My New Favorite Spot

After 18 months in the house, rooms are starting to come together one by one.

I've slowly been working on getting our master bedroom to the point of complete. We had found a good deal on Angie's List for painting and had that done in late July. The color is one shade darker than our kitchen (Benjamin Moore's Hale Navy). I was nervous about going so dark, but figured if it turned out terrible, you can always repaint. I found the picture at World Market and didn't even notice how perfectly it matched the pillow at the foot of the bed until it was up on the wall.

Two weekends ago I made huge strides in getting closer to complete. I had purchased the curtains from JCP in August and tried to hang them right away. When my first bracket was looking to be screwed into a metal stud, I thought it was above my skill set and requested hubs to bring in back up in the form of one of his buddies who are pretty handy.

Two months later, the curtain rods still sat on the floor, the brackets and hardware littered my dresser and the curtain panels remained in their packages at the foot of the bed. The ladder and tools were sitting in my craft room and in the way. I was ready to reclaim my space, so last Sunday I decided those curtains were going up with or without any outside assistance.


I pulled out the power drill, ladder, and tool bucket and got to work. I got all seven brackets up without too much trouble, got the curtain rod up and then started working on ironing all of the panels. The curtains I bought had the tabbed tops, but I prefer the look of drapery hooks. I ironed each of the tabs back and you can't even tell they are there.

Now that curtains are up I just have a couple pictures to hang up and I'm calling the room DONE.

BEFORE

(with paint swatches on the wall)

AFTER

I can't decide if I should hang the dachshund pictures up over the night stands again. Should I put those back up or find another spot for them? 

What projects have you been working on around the house?

Wednesday Weigh In

I missed last week. I definitely weighed myself and most certainly thought about a blog post, but it would have been a bad one, and I talked myself out of it. BAD KIM. Not so good at the accountable.

Since last week would have been a bad report and I didn't want to fall off the weekly check ins entirely, I vowed to make this week's report a good one.

AND IT IS!!!!

Official Weigh In:
Down 6lbs since my birthday! 

Woot Woot! 20% of the way there. (also only 2lbs away from being down 20lbs since January 1!! Another milestone I'd like to hit)

The 6 doesn't seem so significant, and the 24 left seems like SO MANY POUNDS, but the 20% is encouraging. I just need to do what I've done four more times. That in itself is not so bad.

The biggest change I made this week was curbing my boozing on the weekend. Who would have thought choosing water over wine would make such a big difference? Looks like I'll have to stick to that plan long term.

My gym started a 30 day challenge today. My favorite Cycle instructor has been encouraging me to sign up and I was looking for every excuse not to. So in class this morning when she asked me in front of everyone "Kim, did you sign up yet?" I responded with a weak "I don't have a partner!" thinking that would get me out of it. After class I was approached by a girl who wanted to sign up and needed a partner. DOH. So now I'm in. The first weigh in was right after class (no time like the present), so here we go.....

This should be great motivation to make it through Thanksgiving.

What are you doing to stay motivated from eating ALL OF THE POTATOES at Thanksgiving?

Thursday is the new Wednesday (Weigh in)

I bet you were thinking I was avoiding posting because it was bad news. Well then you would be WRONG. I was just busy and the day slipped away from me.

So here I am a day late, but still have to stay accountable, right?

OFFICIAL WEIGH IN #3
Down 4 lbs since my birthday!!!!

Another modest loss this week, but a loss none the less. I had vegetables EVERYDAY last week and I chose water over booze several times. Even watching Penn State get murdered by Ohio State, I somehow managed to only have a couple beers instead of drowning my sorrows in the Honker's Ale we currently have on tap at the house. I did, however, bake two batches of cookies and then ate as many as I could. I felt sick on Tuesday after too many white chocolate chip pumpkin cookies.

So with 43 weeks left, I have 26lbs to go. I think I can. I think I can.

And in honor of today, Sid would like to say "Happy HOWL o ween", while Wilbur prefers the cliche "Weiner Dog in a Hot Dog Costume"

Because who doesn't love FREE MONEY????

I know I shared this a while ago, but I wanted to throw it out there again since I just got $72.82 in FREE MONEY from Ebates.

You get paid for shopping online! It can't get any easier than that.

How it works:
You sign up for an Ebates account then before you make any online purchases, go to Ebates.com find your store name and just navigate to the website through there.

Ebates creates a tracking ticket and after you make your purchase, you get a percentage back.

You get paid every couple of months, so if you start using it now, you can really rack up some cash with all of your holiday purchases.

