Wedding Celebration and Backyard DIY Projects

 We have been busy here in the Lamperski household since getting back from our wedding/honeymoon, a little over a month ago.  It was pretty hard for me to get back into the swing of things once we arrived back home.  Normally I don't have too hard of a time returning from vacataion, but this time I did.  I think it was just sort of setting in that it was all over, the long 15 months of being engaged and the wedding had already come and gone.  It was wonderful, but I did miss being in Negril, missed our wedding and missed being around everyone that was there with us. 

Some of our good friends here in Charlotte organized and threw a wedding celebration party for us when we returned.  They put a lot of planning into the event and it was nice to get together with so many friends that weren't able to come with us to Jamaica, but wanted to celebrate with us upon our arrival back to Charlotte.  We are very grateful to have such good friends in our lives!  Here are some pictures of the fun we had!

sending us off on our cab ride back home

Since we have gotten back the weather has turned to summer, and we have been doing a lot of work to our backyard.  When we moved in to the house there was not too much going on in our backyard.  There were a couple old putt putt greens back there, and a ton of leaves!  With all the trees, the yard keeps us busy picking up sticks that fall and raking up leaves.  We took apart the putt putts, as we had no use for them, and planted flowers and bushes.  We decided to make a path to our backyard where we dug out and built a fire pit area. 

We were going to wait on making a path, but one day while we were back there working we just decided to start making one with some firewood logs we had.  We dug out path lines with a shovel and began laying the logs as a frame.  Then we raked up the path and laid down some pavers.  We then filled in the rest of the path with pea pebbles.  It looked so good, we decided to fill in the area around the fire pit with the pea pebbles as well.  We also used two tree stumps for seats, and made a large bench for another seating area.  We had an old table top we used and Chris built legs for it to make the bench.  I sewed together a cushion for the top, as well as painted the table green.  It is very comfy!

We LOVE how the path and fire pit area turned out.  We hung globe lights from the trees around the area and added some paper lanters and it looks like a beach party back there!  We bring out wireless speakers to add music and it is the perfect setting out there!

We also picked up a nice big 11' umbrella for our patio, which gives us nice shade from the sun and allows us to sit out back when it is raining, which is has been doing a lot of lately!

We love our backyard now, it is so peaceful and fun, we hope to do some entertaining this summer!

I Love Productive Weekends!

Chris paiting our bedroom!

This past weekend was fun and productive! We started off by running in the Charlotte 10 Miler down in Ballantyne. I won a free entry to this race from Theoden’s (running) facebook page. It worked out well for a running workout Chris had planned for me. I am running the Wrightsville Beach half marathon on March 17th, so just a few weeks left to train. I have a goal, just not sure I am going to be ready for this goal in a few weeks time.

For this race, Chris had a plan for me to run a two mile warm up, then run the first two miles of the race at an 8 minute pace and get progressively faster with each mile. Then a mile cool down to finish. I was a little worried about a hill I heard about around mile 8, almost 6 miles of the race was ran on the greenway, so you think it’s going to be a flat, fast race.

That morning we woke up before 6am to heavy rain. We debated even driving down to the race in the cold rain. I decided since I was awake I might as well go, even if I don’t want to run, I could at least cheer others on.

As soon as we got down there and parked, I realized I forgot my race bib at home! Luckily, they were very kind at registration and let me have a new bib, since they were so nice about this, I decided I had to at least run. So, we went back to the car, sat in there to warm up and headed to the start line just in time for the race to start. No warm up for us, and also decided to just use this as a training run, no workout.

Chris ran with me, and we didn’t end up following the workout as planned, but still did get a good workout. Although, that hill before mile 9 was not pretty. I thought the two previous hills into the neighborhood were the hills people were referring to, but when I saw the crazy hill before mile 9, I was not very happy. I started running, but decided I was going to walk. I gave up. Chris tried to encourage me to keep running; saying the last mile is all downhill to the finish, but I did not believe him. I figured he was saying anything to get me not to walk. I did not like this hill, you go up a steep hill, then turn and go up another steep hill. As soon as we made the next turn, it was all downhill to the finish. I do wish I had previewed the course and knew about these last two miles before the race, because then I would have beeen mentally prepared.  My 9th mile was 8:44 pace, yowza! Then my last mile was 7:15, it was such a nice last mile to the finish line.

Overall I finished 14th female and 2nd in my age group, with an average pace of 7:46. Overall it was fun, and I would do this one again.

When we got home, we got to work in the master bedroom. We recently bought furniture for our bedroom, so we had to paint the room in preparation for the delivery on Friday. We chose a light brown color, not exactly what I had in mind, but I think it will look good with the furniture.

painting over the green walls





the finished room, waiting for furniture

won't be empty for long

We are also having my treadmill that is currently at my parent’s house in NY brought down in a few weeks. So, we had to make room in the other rooms for this. We re-arranged our guest bedroom and also our workout/movie room. Soon we will have a treadmill along with our bike trainer in here. Chris hung up a projection screen and mounted a projector on the opposite wall so we can watch movies while working out or relaxing.

workout/movie room

sitting down to watch a movie Saturday night

Sunday, Chris was able to clean out the gutters, finally. It seems like it is always raining down here so we were glad to get this finally taken care of on such a nice day. We also got a bike ride in through Davidson earlier in the day. It felt like a spring day and it was nice to be outside enjoying the weather!

