Tummy Toning Yoga Poses

These are all my all time favorite yoga moves that I do daily and now I am sharing with you!

 Warrior 3

Stand with your feet together. Inhale as you extend your arms out wide in T position or straight overhead for a more advanced variation.

Exhale as you bend forward at your hips, lifting your right leg straight behind you coming into Warrior 3. Draw your navel toward your spine and hold for five breaths. Then come to stand, lower your right leg, and repeat with the left leg lifted for another five.

Standing Hand to Big Toe D

Begin standing with both feet together and your hands on your hips. Shift weight into your left leg. Inhale as you raise your right leg up, keeping your core strong while stacking your shoulders directly over your hips and your left leg. If you can't hold your leg straight out, just bend the knee — you're still working your abs.

Hold Standing Hand to Big Toe D for five breaths and then repeat lifting the left leg.

Dolphin Plank

From Downward Facing Dog, inhale and shift your weight forward coming into plank position (top of a push-up). Exhale as you lower onto your forearms so that your shoulders are stacked directly above your elbows and your body is parallel with the floor.
Dolphin Plank is an intense pose, so if you can't hold for five breaths, lower one or both knees to the floor.

Balancing Star

Begin in Downward Facing Dog and step both feet together. Move your right hand to the left about six inches so it's at the upper center of your mat. Step your right foot forward two inches and plant the sole of your right foot firmly on the mat, so your toes are pointing away from you. Inhale as you roll open to your right side and lift your left hand off the mat. Raise your left leg up into the air.
Gaze at your lifted hand and hold Balancing Star for five breaths. Keeping your core engaged will help you stay balanced. Repeat this pose on the other side.

Crow

Begin in a squat, placing your hands shoulder width distance apart on the mat. Spread your fingers as wide as you can, creating a strong, stable base. Straighten your legs slightly, placing your knees as high up onto your triceps (back of your arms) as possible. Slowly shift weight into your palms and lift your feet off the ground.
Stay here for five breaths gazing at the floor in front of you.

Boat

Sit on the floor with your legs in front of you. Bend your knees and lift your legs off the floor, bringing your knees in toward your chest with your shins parallel to the floor. Sit up as tall as you can and take a breath in as you slowly begin to straighten your legs. Your legs don't need to be straight since the action of keeping your spine long and drawing your belly in is what works your abs here.
Hold Boat pose for five breaths.

Intense East

From a seated position with your legs extended straight out in front of you, place your hands behind your hips about six to eight inches, with your fingers pointing toward your toes. As you inhale, press into your hands and feet firmly, lifting your hips into the air. Lift them as high as you can so your spine is in a long line. Slowly release your head back, looking behind you, and open through your throat.Stay here in Intense East pose for five deep breaths, then lower your hips to the floor.

8 Crooked Limbs Prep

Sit on your bum with your legs straight in front of you. Bend your right knee and hold your right foot with your left hand. Bring your right arm underneath your right leg and use your left hand to help push your right knee as high as you can on top of your right triceps.
Plant your palms on the floor and bend your right elbow slightly to keep your knee in place. Press into your palms firmly, engage your abs, and with an inhale lift your hips off the floor. If it's easy, lift your left leg off the ground, too. You're sure to feel a burn in your belly after five breaths.

Source comes from

fitsugar.com

Happy Monday and weekday goodies

Happy Monday the sun is shining and is is warm outside!! Our weekend here in Wisconsin was actually in the 50's and we had our heater on!! Crazy eh?!

