WE HAVE MOVED!

Hello all!

We’ve moved!  I bit the bullet and upgraded my blog to a wordpress.com blog-trust me, its very highbrow and fancy.  Not only does wordpress give my blog a much more professional look, it is very user friendly for both you and me!

Don’t worry, the new blog site is SUPER easy to find!  Just type www.25by20five.com into your browser and you’re there!  It’s the exact same address minus the annoying .blogspot.com (which incidentally costs $17 a year to drop!). 

It’s the exact same blog you’ve come to know and love, but slightly different.  All of my previous posts have been transposed to the new blog site, so trust me, you won’t be missing anything!  The only thing I’m sad to let go is the page counter from this site-I was already up to 1,200! 

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you on the new site! Xo Whitney

I Don't Love Running....

I don't love running. Despite everybody telling me "oh you'll learn to love it" or "just wait, it'll grow on you". Ya, no.  It hasn't.  And let's be honest, I don't really think it will.  I don't love running, buuuutttt.....I have found something I like about it. The accessories.  The accessories are awesome.


It started with my new shoes (which I love).  I bought those and suddenly had the desire to buy everything I would need to look like a professional runner.  Next, I bought socks.  The most expensive socks I have ever bought in my life.  They're fancy schmancy Asics made out of a secret super breathe-able fabric with special supports in the arches and yada yada yada.  They're awesome.  They don't give me any blisters like my stupid old cotton ones did.


After the socks, it was running tops.  Do you know what the best thing about running clothes are? They're bright.  Super bright. They are glow-in-the-dark, a car couldn't hit me by accident if it tried bright.  To me, bright happens to equal awesome.  I have purchased two new running shirts, one with awesome holes for my thumbs, and one that is so bright that one of my co-workers called me a "beacon" today. I love them both, and want more, brighter, better ones.


My favorite new running accessory has to be my new ipod shuffle. I absolutely love it.  It is tiny, and pink, and clips right onto my new running tops and I love it.  I purchased it out of necessity.  I found that the longer runs I was attempting on the weekend were agonizing.  They were agonizing because A) I was running for long distances and B) because I was bored out of my mind. I've gotten up to 3-4 miles on weekends, which at my pace is a solid 30-40 minutes of running time.  And during that entire time I had absolutely nothing to take my mind off the fact that I was running, and that made it so much worse.


So I committed the worst running faux pas in the world, I bought an ipod.  I know, I know, I can hear all the "real" runners groaning.  You're not supposed to listen to music when you run.  You're supposed to listen to your heart beat, breathing, and footsteps on the pavement.  Ya. That wasn't cutting it for me.  So I did it, I broke all the rules, and I now listen to music when I run.  I've found that I finish my runs much stronger when I have Akon yelling in my ear telling me that I'm a "sexy bitch".  True story.

Me with two of my new accessories.  Please note that my face is the same color as my shirt because I had just finished a run.

VOTE FOR CHARLIE!!!

Just wanted to take a moment to use my blog for the power of good, not evil.  

Well, its good for my family anyway.  Please take a moment to vote for my little brother Charlie to win a $5,000 college scholarship from Hood.  Please help send him to college so that he can get rich and take care of me later on in life.  And the best news is-you can vote for him every day until March 15th! YAY!

Please pass this link on to all your friends and everyone in your network.  Charlie will be attending St. Lawrence University (not as good as Trinity but we're still very proud of him) in the fall and it is a ridiculously expensive school.  We know how ridiculously expensive the school is because my sister Molly already goes there.  SLU is sucking my parents dry.  Every bit helps so please vote for Charlie! And then vote for him the next day, and the day after, and the day after that and so on an so forth.

Here is the link to vote!

https://www.hood.com/promo/scholarship/default.aspx?sid=B84A3538-BA53-4F43-BF2F-207FE407F254

Also, I changed the blog background to the hearts yesterday in honor of Valentine's Day, but I'm kind of digging them so I think they will be sticking around for a while :)

Crafty Life Lessons

I was told this weekend that I didn't blog nearly enough-I'm sorry! I was worried about going through THE LIST too quickly.  So I've decided to do some non-LIST related posts whenever I do anything crafty and or cool.  Hence today's post!


