Once the weather gets nice and warm we deal with the season's most pressing question: is it appropriate to wear sandals to work?? And if so what kind of sandal? My workplace is pretty casual but flip flops are banned (I think flip flops should be banned in general but that's an odd pet peeve for another day). SO  I'm in the market for some new flats (maybe sandals?) and these are my tops. Usually Target is my go to but lately they haven't been the best deals in town... anyone else notice Target getting pricier over the years??




$14 Loafers @ H&M (TONS of colors)







$24 City Classified D'Orsay Flats @ Charlotte Russe (BOGO sale!)





$25 Frame to Please @ Lulu's (multiple colors)








Where do you find flats? And do you wear sandals to work??

Affordable Flats

Thursday, April 23, 2015

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Soffe   for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.

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It seems like everywhere I turn, someone is taking a selfie—sitting at dinner and the person next to me is snapping a selfie of them eating their salad, walking down the sidewalk and people are taking selfies of themselves in front of the bus stop… it’s gotten so intense that museums here in DC are banning selfie sticks!

I’m not the only one noticing the prevalence of selfies—there is real research going on about this trend. Social media platforms are mostly image-based and force people to take a closer look at themselves, and people post 1 million selfies each day. 91% of teens have posted a picture of themselves online (that’s almost everyone). 30% of all photos people aged 18-24 take are selfies, and 35% of 18-24 year olds admit to altering their selfies.

These statistics made me laugh at first (picturing people altering their selfies), but these studies have found significant problems stemming from selfies. Studies show that selfies lead to decreased intimacy, more shallow relationships. Plastic surgery has risen for patients younger than 30, and selfies have given a rise to “selfie surgery” (eeek!).

That’s why Soffe is heading up #TheUsProject movement, a movement where we can use social media to bring us together instead of pitting us against one another (and ourselves). Instead of competing, let’s build each other up. #TheUsProject movement encourages replacing selfies with a statement that says “we” makes “me”. Together we can make a beautiful picture!
Want to join the movement? You can participate by taking a group photo of yourself on Instagram with the people that give you strength, tag my Instagram handle (@lhtempleton) in the caption and use the hashtag #TheUsProject. The contest runs from 4/20/15-4/25/15. You have a chance to win any of these prizes (BTW these aren’t the cross country team Soffes you’ve been sleeping in for the last 10 years, Soffe has revamped with high performance fabrics and a new look):
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My #TheUsProject picture is of my former teammates/co-workers/roommates and most recently, bridesmaids. The 3 of us met when we moved to Rhode Island to serve as Americorps members with City Year. We worked a really, really tough job and lived in a really tough apartment (see: tiny apartment, mobster landlord, people screaming 24/7 below us). We came home at the end of every day exhausted, but we kept each other going. Their dedication inspired me to do more and do better, and we gave each other the strength to get through the year. We have stayed best friends even though we are scattered across the country, and they are my “we” that is better than “me”. They both work hard for great causes, and when I am losing motivation they inspire me to keep going! This is my post:



Check out #TheUsProject movement and don't forget to enter the Instagram contest to win some new Soffe gear!
Who are your "we" that is better than "me"?

Here is a short video explaining #TheUsProject



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Visit Sponsors Site

SOFFE's Response to the Selfie Epidemic

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

I'm writing this blog post from the Atlanta Airport as I wait for my 10:10 pm flight home from my friend's bachelorette party. Needless to say, there will be no meal prep this week (livin on the edge!) so simplicity is the name of the paleo game- nothing on this meal plan should take more than 20 minutes in the kitchen.




Every time I see plantains at the grocery store I get over-excited and buy more than even a family of 12 could go through before they go bad. A few weeks ago, the risk of plantains going bad caused me to go rogue with the meal plan and try out a new breakfast and it. was. everything.

