Give the groundhog a break!

Okay everyone, it is time to leave the poor groundhog alone!  Yes, the calendar says it's spring (as dictated by the sun and the tilt of the earth). Yes, there's snow on the ground. But honestly, does anyone really believe a rodent who, according to legend, is a lush? Knowing that little tidbit actually makes him more likeable in our book, but also less creditable. Fun fact: During Prohibition Phil threatened to impose 60 weeks of winter on the community if he wasn't allowed a drink. During our groundhog research, we also learned that Punxsutawney Phil gets his longevity from drinking "groundhog punch" (a secret recipe). One sip, which is administered every summer at the Groundhog Picnic, gives him seven more years of life. (How much for that recipe!?!?). And lastly, according to StormFax Weather Almanac, which has been keeping records since 1887, Punxsutawney Phil's predictions are correct only 39% of the time. We don't know about you, but it sounds like Phil's a better Happy Hour buddy than weather/season forecaster!

As we mentioned last post, this past weekend was the Irish Festival! It's a great kick off to the warm weather festival season. Saturday brought warm, sunny weather, which in turn brought the public out! We stayed in one spot the entire time, which was just outside of the packed crowd. Kate was happy to get one of her favorite festival foods- the Irish Surprise, made by the ladies of St. Patrick's Church. A warm bowl of potatoes, cabbage and corned beef. Although we didn't have a chance to visit the vendors or watch the bands, we had nice time catching up with friends. And really, that's what a festival is all about! Well, that and Kettle Korn.


Richmond was sad, but proud of VCU this weekend. They played hard, but couldn't quite make it to the top of the tournament. Great job Rams!

A few weeks ago, we told you about a wine tasting we hosted with a few of our friends.This was something we had been wanting to do for weeks, and were totally bummed with the results in the wine. For the last few weeks, we've been trying to come up with a way to give an honest review without being ugly. We have decided to come clean and be as honest as possible:

The wine we were tasting was the Skinny Girl brand- we tried the white, blush and red. Now, the 5 of us are not wine snobs. I mean, we're all in our 30s, have had our share of wine, and know what's decent and what's not. But we're not above having a glass of Three Buck Chuck every now and then. It's pretty safe to say that 50% of the wine we typically drink is around $10 a bottle or less. So with the Skinny Girl wines retailing for $20 a bottle, we had some high expectations. We started taking notes when we began sampling the white. Then realized we all had the same thing to say: little flavor, boring, blah, won't pair with anything, not a sipping wine, not a wine for drinking, yuck. Same for the blush, and even worse reviews for the red! Before the tasting we were joking about having a dump bucket as they have at a proper wine tasting, and decided that we'd likely be drinking it anyway! WRONG! We ended up dumping most of the wine down the drain. Using it for cooking or sangria was discussed, but ultimately, it was just that bad. Fortunately Kate had back up wine, so all was not lost! Aside from the bad taste in our mouth, we were really just disappointed. We knew there would be some hype because of the brand, but it just seems wrong to charge that much for "diet wine" that tastes so bad. It was unanimous that we'd rather drink 120-135 calories of good wine than 100 calories of bad. Thanks to Ashley, Kri and Mary for helping us out!

On a happier note- the weekends in Richmond are about to get really busy! The Easter holiday brings out the fun family festivities! Here are the highlights we hope to hit this week:

• Happy Hour at Fat Dragon
• Three Sheets to the Wind at the National
• Easter at Maymont
• Easter On Parade on Monument Ave
• 4 week countdown to our first race of the year!

Last week we asked for Roller Derby names, and got a HUGE response. By huge we mean zero. So here are a few we came up with, using our former fake bar names:
Sockem’ Susie:“Don’t cry- it will only hurt until I sock ya again”
Susie Sunshine :“She’ll socket to ya”
Hellacious Heidi: “Hell on wheels, the fire is coming for ya”
Heidi “the hurricane” Duvet: “She's got her 'eye' on you!"
Cyclone Susie and Hurricane Heidi: "Catastrophe is a comin’ so you best be a runnin’"

What do y'all think? Have any favorites? And more suggestions?

