Girly day

Today was all about me.

I made baked oatmeal for breakfast. Then I ate half of it cold when I got home tonight. (Its amazing cold!) Here is the recipe, except I used half the sugar and almonds instead of walnuts and almond milk instead of real milk.

I painted my nails after watching Kristina Werner's awesome YouTube videos. She even has a nail blog! I am inspired to buy so many fun products. :) You can find the blog here

I put make up on today.

I bought myself a latte and was delighted with the foam art.

I visited my dear bro and sis in east lake and delighted in their home cooking. I love the view of Lake Union from their place!

I got poked today, for (hopefully) the last time for awhile. I appreciated the delightfully yellow band-aid which went so well with my neon polish. I received the awesome news that I am hCG free at last!!!

It was a good day. I miss hubby, but it was still a good day.

This Week's photos

I have been faithfully photographing lots of details of my week. It has not been an amazing exciting week, but rather very routine. Its really a challenge to take beautiful photos of every day life. Here are a few from the last few days that I particularly like...

Every morning I wake up with two kitties on the bed...

Here I am right before heading to work on my bike on Monday...

I grabbed a photo with instagram after locking up my bike...

On Tuesday I walked Green lake with a dear old friend Claire. I got to meet her new baby for the first time.

I also walked to work after walking the lake. I ended up walking 5.2 miles that morning! I took lots of pictures on the route from Green Lake to Fremont.

On Tuesday night I tried something new. I used my self timer to take a photo of me feeding the cats. Usually both cats rush to my feet and I wanted to capture that. But that night, Flash was holding back. That's why I have such a funny look on my face. I am trying to convince Flash to come eat treats.

Tonight (Wednesday) Matty flew to North Carolina, so we worked hard getting him all packed on Tuesday night. So of course everything was a big mess. :)

Wednesday was the most routine day of all! I drove to work, so no exciting transportation. I went to the gym, grocery store and gas station.  Here are a few favorites from today:

Matty in the morning enjoying coffee and relaxation...

I LOVED shopping for myself. So fun to buy food just for ME. :)...

I couldn't wait until I got home to eat a skinny cow. I was SUPER hungry from my work out.

I checked facebook during TERRIBLE Northgate 6pm traffic.

Cereal for dinner!

Finally dropped Matty and Heather at the airport after lots of last minute crazyness...

I know this was a super long post, so thanks for staying with me til the end!

Project Life Weeks 15 & 16

These past few weeks have been pretty awesome, in that the weather is actually starting to improve. We have had two amazing weekends and many opportunities to use our little BBQ.  It seems like Spring is in full swing and there are flowers everywhere. I love it.

WEEK 15

These weeks have also been pretty normal.I did ride my bike two times this week and I made a little card to record that. I don't have any photos of me on my bike, but I do have a new Stamp set that came with my SC kit. Love that bike stamp!

 I completely fell in love with instagram and I fear that I am one of those annoying take-photos-of-everything kind of people! I cut up a page protector to add six instagram photos as an insert.

I decorated one of the cards with blue spray mist (Mister Huey) and some chipboard clouds to symbolize the amazing weather.

WEEK 16

This week was Tulip Festival, watching Boston Marathon, more BBQ, Paleo muffins, lots of running and lots of dishes.

I still took a lot of instagram photos, but I didn't print them all out. Some of them can just live on my phone.

This half of the week is a lot about running and my new water belt. I also put a picture of the dishes on there because we did so many this week. That's what happens when you cook, I guess. On the top right I placed a photo from last week. We have a friend Donella that always makes delicious bread or cookies or cake, and it tempts me every Friday night. We think she should open a bakery!

I am now super caught up because its still Saturday and both weeks are done. I better not do anything epic tonight because I would have no place to add it to the book! My guess is that I will go to sleep early. :)

How to run 19 miles:

Answer: Slowly!

I hate that this is the answer, but actually that is how I accomplished this feat. I am sad to say that I actually walked for a bit after mile 14, and again at mile 16.5 when I was faced with a GIANT hill.

