Friday, October 25, 2013

Friday Favorites!!!

Hiking - State had a bye week last weekend, so we took advantage of that and went to Cunningham Falls State Park to go hiking. It was a little cool, but that was perfect for hiking because we didn't really get hot. The trail we took was just under a mile, so pretty short. It was Bailey's first hike, so this was sort of a test run. It's not too far from our house, so we hope to go back to do the 7 mile hike at some point. 



 Love her with her backpack! 

 This is the spot we chose to hang out for lunch. So beautiful! We took a bone for Bailey to chew on while we ate, but she preferred playing in the stream. 

HUGE caterpillar looking thingy



Pretty girl!


And...on the way, we saw a dang ZEBRA! It was just hanging out on this little farm. Crazy!

Running - Until this week, I hadn't been running since we ran our 10K in September. I FINALLY took Bailey running on Monday. It was a very short run, only 1.3 miles, but I did run my fastest mile yet! It felt really good to run and I really need to make sure I'm setting aside the time to go for a run a few times a week. I want to stay in shape so I can hopefully finish in less than an hour in next year's 10K!

The Midwife's Confession - Anna turned me on to this book and it's great! 

Short Friday - I only have to work a few hours today, so I'm really excited about that!

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Friday Favorites

Busch Gardens - Last Friday, we took the day off to go to Busch Gardens for Jen's birthday. As I mentioned in my last Friday Favorites post, we got a great deal on our tickets!

We saw grey wolves! Beautiful!

We saw the Clydesdales. This is the baby, Aidan. He is a year and a half and weighs 1100 pounds!

Photo
Me with the hubby!


Love these guys!

We had such a great time celebrating Jen's birthday!!!

Visit with the grandparents - After leaving the Williamsburg area, we drove to visit with Josh's grandparents, mom and step-dad. We haven't visited with Josh's grandparents since April, so it was really nice to get by to see them!

Inlaws Visit - Josh's mom and step-dad came back home with us and visited Saturday and Sunday night. They haven't been to the house in a year, so we had lots of new stuff to show them! Aaron helped out with a couple small projects and gave us some tips on our big project (see below).

Ceiling Repair - I haven't posted about this yet, but we flooded our kitchen a few weeks back and we've been working on repairing it since then. It was labor intensive with the drying, moving furniture, covering EVERYTHING, repairing drywall and painting the ceilings.

Here are a couple pictures of the damage:


This is the mostly finished project:
It's not perfect, but it's MUCH better! We still need to touch up the red wall a little. We ripped off a little of the red paint while untaping and sanding. We'll do that this coming week.

New Laundry Closet Doors - My laundry closet doors have been broken for a LONG time. Like 2 years long. They were hard to open and close and they regularly fell off the track. We finally replaced them last weekend! We had to replace them with the same bi-fold type of doors, but they're brand new and they work like a charm!

Work - I mentioned in my last post that I might have to work a part time schedule during the shutdown. Even though the shutdown went into the following week when that schedule was supposed to start, I was able to work a full schedule and I didn't have to eat through all of my vacation. Unfortunately, it looks like this could happen again at the beginning of next year, so I'm still trying not to use any vacation if I can avoid it.

Pumpkin Beer Tasting - We invited Josh's entire team over for a pumpkin beer tasting. We had about 20 people and each of those people brought a pumpkin beer to share. There were SO many and we didn't even make it to all of them! My favorites were Elysian's Dark O' The Moon (surprisingly because this is a stout!) and Weyerbacher's Imperial Pumpkin (not surprising at all). I made chili and had a chili bar. I included chili toppings (cheese, jalapenos, etc.) and things that people like to put chili on (cornbread, hotdogs, mini chili bowls, grilled cheese). For dessert, I had a delicious Apple Crunch cake, a pumpkin roll and iced cookies. The chili bar was definitely a success and I plan on doing one again!

I didn't take many pictures at all because people were starting to arrive just as I was finishing up.


Friday, October 4, 2013

Friday Favorites!!!

Here's 2 weeks of favorites for you :-)

1) Raleigh - We went to Raleigh last week for the Clemson Game. We had SO much fun catching up with our friends. We may not have won the game, but we really did have an amazing time! We stayed with Anna and John and we had a great time! The dogs had a great weekend together. It was a really awesome trip. :-)

We got to hang out with Burgess for the first time in forever!

Tailgating with my favorite Clemson fan...


And my favorite person in the world!

Love this card trick!

2) The Pit - This happened while in Raleigh, but it deserves its own number anyway :-). We never went in college because we were too cheap. Every time we've tried to go while visiting Raleigh, we haven't been able to get a reservation. We finally got a reservation at lunch time and the food was SO good!

3) Rehoboth Weekend - Josh and I stayed in Rehoboth, DE with a few friends last weekend. The weather was amazing and we had a wonderful time!

4) Dogfish Dash - We ran our first 10K and had a great time!

5) Revenge/Once Upon a Time - My favorite shows are back! I watched last week's episode of Revenge and it was great! I haven't watched Once Upon a Time yet, but I'm sure it will be great! I watch that one with Josh and we're working opposite schedules right now, so hopefully we'll get to watch it this weekend.

