12:06 | October 7, 2017

BLUEBERRY FETA SALAD

Food

Meet your new favourite salad. It’s mostly just cheese, blueberries, and quinoa… but, still counts as a salad. Right?… RIGHT?? 😅

^After you mix it all together, before you put it in a fancier bowl. To appear fancy.🍸

Fancy bowl.

Uhg, so good. 😩 You’re welcome.

Happy Friday!

Before we get into this salad business, which I’ve food-porned all over above…… I NEED UR HELP! Went to my first pilates class in LA today (I just moved here), and it defs was not the same as Vancouver. I am used to the “megaformer” Pilates and not the traditional Pilates. Seemed very fast, hectic, and almost… out of date? Does anyone have recommendations for the “slow style” megaformer pilates in LA, specifically, Santa Monica? Please email me!! robyn@skinnybelle.com, I’m new here. Girl needs some local tips. 🙏🏻

Alright so back to the best salad you will ever consume. Not trying to ring-a-ding-ding my own bell here or anything, but it is the best.

Why did I make salad today?

Because I am 150% planning on stuffing my face at In-N-Out tonight. Like the classy gal I am. It’s date night and I want to look extra hot for my bf, so I made the glamorous suggestion to go to In-N-Out. That’s how you impress men, right? 🤓

^^ME 💯

Moving right along… my pre-hamburger/fries/milkshake meal was this FREAKING PHENOMENAL salad. Sooooooo good. 🥗

It is so hard to name my recipes because I want you guys to fully understand the awesomeness of the recipe from the title alone, which inclines me to list every single ingredient… But that may be a bit much. Just a bit. 😉

Anyways, if you want a salad that doesn’t taste like grass, a salad that is filled with hearty goodness… this one’s for you my friends.

Eat it up.

Dressing

  • 3 tbsp EVOO (extra virgin olive oil, I don’t fuck with any other oil)
  • 4 tbsp meyer lemon (if you don’t have meyer do 1 – 2 of regular lemon or you will legit die)
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder
  • 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
  • 1/2 tsp whole grain Dijon
  • Fresh ground salt + pepper to taste

Instructions: put all that stuff in a jar. Shake it. Taste it.

Salad

  • 4 – 5 dino kale leaves, washed and cut up thin (I always remove the stems)
  • 1 cup fresh blueberries
  • 2 cups pre-cooked and cooled quinoa
  • 1/4 purple onion, super thinly sliced
  • As much feta cheese as your little heart desires (mine desired a lot 😝)

All you do is mix everything together, and enjoy!! I seriously hope you guys love this salad as much as I do.

That being said… off to In-N-Out!! 🍔

 

xoxo,

 

10:13 | October 4, 2017

WHAT HAPPENED

Lifestyle

Ya girl is back 🍸

OMG. You guys. I’M BACK!!! 🎉

And holy shit we have a lot to talk about. I am 110% sure I just had my quarter life crisis. Is that a thing? Well… based on how the last few months have played out for me I am very positive the “quarter life crisis” is a real thing.

WTF do I mean? Okay, let me back up for a second here. My blog has been down for about 3 months now, I took a major social media break (not counting a few insta-stories here and there 😉), quit my corporate job (a really fantastic job at that), moved counties, AND now live with my boyfriend of 5 months. If all those things do not qualify as having a quarter-life crisis, I am not sure what does. On paper it might sound like I’ve lost my mind, but in reality, I’ve never been better. I needed these last few months to make the changes necessary to be living my best and fullest life. To refocus on making my personal health and happiness a priority. I’ve been struggling with some personal stuff over the last few months (ahem, more like this entire year..), but can now confidently say I am en-route to being my best self. Gettin’ my sparkle back, if you know what I mean. ✨

Where to start…

The blog.

Let’s start here. Skinny Belle launched 3 years ago, as a way for me to share my outfits, recipes, and lifestyle tips. It is my absolute FAVE thing on the fucking planet. I promise you that. But, family pressures were building to get a “real job.” *eyeroll*  For the last few years I have been doing the branding and marketing for some very cool tech companies, and really loved both what I was doing and the companies I was doing it for. As a result, Skinny Belle became more of a weekend hobby, and started to drift further and further away from what I really wanted it to be. Skinny Belle was supposed to be the platform to share myself and everything I have learned with the world, and it was literally killing me that it was not being given the attention it deserved. KILLING ME. 😭 So, I decided to take Skinny Belle down, completely revamp the site (which was a battle in itself… don’t even get me started on web development. Fuck.) and start fresh. Obviously keeping all the old content, because it will be fun to lol at myself in a few years time. So here we are, new blog design, and entirely new mission. Skinny Belle is going to be like my own personal diary. I will be here every day — sharing, asking, and sharing some more. I hope you’re excited, because I sure as hell am. 😁

Social media.