Here are some things that got me through the run:

Looking nerdy!

I have always hated those silly water belts, but they actually do come in handy. Today I had to refill mine at Matthew's Beach because I completely ran out.

The pocket also was extremely handy because it held my phone with my "RunKeeper" app on me. I could hear as the lady on my phone yelled out the time, distance and minutes per mile.

I also used some energy gels about half way through the run. I used the shot blocks this time, which are way yummier and more like gummy bears than the gross GU gels that I'm used to.

It also helped that I ate a large bagel with almond butter for breakfast! That never fails me!

 

I always love to get out my camera and snap a few photos on my runs. Of course I use my cell camera. :) Today I was pretty exhausted, but I managed to take one photo.

This one is taken on the Burke-Gilman trail. Everyone was out today and it was so inspiring to see tons of bikers and runners. Many runners were like me and had their water bottles attached to them...probably marathon training as well. Sometimes that makes the pain a little more manageable.

I ended my run with a yummy Starbucks Frappacino with some protein added. I like to delude myself into thinking that I'm being healthy. :)

 

All in all, I ran 19 miles. My average pace was 10:04. Before I started walking it was about 9:30, so I'm pretty sure that the hills and walking were what drove the average down significantly. I know at the end when I was actually looking at my phone, I was running between an 8 and 9 minute mile.

So glad this run is over. Its hard to imagine that I have to add SEVEN more miles to make it a marathon. 

I am glad that I am okay with walking a little. I know that I wont WIN the marathon and I may not even make my goal of 4 hrs. That is OKAY with me! I will be glad to just finish!

Plans for Week in the Life

For the past two years, I have been following Ali Edward's "Week in the Life" where she documents an entire week with lots of photos and details.

In 2010 I made an 8x10 book with all my photos and words and Matt loved it! I finished the book in the summer of 2011 (finally) and was completely sick of it!

Last year, 2011, I took TONS of photos with my retro camera app on my phone and shared them here on the blog every day. I ended up spending about $50 to have them printed out (4x4 is expensive!) and I still have yet to finish the book. I have everything ready to go in an Iris container and plastic bags labeled by day. Someday I hope to finish that little book, mostly because of the cost of all those photos. Somehow it is just so much fun during the week to take pictures, but really hard to have the inspiration to finish the project.

Next week, Week in the Life 2012 begins! I decided that this year I am just going to add a couple of extra pages to my project life book. I am not sure how many photos I will take, or how many reciepts/memorabilia I will collect, but it doesn't matter. I will just add a few pages within the week for Project Life. Then I wont have a huge scrapbook to make! Matt will be gone most of the week anyway because he is flying to North Carolina. So it wont be much of a regular week.

Next week I will probably be posting every day with photos of the day. It will be a mix of SLR photos (missed those last year!) and Instagram photos.

It is a super cool project and I am excited!

This kitty

I have a kitty that loves to get in the way of the camera. Any time I want to take photos of my scrapbook pages, or in this case, my delicious paleo cookies, Leo loves to jump into the shot.
Good thing he is so cute! :)

I arranged that blue bench and little table as a spot for me to drink some coffee in the morning. So far its been too cold, but I when the weather gets warmer, I plan to put some pillows outside and maybe a pot of flowers. I have really been needing a place to catch some sunlight, and on our super tiny porch, that's pretty hard!

I will let you all know if I succeed with my little plan. :)

Healthy Update + Tulip Photos

This blog keeps me accountable to how I am doing with my health!

Exercise:

Running like crazy on the weekends! Last Saturday I ran 17 miles. I just about died, but I did it!

I ran Green lake yesterday (Monday) in 25 minutes! I ran the outside loop, which is 3.1 miles, a 5K exactly. That felt really good.

I keep up with Spin class/weights every Monday night. Mondays I am always super consistant, and I love that.

