Bootcamp 10/5

To do this, or any other Tabata workout simply download one of the many Tabata Timer Apps or go HERE and use an online timer to regulate your workouts.

Here is our workout from Bootcamp Week 3!  It has many super sets as well as bursts of cardio.  

Remember Monday is Columbus Day and there will be NO CLASS!!!

Set 1:

One arm pushup (other arm elbow planked)

Chest Fly, twist at top

Set 2:

Super Mario

80/20 Squats

Set 3:

Walking Plank

Vsit (DB Rainbow over)

Set 4:

Squat, Kick one leg (all one side)

Stationary Side lunge, stay low touch foot

q

Shoulder Press

Side Bends

Set 6:

Burpees

Tricep Extensions Bent over

Set 7:

Glute Bridge (at, lift a leg)

1,2,3s

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Bootcamp 9/28

Hey Bootcampers!  You all did great last night!    Week 2 can seem like some sort of a "wake-up" call for many.  You all did great!  Here is what we did in case you want to do it again at home!

To do this, or any other Tabata workout simply download one of the many Tabata Timer Apps or go HERE and use an online timer to regulate your workouts.

Class 2

Warm Up

Tabata

Set 1:

Gate Squats

Elbow Plank

Set 2:

Upright Row

Cross jacks

Set 3:

Penguins

Pushups

Set 4:

2 Moving Squats with DB

Front/Side Raises

Set 5:

Mountain Climbers

Skull Crusher

Set 6:

Side Lunges

Deadlift

Set 7:

4 and 4 run

Hammer Curl (balance)

Cool Down

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Bootcamp: Monday 9/21

Hey Bootcampers!  You all did great last night!    Week 1 is typically abbreviated because of the paperwork we need to cover.  Here is the plan of what we covered.

To do this, or any other Tabata workout simply download one of the many Tabata Timer Apps or go HERE and use an online timer to regulate your workouts.

Class 1:

Set 1:
- Squats
- Bicep Curls

Set 2:
- Forward Stepping Lunges
- Overhead Tricep Extension

Set 3:
- Regular High Plank
- Jumping Jacks (or Prisoner Jacks)

Set 4:
- Pushups
- Situps


See you all next week!

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Cardio Dance Monday 9/21

What a GREAT first class!  

Here are the songs we did yesterday and will do for next week (plus a couple more!).  

Some of the songs are remixes.  If you want to find them on the internets, just copy and paste them into a Google search.  Most songs come up in YouTube.

If you have problems finding a particular song let me know and I will point you in the right direction.

See you all next week!

1.  Yeah 3x - Chris Brown (warm up)

2.  Juicy Wiggle - Art Burns

3.  Payphone - Maroon 5 feat. Wiz Khalifa

4.  You Should Be Dancing - Liquid Paw

5.  Shake Señora - Pitbull feat. T-Pain, Sean Paul, and Ludacris

6. Africa - Fresh Face Dolls (cool down)

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Best Ever Campfire Potatoes

I am getting sick of the same-old, same-old grilled items over and over.  I also know that my kids are sick of the same old stuff as well (awe, we are having hotdogs AGAIN?!).  I came across this potato recipe on the Favorite Family Recipes blog.  It looked easy and delicious and it looked like something my kids would dig so I gave it a shot today and it was a real big hit!  The best part was that the foil potato packets can be personalized to each picky eaters particular like of the day.  Bacon and cheese for my one son, scallions and cheese for my other.  I tasted some and they were so good I would consider adding broccoli or something else for myself sometime.

I wasn't able to get a good picture of the meal so here is a picture provided by Favorite Family Recipes.

Ingredients

• Potatoes, scrubbed and cut into bite sized pieces (we keep the potato skins on)
Ranch Mix:
• 1/4 c. mayonnaise
• 1/4 c. sour cream
• 1 dry packet Hidden Valley Ranch mix
Optional Topping Ideas:
• ham
• bacon
• sausage
• onions
• peppers
• broccoli
• your favorite cheese

Instructions

• After potatoes are washed and cut, combine the ingredients for the ranch mix. Use just enough of the mix to thoroughly coat the potatoes and stir together in a large bowl.
• Spoon potatoes out onto individual aluminum foil squares and sprinkle with desired toppings. We did cheddar and bacon for one, and gorgonzola cheese and bacon for the other.
• then wrap the potatoes up in the foil so they are completely covered. We usually wrap each one in two pieces of foil.
• Bake, grill, or cook in a fire pit. It is ready to eat when you peel back some of the foil and potatoes are fork tender and break apart easily.

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We've Moved!

