Hello world! It's about time I posted something, don't you think? I feel like the holidays flew by and I can't believe January is almost over. How did this happen?

To say I've had some pretty big distractions is an understatement. While I have been recipe testing, photographing, and traveling for the last two months, none of it has made it to the blog.. yet! I have two fully shot and tested recipes, two big trips (which will have to be broken down into multiple posts), ingredient guides, and so much more just waiting to be posted! So, let me break down the last few months into a few bite sized pieces.

New House

Mark and I are moving! ... in 6-8 months, haha. We are building our house from the ground up, which so far has been the craziest thing I have ever done. For the last year, we've been wanting to move but nothing on the market sparked our interest. We wanted to stay in the North Scottsdale area and pounced when we saw a new build community pop up. It was a dream come true!

Because this house will be our 'forever home' we've been working hand-in-hand with a design team since early December to make sure we get every detail just right. We hired The LifeStyled Company to help us with all the design decisions, then spent 12 hours over three different appointments hand picking everything else with the builder. This new build has been pulling my head in a million different directions but I am excited about this next phase of our life! Now that most of the tough decisions have been made, we can sit back and wait for it to come together. We live about 15 minutes from our build site and saw that they broke ground the other day - we were overjoyed!

Girls Trip to Iceland

Don't worry, I have quite a few Iceland posts coming soon but I thought it would be fun to share some of the details now! I am the oldest of three girls and our 21st birthday family tradition is that my mom takes us on a one-on-one birthday trip to the city of our choice. My mom took me to New York City, my sister went to New Orleans (she's super into Jazz), and my youngest sister wanted to see the Northern Lights. My mom originally planned to take her to Alaska but after some research she realized that she would have better luck seeing them in Iceland. Once word spread to my middle sister and I that mom was taking Maurisa to Iceland, we begged to join them, and the rest is history!

Precepting #RD2Be's

As a registered dietitian nutritionist, I am now at the point in my career where I am able to mentor and teach the next generation of dietitians! To become a registered dietitian nutritionist, you have to have a college degree in dietetics, compete a full-time 9 month internship program, then sit for a national exam. The 9 month dietetic internship is basically really intense job shadowing. You are exposed to all different avenues of nutrition and at the end of the rotation are expected to be fully competent in that role.

After being a dietitian for 2 years and running my blog for about 3 years, I am now taking dietetic interns from of a local dietetic internship program. As their entrepreneurship rotation, I show these future dietitians what it takes to run a food blog and everything that goes on behind the scenes. Being a mentor is really rewarding and I can't wait to show you what we have been working on!

I am so excited to get back into the swing of things and hop back on line. Like I said, I can't believe February is almost over but am so excited about the road ahead!