What I would like to work on:

Running more frequently during the week. Its not enough to just run a long run once a week!
Just like I did on Monday, Id like to run a few more times during the week, just some easy runs and at least one tempo run or some intervals. Need to work on my speed.
I'd like to also practice just running for fun. Not running a particular distance, just getting out of the house and running as far and as fast as I want. Sometimes training for a race really takes the "fun" out of running!
I have a goal to weight train at least 3x per week. So far its been about 2x lately. This week I plan to meet a friend at the gym on Wednesday, hopefully having a work out buddy will help!

Food:
This part is still really hard for me. I am great during the week. I eat a healthy breakfast, plan and eat a healthy lunch, and we have been eating at home more during the week. The weekends get difficult! Especially when I run a lot, I tend to eat unhealthy food. Here is an example from the weekend:
I asked for no bacon on the burger and also for coleslaw instead of fries. But the restaurant forgot, so I just ate this all anyway. It was absolutely delicious. :)

I am still plugging along and hoping to improve my diet this week.

Now for a few quick tulip photos from Skagit Valley this weekend! That's why I ate the hamburger, we stopped quickly in the town of La Conner before heading home from the Tulip fields.
Aren't they just fantastically gorgeous? Sorry for so many photos but I just loved so many shots from yesterday. Tulips are amazing. :)

Out of my creative rut

Thanks to Shimelle, this weekend I have been scrapbooking! I made three pages today and I also photographed a lot of older pages that have just been sitting around for the past few months. Now all I need is to buy a new album so there is somewhere to put them all.

Shimelle had a TON of challenges on her blog this weekend. I really didn't do very many of them, but she had one challenge in particular that really inspired me.

She had this brilliant idea to find a super old piece of paper that I LOVE and make a page kit with it, with all new products. I ended up making four page kits, and today I scrapbooked using two of them. I love that the papers are really old, yet I still love the pages.

None of the pages I made are particularly amazing, but I had a ton of fun.

(This page uses FOUR old papers that were all 12x12, most I got over two years ago.)(This page uses an older October Afternoon paper from the Road Map collection. Its one of those ones that I love too much and I hold onto forever. I matched it with some paper from a Studio Calico kit, as well as some new chipboard clouds, also by SC.)

This next page is for one of the challenges, which is to do an old challenge. So many times I get excited about a scrapbook sketch but never have the time to complete it. This page is an older sketch challenge from one of Shimelle's classes. I can't even remember which one.

(I used my white mr. huey for the first time!! I also used bright cardstock which I never do, and really mixed it up with random pattern paper)
Thanks for looking!

Super fun day. So glad I am finally inspired after six long weeks.

Project Life Week 13 and 14 (I think?)

Week 13:
Mercer Island Half marathon
Ultrasound (all normal!)
A pretty regular week, with some intense running on either end!
Race day Sunday, running adventure Saturday

Recorded some random stuff....Starbucks with Audra on Thursday, crazy messy break room at work, a Shimelle sketch that I loved (posted earlier!)
I kept the email sent about our running adventure and attached the map of the Olympic Peninsula on there. (that's what you see on the 8.5x11 insert)

I also placed a photo of a stump with pretty flowers arranged on it. Every time I run or walk or bike around green lake I see this beautiful display that commemorates an enormous tree that had to be cut down for health reasons. I was actually there the day they cut it down...sad day!!!
Week 14:
This week also includes an insert, a 12x6 page protector with three slots for 4x6 photos. On the front I placed some photos and a baby announcement. On the back I put the packaging and the card that I got from GERMANY from JOY!!! It contained chocolate. :)
Beautiful trees!
A little Froyo. :)
Me foam rolling with the cats all around. Whenever we do physical therapy in our living room, the kitties go CRAZY and always want to be all over us. :)

Post card from Joy
View of the city!
A couple of instagram photos!
Last week was a really good week. I could have added even more photos if I had the space! I guess most of them have already been posted to the blog.

I better get going, I am currently marinating chicken that we will be GRILLING tonight when Matty gets home! There is nothing more summery than BBQ! (Even when its raining)