Breakfast ride!

One of my favorite rides of the week has to be Sunday morning to breakfast. It’s always really quiet because most people are still sleeping or maybe at church and it’s just peaceful.

It was pretty chilly when we left the house, but it was supposed to get warmer. 8 miles later and we hit up Panera Bread for breakfast!

It was nice to relax and chat over coffee. We decided to keep riding for a while and head to Lake George:

I will say that it’s now tourist time. The people on the path. The people! Spread over the path, with dogs that chased us, kids weaving all over the path on bikes. It can be dangerous. John and I got separated by a clot of people and then I saw a young boy topple over from his bike, so I stopped to make sure he was okay. His mom had scooped him and and he was crying, but no blood or anything.

I said to him, “Do you know what this means?”

“What?”

“It means you are a real biker now.” Then he smiled and we knew he was fine. So, I continued on and met John at the lake, who was probably wondering where I got off to. LOL.

Boom.

We hadn’t thought too much about this ride as I didn’t have sunscreen and we didn’t have a snack. It was a long ride without food, so we got a snack at the lake and wandered around.

Fort William Henry fife and drum group.

We headed back home and wound through more people. Ugh! It went from 0 to 60 with people this weekend. We had shed jackets since it was pretty warm.

After a bit, I realized that I was going to burn in the sun, so I had to put my jacket back on to protect my arms. I did not have my travel sunscreen in my bag since I took it out last fall! We really didn’t prepare well LOL!

The marsh:

It really was a gorgeous day.

Home!

Ride stats:

Total miles: 33.8

Average speed: 12.2 mph

Top speed: 26.6 mph

Calories burned: 1010

This ride felt really good. Definitely ready to head down to Saratoga! Not to mention I want to do 46 miles on my birthday in a couple weeks 😀

What’s Blooming!

It’s green, green, green around here! I love it!

These are the lilacs on the neighbor’s bush. The house was vacant for all of last year, so I hacked down the bush because it was so overgrown. It didn’t bloom much this year, but there were some.

One last tulip to show:

This is an Aleppo fringed tulip. The only one that came up.

The burning bush. Good thing I bought the dwarf variety, right?

Needs a haircut this weekend.

The rest of the green, green shade garden:

Closer look at the bleeding hearts:

Nature is just so cool!

Lily of the valley!

Every year I marvel at the awesomeness of this little flower.

Back to the sunny side.

I am pretty excited about my bearded iris this year – I am going to have so many blooms! I have another color that will be coming up as well. I have had the other iris for 3 years, but it hadn’t bloomed and so I moved it last fall and now I have a bloom that is coming!

I did lose a rose bush, though. Surprisingly, it was the knockout rose that is behind these irises. I thought it might make it, but it did not. That was the one plant I thought was tougher than all the rest. I have to replace it, but I will just get one of those cheap $12 knockouts at Lowe’s. I don’t want to put in a really nice rose and then want to take it with when we move.

This weekend is working on the tippy pots and the other containers. Have a good Memorial Weekend!

Just a bit of nothing

I don’t have too much to say. Everything has been the same and busy, busy, busy. At least we seemed to have crossed out of the worst part of the storm with work. We hung on to the account by the skin of our teeth for now. I got so many calls from work that I was ready to dump my phone. Over the course of 7 days (in a row, mind you) I got called a dozen times. Twice on Saturday and twice on Sunday to help out. Apparently I am supposed to work 7 days in a row. 🙄

That’s neither here nor there, though. I can’t change my circumstances right now. John and I are in a holding pattern until the house purchase goes through and we can then make the changes we are looking towards doing. So, while I do complain now – know that I do have plans 😀

Anyway, here are just a few pictures I have taken this week.

At breakfast yesterday – a new artist featured at the coffee shop:

We were trying to figure out what Ganesh has a bowl of in his hands. I didn’t think they were Cap’n Crunch peanut butter balls, but after looking it up, apparently Ganesh has quite the sweet tooth, so maybe that’s it. 😉

‘Tis the season for itchy eyes and sneezing:

That’s all yellow pollen on the car. Ick.

Pixie getting under foot:

Photo a day prompt today is “Free”

A filled out coffee card! This means a free drink of choice. Woo Hoo!

