Running Hiatus

The foot issues that have plagued me for the last 18 months or so have gotten better since the worst period, but they're far from gone. I've been to a podiatrist several times, tried resting the foot, gotten new shoes and orthotics, and nothing has cured me. I don't have numbness and pain every time I run, but it occurs often enough that I know something isn't quite right.

So when my local running store advertised a free injury prevention clinic with a chiropractor, I decided to give it a try. I'd never tried chiropracty before but I know many people who have had good luck with it, so why not?

I went to the clinic last week and the first thing the doctor did was look at my shoes and shake his head. I should've known better than to walk in complaining about foot problems wearing shoes like these:

Despite the shoes (and more head shaking on his part), he seemed optimistic that he could help me. So I went to his office a couple days later for further consultation and discussion of a treatment plan. He's going to be trying something called Active Release Technique (or ART) to "free the nerves from entrapment" and he'll give me an insert for my non-running shoes to help re-develop the arch in my toes. (My foot arch is high and healthy. The toes have lost their arch as a result of wearing heels. I know, I know - this should be enough to conince me not to wear heels, but I can't give them up!)

I'm excited to envision a day when I won't have any pain in my toes/foot when I run, but I'm a little bummed that I have to take a break from running for 4-6 weeks. I can still work out at the gym - elliptical, bike, stair master, swimming - but no running. Of course, as soon as the doctor told me that, I've had the running ITCH like you wouldn't believe! But I'm getting back into biking and enjoying a different challenge.

Here's hoping the break will do me good...

Quick & Easy DIY

A couple months ago a friend sent me this beautiful thank you card:

I loved the paper it was made from and the flowered print was gorgeous. I especially loved the subtle gold accents. It also matches the color scheme of my spare room (fabric I used for a valance and accents below) so I decided to keep it for some then-unknown project.

With some time on my hands this weekend, I decided I would finally do something with the card. I discovered I had a small unpainted frame from IKEA and the card was the perfect fit! So I painted the frame with a magenta base coat:

(Side note - I didn't realize until after I took the photo that the headline in this newspaper/magazine - that I got at some travel trade show - had the headline "Creative Iceland." It seems oddly fitting!)

Once the pink dried, I put a watery gold wash on. (I just mixed gold acrylic paint with water.) After putting a thin coat of the gold, I wiped it down with an old towel. The result was a pink frame with just a hint of glad on top:

Once the paint was dry, I put the picture in the frame. (I had to trim the card slightly to fit. To be sure I got the correct size, I used the cardboard frame insert as my guide. I matched it up against the card and used my paper cutter to cut the excess.) I think it's perfect!

Here's what it looks like on the bookshelf:

I'm so pleased with how it turned out! It adds a little somthing to the book shelf, and every time I look at it I will think of my friend Annie who sent me the card. I also love that the project took me less than an hour!

Comfort Food

My schedule has been crazy busy lately. Not a lot of time to run, craft, or cook! I worked all weekend and was tired when I got home but decided I needed a home cooked meal - and comfort food to boot! So I made some super tasty vegan mac & 'cheese':

This is from the Happy Herbivore cookbook and so, so good!

I served it with locally-grown, steamed asparagus:

Yum!

(And I have leftovers for my lunches this week!)

Bathroom Redo - Part 2

So once I got the old vanity pulled out, new drywall installed, room repainted, new trim in place, and replacement tiles stuck down, I was so excited for the easy part of the remodel! I had already looked at a number of vanities online and had a good idea of what I wanted - something dark with a white sink and possibly a new mirror to match the vanity.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the old vanity was a now non-standard size so I knew I would need to purchase something that would be slightly smaller (less wide) than the little 'alcove' it would sit in. It would also need to be less deep since the old vanity stuck out into the door frame - which had to be cut around the vanity. (I don't know if that makes any sense, but once the old vanity was removed, I had to replace a piece of the door frame since there was a big chunk of the woodwork missing.)