For those of you who don't know, I am in charge of hosting all of the birthday celebrations at work-it's pretty awesome.  I thought it would be a lot of fun to have the February birthday celebrations on the 14th this year and make it Valentine's Day themed.  Then I got the genius idea to make heart shaped cupcakes!  I'd seen them on pinterest and foodgawker and they looked SO EASY TO MAKE!  False.

They looked so good and "hearty" (get it?) in the pan

My first attempt was a complete and utter failure.  I mixed the cupcakes, added a little red dye, and filled the cupcake liners.  I made the mistake of filling the liners as I would for normal cupcakes.  DON'T DO THIS.  I then put a little marble in behind the liner and already they looked like cute little hearts.

My first failure

They didn't look like cute little hearts when they came out of the oven.  Yikes.  But, in baking, as in life, we learn from our mistakes and soldier forward.  We learn from our mistakes and do better next time.  


This time I filled the cupcake liners less.  I used two spoonfuls the first time, so I figured I would use one spoonful this time.  The liners looked so empty with one little spoonful of batter in them that I caved and added another half of a spoonful.  DON'T DO THIS!  While the end result was certainly better than the first, they were still a far cry away from the perfectly heart shaped cupcakes floating around pinterest.

CLose, but still no cigar

Try, try again.  And the third time is always the charm...right? ...not right...completely wrong.  I only filled them with one spoonful of batter this time. Still not heart shaped.  Closer, yes, but still not quite it.

GAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

So do we try a fourth time?  No.  We give up.




Ohh, I'm sorry.  Did you think this was going to be some sort of underdog triumph story?  Poor little baker can't get her cupcakes to look like hearts, but she never ever gives up? Ya. No.  This isn't that story...


 After three attempted batches (failed batches) I have come to the conclusion that perhaps I need larger marbles to make a more distinct indent in the liners.  Only problem is, these marbles came from my mom's house and I have no desire to drive over there at this hour of the night begging for more marbles.  I would rather sleep. So, we give up.  Better yet, we give up and go to bed because we realize that without my solid 9 hours of sleep I might actually hurt someone in the morning.  We realize that these cupcakes are not worth losing my marbles over (see what I did there?).  So we sleep.  We don't stress the small stuff we can't control, and instead, sleep.  I (we) love sleep.  Hopefully my co-workers tomorrow will realize that even if the cupcakes don't look like love, they taste it <3


So, what's today's life lesson?  Is it to never, ever, ever give up?  Sorry Mr.Churchill, in some circumstances that is an excellent idea.  However this time we learned not to sweat the small stuff. to breathe, stretch, shake, let it go.  On to the next.  (My life lessons are usually influenced by pop songs).  At least they taste good!

The ADORABLE version Pinterest teased me with)

The closest I got....

#22 Part B

First of all I would just like to say...WOW...this blog has already had over 1,000 views in it's short life.  I am absolutely amazed!  I can't believe there are that many people reading this.  Or is my mom just stalking this page everyday? You've got to admit it's a possibility.  However I do prefer to think that I have more readers than that :)


Anyways..on to some more good news...THE FISHIES HAVE ARRIVED!!!!   It is a very big day in the Duprey/Chisholm household!  We were at Petco promptly at 9:15 this morning (they didn't open until nine, otherwise we would have been there earlier!)  And we went straight to the glow fish!  These little fishies are amazing and are genetically created to glow!  They come in all shapes and sizes from thin bright pink ones to larger blue green ones.  We had a brief dalliance with the boring orange 15 cent fish because Ollie thought paying $9.00 for a single fish was a little ridiculous, but the glow fish were too cool to resist.


We wanted to buy about 10 fish to start, but were told with a new aquarium it is better to start with one or two fish otherwise some chemical (whose name I can't remember) would rise too quickly in the tank and CHEMICALS KILL FISH.  (there is so much to know about keeping fish!) So we decided on two of the green/blue glow fishes that had just arrived in the store (they caused quite a stir with their arrival-people were very excited).


After being trained on how to introduce the fish to our tank (a 45 minute process involving "floating" the plastic bag in the tank and slowly introducing the tank water into the bag water-DO NOT LET THE BAG WATER INTO YOUR TANK-YOUR FISH WILL DIE!) we got to take them home!


