Sharing a holiday gift guide filled with ideas for your health and fitness-loving friends… or yourself. 

Hi friends! How are you? I hope you’re having a wonderful week so far! I taught at a fun event on campus yesterday and we had an amazing holiday dinner with friends.

For today’s post, I’m popping in to share some holiday gift ideas focused on health and wellness. I’m a huge believer that all you need to improve your health is a safe place to walk, some sneakers that fit well, a good water bottle, a plan, and the dedication to stick to the promises you make to yourself. All of these gadgets and extras are an expense, and definitely classified as “nice to have” instead of “need.” At the same time, they can be super fun, provide extra insight into what’s working in your routine, and the PERFECT thing to gift someone you love (including yourself!!)

Here’s a roundup of some of my favorite health and wellness gift ideas at various price points:

2023 Fitness and Health Gift Guide

Walking pad. I use my walking pad every.single.day and it’s such a great way to get in extra movement and steps, especially during long conference calls (when I don’t have to talk), emails, and watching modules.

HigherDOSE sauna blanket or PEMF Go Mat. These are two of my all-time favorite biohacking products. (You can use the code FITNESSISTA15 for 15% off)

Rebounder

An Aviron rower! This one is definitely a home gym investment, but I LOVE this thing. It’s so fun to row and be able to stream shows from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Disney+. I can’t wait to watch the new Bridgerton season in the sauna blanket and on the rower. My review of the Aviron rower is here. 

Water purifier- We use Berkey and Clearly Filtered. We’re getting a Radiant Life whole house system this year!

Oura Ring. The Oura ring provides excellent data on sleep and recovery. You can check out my full review here. 

Air purifier! Clean air and clean water and some of the first

Mexican Wedding Cookies are tiny melt-in-your-mouth cookies that are known by many different names around the world. My grandmother called them Sugar Butter Balls.

The first time I shared this recipe online, I was overwhelmed by the response, it felt like everyone had a different name for these cookies!

Russian Tea Cakes, Polvorones, Snowball Cookies, Egyptian Feast Cookies, Nut Butter Balls, Norwegian Snowballs, Kourambie, Walnut Delights, Pecan Petites, Holiday Nuggets, Swedish Heirloom Cookies, the list goes on and on. If I’ve missed your favorite name for them, please leave a comment here to let me know!

Wedding Cookies

Every time I bite into a wedding cookie, I’m transported to a time when I watched my grandmother roll them between her hands. She was the source of so many delicious foods in my childhood.

She would set the finished cookies on a platter and everything looked so elegant to my young eyes. More than any other holiday treat, these Mexican cookies taste like Christmas to me.

I’d try sneaking them from the tray before it was time but I’m fairly certain that the powdered sugar always left a ring of evidence around my mouth. No matter, Grandmother always made plenty of these cookies to go around.

Mexican Wedding Cookies

The first time I tried making these cookies on my own, I was 18 years old and living in my first apartment. I had my grandmother’s Mexican wedding cookies recipe, but I figured I knew best.

Instead of rolling the warm cookies gently through the powdered sugar, I placed them in a Ziploc bag and poured sugar over them. When I shook the bag to coat them with sugar, at least half the cookies broke apart.

The cookies were still delicious, but they were a mess to eat. In the years since I’ve learned that Grandmother knew best. If you follow her directions for rolling the cookies in the sugar, yours will turn out every bit as perfect as hers always did.

The easiest method I’ve found for coating the cookies in powdered sugar is to put about a cup of powdered sugar in a bowl and roll the warm cookies, a few at a time, through the sugar.

Yes, rolling each ball in powdered sugar might take a little more time but the results are so very worth it. These classic cookies are crisp when you bite into them and then they melt in your mouth.

That first bite delivers sweetness from the powdered sugar on both the inside and outside. This light buttery cookie always brings a smile to my face as I think about my grandmother and all those childhood holidays.

Sweet Potato Casserole with Marshmallows

This easy Sweet Potato Casserole is topped with marshmallows and a brown sugar streusel topping. It’s so easy to make, and kids always love it! It’s a Ruth’s Chris Copycat gone wild, so if you love their famous Sweet Potatoes then jump in, and let’s get cooking!

