KC Corporate Challenge Kick-Off

My company's trailer.  Karl really wanted Matt to get in the picture, but he ran and hid so he wouldn't have to be in it.  I covered for him....

This is one of the machines we sell if you ever wonder what I do for a living.  Pretty un-glamourous, but I like my job.  Because our company is so small, we teamed up with a couple others for the corporate challenge. No, I didn't come up with 'Pain Train', but I made that sign! Being the only female at the company, most anything crafty is left to me.


Grandma's company was down there too so we pretty much hanged with them



It was cold and windy and Charlie was in 100% fuss mode.  It was neat to see the tents and people all, but I think we were all happy to leave.  Charlie is going through what I hope is a phase right now.  Whine, whine, whine...temper, temper, temper but how can you not love that face?

Eating with Grandma

Grandma giving Charlie cookies....I see you!

Dinner with Carly



Carly is a friend of mine from Lawrence.  Not from college days, from when I moved back to Lawrence in my mid-20's for a few years.  I lived in this big house with five dirty, stinky, fun-as-heck boys and she was dating one of them.  We've been friends from the first day we met.  We used to get ca-razy together.   Ahhh....good times




Carly moved to San Fransisco, then to Portland, then back to San Fransisco and finally moved back to be closer to her family




I have LOVED having her back.  We both have a weakness for raja and felafel and steal away often to gorge ourselves on it.  Here we are knee deep in Mexican (Mi Ranchito- the best Mexican in KC) 



This was Charlie after we left. This was sitting at a stop sign at the end of her street. Is that bad that I saw he was crying, thought it was so cute that I whipped out my camera? Charlie and Carly are best good buds.

Holy Strawberry on Steroids!

The whole carton is like this!

This can not be natural.....

The Anti-McMuffin

I have a terrible secret. I have a huge weakness for Egg McMuffins from McDonald's. I could eat them literally every day. At only 300 calories, they are one of the least caloric offenders on the McDonald's menu, but they are full of fillers, hydrogenated this and artificial that, it's just a bad deal.  Plus, how do you not get a hash brown with it? Even though I skip the ham on it (meat from fast food places freaks me out), it's bad news. I like eating eggs in the morning because they keep me the full and can get me through until lunch. 



I bought these at my local box store.  Man, these are handy to have around.   Bought them for my breakfast sandwiches and have used them every day on other things



My assembly line.  Yes, that is American cheese, which is kind of a weird cheese, but there is not a better cheese with eggs. 

I started making these with regular English muffins, whole eggs, butter and cheese, but once I realized that I could eat these every day, I knew I had to change them up. I couldn't lose the cheese, so I changed to whole wheat English muffins, egg whites, and no butter. They are still very good but whoever says there is no difference between whole eggs and egg whites is bonkers. Now I take these to work every day. I can't eat for about an hour after I wake up, so when I get into work, I pop them into the toaster oven for a half hour or so on 400 degrees. If I'm not ready to eat, I just turn the timer on for another 20 minutes. You can't really over cook or mess these up.



Flipping delicious.  I could give or take the ham slice, but it's a good, low calorie protien booster

Nutrition Info

McDonalds McMuffin: 300 calories, 12 grams fat, 18 grams protien

add a hasbrown: 450 calories, 21 grams fat for both

See here for the never-ending fillers and ingredients that are in McDonald's Egg McMuffin

Anti-McMuffin: 231 calories 8 grams of fat, 17 grams protien

Plus, peice of mind because you use your own ingredients. 

Nascar, a whisky tango Kentucky Derby

I got a phone call at work from our Sprint rep offering us tickets to the Nascar race. Sprint is based in KC and a huge sponsor out at the race track. The track was built in 2001 and I have never been out there. I thought it might be fun.  We got hospitality passes and so we got to go down to the pits and everything. I literally know nothing about Nascar. I thought it might be different, at least fun to people watch. It was so much more fun than I imagined it would be. We had a blast and literally didn't spend a single dollar.   I know there are a ton of videos on this post, but I promise, most are less than 30 seconds and give you a feel of being there.



