Weekend Recap: Furniture Haul!

Good morning! I hope your weekend was awesome! Ours was pretty crazy busy but we also are feeling super accomplished from it, so that is always good!

On Saturday the husband and I went furniture shopping – big time.

We had a goal to furnish our first floor and be finally done with it. Since we moved in (last March) our living room has been pretty bare, and our dining room is pretty much completely empty. Minus a crappy hand-me-down bookcase that is slowly falling apart. Our first floor kitchen, living room and dining room is an open floor plan, so needless to say it all felt pretty sterile to say the least. We also haven’t painted any colors on the walls or hung any photos. The lack of feeling “home-y” finally go to us to work towards furnish our living room and dining room.

Our living room is a weird size. It’s long and skinny. This is how we had it set up before this weekend:

Notice the lack of end tables for the couch – this was driving me crazy!!! We also kept putting off buying bar stools for the counter that opens up into our kitchen. I wanted to get those from the time I saw the plans for the house, before it was being built!

So, I played around with the floor plan, and came up with this:

I re-oriented the tv so that the room would feel larger. Also added secondary lighting so we don’t have to use the over head light, and a coffee table and end tables. I even played with the idea of a couch table behind the two chairs but we ended up nixing that idea after we went shopping. I also was hell-bent on getting those bar stools (not shown it the floor plan above)!

We went shopping Saturday and about 4 hrs, multiple stores, and purchases from 3 different stores we found EVERYTHING we went looking for. 

We found the bar stools, and were able to take them home so they are already set up (and look fabulous!). We also ordered a dining room set, a new bookcase for the dining room, and a set of tables for the living room – two chair side end tables, a regular end table and a coffee table. The stuff will slowly trickle in, which is probably best so we can adjust things as we get them, but we get to pick the dining room set up on Tuesday are we are really psyched! Our house will finally start feeling like a home… next we just have to finish the basement, paint the walls and starting hanging some photos up. Oh and I’ve got to find a floor lamp that will match our table lamps that we already have. 😉

On Sunday I woke up to get in a 7 mile run on the treadmill. I took it easy (especially the first mile or so) and finished in 1:37:18. I watched No Strings Attached (the movie with Ashton Kutcher) on my kindle fire while I ran which helped the time to pass. The movie was just okay – it was a nice one to watch while sweating though because it didn’t require a lot of thought to understand what was going on in the plot. 😉

After my run, I worked with my dad to get our taxes submitted. Our federal taxes are done and e-filed, the state ones I have to mail out today and the local ones still have to be done (their website was being screwy), so I guess we’re about half way there.

After taxes I was off to a Zumbathon! Two hours of Zumba! whew! It was a lot of fun though! Once it ended I came home, we ordered a pizza and I promptly fell onto the couch for the rest of the evening. I was pretty exhausted but felt really great about the weekend I’d had.

Lets hope this week goes just as well!

Zumbaing at THON

Hey there. I hope your weekend was marvelous. I slept. a lot. but let me back up…

As I know I mentioned last week, Thursday was pretty crazy for me at work. So when I woke up Friday I decided that going into work an hour late was a-okay. Once I got into work, I looked at my vacation time balance and decided to head home after lunch. So I worked approximately 3 hours on friday. It was glorious. I then spent the evening relaxing, doing the 30 day shred, and relaxing some more. Perfect.

Saturday I had to wake up SO early. like, 4 am early. I had a really great reason though. I live near Penn State University, and this weekend was their huge THON weekend. THON is a yearly dance marathon that raises money for pediatric cancer though the Four Diamonds Fund. This past weekend, the dancers were on their feet for 46 hours. They raised 12.3 million dollars! That is an insane amount of money for a really amazing cause! If you want to learn more about THON, check out their website.

I was up at 4 am because my Zumba teacher had the opportunity to teach a short Zumba class as part of THON weekend. She asked for volunteers and I jumped on board immediately. We were stationed in a side gym, and dancers and their teams could come and go and dance with us as they pleased. It was a really awesome experience to see (and dance with) just some of the students involved in the weekend. We went through 3 or 4 songs, for a total of about 20 minutes. It was a ton of fun.

After Zumba-ing, I drove home, hopped in the shower, and jumped right back into bed. I may or may not have stayed in bed until 12:30, dozing on and off. 😉 I can’t remember the last time I was in bed that late, so it was nice. 🙂

Somehow, after waking up, I managed to lug my butt out the door to do a 6 mile tempo run. Not gonna lie, this wasn’t great. I could make a million excuses, but the fact is I didn’t hit my paces that I was supposed to, and the second half I really struggled. You win some you lose some I guess.

The rest of the weekend was filled with a little of this and a little of that. Nothing too notable.