Prep Time: 10 mins
Cook Time: 10 mins
Servings: 1

Ingredients:
  • 2 ripe plantains, chopped ($1)
  • 1 Tablespoons cashew milk or milk of choice 
  • 2 eggs ($.50)
  • 2 slices uncured bacon (for the side)
  • Seasonings of choice (I tried garlic powder and sea salt, as well as cinnamon and honey. Both were amazing)


First, cook the bacon and put to the side - keep the grease in the pan.

Combine the chopped plantains, milk, and seasonings of choice in a medium sized bowl and blend together (I use my $25 Cuisinart Smart Stick 2-Speed Immersion Hand Blender from Amazon, but if you have a good blender or food processor you can use that too).

Heat the bacon grease on the stove and scoop a 1/2 the plantain mix into the heated pan (it should be kind of like a pancake but a little bit thicker). If you don't have enough bacon grease to coat your pan and "fry" the plantains add the oil of your choice. Flip the concoction after a minute or 2 (once the bottom is tough enough to be flipped). Cook the other side. Repeat with the rest of the plantain mix.

Next, cook your eggs to your preference (I like over-easy) and put on top of the plantains. I added hot sauce and it was AMAZING.

20 minute prep Paleo Meal Plan + Plantain Breakfast

Monday, April 20, 2015

Ah yes, finally the season in which I shell over all the money I saved by sitting on my ass all winter drinking 2 buck chuck binge watching Netflix instead of spending it all going out with friends/spending money to look decent going out with friends, on wedding season. Last year I attended a whopping 10 weddings in 8 different states and spent approximately my life savings to do so (not complaining! I love weddings and I love my friends and I love being at their weddings!). Being a wedding guest gets expensive and I'm not about to make it harder on myself by dipping into my retirement fund (lol who really needs those anyway) on looking nice for the party. Enter: H&M, Asos (new bff!), Target, and Dillard's.

I'm all about Asos right now because of the fact that I can order everything in every size with free shipping and free EASY returns - all of this without having to try on dresses next to 16 year olds trying on prom dresses (like the traumatic time a not-full grown girl with braces and I walked out of our respective dressing rooms in the SAME dress which began my soul searching journey to re-evaluate my fashion decisions and how I decide if I'm too old to pull something off), dig through the "racks" at Target (REALLY IS THERE ANY TYPE OF SYSTEM HERE?!), suffer an anxiety attack from the music at Forever 21, etc., etc.

Here are some of my top picks for wedding guest dresses under $30




A few sidenotes:
  • Once I was watching Four Weddings and the coolest bride wore outfit #2 with beautiful sparkly shoes and I never considered wearing a 2-in-1 dress until I wanted to be that girl.
  • There has been at least one guest sporting a jumpsuit at each wedding I've been to this year and I want to be that girl but I'm short and my waist is awkwardly high and I haven't been able to find a jumpsuit that fits ):  Anyone have success with this?


Shoes:
I have had a lot of luck ordering multiple (yes, multiple) Nine West Flax Heels from EBay stores. I wore them at my wedding (I changed out of heels around half time because that was the point that I said IDGAF ABOUT ANY OF THIS ANYMORE) but I can sport these a full night when needed.

And speaking of weddings, today I'm headed to Miramar Beach, Florida to celebrate my college roommate's bachelorette parties in style:





Where do you find wedding guest attire for reasonable prices???


Affordable Spring/Summer 2015 Wedding Guest Attire

Thursday, April 16, 2015

What a BEAUTIFUL weekend!! We're building a deck right now (LOL - getting a deck BUILT, the idea of me building a deck is hilarious). Since the dogs/no one could use the backyard, we spent a lot of time outside and I took some fun pix which are at the bottom of the post because I'm obsessed with my dogs. For now, meal plan:

Breakfast for the week: Smoothies. I asked for suggestions last week and Jess had a great suggestion which I will be trying:

Lunch for the week: I made this taco soup recipe a few weeks ago and had SO much leftover at the end of the week that I froze it and am eating it for lunch this week! Yay for saving time!

Monday Dinner:

Tuesday Dinner:
Gaspacho!!! (Please excuse the !!!!s, I'm just REALLY PUMPED that it's finally gaspacho weather)

Wednesday Dinner:
Grilling burgers (recipe coming!)

