Fitness Friday: Revolt Fitness Week 3

May 17, 2013 by 3 Comments

Well, week 3 of Revolt is almost over and I have to tell you that I am feeling great! I feel stronger, my clothes are looser, and I still am loving the workouts. After a little stomach bug prevented me from working out on Monday, I hopped right back into the saddle and continued my work outs. I have to admit that the workouts are my favorite part of this lifestyle program. The food is really good – but I feel so great all day after I work out.

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I get up at 4:45 in the morning to work out. I am one of those people who will only work out if it is in the morning, first thing. Most of the time I am a bit grumpy (my husband is lucky he sleeps through this) and I plod down the stairs asking myself why I got up so early. But with Revolt a funny thing happens. I turn on my computer and go through the exercises with Nicole’s videos and within minutes I am sweating – and smiling. I can honestly say that the videos are what make this program for me. You can give me exercise plans up the wazoo and I wouldn’t do them. You could send me to an exercise class and I would stop going after a week. But the videos are the in between happy ground for me. I don’t have to guess how to do anything, but I don’t have to worry about embarrassing myself in front of a bunch of strangers while I figure things out.

Are you interested in Revolt? Check out their website (I am an affiliate) and let me know if you have any questions!

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Refinishing the Drawers

May 16, 2013 by 8 Comments

As I mentioned in this post we recently received two sets of drawers from my late great uncle and aunts house. Both Fergal and I love the fact that we have something that has been passed down to us and are excited that they fit so perfectly in our guest room. That being said, the drawers are a bit older with some normal ware and tare so I decided to give them a bit of a facelift in the form of new drawer pulls and a coat of wood stain to darken them slightly.

Drawers

Above is what the original drawers look like. They are such great quality, and super sturdy. I wasn’t crazy about the drawer pulls, I felt like they didn’t match the rest of the decor in my house. I also wanted to darken them slightly to give them a brand new look and feel.

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The first step was to take all the drawers out and remove all of the drawer pulls. Then it was time to scrub down the drawers. Particularly hard to scrub was the marks left by the drawer pulls, but I didn’t need anything more than some elbow grease and a damp cloth.

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These are the items that I needed for the actual project. There is wood filler, sand paper, stain, and the drawer pulls.

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The reason I needed wood filler was because roughly half of the drawers had drawer pulls that were not standard size. In order to get all of the same type of drawer pull (which I really wanted) it was necessary to drill new holes and make the old holes disappear. I would definitely recommend this type of wood filler – it worked great. Once I had filled all of the holes that needed filling, Fergal came and helped me drill the new holes.

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Once the drawers all had their new holes it was time to sand down the surface, clean it off, and then stain the furniture. The whole process of staining took about half and hour and I only did one very thin coat. You can see the before and after really clearly in the picture above. Once everything was stained it was time to let the wood dry – I left it alone for about 24 hours.

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The last step was adding the new drawer pulls and then putting the drawers back in place. I am so excited with how the drawers turned out – they look amazing. I did have trouble capturing the true color of the drawers, so I added in the fuzzy picture of the tall and narrow set because that was the one that best reflected the colors of the drawers.

Have you ever stained anything?

 

 

Filed Under: Bedroom, DIY, Furniture Tagged With: , , ,

Thank you Lowes for Great Customer Service!

May 15, 2013 by 2 Comments

drawer pull

 

Since writing this post, I have been waiting to refinish the drawers until I could find affordable drawer pulls that would match our houses décor better than the original ones. While checking Lowes.com for the millionth time I finally found some drawer pulls that I loved and that were affordable at about $2 each (they were on sale).
Not wanting to miss out on them I ordered them online and selected to pick them up at my local Lowes. I have done this several times and never had a problem, so I didn’t think much of it. That night when we got to Lowes and I went to pick up my order, it quickly became apparent that the pulls were missing from my order (I had also bought some stain to give the drawers some new shine).
A very helpful guy went to search for the pulls, but came back with knobs instead that were nothing like the drawer pulls I had purchased. We went to the hardware aisle with the employee and it soon because clear that the drawer pulls I had bought were not there. I was disappointed – I had wanted to start on the project the next morning – but the employee seemed just as upset as I was so I didn’t get mad or upset with him (After all it wasn’t his fault.) He left to check one more place, and I started to think of other solutions- the main one being holding off until I found more drawer pulls like I liked and could afford.
When the employe came back he apologized and said that he did not have the drawer pulls. But, since we had been so patient and understanding, he said that we could pick out ANY drawer pulls there and they would charge us the price we had paid for the original pulls. I was surprised and excited about this, and he left us to go looking through the drawer pulls.
We ended up not picking an expensive drawer pull for two reasons. The first being that we didn’t want to take advantage of this guy’s offer and the second because we happened to like one of the less expensive drawer pulls. When we went to check out and the employee and his manager looked at the drawer pulls we got they seemed impressed/surprised that we hadn’t taken advantage. So, the manger took off another dollar to thank us for not taking advantage of their offer. Meaning we got the 26 pulls for a dollar a piece!
We both left the store feeling really great, and I think that the customer service at Lowes is just awesome and I wanted to share!

Pictures of the updated drawers (with a tutorial) tomorrow!

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Fitness Friday: Revolt Now Fitness Week 2 (aka the week of the dreaded Thrusters)

May 10, 2013 by 6 Comments

I am in week 2 of my 6 week Revolt Now Fitness challenge and still loving it. My weight loss has slowed, but I can tell that I am getting stronger. Climbing the 4 flights of stairs to my office every day is becoming a breeze and I am barley out of breath after I hurry up the stairs. This weeks work outs really kicked my butt – especially this exercise called “Thrusters”.  They were part of our Cardio circuit that we do 3 times a week on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday (tomorrow will be the last one!) and I can honestly say on Monday I thought I was going to collapse right there after doing the thrusters during the second and third circuits.

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The screen shots above are what a thruster looks like (this is Nichole Huntsman in one of her daily videos). Basically your are “thrusting” your legs up towards your arms and then back (and then repeat). You do sets of these as part of the circuits and they are no walk in the park — and this is the “easy” thruster — there are harder ones for the more advanced students.

Yesterday when I did the Thrusters they were a little easier, which I took to be a good sign. Don’t get me wrong – I still struggled through them – but I didn’t seem to struggle quite as much. I love getting up in the morning and doing these workouts – they are such a great and empowering way to start off my day.

Interested in joining revolt? Leave a comment below and we can chat about revolt in more depth and about starting the next “revolt” on June 3rd. It will change your outlook on eating and exercising for sure!

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Dose of Inspiration

May 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment

dream and do

As someone who dreams a lot this is a great message. So many times it is easy to give up and say that something is just a dream, but if you believe in yourself and push yourself then you can do it! I have two things that I am dreaming about at the moment – learning how to code (HTML) and editing my novel (so it can maybe be published someday). Not to stop dreaming and start doing!

What are you dreaming about? Have you already started to work to make your dreams reality?

Filed Under: Wednesdays With Walt Tagged With: , ,
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