VLOG CITY LIFE: October 2016 Tampa Restaurant Crawl, Fitness, and Lifestyle

Life: So this month we switched things up! I do believe this has been one of our most active months ever because we usually don't go out every weekend. In October, we usually go to the Jazz Festival, but this year we decided to stop going because it has become more of an "everything" festival with very little jazz and lots of people acting crazy. So I proposed a new idea, a restaurant crawl. Basically, we would try new restaurants every Friday & Saturday that have gluten free menus (so that it is safe for me). So it did get hard towards the end of the month because we both love staying home, but we had a lot of fun and we found a few gems.

I resumed my search for the elusive clean white pumpkin to decorate, I still haven't found one. I am so drawn to the pumpkins though even though I don't eat them; I think I have been here at least three times this month. I even went to a pumpkin decorating hoping to find a white one, but they were painting them white lol.

I finally decided on what I wanted as my anniversary gift and I am glad I waited. This bag is perfect for fall.

Health: I got to play around with NIMA my portable gluten tester after I got my first shipment with 3 test tubes at the end of last month. I am finding that a lot of restaurants have gluten free menus, but don't understand the issue with cross contamination (not a shock, but these restaurants are listed on the top 10 or 15 safest restaurants to eat at if you are on a GF diet in Tampa). I got glutened 3 times this month during the restaurant crawl (all cross contamination).

Luckily, I have a monthly subscription to get capsule refills so I will get 12 test tubes a month and I won't have to chance it after this. 2 of the restaurants that glutened me I actually want to return to and give them another chance. Maybe once I have NIMA in hand I can narrow things down with the help of the staff. I have been eating a lot of seafood lately ever since I was introduced to King Crabs and oysters at a few of these places in South Tampa. They get the seafood in fresh from local beaches and its just amazing. I am not ready to give up yet!

Cooking: This month I actually cooked more than usual despite doing the restaurant crawl so I had to save some of my food pics for next month. This month I had a huge issue w buying food within the sale by date from Trader Joe's, but when you open it its rotten. This has happened so many times shopping there which is a huge disappointment. I love TJ's, but this has to stop because not only am I waisting money, but throwing away food. Whole Foods, Fresh Market, and Publix Greenwise Market are all pretty close so those are my preferred stores over TJ's I just get lazy because TJ's is closer. I was so happy to get a fresh haul of organic local foods from Whole Foods and get started in the kitchen. I mainly video my cooking on my snapchat user name Fashiontolive if you want to check it out, otherwise you can find full recipes on my YouTube channel FashiontoliveTV.

pumpkin decorating party

Fitness: So thankfully my knee is almost 100% better. It no longer swells up after I work out or hurts terribly so I am back at my regular routine. This month I pretty much did a ton of workouts in doors as well as outdoors and just had fun. I have been specifically strength training for a little over a year now and I am at a higher weight now from building muscle, but same size clothes wise. I am really happy about this because before I was just thin/skinny. Well, I still look like a string bean, but I have more tone which makes me happy. My goal is to just keep doing what I am doing and really start trying to do headstands. Not being able to do headstands is making me crazy, I had more upper body strength last year before I switched my workouts so I have been neglecting my arms.