Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Black Friday MAD*ness

So- Black Friday. The day of deals, right?

Wrong.

Well, maybe.

Anthropologie had a 50% off sale. This happens... never.

Well I went crazy and ordered all the beautiful things that I've coveted all year.

Drool worthy, right?

I ordered 23 items (of course planning to return the majority of them). My order was confirmed, I have an email to prove it.

And then.
Cancellation alert?

Are you kidding me?

They cancelled x20 of my items and refunded my credit card.

This is why people fight the good fight at 6am for the Black Friday deals. Because it's not likely that you'll leave a store and then find your shopping cart is actually empty.


You'll be disgusted to know the same thing happened with Gap - only they cancelled every item that I ordered so I'm not ever getting a pathetic box from them.

So be warned: you must go to the brick and mortar or the items are cyber ripped from your hands.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Today's workout

So I'm doing the toneitup Fall Challenge. So far the biggest challenge has been drinking enough h2o (half your body weight in oz.)

...however, this fun workout is a top contender for tough.



· 3 Minute Brisk Walk

· 3 Minutes Jog

· 60 Second 'Sprint'- as fast as you can

· 60 Second Jog

· 60 Second 'Sprint'

~ Chill for 20-30 seconds, breathe, take a couple sips of water

  • 20 Pushups
  • 3 Minute Brisk Walk
  • 3 Minutes Jog
  • 60 Second 'Sprint'- as fast as you can
  • 60 Second Jog
  • 60 Second 'Sprint'

~ Chill for 20-30 seconds, breathe, take a couple sips of water

  • 20 Squat Jumps
  • 3 Minute Brisk Walk
  • 3 Minutes Jog
  • 60 Second 'Sprint'- as fast as you can
  • 60 Second Jog
  • 60 Second 'Sprint'

~ Chill for 20-30 seconds, breathe, take a couple sips of water


  • 20 Situps
  • 3 Minute Brisk Walk
  • 3 Minutes Jog
  • 60 Second 'Sprint'- as fast as you can
  • 60 Second Jog
  • 60 Second 'Sprint'

~ Chill for 20-30 seconds, breathe, take a couple sips of water

  • 30 second Plank
5 Minute Cool-down Walk

Hit the weights and burned out my hamstings by doing four sets of 12 squats in the lower 12 inch range

...ouch.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Where have you been?

WELL.

We bought a house, obviously. Below you'll see the unsuspecting married couple, excited about their purchase. Not knowing what lies ahead.
Soon they found 12 layers of wall paper ready to greet them. This was day one of demo.

Day three of demo, still working on the wall paper. Now Doug is involved so it's going faster.

By day 6 we're rocking and rolling. We've removed the carpet, the light switch covers and closed a doorway (barely noticeable to the right). We found all sorts of surprises, like the wood floors below:
Whoa, kitchen.


yay, vintage tile.
scary asbestos. Doug knocked all the asbestos duct work out of the basement, saving us $2800~ score.
Huge job. The two of us ripped all this tongue and groove planking up from the basement ourselves and lifted them out of the window.
This is a view of the great outdoors, through the front door. When I started taking the paint off I realized that paint was concealing some serious cracks in the door.

So that's what we've been up to, oh and the dormer project is one step to done. So look forward to that!

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Dormer Love


The house we are trying to buy has dormers.
/d-or-mer/: A dormer is a structural element of a building that protrudes from the plane of a sloping roof surface. Dormers are used, either in original construction or as later additions, to create usable space in the roof of a building by adding headroom and usually also by enabling addition of windows
You will notice how horrible I am at photo credits. Most of them came from images in google when searching for dormers. That is that case for this one:
This dormer add's a significant amount of light. And while the head space isn't all that useful, it adds a fair amount of that as well.
The above image is from Cote de Texas, this deep dormer is lovely. Doesn't it look so large compared to that chair? I wonder if that chair is full sized. Again, the additional head space seems like it wouldn't be all that functional here, but that architecturally the depth is lovely, and the window is sublime.
This picture came from google photos. I like this photo for a couple reason. Most obviously, because the windows are divine. I like to see dormers with a brick house (because ours is brick) and I like to see the roofing shingles used as siding on the sides of the dormers. I don't think I would do this, because we have asphalt and not slate, but this is motivation to consider slate in the future!
These look a lot like the ones above, but with asphalt shingles they opted to use siding instead of shingles. The columns give it a cape cod feel.