6) Happy Hour - Last week Josh and I went to happy hour with a group of friends and this week I went with a smaller group of friends. It's nice to just unwind a little after work.

7) Being Able to Work - With the shutdown going on, we're just thankful that we're able to work. As of right now, Josh can work a full work week, just at an altered schedule. I was able to work a full week this week, but if congress can't get its act together, I'll be limited to half a work week until the government re-opens. This means I'll have to start burning through the vacation I've worked so hard to accrue. As much as that sucks, I realize there are people who haven't been able to work during the whole shutdown. So, here's to being hopeful that this isn't all in vain and that something good comes of it...and that it doesn't last TOO long of course!

8) Bailey - I'm so glad I have this little lady to keep me company while Josh is at work!


9) Doggy Play Date - We had a doggy play date with a few co-workers and their dogs on Tuesday. Bailey had a great time and I think she made a new boyfriend :-). She played really well with the other dogs and I think we may be dog-sitting Baxter (the boyfriend) this weekend.

10) LivingSocial - We're going to Busch Gardens next weekend to celebrate Jen's Birthday. The tickets to Howl-O-Scream are usually $72. There was a Living Social deal for $36 each on the tickets. If you buy a voucher then get 3 other people to buy it, you get your voucher for free. Combine those with a 20% discount...we ended up getting our tickets for around $22 each...WAY better than $72!

11) Just Because Flowers - The very best kind! I came downstairs yesterday morning to find these!



Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Apple Crisp

I had quite a few Gala apples that I needed to use up. I have quite the sweet tooth, so the first thing I considered making was apple pie. I wasn't quite in the mood for that, so I googled and found Apple Crisp. YUM! It seemed easy and quick enough. It was!

I used the following recipe, but scaled it down a bit.


Ingredients:
- 8 Apples
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
- 1/4 cup white sugar
- 1 tablespoon butter, melted

Directions

- Mix together flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder, and egg. The mixture will look
like cornmeal.

- Peel, core, and slice the apples. Mix together with 1/2 tablespoon cinnamon. Place apples in a greased 8 inch square pan. Spread flour mixture over the apples. Mix together 1 tablespoon cinnamon and 1/4 cup sugar; sprinkle over the top of the crisp. Drizzle with butter or margarine.

- Bake at 300 degrees F (150 degrees C) for one hour. Serve warm.
 


This would have been really good served over ice cream. I didn't have any, so I just put some whipped cream on it. It was delicious!

Guest Bathroom Upgrade

When we moved into our house, there were several smallish projects we thought we would do right away. We have taken a lot longer to do these projects for various reasons. We recently finished upgrading our guest bathroom! We painted, framed the mirror, upgraded the bathroom hardware, replaced the faucet and painted the cabinets.

This is what our guest bathroom looks like right now. I'm very happy with it.
We chose Sherwin Williams Bold Brick for the walls. I love this color! The frame was made from materials we had laying around the garage, so it didn't cost any extra money, just a little extra time.

Here are a couple pictures of the bathroom when we first moved in. 
 Beige walls. These really needed some color!

Unframed mirror. It's so plain and ugly.

 This is the old, hideous faucet we had.

New faucet! About $40 (for the faucet and new pipes to go under the sink) and 30 minutes of my time later...HUGE improvement.

 New TP roll holder. I didn't take a picture of the old one, but it was hideous! I also picked up a new towel rack.

 The cabinets and frame are painted with Sherwin Williams Burnished Brandy. I used the All Purpose Enamel for these cabinets. I used the ProClassic on our master bathroom cabinets. Between the two, I definitely prefer the ProClassic. The All Purpose Enamel seemed to take much longer to dry and it didn't dry as hard as the ProClassic. I'll definitely keep this in mind for the future.

I spray painted the hinges just like I did in our master bathroom. They turned out well. I also added the quiet shut hinge adapters. I still love these things! They're holding up very well and they make a huge difference! They're definitely worth a few dollars a piece!

I'm not sure exactly how much this upgrade ended up costing us, because we did it over time. I could figure it out, but I'm too lazy. I'll estimate around $125. Totally worth it!

Dogfish Dash

Josh and I traveled to Delaware this past weekend to participate in our first 10K! We left out early Saturday morning to take Bailey to camp and pick up a co-worker's son from college. His family lives close to where we were going to be staying, so we had no problem picking him up. On the way, he told us about this taco place/Mexican convenience store that he worked over the summer. It was only a few minutes out of the way and Josh and I get excited about authentic Mexican food, so we decided to stop by to pick up lunch number 1. Haha. We tried 4 different tacos. A pork one, and 3 different beef ones. Josh's favorite was the pork, which was very good, but one of the beef ones was amazing! We got them mixed up, so I'm not really sure which one it was. We also tried a cow tongue taco. I wasn't a huge fan of it. It was really good at first, but then it had an aftertaste similar to lamb, but not quite as harsh. I hate the taste of lamb, so I didn't appreciate this. 

