Spoka

We made our second trip to the new IKEA tonight. I wanted Chase to buy the cute blue nightlight critter but noooo he had to pick the weird round odd looking red critter. I think the red one is kind of creepy and I don't know why any child would want to wake up to it in the middle of the night. Of course Boris thinks it's cute?!

Creepy...
 

Good Samaritan

There are apparently very kind people in my neighborhood. I went out to the park with Chase and when I returned home I had an email from our library - someone had found my keys and turned them in!!! Thank you good Samaritan!

Ride On Chase

We upgraded Chase to a 16 inch bike. I think B may be even more excited than Chase!

IKEA Rocks!

Graham and I went to IKEA today and I bought a ton of new furniture for the house. I made two impulse buys - one of them was the above ruffled throw. I LOVE it. The other was a panel curtain for the sliding door. There were about 5000 other things I wanted to buy but I tried to control myself since we were buying so many planned items. 

Garage Sale

We had a garage sale today...people are amazingly cheap. Here are my best garage sale stories:
- Near the end we were selling everything for $1 and one if the items was a dry erase board with an eraser and marker. The guy had to check to make sure the marker worked before he bought it for $1!
- One lady wanted a printer which was $1 and she was wondering if it printed in color - for $1 does it matter?
- Another person haggled me down from $12 to $6 for three frames...left a $1 scrap booking binder...came back for it!
- Seriously one van that came had like 10 people in it.
- Some people would put stuff back if you said it was $3.
- We had a giant black and white painting that we were selling for $15. Two people turned it down for that. I turned down someone that offered me $5 for it but ended up selling it for $1 at the end of the day. Apparently art isn't worth much at a garage sale.

Superhero Bedroom Art

 
Bedroom

Bathroom

- Cheap eBay comic books $20 for 50
- Metallic blue and green frames from Jo Anns $13 for the big ones $11 for the small ones
- White art paper (8 sheets) $3 a sheet

Amazing art for Chase's new superhero room and bathroom...priceless.  

It is going to be the perfect pop of color for a somewhat neutral room!
 

One of Those Days...

 
- Bad dreams last night
- Chick fil a breakfast was disappointing with fatting icky nuggets (but Chase was adorable)
- Bought frames for Chase's room
- Dropped all the frames in the parking lot shattering them
- Returned broken frames (thanks amazing Jo Anns worker for helping me and making this day tolerable)
- Missed run due to broken frames
- Crazy last minute project at work that took forever that was a favor to another team
- Closed crazy project without saving NOOO
- Redid crazy project (thus missing lunch)
- Ordered pizza for 6-8 night meeting blegh
- Spent 30 minutes fighting with the projector for the night meeting
- In the middle of my meeting I received and email saying my crazy project that I spent hours on was unhelpful
- Lots of anger (decided not to attend 7am meeting for crazy project - no more good deeds)
- Get home at 8:30 without getting to see Chase and fed my feelings with cake

Yah one of those days...
 

Crazy Dog Love

 
This is what trying to get anything done around our house looks like. If Jaxx's face isn't pressed up against mine he isn't close enough.


 

Lollipop Park

We went to an indoor kiddy amusement park today.  The pictures are terrible because of bad lighting but Chase had a blast!!!  (I almost threw up going slow on the teacups...me and rides don't mix)
 

So Cute

Deep thoughts during a car nap. 
 

House Update

Flooring is in!  They are just doing landscaping and paint touch up now!
 

Squinkies

These "Squinkies" are adorable - they are about 1/2 inch tall. So fun!

My First Barefoot Run

 
Yes, yes you are all probably tired of reading running posts but I can't help myself. Stop here if you don't want to hear anything else about running =)

So let's start by saying that my typical shoe wearing habits include none any time they aren't required, when I have to leave the house flip flops or crocs are often my shoe of choice, and when I can't wear those because I am going to work I am usually wearing some kind of flip flopish or strappy heel with no support that puts me on the balls of my feet anyways. Also my other activities of choice in the past have been ballet and yoga which are both very foot and lower leg intensive (so what I am getting at is my experience may not be typical).

My first barefoot run (well in Vibrams) was AWESOME! I ran 1.25 miles so a very short run and I ran at a 12 minute mile pace so about a minute per mile slower then my typical pace (I felt really good and probably could have kept going but everything I read said to start slow). You really can tell when you are running barefoot correctly, your heel never really touches the ground and you kind of bounce/glide run on the balls of your feet. If you happen to take a step incorrectly (heel strike) you can feel the impact change in your leg immediately so you really never take more then one incorrect step. I probably took a handful of them the first block or so I ran while I got used to the new motion and after that the barefoot stride felt very natural and smooth. I did notice that you have to take shorter steps (or at least I did).