This morning I got out of bed to hit the treadmill for a little speed work. Splits:
1 – 14:50 easy
2 – 3/4 mile @ 11:49 pace, 1/4 mile at easy pace
3 – 3/4 mile @ 11:39 pace, 1/4 mile at easy pace
4 – 13:12 easy

This workout made me feel better about my pace, but it was on the treadmill so it’s not hard to keep up, ya know? I have to run 4 miles @ race pace on Thursday and I’m hoping that goes well. I could use a confidence boost!

And just a quick photo before I wrap things up. When I got into work today, I was greeted with this lovely site:

It’s girl scout cookie time!

YUM!

Whew.

Wow sorry I didn’t check in yesterday. I had a good reason though. Yesterday was pretty insane for me from a work perspective and from a personal perspective. From the time I woke up until when I went to bed it was pretty much go go go. Just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, here was my day:

5:45am – wake up
6:00 – run 3 miles on the treadmill
8-11:30 – work from a coffee shop (my boss is awesome and lets me do this from time to time when I have a lot of work to get done)
12-1 – yoga
1-3 – work in the office
3-4:30 – dentist appointment (a filling, super sarcastic yay!)
5:30-7 – Zumba

whew. needless to say, I drove all over town yesterday. and once I got home at 7, we made an easy dinner (quesadillas) and chilled out on the couch. and then I managed to fall asleep by 9:30. ha.

I usually won’t work out THREE times in a day – that’s a little insane. But Zumba and running are kind of on a fixed schedule. I am trying to squeeze in a quick lunch time yoga class once a week and it’s only offered on Tuesday or Thursday. Since I have to sort of work around my work schedule and Thursday wouldn’t work, yesterday it was!

It was one of those days!

Kitty purring

Happy Wednesday!

My day is off to a slower start than usual. I’ve got a dentist appointment in about an hour so I did the whole work from home thing this morning.

The best part about working from home?

The purring kitty on my lap. Gotta love it.

I took my last Zumba class of the session yesterday, before meeting the family for a late dinner at Olive Garden to celebrate my parents anniversary. By the time we got home I was exhausted and ready to take a shower! The next Zumba session doesn’t start for a few weeks but I’ve already signed up. I’m going to change it up a little and take a class mid-day (from noon to 1 on Thursdays). I checked my work calendar and I don’t foresee any conflicts, and if for some reason I can’t make it to a class I can always make it up by attending a class in the evening with the same instructor. I’m really trying to switch around my exercise schedule because I end up feeling SO stressed if I do it after work. I’m not sure why this is, but I just feel like it conflicts with so many things. Switching Zumba to during my lunch break is the first step. Next I need to figure out what to do with Yoga and running…

I received the pair of compression shorts I ordered in the mail on Monday. I put them on just for 5 or so minutes to make sure they fit okay and WOW. I felt the relief just in that time. My hips and IT bands tend to get really sort the long distance I run and these hit that area so well! I’m excited to try them out after the Pittsburgh Half. Between the shorts and my compression sleeves, I’m going to look really stylish on the drive home, hah. I’ll be sure to do a full review of them after I try them out post-race.

We also got our new bread maker in the mail. Neither the hubby or I have ever used/owned a bread maker so this will be an interesting experiment. But I’m really excited to have control over the ingredients and not have to pay crazy prices for healthy bread at the grocery store. I’m hoping to try it out this weekend. Fingers crossed it goes well.

Time to pack up my work computer and head over to the dentist. You know you’re jealous.

Traveling yoga!

Happy Friday! End of the week, yess!
Work has been crazy for me this week and its left me exhausted at the end of each day. Here’s a few highlights from my week though…
Last Saturday I planned on a 9 mile run. Well my garmin died about half way through and I ended up found 10.25. No complaints here! I’ve got 10 planned for tomorrow, and then its taper time!
Tuesday was zumba time. I’m still loving it.
Wednesday I had a girls night, which was perfect timing because work was the craziest Wednesday afternoon. I had wine and lobster risotto, which hit the spot.
Thursday I went to “traveling yoga.” As a group we walked to various spots around town and at each spot did about 10 mins of yoga with different instructors. At the end of two hours we ended with sun salutations at sunset. The yoga was great and the weather was sunny and gorgeous. It was pretty amazing to be practicing outside. And very eye opening – here were other people walking around and staring at the group and I seriously could not have cared less what other people thought. It was get freeing.
Thursday I also had the most amazing salad ever.

Greens, a sliced apple, candies walnuts, a blue cheese wedge and an apple vinagrette. I am on a mission to recreate this when ever possible. It rocked. And it kept me full for a while too.
So that was my week in a nut shell. This weekend I’ve got a 10 mile run planned, a 5k race on Sunday (that I’m just planning to do for fun) and we seriously need to buy some blinds for the house…getting changed in the closet is getting old.
I hope you have a great weekend!