Trying to get into the park.  All the parking is free but took forever to actually get in.




Walking up to the park.  It was a pretty cold and very windy, but I guess that's better than 110 degrees.  People tailgate and there is a huge camping area.  People come down and tailgate for a week for the race.  It was fun seeing all the grills and tents.




We got in and went to find the Sprint tent.  It's in the 'Hospitality Village' which you need a separate ticket to get in.  They had food and beer and a raffle.  We got Sprint backpacks, hats and little Hot Wheels.  This was us getting ready for the tour.  You go down and walk in a tunnel that goes under the track and it brings you up in the middle of the field.  We filled our bellies with BBQ from the Sprint tent and drank a few beers (at 10:30 in the morning!)




In the center, headed to look at the pits



This is what reminded my of being at the Derby, everyone hangs out on the grass. Kenny Wayne Shepherd was there- I love him!  Just needed my hat and mint julep.  A baseball cap and a can of beer would probably be more appropriate.

Kenny Wayne! I was scared the music was going to be horrible, all ACDC and Kenny Chesny, but actually, the music was good all day. In fact, I don't think I heard a single country song at all.


Walking on the track.  People write on the white line- I guess it's 'a thing'  Kind of a cool tradition


People clearing the grass and the race getting ready! 

Up in the stands in our seats- you can see all the people filing off the grass.  Another cool thing?  You can bring your own beer! Another way we didn't spend any money. 




This was the pit crews warming up, this made me laugh



This father and son cracked me up- I wonder who they are rooting for?


This was the beginning, it was really exciting. They drive around and around and around in back of the pace car and all of a sudden, the pace car ducks away and they wave the flag and the race starts and everyone is cheering. It was SO fun!

Pamm Harkin has gone for years and she told me to pick a car, that it would make it more fun.  I picked the Target car. 

A.) I'm a good Minnesota Girl

B.) The driver's name was Juan Pablo Montoya, I mean really, how can you not root for someone with a name like that?

My car ended up getting 12th.  I wanted to jump up every time he passed a car but no one else seemed to be doing that, so I restrained myself.  I got pretty into it



Father and son again, with their yellow scanner ear things- I was obviously a little obsessed with them


this is the tunnel under the track, you can hear the cars above you on the track


We went down to the pits during the race and got to see a live pit stop- although you can't really see anything, it's unbelievable how fast they get them back out.




We watched the end of the game from hospitality village- we were so close that when the cars drove by, it blew Matt's hat off.  That's the tan one, looks like someone else lost their hat.  An usher was nice enough to go and get it for us.


This is the one that blew off the hat- they had just come off the caution so they are all together which is more fun


vroom vroom vroom!  SO flipping loud.  My head rang for hours and I had ear plugs in




There is my Target car!  Go Juan Pablo!  The race is 267 laps. Laps 1-50, super exciting. Laps 51-250, eh, kinda boring. Laps 250-267, I was so excited for the end. It was all exciting and then the race just ended. It was kind of confusing. I looked at Matt. 'Yes, Mollie, that was the end' I don't know if I was expecting them to run through a ribbon at the end like a marathon or fireworks or what but it was kind of anti-climactic. Especially with my Juan Pablo in 12th.  But 12th out of 43 isn't too bad!



Ethan turns 12!

Hamming it up for Grandpa

He wanted a Lego cake like Charlie's.
Again, it looked nothing like a Lego, more like an ice cream sundae or a castle. 
I tried.... 

Ethan and his friend Scott are obsessed with Nerf guns- they play 'Top Shot"

Ethan is growing into quite the young man.  He's not the little 6 year old that fell asleep on his dad's lap at the T-Bones game anymore!  He has braces and leg hair....puberty, here we come!

Ethan is a dear, sweet boy.  Sensitive, caring and innocent, he is such fun to have around.  He is a huge help to me around the house and an excellent big brother (and little brother for that matter, although B finds him to be a pest).  I have loved watching him grow and can't wait to see the man he will become.