This house has the slate roofing and dormer siding combo as well.

If you look closely, you can see they used the house siding on the dormers, and even painted it green to match.


I think this came from Holly at Things that Inspire. The casing windows are lovely, and I really like the set of three. I only have one on the front of the house. I also like the pitched roof. The roof on our house is flat like the one below.
Holly again. Holly over at Things that inspire has posted this house quite a bit, she loves it! Can you blame her, it's perfect- the green around the windows is lovely.

This picture cam from Holly, and I love it because the limestone windows on the smaller dormers look great with the added details on the pitched roof.
This is one of my favorite Southern Accents homes. I like the siding, probably cement board, contrasting with the brick. They look like they are painted blue, or a different, brighter shade than the green on the fence.
This steep pitch of the dormer allows for most of the dormer to be asphalt and very little siding. I like it-
Look at these wee little dormers on this home. We are contemplating pitching the roof of our dormers. This is a good example of that they would look like if we left them white.


Those might look something like these close up.

The slope of this roof moves all the way down to the original roof line. I don't like it as much, but it does widen the opening inside the home.


Somewhat common, especially out in the west, is the arched dormer. Obviously there are some much prettier than this. Like this one:
There are so many choices in a home. Even something as simple as dormers require research and thought! I don't know how I'll ever get through this. We have to repair the roof around the dormers so we'd like to pitch the roof and reside them at the same time. What do you think would look good on our house?


Monday, June 13, 2011

One day...

I will be the hottest girl at the gym.


Until then I'll just be the sweat-i-est.


Sick.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

It's ours!

it's ALMOST ours.
The inspector is coming tomorrow to look over things. We already know that there are some pretty stout electrical/plumbing concerns-



Carpet in the Kitchen?
You know it.

Only the best for this beauty.

In the photo below you can catch a glimpse of the wretched wall texture. yikes.
Last but not least...the floral wallpaper and green shag carpet.
Fortunately, I am gainfully unemployed, allowing infinite time to research solutions to these problems.

Monday, May 16, 2011

1920's Kitchen


house hunting.....worst ever.

We have been on the hunt for a new pad since mid March. It's awful. This market=awful. Seems like 1/2 of the homes on the market are short sales and the other half are priced way over market (whoa, the word market was used x1 too many).

What I mean it, either it will take forever to buy...or the sellers can't afford to part.

We do know this: We are looking for a circa 1920's home.

A charming Tudor will do just fine. The problem? The 1980's! That's the problem.

True story:
What's a girl to do? Rose colors swag is not an option.

Research people. We know most things lovely in architecture came pre-1930; but interior design?


Here's to simpler times, huh?

The challenge: contemporary function vs. time stamped fashion.

Concrete countertops = function
dye them white = fashion
These honed concrete counter tops give a look of stone apothecary. Very true to the time; and still functional.

Floor to ceiling cabinets = function.
Retro hardware and console shapes = fashion.

I love the shaping of all of these cabinets. They come together like an old ice box. The cute farm sink ties it together.
NOTE: the beadboard back splash is def a function no-no.

I found countless beautiful kitchen's with 1920's influences...
ha! If only?! The only not wonderful thing about the 1920's kitchen is the not so comical resemblance to a shoe box.

A time when space was limited.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Schools out....forever.


Disclaimer: My photo uploader wasn't working. I chose these at random; snap shots, really.


We are here!



The two ladies who got me through it:



And just like that, it's over.


Job hunting is the worst- that and house hunting...both of which are taking up time these days.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

VOTE FOR US~~

Best of Utah County?

Yes, please!

http://www.heraldextra.com/app/bestof/

It's on page 1...then you can skip to the end or vote for some of your other favorites;)


Sunday, March 6, 2011