#photoaday November Part Duex

Two posts in one month?! What WHAT?!? Yes this is happening.

So, let's pick up where the last post left off...

Day 11: night

Where I spend my time at night. This is where we're at with the bedroom so far. I still want to paint. I need to redo the headboard from the condo to fit a king sized bed and with a new fabric. Oh, an curtains or drapes. My brain has totally blocked out picking out window treatments since we have pretty decent blinds.

Day 12: drink

Since I already did Diet Coke, let's feature my other current favorite drink, Tanqueray and Tonic. I've just recently started drinking gin and am hooked. I tried gin about 7 years ago an HATED it. After reading a book set on Nantucket with everyone drinking G&Ts all day long, I decided I'd give gin another try. Loving it and I feel so fancy ordering a Gin and Tonic at happy hour these days.

Day 13: where you slept

This one comes from my Instagram. This is what I wake up to every morning. The pups love sleeping in the bed and take up more space than the people do. they really spread out and get comfortable. At least they're cute while they do it, otherwise they would have gotten kicked out by now.

Day 14: man-made

Practically everything man made started at Home Depot, right? I was totally a Lowe's girl before we moved, but with a Home Depot twice a close to our house, I made the switch. We go to Home Depot at least once a week, there is always a project in the works or something we forgot on the last trip. We have to change light bulbs so much in this house, and each one that goes out is a different type than what we've already stocked up on, so always go back for light bulbs at a minimum.

Day 15: in your bag

I was going to give you a pic of my messy bag, but that was too chaotic. Lately my Kindle Fire has been going EVERYWHERE with me. I've been reading The Maze Runner, I don't have tons of time to read, but it's gotten really good in the past couple of days, so I've been taking any few minutes I can to read a few more pages.

Day 16: the view from your window

Here is Sidney hunting through the back yard. The pups seem to enjoy their new backyard. When we first moved in there were rabbits that snuck in through gaps in the fence. The pups loved chasing them through the small yard, they would team up, but never quite figured out how to catch one. THANK GOODNESS.

Day 17: the last thing you bought

We went up to Philly to visit friends this weekend. We stopped by Reading Terminal for lunch. DiNic's was featured on Man vs. Food and our friends from Philly vouched for it's amazingness. The Philly Marathon was this weekend and the Race Expo was going on across the street. The line for DiNics was wrapped around the building. Luckily it moved pretty quick, we were getting hungry! I didn't get a picture of my Brisket sandwich because I scarfed it down so quick. It was amazing though.

Day 18: happened this weekend

Here's another shot from Reading Terminal. The produce looked AMAZING. I would love to have something like this close to our house!!! The farmer's market down the street just doesn't compare.

Day 19: something awesome

Ok, so maybe this isn't awesome to everyone, but this is my favorite place in the house right now. We got a deep freezer for the 1/4 cow we bought from a local farmer. Local, grass fed, organic beef for less than $3 per pound? Sign me up. We pick up our cow tomorrow, so excited to get this baby filled up. We're getting almost 200 lbs of beef. All individually packed and vacuum sealed. I'm excited to start menu planning and trying out new recipes with all of the different cuts of meat we'll have.

This picture is also awesome because of the shelf above the freezer. Hubs and I hung that bad boy up without drilling a single errant hole. This is huge for us, we usually have at least 2 or 3 mess ups before we get everything completed.

Day 20: work/play

I am fortunate to be able to work from home sometimes. Today it's working with Bravo on in the background. I can work all day and keep guilty pleasure/trashy shows on all day in the background. LOVE IT.


So that's what I've been up to the past 10 days. What have you been up to? Anything exciting aside from Turkey Day preparation?

#Photoaday November

Oh hi there little blog.

If this blog was a Bud Light, it'd be 7 days from being out of date. No posts in almost 3 months. Not good.

Maybe a Photo A Day for November will help spice things up a bit.

I got a fancy new camera for my birthday, so I wanted to do something to get me more comfortable with it and get to using it more than for just vacations.

So lets get started. I found the Photo A Day from @fatmumslim

Day 1: something beginning with "C"

I went with cauliflower. I hate cauliflower, but we were working on cleaning out the freezer, so cauliflower it was for dinner on the 1st of the month. I roasted with some olive oil and threw some mozzarella cheese on at the end. Guess what, turns out I LOVE cauliflower cooked like that. I've been thinking about it since that day, but haven't gotten around to making it again. Maybe this week...