The biggest percentage of my last check came from buying curtains from JcPenny. I could have bought them in the store, but my purchase qualified for free delivery AND I got 8% cash back. Who doesn't like that?

Other ways I've used Ebates to my advantage, I've purchased things from Best Buy or Home Depot online and just selected "Pick up in store". Go into customer service and BAM, get your purchase that day AND the cash back!

Also, all of the GAP brands are on Ebates. I've found that sometimes one brand will have more cash back than others, so I pick that brand's page to start from, then use the links at the top of the Brand's page to navigate to the other brand I want to shop from and just make my purchase. Example: Athleta was having double cash back, but I wanted to buy some things from Old Navy. I went to Ebates, selected Athleta, then just navigated to Old Navy to make my purchase. My order said "Athleta", but all of the items were from other GAP brands and I got the double cash back.

Also, you get $5 just for making your first purchase. Again, FREE MONEY.

Full disclosure: I also get $5 after you make your first purchase for referring you to the site.

Use my referral link to start your account and start getting free cash back!!!

Wednesday Weigh In

I lost again this week! Just 0.2, but hey, it's something.

Total: down 3.2lbs since my birthday.

44 weeks to lose 26.8lbs. Totally doable.

In thinking back to why it wasn't a more substantial loss, I skipped one day at the gym, not too awful since I had been 6 times already that week. The reason I skipped though, hungover, too much wine. So that means too many empty calories.

Also thinking back to my diet this past week, I went three whole days where I did not eat a single fruit or vegetable. THREE DAYS WITH NO VEGGIES. That is awful. This is why I start most days with my green monster smoothie, so at least I'm getting that in and will most likely continue the good habits throughout the day.

So game plan for this week: Choose water over wine. Eat my veggies!!!!

Wednesday Weigh In

I've read in about a billion places recently that tweeting about your weight loss on a regular basis helps you to lose more weight and keeps you motivated. Instead of inundating my twitter and instagram with pictures of my meals and checking in every time I hit the gym, I'll just post here weekly to stay accountable.

Confession: When I made my goal to lose 30lbs while 30, I planned on doing Wednesday Weigh Ins from the beginning. I just couldn't bear to post until now since I hadn't lost anything. WHOOPS. So, on that note, if I miss a week (or three), it's not because I forgot, it's because I wasn't happy with the weigh in. So bug me. Keep me accountable. It might get painful in the next couple months coming up on the binge eating/drinking time of year, aka the holiday season, but time to buckle down, not give up.

So enough skirting around the issue.

The Official Weigh In

I'm down 3lbs since my birthday.


That's 10% of my goal!! Woohoo!!! I won't lament that we're 12% into the year, so if I'm going by percentages, I'm behind. Let's instead focus on I have just over 45 weeks left and 27lbs to go. Totally do able, right? RIGHT?

Last year I worked my butt off the first half of the year and then pretty much gave up during the summer and wrote the fall off as "football season and holidays" and ended up 3lbs HIGHER on January 1, 2013 than I had been the year before. Now is the time to buckle down and power through to keep LOSING throughout football season and holidays.

I've made it through my birthday month, a vacation across the pond, a wedding and the first half of football season down 3lbs. I'm pretty excited about that and with nothing else big coming up on the calendar, I think I can get this number dropping a bit quicker.

Anyone else finding motivation to keep going before the holidays or have you already written off the last few months of the year?

Tri 4 Love 2013

She believed she could, so she did.

So I can officially call myself a triathlete!!! Woot woot!!!!

After my last post I was ready to finally get going with race day. Friday night I made sure to get a good night's rest since I've heard from several sources that the more important night of sleep is not the night before a race, but two nights before. I woke up kind of early on Saturday but I just lounged around and took it easy all day until Penn State played at 6. I made sure to hydrate all day long, napped in the afternoon, and made some short ribs to have over pasta for the pre race dinner. Penn State lost, so I went right to bed after the game. I fell asleep surprisingly fast considering the nerves were starting to kick in.

Race day started AWFULLY early. I woke up at about 2:45 and knew I wouldn't be able to fall back asleep. I stayed in bed until my alarm went off at 4:30. I popped right out of bed and put on my swim suit and tri shorts. Everything else had been packed the night before.

I had a banana with some peanut butter and a small glass of milk and headed out the door.

I had to park a little bit away from the race site, so I hopped on my bike, with my bag of gear on my back and headlamp to light my way, to ride a couple minutes to the race.

It really hit me what was about to happen when I got through the final check in where they marked my bib number on my arms and my age on my leg. I found PJ and started to get my transition area set up. I had a pile for the bike portion and a pile for the run. The advice I received was "just keep putting things on until your pile is gone".

