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!

Welp, March is Over So Time for Our Report Card & April Goals

Y’all, how is it already April?! Good Lord, time flies!  Well, here is how we measured up for March’s report card! Hope we aren’t grounded!

Teal

1. Paint Bedroom and guest room for real this time. Spring break should make this possible! A+: Done! I did this all by myself from 8-1am one day during spring break! So glad that is done. Every room in my house is now painted! Wahoo.

2. Survive my 2 week break from running and cardio by not cheating. I am going to give my body a true rest. I think it is overworked and is partially to blame for the plateau of weight-loss, my injury and that it is not fully gone, and from being tired from having 2 jobs and grad school. The break will be hard because rest is really not part of my vocabulary but it’s a needed part of life. Must get better.

A: I survived this and technically started cardio back one day early. I am happy to say that I have no foot pain, well minus our run from Saturday, but it feels great! I think my body feels better, but is ready to get back into training. Running has not been what I want but I am glad I did this. I really only ran 2 times last month outside of the 3 races we did. So it really was a good well needed break!

 

3. Yoga 12 times this month. This will be how I survive the “rest” from running/cardio. Low impact, restorative, and a good way to focus on flexibility.

C: I only went 6 times. I think my break went to my head because I really didn’t want to do anything. I was, however able to earn new Yoga bling for my 50th class this month.

 

4.  Finish Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes F: Not only did I not finish this book I A) can’t find it and B) I read the Hunger Games instead! Whoops.

 

Beth

1.  Run a sub 2:00 hour half marathon at Rock ‘n’ Roll Dallas! A+: I did it!  In case you need the proof here it is 🙂

2. Lose 5 pounds. Seriously, y’all!! I need to get SERIOUS about take some pounds off for my wedding! F: Pretty sure I gained a pound. Womp! Womp!

3. Get a caterer for the wedding.  You thought this one went away didn’t you?  Well, I was all on track, got one approved by my venue and haven’t heard back from him after our initial phone call about my homes and dreams of wedding food.  I’ve chosen to take that as a sign and look elsewhere just need to setup tastings! B: Brent and I are going to a tasting Thursday and Saturday of this week! Never thought it would take THIS LONG to get to that stage of getting a caterer! Holy geez!

4.  Attend 3 to 4 yoga classes a week. You’re probably like whaa?? You yoga all the time!  Well, technically I don’t totally have yoga goals like I did for all of 2011 and I took 2 weeks off when I hit my 200 and let me tell you my body knew it!  So I want to see how I do with 3-4 times a week for a month where this blog holds me accountable! B+: I did this every week with the exception of the last week of April! So pretty darn proud of myself!

5. Update my handwriting/calligraphy website.  It needs a MAJOR change starting with a new theme that allows for a real blog inside the website.  Change is a coming! D: It still looks the same.  Part of this I need my sister’s help on and we thought she’d uploaded a new theme for my website but it didn’t go through.  AND she got to work on self-publishing her first ever book, Creative Chaos, so she got a little tied up which I don’t blame her!

As far as hills went in March I did a hill workout in 3 out of the 4 weeks of March.  And I’m totally behind on my two books a month goal and only got through Mile Makers by Kristin Armstrong in March.

 And now for April’s goals….

Teal:

1. Successfully complete the BluePrint Cleanse.  This will start Monday April 2nd and end Tuesday April 10th.

2. Complete one hill and one speed training per week, in place of regular runs or cardio.

3. I have one paper left for Grad School that is technically not due until the middle of May but I want to finish it and not procrastinate. Also I would like to finish up with all of my hours before the end of the month so I can order, submit, and file everything early to be ready for graduation!

4. Earn my 75th class yoga band.

Beth:

1. Please don’t hate me, but I’m going for lose 5lbs again.  Third time is a charm right?  I plan on doing the Advocare 10 day cleanse again this month and take a two week supply of the Advocare MNS Max 3, so all of that alone should guarantee I lose more than 5lbs we’ll just have to see how I do keeping it off the rest of the month! 🙂

2. Save the Dates – have them printed, addressed (myself) and sent off to wedding guests before this month is over!

3. Stadium workouts once a week.  This week sometime I should be meeting Johnny to do a stadium workout the way he wants me to do them and should that happen I would like to complete them once a week!

