When we moved into our house, I was surprised by the number of ceiling fans we had. There was one in the main living area, one in the kitchen (why?) and then fans in the bedrooms. 

I love a ceiling fan in the bedroom, so I was happy to see they were already there, and I wouldn't need to get an electrician to run wires or anything like that.

However, the age and quality of some of the ceiling fans was highly questionable.

The ceiling fan in the kitchen was so small, and so old, and so poorly installed that when you turned it on it wobbled back and forth and vibrated so hard that I swore it was going to fall right out of the ceiling. 

Oh did I mention it was also extremely ugly?

All that said, it stuck around for over a year because it just kept falling on the priority list of things to deal with. But we finally got our act together. I found a light fixture that complemented the other light fixture in the kitchen, and we were ready to trash the fan. 

Since it was so small, it didn't take too long to get it down. But I have to show you this one thing. The fan had this really weird plastic plate around the mount to I guess make the ceiling look fancier or something. I have no idea. It's clearly hideous.

Installing the new light ended up being a little frustrating because the directions were not in the most logical order and left you only a little room to maneuver the wires around. But when all was said and done, the ugly fan was gone and we had two coordinating light fixtures and a bunch more head space in our kitchen. 

One problem fan down, one to go. 

The other problem fan was in our guest bedroom. It took us until we were regularly sleeping in the guest bedroom while our main bathroom was under construction to realize just how problematic this ceiling fan was. 

This fan actually shook even more than the fan in the kitchen. There was a gap between the fan's mount and the ceiling, and my husband literally had to shim it with a piece of cardboard temporarily so that we could use it without it falling out of the ceiling and impaling us in the night.

Once we realized we had an actual safety hazard on our hands, we bought a replacement fan and pretty quickly swapped them out. 

I don't have a picture of this fan still hanging from the ceiling with the cardboard shim because my husband took it down before I snapped one, but here it is in pieces on the ground.

The new fan is not only properly installed and much sleeker looking, it also throws off much more air making it better for air circulation. 

As for the two remaining fans, they're staying for now. We may eventually replace the one in our room with the same model as the one we used in the guest room. And I'm just not exactly sure what I want to do with the one in the main living area, so that's a decision for another day. 

One of the things I'm so excited about this fall is that in-person races are back! I was pumped over the summer, but also a bit hesitant to pull the trigger on any registrations because I was having all those hamstring issues.

But by August, my hamstring issues had faded, and I signed up for a handful of races.

I'm running the Bay Bridge 10K on Oct. 31, the Rock N Roll Half Marathon in DC on Nov. 13, and the Rehoboth Seashore Half Marathon on Dec. 4. 

All these races were far enough away that I figured I'd be able to build a solid training base after not racing for a really long time. 

I also decided to try a new-to-me kind of training plan for this training cycle. This training plan bases all your workouts on heart rate rather than on set mileage or set time goals. I thought maybe a heart-rate based training plan would help me avoid over training and potential injuries.

Granted, my hip/IT band/piriformis has been tight since before I started the training plan, but just about one month in, and I'm happy to report that I don't have any new injuries cropping up.

While overall I've been enjoying training in a different way, there are a few things that have been a huge adjustment for me.

First, all the workouts are based on a certain amount of time spent in each of the five major heart rate zones. I'm so used to a training plan that tells me how many miles I have to go out and run each day. This time-based method is a really big mental shift, but it's been good for me.

With mileage-based training plans, I always tried to push myself to get the miles done as quick as possible before I had to start my work day. That often meant I was running my "easy" runs at a pace that was way too fast. 

Now, my workouts are a set amount of time. I don't need to worry how many miles I cover in that time, I just know how much time I need to set aside to finish the workout. 

The second thing that I've realized is that running easy enough is actually really hard for me. My recovery runs are all supposed to be in zone 2, which is only about 65-75% of my max heart rate. For me, that means I need to run really slow to keep my heart rate that low. We're talking sometimes 11 minute miles here. That is really humbling because it feels so painfully slow to me. 

But if I start picking up the pace too much, I pretty quickly move into the next heart rate zone, which means I'm not treating the run as a recovery run. I've found a screen on my GPS watch/heart rate monitor that doesn't show distance, so while I'm in the middle of a workout, I can just see what zone I'm currently working in and the overall elapsed time of the workout. Not seeing my distance or pace per mile helps me worry a lot less on my pace.

The other thing that has been a major struggle for me is getting into zone 5 when I need to. Zone five is the hardest working zone, and I've had one workout each week that requires either hill sprints or some other kind of sprint where you are supposed to be in zone five for 60-90 seconds. But no matter how hard I sprint and no matter how steep the hill is, I have never been able to get my heart rate into zone five. I've gotten basically to the upper limit of zone four, but I'm failing to cross into zone five. 

I'm not sure that this is a huge deal since upper zone four is still really hard, and I feel like I'm still reaping the benefits of my sprints. But it's just one of those things that bugs me.

The last thing I really love about this plan is that I feel like each of my runs has more purpose. Tempo runs have become much more bearable when I only have to worry about holding a certain target heart rate zone for a certain amount of time rather than holding a specific pace. I always struggled to do pace-based tempo runs, but I've been doing pretty well with these heart rate tempo runs. They're still really hard, but I don't beat myself up if my pace wavers because my heart rate shows that I'm still working hard. 

So one month in, I'm really happy with this plan. I'm enjoying my runs more and hopefully I'll have a really strong training base when race day rolls around. 

Reading in August felt like a slog. I started so many books that I ended up not finishing, which is always disappointing. Even some of the books I did finish weren't some of my favorites. But there were a couple of books that I really enjoyed, and they at least help balance out the month. 

