Years ago, my husband purchased this gem of a coffee table at a second hand store and it’s made a dozen or so moves with him. It is the perfect square size and made of solid wood. I love it, but recently I started noticing some bad wear & tear and wanted to give the table new life.
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Man I love celebrating our friends new homes. I think it is such a fun experience where your friends have saved up, gone through the emotional journey of buying a house and hopefully you didn’t have to help them move in. Here’s some ideas to help you shower your friends with love.
Cocktail Napkins
– Let’s get this Party Started – $10.95
– Fa-La-La Llama – $7.95
– Out of Office Cocktail Napkins – $7.96
Flowers – Trader Joes
Dish Towel
– Mimi Dish Towel – $18
– All of the Feelings Dish Towel – $18
– William Sonoma Classic Logo Towel, Set of 4 – $19.95
‘Tis the season for the hated (just me?) Secret Santa at work. Every year I feel like I get the co-worker I hardly know or the one that doesn’t have a hobby you can buy them a gift for. I’ve wrangled up a few ideas to help you nail Secret Santa this year.
CONTINUE READINGAs we dreaming of installing a glass door for our bedroom, I’ve been already thinking about the type of doorstop we will want.
Our home is a 1940’s bungalow, and it may sound strange – but we don’t have bedroom door. The previous owners had a dutch door installed – assuming to use as a baby/animal gate – however it doesn’t feel functional for us.
However, the need for a door is real. Let me take you through a few scenarios:
1) I’m making dinner at home alone and the smoke detector in our stairwell continuously goes off (mostly because I’m not a great cook – but you get the picture!)
2) One of us has friends over and are hanging out in our living room, you can hear every conversation if the other person is in the bedroom.
3) We leave for work at different times – it’s v hard to be quiet every morning (what if you want a smoothie?!?).
You get the picture – it’s time.
I’ve been saving up our Home Depot gift cards (I like to do this for big purchases, it makes the investment a little easier to digest) and dreaming of our bedroom door.
Before we make big investment or change in our home, I like to use the editor on my phone to draw out what it could potentially look like. (Bedroom Curtain Example)
Pre-Run Energy and Hydration.
– A plain bagel (sometimes with some Almond Butter on top if I was feeling Wild)
– Enhanced hydration of either Liquid IV (Passion Fruit or Lemon Lime) or Nuun’s (Watermelon or Orange) in a water.
– Clif Bar
– Preventing Runner’s Trots by taking Imodium.
Nutrition while Running.
Your local running store will be your best place to tryout different products.
Post Race.
– Obviously you need to stretch after any run.
– Cold Bath.
Apparel.
Mental Toughness. Woof. You will have runs that kick your ass and you will have runs where you think you can concur the world. Highs and Lows man.
Training Plan. I used the Nike Run Club Training Plan.
Pro:
– You put in the race date and they create a tailored training plan.
– Great in app tracking.
– Free
Con:
– If you miss a run, the plan will update – sounds great in theory, however it becomes difficult to get back on track. Some weeks it would say I have to run 3 miles when I really needed to run 15.
Strava also offers a training plan in their Summit Training Pack – $6/month.
– If I had to do it again, I would try out the Strava Summit Training Pack – which would only run you $2/month.
Chafing. For any long run, make sure you are not wearing new clothes. Vaseline works wonders if you do experience it.
– Vaseline between and on top of your toes. I never tried this, but Jay swears by it.
We are marathon finishers and I now understand why someone would put a 26.2 sticker on the back of their car (don’t worry – I wont be putting a sticker on my car unless I get a few more marathons under my belt).
Running a marathon is a joyful, emotional, powerful, humbling and miserable experience. Our finish time was no where near record breaking, but we make it thru and are finishers.
Results: My dad and I finished, holding hands in 5:30:02. If you were to take out our bathroom breaks, our unofficial time is somewhere around 5:10-5:15.
Our goal was first off to finish, and secondly to finish under 5 hours. We met one of our goals and weren’t too far away from the second. It is easy to get defeated if you read this and say that we didn’t meet our 5 hour goal. But damn, run a marathon and give everyone grace who has crossed the finish-line no matter what time it is in.
The Why: We ran to raise money for Project Purple – who’s goal is to find a cure for pancreatic cancer and improve the lives of patients through support, hope and compassion. I am very proud to say that thus far, I’ve raise over $3,000.
Emotional Struggle. When training, no one talks about the emotional roller coaster you go on when actually running the race. Yes, there’s the pain – but I’m talking a real life emotional struggle. Breaking down crying out of no where type emotions.
Number of Times I cried: 1) Teared up Crossing the Ambassador bridge, when the sun was rising- super thankful for the experience. 2) Seeing our cheering squad (My Husband and Mom) at mile 12. 3) Mile 17 when Jay was crying 4) Mile 18 when we saw my brother, sister-in-law and nephews 5) Mile 21 when it got so damn hard, we’d ran the furthest we ever had before and I started to really think about Uncle Scott 6) Anytime I thought about taking a Gratitude Mile.
Race day photos:
