The Friday Five: 10/26/12

Five things I am loving about this Friday:

1. Baby Giraffes: Unless you have been living under a rock (or perhaps don't live in Greenville or surrounding areas), you know about the Greenville Zoo's latest edition, Kiko, the baby giraffe born Monday night. A million people watched the birth on the online webcam so Greenville has become quite smitten with this new little addition. I of course got all my coworkers invested as well so today we are going to take a little field trip to the Riverbanks Zoo and feed a few giraffes of our own.

Baby Kiko and Momma Autumn

2. Date Night: Tonight Brett and I are taking full advantage of a free Friday and going to Solstice for dinner. If you have never been before I highly recommend it. Definitely one of my favorites in Columbia.

3. Sore no more: I can finally walk about without a severe limp so now I can finally decide when to go back and take another Pure Barre class.

4. Sweet Potato Pie: Is it ok to brag about how great of a baker you are? No? Too bad - I made a killer sweet potato pie the other night and may have to sneak a slice (or two) when I get home today... no judgements please. (I plan to share the recipe next week!)

5. Weekend Activities: We have a lot going on this weekend; noon game tomorrow, wedding shower, Brett heading to the lake, and a Halloween party with all our friends and their kiddos! A lot of fun and a lot to be thankful for!

Hope everyone has a great Friday and weekend as well!

GO COCKS!!!

No, it's not a bar with drinks.

When I told all my friends about Pure Barre opening up they immediately asked "like a juice bar?" No, not like a juice bar - like a ballet barre people!



A Pure Barre studio opened in Greenville right after I moved and was thrilled when the phenomenon finally made its way to Columbia! For those of you not familiar with it, the technique is to use small isometric movements of the body to create long, lean muscle with a lot of these exercises using a ballet barre. You can read more about their technique here.

I danced ballet my entire life from a little girl, through high school, some college and even a few sporadic classes here and there since college. Since I grew up in a ballet studio, I have always hated working out in a gym. Seriously, it is so foreign and awkward to me I just can't deal. So I was beyond excited to try out this new style of workout classes. I immediately emailed my girlfriends to try and find a brave soul to try this out with me and then scheduled my first class.

Last night was that first class and today I.Can't.Move. Like, can't roll over in the bed, can't brush my teeth my body hurts so bad. Needless to say it was an amazing workout! I kind of had it in my head that since I did ballet for so many years I would breeze through. Oh man was I wrong. I actually thought to myself during the first set if I would even be able to make it through the whole hour. But I prevailed and it felt great! It showed me how incredibly out of shape I was but also reminded me how great it feels to work out and actually be sore for a change.My friend and I are both going to get a package and try one class a week for awhile until we get used to the workouts so hopefully we can keep at it.

They have studios all across the country and quite a few in SC so I definitely encourage you to try it out! I only hope your first class is as rough as mine was (and if it isn't, please don't destroy my ego in telling me).

Weekend Recap

Friday after work we headed down to Myrtle Beach to meet up with Brett's dad, brother and sister-in-law for one of their cousin's weddings. The wedding was Saturday afternoon at 3:00 which at first we were a little bummed about since the game came on at 3:30. But after following the first quarter of the game online, we quickly realized it was a blessing we didn't have to watch that ugly game and just enjoyed ourselves at the wedding.


The reception was at a house in North Myrtle Beach. Absolutely gorgeous location!

 

All the little details of the wedding were gorgeous as well.

Sunday we woke up bright and early and grabbed a bite to eat with Brett's dad then headed on home. Most of the day Sunday was spent laying around the house and catching up on Netflix movies but we did venture out long enough to pick up our pup from the kennel and get a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch the church we have been visiting (Trenhold Road UMC) does every year. I didn't get any pictures of it but if you are in the area go check it out! 

Hope everyone else had a wonderful weekend!

Let us wear jeans!

In my previous life in advertising our dress code was "client appropriate" as in, wear whatever you want to wear to work unless you are seeing clients, then dress to their usual dress code. So my week would start off by wearing a nice pair of jeans, heels, a cute top and by the end of the week it was ratty jeans, flip flops and a tshirt (yes, sometimes the old sorority function shirts came out). In my new life in the corporate world there is a strict no jeans policy... except for the few times a year we have a jeans day - like today!

So this begs the question, "Why can't we wear jeans to work?" Most of my time is spent sitting in a cubicle working at my computer so why do I have to dress up every day to do that? I understand the "client/meeting appropriate" and if you have a big meeting/presentation/client visit then yes, by all means you need to look your best but for the other 90% of the time, why not wear what you want and be comfortable?

Let's face it, jeans aren't just for the Marlboro Man and construction workers anymore. These days women dress up jeans more and more (and probably spend more money on them than dress pants). So why not wear them to work?

I enter in my evidence:

Nothing is dressier than a pair of these trouser jeans.


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You can even do a cute pair of skinny jeans and dress it up with a fun blouse and cardigan.

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This look would be a great look paired with a black blazer.

