We made it through month one!

January 2013 has proven to be extremely successful in creating and fulfilling some awesome goals! We have had a great time launching this awesome blog and are enjoying the outlet this blog has proved for us to get our creative juices flowing, projects completed or in the queue for completion and most importantly getting our hot bodies in even hotter shape and better health. Thank you to everyone that is checking in on us- we hope you are enjoying our ramblings!

We are still working to find our voice, direction and niche so we may make each and every post fun, entertaining, resourceful, educational and awesome! We have decided to stick with the obnoxious use of the word awesome, it just makes us smile.

We would love to hear from you, please feel free to comment and give us your feedback and ideas. Also feel free to tell all your friends and family about our awesomeness.

This week we did squeeze in a Kate & Heather HH at Mosaic. Mosaic is a great little spot located in the River Road Shopping Center. We both have a soft spot for Mosaic as they catered each of our weddings. Plus it is a good halfway meeting spot between our homes, in case Heather doesn’t want to go all the way into town and Kate doesn’t want to have to cross the river. HH deals vary by day with a different libation available for $3 Monday-Thursday and $4 on Friday. They offer a complimentary appetizer at the bar, which also varies by the day. You do have to ask for the appetizer, and it's a very small portion. Drink specials and complimentary app are Monday-Friday, 4pm-7pm at the bar only.

We have completed our extremely sophisticated Happy Hour rating system,
formerly referred to as our ranking system. We are rating not ranking. We will be giving up to a 10 martini rating for the best score and a 0 martini rating for the worst. Check out the Happy Hour tab for the details on our extremely sophisticated Happy Hour rating system. 

Kate and her hubby rocked a trip to Ikea this past weekend and created an amazing craft/sewing table. They are not taking orders (Heather's already asked), but a step by step how to make your own is on Down & Dirty Nitty Gritty. 

All goals for the past week were met with the exception of a She’s Crafty wreath making day because it snowed. We know it wasn’t much snow, but the thought of snow in Richmond means schools are closed, the grocery stores are sold out of milk and bread-thank god they always have beer and wine, and crafting days are cancelled. We did manage to have a great coffee date/baby shower planning meeting with a great friend on that day before the weather got too crazy.

Heather did not go to the gym but did look up class schedules online, that counts right? WRONG! Kate went to the gym not once, not twice, but three times and is still kicking butt in the Diet Bet. Heather is not. Heather did use that spanking new pedometer and download the training apps. Which will come in handy as we both signed up for another 5K race to be held in April. This one had a different motivation than the beer the Hardywood 4 miler has to offer, this one is like a running through a rainbow! It's called Color Me Rad. The FAQ page was enough to motivate us to sign up, let alone getting bombed with color bombs! Check it out and join us! 

Goals for the week are:
Heather: To actually go to the gym. At least get up to 2,000 steps a day on that pedometer with a goal of 10,000 daily in the next 30 days. She will attempt to not pig out Super Bowl Sunday even if the party hosts are having the event catered by her favorite Mexican Restaurant.
Kate: Continue with the couch to 5K training and healthy eating. Return to the gym, except for the warmer days. If she goes to any Super Bowl events (or as she prefers to call it- Puppy bowl/Commercial bowl), to try to keep the snacking to a minimum. Also, work on organizing the new craft table and start painting the back of the Ikea bookshelves that were also purchased on the weekend trip.


In other fun happenings this coming week, one of us is maybe getting a much needed haircut and therefore donating between 8-14 inches of hair to Locks of Love. The amount donated will depend on not someone chickening out when the scissors are in motion. If it happens, before and after pictures will be posted to the blog Thursday.

Just so you know February is shaping up to be pretty awesome! With stuff like 28 days of scrap-booking, more weight lost, a Pinterest page and a Facebook page coming soon.  So get ready for some more AWESOME adventures with us!

Hi all!

Hi all!

Hope you had a great week, we sure did!  Here are the highlights for y'all:

As promised we had one more Happy Hour-birthday style on Friday, at Selba.  Great turn out! Thanks to everyone for coming out to celebrate the birthday girls, Kate and our friend Nicole. (P.S. Nicole is an awesome jewelery designer- Check her out!)

Here are some of the Selba Happy Hour details for your Happy Hour consideration. It's great spot for a large group to gather at the bar with plenty of room for conversation without being in the way of staff and other patrons. Happy hour is from 5pm to 7pm. Daily deals include $3 rail drinks, $2 off wine and $1 off beer. Thursdays they have $5 martinis! We loved it and will be keeping it in the rotation.  

By the way, our extremely sophisticated HH ranking system is being tweaked and will hopefully be in next week’s post.  It's gonna be awesome.

The weekend went quickly but was productive and enjoyed. Errands were run, houses were cleaned and organized. Heather finally put Christmas away! It took a few weeks because everything had to be wrapped, labeled and stored differently this year and it worked out perfectly.  Next year putting it away will be a breeze! The Jewish Food Festival was held at the JCC and was a big hit with delish food, entertaining music and great company. Read more about the festival in the RVA tab.