I am thinking tomorrow afternoon taking a break and redeeming this for a latte! We actually have 2 filled out cards, so both John and I can get one. 😀

The dresser project

Here is a little more on the dresser project I am going to do. I have painted this dresser a couple times and this is the current state, which it has been for probably 10 years now? It goes with our current bedroom decor.

The top was done in a textured fleckstone, which maybe shows up better here.

It’s getting a bit dinged up. Anyway, I am wanting a different bedroom color scheme for our new house and that means repainting the dresser. I am loving chalk paint right now, but you know frugal me just cannot stomach shelling out $30 for a quart of paint! (It makes me faint just typing that). So, I researched and found that the component is chalk paint is Calcium Carbonate. The same stuff you take in pill form (food grade) or what you sprinkle in your garden. I found this on Amazon for $5 for 5 pounds and free shipping!

The recipe is 1 part of calcium carbonate to 2 parts of paint. Plus a tablespoon or 2 of water. You just mix the calcium carbonate with water to make it smooth, then add the paint and stir really, really well. It doesn’t matter what finish the latex paint is as all of them turn out the matte finish with the chalk look. The texture of the chalk paint is what is cool. It’s easily sandable, so if you want to distress something it is much easier. It also allows you to do transfers like I did to my great grandmother’s table.

My dresser will have blue drawer fronts (clear blue sky by Valspar) and creamy top and sides (white linen by Valspar). I have my 2 sample pots in the photo above. This is more than enough to do the dresser. Well, I might have to get another White Linen pot since I already used some to paint my table. However, the cost for the 2 paints and calcium carbonate was $11 – which makes this cheap lady pretty happy.

I will be putting new hardware on, which will be birdcage style.

Then the cool part. The top is going to have a transfer on it with one of these 2 designs.

I just haven’t decided yet. You can find all kinds of free graphics like these from the The Graphics Fairy.

I brought that old mirror in to see how it fits with the dresser:

Please ignore Ms. Nosey. The mirror is a little bigger than I thought and I don’t think it will work as a topper, but it might work as a headboard. I was going to paint it the same blue as the drawers and I might do that anyway and figure out what to do with it later.

So, that’s my next project. I have to strip off the fleckstone before painting for a smooth surface, but otherwise, I can just go right over the old paint. That’s the cool part about chalk paint.

Godzilla and biking!

Another weekend flying by. I have not been to a movie in a theater in 2 years (the last Batman). It takes a lot to get me out to the theater and this movie did it. Godzilla! I am a huge Godzilla fan and grew up watching all the monster movies on TV. I loved Godzilla, King King, Rodan, Mothra, Gamera. Yay! Of course, I had to see this with my sis, so we met her, the nieces and my BIL for a Saturday showing.

I tried to get my nieces to look scared and this was the best take:

Good thing they have other talents because they are not thespians…

As a true fan, I have to say the last reboot of Godzilla with ~~Ferris Bueler~~ Matthew Broderick was horrible and disappointing. However – this reboot? Amazing! I loved it! No silly one-liners, excellent special effects. Just very good. I didn’t really care about the family at all – in fact I kept forgetting their names. But who cares because… Godzilla! Highly recommended.

We all went out to lunch and then it was time for John and I to get in a ride. Not going to waste a nice weekend day! Our original plan was to go to the lake and back.

It was pretty breezy and I was feeling fatigued just from a hard week. Work was pretty bad this week and on top of that I haven’t been sleeping well and I think it just took its toll. After 10 miles, I told John to go on to the lake. I still wanted the miles, but not the hills, so we decided to meet back up again a little later. I went back through the streets. Looking off to the golf course:

You can’t bike on the golf course. Probably a good thing 😀

Hometown Glens Falls and our future home when the never ending closing finally happens:

I love the paint job on this building!

I rode for another 10 miles or so and got a text from John that he was headed towards Coopers Cave and froyo! I headed that way and met up with him on the path and it was time for our treat!

I got a Mexican sundae, which is chocolate and peanut butter (under that whipped cream!) on top of vanilla yogurt. That’s probably my favorite thing to get at Coopers.

We actually got chilly eating this as it was much later than we normally are out riding and was starting to cool off.

My patented shot while biking!

