The Best Upgrades are Free!

The house has taken over life! (In a good way.) I thought I’d make a laundry list of some of the little things we have been tackling around the house!

My parents were here a few weekends ago and helped us with some housework. The Engineer and my dad hung 8 sets of blinds (I think). They made such a big difference! There were a lot of windows with little fabric panels on them or a see through covering which is not cool at night when you are in display. The new blinds look wonderful and still let all the light in when we want it.

My mom helped me clean, prime, and paint this wall.

Can you tell I forgot to take a before picture?!

We didn't really like the look of the wood finish, but I knew if we just painted it white it would look like brand new bead board. And it does! This was a free upgrade too because the previous owners left us a bunch of paint in the shed. Some of it was completely dried up, but it is great to have some of the matching paint for the house for free! I actually really like this wall now! We have the same stuff on the entire back wall of the sun room and I CANNOT WAIT to get my brush on it!

I also recently got that blue wood box to use as a shoe basket. It isn't the typical shoe basket, which I love, and it’s not huge or deep encouraging the pile up of shoes.

After I painted the little wood accent wall I found the interface between that and the adjacent trim to be dismal at best, so I carried the white paint on the trim a little farther :)

Sooooo much better!

Another free upgrade was the removal of some odd items in the backyard.

On trash day I included the old ‘protected by Brinks’ sign (which why it was on the inside of the fence I’m not too sure haha), that wonderful massive saw blade, a padlock which was locked with no key in sight, a metal Mexico dish, and a one-eyed metal frog (not pictured). Some of these things are kinda cool on their own, but all together I didn't like the look it all gave off. I also took down a hand painted sign from the shop (and by hand painted I mean finger painted) that said something along the lines of defending your right to protect yourself. Not fancy. The trash can loved it though!

Now all we have is our knight in shining…errr…rusted armor. I like him though. I think he needs a name.

There has also been a lot of cleaning going on. There was A LOT of dog hair left in the house for us, so I've been looking for every nook and cranny trying to get rid of all of it! Cleaning things makes me smile after the fact even if I am a grump through the process. I don’t like dust and old dog hair.

I’ll save some of the little additions to the house for another time. My current project is working on an upgrade to our closet doors. I’m pretty excited for this one because I am not the biggest fan of old sliding closet doors.

Working a Lil' More Than Working Out

What is exciting in your life lately? Um, big news in mine, we moved!!! Moving wasn't terrible, but it did cramp the work out schedule.

We closed on our house on Thursday and went over that evening to do a little cleaning. It was so surreal that that was our house. We will have a lot of extra spaces to fill, in a fun way. I'm so excited to work on all the new rooms! I took this panoramic before we moved all our belongings in. There's just cleaning supplies in the kitchen.

Love <3

The Engineer took the whole day off work on Friday and cleaned the rest of the house. Amazing right?

Then it rained. :-/ Luckily it only rained while we were picking up the truck and for the first hour or so of loading.

I took a half day on Friday and we loaded the truck that afternoon/evening. Sadly, it took a decent bit of time simply because of the trek to the truck. The stairs are closer than the elevator, but we didn't use them much since we were double teaming with dollys. That night we drove to the house with a few friends and unloaded our mattresses to sleep on. We woke up in the morning and unloaded the entire truck in 1.5 hours flat. Dream team. We were thankful we previously cleaned the floors (if not solely for getting rid of the dog hair the previous owners were so kind to leave us) but it helped cut down on the mess since the ground was still wet and we tracked in a bit of dirt and leaves and other things that cling to the bottom of wet shoes.

Once we started unpacking we set the guest room up in a snap (furniture, not decorations or anything).

We then moved to the living room and kitchen areas and ended up with a big mess. 

We were really happy that nothing broke during the move and everything traveled well (The Engineer noticed a ding on the corner on the dining room table and I actually forgot to go check it out). I had a little oops while setting up the kitchen though. I was moving a shelf down in the kitchen cabinets and didn't realize that there was still a glass on it. When I pulled the shelf out the glass fell into another glass on the shelf below it. It shockingly didn't break but they were stuck. I mean stuck stuck. We tried dish soap and even ran it through the dishwasher just for the heck of it. When we finally put ice in the top glass and ran hot water on the bottom one, the bottom glass cracked. We had already realized that we would probably be sacrificing the bottom one. I really couldn't help but laugh at the whole situation.