We are big fans of almost every type of festival (food, music, beer, wine, holiday inspired etc.) that comes to the Richmond area, and we attend as many as possible. Upcoming festivals will be posted on our home page and our RVA page. 

Our goals for last week were primarily health related and we knocked them all out. The diet bet has begun-we are officially weighed in and on our way toward winning our share of the money pot! The goal of this game is to lose 4% of our starting weight within 28 days. This works out to roughly 6 pounds for each of us. To play the game, you pay a set amount for the bet (our bet was $25). Everyone playing that meets or exceeds the 4% weight loss goal splits the pot!  We only have 4 participants, so someone could win $100. Hopefully we'll all reach our goal and just win our $25 back. Kate is already in the lead with a 50% towards her goal- awesome! Start a Diet Bet with your friends, family and/or co-workers. Friendly competition is always fun and wining money isn’t too shabby either! Not to mention that getting healthy and in shape is an awesome reward on its own! 

We have registered to run (walk) the Hardywood Brewery Twilight 4 Miler on Thursday, April 25, 2013.  Yes, we will run for beer…and good health!  

Kate is trying to get into training mode with the help of apps like Map My Run  and 5K Runner.  Heather is counting steps on her spanking new pedometer and plans on downloading the apps. 

Goals for this week are to Get Crafty! by making a decorative winter wreath for the front door, continue eating healthy, train for the 4 miler, and go to the gym at least once this week with the ultimate goal of getting back in the practice of going to the gym once or twice a week, every week.

We are going to lose this weight and wish you the best of luck if you are trying to shed a few pounds with us. 

Cheers!

K&H

Birthdays

Birthdays!  

We are a couple of ladies who really enjoy celebrating our birthdays and we celebrate in style all month long, December for Heather and January for Kate!  We get to start and finish each calendar year in full birthday month celebration…and yes we did say all month long!  We don’t shy away from our birthdays or worry that at the turning of another year we have not done this or that, whatever this or that may be.  Possibly there could be more of something, anything, everything! But we have all we need and we have all that matters-awesome families, friends and husbands.  For those 3 reasons and so many more we celebrate turning another year better for the whole month!

You may not take our approach to birthday celebrations but on your birthday we hope you will or at least take the whole day to celebrate yourself! As we require all our family and friends to celebrate in some (but not all) of our birthday month celebrating, we do try to make their birthdays recognized and special and let them know how much we love them and how awesome they are on their respectful birthdays. It isn’t always all about us!

A must have for birthday celebrating is at least one HAPPY HOUR but additional happy hours may always be added!  For Kate’s birthday HH we went to Xtra’s in Carytown.  We highly recommend it!  While there we came up with an idea on how to rank HH spots, stay tuned for our extremely sophisticated ranking system to be unveiled in the coming weeks. Xtra’s Happy Hour deals are pretty good with ½ off wine by the glass, $2.50 well drinks, $2 off drafts and $5 appetizers.  Since we are working toward our weight lose goals of shedding a few pounds we cannot confirm or deny we ate the appetizers, however, we can confirm our friends said the wings, spring rolls, and a plate of life changing Canadian style cheese fries were scrumptious.  They may not be life changing cheese fries but they are awesome.

As Kate’s birthday fell on a weekend she also gets to have the all cherished birthday weekend. Since a lot of cooking wasn't going to happen at the house, she & her hubby dinned at The Mill, Comfort and Northside Grill. Other birthday treats included a visit to the salon (what grays?), seeing Spamalot at the Carpenter Center (Center Stage)*, hiking on Sunday thanks to the great weather, and outlet shopping.  A second HH is scheduled for Friday at Selba’s for those unable to make the first. This HH is also to celebrate our friend Nicole's birthday.

*As Southern girls who came to know Richmond because it was our transplant home and now just home, we have in a very Richmond-er way adopted the ability to refer to Richmond locations by what they were called when we moved here or what we remember when visiting as children. Therefore, the Carpenter Center will always be the Carpenter Center. We appreciate Center Stage but it will always be the Carpenter Center to us. That new restaurant will always be where the old one was, the Landmark will always be the Mosque etc etc etc.

In non-birthday celebrating news, we had sewing class tonight and aced it!  Seriously, we were given a verbal A+!  We learned several practical and useful skills. Now we just have to take the steps to starting the first sewing project.  You will know when it happens!

On the list for this week, we hope to jump start our weight loss by participating in a friends and family Diet Bet which not only motivates us to lose weight but to gain money! You should encourage your friends and family to try the Diet Bet, check it out http://www.dietbet.com/.  We also plan on checking out some local races in hopes to set a goal of running, or at least fast walk, a few miles in a row. In the weeks to come we plan on trying everything we can to meet our weight loss goals and share them with you. We'll hope you’ll join us on our journey to smaller pants!

Cheers,

K&H

Happy Tuesday!

