Running!

Hi everyone!

I (Kate) have been using the 5k trainer app since mid-January to help me  get off my butt and get in shape. I'm not a runner & never have been. I dreaded that day in PE class when we had to run a mile. And what's with the "runner's high" i keep hearing about? I think it's a myth. But I know it is a great way to burn calories quickly and get into better shape. So far I have been really good with my workouts- running using the program for at least 3 days a week, plus some walks squeezed in! What's even been more of a surprise, I haven't cheated! About half of my workouts have been at the gym, although I prefer running outside. For 4 and a half weeks I was kicking butt. Then last week happened.

I went out of town last weekend to visit my family for 3 days. I brought my running gear and had every intention to getting in a few runs.  Between giant meals and cold, wet snow, it just didn't happen. I did go to a Zumba class with my sister-in-law, and bought new running shoes, but missed 2 days of planned running. Once home, my schedule was crazy and I didn't get to the gym until Wednesday-6 days since my last run. It was tough. It was hot (not in the sexy way). I swear the gym keeps the thermostat set to 85 to trick you to believing that you're sweating buckets from your workout! Menopause is going to be so much fun (she said sarcastically!). I was breaking in new shoes. My earphones for some reason kept shocking me. I had all sorts of reasons to have a crappy workout and just throw in the towel. However I stuck with it and managed to do most of the running, with a bit of walking. Saturday morning I was back in the gym. My shoes still didn’t feel right, I was even more tired, and boy, was I hot (again, not in the sexy way). I was even more miserable than a few days before! I had been running 5 minute intervals now I could barely do 2. I came home feeling defeated.

The next day (Sunday) my buddy Ashley called, she was in need of some fresh air and exercise.  We ended up going to Three Lakes Nature Park with her 4 month old, Vivi, and her other child, Penny the highly energenic chocolate Lab.  After a good walking warm up, I decided to run with Penny. 5 minutes later- I felt okay. After a few minutes walking with Ashley and Vivi, Penny and I were off for 6 minutes. Then another 5 minutes. I'm not going to lie, the last 30 seconds of the last running interval was the longest 30 seconds of my life, but I did it, and I felt good about it…no, I felt great!  I pushed Vivi in the stroller while Ashley ran for about 5 minutes- something she hasn't done since being pregnant with Vivi! We celebrated with a cold (light) beer afterwards. I figure that's part of our training for the Hardywood Twilight 4 Miler in April!

I need to adjust my running to allow me to run outside. I enjoy it so much more and am so much more successful. Here's hoping the training keeps getting better!  Maybe I will find that “runners high” after all…HA! If you have any advice for a novice runner- please share in the comments. I can use all the advice (and encouragement) I can get!

Roscoe the cat joining us post walk- I think he wanted a beer too!

Cheers,
Kate

   

Hi- Heather here! This month I set a goal of 28 days of scrap booking, and I'm happy to say I've completed it! Check it out in She’s Crafty! Keep up the good work Kate- you are rocking it and it shows! 

We are both ready for some March Madness and we don’t mean basketball!  Crafts are in full swing, the workouts will get tougher and better; there will be a Happy Hour or two, Yea for Daylight Savings, The IrishFestival, Easter, Easter at Maymont, and the Easter Parade on Monument Avenue!  Just to name a few things March has to offer!

Cheers!

Heather

Heart Your Heart!

Heart Your Heart!

As you know February is Heart Health Awareness Month. It is so important to take care of every part of our bodies with good nutrition and exercise, especially your heart. What great motivation for all of us to get into better exercise routines! The two of us are meeting our exercise goals almost daily. We are starting to see results and are creating more challenges to continue toward a healthy life and a hot new body. Visit the American Heart Association website and learn all kinds of great tips on how to heart your heart! 

Kate and our friend Ann kicked butt in the Diet Bet. Way to go ladies! They had such success with losing weight and so much fun winning money they are joining an open bet with lots more players (therefore lots more money if they win)!

5K training is going strong. We were able to take advantage of a nice day and go for a walk/run around the lake at the MidlothianMines Park,  This is a beautiful park and a great walking path.  On the website they have information about the trails and paths so you can easily map out your workout.

After our great workout we treated ourselves to sushi and wine at Sushi O.  Service, Atmosphere, Deals, Restrooms all get a 2 martini rating for an 8 out of 10.  Heck lets make it a 10 out of 10 and say the massive Buddha and great service gave it the WOW!  Check out the  Happy Hour tab for a refresher on our Extremely Sophisticated HH Rating System.

