Highlights from my weekend

Here are a few pictures highlighting my fun weekend in Winthrop!

The view from my tent on Saturday morning! Apparently there is a place nearby the campground that you can go on hot air balloon rides. Some day....

We stayed at the Winthrop KOA! We are not normally KOA campers. We usually say we like to rough it. But we signed up for a spot last minute and just wanted to make sure that there would be a space for us. And why rough it when you can set up your tent on a manicured lawn? And when you can buy a towel, hand sanitizer and s'more ingredients at a store on the property? And especially why would you rather rough it when you can have an amazing clean bathroom! Seriously, the bathrooms at this place are nicer than my own.
Here are all of us mountain bikers! I had already changed into normal clothes because my race was finished an hour earlier than these guys. Overall I was pretty happy with my race. I fell a little behind on the downhill section because I am just not quite brave enough to just let loose and bomb down the mountain!
After the race everyone else went home and Matty and I spent a couple of hours in Winthrop. We visited a cute little museum that is just up the hill from the main street. There were lots of log cabins and room after room of antiques. I just love this kind of museum! I had to snap a photo of this old fashioned tooth extractor...

Apparently the dentist in the Methow Valley was a traveling physician that would visit each town in the area for about three weeks at a time. He would do nothing but pull teeth! Makes me cringe!


We made and ate a lot of s'mores! The best kind are made with either dark chocolate or Reese's cups! I always like to heat the graham cracker and chocolate near the fire so that it gets nice and melty. Yum!
One of the best parts of our weekend was waking up Sunday morning and mountain biking for 3 hours before checking out of our campsite. We had a blast! There are so many trails in the Methow Valley. The ride really wore us out!
There are many more photos (of course) but this post is getting long. Its just great to document a few awesome memories!

Going to Winthrop

I love this place! We spent a day there while we were camping on Memorial Day weekend. And now we are going back for a bike race! Its a really cute town and I'm excited to spend a couple days there!
Have a great weekend...hopefully everyone can catch some sunshine!

Proud to be a Northwest Girl

Watch out! This post is not meant to offend! I am mostly just responding my my sister's blog post about how she feels she is getting more European. There are a few stereotypes that Europeans have about Americans...we are fat, sloppy, wasteful etc.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, I feel that I am none of these things!

1. I exercise daily.

2. I have minimalist shoes. This is definitely a trend that is catching on in Seattle!

3. I have a techy cell phone.

4. I love camping and hiking and generally being outside.

5. I recycle anything I can. I don't believe in Styrofoam.

6. I drink coffee beverages like a fish.

7. I bike to work. (And I just started mountain biking)

8. I generally eat healthy food. I don't eat fried food (at least most of the time!)

9. I probably wont have kids until I'm a little older. (This is probably a city girl thing v. a Northwest thing)

10. I am a foodie. I love going out to eat and trying new foods, especially ethnic foods that I have never tried.

11. I am a gear head.

There are many more reasons I am so proud and happy to be a Northwest girl! I will have to come up with a few more and share them later. Happy Weekend!

My Thursday in photos

Very fun day today. I always love to have a good time on a week night. All photos taken with my camera phone!

Me at work with a very cute client:

I discovered my new favorite restaurant!

Visited some ducks while waiting for our food. Agua Verde is located right on the ship canal...beautiful location!
Peter and Hannah suggested this fun restaurant. We sat on the porch and enjoyed the cool breeze. I loved the atmosphere and the salsa bar and the six dollar guacamole!
I have a thing with taking food photos. The bright colored dishes made it even more fun.
Here is my cute husband with his freshly cleaned teeth, about to eat some delicious enchiladas.
Other highlights of the day included riding my bike to work (an every day thing now) and indulging in some vanilla ice cream and dark chocolate. This girl had a little too much fun, I am afraid! ;)

Bike race scrapbook page

I have made a couple of scrapbook pages about my bike race in Port Angeles. I know that I don't usually post scrapbook pages on this blog. Most of the people that read this already know me and maybe aren't as crafty and maybe don't want to see lots of crafty stuff.

But guess what? I love to scrapbook and I scrapbook all the time. So maybe there might be a few scrapbook pages here and there on this blog. Ha!

For this page I copied Shimelle's sketch of the week. I RARELY copy sketches, and if I do, its usually from Shimelle because she uses lots of 4x6 photos, as do I. Here is her website...

http://www.shimelle.com/

And the sketch:
http://www.shimelle.com/paper/1015/scrapbooking-sketch-of-the-week/

Here is my page:
I copied her technique of painting the edges of paper with glimmer mist. I have been using my glimmer mist more often, but it is still a product that I am afraid of. I am so happy to use it in a new way! I made the little specks with my glimmer mist and a paintbrush...loving the way it helps control where the spray goes. Shimelle has a cool video on her blog that shows how to do this.