Thursdsay Dinner

Friday Dinner: Oh! I'll be lounging on the beach in Florida for my friend's bachelorette party! No cooking for me!



Desserts: 
  • Dark Chocolate Pudding
  • Cadbury Mini Eggs (ok not Paleo at all but I gotta live a little and I bought ~10 bags since each bag cost $.25)
Snacks: 
  • Fruit, fruit, more fruit.
  • Plantain Chips from Trader Joe's

Here's a recipe I tried last week and really enjoyed. I call it chicken salad, Harrison calls it chicken guacamole, potatoes potahhtoes:


Creamy Avocado Chicken Salad
Servings: 4
Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 0 mins (hey hey! I know you like that!)

Ingredients:
  • 2 lbs chicken breasts, cooked and shredded
  • 2 ripe (aka brownish blackish) avocados, peeled and diced
  • 1/2 onion, diced
  • Juice of one lime
  • 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
  • 1 teaspoons ground sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
Mix it all together. Eat it. Love it. Harrison dipped chips in it because he feels this is simply guacamole, I ate it plain.

And now for some Andi and Ziggy enjoying spring, which we all thought was going to skip over DC this year. AREN'T THEY PERFECT?!?! PS I constantly post pix of my dogs on Insta if you're into that kind of thing. 



Weekly Paleo Meal Plan + Creamy Avocado Chicken Salad

Monday, April 13, 2015


I'm not sure why I said "Spring Training", as if I'm training for something really official and cool. I AM planning on a fall half marathon with my friend Stephanie - anyone have ideas for good east coast halves to run? Preferably with costumes? (Ok, costumes are not required but definitely an added bonus). For now I'm just training for me - for the last months I was killing it for this damn wedding (kind of for me, kind of not), and it feels good to just be working to feel good.

Sidenote: Lindsay with goals like "feel good" usually result in Lindsay at happy hour every day because it's spring and what feels better than drinking a cocktail outside! so we'll see how this one goes. I know I need real goals (shoutout to my small group!) and I'm working on it. More on that later.

Anyway. Here are some of my favorites lately:

Running: Winter is finally over which means it is time to get the heck outside!! I've been looking for ways to spice up my runs and lo and behold, Kelly posted her track workouts and interval runs over the last month- thank you! PS just reading the words "interval run" make my stomach turn- cross country flashbacks.

Millionaire Hoy (duh). I'm digging his 35 minute 500 calorie workouts. I know it's unlikely that I'm actually burning 500 calories but it breaks a good sweat.




Yoga by Candace, especially this video with binds. There was daily yoga at our resort in Mexico, and I was the only who showed up TWICE. The instructor helped figure out these binds and now I'm all about it. This is coming from someone who could hardly reach their arms behind their back 2 months ago.



Intense Barre Workout with Lauren Hefez: Her energy! Oh my. How this girl smiles and laughs through the whole thing is crazy to me. But it works!



Yoga Life Fit with Becca: I love her "creative vinyasa flows". I'm only using quotation marks because I'm not quite sure what "creative vinyasa flow" means but I'm down with it.

Wednesday Workout: Spring Training

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Mann what a weekend! Easter! Sports! Beer watching sports! More sports! More beer watching sports! I'm not a huge fan of the NCAA tournament because it brings back traumatic childhood memories of being a die-hard Jayhawks fan and writing tear-stained diary page after page about how this time I won't recover from our loss, we truly deserved to go all the way this year and life is so unfair and if the Jayhawks can't have the title then what is left to believe in. (direct quotes from my 5th grade diary. I did in fact have a swift recovery that year as the entry two days later weighed my future husband options: Taylor Hanson or Lance Bass or Paul Pierce?).

Anyway, onto le weekly meal plan:

Breakfast for the week: Hearty Breakfast Casserole / Green Smoothies (I'm getting bored with my smoothies...suggestions for new smoothie recipes please!)

