Blogging and Body Confidence

Life is interesting, full of twists and turns; makes things interesting yet fun. That is how I am back to blogging I have made turn to start writing and start photography again. Some where down in my heart tells me it is the right thing, to listen to your heart is to listen to soul. It's like the saying that music is the heart and soul for singers, will I happen to be a really good singer... Yet I hide that I am simply because I am shy..

I am going to start a blog series based on positive thinking, positive  thoughts and self improvement; along with that I will share my adventures of me learning to be myself with confidence. All of this came upon after watching a couple YouTube videos from Sarah Rae Vargas, she is awesome. She made me realize that body confidence and confidence are really important to oneself. 

I will still be doing my food and nutrition part of my blog, I will sharing more of my daily life posts to show you how I have been able to be successful at my weight loss. Yes that's right all the weight I have kept off has not come back and I will go into how it has been possible. For now I will leave you to wondering where I have been....

Hello I'm...Late

Wow I'm late to the party by 3 days oops!, I do apologize and this is what happens when I post on the fly. I wanted to start about with a huge Vegan MoFo boom but Larbor Day happen it's a pain in the neck for me at work. It's like one of the insanely busy days that everyone wants to return anything plus the big regional/district bosses like to come out to the store since it's one of the bigger/higher selling stores in the area. 

That's okay things happen but from here on I'll be more part of the community and the Vegan MoFo environment. I'm like a quick ninja I'll post when your not looking ha ha, I'm really a smart ass and this year I decided to show my true self in my working for everyone to understand who Southern Purple Veggie really is. For example it's about 11pm on September 3 and I have work at 5am; I really need to be asleep so I am going to make this post short. There will be better and longer posts to come in the next few days when I am not typing with one eye open.

So this year during Vegan MoFo part of my theme was to show vegan grocery hauls or things I usually buy around where I live. Mostly recently I purchased the Earth Balance vegan cheddar flavor squares,  dark chocolate bixby bar, and emmy's macaroons. All of these are products I have never tried and I loved them all, especially the Earth Balance vegan cheddar squares. I love them with a passion I even have a box at work now, that even my co workers who are not vegan eat also because they taste good. 

I think for now I'll leave you with this picture of vegan yummies until next time. Oh and one more thing I introduce my new lovely kitten lucky sugar bear; he's a rescue kitten from a truck that was parked in my work parking lot when the weather was over 100 degrees.

Release Hot News #VeganMoFo2014 is coming

Hello, everyone this is start of VeganMoFo aka Vegan Month of Foo; its the time of year that a team of bloggers unite to kick up this wonderful blogging event. They are such a wonderful team of people that in fact you don't have to be vegan to be of it but you do have to post 100% percent vegan recipes during the event. 

This year is the 8th Annual Vegan Month of Food (aka VeganMoFo) is ready to take the internet by cats and dogs. September 1,2014, is the date that several hundred bloggers and now including instagrammers from all over the globe will commit to posting vegan food for at least 5 days a week for the whole month of September. Most dedicated participants try to blog all 30 days. Food writers, bloggers and home cooks will write about what they eat, what they cook and even what they imagination to cook with the intention of showing off the wide and delicious world of vegan food. Some participants use VeganMoFo as a motivation to tackle massive culinary projects, some choose a theme for each day or for each week; while others take the challenge on of daily posts from the seams of their pants!

Ha! that's me this year I'm doing this from the seams of my pants, yes I do have a theme but it's on the fly when it comes to writing up posts. On to the press release info, early I mention that instagrammers are part of this even this year. This is something new to the VeganMoFo event, in fact there is a hashtag you can you during the event which is #veganmofo2014. That way if you are curious what vegans are eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner - you can take a look and will be amazed at the variety meals and foods. I mean there will be everything from summer produce, family dinners, green smoothies, mountains of cookies, waffles, and ice cream. 

Local blogger Ashley Nikole of Southern Purple Vegan is one of the blogs participating this year. She first began Southern Purple Vegan back in 2011 which focused on her love for vegan food, local restaurant reviews, food recipes and much more about her journey in Texas. 

An alphabetized list of all participating blogs and Instagram accounts will be posted online at the Vegan MoFo Headquarters International (http://www.veganmofo.com). There you will also find information about generating an RSS feed to help you keep track of all the food writing. Vegan MoFo can also be followed on Twitter @veganmofo. VeganMoFo is a grassroots event that has evolved from an international community of vegans who love to cook, and are passionate about sharing their love of vegan food with the rest of the world. First organized by famed vegan chef and cookbook author Isa Chandra Moskowitz (theppk.com), Vegan MoFo has been gathering more and more enthusiasts each year. Anyone interested in food should definitely go online and check it out. And be prepared for a growling stomach!

