Color Me Rad 5K, Cool Ideas For The Messiest Race Going

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Danielle

The super-hyped up Color Me Rad 5K run that has been crisscrossing the country, finally made its way to Raleigh this past weekend. And boy was it worth the wait. I dare say this 5K may have even been more fun than the famous Raleigh Krispy Kreme Challenge.

Color Me Rad involves running 3.1miles while overly enthusiastic volunteers splatter you with paint. Well, not real paint. That would be a little too messy. Instead its coloured cornstarch. And once it reaches your shiny white tee, it makes a psychedelic tie dye pattern. Sounds fun right?

Team Rainbow Dash

Yup we used a My Little Pony reference. Why not, we’re all moms.

The Race was awesome. And if it comes to a city anywhere near you, you must do it.

And now I can’t wait till next years race! It was that much fun.

So now that I’m a veteran Color Me Rad runner I may have to step up my game for next years run.

And here are some cool ideas:

Color Me Rad Art Work

During the run I saw a woman running with a blank white canvas in her hands. I know weird, but then I realized what she was doing. She was creating a Color Me Rad masterpiece while she ran. Brilliant.

Sherry from Young House Love did something similar. She brought a canvas to the finish line and used all the powder on the ground to paint her piece. Man those two can make anything look beautiful!

source: Young House Love

Check out how cool it looks hung on the wall!

Another cool option is to frame your newly dyed t-shirt. Color Me Rad recommends spraying your shirt with vinegar and then ironing it to keep the color in it. From my experience you need to do this immediately. The color quickly turns to a big blob of brown. Not the look you want to remember from your super awesome day.

source: Kickin’ Ass, Takin’ Names

I think this would be a great idea for all those kids who run the race. Hung in a kid’s bedroom, it could be a fun way for them to show off their race day bib and shirt to all their friends.

Color Me Kind

So this amazing idea comes from Patience over at Kindness Girl (so you already know it’s going to be a fabulous, right?). We’ll she left these adorable hand written notes on random cars in the parking lot, asking them to pass on some rad, kind, fun!

On the notes she asked people to pass along some rad kindness after the race. She even provided some great suggestions:

Leave a FAT tip for a dishwasher at your favorite restaurant. Don’t forget a note of thanks!

Pay for a friend’s next race registration, then tell them to pass it on.

Corral some grocery carts at the store parking lot, then leave a note at the desk for the worker thanking them for all they do. You can also leave a small gift card.

Ding Dong Ditch a bouquet of flowers to your bestie with a kind note, then tell them to pass it on.

What a fun way to end an already amazing day.

Kids & Color Me Rad

This is a great race for kids to run in, and this is why…

totally low-key race, non chipped time race.
Multiple start times. First runners leave at 9am and then every 10 minutes after that (until 10:10am). You’re not rushed in the morning getting the kids to the race site. If you’re late, no worries, just run in the next heat.
There are lots of stops along the route. Stop at each colour bomb station and give the kids a break from all that running.
Since the race is so messy it’s not on a road. No need to worry about traffic (or finishing the race within a strict time period). The Raleigh race looped around fields and empty parking lots at an amphitheater. This also means that if the race is getting to be too much for the kids you can easily take a shortcut and cut off part of the course. Or head straight to your car since you’re never that far from the start line.

The youngest I would recommend for this race would be 5.

But don’t worry your kids at home can still participate! Just before the finish line volunteers will have boxes and boxes of color bombs (small bags of the colored cornstarch). The organizers want you to use these for one last explosion at the finish line, and also for a huge group shot at the end. But I grabbed a bunch and brought them home.

Once Hurricane Sandy passes I’ll send the kids outside with some clean white shirts and let them throw the color bombs on each other. I have a feeling they’ll love it.

I’ll just have to be prepared for this!

So what do you think? Are you in for next year?

Must Make, Low-Fat Caesar Salad

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Danielle

easy recipe1 Must Make, Low Fat Caesar Salad

Whenever my mother-in-law comes to visit my first request is always her amazing caesar salad. She is a trained chef and can make just about anything. But it’s her caesar salad that I LOVE.

During her last visit she gave me the recipe. Guess she was sick of me asking for it all the time!

Good news is that it’s super easy to make. And I promise that EVERYONE will love it.

caesarsaladingredients Must Make, Low Fat Caesar Salad

The key to this low-fat caesar salad is the greek yogurt. It makes the dressing just as creamy and delicious but without the fat from eggs, mayonnaise and oil like a true caesar dressing.

Low Fat Caesar Salad

Author: 2 Little Superheroes

Recipe type: Salad

Prep time: 20 mins

Total time: 20 mins

Serves: 6

Mock caesar salad, just as good as any caesar salad but way less fat!

Ingredients

Caesar Dressing

6 tbsp good quality greek yogurt
2 tbsp light mayonaise
1 tbsp milk
3 cloves minced garlic
1 tbsp grated lemon rind
1 tbsp lemon juice
few shakes of worchestershire sauce
¼ cup grated parmesan or asiago cheese
salt & pepper to taste

Salad

1 head Romaine lettuce
bacon
croutons
¼ cup grated parmesan or asiago cheese

Instructions

Whisk all ingredients together and serve over romaine, bacon bits, croutons and grated cheese.