There is a lot involved with moving your family of four into a considerably smaller house.  Obviously there is the “stuff” that needs to be gone through, packed, sold, whatever.  Our family went through EVERY ITEM WE OWN and easily got rid of 75% of it in some way or another.  Our stuff was weighing us down and really I didn’t want to move anything that I didn’t need.  After the move I have noticed two things.  1) No one has missed any single item that we have purged, and 2) We can stand to lose another 30% of what we have moved.  I still have boxes of “décor” that I haven’t unpacked yet.  I have no idea really what is in these boxes.  Well, I kind of do because I labeled them BUT I would miss a thing in them I don’t think.  I am going to wait and unpack them but I bet by the end of summer when the real house renovations begin I will be tired of moving those unpacked boxes around once and for all.

Speaking of my packing method I must warn you.  No matter how organized and well equipped you are with lists, colored packing tape and organizational spreadsheets/notebooks – the packing will at some point get out of control and shit will just be tossed directly from a drawer into whatever moving box is nearest and opened.  Note: This is only true if you are not using movers.  If you are then I have no idea what kind of heaven you are living in and I would rather not hear about it. 

Something I wasn’t really expecting to have to deal with when moving to a smaller house was explaining to my kids that we are neither poor nor are we getting a divorce.  Apparently the dissolution of my always-solid marriage of nearly 15 years is easier to grasp to some (most?) people than the reality of us just taking a (big) step towards financial freedom and less space to be in charge of on this Earth.

The Dream (as I call it) won’t always hold up.  The dream of moving my simple family from a rather complicated life of large spaces, bills and responsibilities into a smaller, uncomplicated house with less space, less stuff and more time to be who we want to be as a family isn’t exactly a fool proof plan.  It is what it is.  A dream.  A vision to work towards.   There was no poorly drained and over grown backyard in my version of The Dream.  In my Dream kitchen, the hot water and cold water than ran from the sink was not backwards.  And there most certainly wasn’t a pile of large furniture garbage left outside the garage in the driveway of my Dream house from the previous owner because she was lying or lazy (or both) and never called to have them collected like she claimed.

The Dream is ever evolving.  We have definitely grown as a family in more ways over the past month since we have moved that I could have imagined.  I kind of feel like we have taken a step back to who we used to be when we first got married in our first (small) house.  The excitement of making our space fit who we are is still there.  There were many bumps during the move, some were expected and others not so much (i.e. our driveway garbage dump site).  Thankfully not one bump has been anything more than that.  Our kitchen now has hot water coming out the hot side and cold on the cold – you know silly things like that.  I am sure there are going to be more things that we encounter as we tackle the remodel of each room but we are handy and we will figure it all out I am sure.  Pinterest is mu new best friend.  That was most definitely NOT around during the time that we had our very first and second homes.  I do fee l like The Dream is still kicking for us but I am just not quite sure what it will look like when we are done.

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Small Spaces - Game Storage

We have stacks of board games. So many games that I had to buy a bookcase just to house the. Sorry. Life.  Scrabble.  Monopoly.  Monopoly Nintendo Edition.  And many, many more.  In the new house there is no room for all these games or the bookcase itself.  Less space means a new storage solution was needed.

First thing I did was get rid of the games that were just taking up space.  That lessened the load quite a bit but it wasn't good enough to lose the bookcase.  I took some drastic measures.  I ditched the boxes (gasp!!) and I put each game in a Ziplock baggie with the instructions for game play.  If the game board didn't fit inside a gallon sized bag I simply kept it separate from the pieces.

I ditched the boxes in the recycle bin and all the games fit in one small-sized moving box.  I would have needed at least four of them.  When we move into our new house I plan to store these games in the family room inside of a trunk-style coffee table that I have yet to pick out.  Stay tuned for whatever I end up choosing for that.  

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New Bikes for the Family

Traded the van for it straight up. 
I can get 70 miles to the gallon on this hog. -Lloyd

One of the quickest ways to save money is to drive less.  If you trust the bean counters at the IRS, their standard milage rate for 2015 is 57.5 cents per mile.  The standard mileage rate is based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile, including depreciation, insurance, repairs, tires, maintenance, gas and oil.  I believe them.

So where can we save money by choosing to bike instead of drive?  At our new house, we are between 1-3 miles from just about every local and big box store imaginable.  We should be able to save a significant number of driven miles after we move.  At our current house, going anywhere is minimally 4 miles so we won't be able to fully embrace this lifestyle until we move.