Since I didn't want to risk injury I stopped after 1.25 miles and put on my running shoes to finish my hill training. Seriously after about 2 minutes my knee and hip started to tweak which had started happening during my last run (did not experience this while running barefoot). You have to take all of this with a grain of salt since it is my first run and who knows what my feet / calves will feel like tomorrow or how longer / faster runs will go but I am very optimistic that this could help keep my knees and shins and hips safe. If possible I would like to run my August 5K barefoot (someday I would like to run really barefoot - not in Vibrams - but that is months down the line). More to come...
 

CEP Compression Sleeves

Oh where have you been all my life?!?  I have been reading reviews about compression sleeves lately and with me upping mileage I have started getting some mild shin splits. I bought a pair of sleeves put them on and they are seriously amazing!  I would never have guessed they would make such a difference. When I bought them I was planning on just wearing them for recovery but now that I have tried them it is going to be hard to get them off me.  Bye bye pain!
 

Nearly Barefoot

My entire life I've loved being barefoot...I think these shoes were made for people like me. At the race I ran people wore them and I have seen them on a ton of running blogs. One of our friends has a pair and she totally sold me on them. I can't wait to take them for a short run to see how they do!!! (Apparently I'm going to have to work on building up my calf muscles.)
 

Flounce Ruffle Scarf

 
I dragged B out to a specialty yarn store yesterday and bought some ruffle yarn! Here is the finished scarf. It is on the short side (I actually like scarves this length - about long enough for one wrap) but if you wanted a scarf you could wrap around your neck a few times I would go with two skeins instead of one. I used six stitches for this scarf. This is a great beginner project, really fast knit and fun finished product.



Scarf modeled by Chase.





While I was at the knitting store I also picked up this yarn / pattern - so fun!



And finally on the running front today I did a nice steady long run - woohoo!


 

Ruffle yarn?! Genius!

Well hello lovely ruffle yarn...as soon as I can get to a craft store I am going to knit myself up one of these scarves!
 

Where am I with Running?

So I finished my first 5K - now what? Well my sad little brain immediately jumped to "Woohoo! Been there, done that, no more running yippee!". So to negate my laziness I immediately went home and registered for the ERace Homelessness 5K race in Washington Park (August 28th - if anyone else wants to join me).

It still left me with a lack of motivation so my next search was for a 10K. I am highly interested in the Denver half marathon / 10K at the Cherry Creek reservoir on September 11th but I am afraid to sign up because no matter how good my intentions are I'm afraid moving may get in the way of my training / running.

My other goal in July is more cross training which to me = yoga. Unfortunately yoga is a time consuming activity and packing / moving may interfere with those plans as well. But just in case I some how pull off renting a house, moving, and training all at once I thought that I should start upping my mileage. So today I added an extra half mile to my run. :)
 

Paint Colors

We are experiencing paint color drama around our house. I swear swatches do NOT represent what the paint actually looks like in large volumes! Also paint apparently looks different in all sorts of lighting making it REALLY hard to pick a color. I have bought a ton of samples and still can't decide!

Our house will be painted Analytical Gray and I am trying to pick accent colors.

Mind you the computer doesn't really show how different the colors are.

The biggest debate has been around the study/mudroom accent color (probably because it is the only bold color we are picking). The current top runners are:

Citronella VS. Fusion

Here are the Sherwin Williams sample rooms with those colors and Analytical Gray.

I think for the master bedroom we are going with Mink. The only question is whether we do an accent wall of Mink or do the room in Mink and the accent as Analytical Gray.

Chase's accent wall is going to be Cityscape (basically boring gray) because we are going to do bright superhero comic books as the artwork in his room. Although it has come to my attention that Mink and Cityscape are very similar - but my concern with doing Mink in Chase's room is that it has a slight purple hue to it.

For the living room we are going to do an accent wall in either Porpoise or Griffin (Porpoise is slightly grayer - we will pick whichever color goes with the floors better)...they are both fairly dark / dramatic (I swear in real life these colors are quite different from Mink - much darker).

Here is a sample of what Griffin looks like with Analytical Gray.

I can't decide what to do with my sewing room so it may just stay unpainted while I try to figure it out (which may mean it never gets painted).

What do you think about Moody Blue or Mediterranean for a sewing room?

The bathrooms are also going to have to wait for round two of painting.

Happy 4th of July

We had the best 4th of July this year.

Chase enjoyed the petting zoo and jumping castle at the park (although the ice cream, funnel cake, and glow sticks may have been his favorite things).

The sparklers were just as fun as yesterday.

Even Boris had fun with the sparklers.

My dad came over and encouraged bad use of fireworks...

The men got very creative...

This is the first year we let Chase stay up to see the big fireworks. We saw part of the show at Lone Tree until they had to stop in the middle due to fire issues (this is the second time in 3 years - maybe they need a new fire safety person).

We ended the night with a few more sparklers.

I LOVE fireworks and sharing something like this with Chase was special. This is what the holidays are all about.

Happy 4th of July!

PS: This is the latest Chase has ever stayed up - I may be regretting the holiday tomorrow...