Day 2: Colour

It was a Friday and I wanted to wear my new scarf I had bought in France. So green was the color of the day.

Day 3: Breakfast

I was gonna be healthy on a Saturday morning, but I was hungover, so Chick-Fil-A Chicken Mini's it was for breakfast. #cantwinemall

Day 4: TV

I love my TV in the kitchen. We have nice little nook set up to watch shows, but the whole thing comes out from the wall when I'm cooking or baking. On this particular Sunday, I was baking snickerdoodle cupcakes, so I used the pivot feature to watch P.S. I Love You (for at least the 30th time) while I baked. Look at what Renee from (http://sassywifeclassylife.com/) made.

We tweeted our pictures to @marthastewart, she didn't reply. How rude.

Day 5: 5 o'clock

Leaving work. Our move about doubled my commute. Luckily I'm ok with the extra 20 minutes in the car.

Day 6: a favorite thing

I'm obsessed with this dog. She is definitely a favorite thing.

Day 7: reflection

I actually got days 7 and 6 mixed up and took the pictures backwards. This was my election night outfit. As somewhat of a poli sci geek, I love elections and the responsibility of choosing our leaders.

Day 8: something you do everyday

My green monster smoothie. I have this for breakfast most days. I got my particular version from SkinnyTaste. Love it and feel so nutritious having spinach for breakfast.

Day 9: Small

 An assortment of the samples I've gotten in my last three Birchboxes. I'm not much a beauty expert, but this has really gotten me excited about make-up, hair, skin care, and nails. Who would have ever known? It's $10 a month and I've found some products I really like. I was in the market for a new weekly face scrub, my October box had a great one. Had no idea what the fuss about BB Creams was, now I'm hooked. You can order the full size product once you run out of your sample. Interested in trying it out? Use my referral link.

Day 10: can't (won't) live without.

No matter what diet plan I try, Diet Coke will never get the boot. I don't drink coffee or tea, this is my caffeine. I know all about the artificial sweeteners and how bad they are, but I choose to ignore that information. I start my work day with one every day. It's just become a ritual that I won't give up. I went for a week last year without any soda. While it wasn't the worst thing I've ever done, I wouldn't ever want to give it up for good.

We'll just start with days 1-10 at this point. I'll be back soon with the next bunch of photos!

How's your month going so far?

That's So Pinteresting - Volume 1

So like most people these days, I could spend days on Pinterest looking for decorating, clothing, food, workout, basically life ideas. I want to document some of the inspiration pins that I've tried out and brought to life.

I pinned the below picture from the Crate & Barrel website. I first saw the picture in the catalog and thought "that's exactly what I want our entry way to look like".

Source: crateandbarrel.com via Kim on Pinterest

I couldn't afford to replicate the Crate and Barrel image with all C&B products, so I began gathering what I thought might pull together my own version.

I started with a white cabinet from Home Goods. I then went scrounging through my stock of baskets at the house and only had to buy one additional one to finish the look. I found a chair at the Restoration Hardware Outlet marked WAY down to being slightly affordable. I found accessories at World Market to give it a world traveling vibe. Finally, I finished by going through my mom's house to get books to complete the decor. I don't have the wall space above for a mirror and don't need a lamp in this spot, so I'm missing those two elements of the original picture.

This is what I ended up with:

Pretty good, huh? I am super proud of this space and feel like I've actually "styled" a spot in the house. I'm happy this is the first impression that people get of the house when they come in. Now I just have to get the rest of the house up to the same standard.

I'll be back next week with another Pinterest inspired project!!!!!!

What have you been creating from Pinterest recently? Are you as addicted as I am to the site and could spend days browsing for ideas?

House Guests

We have our first house guests coming this weekend. We had kind of slacked off unpacking and getting things together after the first couple weeks wore us out. This week it has been kicking it into high gear to finish up the guest room and fix up some things around the house.

We painted the guest room a couple weeks ago and bought a lamp for the corner. The room is tiny, so the queen bed takes up basically all the space. We had room for a lamp in the corner and maybe a small table or chair against another wall. We've been searching high and low on our weekly Home Goods trips looking for something that will fit in the corner for phone chargers, an alarm clock, and maybe a book or two.

