Hi friends! Happy Friday! How are you? I hope you’ve enjoyed the week. I feel like it was our first *real* week back in the world. I started to ease my way back into workouts, the girls were back at school, and we got to celebrate my birthday with the fam.

I just wanted to get together for brunch, so we had a lovely brunch at First Watch with our small party of 15 🙂

We had the BEST gluten-free funfetti cake from Lovin’ Spoonfuls with buttercream frosting:

(fun inside scoop: I went to high school with their pastry chef and we order the cake from her every year. I also look forward to it all year! My favorite cake in the world.)

And the rest of the day was perfect and low-key. I read a book, we had a Pilot-cooked dinner here at home, and watched Home Alone. The rest of the week has flown by in a blur and I’m looking forward to the weekend!

Liv has a birthday party and one of her friends is sleeping over, I’m getting a much-needed mani pedi, we’re going out to dinner, and decorating for Christmas. Since we’re traveling next week, my favorite grinch gave the green light to decorate early. Usually he’s the captain of team “Honor the Bird” but he’s making an exception this year.

Flashback to our enormous tree! Frida is too big to move her now. 😉

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Creamy toffee ice cream swirled with caramel sauce and then filled with bits of crunchy toffee is sure to satisfy any ice cream lover. 

Toffee Bits

The toffee in this ice cream introduces a rich, sweet, and slightly nutty flavor that complements the creamy vanilla base of the ice cream. As you take a bite, you’ll experience the creamy and cool vanilla, followed by bursts of caramel and a satisfying crunch from the toffee bits. 

While you can certainly make your own toffee bits, (with little more than a bit of butter and sugar), I typically take the easier route when making ice cream or baking these cookies and buy a bag of Heath toffee bits. 

Feel free to grab a jar of caramel sauce while you’re at the grocery store too, if making caramel sauce isn’t your thing. I have a weakness for this salted caramel sauce, so there’s almost always a jar tucked away in my fridge.

Heath Toffee Bits

Heath Toffee Bits are small, crunchy bits of toffee candy that are pre-packaged and ready for use in cooking and baking. These English toffee bits are essentially small, bite-sized pieces of toffee that have been broken into chunks or bits. They can be used to add a rich, buttery, and caramelized toffee flavor and a delightful crunch to various desserts and baked goods.

If you can’t find the toffee bits or want to try something a little different, you can also chop up some Heath bars and turn this into a chocolate-covered English toffee ice cream. When has the addition of chocolate to toffee or ice cream ever been a bad idea??

What’s the difference between toffee and English toffee? The main difference is that traditional English toffee is made without nuts, while American toffee is often made with a

Award Winning Healthy Turkey Instant Pot Chili

Our Instant Pot Award Winning Chili Recipe is going viral but we couldn’t help but create a healthy instant pot turkey chili recipe for all of you looking for healthy instant pot recipes!

We hear you loud and clear. Cade and I are sitting on the couch watching the Olympics while the kids are in bed (Women’s Snowboarding to be exact, and Chloe Kim is KILLING IT!!!) and writing this Award Winning Healthy Turkey Instant Pot Chili recipe for you all because holy moly, the requests just keep pouring in!!

We almost didn’t post our classic chili recipe because we figured that everyone was totally set in their ways with their own favorite chili recipes, but boy were we wrong! It’s going crazy on our site!

Immediately we started hearing that we needed a vegetarian and a healthy chili recipe, but we can only test so much, so first up, our Award Winning Healthy Turkey Instant Pot Chili! It’s turkey bacon to still give that hint of bacon goodness, but in a more lean way, along with ground turkey, and lots of tomato flavor.

Alright, friends if it was you wanting a healthy Instant Pot dinner recipe, this turkey chili in an Instant Pot is for you!

What’s in Instant Pot Turkey Chili? 

For this healthy Instant Pot chili recipe, you’ll need ground turkey, turkey bacon, a mixture of black and pinto beans, fire roasted diced tomatoes, tomato paste, three kinds of peppers, red onion, chicken stock, and a variety of dried herbs and spices. 

We really wanted to create an Instant Pot turkey chili recipe that could be made with ingredients you already have on hand. You might need to pick up a few of these healthy turkey chili ingredients at the store, but I’m sure you have most of them in your pantry already. Instant pot chili isn’t hard to make, and we wanted to ingredients list to reflect that! 

