Candlepin Bowling

On September 27th, Mike's youngest nephew, Jacob, turned 3!  To celebrate the big event, I got to experience a game unique to Massachusetts - candlepin bowling.  It's pretty much like regular bowling, but with skee ball size bowling balls and tall, thin pins.  When you say you're going to go bowling, people always ask the question, "Big ball or little ball?"  I still giggle every time (I know, I'm so mature).

Mike and I are totally not competitive, as you can see

Actually, I'm okay with Mike being better than me at 2 things - bowling and mini golf.  I'm not good at either and I'm okay with that.  So, all competition was put aside to enjoy the game.

We rented 2 lanes.  One had a bumper and the other was grown up bowling style - open gutters.  Those gutters definitely saw some action that day (from mine and others' turns), but I was fairly impressed with myself on how I did.  I won't be joining any leagues soon but I had good beginners luck.  Maybe it had something to do with all the skee ball I played in arcades as a kid.  Not that I remember going to arcades that much, but when I did skee ball was my game of choice.  Probably because you could earn lots of tickets for "prizes" on those lanes....you know where you spend $20 on games to get a prize worth about $0.25, but I digress.

Other than the balls and pins, candlepin differs in a couple of other ways - 1) You get three rolls per turn (as opposed to two) and 2) the pins aren't cleared after each roll of the ball.  About half way through the game, I learned that the beauty of candlepin is that you can strategically use the downed pins still on the lane to knock down the rest of the pins.  It seems rather obvious to me now, but until Mike told his sister to do that, the thought hadn't occurred to me!

Check out my hot shoes with fluorescent laces!

It took a while for the birthday boy to warm up to the gang (he's going through a shy phase) but he seemed to be having a great time after the initial "hide behind the parents' pant legs" stage.  The bumper lane, mostly populated by the kiddos, didn't even get through an entire game.  It was actually pretty impressive how slow some of those balls were rolling down.  :) The non-bumper lane, mostly adults, got through almost two games.  A good time was had by all!

All the cute kiddos!

Meet LW!

Just last Saturday night I was dancing with Kari and her baby belly at Jenn's wedding (will be a future posting) and last night I was holding her beautiful new baby, Luke Wiley, at the hospital. Congrats to Kari and Jimmy and welcome to the world, L.W.! Kari not only is a close friend, but a neighbor, too. I'm looking forward to many home visits with the new family.

Isn't he precious?!?!

Me and my new buddy!

She's Crafty!

And she's just my type! For those of you who got the Beastie Boys reference, congrats!

Today's posting is to share a few of my recent craft endeavors. About a year ago, we started shopping for our renovation. During our shopping excursions, we came across the coolest pebble tile that we loved and wanted for our bathroom floor. Then we got hit with sticker shock. It was $40 per square foot! Yikes! Even though we had a small bathroom, that was just a bit too much of a splurge to consider. However, I thought I could possibly make the tile myself for much cheaper. I did a little research and then bought the supplies to test it out. Then the renovation started, the stresses of it kicked in and our tile plan was forced to change.

But, I still loved the look of that tile and wanted to see if my idea would work. So, I dug in the (still not fully unpacked from renovation) basement and found my supplies - a silicone baking pan, river stones and my resin mix. First step - find a level surface. The level said my sideboard was good so I set it up there. I carefully placed the river stones at the bottom of the silicone pan in a pleasing arrangement, mixed the resin and poured. Bubbles in the resin product slowly rise to the top and breathing through a straw (for the CO2) gets rid of them (thanks for the straw tip mom!). So, I checked in on it every 5 minutes for the first half hour and got rid of any rising bubbles. A cardboard box acted as a good cover for it's initial drying period to prevent any dust (more realistically, cat hair in my house) from getting embedded in it. After 72 hours, the resin very easily removed from the pan and voila! Here is my beautiful river stone tile:

Cool, huh? I wish I'd had a little more time before the renovation to work on this because it would have been the coolest bathroom floor ever. Maybe on my next renovation. For now, it's going to be used as decor in our NH condo.

My next project looks like it might become a regular at the baby showers. So, to all my pregnant friends out there, you might be seeing this at a shower near you! The Wile E. Coyote onsies I made for Kari came out so well, I decided to make some for my friend Katherine. She and I met through our book club that we participated in for about 7 years. So, I figured a book theme would only be appropriate. Below are the customized onsies I made for her:

I missed the shower but took a quick trip down to visit last Wednesday to give her the gifts and visit. Good thing I did because Miss Sarah was born 4 weeks early on 10/6! Congrats to Katherine and Erik! I look forward to meeting your future bookworm.

Two Years and Counting

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Two years of wedded bliss have flown by. It just doesn't seem like it's been that long since our perfect fall, New England wedding occurred. Thinking back, our young marriage has already gone through a lot of ups and downs - 2nd home purchase, home\condo renovations done by both ourselves and others, trips in several countries and continents, job loss - and we're closer and stronger due to all of it.

Cheers to us for two years and many more to come!

Peaked Hill Pond Hike

Several weeks ago when we were in NH, I persuaded Mike to go on yet another hike with me.  From our condo, we have a great view of a few smaller mountains.  So, I checked to see if there were any trails on them.  There was only one and it seemed like a good choice being somewhat short in length.  Since we were trying to get some work done on the place, we didn't have a ton of time to play so the trail was a winning pick.  

We drove to the other side of the highway from us, a little over 3 miles and set out up the trail.  The trail was nice and wide and Mike and I walked side by side on it.  Somehow, though, I seemed to catch ALL of the spider webs on the trail.  It was seriously unreal how many I was constantly walking through and picking off while Mike was able to not go through one.  Also, I did a very stupid thing.  I forgot to put on bug spray.  Mosquitoes love me and I should really know better.  I paid for it.  I literally got over 20 bites on this 4 mile, 2 hour hike.  Other than the spider webs and mosquitoes, we really had a nice relaxing time and enjoyed spending some time outside.

We normally see critters on our treks, which is always very exciting.  On this one, we got to see a cool little dude - a red eft.  He was very cute and Mike couldn't resist picking him up for a better look. So, you can get a good idea of his size.  I have to say, I was pretty impressed that Mike spotted him among the leaves.  Note: no animals were harmed in the taking of these photos.

As the name of the trail pretty obviously suggests, our destination was a pond on Peaked Hill.  My trail book description notes that part of the trail is across private land.  At the pond, there were signs that the inhabitants of that land frequent the pond.  We found a jon boat, canoe and assorted fishing tackle at the edge of the water.  It really was a peaceful place and, I suspect, a really nice spot for fishing.
On the way back down, we encountered another couple of critters - a toad and a frog.  The dude below hiding among the grass\leaves is an American toad, I believe.
From the trail, we could hear rushing water so we decided to stray off of it and check it out.  We were glad that we did.  Just a little ways down a somewhat steep slope, we viewed a pretty cool waterfall.  Unfortunately, my camera battery died right after snapping a picture of the toad.  Thank goodness I still had my trusty iphone on back up to be able to snap a memory of the place.  

4 weeks and two days

That's the time between when I filled up my car last and when I did it again last night. Even though I have a sports car that doesn't have great gas mileage, I was able to stretch it out that long. How you ask? Well, first of all, I'm not going to pretend I have a long commute or that I drive a ton. I don't. But I do usually fill up at least every 2 weeks, sometimes every week (never more often than that unless on a long driving trip).

So, how was I able to stretch a tank that far? Biking to work at least a couple of days a week and walking to all my evening errands, that's how. Saving money and getting my work outs in....I like it! Thanks high gas prices for helping me to also acheive my fitness goals.

Challenge Update

I still hate push ups. Perhaps more now than I did 2 months ago. I'm better at them and my arms are hard as rock, but I hate them. My strategy for them for September worked out a little better. For July and August, I did them regularly and tried to average 30 to 40 per day. For September, I did 100 per day and was able to not do them nearly as much. In 3 months, I've gone from doing "comfortably\easily" (I use these words loosely since I'm still talking about doing the push ups I loathe) 10 at a time to being able to do 20 to 25 at a time. I realize I'm far from passing any armed forces boot camp, but it's an improvement for me and that's all that matters. To reward myself to my dedication to (suffering through) them for 3 months, I'm giving myself a month off. Not that I won't be doing any, but I'll do them as part of my regular workouts and not try to achieve doing tons of them. 3000 over the last 3 months is pretty darned good, though (if I must say so myself).

I still don't hate sit ups. I did 2500 during September. I could pump out about 300 of those (easily) far quicker than "getting through" my 100 push ups. I still don't have a 6 pack. However, I do have a shadow of a 4 pack. Though, when I asked Mike if he could consider it a 4 pack, he said "almost." I pretty much take that to mean "honey, you're cute but no"....I'm still saying it's more there than not. Honestly, the only way I'll have one is if I lose more weight. I'm not sure that's a reasonable goal at this point. I think I would need to become a professional athlete in order to do that. Since I'm not that talented at anything, I don't see it being a lucrative career move. So, I'll just keep with the measured sit ups since I don't mind them. I like having something to do while watching tv. Sitting still is not exactly my forte.

Speaking of weight, I've been getting back to my weight loss lows. I kept staying a couple of pounds over it due to all the vacations, traveling, parties, showers, weddings, bbq's, birthdays....you name it! This summer had a lot of eating events! This last week I've been getting back (and staying at) my low so I'm pretty happy about that. I just don't think it's realistic or reasonable to truly lose any more. I'm happy where I am. How many times can a gal say that in life?!?! Plus, looking at my weight loss graph, I've been maintaining (plus or minus) this weight for 6 months. I've heard the 6 month "magic number" from a few sources that it's the amount of time that your body takes to "reset" to a weight. Meaning, if you weigh X amount, your body wants to continue to maintain that (hence the difficulty of weigh loss). So, hopefully, this is where my body will continue to want to stay.