Posts from — July 2010

The adventure blog has sort of been on hiatus this past week, mostly because I’ve been in the process of moving into a new apartment in New Haven.

I also don’t have internet yet, so Michal and I have been at the mercy of neighborhood cafes with free WiFi.

Thank you Cafe Romeo.

I’m pretty excited about my new place, especially since after having lived in both Boston and New York City, it’s an odd feeling to suddenly have so much space (and so much money left over after paying rent!). It will also be nice to officially have my name on a lease with Michal, because living out of a duffel bag was beginning to get old.

Our friends Jesse and Paul will also be living with us, so I’m thrilled that the place will most likely always have people in it. Places always feel more like home when there are voices in the background.

Michal and I are tackling the apartment room by room, so on the agenda for our first weekend in the new place was the bedroom…and this meant the REAL agenda was PAINTING.

White walls sort of horrify me. I’m not sure why, but I’m beginning to think it’s genetic, because in my parents home there is not a single white wall to be found.

Luckily Michal was all for painting the bedroom whatever color I wanted, and since I already had the color picked out (Gentle Tide by Glidden), it was just a matter of dropping by Home Depot to pick it up.

If you’ve painted before, I don’t need to tell you it’s hard work. It took us three days to finish painting and touching up two rooms (we painted Michal’s office too). Because of the fumes we set up the bed in the living room, and lived there for the first few nights.

There was lots of take-out and beer consumed this weekend.

Once we finally finished painting we began moving in furniture.

If Michal looks tired in the above photo, it’s because we were both up at 6am, and in my sleepy state I was a bit indecisive, so I made him help me arrange the furniture in our room about 5 different ways until I finally decided on the set-up I liked.

Once we set the bedroom up the way we wanted, we ran to IKEA to buy some shelving. The shelving was SO cheap and made the room look much more finished.

The bedroom isn’t quite complete, but here are some before and after photos (before photos were taken when we first looked at the apartment).

BEFORE PICTURES:

AFTER PICTURES:

Don’t colored walls make rooms look so much more inviting?

Because the windows in the front of the room are so beautiful, I didn’t want to distract from that with a clunky headboard. I toyed around with a few ideas, but finally decided on installing a simple IKEA shelf directly behind the bed. For the brackets we used the plastic white ones that only cost one dollar at IKEA. From far away you can’t tell they aren’t wood. In total, our “headboard” cost us 7 dollars. It was definitely the cheapest solution to keeping the area between the windows simple/clean, while still giving us a place to store a book, water, or cell phone at night.

We also bought two large shelves from IKEA (7 dollars each). Since this wall is more of a focal point, we splurged and bought the nicer brackets (5 dollars each). So in total, we transformed this wall for 34 dollars.

We were lucky that no major furniture or bedding had to be bought. My only real splurge were the bamboo shades (Bed Beth & Beyond) which were $40 each, and totally worth every penny, because when the sun hits them they glow this beautiful honey color.

There are still a few spaces in the room that need to be worked on such as:

so bare

This house plant needs a buddy (preferably in the form of a mirror)

Not a great view from the bed.

I already have some creative and cheap ideas though, so maybe I’ll update you with photos once I complete the projects.

Someday in the future (way in the future) I’d like to purchase something like this, this, or this, but for now I’m just going to dream about that day, and until then I will focus on decorating my new IKEA shelves with fun knickknacks from my local Marshalls, Homegoods, and TJ Max….which did I mention are all less than 10 minutes away from my new place?

I guess some dreams do come true.

Today I’ll be in the woods of Old Lyme, CT helping out with Ninja Zombies, but before I go I wanted to recap a few more things from Maine, specifically my 4th of July, which of course started out with a patriotic bowl of oats…

Ingredients: locally grown strawberries and blueberries, peanut butter, greek yogurt, and oatmeal.

After I let this digest a bit, Michal and I decided to rent bikes for the remainder of our vacation so we could have the freedom to get around without having to deal with the 4th of July traffic.

First stop with our bikes was Footbridge Beach in Maine which is my favorite beach in the area.

Enjoying fresh cut watermelon on the beach is one of life’s cheap luxuries.

After a few hours of relaxing on the beach, we got back on our bikes and headed down to Perkin’s cove for lunch.

Michal was very excited when while we were on the Perkin’s Cove draw bridge, a sailor shouted up to him to press the button to raise it.

Michal brought his Canon camera on vacation, so while we were in Perkin’s cover he took  some really beautiful photos that I plan on framing.

We also discovered a really amazing cafe I had never been to. They make homemade lemonade from scratch, and they have the most amazing back porch where you can sit.

Around this time we started to burn out, so we got back on our bikes and headed back, and after a nap and an epic outdoor dinner with the neighbors, we got back on our bikes to make one last trip…

It just wouldn’t be the 4th of July without fireworks.

Saturday night Michal and I decided to go out to dinner for seafood, because when you’re in Maine, it’s just wrong to eat anything else, so we put on some non-scrubby clothes, and hit the town.

I know from this blog it seems as though I never wear make-up and am always in running shorts, but I assure you I am quite girly (note the pink top).

We decided that we would park in town and then walk along Marginal Way which takes you down into Perkins Cove.

Once we began the walk on marginal way, the views were incredible…

When we arrived in Perkins Cove, we ate at one of favorite restaurants, Barnacle Billy’s.

I’ve been eating here since I was a kid, and the food is always straight off the boat and delicious.

Before being seated, Michal enjoyed a cold beer in the lounge, and I sneaked a photo which captured his content state.

Is there anything better than enjoying your first cold beer on vacation?

When we finally sat down for dinner, I already knew what I wanted–Billy’s homemade Gazpacho Soup with JUMBO shrimp….

You can’t find shrimp any larger than this. They were so big that just 4 left me feeling full (and usually when I eat shrimp my stomach is a bottomless pit).

Michal had their stuffed shrimp dish which looked just as incredible.

But you want to know what the best part about dinner was?

The view.

This is my third time running this race, and ever since coming in second for the women’s division last year (it’s a small race), it’s become an on-going joke for me to talk a whole lotta game before the big day.

Coincidentally, Michal came in 2nd in the men’s division last year also, so the smack talk has just been non-stop between the two of us.

But somewhere in all those little quips…I was serious.

And so I trained the past two weeks, and I had this whole master plan laid out in my head, how two days before the race I would do one final 4 mile run on an up-hill course (my reasoning being that the 5k race would seem easy 48 hours after so much up-hill work). So Friday came, and after work I did just that. I ran an intense 4 mile up-hill course in blistering heat. Then I got home and rested a bit, because I was going to be driving to Maine later that night.

Then my mom, who was already up in Maine, called.

“Hey, did you know your little race is tomorrow morning? I just saw something about it on the TV.”

Yup, that’s right. I got the date wrong. So basically I would arrive in Maine at around 1am, and then have to wake up at around 8am to run a race, and on top of that I would only have around 12 hours of time to recover.

Want to see a picture of me before the race?

It’s probably hard to tell because this picture is pretty small, but I was literally falling asleep, and I didn’t even have the energy to warm up or stretch. I just sat on a rock and watched all the other people do cool pre-race stuff which totally psyched me out.

Luckily I had Michal there to lend his support (and talk a big game), so I at least I stayed a bit motivated.

A mile into the race  though I was pretty behind, so I started regretting my decision to run the race, but then I sort of told myself, “you are on vacation, so get over yourself, and get over the fact that you will have a slow time.” And just like that I got over it, and suddenly the race seemed fun again because I accepted the fact that I wouldn’t do well, and that I would be proud of myself just for finishing it.

And then mile two came, and I was so happy to have set myself free from the pressure of getting a good time, that I started to pass a lot of people who were burning out on the hills.

And then mile three came, and I started to pass even more people.

And then I finished…

and after the results were tallied up, I came in first in the women’s division

Pretty cool, right?

Although in all honesty, I was not the first female to cross the finish line. The first WOMAN, yes, but not the first female. A few girls under the age of 19 destroyed my time, so I was fortunate that there was a separate category for “under 19.”

I wish I could show you an actual picture of me accepting the prize, or a picture of my finish, but the camera died half way through the race (my mom didn’t realize that you need to turn the camera off when you’re not using it). By that point though, I didn’t even care about the camera. I was just thrilled to have had something that seemed horrible turn out to be something really fun.

As for Michal….

Let’s just say he got 2nd place again, but this year the men’s 2nd place time was slower than the women’s 1st place time….

I guess there can only be one winner in every relationship (ohhhhhhhh snap!)