We hope you and your loved ones have a great Easter weekend!

Cheers,

K&H

Countdown to Spring

Hello!

Happy almost spring everyone!  It's been a busy week here in Richmond. We had a Happy Hour, checked out the River City Rollergirls, got our craft on, did some running shoe shopping, cheered on VCU, celebrated St. Patrick's Day and enjoyed a spa day...phew! Here are the highlights for your reading pleasure:

• We got together on Thursday with some friends for Happy Hour at The Savory Grain. Opened last month by the beautiful and talented Jami Bohdan, the wife of a former coworker. It's a lovely space and we are so impressed with what they have built! This is a wonderful "date night" spot, and has a fantastic dining room available for small groups. The bar is stocked with plenty of local beers on tap, which were $2 off during Happy Hour.
• On Saturday we went on a double date to check out the River City Rollergirls at the Richmond Convention Center. This was our first bout (Roller Derby word for game or match), and it was exciting! There was a fun, enthusiastic and diverse crowd to cheer them on. Once we understood the rules, we really got into it! One of the highlights was checking out the player's alter-ego names on their jerseys. Though we are still deciding our Roller Derby names, we have no plans on joining, just cheering them on. We ended the evening with burgers and beers at Northside Grill.

We're bruised just watching!

• Kate finally finished a craft project that's been on her plate for awhile. When the craft table materials were bought, 2 magnet boards for crafty inspiration also wound up in the cart. Plain old magnet boards are fine and dandy, but fabric covered boards are better!  Check it out in She's Crafty!
• Heather and her Boo did some running shoe shopping over the weekend. They checked out Lucky Foot, a locally owned and operated running store. They specialize in proper fittings based on your foot and running style. It was one of the BEST customer services experiences ever, and we highly recommend checking them out. The icing on the cake was the free beer in celebration of St. Patrick's Day.
• We're proud of VCU and where they finished in the A-10 conference tournament over the weekend. We wish them luck in the NCAA tournament. Go Rams! Bring on the HAVOC!
• St. Patrick's Day was low key for us as far as the usual celebrations. Heather & hubby were buying shoes and watching the VCU game, Kate & her hubby took care of house projects. Next weekend we'll hit the Irish Festival in Church Hill.
• And the BEST part of the week was Spa day (or Spaaaaaahhhh day!). As a thank you for hosting Meghan's shower, we were given certificates to Glo Med Spa. Heather had the Deep Pore Glow Facial and Kate had the Body Contouring Massage (aka the skinny massage). The soothing atmosphere and knowledgeable and friendly staff made for a relaxing afternoon. Thank you Meghan!!

That's all for this week! If you have Roller Derby names for us or you, please comment below or on Facebook. Check in next week for our next awesome adventure!

Cheers!

K&H

 Marching On!

We had a lovely week of snow days (well one snow day); working from home, snow cooking, traveling to visit friends and loving the 60 plus degree weather over the daylight savings time kickoff weekend. After this cold and dreary winter, we both spent as much time as possible outside Saturday and Sunday.

Heather prepares for a day of cooking

Dutch ovens want to play in the snow too!

Mmmm- nothing like chili on a chilly day

Kate's kitty Lola watches as the snow starts to stick.

Kate's backyard

3 days after the snow, springtime!

  
Heather, her Boo (yes, they call each other Boo-it is hilarious, well, they think it's hilarious) and our friend Ashley with beautiful baby Vivienne in tow enjoyed workouts at the park followed by outdoor snacking on the back deck and patio. It was perfect!

Kate and her hubby drove north for the weekends to visit our friends Jimmy and Sarah in Philadelphia. Jimmy's band was performing on Saturday, which was a great excuse for a visit, like they really need one. Aside from rocking out, we ate some great meals, explored Philly, and just hung out!

We didn't take a lof photos, BUT came across an awesome stash of US Weekly magazines from 1991.

Mary Catherine sorted the hundreds of photos of our baby shower craftiness that we bragged about last week. A few images can be found on our She’s Crafty! page. We really did rock that shower!