4. Prepare food for each week on Sunday nights this month.  I’ll have to do this for at least the 10 day cleanse, but to help me get serious with my food and losing weight this has to be done every week!

So time for us to get busy!  What do you have in store for the month of April? Personal goals you are trying to accomplish, running goals or both?

Runner Stubbornness

I am pretty sure I am not alone when I say I am stubborn in terms of working out in some sort of pain. I do it basically every time. Some days are worse than others, but I have very few where something doesn’t hurt in a weird way. I basically have gotten used to it. I have been to the doctor a bazillion times, each time for them to basically say the same thing, “Well, if it hurts, don’t do it.” If I followed that rule I would be out of shape. I hate admitting something hurts; I would rather just be tough about it. I have terrible knees that grind and pop and have deterioration of cartilage much more than someone my age should have and arthritis in both. The knee doctor said my IT band was too tight and that he should not be able to see it and he can. This is partially to blame for why my knee doesn’t stay in socket. Recently I have some pain across my lower stomach from running so many miles and being so tight. See… Stubborn – I don’t really stop doing anything.

 

The problem is I think most of the aforementioned problems have resulted in this current one that I can’t make go away. One week before White Rock I ran a super easy 6.2 mile run, symbolic, yea probably, and I was nervous about the race so I wanted to run something. My foot was sore but not in pain. I ran 3 miles on the treadmill that Tuesday and have essentially been in foot pain ever since. The Thursday before the race I was seriously wondering if I could run it, I told Beth that day that it was bothering me but I really didn’t say much. Saying it out loud would be admitting that something was more seriously wrong.

 

I ran the marathon, obviously, but have not run since. We are basically two weeks out from the marathon and I haven’t so much as run a ¼ mile. Something is wrong. My friend Cynthia had foot pain so bad she ended up having surgery. She went to so many doctors and eventually ended up in surgery that really didn’t completely work. She has been lecturing me since I told her my foot hurt. I think it is time to not be stubborn because now I am just scared. Everything else has seemed manageable, but not this.

 

I ran across a blog post from The Trail Jogger the other day and I am going to share with you kind of what it says BUT shockingly enough I have to STOP BEING STUBBORN. You can read the full post here but here is the condensed version.

 

1.      Stop Running: easier said than done, when it stops hurting start running with low mileage.

2.      Ice: This bores me and I hate it but isn’t that rule number one when something is hurt?

3.      Roll it: Use a tennis ball or golf ball and role the arch

4.      Stretch: especially the calf muscles – apparently all of that stuff is connected

5.      Hang your feet off the end of the bed when you sleep:– this is the easiest one! I’m 5’10”- apparently it helps in the morning when it hurts the worst

6.      Support it:– Wear shoes all the time (this one is hard for me. I HATE shoes!)

 

As far as everything else goes- I am foam rolling everything, stretching and going to yoga to strengthen and stretch, and using the “Stick” whenever I can.  Beth has had on and off hip flexor pain that she says has been so much better since yoga, so I am tagging along in that. We both attend Sunstone Yoga.

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Here are some pics of the recovery process! This really is progress for me in terms of not ignoring something!

icing at home

rolling at work

Thank you to Emily for passing along the Ozarka bottle tip!

 

Yesterday we showed you our December running plan – I have essentially done none of it. This makes me SO nervous because I don’t want to lose endurance! That crap is hard to build. I hope to be able to run the New Year’s Double. My heart and mind say run the race- “How cool is this race, and the medal and the people,” but my body is like- “Really Teal, Why do you hate me?” I am torn and nervous. Essentially I know I will make it!  I ran 26 miles on it already. I know it will work for 26 more especially split into 2 days (see the crazy rationalization) but how long do I want it to hurt, and how do you really stop being stubborn?  

 Beth hasn’t exactly been following the plan either.  She keeps herself pretty busy too and now that the goal of a new unknown distance isn’t looming over her head she’s been enjoying some down time.  She’s still pretty much making it to yoga, Johnny’s or the gym every day with a rest day or two thrown in the mix. 

I can pretty much guarantee that you will see BOTH of us at the race! I’ll run regardless, even if it is slow and terrible, BUT perhaps admitting stubbornness is the first step to solving it?

Do you have any additional advice on treating Plantar Facsiitis?