How to Make Ground Turkey Chili in an Instant Pot

Turn your instant pot to sauté and cook bacon until crisp. Once cooked, remove the bacon and place on a paper towel-lined plate to absorb any extra grease.

Add the onions and peppers to the electric

Cinnamon Roll Pigs in a Blanket Dunkers [+ Video]

Oh, mama! We made this cinnamon roll pigs in a blanket recipe for breakfast the other day and it’s our new go to breakfast!

For this recipe we wrap a cinnamon roll around a sausage link to make the most delicious sausage dunkers. We will teach you how to make a maple butter sauce for dipping them in too. The combination of sweet and savory in a breakfast recipe is totally my jam! Remember our cinnamon bread bacon stuffing at Thanksgiving?

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Johnsonville Italian Sausage. The opinions and text are all mine.

What are Pigs in a Blanket?

Pigs in a blanket are an appetizer or breakfast food consisting of small sausages wrapped in pastry.

I think everyone has heard of “pigs in a blanket” right? I certainly have and then when Cade and I were talking about what to do for our next post with Johnsonville, we knew we wanted to make a kid friendly Christmas breakfast recipe and I suddenly realized I don’t know anything. Then I said, what about our own version of pigs in a blanket, you know with the pancakes.

And Cade informed me that most pigs in a blanket recipes are actually hot dogs or franks in crescent dough or puff pastry. What?! All these years and I didn’t know! Well, this is still our breakfast take, cinnamon roll pigs in a blanket dunkers with a maple butter sauce.

That’s right, maple butter sauce. Cinnamon Rolls. And of course, breakfast sausage links.

Ingredients for Cinnamon Roll Pigs in a Blanket

For the sausage dunkers, all you need is 2 ingredients! So simple! For the maple butter sauce, you’ll need just a handful of ingredients, most of which you’ll have already at home. Here is what you will need:

• Grands Cinnamon Rolls
• Johnsonville Turkey Fully Cooked Breakfast Sausage: we chose to use precooked sausages to save on time but you can cook your own sausage if you prefer

Sharing some exciting exercises you can do with the cable machine.

Hi friends! How’s the day going? So happy you liked the chicken salad recipe!

So for today, let’s talk about this thing.

A long time ago, I wrote this post about the fairly intimidating cable machine. It kind of looks like a torture device. I also shared some of my favorite cable machine exercises.

I’ve found that it’s so easy to get into a gym routine and use the same tools for the same things. In order for me to really switch things up, I have to make a conscious effort. Today, per reader India’s request (thank you, India!) I thought I’d share some of the more unique uses for the cable machine.

Exciting Cable Machine Exercises

What Is A Cable Machine?

First of all, let’s go over the cable machine and what it is. It’s a piece of equipment (pic above) that you’ll see in almost every gym. The great thing about the cable machine is that it has adjustable pulleys so that you can target your entire body and do a variety of exercises. Pretty much any *traditional* strength training exercise can be done using the cable machine.

Are Cable Machines Effective

YES! You can adjust the resistance to make the exercise more challenging. With cable machines, you’re able to smoothly work through the fun range of motion for an exercise. I find that using this type of resistance encourages you to use your core to help stabilize. Make sure that you breathe as you brace your core and work through cable machine movements.

How To Use a Cable Machine

You’ll need to adjust the cable position, depending on the type of movement you plan to do. Overhead movements, like overhead triceps extensions and lat pulldowns, require the pulleys to be higher. Chest presses and flies require a mid-point setup. Deadlifts, biceps curls, and upright seated cable rows require a low setup.

Something to keep in mind: when you pull the prong out of the pulley system to slide it up or down, you’ll notice that the stack of weights for resistance will also move. An easy way to prevent this is to put your hand ON TOP of the stack of weights before adjusting the cable pulley. Keep your fingers away from the stack of weights. If it drops down, it can pinch your finger(s). If you need help with pulley setup, ask a trainer at your gym or studio and they will show you how to use it safely.

Here are some favorite exercises! I tried to choose exciting ones outside of the usual biceps curls, cable crossover,

Compound:

Squat and row

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Make sure to keep your weight in your heels