Eventually it was time to head into the community center for the swim. Cue the scary music, THIS IS GETTING REAL. After one last bathroom break and a quick dip in the pool to make sure the water wouldn't be ice cold and shocking, it was time to line up. We had put our expected swim time on our registration, so the numbers were in that order so we wouldn't bunch up on each other.

Then it was time to start. We started at one corner of the pool and snaked our way up and down each lane until we reached the last corner of the pool. One person went off at a time with 15 seconds between each person. About 4 1/2 minutes after the first person started, I was up.

Swim:
When I was given the go ahead I leaped into the pool and got started. I got a mouth and nose full of water when I jumped in and was a little panicked that it had all started, it took me about 4 laps to settle down. About 8 minutes later I had reached the end and climbed out the ladder. It was out the closest door and out to the transition area to get ready for the bike.

T1:
I had adrenaline racing through me when I got out of the pool and I half jogged/walked to the field where my bike was waiting. I was soaking wet and just tried my best to get everything together. Getting the socks on was probably the hardest part. Once I got everything on, it was time to run my bike out to the course. This probably took me 5 minutes. Definitely something I can improve on.

Bike:
I was on my bike and ready to hit the trail where it was an out and back for a total of 15 miles. I thankfully got clipped in pretty easily. It took me a couple miles to pull my thoughts past the swim and first transition and to focus on the bike. When I got to the first intersection I was nervous the cops wouldn't be able to stop traffic, so I unclipped from the pedals and was ready to stop. After a couple intersections I realized the cops would handle the cars and I'd be able to cruise right through.

Since I had a bit of a head start thanks to the swim, I knew the majority of the racers were behind me. I got passed every couple of minutes, but was mostly by myself. I got to the turnaround and started thinking about conserving my legs for the run. I had started thinking about the 5k to still left to run after I made it back to the community center. There may have been a string of 4 letter words at that point cursing everyone who had talked me into signing up for this. The last quarter of the ride was almost all uphill, so conserving proved to be harder than expected. I finished the bike in about 1:05. Next year I want to get that under an hour.

T2:
This is where things got a little dicey. As I came cruising off the trail and into the transition area I couldn't get my right shoe unclipped from the pedal. My cleat had come loose and no matter how much I turned my foot, that sucker wasn't coming out. When I got to the dismount line I stopped next to a car so I could lean against it to undo my shoe and pull my foot out. I ran across the grass with one shoe on and one still on my bike. Luckily I had another pair of socks to put on since that pair was soaked. Again, socks were not an easy task and took way too much time. I had also planned to switch shirts and put on a dry one, but in the chaos of it all, I just left on what I had. Note for next year, don't wear cotton, it holds onto all the water from my suit and never dried. I had my mom and sister there cheering me on through the end of my bike and this transition. Too bad for them I'm not the quickest runner, so they still had a while to wait for me to finish.

Run:
I grabbed some water from the aide station and hit the run course. Only 5k left between me and the finish line. My legs were completely numb from the knees down from the chilly morning (it was about 50 degrees when we started) and the bike ride. I tried jogging but had to slow it down to a walk for a few minutes to get myself together. There was a no headphones rule so all I had to get me through the run was my own thoughts. I ran as much as I could and walked when I needed to. I tried to keep it to only walking the uphills and running the flats and downhills.

Everyone participating in the race was so up beat. Every single person I saw heading back towards the finish line was so encouraging. Everyone was saying to each other "You're doing great" "looking strong" "Killing it". Definitely helped me keep going until I got to the turn around to head back. Once I got to the volunteer at the turnaround point it was just over a mile until I was done. I tried to pick up my pace and run more than walk. Once I could see the finish line it was time to start grinning and no more walking anymore with everyone watching me come in.

I cruised to the finish line to end this crazy journey of not just a swim, not just a bike race, but a swim, bike and 5k too. Seriously, who decided that was a good idea?

Thank GOD it was over. Two hours and eleven minutes after I jumped in the pool, I was done.

When does registration for next year open?

I think this was the perfect race for my first triathlon. The pool swim was a little less chaotic than an open water swim, the bike was on a familiar trail that I've rode on tons of times, and the volunteers were amazing. The race was in honor of a local girl, Taylor Love, who has been conquering pediatric cancer since she was 18 months old. Check out her story here. Everyone was out to support her, so the energy was so positive and uplifting the whole day. I was so happy to have participated this year.

I can't wait to do this race again and to try out other local sprint triathlons next spring. And just 12 days into my 30th year, I get to cross something off of my 30 while 30 list.