Thanks for looking! And soon I will have photos of my awesome Bro-in-Law who is currently (at this moment) graduating from college! My awesome Bro-in-Law gave me permission NOT to attend the six hour ceremony and I am ever so grateful for that! ;) But I am still super proud and happy and took some fun photos this morning.

On Running and Cycling

After my great running injury of 2010, I have decided to be WAY more careful and NOT get injured again. I had some IT band strain which was just a minor overuse injury and ended up ruining my legs for several months. After lots of icing and painful therapy (thank you Matt) I was able to run Bloomsday in May 2010 and ultimately get back to my half marathon running self by the Fall.

CURRENTLY...I have a little injury. I have what I believe is a high hamstring strain in the left side, and I have been limping around for the last several days. It actually all started two weeks ago today, when I went on a lazy six mile run. Sometimes I will get random hamstring or knee or shin or foot pain on a particular run, but this time the pain has stuck around! Fortunately I can still cycle without any problem. In fact, my leg has felt better after both of my mountain bike rides in the past couple weeks. I thought that was strange.

I did a glorious ten mile run on Sunday with my trainer...here is a photo I took of the beach in Lynnwood...
The run was amazing. SUPER hilly and hard, which I like. I haven't been able to walk since, but it was worth it! I want to run this same route again when I am more healthy and less embarrassing. (I had to walk for a bit at mile 9.25)

To sum this all up, I am not running right now. I'm taking a little break. I am doing lots of cycling. The fact that we only have one car now is helping, because I have no choice but to ride my bike to work. I am hoping a week off running will heal my legs and I will be back at it in no time! I have a race coming up in July...I better start training!

So here I am tonight...actually skipping spin class and letting my legs rest. Its mostly just hard to get up when I have a kitty in my lap...
He keeps me super warm and its so cozy having him sleep here as I type away. :)

A couple more camping pages

On this page I used a couple more of those misted circle scraps. I used a stamp to make a wood grain circle with distress ink, and I cut one of the circles in half. I used papers from my 8x8 Campfire pad. I love that these papers are already 8x8, takes away all the guilt of cutting them up. :)


I made this second page with a variety of products. The little skunk, deer and trees are cut out from a sheet of paper from American Crafts "Campy Trails." I think this is all new, and this paper is so cute! Everyone who knows me knows that I love any paper with cute little critters. The tag and circles on this page I bought from a website called Ormolu. They are called Tree hugger storytellers and I love them!

http://www.shopormolu.com/product/treehugger-storytellers

The lady who owns this shop seems super nice. She threw in a few extra free circle tags with my order. :)

Thanks for looking. I will be back soon with some more BIKE RACE photos! By the way, I totally did not die. In fact I also did NOT come in last. :)

On using every little scrap

Remember a couple weeks ago when I posted about making this scrapbook page? Well I said that I would use these white cardstock circles for something! I really cannot let anything go to waste, especially cute little misted circles. So far I have used them on two pages. Here is the first one:
I added a little distress ink on the edges and I think they look great! I made another page as well that I have yet to photograph. Once I do, I will post it here! I can't wait to talk here soon about two of my favorite combinations....scrapbooking + camping! (I have a special affinity towards mr. campy and campfire. ;) )

This page is about Josh and Matt's bike race in Ephrata that did NOT happen. Matt's fork exploded on Friday night and Josh's seat post broke during the first few minutes of the ride. When I showed Matt this picture he said, "That was an epic day!" Thus the title of my scrapbook page.

Tomorrow morning VERY EARLY, Matt and I are headed into Leavenworth for our second bike race of the season. After pre-riding the course last weekend and enduring the hour long climb up a mountain, I can hardly believe that I am committing myself to this race! Hopefully I will come out alive!

Home again...

Back to normal life!

On Tuesday I had a bit of withdrawals from my care-free summer weekend. We expected rain, but we got SUNSHINE. And WARM WEATHER. And I was silly and a bit crazy and not at all responsible. That felt GREAT.

We have a bit of car trouble staring us in the face right now, as well as a whole lotta rain and gloom in the sky. So its honestly hard being back to normal life and I am trying to make the best of it! I have been scrapbooking and making burned pop corn and organizing and enjoying the little things in life, such as coffee. I have a little Dove chocolate wrapper in my car that says "Chocolate never lets you down." As I read that wrapper each day I realize I feel the same way about coffee. Chocolate and coffee never let me down!

Anyway...

Here are some photos from the weekend that make me happy. Our campsite seemed small at first, but it ended up being pretty cool.
Can't believe another memorial day weekend is come and gone!