Lunch for the week: Slow Cooker Picadillo 

Monday Dinner: BLT Breakfast Salad, because LOOK AT THIS



Tuesday Dinner: Sweet Potato Burgers (subbing a few ingredients, updated recipe to come)

Wednesday Dinner: Breakfast for dinner! Trying out some paleo pancake and/or waffle recipes - anyone have suggestions for this??

Thursday Dinner:  Paleo Gnocchi (Hi can someone please tell me the correct way to pronounce this? I love it. I love to eat it at restaurants. When I order it at restaurants I'm always like "I want the nock-eyyy, wait I mean neeyokeyy I mean..sorry I'm simple" and everyone is like:



Friday Dinner: Leftovers

Desserts: Banana Cake, dark chocolate (72% or higher cocao)

Snacks: almonds, veggies, fruits, sweet potato chips.


Ok so I read this New York Times article and at first panicked that I'm going to die or my body will turn 80 in approximately 6 years because I love meat so much (I'm an end-of-the-world type thinker), then got a reality check and decided to just try to stop relying so much on meat and incorporate some more plant-based meals into the meal plan. Last week I made this vegetable soup that turned out DELICIOUS and really filling and packed with 1000000 servings of vegetables (I measure servings loosely):


Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 6 hours (set it and forget it in my new crockpot)
Servings: 8

Ingredients:
  • 3 stalks of celery, sliced ($.50)
  • 1 package of frozen green beans (15 oz) ($2.00)
  • 1 package of frozen peas (12 oz) ($1.50)
  • 4 carrots, chopped ($1.50)
  • optional: 14 oz navy beans ($1.00)
  • 2 zucchini sqashes, chopped ($1.50)
  • 32 oz vegetable broth ($2.30)
  • 1 14 oz can of tomato sauce ($1.00)
  • 1 14 oz can diced tomatoes ($.1.00)
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 tablespoon sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 2 tablespoon minced dried onion
  • 1 tablespoon garlic powder
  • 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes (this came out pretty spicy so maybe lay off on this a little - easier to add more later)

Throw all the ingredients in the crockpot for 6-7 hours, then enjoy veggies like you've never enjoyed them before.

I need suggestions: plant-based meals/blogs, paleo pancakes/waffles, and smoothie ideas. HELP!




Weekly Paleo Meal Plan + AMAZzzz Paleo Veggetable Soup

Monday, April 6, 2015


Welcome to wedding class, today we will be discussing a part of wedding planning that is extremely fun but a bit difficult if you are clueless like myself.

At the beginning of this whole wedding planning process I had a conversation like this:
Feminist Lindsay: But why should people give me gifts? No one gave me a gift when I got a job? No one gave gifts when I got a promotion? And what about all the successful people who don't get married - what a horrible message! You get married - you get presents! You have babies - more presents! Success in life - no one cares!
Friend: We got a Vitamix from our registry.
Me: What was I saying about registries again?

So, here we are with a wedding registry and here's how we did it:

1. After reading about Kelly's experience I decided to do all the registering online.

2. I love when my friends have Honeyfund registries because I like the idea of giving an experience (or buying their drinks!) so we set up a Honeyfund which took all of 10 minutes (something easy in wedding process! Thank you!). The site is super helfpul with plenty of sample registries on their homepage and constant communication so you know what the heck you're supposed to do next, if you did something wrong, and how to fix it.

3. Next I found this incredibly helpful checklist of everything you could possibly want to register for on TheKnot and basically copied and pasted all of it into a spreadsheet (spreadsheet was totally unnecessary but Excel serves as a security blanket for me).

4. Then I embarked on some obsessive intense research on the products we were registering for. First I checked Consumer reports and Good Housekeeping Product Reviews, and once I narrowed down our lists I checked Amazon reviews for these products and picked the highest reviewed products. This was really time consuming but I want to have most of these things for the rest of my life! And I've taken the work out of it for you and posted the top products below.