Five Stars

Broke Millennial Takes on Investing: A Beginner's Guide to Leveling Up Your Money by Erin Lowry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Five stars because I love a good personal finance book that is written in a conversational and easy-to-understand way. Investing is definitely the area of personal finance where I have the most to learn, and I appreciated that this book looked beyond 401K investing and covered topics like mirco-investing, cryptocurrency and other less traditional ways to be active in the market.

Four Stars

The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A cute, though somewhat predictable take on the world of dating apps. When one freelance data scientists meets the creator of a dating app that uses DNA samples to find a perfect match, she's not at all convinced the science will work. But on a whim, she decides to submit a sample and see what happens. Fast, cute and fun read.

Outlawed by Anna North
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Westerns are not my favorite, but I appreciated this twist on the genre. In this dystopian story, women who can't have babies are cast out from their towns, jailed or hung as witches. One such woman escapes to a convent before she eventually joins a gang of outlaws that banned together for survival.

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm not sure where I stumbled upon a recommendation for Riley Sager, but I'm so glad I did. This book was a thriller set at a summer camp. The main character Emma had been a camper 15 years ago at the camp when the girls in her bunk went missing and then entire camp shut down. But now the owner is reopening it and wants Emma to come back as a camp counselor. She goes back determined to solve the mystery of what happened 15 years ago, but is surprised to find when mysterious things start happening all over again.

Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a pretty perfect audiobook. Each chapter covered a different "lady killer" so it was almost like listening to an individual podcast episode about each person. I'd not heard of many of these women, and I enjoyed the way the author not only gave you the general facts about what happened, but also talked about the often sexists way these women were portrayed as society attempted to make sense of why these women killed.

Three Stars

The Wife Stalker by Liv Constantine
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I generally enjoy the books by Liv Constantine, but this one didn't really do it for me. I didn't love the writing style -- it felt shallow and like it needed more depth to bring the characters to life. And though the plot was decently enjoyable, I just felt meh.

A Special Place for Women by Laura Hankin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book started out pretty fun and interesting, but it took a turn that I was not expecting, and I lost a little bit of interest then. I still finished it because I was intrigued if the main character journalist would expose the secret society, but by the end of this book, I felt a bit meh.

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Back in June, I showed you some of the initial work I did to liven up our small half bathroom. The focus then was to turn a sterile, white space into something more fun and colorful. 

I was really happy with how the first bit of work turned out, but I knew I needed to do something with the tall white wall behind the toilet. It was the last remaining part of the room that just felt very unfinished. 

After searching for ideas to the ends of the Internet, I finally came up with a game plan, and loved the way it turned out.

First, I settled on adding some wallpaper to give the wall color and texture. 

I wanted to continue to build on the nautical theme I had going on, and I found a beachy looking, weathered wood pattern that I thought would be perfect. 

I was able to get the first piece up by myself without any issues, but from there things got tricky, and I had to call in the reinforcements.

It was much easier with two sets of hands to maneuver around the toilet, line the wallpaper up and then smooth it down making sure we got out the air bubbles.

Once we had it all up, my husband took an Xacto knife and cut the excess off from around the edges.

I loved the way this instantly added some color and made this wall so much more interesting. Here's the before and after shots, with me wedged in next to the toilet.

This small change made the room feel much closer to complete, but I still felt like because the wall was so tall, it needed something else. I just couldn't decide what.

So out came the painter's tape, so I could play around with different options to get a sense of what might work well in the space. I knew I either needed one really big piece of art or several smaller things in some sort of a collage situation to make this space work.

Ultimately I decided one big piece of art didn't feel as exciting since we already have a picture hanging on the other wall. So I immediately starting playing around with shelves or collage ideas with multiple parts.

As soon as I tried the squares, I knew that was the direction I wanted to go in.

I left the painter's tape up on the wall for several days, and each time I walked into the bathroom, I liked the idea more and more. So I knew I was ready to head to the store and buy the supplies to build some custom shelves.

The way I measured things out was that each side of the square was going to be 12 inches long. So I purchased one 1x6x12 ft poplar board, and had Home Depot cut it down into the eight 12 inches pieces I would need. (I also had them cut the remainder of the board into two 14 inches pieces for another set of shelves for a different room, but I'll share more on that project later).

I had wood glue and nails at home, so the only other supplies I needed to pick up were stain and the mounting brackets that I would use to hang the shelves.

Let me tell you, picking the right color stain turned out to be a challenge. I wanted a light, but warm, wood tone. The first stain I picked out ended up being too grey, which actually worked perfectly for the other shelf project, but did not work for this bathroom.

So I ran out to three more home improvement stores trying to find a stain color that would work. I eventually settled on Minwax Puritan Pine.

Shelf assembly was very similar to what we did for the mantel. We started by sanding everything down really well.

Then we glued the pieces of wood together and firmly attached them with nails. As you can see, we got really creative with using stuff from around the house to help hold the shelves in the proper form while the glue dried overnight.

These shelves aren't very big so the staining process went really fasting. After two coats of stain, I followed up with three coats of polyurethane to seal everything. Normally, I stain and seal things outside because of the fumes, but the weather forecast was not promising, and I couldn't risk my shelves getting rained on, so I sucked it up and did it in the house.

Then we attached the mounting brackets and hung these on the wall.

The most challenging part of hanging them was being super careful that we nailed the holes into the wall in a level manner. So it was lots of measuring and adjusting to make sure we got them just right. It was very helpful to have assistance on this part.

I love these shelves. I think they add so much to this otherwise boring wall, and once they were hung, I knew exactly what I was going to decorate them with.

With all that, I think this bathroom is officially done. I love the nautical, beachy vibe we created in this room.

For one last time, here's the finished room with me squished next to the toilet. I'm so happy with how it turned out.