Category Archives: since when did i become a runner?

granite shopping, house painting, a feature and my first half marathon

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The garage remodel is progressing along nicely thanks in HUGE part to Devin’s dad who has started building the beautiful cabinets for my new laundry and pantry area out there.  The man has some ridiculous woodworking skills, and I am overjoyed at the prospect of all the extra storage space I’ll have!  I’ll show some progress photos soon.  In the meantime, this morning we went shopping for granite for the counter top.  We decided to go with granite since the counter will also double as our bar area when we entertain.  The cabinets are pine and we won’t be painting them (just sealing them) so it was important to find a pattern and color that would compliment the wood.

If you have ever shopped with a significant other who may have slightly (or hugely) different taste then you, then you can understand how I had to steel myself this morning for the battle that I was sure was coming.  Surprisingly, we came out of the experience in one piece, and the wedding is still on :) .

Devin wanted something bold with really interesting color and markings whereas I was leaning towards stone that was a little more subtle.  The one thing that we both agreed on at least was that we wanted a leather finish and not polished.  We ended up choosing a granite called Silver Galaxy in leather finish which is gray with touches of white and a muted red.  After going through all of the slabs, we both settled on this piece:

We’ll be cutting it down to the upper right 71″ across and down 20″.  It’s bold enough for Devin, but the markings aren’t too overwhelming for me, especially with the larger white marking towards the left side and the larger expanse of gray in the upper right.  It’s going to look great against the pine, and will also pick up on the red from the bricks of the backend of the fireplace that’ll be directly to the left of the counter.

In other news, I’m both anxious and excited to be running my first half marathon tomorrow morning.  I’ve been training since February, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be okay, but I still can’t help feeling a little nervous.  The race is called the Divas Half Marathon and it’s geared towards women.  I have no goal time…I just want to be able to run the entire time and finish the race.  I may or may not be wearing a hot pink and black running tutu.

I’m just sayin’ :) .

Also, we finally decided on colors for the exterior of the house (it only took two years!), and our painter friend has been hard at work this past week.  He should be finished next week so stay tuned for the reveal.  We could’ve painted it ourselves, but all signs pointed to having our friend do it since he’s a pro, is in need of some work and is giving us a huge discount.

Lastly, tonight our bathroom facelift is being featured over at Remodelaholic.  Thank you so much to the wonderfully talented and creative duo of Cassity and Justin for the feature!

 

 

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homegoods, camping in the rain and my first 5k

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This past Friday afternoon, I took a trip to Mecca, also known as HomeGoods.  Because really, can you think of a better way to start the weekend?  Like most trips I take there, I didn’t really have anything specific in mind that I wanted or needed.  Though also like most trips I take there, I left with something that I hadn’t realized I needed beforehand, but I couldn’t leave without.

If you don’t already know, I love quatrefoil patterned ANYTHING.  I also love the color gray.  So when I saw these Cynthia Rowley towels, I just couldn’t pass them up.

For anyone interested, they came in other colors too (cream, light green, maybe orange? if I remember right).

Then on the way home, I decided to stop at our local Salvation Army just in case there were any inexpensive pieces of furniture in need of a makeover.  As if I don’t already have enough projects to work on!  When I pulled up, what did I see sitting on the sidewalk in front of the store, but this super ugly little table marked “$5.00 As Is.”

I looked it over and everything seemed to be in decent shape, and it’s fairly heavy so no particle board on this baby.  As I expected, the second I brought it home, Devin declared “there is no place for that table in this house.”  Ha.  We’ll see.  The second I laid eyes on it, a variety of “after” images flashed through my head.  Especially since I’d recently read this post of Ashley’s where she made over a similar looking table.

Admittedly, I sort of agree with Devin that the style wouldn’t really fit in our home, but that wasn’t about to stop me from buying it and making it over anyway because FIVE DOLLAR TABLE HELLO.  We’ll see how it turns out, then at that point, I’ll decide where its permanent home should be.

On Saturday we headed down to Santa Cruz with the dogs to camp overnight in preparation for the She.Is.Beautiful 5K that I was running on Sunday morning. While I was excited for my first race, the gloomy, rainy weather really did its best to bring us down.  We spent most of Saturday trying to stay out of the rain and exploring the Aptos/Capitola/Santa Cruz area where we stumbled upon an adorable store called Warmth Company.  Look at this place and tell me you don’t want every single thing in there.

While many things were overpriced in my opinion, there were some accessories that weren’t too bad, and we ended up leaving with this Dash & Albert rug that’s perfect for our entryway.

I love the colors, and it makes a really nice impression when you first walk in the front door…so much more so than the drab beige rug we had there previously.

Afterwards, we finally headed back to the New Brighton State Beach campground and set up shop for the night.  While the circumstances weren’t ideal (muddy dog paws, wet pants, rain rain RAIN), we made the most of it.  At 3AM I woke up to the rain POUNDING on the roof of our van (more on the RallyWagon in a future post!) and prayed that PLEASEGODLETTHERAINSTOPBY8AM because the thought of running in that torrential downpour really bummed me out.

Lo, someone up there listened because when we woke up the next morning the rain had stopped!  It was a beautiful course, along the ocean the entire time, and I ended up coming in at 29:37…five whole minutes faster than my goal time!

Please forgive the facial expression…I have no idea.

On that note, here’s to another week!