Instead of a happy hour at a bar/restaurant, this week, we tried a little something different. We hosted our own wine tasting with a couple of girlfriends at Kate's house. We had a specific new brand of wines we wanted to sample, and we are bummed to say we were all disappointed. On the positive side, we had a great time with our girlfriends and thankfully had good back-up wine and yummy charcuterie so the night was not a complete loss! We are not completely ready to throw in the towel on this brand (well, we are for the wine portion of the brand!) and are going to explore it bit more before dishing all our thoughts. More will follow in the coming weeks.

It's hard to believe that we are already upon St. Patrick's Day! We hope you have a safe and fun one!  Don't forget to wear something green and kiss someone Irish…just be sure they are cool with it first! 

Don’t forget all the great festivals this month! And in case you need information on things like St. Patty’s Day Etiquette, a beer guide, hangover cures, how to call out of work excuses, driving safe guidelines (don’t drive) and other fun stuff, check out this Richmond.com article.

Cheers,

K&H

March Madness!

March Madness Cocktails and Glitter style! 

 

We are now in the third month of the year as well as the third month of blogging.  We are getting a better hang of it each day and hope you are still enjoying what we are putting out there.  Any and all feedback is welcome.  If you haven’t already, be sure to “follow us” on Pinterest and “like us” on Facebook!  

In the month of March we will be…

• Adding more content to the blog, Pinterest and Facebook. 
• Loving having sunlight in the evenings, don’t forget to set your clocks for daylight savings this weekend!
• Increasing the frequency and intensity of workouts. Those pounds are going to drop!
• Making a couple of crafts, maybe we will finally get around to those wreaths we got snowed out of making in January!
• Having a big Happy Hour...maybe even two!
• Cheering on the RiverCity Rollergirls at our first ever roller derby, March 16^th.
• Treating ourselves to a spa day.
• Traveling and visiting friends.
• Celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17^th. 
  
• Celebrating the first day of Spring, March 20^th.
• Enjoying the unofficial kick off to the festival season, The Irish Festival, March 23-24^th.
• Rocking out at The National  to see Three Sheets to the Wind, March 29^th
• Celebrating Easter, Easter at Maymont, March 30^th and the Easter Parade on Monument Avenue, March 31^st.

And that is just what we know of right now! Pure madness, awesome fabulous madness, awaits us this March!

We started this month of madness by hosting, along with our friend Mary Catherine, a baby shower for our dear friend Meghan. The theme was Star Wars-chic and it was awesome! Our guest of honor and her husband are fans of Star Wars and based on the very cool gifts they received and the shower theme, apparently, all their friends and family are aware of this fact. The idea of the theme started off small with Mary Catherine designing the shower invitation with a baby Yoda and a couple of subtle Star Wars references. After a snowy coffee date to plan we had come up with a menu of  “grown up” kid foods such as peanut butter and jelly sushi, baked brie with Yoda stamped on it, tater tots, chic fil a chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese bites, cupcakes from Pearls and of course fruit and veggies. 

 

Kate used the coolest craft tool in the world, a Silhouette, to make a Star Wars mobile and a banner tying in the reference from the shower invitation.  As part of the mobile there are baby pictures of the parents-to-be at all stages of childhood. This was a neat touch and everyone loved looking at the photos. Each of these will be hanging in the baby’s nursery.  

Mary Catherine has a fabulous flair for the vintage and we were able to use her collection of antique cake stands, drink dispensers for cranberry-pineapple-almond punch (see Pinterest for the recipe) and family heirloom green depression glass plates. We were all very pleased with the way it all came together and have no problem saying it was very cool and not nerdy at all...well maybe a little nerdy but in a nerdy-chic kind of way!

 

Another personal touch we added was that we had each of the guests decorate a square building block. All the guests got very creative and the end result was special one-of-a-kind toy for the baby. Adding to the special-ness was that the blocks were handmade by the father-to-be’s own father. Keep this craft in mind for a baby gift or party favor. 

We will post pictures of everything before the week is up!

Cheers!

K&H

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