Archives for July 2013

My 30 Before 30 List

July 10, 2013 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

A little over a month ago I turned 29, and while I’m not big on milestone birthdays, this feels like a good time to get a list of things I want to accomplish written out. I’m not crazy enough to think I’ll actually get ALL of these accomplished before my birthday next year (for some reason life seems to always interfere with my best laid plans). But I’d like to have made significant progress towards ~~all~~ most of them! So here goes:

My 30 Before 30 list:

Run another half marathon (bonus points if I beat my previous time: 2 hrs 9 min 10 seconds)
Start a vegetable garden
Build my own built-in-closet (modeled after Sandra’s AWESOME closet)
Book a trip to Europe with my husband (and maybe a few friends)
Find a farmer’s market near my house to visit on a Saturday morning
Finish my t-shirt quilt (2+years in the making)
Learn to cook 5 new meals
Take my husband to visit my favorite city: Washington DC
Go see Lion King (kind of cheating… I already have tickets to this… but it’s a show I’ve always wanted to see!)
Pay off part of my company debt
Finish another sprint triathlon (again… bonus points if I beat my previous time)
Build a pergola in my back yard
Help my twin brother fix up his house (as payment for letting me use his pool whenever I want!)
Spend a Saturday without ever leaving the house… no projects, just laziness.
Take a weekend getaway to Beaver Creek. (I bought a couple of free nights at a silent auction… now we just have to use them)
Go Skiing with the church youth group… as an ‘adult’ sponsor.
Get new Christmas Stockings for my husband and I for our first Christmas as a married couple.
Learn how to put crown molding up in my our house
Give 10% to charity or the church for 2013
Get my husband certified to Scuba Dive
Finish changing my name to my married last name… who knew there were so many things to change!?
Organize the whole house- no seriously… every cupboard, closet, under every bed.
Take a spa day with a friend
Host a dinner party
Make homemade ice cream
Make a wedding book for each set of our parents and ourselves
Save enough money to install double ovens in our kitchen
Get to my ideal weight
Get better at using my SLR Camera (kinda hard to measure… but maybe I’ll know it when I get there?)
Throw a 30th Birthday Party for my twin brother and myself

There you go! I’ll keep you updated as the year (11 months now!!) progresses…

UPDATE! I am making progress… check out the updated list here and here!

And just for fun a picture of me (with my twin brother) at a much earlier birthday:

Filed Under: 30 Before 30, Life, Most Popular

The Ever-Changing Little Microwave Cart

July 8, 2013 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

When I was renting a 1920s house with almost 0 counter space my twin brother gave me his old microwave cart that looked very similar to this one:

photo from www.kitchencontraptions.com

I think he originally bought it from Target for somewhere around $75. Since that light wood finish didn’t match ANYTHING in my kitchen, I gladly repainted it. But I wanted it to be a little more exciting than just plain white, so I painted the bottom half white (with Rustoleum’s Semi-Gloss White). and then sanded and stained the top half using Minwax’s Dark Walnut.

This is what it stayed like for a long time, and there is just something I love about the clean look of white wood with a dark wood top, but once I painted the kitchen a light blue, the stark white of the bottom clashed a bit with the not quite off white of the cabinets. So I decided I needed something with a little jolt of color thrown in the mix. I went and bought a quart of paint from Home Depot. The color is a Behr color, but I can’t for the life of me remember the name or find the old can, when I do, I’ll update you! I just taped off the wheels and the top and painted the bottom. It took me maybe 45 minutes of work time (with a few hours of dry time in between). And I love how fun it looks in the middle of the kitchen.

Filed Under: DIY, Kitchen, Paint

Dog Dog aka Lexie

July 5, 2013 By amusingmjblog Leave a Comment

About 2 years ago after July 4th weekend I decided it was time to get a dog. I lived in a house by myself and thought… what better way to get a little security than to get a big dog?? So I set about to get a chocolate lab, since that’s what my family had when I was growing up. I found a place not too far away from me that had a litter of chocolate lab puppies ready to take home, and went to go pick one out. I fell in love with the runt of the litter because she had these two cute little white spots on the back of her front paws that looked almost like someone had put a thumbprint of white paint onto her chocolate coat. She comes to work with me every day (this post is when she is just about 2.5 months old in my office) and has been my constant companion. She is a typical lab, friendly energetic and loves people, however she is scared of EVERYTHING. If the sprinklers go off… she hides under the table, so much for getting a guard dog! But she is intensely loyal and is a big part of my life!

Like any good lab, she gets into everything (although she is almost out of puppy stage and gets in to fewer and fewer things that she is not supposed to). My first thanksgiving with her, I took her to my parent’s house. They love dogs and were especially missing our recently deceased 16 year old chocolate lab, so they were happy to have her along for the week. I had to be gone for a few hours and asked if they wanted me to leave her out (and thus be responsible for her) or to put her in her crate while I was gone. They happily said… oh, we’ll watch her, no problem, leave her out! (famous last words)

Lexie then proceeded to steal one of mom’s freshly baked loaves of rye bread off the tall counter top and eat the entire thing before they noticed. The picture below shows her stretched out… clearly pleased with herself… after the aforementioned incident.

lexie-post-thanksgiving My now husband and I had our semi-first date after a trip down to Whiterock Lake in Dallas with Lexie. And since we decided to do our engagement photos there, we thought it only appropriate to bring Lex along for a few photos. Our awesome photographer captured not only how Lexie looks every day: