Tie Dye Party

We spent last Saturday night tie dying. Yep, that’s right, we channeled our inner hippy and joined the amazingly sweet yogis from Sunstone Yoga (North Dallas/Addison location) for a tie dye party. One of the instructors at Sunstone along with her husband would be leading the entire workshop. We debated if this was weird and decide it wasn’t in the slightest, and even if it is we WANTED to do it so that then takes it back to not weird. 🙂  See how that works?

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We left our boys at Flying Saucer to hang out and drink beer while we headed over there. Pretty sure both of them asked us how long it was going to take because we would be holding up dinner. We both responded with “ it most likely wont be the entire time so chill.”

The tie dye party was from 6-8 and we both thought back to our childhood tie dying and thought, No way can you dye a shirt for 2 hours. WRONG! Not only did we stay the entire time, we probably could have stayed for 2 more hours! We quickly learned that tie dying is in fact a true art. We have never met anyone more passionate about the art of tie dying then Jeremy.  He has been tie dying since the 80’s and basically is a walking encyclopedia of how to tie dye. We are not kidding and we had no idea this was actually the case. You have to check out his website if you don’t believe us – Tie Dye Guide

We spent the first 30 or so minutes getting the basics like how to fold your clothing item, how to decide colors, what the different folds are and insider tricks to making it look good. He can relate everything back to Davinci or the meaning of the swirl in life, which is actually very impressive and interesting!  We can only hope we retained all the information Jeremy and Jen shared with us!

When we tie dyed as children we just stuck rubber bands on a shirt and dunked it in dye, not giving a flip as to what would actually happen.  We decided to do the spiral method because Jeremy told us that was the easiest one to start with and since at this point we felt a little scared of what would happen we went with it.

Here is what our process looked like! The spiral twirling part is a little hard since your shirt has a mind of its own. Turns out that in the end it doesn’t so much matter (at least to us newbies) You couldn’t tell our swirls where lopsided or raised!

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The actual dye part is somewhat complicated especially if you forgot the color wheel from like elementary Art class. We all pretty much know yellow and blue make green and what not, but trying to figure out secondary colors on tie dye made us worried we would end up with brown shirts. Jeremy and Jen basically helped us make sure that didn’t happen and we both stayed with colors that would not allow any poop brown to show up!

See picture of us intently working. Ha

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We took our shirts home at the end of the night and washed them out in the morning. Voila! This is what we got! We love them and they turned out WAY better than expected.

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Just as a reference of how awesome the real tie dying was to the tie dying we are used to. Here is a picture of a recent tie dye job one of us did… yea…. Spray tie dye…. Not so much!

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We do want to say a BIG THANK YOU to Jeremy & Jen!  We loved the tie dye workshop and are SO glad we made it into yoga to hear about the workshop at the end of class! Our shirts are also displayed on the Sunstone Yoga North Dallas facebook page which is fun! AND we heard that Jeremy & Jen will be leading more tie dye workshops in the Dallas area in the next few months! Be sure to check Jeremy’s page for updates!

What’s a CASA??

If you follow us on twitter or have connected with us on Facebook then you might already know that this Saturday we are running in the first ever Dallas CASA Superhero 5K and Family Fun Run.  Beth’s future mother-in-law works for CASA and is really the main reason we know about their 5K this coming weekend.  Yes, we are also doing Big D half on Sunday – we like to do double race weekends! We’re crazy like that! 🙂

Both of us have been familiar with CASA for quite some time, but realized that not everyone might not know as much as we do! So we’ll let you in on that –

CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) is a nonprofit organization of community volunteers who serve as voices in court for abused and neglected children.  CASA volunteers are trained and supervised to advocate for the best interests of children in protective care and to make recommendations that help judges decide what is best for each child. For many children, a CASA volunteer is the one constant during a frightening, uncertain time. A CASA volunteer can have an immediate and critical impact on the life of a child. Less than half of the children in protective care in Dallas County have CASA voices in court. 

Fun fact for you – the sole reason that each of us know about CASA is because in college we each had a friend who was a Kappa Alpha Theta and well CASA is Theta’s philanthropy.

The superhero theme behind the race is because – Like the superheroes of childhood, CASA volunteers know that in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for abused children, they must never give up. They also know that they are more powerful when working together. The Superhero 5K brings our community together as superheroes for abused children to help Dallas CASA provide volunteer advocates for every child who needs one.

Did you know that there are more than 2,000 children in Dallas County who have been removed from their homes and are waiting for the courts to decide where they can live safely and permanently?  

As of now only two out of five abused children have CASA volunteers to advocate for their best interests and help them find safe, permanent homes.

So we would love for you to come join us, come help support Dallas CASA and help spread the word about  who CASA is and what they are doing for local Dallas County children!

Children are very near and dear to both of our hearts as Teal is a middle school teacher and Beth majored in elementary education in college, and it is our privilege to help support a great cause through our running! Registration is still open at runontexas.com

Dallas CASA superheroes to race for a better future
for abused and neglected children

Trinity River Levee Run

I woke up Friday morning with beginnings of a cold coming on. Ugh, not so perfect timing! But got to bed early for a 6 a.m. wake up call for the 10k. That seemed SO late considering how early Teal & I woke up for Princess Half!

First I should backup and say the packet pickup at Luke’s was pretty easy at Luke’s Locker especially since I heeded the advice from email to know my bib number before getting there. I walked up to the nice fireman, told him bib 962 and in under 30 seconds I was off and looking at the running clothes sale. 🙂 Kudos to this race for having firemen help with packet pickup! 🙂

I’d seen multiple things regarding driving directions to the race and I had every intention of following them until I found myself on the exact street it said to avoid. Oh, well! Quickly parked on the opposite side of the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge from where the race started, but ultimately I was glad because I got to walk across it twice in addition to running across it!

After crossing the bridge I found my friends Mary, Cory, Tom and Paige pretty quickly and in no time it seemed like we were off!  Since Teal was on a field trip with her students I just assumed I’d be running this race by myself and I was totally wrong!  Tom and I ended up running pretty much the whole race together.  We chatted about anything and everything!  Talking during races and even during training runs is not something I commonly do, so it was a nice change of pace.  Tom kept me updated periodically on what our pace was.  I knew I’d want to do another 6ish mile run later in the day so I was too concerned with pushing real hard in this race.  Overall the course was fun, lots of awesome volunteers out passing out powerade and water.  I don’t frequent that area of town all that much so it was fun seeing everything around there.

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Tom & I after the race - please enjoy the mess that is my hair!

The results for this race were a little tricky to find or maybe I’m just not that use to having to click on so many links to be taken to a word document containing a link that holds my results?  My chip time was 57:41, 201st female to finish and 661st person to finish overall.  The thing I was most proud of in this race was the kick I gave at the end.  When I stopped my runkeeper at the end it said I had been running at a 7:14 pace! So excited to see the difference my hill and tempo workouts have given me in a short amount of time!  Would also, like to give a shout out to Teal’s workout buddy, Cynthia I saw out there!  Wish I would have seen you after the race!

After the race was over I made sure to take a picture of one of the three murals that Shepherd Fairey recently put up on Singleton Avenue in Dallas.  Tons of people were having their picture taken with the murals so I got just this one with no one else in the picture before I headed out.

On my walk back to the car I took advantage of the time and snapped some more pictures of the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge or as I’ve already heard some referring to it as #largeMarge.  I’m going to hold out and put one of my favorite pictures I took walking across the bridge to the race on Facebook only, so come find it on our Facebook page! And if you haven’t liked us on Facebook yet – why not??

Later that afternoon I headed out for a 6 mile run that I was hoping would include some hills.  I set off on a bit of a new route for me, and to be honest in the beginning I wasn’t completely feeling this run.  As I was nearing the halfway point of my run which also was the point where I was running down my soon to be monster hill to run up, I saw a police officer and contemplated asking him to give me a ride home if I wimped out on the hill.  But let’s be honest – no matter how much I wanted to wimp out I wasn’t going to.  The hill was hard, but once I did it and recovered from it I felt great!  The whole last half of my run was fabulous!  I get more of a high from running when I accomplish something hard out in the course than if it was just completely flat.  Run #2 on Saturday felt like another victory for my tempo and hill workouts!

Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend!  There were so many people out racing and Teal & I are both excited to see your race recaps! 🙂

Three Things Thursday

We’ve never done a Three Things Thursday post before…maybe because we’ve never just had 3 things to tell you, but today we think we do! Here goes –

1. We finally caught up with the times and we gave our little blogy blog here a Facebook page! Feel free to go here and like us! Also feel free to leave us a comment if your blog has a Facebook page and we’ll go like you!  Or just click on the fun little like box over there somewhere ——->

2. We again finally caught up with the times and each joined DailyMile under our own names!  So if you are want to connect with us there we would love it!

3. And lastly, happy holidays to each and every one of you! We are so grateful for the people who have been brought into our lives in 2011! We wish you and your’s a very Happy Holiday season!

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What are you most thankful for this holiday season?

 

Wordless Wednesday No. 9 – One Week Old

[Added 10/13] Jack officially turned 1 week old on Tuesday! His mommy posted this picture on her facebook page.  While we were busy posting this blog yesterday – Mr. Jack was busy getting his first set of professional pictures taken!  If you’ve been keeping up to date with all of our #TeamCindy posts, Jack was having his pictures taken by Love, Me Photography.  This is the same DFW photographer who shot Cynthia’s wedding at Cindy’s hospital.  And as a bonus I added a picture of Jack looking like an pilot –