Pure Awesome

Let me tell you about the new workout I've been trying lately...

PURE BARRE!

Yes, that's right.  I have officially jumped on the bandwagon.

After reading this article in Southern Living and this blog post, seeing the "grand opening" billboard in town, and hearing my friend rave about it, I felt like I was being hit over the head with this new workout craze (and you probably will now too thanks to this post. sorry).

I simply had to try it.

So I hopped on over to the website to get some more info.

It turns out the Pure Barre studio in my area is offering a new client special~1 month unlimited classes for $100.  Now I don't know about y'all, but to me, that is not cheap!  But then I looked at the other options and they were as follows:

1 month unlimited (for non-new members) at $225
10 classes at $200
15 classes at $270
20 classes at $340
5 classes at $105
single class at $23

The new client special is the best deal by far as long as you plan to go to more than five classes.

So I splurged and spent the $100.

Am I glad I did?

Hells to the Yeah!

I seriously love this class.  The closest thing I've done that I can compare it to is Pilates (which I also love) but it doesn't just work your core, it works your entire body using nothing more than your own body weight.  And it's HARD!  Not in a "I'm not sure what I'm doing" kinda way, but in a "my whole body is shaking and my muscles are burning" kinda way.  After each class my arms, back, thighs, butt, and abs have been so sore.  There's also a lot of stretching mixed in between the strength sets which is a nice change of pace.  But my favorite thing about the class is the music.  It's fun and upbeat and they BLARE it.

I've been to four classes so far and I swear I can see a difference (is that possible?).  Probably not, but I definitely feel great.
Will I keep going after my month is up?

Not sure.  I really love the class, but I'm just not sure I can justify paying such high prices.  I might have to try the DVDs~anyone know anything about them~good? bad?

I guess I will have to reevaluate once my month is up on March 17th.  I'll keep you posted.

But for now, I'm totally enjoying Pure Barre.  If you've been wondering what all the hubbub is about, I highly recommend you try it.

And let me know what you think!

Diaper Cake

Last weekend Paul and I went to a baby shower-well I don't know if you could really call it a baby shower because the baby was born 7 weeks ago, so it was more like a meet and greet, haha-for our friends Robert and Oriana and their new baby, Avery James.

The parents asked for diapers, so I thought it would be fun to make them a diaper cake.

BUT...I didn't know how to make one.

So I googled it and found a few different websites with step-by-step directions.  Good old google never lets me down.  Seriously, what did people do before google??

Anyway, there are a lot of different ways to do it, and as this was my first attempt-I'm certainly no expert, but I thought I would share how I made mine. 

I started by unfolding the diapers and rolling them up from front to back.  After each diaper was rolled, I secured it with a rubber band (you could also use curling ribbon).  FYI, I bought a package of 70 diapers and ended up using all but three. 

Then I placed 7 diapers around an 8-oz baby bottle and put a rubber band around the whole ring to secure it.  I chose to use a bottle, but you could use baby powder, lotion, shampoo, etc.  You just want something that is sturdy enough to be the foundation for the cake.

Next I made a second ring of diapers (13 I think?) by placing them around the first ring and securing it with a rubber band.  

And then I made a third ring of diapers around the second ring, secured it with a thick ribbon instead of a rubber band, and placed it on a piece of foam board so that I could transport it later.  I held the ribbon together with a dot of hot glue, but you could also tie it in a knot or a bow.
This is the first tier of the cake.  Yay!

The second tier of the cake is the same as the first except there are two rings of diapers instead of three.  I placed the first ring of diapers around the rest of the bottle that was sticking up from tier 1.

Moving on to the third tier-somehow I forgot to get a picture of this :(

I rolled up a little monkey outfit just like I did with the diapers.  Then I placed a ring of 7 diapers around it, secured it with a ribbon, and placed the whole thing on top of the other two tiers.

And now for the fun part-decorating!  You can pretty much attach anything to it with a straight pin.  I went with a blue & brown monkey theme.  I was pretty tame with the decorating, but I've seen pictures of  some that are COVERED in little baby items, ribbons, stickers, etc.  It's all about personal preference.

Here's my finished product..

   

Not too bad considering it was my first one.  And I'm thinking the more I make, the better (and more creative, fingers crossed) I'll get.

This really was a fun and easy project.  Plus, it was a huge hit at the shower! 