Another place I want to target is my commute.  At our current home,my commute is 39.2 miles roundtrip.  At the standard mileage rate that is $22.54 per day or $112.25 per week.  Another way to look at it is $83,660 ($112.25 * our 752 magic number) in lost investment over ten years.  At our new home, my commute is slightly less at 30.8 roundtrip, but that is still $17.71 per day.  My hope is that our new offices get moved downtown.  This will make the trip about 10 miles each way.  In either case, I am going to give it a try on a bike.  If I can make the trip is less than 1 hour, I am in.

The Quest

The boys have 20" BMX-style bikes that they are quickly outgrowing.  Stephanie and I have not owned a bike since we were 13.  The challenge was to find good, cost-effective bikes for the whole family.  I began the quest on Craigslist and the Internet.  I got surprisingly lucky with the boys bikes.  I found two DBX 24" mountain bikes from two different people on CL.  Two different colors of the same bike and in good shape, perfect.  I was able to negotiate one down to $80 and the other down to $55.  Bottomline, two quality bikes for $135.  DBX is a Dick's rebranded Schwinn bike with decent components.  Needless to say, the boys love their new bikes and ride them all the time.

I found the search for adult bikes on Craigslist to be more challenging.  I found very few hybrid bikes of good quality.  We plan on using these bikes to replace driving and I maybe putting on 30 miles a day, I started looking for new bikes.  Plus, Stephanie and I are not going to out grow them.  Buying a quality bike is like buying a quality shoe.  It should last until you wear it out from use.  After doing a good bit of research, I narrowed down our choices to three bikes in my price range of around $300:

• Nashbar Trekking Bike
• Schwinn Discover Men's Hybrid Bike
• Diamondback Bicycles 2015 Edgewood

We decided on the Schwinn.  It was rated high by many review sites, Amazon reviews and was the Best Hybrid Bike For The Money.  I had some Amazon points and cannot beat 2-day shipping with Amazon Prime.  We ended up getting a matching pair, his and hers, Discover models, Schwinn helmets, and awesome lock system called Cocoweb.

The Results

We have had the bikes for a little over two weeks.  We ALL love them.  We've only put on about 20 miles as a family with the kids putting on a few more miles around the neighborhood.  The Schwinn Hybrids are light, smooth and very enjoyable to ride.  I hope to use the bikes more after we move, it has been crazy since we sold our house.

I also made a deal with the boys, I am going to give them 10 cents per mile for everything trip that we would have normally used a car.  The frequency of these types of trips will increase after the move.  They have already told me that they love riding.  I cannot wait to cycle more!

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Downsizing- small update

So we are on permanent picnic status here.  With the move coming and downsizing being frantically fixated in the front of my mind always, I went ahead and posted nearly all of our furniture on Craigslist in a "Moving Sale!" post.  I priced it all to sell and sell it did.  We currently are eating on our card table and sitting on fold out chairs.  The good ones though with the cushions.  I call it Industrial Chic.  Progress is slowly being made towards downsizing.  It is overwhelming to say the least but we have (some) time to work through it.  There is absolutely nothing that makes you go through your belongings like moving!

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Home Inspections and Downsizing our Sh*t

Dining Room Set - Buh-Bye!

With the successful sale of our house underway, the next step in the plan is to start the downsizing process.  Our current home is 2230+ square feet (that does not include the full, finished basement).  Less space means we need to bring along less stuff with us when we move.  Our large furniture pieces are useless in the new house which is just under 1500 square feet.  Storage space is limited.  Bedrooms are smaller.  There is only one bathroom.  (Gasp).  This shocks a lot of people.  I cannot tell you how thrilled I am about only cleaning ONE bathroom.  ONE toilet.  ONE tub.  That is a slice of my version of heaven.  Furthermore, there is no dining room in the new house.  No "bonus" living room.  That means my china and dining room set is useless.  The kitchen space is actually larger space-wise.  The pantry has less space, but not by that much.  I am grateful that there is a pantry. Many of the smaller homes that we have seen just don't have one.

C-ya!  Matching Bookcase!

Aside  from the dining/living room furniture we need to downsize on bedroom furniture (our current set is way too bulky and we have way too many pieces to fit into our new, "cozy" master bedroom).  Basement furniture needs to go.  We have a great basement space in the new house but the furniture needs to be more functional than the black leather sectional and large oversized stuffed chair that we currently have.  Our kitchen table and buffet is going.  Our family room couches are going (they should have gone a year ago, they are super worn out from all of our "love" over the years).  Basically, we are starting from scratch.