We know someone who owns a condo near Bethany Beach, Three's Company. We stayed there with 2 other couples and we loved it! We definitely plan on visiting again. Josh and I were the first ones to arrive, so we got to pick our room first. We chose the gorgeous master of course. Mostly because of the view. We met up with our co-worker at the house and unloaded our things.
 Our beautiful master!

 The view from the master bedroom.

 The most comfy couch EVER!

The dining room. I LOVE this rug!

We just relaxed for a little bit then we made plans to meet the rest of our crowd at the Dogfish Brewpub for lunch number 2. Since we had eaten tacos a couple hours before, we weren't very hungry. We decided to share a pizza. SO good! After lunch, we went to pick up our race packets. We weren't supposed to be able to pick them up until 4:00, but they were nice enough to give us our packets early. Our bags included a t-shirt, our race day bibs with 3 beer vouchers, a pint glass, a plastic cup, chapstick, a coupon for 10% off at the brewpub, a bottle opener, and a couple other odds and ends. We didn't expect the pint glass, so we were pretty excited. 

We got back to the house and explored some more, lounged and made plans for dinner. We decided on taco night. Yes, I am totally fine with having tacos for lunch and dinner. We got hard and soft tacos with all the toppings and sides for a whopping $10 a couple. Score! After a quick trip to the grocery store, we were back and cooking dinner. We shared a few beers, had dinner, played Catch Phrase and did a mini beer tasting before crashing for the night. Half of us had to get up bright and early to go run 6.2 miles!

Taco stuff. YUM!

We got up early enough to have breakfast and relax in the sun room for a few minutes before we had to leave for the race. We were a good 45 minutes away from the brewery, so we had to leave pretty early. The 3 people who were not racing slept in and we planned to meet them after the race. We got there a little bit before the race. We enjoyed looking around at the costumes and other racers while we waited for the race to start.

 Dave!

Hubby and I pre-race!

The race started at 9:00 and we were off! You feel great at first because you're passing all the 5K walkers and such. The crowd REALLY thinned out once the 5K crowd and the 10K crowd separated. Josh and Dave stayed back with me until about the halfway point. Dave wanted to run for time so he sped up. Josh was going to stay back with me, but I finally convinced him to run ahead with Dave. He gave in, gave me a kiss, we wished each other luck and he ran up to catch up with Dave. The girl behind me said it was super cute and she wishes she would have had a camera for it. Haha. She and her husband separated at the beginning. We pretty much stayed together for the rest of the race.

While it would have been great to stay with Josh, I'm just not there yet, so I'm glad we separated. I was running faster than my pace to try not to hold him back, and he was running way slower than his pace. It wasn't good for either of us. If I would have kept pushing myself to run at that pace, I probably would have ended up having to walk part of the race and if he had to run at my slower pace with his long legs, it would have sucked for him. It bothers his knees to take short bouncy strides to stay at my pace. 

It was very challenging and there were times that I wanted to walk, but I never gave in. I think part of it was that the girl I was sticking with never walked. I even jogged through the water stations and while sipping on my water. I refused to walk at all. Haha. My goal was to finish in a better time than my practice 10K, which was 1:10:54. My time in this race was 1:08:10. The details are below. 

Dogfish Dash 5K/10K Road Races-2013

September 29, 2013


Milton DE

Place522
Out Of586
Bib#1580
First NameKRYSTAL
Last NameKINLAW
GenderF
Age26
CityODENTON
StateMD
Guntime1:08:10
ChipTime
1:08:10
Ageplc57
Agefin66
DivF20-29
Winning Time for Your Division41:55
Genplc231
Genfin275
4mile
Time43:10
Pace10:48
last2.2
Time25:01
Pace11:22
GUNTIME
Time1:10:34
Pace11:22

Hubby met me and re-ran the last stretch with me. So sweet! On a side note, I totally could have passed that girl in front of me.

I do feel like I could have pushed myself a little harder and done a bit better. I definitely could have pushed to pass another person or 2 at the end, but I really had to pee and I did not want to be that girl. Haha. Josh and I both really enjoyed this race and we plan on running it again next year. My goal will be to finish in under an hour :-).

Post race brew!

After the race we were give 3 vouchers for beers and breakfast. We hung around to see the costume contest and to go on a brew tour. We have been on the tour once about a year ago, but it has changed so much! They are still undergoing renovations, so I hope to visit again next year to see what else is new. The new brewing room is AMAZING! The walls are cedar and it smells SO good! It's absolutely gorgeous. 

 Where do I apply? 

Palo Santo barrels 

Look at those nice cedar walls! It smelled amazing in here!


You can see inside the kettle! So cool!

After the tour and shopping around for some Dogfish gear, we decided to go to the brewpub for lunch again. This time, Josh got the Indulgence Burger (so yummy!) and I got the Short Rib Sloppy Joe. SOOOO GOOD! I will definitely try to make this at home at some point! 

After lunch, we went back to the house to shower and clean everything up, then we made our way home. It was so beautiful and the weather was great! None of us wanted to leave. We're looking forward to this trip again next year!