We did get the kitchen put together though. I wasn't sure how I would like having cabinets with windows, but I LOVE them!!!

Love, love, love!!

Needless to say, with all the packing, loading, unloading, and unpacking, we didn't work out at all. I finally put 5 miles on the books yesterday. Gasparilla isn't getting any farther away so I figured it would be in my best interest to get back on track! I'll leave you with our new friend in our back yard. Maybe the previous owners left him for us because they knew we were UCF Knights?

GO KNIGHTS!!!!

A Little Hey Howdy

Just popped in to say a quick hello! I had intended to have the post about our dresser/side table/cabinet refurbishment up (can you tell that I have NO IDEA what to call the thing?!) but that has clearly not happened. Sad face. My computer is on its death bed and I've thus been ignoring it and finishing that post, but we did finish the dresser...thingy!!

It has also been a bit busy around here. We went to the Gasparilla parade on Saturday which was a lot of fun and we came home with plenty of beads!

Working out fell a little to the wayside, and I know it will be difficult this week with moving but I'm going to get back on track. I have been doing plenty of active work with moving and construction at work. 

Sunday we…packed!! The vast majority of the house. I’m actually a bit worried about the structural integrity of our second floor apartment’s dining room floor. We have probably 90% of the apartment packed and 80% of that stuff is in the dining room. That’s a lot of stuff. It has held on so far but we need to move it out of there ASAP!

The good news is that we close in two days!!!!!!!!!!

Here’s to crossing our fingers that everything goes off without a hitch!

Workouts This Week

With a 15 K on the horizon, I am trying to maximize my run workouts when I get them. Last Sunday The Engineer and I ran 6 miles! We both had an awesome run…I ran slower than all my runs as of late, but given that I completed the 6 miles and felt great (relatively speaking at least, running never actually feels great) I was extremely happy!

We decided to drive out to the new Suncoast Parkway trail. It's been open for a while now but it still feels new to me, which is great because it stinks when your running routes get old. It was a beautiful sunny January afternoon with temps just below 70F. It reminded me of last year when I was running in 20F in NJ where it was grey and FREEZING. This was much better and I took some time to appreciate how lucky I am with all the changes in my life over the past year.

Monday I wanted to take my bike out but it looked like it was going to rain so I settled on the trainer. Buuuttt then my bike didn't fit in the trainer. Literally 2 millimeters off. g.r.u.m.p. I didn't want to force my bike in to the trainer and scratch it up or actually mess something up. I wasn't going to be defeated though. Instead I ventured over to our little apartment gym and rode the recumbent bike for an hour. I will forever complain about apartment and hotel gyms choosing recumbent bicycles over a regular old spin bike, but I’m still thankful they had something I could peddle on!

Monday I took myself to Davis Island to run 3.5 miles which I intended on running a little faster but alas my little leggies were tired! I still held a decent pace and skipped my strength for the evening. This week is a step back week and I want to make sure I don’t overdo it because next week has some serious (serious) miles for me! I felt a little guilty about going to DI without The Engineer because it is one of his favorite plane watching spots, but it was a fun change up for me.

Last night was supposed to be 30 minutes of cross training which I had planned for my arms. However, I ended up putting the canvas for this tent on all by myself (my co-worker got called to the field) and I was tired! That thing is heavier than it looks and it was all over my head. I felt that that was plenty of a workout for my back and arms. And I feel like I got my Super Woman on for the day. :)

The Engineer and I have been working on revamping an old cabinet we've had and we’re almost done! I’ll share that transformation soon!

Happy 2014

I like New Year’s Resolutions. They give you the chance to get focused of refocused on something. The great thing about that something is that it can be anything.

This year I want to get back to racing. I jumped age groups last year and didn’t do a single race in my new group! Life got busy and there were a lot of changes, so I am ok with that, but I miss racing. I love having a goal to work toward and I think they are fun!

First up: Gasparilla!

I’ve been working on my running game to help my triathlons a little bit. A race focused on running is exactly what I need. I’m aiming for the 15K. No time goals here, just finishing is all I need.

I’m also trying to do better about putting things away where they belong as I finish with them to stop the buildup of junk that needs to be put away each night. It’s the little things right?