I went to Home Depot--basically, my own personal Cheers during this project--and found a beautiful vanity that was a perfect fit. The color was cognac - a medium-dark brown, a super warm color. It was the right length and width (18" - this will be important later!). It had drawers on the right side and an open cabinet on the left which would be perfect for what I needed to store in the cabinet. I bought a white sink top to go with it and was so excited to bring it home! I got help loading it in my car but when I returned home, I had to haul it in by myself.  Challenging, yes, especially since the hatchback on my SUV doesn't stay open when it's cold out so I was trying to pull the vanity out with one hand while holding the tailgate up with the other. Finally got it in the house, into the (tiny) bathroom and was IN LOVE with the color. I went to push the vanity up against the wall...and realized that because of where the plumbing was, the vanity would not work. The cabinet side had an open back but the drawer side had a backing which interfered with the pipes. I thought about using the router attachment on my Dremel to cut away the back but (thankfully before I made a cut) realized it wasn't going to work.

Fighting back tears, I got the vanity back in the box and back in my car (again struggling with the hatch) and made my way back to HD. I returned it without incident and went looking for a vanity that was just cabinet - no drawers - with an entirely open back. No luck at that store so I tried the other HD in town. I found another vanity I really liked but it was 20" deep. I knew from measuring it would physically fit even though it wasn't exactly the size I'd had in mind. So I got help (once again) loading it in my car, once again wrestled it into my house, and once again pushed it into the powder room...only to discover that it was WAY.TOO.BIG. Just 2" bigger than the first one but it may as well have been a foot too big. It was ridiculous. And so this vanity, too, went back.

At this point I was running out of weekend but set off for a neighboring city which has both a Lowe's and a HD. I checked out both places but didn't see anything I loved or that would work given all the resitrictions I now knew I had (no more than 18" deep, 24" wide, with an open back). So I came home and cleaned up as best I could so that my entire downstairs wasn't torn apart for another week.

The next weekend I decided to head north of where I live to try yet another Home Depot. A quick check there revealed no matches. So I headed even further north for another Lowe's--where, at last, I found the perfect vanity! And it was on sale! With a matching mirror! And I got 10% off because the manager felt bad that I had to wait to get help! I was thrilled. I knew I had just the right vanity + sink and couldn't wait to get it home.

As I pushed the vanity into place, I held my breath. Would it really work? YES! I had a winner! Then I unwrapped the granite sink top...only to find that it was cracked right down the middle. I lugged the INCREDIBLY HEAVY top back to Lowe's 40 minutes north of where I live, waited 35 minutes to get a new one and finally returned home and put the new sink top and mirror in place. It looked beautiful!

I had a few more problems hooking the plumbing up, but the rest of the project was a breeze compared to the vanity nigntmare. I replaced the frames in the bathroom and added a couple other things and the bathroom looks fabulous! I'm so proud of it (and don't think anyone but me can really tell that the sink top is not perfectly centered on the vanity).

Bathroom Redo - Part 1

Two years ago, I redid my master bathroom. I put in a new sink and vanity, took out the old vinyl flooring, put down ceramic tile, and installed new baseboards and trim. It was a fun project and it turned out great. There were a few surprises, but overall, it went pretty much as planned so ever since I finished it, I've been wanting to redo my powder room downstairs. I figured this would be a snap - tiny room and the only real upgrade was to the vanity and sink. (I initially thought about redoing the floors, but they were in good shape, I liked the color, and wasn't up for removing and then replacing all the woodwork which a new floor would require.)  Here's the bathroom before the remodel:

 

Not hideous by any stretch, but the vanity really bugged me because it was the same as my kitchen cabinets. I had the same situation in my master bath when I moved in. Basically, the builder used the same stuff in the kitchen and both baths. Nice 1980s formica with wood trim. The vanity and sink were in good shape but they were definitely due for an upgrade. And I hated the dirt-cheap faucet. Seriously, it looked like something from a cheap motel.

I sort of started the project on a whim one Friday night. I hadn't planned the project completely but went into the bathroom and started to remove the backsplash and the woodwork that surrounded the vanity. Then one thing led to another and suddenly I was here:



So a few surprises...

1) No tile under the vanity - just bare concrete
2) A trough/borderline hole behind the old backsplash
3) Unpainted drywall behind the vanity
4) Mold leftover from an old leak (I checked to be sure the leak wasn't current and, thankfully, it wasn't)

Already I knew this would be far more work than I'd anticipated but I still couldn't know the full extent.