We finally found what we were looking for at World Market last night, just in the nick of time! We bought a small table that would be perfect and not take up too much space. We also finally found a frame for a print I had bought on Etsy.

 

 

In the basket I put washcloths and some hotel toiletries that I've snagged over the years. I have a whole bucket of them just waiting for guests to come visit us!!!

 

I also included a book on the table of 1,001 places to visit. The bonus entry being "Kim and Tony's House"

We also made a small update in the bathroom. The towel bar in there had almost immediately fallen down once we moved in. We could tell another one had fallen down recently because there were holes about 6 inches higher on the wall filled in but not painted. I wanted to try something different from just a towel bar, so we found these wall hooks at World Market. They are bigger than you would usually find in a bathroom, but I liked them, so onto the wall they went.

We will paint this bathroom eventually, but we needed somewhere for guests to hang towels this weekend. What do you think???

I love prepping for guests because our place always get so spotlessly clean. It's such good motivation to clean and finish up projects.

Does having guests over help motivate you to get last minute house projects done?

 

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First House Post

So I've been such a bad blogger about getting updated about the house, life, vacations, everything. I'm always thinking "Oooh, that would make such a good post!" and then get home, and never do anything with it.

So first post about the house. This one is about the outside. Again, since I'm a bad blogger, I don't have pics from when the house was empty, all I have is from the listing. Moving day was so hectic, taking pictures of the empty house was all but forgotten.

So our house has this great big deck that we focused on first.

This was the shot from the listing. Good views, plenty of space, we're 2nd in from the end of the row of townhouses, so not too busy.

After picking up everything over the past couple weeks, here's what we've come up with so far:

I just got these chairs put together today. I'm dying to sit outside with a cold glass of wine in the evenings. Too bad it's a thousand degrees out this week. We'll just be looking at the chairs from the air conditioning. 

Hubs has been perfecting his grilling skills, we cook on the grill about 1/2 of the meals we eat at home now. We've done steaks, chicken, kabobs, burgers, dogs. A little bit of everything. We absolutely love it. While he's outside grilling, I'm inside making the rest of the meal and we meet at the table with both of our contributions. 

And finally an Instagram shot, seems like a blog post can't be complete without one these days. I finally broke down and downloaded the app on my phone.

Can't wait for it to cool off a bit so we can enjoy our first finished room!!!

STUCK!!!

Ok, I promise I'll get some updates on the house for you. Guess what? Moving into a new place is hectic!!! I feel like I've been go go go since we moved. We closed 4 weeks ago and have just been crazy trying to get things unpacked, purchased, and put in place. Things are coming together slowly but surely.

Quick story for today though.

Yesterday I got stuck in an elevator for 40 minutes. I was at work and was going back to my desk from the lobby. I'm on the fifth floor. I watched the numbers ticking up and after "4" flashed the whole elevator just stopped. The power was still on, so I wasn't too panicked. I just tried to push the buttons for my floor and lobby again, but nothing. After three or four minutes I tried the alarm button. All that did was buzz an annoying bell. I had my cell phone with me (thank goodness) and called my coworker. She called down to security and got my rescue mission started!

Everyone came to the elevator, worried that I was freaking out. Security called the engineer and he came and had to call back up. I could hear everyone talking and was getting text messages on my phone. The worst part about the entire incident is that I had been listening to Pandora all day on my phone, so my battery was running low. I could only play about a dozen games of Bejeweled Blitz before I was under 10% of my battery and decided to save it.

I was on Twitter and said I was stuck, then said "Still stuck". No responses from anyone on Twitter. So rude.

About 35 minutes into it the engineer yelled up to me "I have to go upstairs to see what the issue is from above" I just responded "Ok, take the stairs".

Finally all the power blinked, and I started moving. They got me out about 40 minutes after I went in. All of my coworkers and my manager were WAY more upset about the incident than I was. It was mostly just funny to me.

As a result, I'll probably be taking the stairs for a while. Combined with now living in a three story house and the four flights up to my desk each day, my legs and bum should be looking REAL good by the end of the summer.

Have you had any accidental adventures recently?

Welcome to my new home...

The previous blog somehow got corrupt, so everything was wonky and beyond repair, hence the move. Thanks for making the jump over! Welcome to my new home on the internets!!!!

I'll show you pictures of OUR new home after we move in on Saturday!!!!