Kate & her hubby finished another awesome house project. Not one but two book shelves where built, stenciled and filled with books! Check out the photos in Down & Dirty Nitty Gritty.


In other fun news, our friend Jami opened a new restaurant this week; The Savory Grain. Kate & Brian went on Valentine's Day, the first time they've braved the crowds on this "holiday". It was their first day being open for dinner (aside from their soft opening nights), and we were really impressed! The food was great, the beer selection was impressive, and the atmosphere was fantastic. We can't wait to go back!

Need something to do this weekend? Here are some suggestions!  Get your wine on at the Virginia Wine Expo held at the convention center. You can sample your heart out. Based on past experience, we recommend you go after eating, and plan on walking to a near by restaurant before driving! Mary Poppins takes the stage at the Landmark if you need something for your inner child!  Kate actually went last weekend with her family in Raleigh. Keep in mind that this is based on the books more so than the movie. While Kate enjoyed the show, her 7 year old niece was a bit disappointed. However they had a blast singing and dancing when we got home!

Thanks for checking in with us this week!

Cheers,

K&H

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentine’s Day seems to be for most a love it or leave it kind of “holiday.”  With some celebrating in grand over the top romantic ways or others feeling the world is ending without a romantic valentine to share the day. We are here to tell you it is just another day on the calendar. It is another day for you to be absolutely fabulous by celebrating yourself and being your own Valentine! If you are an over the top romantic type keep it up and have a wonderful time. If you are not, we want you to have a wonderful time too. If you find yourself without a significant other to celebrate with then be your own Valentine! Go over the top and send yourself flowers and candy, treat yourself to your favorite take out or gather up the girls for a ladies night.  Keep it simple and curl up with a nice glass of wine and watch a great old movie. It is funny to say, but the best Valentine’s Days for us have been those spent not getting all in a tizzy and just having fun with the girls.  Surprise your girlfriends with a fun little Valentine treat like Heather’s dear friend does each year. She sends a sweet note and candy just to say hi! Heck before Valentine’s Day even arrives this year, there is Fat Tuesday and Ash Wednesday to celebrate; you may be too partied out to even notice it is Valentine’s Day!

Valentine’s Day isn’t only about romantic celebration it is also an opportunity to celebrate all those in your life that you love. Take advantage of Valentine’s Day to tell all your people that you heart them. Tell them loud and proud how grateful you are they are part of your life. Tell them every day not just on “special” occasions. On that note we take this opportunity to tell our families, friends and husbands (aka our Valentines) WE LOVE YOU! Our lives are richer for having you in them and that is pretty awesome!

Happy Valentine’s Day or if you rather just Happy Day!

Cheers!

K&H

Yes Virginia, those are LOVE wine corks.

Happy February everyone!

We hope everyone has recovered from Superbowl Sunday (or Puppybowl Sunday if you're like Kate). Hopefully you all behaved yourselves- we really tried! Heather attended a Superbowl party and was pretty good. Kate's mom was in town for a visit, so missed the game (and junk food) entirely... aside from the big bag of homemade Chex mix she brought.

We both did well with workouts this week.  Both us us hit the gym, and we even managed to go outside for a walk/run together at a Bryan Park. We were happy to see new signage there, including a 5K course. Perfect for our training!  Heather's been wearing her pedometer everyday, and has exceeded her target daily step goal. Go Us!

The big blog news of the week is our new Pinterest page and Facebook page! 

The Facebook page is to help us get the blog out to a bigger audience, and make it easier for folks to follow us. We hope you'll "Like" us (you really really like us!). The Pinterest page is just a fun way to share more ideas that go beyond what we can add to the blog (recipes, cocktails, projects we'd like to do, etc). So please, Like, Follow and Comment away! We would love any and all feedback. Thanks for hanging out with us so far!


Cheers,

K&H

Hair!

Hair!

Heather cut her hair Tuesday and was able to donate 17 inches to Locks of Love! Another 2 to 3 inches were cut off in the styling process and as everyone has said, it is still long! Another cut may be in the very near future to have a more dramatic impact.  

Shout out to our new friend Dinah who did a wonderful job with the cutting and styling. She is awesome! She does business out of her home and sometimes is able to come to your home. Right now all her clients are from word of mouth. If you are interested in contacting her for your own major hair transformation or just a much needed trim, feel free leave us a comment, and we'll get put you in touch with her.


Here are the pictures of the transformation!

So so long!

No turning back

So so shortish!

Pretty Awesome!

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