This recipe is undeniably the best marshmallow sweet potato casserole on earth. We just made it again for Thanksgiving, and it was my favorite side dish this year. In fact, I’m going to make it again for Christmas and I think you all should too! They are great for Easter too!

Sweet Potato Souffle with Marshmallows

Several years ago, I remember making this recipe with our four-year-old. She was so excited about making it, that she had call Cade, with my supervision of course, to tell him that SHE just made the best dinner ever. It’s definitely not “dinner” as we had more than just sweet potato casserole for dinner, and she most certainly did not make it all by herself, but the girl did quite a bit! And she loved it! 

Can all of us moms have a moment of silence for a toddler who loved something that would become dinner? Not just ate it, but loved it! Alright, that could have something to do with the amount of sugar and marshmallows in this dish, but I won’t tell if you won’t. 

I used to hate “yams” at Thanksgiving because they were an awful orange, dripping with some weird syrup (gag!), and they tasted like grossness with burned, flat, hard marshmallows on top.

Now I know better. Now I know that it was the person bringing them that was the problem, bless their hearts (that’s what you say to make a mean thing sound better). Sweet potatoes are awesome, they just need to be cooked correctly and if you must do the marshmallow thang, well let’s just do it my way at least. 

Make the sweet taters into a souffle (easy peasy, so don’t get nervous on me…a potato ricer is a game changer) and then use both marshmallows and a brown sugar streusel on top. Trust me, your guests will be BEGGING for the recipe.

Sweet Potato Casserole Ingredients

To make this easy sweet potato casserole recipe with marshmallows, you’ll need: 

• Sweet Potatoes
• Egg
• Unsalted Butter
• Salt 
• White sugar
• Brown sugar
• Cinnamon 
• Vanilla Extract
• Read more

Fudgy and delicious, these are the best gluten-free brownies! They’re actually the best brownies ever, gluten-free or not! I’m so excited to share the recipe with you and hope you love them as much as I do! This is an older post that got a little photo refresh.. and we got to eat a ton of brownies.

Copycat Waffle Love Liege Waffle Recipe [+ Video]

This copycat Waffle Love liege waffle recipe is the closest we’ve found to our favorite food truck waffles here in Utah using a liege waffle. 

Remember when food trucks started popping up and became all the rage a few years back? The Waffle Love food truck was one of the original food trucks to go crazy here in Utah. They always had a line for days no matter where they were. In fact, they have now opened over a dozen brick and mortar locations in Utah, Idaho and California and their food truck is still going strong!

Waffle Love quickly became the go to family treat truck, date night truck, girls night out truck, and “I’ve got a hankering for something sweet” truck. The waffles are amazing and the little sugary bits really add something to the waffles, but you can’t forget about their awesome toppings which revolve around one of our household favorites, Biscoff. Stinking Biscoff. That stuff rocks our world.

I immediately started working on a copycat recipe so that we could make these irresistible waffles at home. After I figured out the perfect recipe, I posted it and it went crazy! So crazy that the aforementioned company contacted me and asked me to pull my recipe down because it was so close to theirs. Haha…nope! That, my friends, is when you’ve NAILED a copycat recipe! The people need to be able to make these at home, and so you shall!!

While we still love our bacon apple cider waffles, this copycat waffle love recipe is seriously fantastic, and it would be the perfect way to enjoy Christmas morning.

What is a Liège Waffle?

Liège waffles (pronounced “leej”) are a Belgian style waffle made from a yeast dough rather than traditional waffle batter. They are a little sweeter and different in texture once they are cooked.

Liège waffles are different than your normal run of the mill waffle. In fact you really should forget about the taste and texture of the normal breakfast waffle because this one is seriously a totally different taste, but delicious like you wouldn’t believe.

What Ingredients are Needed for Waffle Love Waffles?

Here are the ingredients that you will need to make this liege waffle recipe:

• Whole Milk: scalded, see section below for how to scald milk
• Water: helps activate the yeast
• Sugar: used to both feed the yeast as it activates and to sweeten the liege waffle dough
• Instant Yeast: we prefer instant yeast rather than active dry yeast
• Eggs: adds structure to the waffles
• Unsalted Butter: the fat needed to make these waffles so rich and fluffy
• Honey: adds a little extra natural sweetness and flavor
• Vanilla: adds flavor
• Bread Flour: the combination of bread flour with all purpose is magic
• Flour: just regular