Tuesday, December 30, 2014

My moms 50th birthday!!

Today my mom turned 50 and luckily she was still in town so we got to celebrate with her!
We went to one of my favorite restaurants House Of Tricks for dinner and the food was incredible, as usual.
After dinner, we were supposed to go play laser tag- but because of the holidays and the 'holiday schedule' they weren't open. :(
So we headed back to my moms house and had ice cream cake.
After cake, we all took turns doing the splits- surprisingly 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' can get lower than I can- but my niece was the only one who was actually able to do them. (In her dance class, when everyone gets their splits- they get to have an ice cream party!)
I am so lucky to have the best mom in the entire world- she really is one of my best friends and I don't know what I would do without her. We have definitely had our share of wild adventures that still make me laugh, and she's always there to help me with all my last minute projects. LOVE YOU MOM!!
When is your birthday? 

What are your plans for NYE? 

Friday, December 26, 2014

Christmas 2014

Just like last year, we had everyone over for dinner at our house on Christmas Eve. 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' did an AMAZING prime rib roast with a ton of sides- it was all incredible! He also did his traditional Filipino food like short ribs, fried rice, and meatballs. Everyone was so, so good!! (Of course I don't have any pictures. :(

And I finally finished our pajamas ON Christmas Eve- talk about extreme procrastination!!
They said "Son of a Nut Cracker" 
To continue with the procrastination, we finished wrapping some gifts! (I know!! I really am going to work on getting better at this next year!!)

We slept in until 10am on Christmas- it was amazing! We opened gifts at our house and headed to my sisters around 11:30 for brunch and to do gifts with my family. It was so much fun!
This apparently was the 'kid' table, as all the adults/parents are missing. ;)
 I had really been wanting to get a video camera for all of our upcoming trips (especially New Zealand!) and 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter totally surprised me and got me one! I absolutely LOVE it!! And on top of that his dad gave us a GoPro!! 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' has been having a blast playing with it. I'm so excited to be able to video (and GoPro) all of our upcoming adventures!!
Merry Christmas Everyone!! 

What is your favorite holiday tradition? 

Monday, December 15, 2014

National Cupcake Day 2014!!

You all know today is one of my favorite days of the year! And with the Cupcake ATM launch last week, this really is the most wonderful time of year! :)
I was looking forward to getting cupcakes all day, and I think the excitement helped me run my fastest 5k today at gym on a treadmill.
(I walked for 2 minutes to warm up and it was .10 miles)
'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' gave me a gift card for FOUR free cupcakes and I was finally able to put it to good use! ;)
I went to the same cupcake shop I always go to, and just like years before-- no celebration for this glorious holiday! I was shocked! I told them they really needed to step up their game! ;)
I picked out 4 of the cutest cupcakes and headed home. All of the flavors were so, SO delicious!!
Great photo right? 
Did you celebrate 'National Cupcake Day' today? 

What's your favorite time of year? 

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Beauty and the Beast Off Broadway!

After the Superbowl 4.k Race, I headed to the gym for my long swim and after that, came home and started getting ready for our 'road-trip' date! We were headed down to Tucson (100 miles away) to have dinner and watch Broadway's 'Beauty and The Beast'. I have been SO excited for this for weeks and was ecstatic that it was finally here!

Since the show started at 8:00pm, we left around 4:30 to make our 6:00 dinner reservations. The sunset on the drive down there was amazing! 
'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' looked up a bunch of nice restaurants in Tucson and we both agreed on Feast- plus it ended up working out perfectly, because it was about 3 miles from the theater.


OH. MY. GOSH! Everything about this restaurant was perfect! The atmosphere, the menu, the food-- seriously everything! The only bummer is that we were running out of time and couldn't get dessert. <<Insert SUPER sad face!>>

We quickly headed over to the theater at UofA, picked up our tickets, and headed inside to our seats. Our seats were great- second row in the center. I was hoping to be able to see the orchestra, like we could at Lion King in New York, but there was a wall up and we couldn't.

The show was SO good! I loved every second of it! The talent of everyone involved is truly incredible. It was longer than Lion King, but the time flew by. It was really, really well done. The Candlestick and Clock were definitely my favorite!!

Once the show was over, we decided to head back home- even though it was 11:30pm. (We originally were going to get a hotel, but wanted to head home and be able to get in a bike ride on Sunday morning, and that probably wouldn't have happened if we spent the day in Tucson.) We stopped for gas and while I was pumping gas, 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' went inside for soda to keep me awake and came out with ice cream cones since we didn't get to have dessert at Feast. He really is the sweetest guy ever.

We finally made it home around 1:30am and I have to say it was one of my favorite dates. The long drive alone together, dinner, and the amazing show- couldn't ask for more.

What's was your favorite date?

What's was your worst date?

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Kicking off Superbowl 49!!

Today was a SUPER fun race! My friend works for the Cardinals and got free entries into their 4.9k Superbowl 49 kickoff race.


I was a little worried because it had rained on and off throughout the night, and was supposed to rain again this morning, but it ended up being perfect weather! The ground was a little muddy at the start but not too bad.

We got to Rawhide and walked around a little bit before it started and saw Big Red and some of the Cardinals cheerleaders. I was determined to get a picture with Big Red before we left. ;)

The race started and we went out FAST... probably a little too fast. I think at one point, she said we were doing an 8:15 pace....

We came up on the first water station and walked through it as we grabbed water. We started running again- and it was hard. We were definitely pushing ourselves! We walked through the second aid station and then practically sprinted the rest of the way to the finish.
Proof that I was absolutely loving life... ;)

As I came up to the finish I was too busy waving my hands in the air like like I just don't care, and totally missed high-fiving Big Red!!
But he totally realized I probably made the biggest mistake of my life and backed up and let me have a re-do. :)
Once we finished, we got some Gatorade and awesome post-race food- seriously, for this being a smaller race, it really had such a great spread of post-race food: protein bars, bananas, oranges, pretzels, water, chips, etc.

we walked around for a little bit and actually caught Big Red leaving and was able to stop him and snap a picture with him!! MADE MY DAY!!

We left with all our hands full of stuff- including a free water bottle from a local news station! This was such a fun, friendly race- with GREAT weather! :)

Who's excited for the Superbowl?!

What's your favorite football team? Mine would have to be the Arizona Cardinals with the Denver Broncos in a close second place. ;)

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

My New Favorite ATM!!

So I had gotten SEVERAL texts, emails, Facebook messages, and even calls about the new cupcake ATM opening up at Sprinkles Cupcakes in Scottsdale. I truly appreciate everyone who reached out to me, you all know how much I love cupcakes!! :)
After work, my sister came over and we headed to check it out. I was super excited to check it out-- I mean an ATM that gives you cupcakes?! such a genius idea!
We got there, and apparently weren't the only ones who got the memo.... there was a pretty long line for the ATM. (Which was hilarious, because the actual Sprinkles store was still open and there was no one inside-- everyone was waiting to use the new ATM! Haha!
Blurry phone pictures are the best! ;)
So we got in line, and it was moving pretty quickly. (To be honest, I think the thing that was taking the longest is everyone taking a bunch of photos with it after they bought their cupcakes!!)

We finally got up there and my sister bought 4 cupcakes and then I bought 2. It was pretty cool that they show a video of it grabbing your cupcakes and bringing it up to the door. (My nephew and niece thought it was the coolest because they could see themselves in the back of the video. HAHA!!)
All of the cupcakes were really good, my sister mixed up my two with her 4 and I ended up with a peanut butter chocolate chip one- which was good, but kind of dry. Carsen ate my second cupcake and it was super moist and REALLY good- he loved it!


Have you ever used a Cupcake ATM? 

What's the weirdest thing you've stood in line for? 

Monday, December 8, 2014

Hot Chocolate 15K!!