Wow! Did you get all that awesome information? Isn't it exciting?????! My theme is slightly random, I'm keeping it interesting needless to say I have three themes at one time. My main theme is dinner with a movie, which I pair a vegan meal to the movie I am watching, my other theme is vegan lunches for work and last but not least my 3rd theme is my love for vegan food finds/grocery hauls. I might even include a few vegan friendly places around my area I live.

Learning the meaning of balance

I may not be the best blogger in the world or even consistent at it either. I have learned a few things over the past few months about balancing my work life and personal life plus this blog. Southern Purple Vegan got put aside until now, I took on new responsibilities and moved departments at my current job. The position I have new required my full attention during my training and to this day at times it will require my full attention.

Even though I haven't blogged in a while it's still something I like doing, it's a creative outlet. I recently have been eating a more raw diet, because it's been so hot plus humid in the building I work at. That eating a fresh non cooked meals at work made more sense than eating something cooked. My meals may show up on here from time to time that I take to work, but mostly this blog is about my weight loss journey and healthy recipes plus food.

Since last year I have declined in blogging but have not declined in my regime of getting healthy I have maintained my current weight for a year with out gain more than 7 pounds and losing it. Needless to say I might be randomly posting at times when it's easy for me, at times there may be a gap in my blogging. So needless to say welcome to Southern Purple Vegan...oh here are some of my random moments of work from the past 6 months.

Random things you find in a drawer at a work.

Free coffee from a customer to all the employees working outside when cold.

Serious mix up on a order at work, who orders a coin operated dryer.

Need Red Bull?

Yum Simple Dinner

While I was working so much during the holiday season I made some very yummy simple dinners and so did my other he made  me a few dishes. My typical meals were simple very few ingredients in them I figured less ingredients would equal less time in cooking. 

Here's a few of the dishes I had during the holiday season, my decent dishes that I worked on I'll be posting with a recipe. For this post its all about the pictures.

Time Has Past

I'm not going to lie to you my fellow friends and followers, I did disappear for a bit. I need to rethink how I was going to continue this blog or if I was going to even continue it. After working over a month now at my new job I have figured out that blogging is a passion for me. So I am going to continue this blog, as far as my journey to get to a healthy weight it's still a big work in progress. My birthday has past and I didn't make my goal but overall I am happy with where I am.

 The job I have right now keeps me on my feet all day so I'm constantly moving during my shift so I'm always physical working my body even on my days off. So the journey to get to the weight I want to be will be here soon than later, right now I'm honestly putting a little effort into it right now and I'm just losing weight like crazy. I had to go out an buy a new belt after 3 weeks of working and now it's 3 weeks later I'm moving down a notch in the belt to make it smaller. So my journey is now in a new spot in my life since I'm back to working. I have to fine my perfect balance for everything in life since it's all new to me again.

I have a few things to share soon here on the blog one of them is a review of NatureBox an monthly subscription service, which is way over due. However the schedule I have been given recently doesn't really allow me to do barely anything expect for sleep,eat,work then sleep. So soon as the retail holiday season is over maybe I'll have more time again but for now I barely have any time for anything.

Plan + Attack = Vegan MoFo

It's been a few days however I'm prepping for Vegan Mofo, it's my first year and I want to make it a good one. I am going to apologize in advance for couple things I may not be able to respond to comments right away due to job hunting and interviews. I'm really focused on trying to get a job at least two months before my next birthday, so I'm really focused. 

If you want to a sneak peak at what I'm doing for Vegan MoFo head over to Instagram and look up me @southernpurplevegan, feel free to look at any of my other pictures. All Vegan MoFo pictures will have the hashtag #veganmofo.

Computer Nightmare

Going to sleep at night with a computer on can really give someone weird dreams especially when it doesn't go to sleep. I learned this lesson last night when I was attempting to download Microsoft Office 2010, again for the fifth time. It didn't download it got stuck on the screen saying it was downloading, so I went to bed and woke up. It was still on that screen, so I turned the computer off and eventually it decide to download Microsoft Office 2010 after three hours.

Needless to say waiting for 60 days to get Microsoft Office back on my netbook has been a pain in my butt, simply because I haven't been able to do anything. I have been attempting to use Internet based resume builders for posting on the Internet to get jobs, but these builders make your resume the same like everyone else's. That is why I'm so excited to have Microsoft Office back, because now I don't have to use my mom's computer for creating a resume. 

