Recap Summer 2013

I don't know if you caught it, but I totally didn't do a Spring recap. Spring kind of melted into winter and summer and wasn't really it's own thing. I've decided to include some March and April in here for that reason. Just a little bit.

Above: I ran my second 10K. It was harder than the first.

I also did some fun arm balance stuff while I was at work.

A friend and I took the dogs out to Malibu and hike/walked. Then we went to the Country Mart and got them whipped cream.

Inspiration & Awkwardness

I called the studio on Tuesday to reserve an hour timeslot for my usual class on Saturday and, to my surprise, the girl said she had actually been meaning to call me.

She wanted to confirm that I was taking over the Thursday night class... because they had already put me on the schedule. Whoa.

and once I confirmed, she asked if I could send her my bio and a photo - "just a nice one where you can see your face. poses are nice, but it can be hard to see your face"...

...

...WHAAAAT?

I mean... I knew I was officially being put on the schedule, but that's oh-so-very different from getting an official fancy pants instructor bio, and... wait. Now I needed to write a bio, and she wanted it by Friday.

Lucky for my, the weather was beautiful on Wednesday, so I spend about 20 minutes in the afternoon running around Malibu taking pictures of myself.

Yep. I was that girl. That's how the lovely above collage was made. So awkward. I am not a huge fan of photos of myself solo. I like group shots and usually find myself saying, "oh, hey, I look nice in that one", but solos are not my thing. Smiles get awkward. One eye opens wider than the other. One corner of the mouth is pointier than the other.

Actually sitting down and writing my bio was one of the hardest things. I love to write, but now I had to take 12 years of yoga and turn it into a sales pitchy blurb about how yoga has changed my life and how awesome I am. A BLURB! I could write a 20 page essay on how yoga has changed my life - probably more - and getting me to write about what makes me awesome was like pulling teeth. I kept giving it to T to review and he kept telling me it wasn't positive enough.

Later in the afternoon, a few favorite photos were instagramed (bc I don't have photoshop), shared with husband, bff, sisters, and mom for their favorites, and then packaged up with my bio in an email to the studio.

Less than an hour later, I got an email back.

"You're live on the website!"

and there I was. It hasn't even been up a day, but it is still so incredibly surreal.

This is a linkup! Make sure you follow the links below to some amazing ladies' blogs and read about their happiness projects!

Pants! Wardrobe Revamp; Fall 2012

Last week I was listening to Joy the Baker & Tracey Shutterbean's podcast on Homefries and I had a revelation. One of their listeners wrote in to ask for style suggestions.

Ok, so, its fall now. (not my revelation) It's time to wear pants. I've been living in Bermuda shorts and sundresses for the last 4ish months. It's been awesome.

Now that its been getting cooler, I've ventured into my closet a few times to find a good pair of jeans and been dismayed to find all of my jeans are old and out of fashion... like, whoa.

It made me kind of sad. So, I decided to buy some new pants...

and I may or may not have gone a little crazy with it.

Not to very long ago I decided to invest in some fun pants, so I bought myself these red ones ...

This was pre JtB podcast revelation.

Post revelation, I am more invested a total wardrobe revamp.

MORE SKINNY JEANS!

THE COLORS, DUKE, THE COLORS!!!

Testing Out This Gluten Free Thing (and Muffins!)

Hubs and I are skeptics of this whole everyone is allergic to gluten phenomenon.

One of my amazing professors in grad school had/has Celiac Disease - legit, full on gluten allergy. He was sick for years. They thought he might have cancer. They cut gluten out of his diet and he was magically well. Amazing. LEGIT. I was/am happy for him that he is now a healthy person after purging gluten from his diet.

So, I know that this gluten allergy is real. I know that some people really suffer. I am not one of them. Apparently, I love gluten.

BUT I've heard a lot about cutting it out and how less/no gluten can make you feel better about life - like a healthier, more energetic person with a peaceful stomach.

So, we thought, "what could it hurt?" and I started doing research into what EXACTLY contains gluten.

My base knowledge of gluten consisted of this:

Flour contains gluten and you can add additional gluten to breads and things to give them more crunch and rise. 

So then, how can hubs and I continue to eat what we like without giving up baked goods. The answer is flour substitutes. I walked into our local Sprouts, which is my absolute favorite place to grocery shop, and was stunned by the variety of gluten free alternative flours they had - oat flour, almond flour, rice flour, brown rice flour.

Yoga Teacher Training - Want some makeups?

Wow, I can't believe it's August already. I think it's time to do a little update on becoming a yogi.

First of all, this is happening, like, for realsies.

A couple weeks ago, I sat down with my husband and really talked about it - where the programs were, how much they cost, when they start, how long they run, would I be happier/more fulfilled in life, how our lives would change when/if I went through with it - and we decided F*CK IT. We have the money. It's not going to be easy to say goodbye to, but I know it will be worth it, and I know I'm sick of waiting around for people to order enough cake and makeup to pay for it.

I already know I'm good at talking in front of a group of people. I did it competitively for four years. I should be able to talk pretty while walking around folks and guiding them through asanas. ;)

I've been contacting yoga studios to find the right fit. I love yogis. They're such wonderful, warm, genuine people. They make me want to take my training at all of them. Every single person I've talked to has been so helpful and so excited that I contacted them.
Unfortunately, a lot of it is coming down to when and where the programs are - Fall in the valley versus Winter in Santa Monica? Fall in the Valley wins.

I posted a few months ago about yoga and putting cake and mark. sales towards teacher training.
Here's the thing about that. I feel like an a-hole constantly self-promoting about that. I did it for a while. I felt like an annoying a-hole, so I stopped. I still, technically, sell mark., but it's turned too much into just buying stuff for myself, when I should be saving that money and putting towards getting into a career that will make me happy. The point here is that I've decided to sell off my overstock - trying to recoup some of my losses and not take such a financial hit when I go ahead and do YTT anyway.
I made up a whole list of everything and I'll be selling it for super cheap. I don't really want to put the whole thing up on my blog, so let me know if you're interested in some cheap mark. products and I'd love to email it to you.

To sum up, I love yoga. I am so excited that this is actually happening and the best choice is to proceed. Please help a girl out. No pressure. ;)

On a totally random sidenote: how come all bloggers are also professional photographers? All my photos look like garbage compared to some of the other stuff out there.

My Hair Looked Good Yesterday

I have an interesting relationship with my hair. I'm not gonna go all crazy and say that my hair is more difficult than anyone else's and its so hard to be me with my curly red hair, but I am gonna be honest - sometimes my hair looks pretty, but unless it's cut perfectly, most times its a pain in the ass.

Over the last few weeks it's been just that - finally getting long and sometimes pretty, but awkwardly kinky in the back to remind me that I have middle eastern roots. The last few days, I "semi-straightened" it because the tight/kinky curls in the back were driving me crazy. I've been semi-casually throwing around the idea of cutting it off - even going as short as a pixie, but I've seen some disastrous short cuts over the years and I didn't want to be one of those girls.

I've done this before. My senior year of college, my hair was down to the middle of my back and I was so over it. There's only so much you can do with hair when its that thick and kinky and curly and all you want is hair that's easy to manage. I wanted "throw in some goop and walk out the door" hair, but with this mass, the only fast and easy way to walk out the door was to put it in a ponytail.

Returning to the present, I got up yesterday morning and took the obligatory "I'm getting my hair cut today" before pictures.

My pain in the ass hair picked the day I was getting it cut to look cute. (at least I though so anyway. you're entitled to your opinion) It was even relatively easy to manage yesterday. Bah humbug. It's like it knew I was planning to cut it and was trying to convince me not to go through with it.

Regardless, I drove myself and my hair out to the salon after work and told the wonderful girl cutting it that I wanted to go as short as possible without it looking stupid. I'm pretty sure those were my actual words. I didn't really know what that meant, since I don't know if I have the bone structure to pull off a pixie or to completely shave my head. My sister and I talked about shaving our heads years ago in solidarity when our youngest sis found out she was/is Alopecian (that's right. I just sent you to Wikipedia), but we kept making excuses to not go through with it. Mine was "I have to look professional when I'm giving speeches (in competition)". Of course, in retrospect, that was dumb. If anyone on the competitive speech circuit judged me for shaving my head, I should have been able to tell them to suck it and not face any real consequences.

After a few minutes of chatting and trying to figure out what to do, she started cutting away. It was different than last time when the woman who cut my hair just put it all back in a ponytail and cut it off. This time she cut each piece one at a time, starting with the back/bottom and working up and out towards the front/sides - maybe because it started out shorter? I don't know. I didn't ask.

It was important to both of us that I didn't end up with "mom" hair, but the way my hair curls, that is a pretty big challenge. When I got home, I wasn't sure about it. The cut was cute, but the curls were funny. Though in my teens I may have been the type of person to cry when something about my hair was not perfect, I can happily say that I am much more relaxed about my hair now. I played with my flat iron and took out a lot of the curl that said "I have 3 kids to drop off at school before I head to the gym in 1993", and ended up with this:

*sidenote: I will not pretend I am a model and make ridiculous "modeling" faces for these pictures. I will stick to these "regular" ridiculous faces.

It's a smidgy-smidge longer in the front to help combat "mom-ism" - stylist's idea - and the weirdest part is now that it's the shortest its ever been, it actually feels thicker. When I run my fingers through it, it doesn't just fall back down where it was, it stays poofed out. I don't really understand. Maybe it has something to do with my product I put in it, but it didn't do that before...so...I think it has to do with the length and not having all that extra weight putting it down.

Since I haven't even had this haircut for 24 hours, I am very much still getting used to it.