Enjoy!

My Thrifty Kitchen Shelf

Posted on October 25, 2012 by Danielle

Last week I told you all about my shopping adventures of Thrifting in Raleigh at the Southern Bloggers Conference with my new blogger friends. It was a fabulous shop till you drop kind of day. But unfortunately I was on a tight budget. Like $20 kind of tight budget. Yikes. But I still found a couple of great finds.

My first find of the day were these 3 wooden corbels for $4 at the outdoor flea market at Gresham Antiques. Now they certainly weren’t charming antique pieces but for $4 for all 3 I knew I could work with them.

At the Southern Bloggers conference our awesome swag bags came with some Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint samples. I had never used milk paint before and I know how unpredictable it can be to work with. But I thought these corbels would be the perfect project to use the milk paint on.

You can see how boring the corbels were when I bought them. I was hoping to get that aged chippy look with the milk paint.

I didn’t prep the corbels at all, just gave them a quick wipe down with a cloth.

I mixed up the milk paint (it comes in powder form). Be sure to follow the directions and mix really well, a good 5 minutes.

This was after the first coat. I sat there watching the paint dry, literally. And it did nothing. No cool flaking paint, nothing. Totally disappointed.

A couple of hours later I came back out to the garage and found some flaking. Yippee. The milk paint was finally working.

You can see the flaking here. I gave it a quick sanding, just to get the loose pieces of paint off.

I used Miss Mustard Seeds Furniture Wax to provide a protective coat to the paint. It’s also suppose to bring out more of the characteristics of the milk paint. The furniture wax makes it nice and smooth. Kind of a professionally finished kind of look.

To hang them I bought these hooks at the hardware store. The old holes had somehow been damaged so they were unusable.

For the actual shelf I really wanted an old worn board. But couldn’t find one the right size. So I used a new board and some leftover wood stain.

After one coat of stain I gave the board two coats of milk paint. This time it did nothing. I found a blog that suggested giving a light mist of water and that will cause the milk paint to start doing it’s magic.

The light mist of water just made a big mess. So I gave up on the milk paint and just took my sander to the board.

Now I just need to find something to put on my new little shelf.

If you are looking to hang a little shelf above your kitchen sink as well. But haven’t been able to find reasonably priced corbels (they are often outrageously priced). Home Depot has great wooden ones for just $10 each. I used these same ones in my kitchen makeover and LOVE them.

And if you’re looking for that aged chippy look but don’t want to invest in pricey milk paint (I’m still unsure on what I think of milk paint) you can easily create the same look with Vaseline. Check out my tutorial here.

Watch Out Pinterest My New Addiction is Hometalk

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Danielle

I totally lost my mind and thought after only 2 months of blogging that I was cool enough to attend my first blog conference. I have no idea where that confidence came from, but I sure am happy I did. The Southern Bloggers Conference was fantastic.

The amount of information was totally overwhelming ( in a good way) and now I have a gigantic list of all the things I need to do to improve my blog. I’m trying to do 2 or 3 things every week to keep it manageable.

But during the first day of the conference I went home immediately and signed up for a super cool site called hometalk. Some of the fabulous hometalk Ambassadors (fellow bloggers) were at the conference and told us all about its fabulous features. I must have been hiding under a rock because I had never heard of hometalk before.

I find the best way to describe hometalk is that it’s a mix between Pinterest and Facebook. And who doesn’t love Pinterest and Facebook. So combining the two sounds pretty awesome, right?

I think I may even like it more than Pinterest. Yes it’s true, never thought I would love anything more than Pinterest. I feel like I’m cheating or something.

Now you do NOT need to have a blog to post. I think it’s a great way for people who are thinking about starting a blog to get an idea of what it’s like to post, get comments, questions etc.

Or you can just show off your stuff, that’s pretty fun too.

This is an example of a post. It’s actually from my new blogger friend Brenda (we met at the conference). It’s of her super-duper fabulous kitchen makeover. You can see 3 pictures in the post (more pictures appear when you click on it), there is a short description, a link to blog or website if it’s posted elsewhere and comments.

Now for all you bloggers out there take a look at her page views 16073. Now that’s A LOT of views. And I imagine a good number of those people clicked onto her blog. We love that don’t we bloggers?

What I love about hometalk is it really does feel like a community. Within seconds of posting my first link a handful of people had already commented. And Mariam the hometalk Director was the first to comment and thank me for joining the site. Pretty cool.

It does focus more on House related stuff (renovation, tutorials, landscaping, furniture refinishing etc). Not party ideas, recipes, quotes etc like Pinterest.

Basically you can do 2 things on hometalk. Show off your projects or pose a question to the community. I loved this question about the bugs. You can see she had 118 views and 8 people commented back to let her know what they thought the bugs were.

I think this feature will come in handy. I’m constantly half way through a project and then can’t figure out how to finish it. So now I have a whole community of experts to help me!

Setting Up Your Profile

Here is my hometalk profile…

It’s super simple to set up your profile and the pictures will be added once you start posting posts. And for bloggers you can add your blog link, twitter (which you can see I still need to add), facebook fan page, and Pinterest. One more way to get your blog out there.