Bathroom Reno

We will be tackling the upstairs bathroom soon. We have one of those bathrooms that were standard in suburban sprawl mid-century ranches. They have a full bath, but are about the size of a half bath in new homes. But we make it work. Matt has some ideas for adding storage into the wall (he's handy like that) but the number one priority is a new bath. As you can see in the picture below, we have one of these tubs that needs to be completely re-grouted and even then, there is damage that can never be repaired. I scrub the tiles with a mixture of baking soda, vinegar and a hard bristled brush and there is still black in the grout. It's the shower that can never be fully cleaned. And my NUMBER ONE most hated domestic duty is cleaning the shower.

So as much as I would love something like this....

We will be putting in a plastic insert tub- something like this

Reasons:

#1 they are easy to clean, it's all one piece so no little crevices

#2 in a house like ours, it's a good investment.  We'd out price our home if did crazy tiling.  Anyone who is going to buy our home some day is going to want something like this

#3 they are easy to clean

We'll have to rip out some dry wall to get it in and that means repainting.  I saw this below and was inspired to stencil.  It may not exactly cohesively blend with a plastic insert tub, but I can buy a funky shower curtain to cover it.  Plus, nothing 'cohesively blends' in my house anyway, so why start now? Janette  would cringe at the lack of design basic in my house 

I moved into this house right before we were married and the first thing we discovered was that the toilet was leaking, and had been leaking for a long time. Matt had to rip out the floor.  Like the entire floor (you could see into the basement) and replace it. We stuck down some stick-em tiles and called it good. We got married and got pregnant right away. Almost three years later, we have yet to replace the trim, or the stick em tiles so our bathroom has been 'under construction' for a looong time. We both decided that it is a project we are willing to tackle now. It was pretty much inconceivable before this. We're going to re-tile the entire bathroom (not a huge job) using the same tiles we pick for the floors, up the walls. It will be a long process of many weekends I'm sure.  We haven't even started on it, but I figure if I put it here, we have to start.  What would my two readers think???

Exhibit A - notice the faux rustic tile stick-em flooring.  Don't you just feel like you are in Italy?

Exhibit B - notice the whole in the back of the tub.  When the dogs are bad, you can yell at them in the basement from there- handy!

Matt always says 'I can't believe this isn't bothering you.' It's weird, but I have tuned it out for so long, it really doesn't bother me like it should.  However, it is time to fix it. 

Here is another groovier example

Stencil Tips:

Getting a crisp edge definitely is about not over loading your tool and not working with a heavy hand. The point is to not drag your tool from the open space over the edge, if the edge is lifted even the slightest bit it will catch the paint, lay back down, and create a rough edge. Practice on a painted board to get the feel of the right amount of paint on your tool and how light or heavy handed you should go.

These are tools often used for painting a stencil:

First you want to spray the back of your stencil with stencil adhesive, I use a spray glue but be careful if you do as it can be too sticky and leave a glue residue.

Stencil brush — dab into a little paint or glaze, swirl a lot of it off onto toweling, apply by swirling onto stencil with a medium hand, working from the stencil edge into the cut space.

Cosmetic sponge — dab into paint, dab off on toweling, dab onto cut out area working your way to the edges.

Roller Sponge — roll into paint, roll off on toweling, roll without much pressure over cut space of stencil, rolling in different directions. Do not press hard, it will squeeze out of roller and go under stencil. I also like to use a worn out smallish brush especially if you have a tight or narrow stencil. Apply some paint, swirl off onto toweling a bit and then brush from the stencil edge into the cut open space, this gives a little bit of a cross hatch when looked at up close rather than a mottled look that the swirling in the stencil cut will give you. You can also stipple into the cut out space with a flat bottom stencil brush but this is more time consuming.


Karen said that she bought the stencil paper and paint at Hobby Lobby. Retro Renovation

Source

Sources on tile and tub
Blue Tile
Rainbow Tile
Insert Tub

Old Phone

Matt found an old phone and Chrarlie loves it!  With the way phones look today, I wasn't even sure if he was going to know what it was, but he picked it up and started talking right into it