After sprinting to the car with the fish inside me jacket (it as freeeeeeeezing out today!) we were on our way!  Yay!  We drove home like there was a newborn in the back seat.  We didn't want to jostle/upset/stress the fish in any way-apparently it is very easy to stress fish out AND STRESS WILL KILL YOUR FISH!


We got home and it was all we could do not to dump them straight into the tank and watch them swim around.  But we listened to the Petco girl, and we didn't even turn the aquarium light on because THAT WILL SHOCK YOUR FISH AND YOUR FISH WILL DIE, and slowly introduced them to their new home.


Good news is-they love it here!  Although we're not sure they like the aquarium light because they tend to get a little twitchy when we turn it on, we're going to have to ask the Petco people about that when we return to get the awesome goldfish we saw there today.


It is my great pleasure to introduce you to Frederick (never Fred-just Frederick) and Zumi Zumi (short for Zoom Zoom Zoom You Make My Heart Go Boom Boom Boom).  Can you tell which one I named?  Anyways, they're awesome, I love them, and they are best friends already yay!  Stay tuned for our next addition!

Frederick 

Zumi Zumi

Fishy Friends!

#22

There is a reason why Ollie isn't allowed to go grocery shopping with me anymore...when we go shopping together we tend to think "the bigger the better" and "the more the merrier".  We tend to go with the "grab-and-go" method.  If we see it, and we want it, we get it. This tends to lead to very high grocery bills and very full grocery carts.  And that's exactly how we ended up with this....

Yup...that's a 10 gallon aquarium.  How did it end up in our apartment?  Let me take you back....


It all started with #22 on the list....get a pet.  Since my mother and landlord have conspired against my having anything cuddly and fluffy, I decided I would get a fish.  I was thinking about getting a simple beta fish.  Bowl, some rocks, maybe a plant.  Simple.  Instead we left Petco (its where the pets go!) with a tank, filter, heater, rocks, plants, several structures with an "around the world" theme, and dreams of the glow-in-the-dark fish we'll get to put in the tank.


Ollie and I walked in the store and immediately the  sad betas in the plastic cups were forgotten.  We were entranced by the myriad of freshwater fish we could get....if only we had an aquarium!  I personally voted for a "nemo" fish, but unfortunately they are salt water fish and quite aggressive, unlike their quirky portrayal in the Pixar film.  Ollie and I bounced around from tank to tank, eyes wide, taking in all the little fishies we wanted to fill our "starter kit" aquarium with.


Luckily we spoke to a Petco supervisor first, otherwise we would have killed all of our little pets within the hour.  We were told we couldn't take any fish home tonight, because we needed to set up the aquarium and treat the water before we could add the fish-otherwise we would shock their little systems and kill them!  Not good!


We practically skipped out to the car, aquarium in tow, and raced home to set everything up.  The tank looks great and is sitting nicely on our entryway table just waiting to be filled with little fishies!


We get to return to Petco on Friday to pick out our little fishes.  Stay tuned to meet them!

Update!

Hello all!  Just wanted to give you an update on my half-marathon efforts!  Unfortunately they've been stalled for the week due to rainy days and extreme shin pain. I tried a couple of economical self-fixes, but Misha was right, I wasn't smart enough to type my shins on my own.  So I stopped running, hoping they would heal themselves.


I decided that in order to help the shin-situation I would get new running shoes.  I went down to Runner's Alley this morning for a fancy new pair of running shoes.  The ladies at RA are kind of geniuses.  They know everything about running, they were also completely aghast at the state of my current running shoes. They insisted I needed a new pair about a year ago, and were convinced that they were the cause of my shin pain.


After trying on a million, ok 8, pairs of shoes, they finally brought out the big guns.  They prefaced the arrival of these shoes by saying "they're the cadillac of running shoes."  BOOM.  I was already sold.  I tried them on and they were like running on a cloud-I was practically prancing around the store, and I'm about to take them for a spin right now!

See? Aren't they puuuuuurdyyy?

So yay!  Training can resume again!  On another note- I HAVE REACHED MY FUNDRAISING GOAL!! $500 has been raised for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in memory of Amma.  THank you SO MUCH to everyone who has donated!  It means so much to me.  Didn't get a chance to donate?  That's ok!  You still can!  The site will be open until June 6th, one month after the race, and donations will be accepted until then.  Cancer won't beat us-we'll beat it!  HOpefully this race won't beat me first!


http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/whitneyduprey/amma