Yup, me, the girl who LOVES the gram just stopped posting for the last few months. I literally just needed to stop. There were so many big changes happening in my life, and I was experiencing major anxiety. It was definitely a problem. It felt insincere for me to be posting happy highlight reel shots, when the reality of my day-to-day life was the complete polar opposite. Instagram is definitely not a reflection of reality, we all know that, but I was so far away from being in a happy place that I couldn’t even fake it. The whole, “fake it til you make it” thing doesn’t really work for me. So unfortunately for you (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), you’re gonna get alllll the real stuff here.😅 Anywho, more on this later.

Relationships + moving countries.

Well, here’s a topic I have NEVER discussed on my blog before. Relationships. Truth be told, this year was a whirlwind for me. Had a very rough breakup right at the beginning of the year, while on my family vacation in Hawaii (fabulous…right??😒), and then just planned on being single for eternity and adopting like 14 dogs to keep me company. I wish that was a joke lol. 😂 Well, not the case. I met someone V special only a few months after my breakup, and lets just say I am fully head over heels for him. What are you supposed to do? Just ignore an amazing person who happens to come into your life because of past negative experiences? Lol screw thattt. So anyways, we kind of just jumped all in. And so far, it’s fabulous. We will talk more about this later. There is sooooo much to talk about and I cannot wait to get into dating here. It’s gonna be fun fun fun.😉

In conclusion, over the last few months I needed to take a step back, look at my life, and address how I can move forward and achieve my macro life-goals. Personally, that required going in full-on hermit mode, hiding from the world, and setting my plans in action. 6 months ago I wrote this blog post on how to accomplish your 10 year goals in 6 months, and go-figure, I actually achieved almost all of mine.💪🏻 It was time for me to make a new set of goals for the next 6 months. I’ll share my 10 years –> 6 month specific goals soon. There is really no reason we can’t all accomplish 10 year goals in the next 6 months.

Looking Ahead

I am BEYOND EXCITED (LIKE THE MOST EXCITED ANYONE HAS EVER BEEN😀😅😂🤣☺️🙃😜🤓😎🤠😏 😱 ) to be back blogging, and even more excited to give you a full-on no-details-spared coverage of my life. Let’s get personal people, it’s been a long time coming. 🙏🏻

Thanks for reading, and thank you for your patience over these last few months. But baby, I’m back and I’m here to stay. So CHEERS to the next Skinny Belle chapter! 🥂🍾🍸

 

XOXO,

 

10:09 | October 4, 2017

THE NEW SKINNY BELLE

Lifestyle

Skinny Belle is back!! 🎊 I am SO EXCITED to relaunch my blog, and share all that is to come together. 😊 Check out the video above, to see what Skinny Belle is all about!

Oh, wondering what happened these past few months? Why the radio silence? Why did I take my blog down? All the juicy details can be found in this post. 💕

xoxo,

6:29 | September 4, 2017

WEDDING LOOK

Outfits

Dress: Some Days Lovin / Shoes: Stuart Weitzman (old)

The trip to Croatia was for the wedding of some friends of Troy (bae ??) and I. It was a beautiful wedding, and took place literally right beside where I was obnoxiously standing and forcing Troy to take photos of me. #Bloglife, amiriteeee?!

This little town was called Rovinj, and I would highly recommend. It had these tiny little streets that were filled with cobblestones, V pretty. V Europe. Would go again for sure.

Can we take a second to talk about the freaking VEGGIES in Europe?! Yes, I am literally talking about tomatoes, cucumber, etc etc etc. ? ? ? I don’t know what we do in North America to so royally rob all vegetables of any flavour whatsoever (hello, GMO) but the veggies in Europe are so freaking flavourful! Flavour town over there. There was one restaurant that we kept going to again and again just to eat bruschetta. In the USA and Canada, bruschetta is kind of a bland and flavourless starter. Croatia? Sooooooooooo packed with flavour I couldn’t believe it. Not because they did anything fancy, literally just because their tomatoes actually tasted like a tomato. Go figure. ?

x,

5:33 | September 4, 2017

SAIL CROATIA

Travel

Hi guys! Okay so this last week has basically 100% been the best week of my life. Hands down. I’ve been on many trips to many places, but this one was just unreal on so many levels.

Here’s why.

First, I lived on the bigger boat you see in the video above for an entire week. Fucking YES. All about that life. it’s like camping except boujee. ? On day two I got super seasick, but I am assuming that is because I am a weak little ginger who doesn’t have the stomach for intense things like sailing. My assumption is probably correct LOL. Anywho, this was also such a great experience because every day we got to go to different islands and see different things. And the most important part? The food was EVERYTHINGGGGGGGGGG. Full white-girl-basic I CANT EVEN. Like, so good. Think, the restaurant goes out on a little boat, catches a bunch of fish, cooks them, and serves them. ? Get. In. My. Belly.

So yes, if you can’t tell I had a great time. More to come.

x,