It's really a good thing that I got Microsoft Office to download today;after I got it downloaded my mom told me that her laptop had died. Isn't that a crazy the same day that I finally get Microsoft Office to download my mom's laptop battery completely dies on her and I was about to finish my resume too. My resume is on my mom's dead computer right now so I'm kinda of glad  that I did use the online resume builder, simply because I have some of the information to create a new resume.

Even though my actually almost finished resume is on my mom's computer, I need to whip up something today. I have an awesome friend from high school, we're in choir together; she's going to help me with my resume tomorrow when we meet up. We haven't seen each other since I graduated from high school which was about five years ago. So I'm a little nervous but purely excited to see her , plus we live 5 minutes away from each other we didn't know this until last week.

What do you think of the online resume builders?

Mad World, Really It Is.

I'm writing this post at 11:15pm on Monday, while listening to Mad World by Gary Jules on Pandora. For some reason this song triggered me to write this post that it is really a mad world. I say this with the context of a grain of salt regards to the job market. I am currently searching for a job & have been for the past year since I left my last job on good terms. However I haven't been that lucky with finding a new job nor a company that has been willing to hire me yet. 

But! I got a email from anonymous company which I am not going to name offering me a job at a kinda of local area but they want to pay me less than the industry standard for the job. Which I was very confused about 1. I'm a experienced in this field, 2. I have highly great feedback from previous supervisor's for my work. This made me think wow this is really a mad world, and I am just now noticing it in regards to the job market.

The lyric's that I think relate to this post are paraphrased below:

.."I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take

When people run in circles its a very,very

Mad World, mad world..."

However on the other hand, I can say that I do understand it's a tough job market right especially with a weak economy and bad politics going on. I apologize for ranting about how it's a crazy world right now, I could go on but I'm not going to. I do apologize again for not blogging, I have been way to busy looking for jobs that blogging is on the far back burner, but I think I'm going to make a honest attempted at trying to blog more. It feels nice to blog, it's like singing it lightens the soul to a place of joy.

On A Mission That May Be Impossible

So me and Dirp Man are on a mission to eat at every restaurant that offer's a vegetarian or vegan meal options in the neighborhood; we live in. This will be something that we  think may be possible, however it will take time to accomplish.

Me and Dirp Man live in the Houston area , so yes there are vegan friendly options. Never the less the part of Houston we live in isn't very vegetarian or vegan friendly;we live in the far west of Houston. Needless to say found a few options but not many. 

The reason behind this mission is, well I mostly want to find those gems in the area we live in. For Dirp Man he wants to learn where he can go to get food; he's new to vegetarianism. So far I know of a couple places, but not many.

Here's a sneak photo of a Mediterran restaurant down the street from where I live; Dirp Man and I will be going back soon. So the review of the restaurant will come soon may in two weeks or sooner.

My Past Week Via Pictures ( Warning Pic Heavy)

My new favorite plant based milk. It's so good.

Homemade Pizza

Homemade Vegan Coleslaw.

Salad with homemade green dressing.

Messy Kitchen almost everyday.

Blister from new shoes after 10 minutes. 

Failed Cupcakes :-(.

Chickpea Popper's too spicy this time.

Marini's Avocado & SW Black bean  Empandas with salad.

Burnt my finger's so it hurts to type.

Why The Disappearing Act?

I know that I didn't really post anything after Wednesday of this last week, I just didn't have the motivation to get on the computer. I was in a mood of avoiding technology except my iPhone which has all my email accounts setup on it.

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I was glad to not be near a computer for a couple days and not having to post anything. I was able to enjoy myself and rethink about how I am going to blog. I realized that I kinda suck at blogging I am not the best blogger nor the most consent blogger either but I realized that I write from my heart about subjects that are dear to me. 

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I realized that when my heart isn't fully into something then I don't complete it, however with my mini break. I really did miss posting things in fact I have lots to write about. It is the year of the dragon so there is luck heading my way since I am dragon in Chinese zodiacs.

Have you ever had one of those moments where you were glad to not have to deal with technology?

Goals Not Resolutions!

Welcome to the year 2012, this is my year. I have decided that resolutions are out and goals are in; simply because we set our self for failure when it's a resolution. With goals you usually hold yourself more accountable for your actions to that goal.

For myself I am setting a few goals that are personal and I will share only five of those here on my blog. The other's will be kept to me and my close friends & family.

So here they are:

1. Removed ANY High Fructose Corn Syrup products from my diet completely.

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2. Do yoga everyday at least 30 minutes per day.

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3. Start college before my next birthday.

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4. Blog more often which means setting time as side each day to write at least 5 posts a week.

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5. Enjoy 2012 because it's my year the year of dragon.

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Is there any goals that you hope to meet this year? Let me know.