The first thing I had to do was cut out the old moldy drywall and replace it. I'd never done this before but I'd taped and spackled before so I understood the process. Of course, I didn't have the right tools to cut drywall but I was able to sweet talk a guy at Home Depot into cutting me the relatively small pieces I needed. (This may actually be a service HD offers - I'm not sure. All I know is I told the guy my sob story and he cut away.)

Once I got the drywall in place and everything had dried, I patched up the other holes, spackled, sanded, primed, and - at long last - painted the new area + about 6" all around. I also took the opportunity to touch up a few other places since I had the painting supplies out.

Last of the patching...


I was so excited Saturday night when I finished the last of the patching, sanding, and painting. Sunday morning I would put in the new trim (which was already purchased and cut to size) and then I'd go vanity shopping. Installing it would be cake so I felt like the hardest part - and the surprises - were behind me.

Not so. I walked into the bathroom Sunday morning and discovered that the new paint was a noticeably different hue from the old paint. Even though it was the same color from the same can of paint. I guess the paint had darkened over the last 5+ years because the new paint was definitely lighter. So I set about repainting the entire bathroom, and then touching up the trim and ceiling where I got green paint on white.

Once I repainted everything and it was dry, I began installing the new trim. It was time consuming but relatively painless - once I recut the pieces, of course. I had measured before going out to buy the trim. I don't have a saw other than a hack saw and figured it would be easier to cut the trim to the right size at HD since they have a whole workbench/measuring tape/saw station set up. Somehow I mismeasured pretty significantly, though, and had to break out the ol' hacksaw at home to trim the trim. What a nightmare.

Trim installed - waiting for putty to dry


This picture also shows the ace job I did on finding suitable tile to go over the bare concrete. Since my new vanity was going to be slightly smaller than the (irregularly sized) old one, I knew I had to put something underneath so you wouldn't see bare concrete. The floor in the powder room is original to the house (1984) and there was no way I'd find an exact match. But this vinyl stick-on tile worked out pretty well.

Once I got all the woodwork painted, I was excited to bring home the vanity! But in keeping with the theme of this project, it wasn't quite as simple as I'd imagined...

[Stay tuned for part 2!]

Lazy Dinner

I got home from TRX at the gym tonight at about 8:15, hungry, and completely uninterested in cooking. I really need to grocery shop so my options were pretty limited but I ended up with a yummy (if not necessarily the most nutritionally sound) dinner.

I discovered I had a bunch of small purple potatoes in my crisper drawer. (Totally forgot that I'd bought them!) They're about the size of red potatoes but they're purple! I decided to cut 2 of them up and bake them into purple potato fries. I spread them out on a cookie sheet that I'd sprayed with olive oil, and then sprinkled salt, pepper, and garlic powder on them. I baked them for about 20 minutes at 350. I knew I couldn't have just the potatoes so I added some grape tomatoes to my plate and there was dinner:

I should have had a protein with this but really didn't have anything suitable and I figure I could have done a lot worse! The potatoes had a sweet flavor and the tomatoes were a great complement. I will definitely buy the little purple guys again if I see them at Whole Foods. I'd also probably add in a chipotle sausage (vegan, of course). I also buy these at Whole Foods; they're near the eggs and butter and tofu and they're made by Field Roast. Super good!

Pantry Re-do (featuring Chalkboards!)

As part of Declutter and Reorganize 2012, I tackled my pantry last week. I got rid of a few things that were suspect (hello, basil-flavored oil from 2008!) but mostly just organized the shelves and made things easier to find and retrieve. I used some plastic bins that I had once used for craft storage but were currently unused, and even incorporated a few baskets. Here's the new and improved pantry:

I'm thrilled with the results, but my favorite thing is on the top shelf, in the middle. I cleaned out some old jars, ran them through the dishwasher, and then painted chalkboard paint on the front and lids. Then I took several of the bulk foods I had that were in plastic bags (and hard to organize), poured them into the jars, labeled them and - voila - organized and totally adorable storage!

I'm looking forward to adding a few more jars once I have some more empties.

I also turned an old wine bottle into a cool dish soap dispenser.  I put a wine pourer in the top (which works better than a shot pourer because the mouth is wider and the soap flows more quickly) and painted a chalkboard label on the front:

I love the idea of repurposing things that would otherwise end up in the recycling bin, and the addition of the chalkboard panels makes the jars not only cute but also really flexible since you can change the label at any time.