All done! Tired, but still a good ride:

I have another project I am working on. I found something interesting up in the attic of the shop.

So, I got to cleaning it up. It’s quite old, actually. I took off the back to make sure there weren’t any buggies in it before bringing it into the house and found a stamp on the mirror from CD Widman, which is a company in Detroit founded in the 1800s! The mirror itself is beveled and has that funny coating on it to make it the mirror (not sure if that makes sense). This piece has been painted, so it isn’t the original finish. It looks pretty good clean:

This is going to become part of my dresser redo project, which I will talk about at some point when I get a chance. This will be getting a new coat of paint and detailed cleaning (there is paint on the mirror).

Sunday was also more family time! It was my dad’s birthday, so we gathered for ice cream cake!

I can’t believe another work week is upon us. I cannot get everything done on the weekends that I want to do! Note to self: buy a lottery ticket this week.

What’s Blooming!

We had a couple of really warm days this week and the garden just popped right up! Some plants I thought were lost poked out of the ground and I was thrilled to see that.

More tulips came up the week – the late ones. These are King’s Blood:

Purple passion:

Maureen and Queen of the Night:

One lone Shirley tulip:

Sadly, a squirrel or something nipped this one right off the day after I took this picture.

Christmas Marvel:

I don’t edit these for color at all. The colors just glow in cloudy weather and really is my favorite weather to take pictures in, either that or early morning.

My bleeding hearts are getting ready to bloom! Likely next week. Love these plants 😀

If anyone wants tall old-fashioned daylilies, let me know – I have a ton here.

The is the amethyst-in-snow centaura:

These are my containers this year. I went all foliage with a sweet potato vine, sun tolerant coleus and persian shield – which I was so happy to find at the garden center.

This will look cool when it fills out (hopefully). You can see the dirt that a squirrel dug out of the container. This is why I can’t have nice things…

News around the ‘net

While I am buried in work, I thought I would share some interesting articles that have crossed my vision this week.

Nutrition survival guide – What you should and shouldn’t listen to about all the diet information out there and how to pick your way through it and not be a diet zombie.

TL,DR? “It’s best to focus on the few, important things that produce the majority of the results and don’t cause you unnecessary stress. Stick to the basics and the details will fall in line with your preferences and lifestyle.“

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This is a good article to make sure you have a good relationship with exercise. Like food, it is easy to have a dysfunctional relationship with exercise, and unfortunately you see this on a lot of blogs. Having a healthy relationship with exercise

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This is an article about how those activity trackers try to record your activity – and what works and doesn’t. What your tracker sees. I love how it shows more activity dipping into a bag of chips than doing biceps curls!

When I wore the GoWear Fit, I had to wear in on my leg when cycling because it just recorded me as sitting if I wore it on my arm.

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Just for fun – it seems the wreck of Columbus’ ship, the Santa Maria, has been found off the coast of Haiti! Following careful description of Columbus’ diary to find the right location, looks like we have a winner! Did they find the Santa Maria?

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And filed under the category of “Just NO” would be cricket flour! Yes, exactly what that says. Just in case you wanted a new way to get in protein, here comes Cricket flour. And wouldn’t you know they also have apple cinnamon cricket flour and red pepper and cilantro flavor. Mmmmm, tasty.

Lifting and bookcase redo

Still plugging away on the Female Body Breakthrough on schedule. I spent most of the time in the open gym today except for a couple exercises.

I really like this room a lot and love that it is open when the crossfit classes aren’t going on. It’s my ‘get rid of stress’ room. Nothing like getting a good sweat on to clear the head. Here was today’s workout:

Exercise	Set/rep/weight Week 1
Prone Cobra	3 sets of 70 second holds
Front Squat	3 sets of 6 with 30# bar
Chinups	3 sets of 6 with assistance
Stiff-legged deadlift	3 sets of 15 with 55# bar
Dumbbell Push Press	3 sets of 15 with 15# DBs
Barbell Split Squat	3 sets of 12 with 45# bar
Split Stance Single-arm cable row	3 sets of 15 each arm at 30#

Then I did this finisher:

20 bodyweight squats
20 alternating lunges
20 bodyweight squats
20 alternating lunges

Tired. LOL. I am a little over halfway done with this stage. I probably won’t increase weights too much for the remainder as it is tough right now.

