Paint & Pour

A friend my book club organized an art event at Paint & Pour (http://www.lexingtonpaintpour.com/) this week.  Not only is this a place where you can do paint nite type of paintings with friends but even better is that they cut out giant shapes such as a pumpkin, anchor, elephant, etc... made out of wood and each person can choose want design they want.  You order a head of time and then the night of the event you can all hang out and paint your own piece. 


There ended up being about 20 of us at the event. We brought wine and food (which makes every event better).  I loved the look and feel of the studio space. It spelled great, was beautiful, played great music, and was overall just a wonderful atmosphere to hang out with your friends and paint in.


Of course if you have some OCD traits (like me) you bring your own brushes, mix your colors (instead of using the colors straight from the bottle) and you end up closing the place (being the last person there) because you really focus on the straight edges being perfect.  I created this huge owl for my door and I love it!


This inspired me to try and host a paint and pour night at my place.  I found a site on Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/TaraMarProducts?ref=l2-shopheader-name) that creates giant wood cut outs so my tentative plan is to invite friends over, have them pick out their design ahead of time and I'll order them. Everyone can bring paints to share and wine/food and we'll have a paint and pour.  Now for the execution....

Run Like A Diva!

I've seen the Diva race series for a while now and thought it looked like a fun race to do. I mean come on you get a tshirt, a pink boa, a pink tutu, a tiara, a giant medal, your picture with a hot fire fighter and champagne! Totally worth running for.  This race series comes to Myrtle Beach annually so back in January when they had a discount going my friend who lives in MB and I convinced each other to sign up for the half marathon Diva race.


Once again this sounded like a good idea until it came down to the training. I was doing really well with training increasing distance and speed, then I got pretty sick with a sinus infection that took forever to feel better. By then I had started a new job with different hours and therefore it took time to readjust my running routine. Needless to say other than running 11 miles once the most I got up to consistently was 8 miles at a decent speed.


So heading into this race I again didn't feel confident of my abilities. I was very worried about the weather being hot and humid as it took place May 6th. Luckily, the weather turned out perfect. We had a cold front come in and day temps only got up to around 72 degrees.


I was super excited about the weather cooperating and the fact that from the beginning of the race I was keeping up with the 9min. pacer.  I discovered the pacer was actually going faster than 9min. miles and I did well keeping up until about mile 8. I had to start lagging behind a bit otherwise I knew I wasn't going to finish without having to walk.  So I slowed to my pace and did a lot of positive self talk.

The end result was amazing! I ended up finishing in under 2 hours at a time of 1:58:33.  I place 81 out of 1,250 half marathon runners.  I hadn't done that well in a race since my first half marathon. This was my 5th.  The race path itself wasn't all that exciting but it was fun to see the outfits and enjoy a beautiful day.

before

after