MakingMine

I have a great app recommendation for you!

When J and I decided to stay the night in Chicago last weekend, we decided to give a new app a try. Hotel Tonight is a hotel booking app for securing rooms “day of.” I can’t say enough good things about this handy tool. It’s so simple and intuitive that we literally were able to book a room while window shopping down Michigan Ave. We got a great price and a location that couldn’t be beat.

You simply let the GPS find your location and it brings up a list of last minute hotel deals. It provides the hotel name, address, room specs, and photos. It also tells you exactly how much you’ll be paying (none of that bidding business). Hotel deals only exist for a limited number of cities, but I really hope that keep expanding! This is definitely an app we’d like to use again!

This is definitely my latest love. Let me know if you try it!

I have another great app to share. You know how most diets suggest you track what you eat, well My Fitness Pal makes this daunting task super simple.

You set your daily caloric intake goal, enter in all of the food and beverage you consume throughout the day, add in any exercise you complete, and submit before you go to bed. You can also set it up so it tracks your weight week to week.

Entering in your food journal could not be easier. There is a bar code scanning feature that allows you to scan the food packaging and then appropriately adjust your serving size. If you don’t have a bar code to scan, just type in what you ate and it will bring up tons of different options to choose from. This little app is seriously smart - remember those McCormicks recipes I was raving about? It found the nutritional info for the same exact meal! It even has a HUGE database of restaurant dishes, so there’s no excuse to leave out those pesky meals.

The tracking on this app is super cool. It shows your nutritional breakdown for the day, week, month, etc. You can also see trends in how you’re eating and how it’s affecting your weight over time. One of my favorite features is when you submit your journal for the day, you get a quick message about how you’ve done. Depending on how well or poorly I behaved that day, it says something along the lines of, “If you ate this way every day, you would loose 3 pounds in the next 30 days.” It’s a good reality check on how my daily food decisions will affect me long-term.

I could go on and on about the neat features of this app, but you really should just try it yourself. For those of you without a smart phone, there is a browser version as well that you can use from your computer.

Hope you enjoy my latest love as much as I do!

J turned me on to a great app for habits - building the good and breaking the bad. It’s the next latest love.

It’s called Way of Life, and the idea is simple: determine the habits you want to build or break and the track your lifestyle choices every day within the journal. When you do something positive (like drinking milk) the entry registers as green, but do something negative (like eat fast food) and the entry registers as red. You can then view your progress over time with a neat trend chart for each category. Tracking choices daily holds me accountable to my decisions. Some say habits take 21 days to make or break - we’ll see if that holds true for me!

Here are a few of the habits I’m working on building:

• Drinking more water
• Drinking milk
• Taking my vitamins (calcium and multi)
• Daily exercise

And some I’m trying to break:

• Drinking soda
• Too much television
• Drinking alcohol
• Stressed out

I love a good cup of coffee any time of year, but there’s something special about brewing a pot of coffee and cozying up with a good book when it’s cold outside. The only thing missing is a fire.

I am a sucker for Dunkin’ Donuts coffee (Strawberry Shortcake anyone?!), so when I saw this seasonal specialty, I couldn’t pass it up. Mocha Mint is definitely making my list of latest loves!