That's right. We bought a house. Well, actually buying it on Thursday when we go to closing. It has been a LONG 7 weeks since we made the offer. I'll go through our entire ordeal soon, just trying to make it two more days until closing.

I'll just leave you with this for now...

Broad Street Run - Ten Miler

Hubs and I ran the Broad Street 10 Miler on Sunday with 34,000 of our closest friends.

We had started training at the end of February and were pretty good about it for a month. Then we got distracted and training for a run became last priority. When we got back from vacation, April 1, we went for a 6 mile run and both felt pretty confident. After that life got in the way and training fell by the wayside. Since that one 6 mile run I ran only one other time for 6 miles and it was HARD.

Since we were completely under prepared, I wasn't so crazy about getting a good time and just didn't want to finish last. 

Hubs and I woke up at 5:15, got ready and headed towards downtown where we'd be parking. Once we got parked, we had to hop on the subway to get to the start line. Here I am still cheerful waiting for the train.

The energy and excitement of the crowd was infectious. We were so excited to get this show on the road. Once we got to our stop everyone flooded up the stairs and we were exactly at my corral, this is where we parted ways so he could run with the faster folks.

There was about a 20 minute wait until the race kicked off. I just chilled waiting for everything to start moving and ready to get started. Once the crowd started moving forward, I got Runkeeper queued up to keep me on track with my intervals and to keep me on top of my pace.

I ran the first two miles pretty quickly and was sticking with my run 4 minutes, walk 1 intervals with no issues. After the first water stop, my run pace slowed a little bit, but I still stuck with the intervals. We were running through neighborhoods at this point with folks standing on their porches and cheering for everyone. Around the 3 mile mark, these three girls were doing Zumba on the side.

We ran through Temple University where students were out cheering for all the runners. It was so nice to see people sticking around and still cheering for us slow pokes in the back.

At this point I could see City Hall in the distance. It looked so small and was only the halfway point!!! I was still feeling pretty good at 4 miles, just trucking along. I knew my mom was around the 6 mile mark to cheer us on, so I just kept thinking, make it to City Hall, then make sure you're still looking good at 6 miles.

Just around 5 miles, City Hall finally seemed reachable. I was going to make it at least half way and still feeling good! At about 5 1/2 miles is when I started losing my intervals. This was also approaching my max run previous to this race. I was at least running when I got to my mom. It was great to see someone cheering for ME and not just waving to everyone else's friends and family.

After 6 miles there were a lot more bands along the route and more spectators cheering. Since I wasn't so concerned with getting the best time, I enjoyed every second of the race. I had a giant smile plastered on the whole time. I was high fiving little kids, singing with the bands as I ran by, and waving to all of the spectators. There were some great posters along the way, here were a couple of my favorites: 

I had set up updates to be emailed to me for both mine and hubs' splits. At about 7 miles I switched to 3 minutes run, 2 minutes walk. I took the walk breaks to check in on hubs. I saw that he crossed the 3, 5, and 7 mile marks all at about a 10 min/mile pace. I couldn't have been more proud of him. Since I knew he was cruising along, I just had to get myself across the finish line. I had friends waiting at the 9 mile mark, so I was just ticking away the miles and minutes until I had to look good running for them. Once I saw them yelling and screaming I knew I was almost done. A few minutes later I saw the 1/2 mile to go sign.

I wanted to badly to run for the last half mile, but my body just wouldn't do it. I knew that when I saw the Navy Yard gates it would be another 1/4 mile. I was so close, and it just seemed so far away. Finally I got through the gates, ran under the photographers (smiling of course) and saw the finish line.  

From there it was just give it all I've got and don't let anyone pass me. I knew hubs was waiting for me to get across the line.

Once I collected my medal, water, and snacks, hubs and I just basked in the glory of being DONE. This was my first race getting a medal and I would by lying to you if I said I didn't wear it to work on Monday. :) I was proud of that sucker.

We found our friends who were tailgating, had some food and a beer then headed back to our car to make the 2 1/2 hour drive home. 

Thankfully we had brought wipes and clean clothes so we wouldn't have to sit in our post race stink for the drive. 

It was so fun to compare stories with hubs and share our different experiences.

This was seriously such a great run and I had such a blast doing it. I would do it again in a heartbeat, maybe just put a little more effort into training before it next time.

I have a 10k in Annapolis in a couple weeks, I'm going to be hitting the trails before that so I can attempt at getting a decent(ish) time.