1. 1&2: Every Sunday we have Ice Cream Sundae night at our house.  I made a homemade vanilla ice cream and we have tons of toppings to fill it.  The girls had chocolate and sprinkles and caramel and chocolate chips!
2. It was gorgeous out Friday so we went for a walk. We usually do go for a walk every night but the rest of the weekend was to cold! Lauren felt extra special to actually feel the pavement on her little feet and she felt big that she was actually on the road. 
3. Swoon**  I finally got to meet baby Cash which is my besties son.  Now we are horrible besties and haven't seen each other in 2 years but life and kids keep you really busy and we are trying to work on being better friends with seeing each other and we only live 30 mins away from each other.  But isn't he adorable??  I think my baby fever is gone after 0928403 hours of holding and spoiling him.
4. Dance parties!!  We have them every night after supper.  We turn on pandora and dance and clean to the music.  Thing you should know I am a clean freak.  So I was yelling kids were in their room all day just cleaning up one pile of clothes and so on.  It was not fun so I had to think of something to make cleaning fun.  So far the dance parties work and the rule of fixing their bed or no breakfast works too lol.
5. Oh the fun of  making a room pretty!  Hubby is a project jumper or a slacker.  The wall you see in the photo use to have 5 ceiling to floor windows that were very very drafty so he got rid of them put up a new wall and windows and that was that.  fast forward 7 months later the wall was still not tapped, mudded or anything until I said hey I am going to do this when you are at work and he said WHAT?  So that was that this weekend while it was cold we got it mudded and tapped and primer is set and oh he decided to rip out the carpet.  I hope he remembers we have a sleepover birthday party at our house in 12 days.  Oye Vey 

Week day goodies!!

Names are clickable to recipe

The Easy Way Out Donuts

Salted Caramel Ice Cream

Peanut Butter Fudge Brownies

My Own Cinnabon

Dance Parties

In our home we have dancing cleaning parties.  Why?  Because it makes cleaning fun and not a struggle.  I can easily admit that I have had yelling matches with my kids when it comes to cleaning where they are either in their room all day cleaning and I am yelling and grounding and I just couldn't do it anymore.

So we all sat down together and made a schedule because that is what works in our household.  So for a long time now before they leave their room they clean any mess they make and most important dancing parties.  Every night after supper we turn on Pandora and dance and clean together.  My kitchen is clean, my living room is clean, the girls help wipe down the bathrooms with Clorox wipes and they finish cleaning any mess they have in their room.

So that way we are having fun dancing and singing and cleaning.  There is no yelling,screaming,crying,grounding.  There is fun.

With kids it is all about making chores fun and dance parties work for us and I don't want them to remember me yelling about cleaning I want them to remember how we danced sang and had fun in our own home.

Happy Monday and weekday goodies!

Happy Monday!  The sun is shining the windows are open and I am semi ignoring the breakfast dishes in my kitchen sink.

My weekend was pretty much boring.  It was finally gorgeous outside in the 70s and I didn't do anything.  We did find a peach truck and bought some fresh peaches which were personally amazing! They are already gone *insert sad face*

Saturday my oldest daughter got her outfit in the mail so we took a 2 mile hike and found some amazing places to take photos.  She will be 8 on August 15th.

Sunday is my deep cleaning day so I stayed home while the hubby took the girls out fishing and then I got to play with this beauty

Yes this is my first Ice Cream maker and I cannot wait to make more with it.  Sunday is Ice Cream night at our house so now instead of going to DQ, this will be so much easier and a lot more fun!

If you don't know I have a cooking blog and something amazing happened this week. The Daily Meal, one of the top 10 food and drink websites.  Personally invited me to their Culinary Content Network!  This is huge for my blog and me and I so over joyed.  They share links to my blog so it does help drive traffic back to my blog and I can even go on press trips!  I am excited to be part of this program.

Now for this weeks goodies

Chocolate Ice Cream

Pizza Balls

Chicken Pot Pie

Linked up with

My little model

I have one daughter who loves the camera to where she is even posing and making kissy faces at the mirror.  My other daughter hates the camera after about 2 pictures with the Mom are we done yet?  No more pictures and my youngest is at the age where she is smiling once the camera is in front of her
Usually our photo shoots end up like this

Well my oldest loving the camera daughter is turning 8 in August so we went on a little ok not little a long hike looking for one certain place and we found it about 30 mins later haha.

So here are the photos we took

She is also a tad big bit obsessed with leopard print

more to come

For some reason whenever I start my personal blog I go blah.  I have thought more and more that it is because it is simply to much work of advertising here, certain days to do things there.  So I am just going to make it simple.  I will write posts here and there.  There will be just random postings and weekly updates no pages and pages of random link ups.

If you like me follow if not then go along but I hope you do like me because my family is awesome *winky face*