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!

Wounded Warrior

Something crazy has been going on in Texas this summer and more specifically in Dallas as I can’t really speak for the rest of the state. 🙂  It’s called rain.

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I was in top 500 or something like that so I also got a hat with my registration and every year they give you a pair of socks in addition to your race shirt.

I woke up race morning and this race really isn’t that far from my house though I was running behind and my fellow NTX Runners who were also running Wounded Warrior had planned a meet up for a pre-race picture.  Just a few minutes behind I was making my way over to packet pickup and juust made it under the awning of the building when all of the water from the sky began to pour down. All of it. Luckily, I’d found some of my NTX people so I wasn’t just standing their by myself since Teal wasn’t able to run this race with me due to high school graduation where she works.  We got a couple updates from a human being that the race was delayed 15 minutes and then another 15 minutes as there was just a massive crowd gathered together trying to stay dry.

For this race they have two distances, a half and a 10K, and per usual I was sticking with the 10K which started after the half did.  It’s too darn hot to be doing a half in June, amiright?  Except for this rainy race day.  I also began tweeting with some other local runners who were hearing the delay was even longer than what I had heard.  Eventually I knew I had 5-10 minutes before my race was to begin so I made my way to the start line in the rain.  I’d already made the executive decision that I was not going to even begin to mess with my phone and Runkeeper for this race.  The life of my phone was more important than music and having exact info on my race.

It rained for half if not more of my race.  They actually had to do a detour on one part of the race that runs on the Campion Trail because it wasn’t just kind of flooded over it was REEEEALLY flooded over.  As in if I ran through that I think the water would have been up to my hips, but I’m also short if you have noticed from all the pictures where I stand next to Teal. 🙂

Throughout the race I didn’t really know how I was doing and was just excited every time I passed a mile marker.  With less than a mile to go I spotted some friends on the course, Lisa & Lucy (who I still had not meet IRL until that moment).  That was  nice little boost at the end.  And then the race was over.  I was drenched and had no clue how I did, but was excited to have my 10K bling! 🙂

 

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I absolutely love this race!  It’s for an awesome cause, it’s close to home and I get a medal for running a 10K!  I didn’t get to stick around too long after the race as some friends of Brent’s were in town and I need to get to brunch. Priorities, people!  But I did get to see quite a few people at the end which was very fun!

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Julie and me

 

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Jesse & me – love his shirt!

I was pleasantly surprised to find out later that day that my naked run at Wounded Warrior was only 15 seconds behind my 10K PR!  I finished in 54:46 which was 9th in my age group.  Not too shabby!

Ironman Texas Volunteering

Two months ago today we were in  Houston for a weekend of volunteering, frunners, cheering and spectating greatness!  We made the four hour trek from Houston the night before with Beth’s sister, Kate.

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None of us left work early and then we decided to all sit down to eat dinner instead of making Teal have to eat and drive at the same time, so we were really setting ourselves up for a late arrival into Houston.  By the time our heads hit the pillow that night we knew that alarm clock was right around the corner. 🙁

But it was so worth it.  We met up with the DFW Crew that was volunteering and the rest of our volunteer group for wetsuit peeling (but let’s call it what it really is wetsuit stripping).  All of us volunteers watched the elites start the swim and then made our way over to where we’d be stripping athletes. 🙂  The worst part of the day was being present at the swim finish when people didn’t complete it in time and were stripped of their tag and done for the day.  Talk about heartbreaking!

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The crew with Mike Reilly

Once our stripping duties were over we got second breakfast/super early lunch, whatever you want to call it, before making our way over to the canal area to find the perfect spot to hangout and later cheer for the athletes.  We were there before the elites had started their marathon portion and man was it amazing to see all of them.  Where we were spectating enabled us to see the athletes 3 times on the run part.

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oh, race signs!

Or really since they ran along the other side of the canal you could say we saw runners 6 times…

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We had a lot of time out on this portion of the race and some time to kill, so we ate a lot of goldfish (shocking), maybe had a couple adult beverages and enjoyed the company of our frunners. 🙂

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A part from the people our group knew racing that day Teal had a friend Derek out there that she also got to cheer for – if only this picture of Derek wasn’t blurry!

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Thanks to the one company that had people passing out cowbells for spectators and a couple of the awesome ladies with us we had tons of stuff to cheer with and/or entertain us.

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We were both so excited and pumped to get to cheer on the power couple of Heidi & Brian. 🙂 These two worked their butts off for months preparing for this day, their hard work showed and paid off!

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Heidi minutes away from being called an Ironman!

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Brian minutes away from being called an Ironman!

The accomplishment of all of the athletes we encountered that day was inspiring!  You won’t catch us doing an Ironman, but man what a feat and such a neat thing for us to be a part of as volunteers and cheerleaders!

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A none blurry picture of Team Leub after they rocked their first Ironman!  Congrats to you both….two months later! You two impress us with your dedication, strength and accomplishment!

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Apparently this is what you look like after covering 140.6 miles each!

