Sunday, August 26, 2007

Baking and Painting this Weekend


Yesterday Lydia and I baked a couple dozen chocolate chip cookies and delivered them with a card to our new neighbors to welcome them to the neighborhood. The new neighbors are from Illinois and are new to the area. They don't have any kids but one is on the way and they have an old dog too so we have that in common. We also baked several cakes and cookies in Lydia's Easy Bake oven. We tried a Barbie's Pink Cake Mix recipe but I think maybe we made a mistake in our measuring because something wasn't quite right. We had lots of fun though and will keep trying other recipes. If you know of other Easy Bake recipes online please let me know.

The weather where we live (WI) has been very rainy or humid for quite awhile but today was not the case so I got out the paint and put a coat of paint on my primed windows. If you've been following along with me, you may remember I started this project quite awhile ago. I am determined to finish it before school starts on 9/4. I have some of the cork cut out. For those of you not following me, I am going to put cork in these windows and use them to display my daughter's art work. I thought the cork would be nice because we can easily swap new art work which we have a lot of around here! After this coat is dry, I think I'm going to spray them with a semi-gloss. The paint is a flat finish and I think the semi-gloss will make clean up easier which will come in handy because these will be getting handled a lot.

I'm leaving shortly for a 13 mile run. I am not motivated at all to run today but I need to stick to my training schedule. Ken and I are waiting for our Power90 kit to arrive. It should be hear early this week. We're going to do the program together. I've heard you are not supposed to start weight training the last few months of training for a marathon but I am going to be extra careful not to injure myself. I'm looking forward to learning more about the nutrition plan. We both need to start eating more healthy.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Sum Sum Summer Time


It's been such a great summer. After the 4th of July we vacationed on Madeline Island by the Apostle Islands and a couple weeks after that we went to the Porcupine Mountains in the Upper Peninsula of MI. We hiked, biked, ran (I did anyway), relaxed, and enjoyed time together as a family. This is the second year in a row we went to both places. They are really beautiful places to visit. We enjoy the area.

I bought my plane tickets for the trip out to Portland. I'm looking forward to the marathon. I ran 18 miles last Saturday and did 10 minute miles without being well prepared at all (was out of Gu packets and only took 4 12 oz bottles of fluid, 2 having Accelerade) so I think I will survive the marathon. I've been doing 5 mile runs on my lunch hour this week and pushing myself to 9 minute miles which feels really good.

I am still working on the window frames I'm going to use to display Lydia's artwork in my kitchen. I have them all primed and I hope to paint them this Saturday. I also have some of the cork cut for where the glass used to be. I can't wait to show you the finished product on my walls. I will try to post pictures in the interim as well.

We picked up all of our school supplies for first grade today. It's so exciting to get new notebooks, folders, crayons, and pencils.