Hope the New Year is off to a good start for you!

So...it's almost 2014 you say???

I guess we can sum up 2013 in a quick whirl wind!

1. New JOB!

Working at GLDD was fun, but the travel was not fun. I was lucky and landed a job as a contractor for the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey). I run around in the woods and rivers measuring how much water is flowing through. It is fun and the travel schedule suites me much better. Being home has given me more time to focus on other things...

2. LIKE GETTING MARRIED!!!

 I was elated to be home to enjoy the rest of my engagement to The Engineer and loved planning our wedding together. We DIY'ed most if not all of our decorations and out family and friends helped up pull it together on the day of. It was an amazing night and the best part? I married my best friend and true lover :)

My Hubby and Dad built a corn hole and ladder golf set, and I painted them with The Engineer. 

I also hand made wire bikes for the center pieces, and we assembled everything ourselves. We even made the wedding favors...Love Spice (aka seasoning salt). I got so many compliments on the personal touches we had at the wedding. While we spent a ton (and I mean a TON) of time on them, it was totally worth it!

Best day ever with the best new hubby ever!

3. New House!

We haven't closed on our house, but we started looking for a home to buy immediately after we returned from our *amazing* honeymoon and after a month and a half of serious looking we fell in love with a house, which we stole right out from under another buyer. We are now crossing our fingers through escrow!

There's the smallest peek through the front door :)

The Engineer and I are now compiling our list of things we want to do to the house. DIY here we come! I know there is still a small change that something won't work out and we will be back to square one but I'm pretty optimistic about it.

One of my goals for 2014 aside from working on the awesome new house will be to get back into the racing scene. I'm thinking a 15K at Gasparilla to kick this year off right.

My other goal is to actually use the blog to document my training progress and all the DIY projects we take on. Documentation is the first step to progress ;-)

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season...Happy New Year!

California Dreams

So remember when I was in San Diego? Yea me too. Good times. I know I'm not there anymore but I still want to share the awesomeness of it. The Engineer came to visit me on my time off one week, but he couldn't be there for the entire week, so I had a few days to myself. I chose some places to explore and planned to take the train/metro deal south one stop with the intent of visiting Torrey Pines State Reserve. They are supposed to have good hiking and the park is right on the ocean. Since I didn't have a car I had to plan around walking to everywhere. In my research I noticed that the University of California San Diego was pretty much on the path I needed to take to the park (there was no direct walking route, and what google maps struggles to show you is elevation...there was a very large hill between me and the park that had no roads on it). 

I was pretty excited about visiting UCSD, I never really realized that I enjoyed visiting college campuses, but I do. They are such unique places! So I set off from the train station in attempts to semi-blindly navigate my way on dirt trails over this hill. I was a bit weary at first, but saw other runner/hikers out there and felt more comfortable that I wasn't trespassing or something like that haha! And I made it onto the UCSD campus. I bee-lined for engineering (gotta pay me respects). It is quite different from UCF (Go Knights!), there were 8ish engineering buildings. Pretty serious over there, and they had really nice architecture and landscaping.

One of the engineering buildings also had what I would call Dorothy's house from Kansas on it. 

The display itself actually had nothing to do with engineering (which was disappointing because I felt at the least someone could have stuck some cantilever explanation in there, something, anything, Buler?), but was simply an art installment on the 7th floor that was not open the day I was there. Sad face. Also of note was the super awesome library.

I also learned that UCSD houses the official Dr. Suess collection! I thought the campus was cool and wished it was sunny so I could get the true feel of California college life. 

I had a good snack and set off toward Torrey Pines. It was a nice walk to get there and there were a lot of hikers of all levels in the park. It made me happy to see it being used so much. Sadly, it was a super dingy day - I never saw the sun because there was such a heavy fog layer - so pictures weren't the greatest, but I had a good time exploring the cliffs in the park.

This park would be a great place for trail running. The paths were wide and all dirt. You could also pick between different trails, some were fairly flat and some had pretty decent elevation changes. I opted out of running since my walking total for the day was probably around 10 miles at that point. By the time I got back to my apartment I had walked just over 18 miles! And yes, I do consider that my first half marathon ;-)

I really enjoyed exploring Cali, there really is a lot to do out there and I can't wait to go back on a real vacation and explore more!