Goals: They’re Making a Come Back

It turns out when you do goals for a whole year then decide to take a break and consider revamping them you end up just taking an all out break.  So goals are back!  Yes we are halfway through this month, so we are starting small and we had each already been working towards these goals for this month anyway so now it’s in blog form.  Let’s see if we can remember how this works:

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1. Clean out the garage.  This thing is a mess and has just become a catch all for whatever crap I don’t want to look at int he house.  We have stuff everywhere and half of it is not even needed.  I have attempted twice to have a garage sale but because I work every Saturday or if I am off we are usually racing, I dont have time for that.  So my goal this month is to get the garage clean. And not just clean, an organized clean so that it won’t continually get messy.  Then I think I will have to walk my husband through what I did because he will just start putting stuff wherever. 🙂  

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2. Create a headboard for the guest bedroom and fix the weird paint job.  When my brother lived with me forever ago he painted the guest room navy blue and got the paint on the ceiling.  I would like to fix that and then add a headboard to the new bed.  I went cheap (sorry guests) and just bought a bed and the lower frame, so it needs something to spice it up.  If you follow Beth’s sister, Kate, she recently re-did the room Beth used to live in and created a headboard.  I literally want to copy her and do the same thing!!

Beth –

1. We have a couple of blank walls in our house that I know what I want to do with them but I haven’t really moved forward in the execution of the plan in my head.  One will be a long collage wall so even acquiring 50% of what I want for that wall will be an accomplishment for this month!  I also keep hearing over and over in my head my husband saying, are you going to put any of our wedding pictures up in the house??

2. Lose 5 pounds.  Yay, for bringing back the weight loss goals!! 🙂

Additionally, we have a couple of joint goals for ourselves as well:

1. Get caught up!  We’ve been working on this one pretty hard lately – can you tell?? 😉

2. Today marks the third time we’ve redone a half marathon training plan for ourselves and this time we are going to actually DO the runs!

See you on the grading side of goals! 🙂  Happy Monday!

The Vineyard Run 5K

The Vineyard Run basically popped up in our email, most likely because we have run our fair share of Mellew sponsored races. Teal really wanted to run this race because the Vineyard run is set at Delaney Vineyard where Teal got married!

Plus it offers a few more bonus points such as a free wine tasting and live band.  Although we didn’t actually enjoy any wine while we were there. But it’s at a winery and since that is somewhat rare in our parts it’s a nice change of scenery!  We should also mention that it was actually a little chilly that day! Hello cold day in May in Texas, what?!

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Brian you are all over this blog now!

We headed out together as normal and perhaps our need to be at races super early is dwindling because we really almost missed this one. Oopsies! We hadn’t picked up our bibs and the cut off was like 30 minutes before the race. We thought we left in time but due to the fact that one of us updated our phone to the stupid new operating system that brought with it a horrible update to google maps, and its lame, and the fact that the area around the DFW airport is the biggest cluster of construction, we found ourselves driving in circles trying to get to the stinking race. We finally figured it out and ended up getting in the back way and then running to packet pick up. Apparently that is a way to force us in to a pre-race warm-up?

We made it and got to hang with our fellow NTX Runner Brian for a few minutes before the race started. He was out there volunteering for the race! We might add that he was wearing his 100 miler sweatshirt. Show off 😉

Waiting for the race to start

Waiting for the race to start

SOOO really we ran a 5k. It was flat, it had 2 kind of annoying hills but nothing we couldn’t handle and then it was over. Also we might add that it was in no way our fastest or our slowest race, so we can call that a win right!? How do you like that for a recap?? Recapping 3 miles is much easier than 13.

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Fairview Half Marathon

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This year has been a little scattered with our running as you might have noticed. We are seriously behind on recapping races and really surprisingly enough we are currently only registered for a 5K and one half marathon that seems like forever away. When we get asked what we have done this year we seriously have to think about it. We both keep forgetting the fact that we have run 2 half marathons this year. We told you about Sugarland already so here is our “this is what we remember” recap from the Fairview Half. Get excited!

As you may know The Fairview Half is put on by the awesome Libby Jones who runs The Active Joe, and she is also the creator of our running group NTX Runners!  She is responsible for the New Year’s Double, Showdown Half, and her newest race, The Fairview Half. She gives awesome perks to repeat runners of her races and also those that volunteer. We were able to get in super early and for super cheap because we have both run and volunteered for one of her races!

This race is actually a very pretty race. It runs through some very fancy neighborhoods in Fairview, through what feels like the middle of the country, and it starts and ends at the Fairview Town hall. Our only disclaimer for this race is it is HILLY. Not as hilly as the ZOOMA race we ran last year (we don’t think anything is that bad hill-wise) but this one is a somewhat distant second. Really that is about all we remember! Great scenery, hills, and the BEST PART is tons of our fellow running friends were at this race. So we will just go ahead and skip to the fun part…Post race pics of all the fun people we got to see and some awesome race bling photography!

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We might add, we don’t have a picture of The Unlikely Runners but we saw them out there volunteering the crap out of this race! And also big props to Ninja for making it out to one of the steepest hills to cheer us on to the top! You were a great site on that hill around the mile 9-ish marker!

As soon as the race was over we booked it out of there to pick up Beth’s sister and then make a 4+ hour drive to San Antonio to see our friend Rebekah and hang out for the weekend! We clearly like to jam pack as much as possible into a race weekend.