And, because I think it's so adorable...

My hub holding sweet little AJ.  He's a natural, don't you think?  ;)



Birthday Weekend

I love birthdays and mine is no exception (that's right, I'm not ashamed to admit it).  I just love any reason to celebrate.  Plus, it's fun to have a special day that's all for you.  Although in my case, it was more like three days.  My birthday was on Sunday, but we started celebrating on Friday :)  I'm so spoiled.

On Friday I had a hankerin' for a giant plate of carbs so we went to dinner at Pasta Jay's with my mom, dad, and brother.  Pasta Jay's is one of my favorite restaurants in Boulder because it's got a fun and cozy atmosphere and REALLY good food.  The owner is so sweet too, and he bought our table a round of drinks.  We had fun, but in the midst of stuffing my face and catching up with my family, I forgot to take pictures.  Oops.

Saturday night we went out on Pearl Street with Lindsey, Bert and Joe.

@ Tahona.

French Mojitos at The West End Tavern.  French Mojitos=freshly muddled strawberry, mint and lime with lavender simple syrup, grey goose vodka and champagne.  Favorite. drink. ever.

Dance party at 'Round Midnight.  Check out those moves haha.  It's not a good sign of things to come when the bar is closing and you're scrambling to get one last shot of tequila.

You know how people always ask you on your birthday if you feel any older?  Well Sunday morning I woke up feeling older-like 40 years older than my actual 27 year old self-due to my drinking habits from the night before.  Ouch. 

We had brunch at Lucile's..

And Paul surprised me with these..

Chocolate Bacon cupcakes from Tee & Cakes. YUM!

Sunday afternoon we went to Ben and Rachel's to watch the Superbowl, which then progressed into Wii and card playing until 2:00 am.

I woke up for work on Monday feeling even worse than I did on Sunday ha.  But it was so worth it because the whole weekend was a blast.  I feel so blessed to have wonderful friends and family who love me and who I LOVE spending time with.  Thanks for making my birthday so special!

MEXICO!

Two and a half years ago, on our wedding night, Paul's cousins told us how much fun they had on their honeymoon in the Caribbean (we were leaving for ours the next day) and how they wanted to plan another vacation.  "Wouldn't it be so fun if we all went together?" we said.

Well, last week it finally came true!  Paul and I took a little trip to Mexico-Riviera Maya to be exact-with Paul's cousins, Michael and Katie, and their spouses, Jill and Shawn.  We had SO much fun! 

We stayed at an adults only, all inclusive resort called the Excellence Riviera Cancun.  The resort was gorgeous-nice rooms (all suites), beautiful winding pools all over the property, lush green landscaping, and a beach with powdered sugar sand and clear blue water.  Here are some pics of the grounds.

The resort had everything we needed-we literally layed by the beach and pools, ate, and DRANK all day, every day.  The girls also went to the spa one afternoon which was fantastic!  But before you go hating me, I will say that the weather was not perfect.  We had three days of sun and two days of cold, cloudy weather :( 

However, we managed to make the most of what we got!

These iguanas were everywhere-totally freaked me out!

We did leave the resort one day to do a snorkeling excursion.  We got on a catamaran that took us to the reef (the reef off the coast of Cancun is the second largest in the world!).  We saw a barracuda, sting ray, eel, lion fish, sea cucumber and lots of other bright fishies.  I didn't take any pictures of the snorkeling part, so I snagged these from Jill-Thanks Jill!

After snorkeling, the guides hooked this giant sail/swing thing up to the back of the boat.  You sat on the swing part and the wind would catch the sail and fly you up in the sky and then you could jump off.  I didn't do it because I was too cold, but it looked fun.

The one area of the resort that was lacking was the service.  Don't get me wrong, it wasn't terrible by any means, but we all agreed that it could have been better.  Our biggest problem, being a group of six, was getting a table for dinner each night.  We usually had to wait 1.5 to 2 hours, so we would go to one of the bars and have a few cocktails while we waited.

After dinner we showed off our sweet dance moves at the discoteca.

It was seriously such a fun time!  I can't believe that after two years of planning/thinking/getting excited about the trip it's already over.  It went by way too fast and it was really hard to come home, but I'm so glad that it all worked out and we got to get away on such a fabulous vacation. 


I'm ready to start planning the next one...who's with me???


Until then, I'll just have to dream about this....