20140815 Friday Finds

I cannot tell you how many times I have claimed to be a horrible homeowner. My advice to anyone under the age 30: Wait until you are ready to buy a house. Seriously, I envy those in a one-bedroom apartment and my main reason for staying where I am at is so my pup has a yard. I am “celebrating” being a homeowner for nearly ten years. Aside from the whole having a mortgage thing, I hate yardwork. I hate shoveling snow. I hate home improvement projects.

But alas, sometimes I have to put on my grown-up pants and get stuff done! A few weeks back, I tackled painting my dining room, living room, and hallway, saying goodbye to the colors that an ex reacted to once by saying, “it looks like a baby’s diaper blew up in here.” Now I have a nice, neutral, shade of gray.

So as part of my ambitious household goals, I spent my weekend tearing out carpet. Is anyone else’s pet in massive shed mode?! I feel no matter what, these carpets are not ever getting clean (though I highly recommend, am obsessed with, this vacuum.. whoever invented the push-button empty canister is a genius!). Anyway, this carpet project has been mildly therapeutic, yet I ran out of time and couldn’t finish so things are a bit of a mess in my house.

Since I prefer to not leave my house unless I have to (hello, fellow introverts), I have been continuing to take advantage of my Amazon Prime membership for anything that isn’t perishable, and for the first time I experienced a shipping fail! Ahhh!! My poor oatmeal! Thankfully, my coconut aminos , the key to everything amazing that happens in my kitchen, survived the traumatic experience.

Oh! and have you seen what has been going on up here in Detroit? Mother Nature threw us for a little loop; but thankfully we are back to some crisp, fall-like weather and sunshine.

As far as workouts, I am on a short-lived voluntarily-mandatory rest period. You can read more about what is upcoming for next week here, and why I had to take a step back this week and just chill..

And now.. some of my Friday Finds for you!

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News/Blogs:

The Unspoken Darkside to Training for Performance and Focusing on What Your Body Can Do: I knew I have thrown a handful of articles from her a few times before, but someone sent me a Nia Shanks article that kept helped to re-ground me after my recent post on an emotional lifting session.

From a pot-belly to a six-pack in minutes: I have a theory that posting before/after pictures are guaranteed to drive traffic, so want to experiment with this but feel it’s a bit deceptive in trying to get blog hits.. BUT the point is, yes, some people have some amazing transformations. But for a lot of us, just learn to use lighting to your advantage, pop a hip, practice flexing, and you’ll do just fine creating your own.

As a small test for reactions, I posted the pic below, taken 5 minutes apart last summer (sigh, a bit leaner, though weaker, me), on a Google+ page, captioning it that it is a fake before/after. In a day, it got 32 +1s and 8 comments, from “Impressive Results!!” to “Way to go!” and “Good job girl, keep up the good fight!” Gee, thanks.. I shall continue practice flexing in the mirror.

Mark Hyman on the Dangers of Fructose – Podcast #144 on BulletProof Radio. I am in the car a lot and listen to podcasts upon podcasts; this was a great episode and one of my favorite takeaways was that Dr. Hyman said it is amazing how much he gets paid to tell people “just eat real food.” If you don’t want to listen to the whole thing, I encourage you to check out the sixth paragraph of the podcast transcript. This sums up a lot.

New Products:

The only fun thing I have for you this week are my new Nanos, which I am a major fan.

Oh, and since I am a pretty numbers-focused person and like to be able to track everything, I want this. It’s on my Amazon Wish List if you want to send one my way. 😉

Discounts and Deals:

Fran’sClosetRX is offering FREE SHIPPING to the US and APO’s now – no code needed! You can check out my review of the company here! Plus, I recently picked this new tank up. How fitting! 😉

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This weekend I am headed to spectate some Crossfit hotties at a competition (sometimes it’s much more fun just watching!), then looking forward to ripping out more carpet.. whee!!

Your turn..
Home improvement – love it or hate it?
Any tips for cleaning up the gunk that remained after I pulled up the carpet padding?
Have you ever had a shipping fail?
Are you like me and prefer to have everything shipped rather than going to the store?
Did you know Amazon has a wish-list feature that works like a registry? 

Disclaimer: Some of the links above are affiliate links in which I may receive cash or product compensation for promoting. However, I only talk about things I love, so click on them and buy them to help support my blogging efforts. 🙂