Callieflower Kitchen

An epic proportion of pictures, that is! Sit back, relax, and get ready for a million and one pictures, because I have a whole weekend in Buffalo and Niagara Falls to recap

The trip started with a perfect breakfast courtesy of Nate -

And then we were off on the road. Due to a couple wrong turns and a really long wait at the border, the drive took a little longer than anticipated so I’m glad we had lots of snacks to hold us over.

Bored but almost there!

We spent the afternoon shopping at the Fashion Outlets and Nate got some nice shirts, but I didn’t have luck finding anything. I wasn’t worried though – I was more than willing to save my border allowance for groceries

I worked up an appetite with all the shopping and snacked on a Luna bar in the car as we drove to the Walden Galleria. After some more shopping and wandering around there (during which time a super cute dress was purchased!), it was time for dinner -

At The Cheesecake Factory!! I know there are many people out there that aren’t huge CCF fans, but I love it and look forward to going every time I’m across the border. I’ve really liked everything I’ve ordered there, I like the atmosphere and everything is really reasonably priced. Plus they’re known for their dessert, so how can you say no?

Ohhhh yeeeeeeah.

We started off the meal with my favourite bread -

(The brown, oaty one – it’s so sweet!)

And a tropical iced tea ♥

Nate had to look over the menu, but I decided to go with the tried and true.

Sweet corn tamale cakes They’re so moist and flavourful and I love the salsa verde, mmmmmmmmm. It’s an “appetizer”, but it’s always more than enough for a full-sized meal for me. I actually only ended up eating a little less than half, so I made sure I got the rest packed up to eat later. We ended up not wanting dessert at the restaurant, but I got a piece of cheesecake to go and we shared a few bites in the hotel (which took about an hour and several miles of driving to find due to a huge lack of vacancies this weekend, but we don’t need to talk about that).

Can’t go wrong with tuxedo cheesecake

The next morning after showering and packing up, we were ready for breakfast! And where do you go for breakfast in the States?

I have an obsession with the unsweetened iced tea they have south of the border.

I wish we could order it in restaurants here, but we only have what they refer to as “sweet tea” in the south. I know I can make it at home easily enough, but it’s just not quite the same I scoped out the “healthy” section but it seemed a little overpriced compared to the rest of the menu and I just wanted straight-up pancakes, so I went with the Harvest Grain N’ Nut Pancakes.

I love whipped butter!

Nathan loves ketchup.

After breakfast was what I came for – shopping at Target + Wegmans. I was hoping to find some cute sundresses at Target, but unfortunately nothing really caught my fancy. That might’ve been a good thing, because I ended up making a rather large purchase anyway But I’ll talk about that in a bit.

The weather was gorgeous by this point, and we decided that we should head back to Canada and check out the butterfly conservatory like we’ve always talked about. I think this was one of the best ideas we’ve ever had, because I had a blast! All the butterflies were gorgeous, and it was so fun taking pictures together.

We had some mad photography skills going on in the conservatory – I was climbing all over the rocks and Nathan was bent like a pretzel. We both made some pretty funny “concentration” faces too. I had almost as much fun taking photos of each other as the butterflies

We had some butterflies land on us too!

Cutest date ever!

After the conservatory we were starving because it was already almost dinnertime, so we headed to the park outside and had some leftovers.

With a salad packed up from home, to make sure I got enough greens in me I ended up deciding to save the cheesecake for the ride home, because we opted for a cold treat to keep us cool in the hot sun.

I loved the chocolate-vanilla swirl flavour of soft serve when I was younger, and the Yogen Fruz at the conservatory had a frozen yogurt variety so I had to try it! The texture was really different than ice cream, but it was still good

After checking out the beautiful gardens, we headed to the main strip for some touristy shopping and photo-taking.

After being to Niagara Falls about a million times, I finally made a purchase at the Hershey’s store! I just bought a bag of milk chocolate kisses (which is mostly gone now), but it made me feel like I could finally check it off my life’s “to do” list

The falls were gorgeous -

And there was even a rainbow!

We had to start heading home because it was getting late, but unfortunately we hit a ton of traffic and were jammed for hours. I snacked on an apple, the leftover cheesecake, and a bunch of Hershey’s kisses as we anxiously waited for traffic to clear.

I still had to drive back to Toronto after we got back to Nate’s house, and by the time I got home that night it was already 1 in the morning. I unpacked and got in bed as quickly as possible, but it still wasn’t a sufficient amount of sleep.

Today I woke up not feeling so great. My throat hurt, I had a headache, and I really just wanted to stay in bed and be miserable all day. Of course I had to drag my butt to work, but I wasn’t very happy about it.

I made myself a chocolate + banana protein smoothie to sooth my throat, and brought it to work in the new travel mug I got from Wegmans. I left my cold travel cup at Nate’s house, so I need to remember to get it back

Lunch was just stuff that could be thrown together really quickly, since I was short on time. Plain salad, a Vega bar, baby carrots, an apple, and -

Blueberry Siggi’s with granola. This was another Wegmans purchase, and something I was really excited to try. For some reason I thought the Siggi’s would be like a fruit-bottom yogurt, so I was a little disappointed when it wasn’t like that. The texture and taste seemed a little strange at first and I wasn’t sure I liked it, but I think in the end I was a fan Yum!

When I got home I could finally survey my American finds – chocolate calcium chews, Arnold sandwich thins (HLS sponsor!), Kashi cinnamon heart to heart and honey sunshine, MaraNatha dark chocolate almond butter, pumpernickel pretzels, two Clif Z-Bars and a coconut water tetra (as well as two remaining Siggi’s in the fridge). And the large purchase from Target?

Candice had told me about the Waring Pro Juice Extractor she got from Target and gave it a very positive review, so I figured I should look into it while I was there. It was on sale for $50 ($10 off) when I looked at it, and I figured that it was very reasonably-priced for a juicer. I was thinking of buying a new dress for the Healthy Living Summit cocktail party which would be about $50 anyway, but I have a cute dress that I bought around Christmas that I’m pretty sure I could wear instead of going to the trouble of getting a new one, so I justified the purchase that way. Like it matters

Even though I was a little nervous that the juicer wouldn’t live up to my expectations, I couldn’t help but be excited and basically cut up a little bit of everything to throw in.

Not expecting much more than a trickle to come out, I flipped on the switch and got to juicing (after washing the unit, of course). When I pressed down on the feeder block, juice poured right out! I felt like I was actually in an infomercial!

The juice was beautiful.

Inside and out.

First taste (excuse my rumpled look) -

Oh. My gosh. It was delicious! A little zesty (note to self: half of a lemon was too much, and the amount of ginger was WAY too much) but it was soso satisfying. I honestly felt almost instantly less sick, and even now I feel so much better. I could see myself drinking juice n a regular basis – I’m already planning tomorrow’s! I was thinking maybe a green juice with celery, cucumber, spinach and apple? I’m so excited!

I also ate about a million dates (medjool are better, but these are less than 1/2 the price) and some various forms of chocolate + carbs (mostly MaraNatha dark chocolate almond and Hershey’s kisses). I never had a real dinner, but I’m still feeling a little off and I definitely grazed enough over the evening.

I’m so sleepy now and it’s way past my bedtime, especially since I got so little sleep last night! I’ll leave you with these Operation Beautiful notes I posted on our trip – they give me this warm sense of happiness in my heart, and I hope they made someone else smile

Have a good night ♥