I listed all of this stuff and more on Craigslist and within 48 hours more than half of it was sold.  After Friday we will have no tables or chairs in our home to eat off of and we will have no master bedroom furniture to put our clothes into (we are keeping our bed), but I will have cash in my pocket to go and buy some new stuff that fits our new home and is functional for the needs of our family.  My biggest struggle is trying to remember the space of the new home.  I have pictures of course, but that differs so much from actually being IN the space.  Not to mention when we were IN the space, the current owners stuff was in there.  It is really hard to picture your family in a home that is currently 100% occupied by someone other than yourself.  This person has a LOT of stuff.  Stuff on the walls.  Furniture stuff.  Clothes stuff.  Knick-Knacky stuff.....  Just a lot of stuff.  It is hard to plan past the stuff.

So basically I Pin things and I obsess over the pictures we took of the new house while we were there last.  Today our current home passed its inspection with flying colors, which we had assumed it would.  Tomorrow our new home gets it's inspection.  I will feel a lot better when that is over.  In the meantime me and Pinterest and Craigslist are becoming quite familiar.

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How we sold our house in 8 days - ourselves!

As you probably know already, selling a home along with finding a new home and actually moving your life from one place to another, is a very stressful time in your life.  There are many decisions that need to be made.  There are a lot of discussions that must be had if you are selling you house as part of a couple.  Those are super fun.  The big questions are:

1. When do we sell?
2. How do we sell?
3. What price do we ask?

I want to focus on the "how" for right now.  The most obvious answer to that and the one that I believe a great majority of people accept as the only real option to them is to use a realty service.  We, however, decided to try to sell our home ourselves.  We did some research and came across the Andrea Dekker's blog, specifically the entry How We Sold Our House!  She made it look so attractive and easy and she had such success that we were inspired to give it a try ourselves.  We followed her lead and created a Wordpress webpage.  On this page we described every detail about our home.  When we moved in.  Updates we did and when they were done.  We also posted a lot of pictures and annotated them.  Check out our webpage HERE.  Many people commented on how well our home looked online and all of the people who contacted us found us on their own, and brought us to the attention of their real estate agents.

The week we decided to move about 8 other homes in our development also decided it was a good time to get out of Dodge.  Everyone including my neighbor two doors down who has the SAME exact home design as we have.  TWO.  DOORS.   DOWN.  And then to add insult to injury, when the listing was officially posted we found out that they underpriced their home for a quick sale.  We went from an immediate high from the original rush of hitting the "publish" button on our listing webpage on minute and then just a sinking feeling in the pit of our stomachs the next.  I would soon learn that this dramatic high and low range of emotions would become a mainstay for us over the next month or so....

We did a lot of things that we heard meant a lot to people who came through our home.  For one thing after viewing our website they felt that they already "knew our home".  Oh!  you are the Wordpress house!  I heard that more than once.  The pictures meant a lot.  I believe the background information that I included on the website made a big difference too.

Second thing we did was network.  I linked our website to a post on Facebook so all my friends and family could see that we were selling our home.  Also, all their friends and family would then see my house....  When we first published that Facebook post on our timelines, within the hour we had over 500 hits on our webpage.  And it was midnight.  That was one of those "high" moments for sure.

We also put an ad out on Craigslist.  Basically I put a brief description of our home with one or two pictures and then a plug "come check out our website for more pictures and information!"  You get the idea.  One note about Craigslist, be sure to "refresh" your listing every 48 hours so you can be bumped back up to the top of the list.

Another big thing, we listed our home on Zillow.   Zillow is a map based search engine for homes that are for sale or rent.  There are homes listed on there that are being sold through a realtor and also for sale by owner homes and foreclosures.  If you are house hunting, you have probably been on Zillow at least once.  We included our link to our website under "House Tours".  5 days after our listing went public we found that our listing was "trending" on Zillow.  I had no idea what this meant until Mike showed me this.....

That was a HUGE high for us!!!!  

I should mention a BIG plus of having the Wordpress website is that you are able to monitor (obsess) over the number of views that you have on your site.  

Put out a sign!  We ran to Lowe's after church on Sunday and grabbed a For Sale By Owner sign with a tube attached for our flyers and we stuck that baby in front of our house.  We also put a smaller sign at the corner.  Our thought there was that if anyone was going to see any of the other of homes for sale in our development, we wanted them to know we were for sale too.  

We first posted our house at midnight on Sunday.  The following Monday (a full week later) we got an offer.  Five days after that we signed a contract.  We were definitely surprised at how fast we sold given the fact that we were up against some beautiful homes in our hood.  So surprised in fact that we were left in a sort of scramble to find a home for ourselves which I will explain further in another blog post.  

I am super happy and super proud of us to have sold our home by ourselves.  Truthfully, a realtor is a marketer, if you are internet savvy and not afraid to talk to people and represent your home yourself, there is nothing a realtor does for you that you cannot do for yourself!  Save yourself the realtor fees and  represent your own home - there is no one who knows your home better than you!

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