Chris's Dad helped holding and moving the ladder

Just 40 more days until our wedding!!!

Productive Weekend!

Everyday and weekend has been a blur lately with all our housework we have had going on. We had another fun-filled weekend of productivity! Luckily, I got my long run of 18 miles out of the way on Thursday morning. Chris and I got up at 5am and he ran 7 miles with me before my friends Amy and Lisa met me for a ten mile run. Then Amy and I continued on for one mile. The weather was perfect and the company could not be beat!

Friday night Chris and I tried to just relax a bit, we had a couple beers at the house and got in our newly emptied, cleaned and filled up-hot tub! It is so nice and peaceful in our backyard. It is so quiet and the backyard lights give it just the right touch. Check out the tranquility...

We got up early on Saturday morning for the Isabella Santos Foundation's 5k for Kid's Cancer.
Chris and I have been raising money for the ISF, we will be running in memory is Isabella, a local girl who passed away recently from a childhood cancer, neuroblastoma. You can check out our fundraising page here. Thank you to everyone who has given, each and every donation means so much, and is so greatly appreciated! Chris won the 5k and set the course record with a time of 16:27. I placed 2nd in my age group with a time of 23:00. I could not tell you if this is a personal best for me, since I very rarely run in 5k's. It was a great event, it was fun seeing everyone from TrySports out there as well! Chris won a free class party at Fly Wheel Charlotte. Stay tuned for the date he chooses, we will use this as another way to raise money for the ISF!

Now, onto our house projects. We have been back and forth to our old townhome, and have almost totally gotten everything out, and cleaned up the place. One more trip. I finally have all my clothes here and can't wait to start organizing my new closet. Ladies, this closet is phenomenol, I hope I can leave some room for Chris...

Today, Sunday, Chris's mom came over to help us paint (it is neverending!) She got to work in our master bathroom. This is a very difficult room to paint, there is also a separate toilet room in the bathroom. The finished product is great, we picked out the color selection from seeing a picture of one of the rooms in Rob and Joy Dietz's house. We love it! Chris also replaced the old gold lighting with a new silver one, picked at the Habitat Restore for just $5 (lightbulbs included!) We are slowing changing all of the gold in the house to silver. Chris hung Levolor wooden plantation blinds above the tub as well.

I had the pleasure of painting the dining room ceiling. This was no fun. I do not think I will ever paint a ceiling again. I did not originally plan on this, but since there was so much blue paint on the ceiling, I wanted to touch it up. I went to Lowes and tried matching the ceiling color up with a new paint, but it was too difficult to match the right color. So, I just decided to paint it all. Phew. I will not do that again, but now it is done.

Last, but not least, one of the new joys of home ownership is trying to figure out why a slug keeps appearing in our dishwasher. I have never heard of this happening to anyone, but it is gross. Twice in three days this has now happened. Yesterday, I ran my dishwasher twice with bleach. Then I ran it again with dishwasher detergent. This morning, no slug. I then put a bowl of beer in the bottom, since slugs are attracted to beer, for some reason. I keep checking, and no slugs have been back. Tonight will be the true test.

I will keep this posted with our new projects, there are many more on our list. Two more bedrooms to paint, more boxes to unpack than we can count, pictures to hang, cleaning to be done, the list goes on!

Loving our new house and neighborhood though, I think we found our perfect spot :)

Welcome to Birkdale!

I have so much information to update on here, I'm not sure where to start.

Chris and I closed on our first home togeter on September 5th. Since then we have been on a whirlwind of moving, house projects, marathon training, work, etc. This is such a difficult time to try and train for our marathon with everything else going on, but we're doing it as best we can. I want to post pics of our current projects we have 'almost' completed. Everything is still a work in progress.

Since we have closed, we have painted our kitchen, dining room, sunroom, and Chris's grandmother was kind enough to paint our office. Here are some before and after pictures. I normally wouldn't want to post these until everything was done and set up. As you can see, there is nothing on the walls yet, there are still boxes around the house, ladders, half of window treatments done, but I figure that if I wait to get everything done, I may not be posting until next year! :)

Dining room before we painted and changed the chandelier, and after...

kitchen before we painted and put new floors in-and a brand new fridge...thanks to my parents for the early wedding present!! (still many boxes and projects around.)

living room before new flooring, and after (with our tv mounted and new blinds)

the sunroom before painting (we still have to finish hanging curtains and bringing in furniture) and after...

I don't have a before picture of the office so I am going to hold off on posting that. We still have much work to do around the house, as you can see. Just wanted to get this posted since many of you have asked to see pictures, especially my family in NY.

More to come...