You know I did my great grandmother’s table on Saturday. I also painted a bookcase using leftover paint we already have. I love those free makeovers!! This is one of those cheapie laminate bookcases, which I think probably everyone has owned at some point – or is it just us??

It’s ugly and we thought about getting rid of it when we move, but we might need it, so I decided to make it look a little better.

It’s sitting on blocks because I painted it right there LOL! I took the shelves out, but didn’t want to drag the whole bookcase out to the garage, so I lifted it up to paint at the bottom. This is coated with poly so hopefully the paint will hold up. If not, it was worth a try!

Next up is my dresser, which I will be transferring a design on as well on a larger scale now that I have practice. 😀

Today’s Photo of the Day prompt is “I spy”.

I spy a bud about to open. Yay! These are my centaurea. Not sure if this will be open by Friday, but I can hope!

Riding and Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Such a nice weekend! Saturday started with rain, but then it got nice and I got so much done! This was the first weekend in many weeks where I didn’t work on at least one of the days. Having 2 days off was a real treat. I got working on some painting projects, including doing my great grandmother’s table!

Before:

I made my own version of chalk paint to paint it in a linen color and did a transfer on it. I can do a tutorial on this if you want. It was easy and came out cool.

I coated it with satin polyurethane for protection and now it will be by my side again as my table during work!

Sunday morning was ride time! This was our first breakfast ride of the year, can you believe it?

This is the Hudson:

This is the husband!

What an amazing sky, right? We stopped at Coffee Planet for breakfast!

After lounging for a while, we continued on our ride. We decided to mark how far it was to bike to Radiance Manor from there. Turns out it is exactly 1 mile! Totally walkable to come downtown as well. We creeped around the property just to make sure it was okay and so I could see what was happening in the back yard.

You know this is killing me.

Want to see something kind of sad? This was written on the back of the house:

I feel bad for the family that had so much trouble here.

Did I mention this house is 95 years old? This is an old milk chute.

There is a similar door on the inside of the house. From the inside, you would put your empty milk bottles inside the compartment and the milkman would be able to get them from the outside and replace with fresh milk. How times have changed.

This waiting is so hard. Ugh! Anyway, we had more riding to do. We took a turn down a side street near the path that we have never been and came upon a treat!

This is Glen Lake. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a place on the water here? No tourists!

Tulips blooming at the Country Club:

Definitely a great day for a ride and we got in over 23 miles.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there! We took out my mom for a nice casual dinner at The Spot.

Very beautiful evening as well.

What’s Blooming!

A really for real What’s Blooming post! I can’t tell you how happy I am to see the blooms and the green lawns and the tiny, tiny buds on the trees. The temps have just gotten to a level where now things are really starting to take off.

Tulips on parade!

I have hyacinths, which look strange this year. This patch of the garden had ice on it for longer than the rest and maybe that stunted them.

I was trying to figure out what looked so funny about the picture to me and I realized the Jim Shore kitty is turned around. That must have happened sometime over the winter underneath the snow.

Pink impression:

Golden parade:

Apricot Dreams. These are the longest lasting of my tulips. These are at least 5 years old.

They have an unsual purple tint underneath the apricot which only shows up on cloudy days:

You can see the butterfly bush in the background there. I thought for sure it was dead. It wakes late, but usually I see signs of life by this time of year. Yesterday I saw the tiniest of buds at the bottom, so maybe all is not lost. It doesn’t look great, but I really don’t want to have to replace that big bush. It’s too big a part of the garden to leave a hole, so I will just hope it grows strong enough.

My shade garden is finally starting to grow. I even cleaned it up!

All 9 Astilbes made it – yay! I think I only lost a couple plants from this horrid winter, so I count myself lucky.

And on orchid watch:

Squeee!! This thing is taking forever LOL! I am so excited to see what color it is.

Finding Radiance

Trying to live a fit life loving food, cycling, gardening and everything in between!

Breakfast ride!

What’s Blooming!

Just a bit of nothing

The dresser project

Godzilla and biking!

What’s Blooming!

News around the ‘net

Lifting and bookcase redo

Riding and Mother’s Day!

What’s Blooming!