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Love this look for winter!


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And of course Princess Kate can do no wrong! She knows how to dress up a pair of jeans!

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I rest my case.

Just my Luck!

So just when I got all excited and shared my hallway rug purchase I get this email...

Grrrrrrr! Guess it's another month of the stained rug we all know and love hate. Sorry to all our visitors who come to our house prior to November 27th. I assure you there will be a "rug has arrived" happy dance when it's finally here.

Hallway Progress

As mentioned before, last weekend we spent a lot of time working on the house and the majority of that was in our hallway. In our little bungalow we have 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom all which open up to this hallway area. The area really serves no purpose so you can’t do much with it but with it being open to all the rooms in the house it has to at least look decent. But it sat for over a year; unpainted, no furniture, 2 random pictures hung on the wall and a rug with stains all over it. Awesome.

View of room before yellow. See those lovely rug stains I said were there?

I really didn't mind the brown color that was in there previously but I just felt like we needed something to brighten it up a bit. And boy did it get bright!

So back in August I had had enough. Brett was out of town for the weekend so I had free time on my hands and figured I was going to spruce up the place a little to surprise him. I finally found a table I loved at World Market (and on sale) and knew we had some left over paint from our living room so thought “This is going to be perfect!!”. WRONG. The table turned out great however the paint job was a disaster. Seriously. The color looks great in our living room but with the hallway being so much smaller with a lot more light, the very light yellow/cream color in our living room was now a bright canary yellow in the hall. Gross.

This is the only picture I have of the yellow walls after. The picture actually makes it worse than it really it but I think you get why we hated it so much. (and yes, I am sideways in the picture frame - I was just testing out a few.)

My mom had just repainted their guest bath and after seeing the color she used I knew it would look great in the hall (which is Monroe Bisque by Benjamin Moore but color matched at Sherwin Williams). So, new paint color picked out, paint purchased, problem solved. Except free time was not on our side so it sat… and sat… and I had yellow staring at me in the face every morning for a month just reminding me of my poor choice in paint color.

AND we still had the problem of the rug. That nasty, stained rug that everyone has to see whenever they come to our house. I searched and searched and searched for the perfect rug. Going back and forth on different colors and finally found the perfect one at Pottery Barn (and we had left over money from wedding returns there – double score). WRONG. It was on back order until mid-January. Really?? So back to the drawing board. Then finally I went to a new website called Shades of Light that I found on my favorite DIY blog I follow, Young House Love. Shades of Light is a great site with a TON of rugs (and you guessed it, lights) – some cheap, some expensive but a good selection nonetheless. And yes, I found the perfect one (again). It was cheaper than the one at PB and the blog had a 10% discount code on their site so that basically covered the shipping fee! It’s on its way and I can’t wait to see how it looks in the room!  Let's all take a moment of silence for hope that it works in there....

I'm in love! I may get all my new rugs from Shades of Light!

SO, the perfect rug was found, the paint was purchased and we finally had a free day to get the painting done. And a little paint goes a long way! It looks a million times better in there!! With some new pictures hung, a new rug in route this room is on its way to being complete and I couldn’t be more happy! I still have a few little nik-naks (is that a real word?) to purchase and get the new rug in there but will share the final shot once it is all complete.

BUSY Weekend

Busy, Busy, Busy! As suspected the bathroom project was a little aggressive so we will get that done another weekend but besides that we got a lot accomplished and I feel so much better about the progress on our little to-do list!

It wasn't just a full weekend of work we also had an oyster roast happy hour Saturday before the game (the sad, sad game) and a drive to Greenville Sunday for a wedding shower. There wasn't a lot of rest but we got a ton accomplished and got to spend some time with friends. I could definitely get used to these weekends at home... too bad we only have 4 (yes, FOUR) weekends at home between now and Christmas.
Our (extremely) aggressive list for this weekend:
- Paint Hallway
- Pick out paint color for Bathroom*
- Paint Bathroom*
- Touch up trim in hallway
- Organize desk/office closet
- Rearrange office furniture
- Shop for bathroom: curtain, towels, mat, etc.*
- Clean out/organize pantry
- Put stuff up in attic
- Drop off items to Goodwill
- Yard work
- Fix fence
*Most likely will not happen.

To Purchase:
- Buy fabric and cover chair in sunroom
- Curtains for guestroom
- Curtains for office
- Rug for kitchen
- Rug for hallway

Small Fix-it Jobs:
- Replace/Fix garbage disposal
- Fix door to laundry
- Fix leak in kitchen sink
- Replace blinds in office
- Fix cracked tile in kitchen (or replace the floors...see below)
- Install flooring in laundry
- Repaint laundry
- Repaint kitchen (then the whole house will have been painted!!)
- Fix squeaky doors (bedroom/bathroom)

Our "If we win the lottery list":
- Landscape front yard
- Replace fence
- Redo brick patio
- Paint exterior of house
- Add bathroom/master closet
- Reno kitchen