5. Next, we registered on Macy's because what doesn't exist at Macy's (answer: turns out a lot of things)?

6. Then, we set up our registry on Amazon (sidenote: Amazon has everything Macy's has but cheaper, however not all guests completely understand Amazon so we registered at both). My favorite feature of Amazon registry was that you can stalk other people's registries who have registered for similar products! Genius!



7. Once the registries went live I kept my eye on both to make sure we had plenty of gifts at each price point (you should always have plenty of $20-50 gifts, $50+, then some big ticket items).

8. As gifts came in, I checked the cards/gifts/gift receipts with the online thank you managers in case there were any discrepancies (for example: any gift classified as an electric from Macy's only shows up as "electric" on the thank you manager, not the specific item they got you). I tracked any confusing things in a Googledoc.

These are some highlights from our registries (based on my psychotic research), feel free to check out our registries for inspiration here:

Amazon:
Shark Navigator Lift-Away Professional Vacuum (NV370) - bye bye allergies! and pet hair anywhere!! And everything I hate about vacuums (this weights like 8 lbs and basically whispers). We use this as a duster (it has an attachment to essentially vacuum all your furniture), vacuum and broom.


Miracle Blade III 16 Piece Knife and Block Set  - I've fantasized about having my own set of these puppies since that infomercial in the 90's where the guy throws a pizza box in the air and SLICES THE BOX IN HALF IN THE AIR.


Vidalia Chop Wizard- YOU CAN MINCE AN ENTIRE ONION IN 60 SECONDS.


CQ Wellness Tri-Blade Vegetable Spiral Slicer, FDA Approved - shoestring sweet potatoes every. single. night. for the rest of our lives. till death do us part.



Vivere Double Hammock with Space Saving Steel Stand, Oasis - can't wait to use this, assuming warm weather ever shows its face again.


Flowtron BK-15D Electronic Insect Killer, 1/2 Acre Coverage - bye mosquitoes!



Breville JE98XL Juice Fountain Plus 850-Watt Juice Extractor - Because drinking champagne with store-bought OJ is for peasants (haha). And we are trying to stay healthy and I saw a doc on Netflix that convinced me juice is the answer to life's problems.

Samsonite Silhouette Sphere 25" Spinner - Bright colors, lifetime warranty, SPINNY WHEELS.







Vitamix Professional Series 750 Blender  - I used the very official research survey method of survey via Facebook and Vitamix came out the winner due to its metal blades, easy-to-cleanness, and I once had "ice cream" made with no dairy and avocados that felt like ice cream at a Costco demo. Here is a chart that compares the different Vitamix series, and this interactive chart allows you to compare Vitamix, Blendtec and Ninja.. If this insane price is too much of a deterrent, Amazon also offers certified refurbished Vitamix for a fraction of the price. Also I know a lot people out there who have a Blendtec and swear by that too (it is about half the price of a new Vitamix).


Macy's


Dansk Flatware 18/10, Classic Fjord II 5 Piece Place Setting - My research says register for 8 place settings, 18/10 is the hardness you want, make sure there are no crevices/hard to clean areas, and that the silverware is ONE piece


Fiesta Dinnerware - no chip warranty, easy to clean, amazing reviews everywhere. We got all white dishes since we are bahhhring, with bright colored pitchers and ramekens. 


Crock-Pot SCCPVL619-S-A Programmable Cook & Carry with Little Dipper Warmer, 6 Qt - A LOCKING LID (praise the crockpot gods for that one), a programmable timer that automatically switches to warm, dishwasher safe, and how damn cute is that little dipper.


Hoover Air Purifier - Because allergies


Anolon Advanced Bronze Cookware - Everything I read said this is best or 2nd best. So far sticky food hasn't stood a chance against these, and it no longer appears that I have lit the kitchen on fire every time I cook.


Martha Stewart Collection Plush - I conducted my own hands-on field research for these which included me going to Macy's and touching every single towel. Harrison's first-hand review: "These are fucking luxurious".

What are your favorite kitchen/household items? What brands have you had good experiences with? 

How to: Wedding Registries

Friday, April 3, 2015