Do I love running? Yes. Do I love chocolate? Yes. Well, the geniuses behind The Hot Chocolate Run know what they are doing by combining the two!! Such a sweet run! (see what I did there? ;))
I had heard about this race and always wanted to do it, but the higher price always scared me away ($75 for 15k, and I think the 5K is $45). But one of my girlfriends from the track club we were in, said she was doing it and asked if I wanted to do it with her. She is a WAY faster runner than me, but I thought it would be a great experience to practice pushing myself outside of my comfort zone in a race environment. (If you're read my blog for awhile, you know I like to just stay at a comfortable pace and not push too hard. ;)) So, 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' and I decided to see what all the hype was about and sign up.
We went to the expo the day before the race, as right as you entered the expo, there was a booth set up with people handing out cups of hot chocolate and marshmallows dipped in chocolate sauce. This alone made it the best expo I've ever been to!! ;) Once we finally got inside, we ran into our track coach and talked about our goals for the race.
Best way to enter an expo! 
We finally made our way to the packet pickup and a volunteer told us we could go into any line, none of which had a wait, so we each picked a line and walked right up. They asked for my name and printed out my name on a sticker and attached it to a bib. Then they handed me the super cute goodie bag and directed us to the jackets.
I wanted to show the zipper and the logo.... he wanted to show you the hoodie :)
We picked up our jackets and browsed through the rest of the expo and then took some pictures with the marshmallow people. :)
We got some dinner and headed home to watch a movie. Since the race didn't start until 8:15am, we were able to sleep in a little bit later than usual, which was amazing!!

We got down there and got parked pretty quickly. For a sold out race, I was really impressed with how organized and fast traffic was moving. We made our way to the start line and stopped to use the port-o-potties. And again, I was super impressed with the amount of port-o-potties they had. We jumped in one of the longer lines (it was the closest one to us) and it was only 5 people deep.

After, we headed to the start line to find our friend, Sarah. We found her, watched 'Mr. Sprinkles and Glitter' do his warm up, and then headed to our corrals. (Buddy the Elf was in our corral!!) We discussed our plan of starting out conservatively at a 10 minutes mile pace and then slowly increase as we got further into race.

Once our corral finally started, it took us a little bit to be able to find some room to run, but once we did it was great. I felt really good and Sarah said our pace was 9:03.... way to fast. So we tried to slow down a bit, but we are still at about 9:15. She said we could just hold this pace and then slow down later if we needed.

This was the kind of race where the miles just fly by- and I mean FLY!! I felt like we just started when we passed the first mile marker, then it seems like only a couple minutes passed and we were at 2! The aid stations had the BEST volunteers ever! They were cheering SO loud and just seemed to genuinely be happy to be there. (Maybe it was the later start time? ;))

We hit the 5K mark and we were pretty settled into a 9:35 pace. She said we had some extra time (our goal was to finish before 1:30) so we walked through a couple of the aid stations and grabbed water.

There was a super boring out-and-back stretch right around mile 6 to 7.5 that really sucked. I think it's always hard for me to see people on the other side looking so happy and closer to being done than me. ;) But then once I'm on that side, I feel bad for all the people behind me because they all look miserable. haha!

Once we hit mile 8 we knew we were close! We also saw a group of ladies who hadn't even hit the 6 mile marker- cross over and totally cheat! A couple other runners called them out on it and they really didn't seem to care. I told Sarah we had to beat the cheaters so we picked up the pace and passed them. :)

Once we could finally see the finish line, I told Sarah to sprint to the finish line, but she was still recovering from being sick (MAJOR trooper for even doing the run- let alone pushing me the whole time!!) She told me to go and to sprint to the finish. I told her I wouldn't leave her and we would finish together. She said no and said she would be mad if I didn't sprint to the finish and break 1:30 and told me to GO! So I took off and sprinted through the finish with Sarah finishing right behind me.

It was SUCH a great race to run with Sarah. I typically find my comfort zone (about 10 minute miles) and just stick to that-- but Sarah really pushed me outside of my comfort zone and I realized that it wasn't really that hard- there was never a time I was breathing hard (except for the sprint to the finish) or working passed my max. So I definitely learned a lot.
From my Instagram: TeamSprinklesAndGltter
I finished in 1:29:50 and Sarah finished in 1:30 on the dot! We finished, got the cutest medals EVER and headed for the chocolate! Every finisher gets a mug with a cup of hot chocolate. In the mug, you have chocolate sauce and a bunch of different stuff to dip it in!! So, SO good!!

It was SUCH a fun race, really organized, and you got a lot of good stuff to! I absolutely loved it and will definitely be back!! And look how cute the medal were!! Have you ever seen such a cute medal??

What's the coolest medal you have from? What does it look like? 

Have you ever done a race for 'sweets'? This was my first and I loved it!! :)