In case we didn't mention it before, we plan on Tuesdays being our usual posting day. We may post more frequently so be sure to "subscribe to our awesome blog" on this Main Page so you you don't miss anything!

Like we said before, one of our 2013 goals is to get Crafty. Re-learning to sew was high on that list. Something that helps achieve that goal is to have sewing machines. Crazy right?  Kate was fortunate to have Monday afternoon off from work, so off we went to Quilter's Corner, a Brother retailer.  We decided on going to a dealer rather than a big box place for a few reasons. One, the staff will know what machine will best meet our needs. Two, the warranty is typically better. Three, we could play on the machines before purchasing. And the best of all, they offer a free class to help us learn how the machine works! The salesperson we were lucky to have assist us was great. He answered all our questions, didn't try to up sale us to the fancy-pants embroidery machines that cost half of what I payed for my first new car, and he laughed at our lame jokes.  He's even teaching the "how to use your new machine" class next week!  Tune in next week for details on that fun!



Once the machines were purchased and loaded in our cars, it was time for our other goal of the day- Go see Les Misérables! Off we went to CineBistro for the movie, a late lunch of a healthy salad, and well, some wine!  The wine wasn't French, but we pretended. The movie was beyond awesome! The acting, singing, scenery, costumes, well everything aside from Russell Crowe, was AWESOME! Fortunately, his first solo provided a much needed pee break. As expected, all of the other solos and ensemble songs were amazing. From start to finish we could not keep the tears from flowing! We didn't get it together until the credits had started rolling. Fortunately the theater was  dark and not crowded, as we are NOT pretty criers!  If you cannot see this production live on stage GO see this movie, it will change your life.  That last part isn’t true but the part about the movie being awesome is true.

One big box of tissues later, it was time for a quick Happy Hour at Brio Tuscan Grill to compose our sniffling selves and talk about the movie.  Usually our watering holes are local spots in town, since we have so many to choose from. However, for a chain restaurant at a higher end mall, the HH specials were pretty good. Drink specials included $5 selection of sangria, martinis, and mojitos. The wine was $6.75 a glass- not the greatest deal, but at least it was a healthy pour. Brio also offered $3.95 "tastes", which were smaller versions of appetizers. We passed on these, being so full of salad (okay, and the popcorn), but Heather has had them in the past and said they were decent portions.  These specials are offered Monday-Friday, 3-7pm & 9-close.

Happy Hour also gave us a moment to come up with a few goals to accomplish by next Tuesday:
*Play with the sewing machines
*Have a birthday (Kate)
*Enjoy the nice weather we're supposed to have this week
*Finish our book for bookclub
*Continue the Awesomeness!

Cheers,

K& H

Hi Everyone!

Thanks for joining us in our blogging adventure!  You may be wondering who we are and why we're diving into the blogging world, or you may not!  But we're going to tell you anyway!

We met at work many many years ago. So long ago, we can't quite remember!  Let's say it's been about 10 years.  Through happy hour, we eventually became family (not in the Big Love way, but the family you choose kind of way!).  We've been though a lot of good times, bad times and crazy times - but we're way more awesome because of it.  When we first met, we were both single, in our mid-twenties, and living in rented apartments in the fan district of Richmond, VA.  Today we're both married to fabulous men, in our mid-thirties, and living in houses we own (one still in the city, one slightly outside the city limits). We have always shared a love of good food, good stories, good company, Richmond festivals, Savannah GA, happy hour, and so much more!

This year we plan on continuing our love of Happy Hour which brings us together with our friends at our favorite places and maybe some new watering holes!  We'll seek out great HH specials and do our best to share them with you. We'll get our Martha Stewart/Pintrest on as we get Crafty! Some projects include re-learning to sew, home decor DIY, scrap-booking and photography. Maybe we'll finally put together our wedding albums! Other projects, such as house painting, gardening, and organizing are beyond crafty, they are the Down & Dirty Nitty Gritty! As happily married women, we've put on our share of "happy relationship weight", and we're not to happy about it!  We're both looking to lose a bit of weight this year as we explore the Struggle With Fried.  And by a bit, we're talking 20 pounds....each!  We love our RVA and we hope you do (or will) too! With great places to explore, history and people, Richmond is one awesome place!  And finally, we'll talk about the Other Things We Love - which will include friends, stories, and anything else that doesn't fit anywhere else!  There will also be shout outs to other blogs and websites that we love and want you to love too!

So bring it on 2013!  

Cheers, 

K&H

Hello World! Welcome to ours!


Who are we? We're Kate and Heather, and we are awesome & want to share our awesomeness with you! This year we plan to do awesome things, drink awesome drinks, make awesome crafts, awesomely lose weight, celebrate our awesome hometown, and just be generally awesome. We fully intend on bragging about our awesome husbands and awesome friends along the way.  We hope you'll enjoy following us in this year of awesomeness, and hope you'll join us in this awesome journey!  (We promise not to use the word awesome all the time)

Get ready 2013- Cause it's about to get awesome!


Happy New Year Everyone!!!

Cheers!

K&H