Saturday morning photos! I'm trying out Picasa's photo collage feature, and it's actually pretty cool...pictures aren't exactly arranged how I would have them, but oh well :)

two things

cause it's just after 7am and my brain can't handle much more right now...

1.) minted -- oh my heavens....this website is my new obsession. I could (and have) spent hours looking through the "Design Challenge" section. If I had any clue how to create something so beautiful as some of those cards, I would be downloading Photoshop & Illustrator right.now.

2.) I found out last night that my little, itty bitty small town gym just bought spinning bikes and is starting spin classes in October! my class instructor was SO excited to tell me cause I've been bugging her about it for over a year now. I'm considering it an early birthday present :)

okay....7:15 and I've got 45 min to get out of my robe, do my hair/makeup and get dressed. better get moving!

proof

my $6 shirt! ignore the wrinkled-ness and the funny bunching around the top, I was running out the door to go to work. oh, and the 'closet' on our footboard. it's a terrible weakness for both me and my husband.

best part about it? I can wear it to work. hallelujah.

what is happening??

at one time in my life, I enjoyed buying nice clothes. In fact, there was a year or so when I was making great money working in a big city, and bought lots of nice clothes, pretty frequently.

when I moved to Small Town America, I knew I would struggle with the lack of malls. shoot, the lack of stores. but I was confident that I would make lots of trips back to Minneapolis [my shopping Mecca], and of course I would just buy online!

here's what I didn't take into account with that great plan:

1.) Minneapolis is over two hours away. It's not a drive we do in a day.

2.) Because we don't do that drive in a day, we usually get a hotel room, eat out w/ friends we haven't seen, etc, etc. That means that leaves me with $ to buy clothes instead of $$$.

3.) I hate shopping online. It's the most un-fun thing in the whole world.

Leaves me in a tough place, right? So I make do with buying a few things here and there when we go to another town about an hour from here that has a mall. Or I might buy something at Maurices, which is not my favorite but will do [we just got one this summer! HUGE deal for our little town]. Add to all of this that I'm currently going through RI-DIC-U-LOUS clothing withdrawal, and, well.....I did something crazy.

I bought a shirt at Family Dollar.

Yes, really.*

If you had told me two or three years ago that I would walk out of a Family Dollar being absolutely STOKED about my new shirt, I would've laughed in your face. Not cause I'm all hoity-toity, brand-names-only, but just cause it's Family Dollar.

Guess that makes me a really great match for my husband, huh?

*note - the shirt is very cute! soft cotton (surprisingly), gray, longer torso, and has three quarter sleeves that button on the sides.

leann

Say what you will about her personal life, but girl looks good. I'm jealous.

Thursday randoms

Because I haven't blogged for a week cause my internet has been down for FIVE days [I almost died], I have lots of little things to talk about! Get excited.

1.) Junk Bonanza I am DEVASTATED I am missing this! I haven't been before and only heard about it the other day when I was reading The Lettered Cottage, but I'm assuming it's a "junker's" dream. Basically - old stuff/antiques that have either already been beautiful re-purposed or old stuff that's waiting for someone's re-purposing touch. I would absolutely love, love, love to go to this.

2.) I am loving this blog, Pink Sass. She wears the cutest clothes, has the cutest blog, and has totally got in me re-motivated to get my butt to the gym this fall! And she got me hooked on Kashi Honey Sunshine cereal, which is currently the very best part of my day.

3.) I've been listening to Rhapsody lately like crazy. They have a free 14 day trial, but I'll probably pay the $9.99/month for the membership fee. I love Pandora, but I'm a total control freak when it comes to listening to music when I'm working out, or sitting at my computer. I rarely appreciate the randomness of songs that you get. The benefit of Rhapsody? I can pick any song in the entire world (seriously, their collection is amazing) to listen to. I love it!

4.) I started my workout classes this week - I'm doing Cardio Kickboxing and another Cardio class. We had the first one last night, and after all the "roundhouse" kicks my butt is SORE. And that was after the instructor informed us last night was the Beginners Basic class. Nice.


Okay, that's all I got. Happy Friday!!

on the phone...

Just checking if phone blogging really works! guess we'll see...

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do you have to post more than 1x/month to qualify?

I got this award today from Annie at Little Running Feet! Quite a little honor and I'm definitely appreciative, even though I'm probably not that versatile in all actuality. Cause posting on your blog would be the first step to being versatile, right?

So! Here's the question:

If you had the chance to go back and change one thing in your life, would you and what would it be?

Tough question, but my answer is no, I wouldn't change anything in my life. The only thing I would do is have really appreciated where I was and where God had me at certain times in my life! When I was single, I wanted to be married. When I was overseas living THE life, I wanted to be with B. Now that I'm married, I want babies...see this cycle? I'm working on being content with where I am RIGHT NOW.

Pick 4 people and give the award to them.

Okay...I have a problem. See, the computer I used to store all my favorite blogs on is en route to Illinois! I'm shipping it back home to my family who was gracious enough to us use it [B's beautiful Mac got stolen out of a house last year. it was terrible.] I shipped it back yesterday without realizing it and now I don't have ANY of my daily reads stored! It's like....losing the last pages of a book you've been hooked on forever!

Thank the lovely individual that gave you the award.

but of course! Thanks, Annie! I owe you Chipotle/Starbucks PSL/Tiger Sushi and a 1 year subscription to Country Weekly!

You need to share 7 things about yourself.

1 - as interested as I am in the bloggers I read, I usually don't read these things. unless they're really interesting. I LOVE the blogs I read, but I'm terrible about reading the surveys/100 Things About Me. that being said, you're free to stop reading now, haha!

2- I'm anal about grammar. A few things: "Anyways" is not a word. It's "Anyway." No 'S'. Any numbers that are from 0-9 are supposed to be written out rather than typed numerically [Two, not 2]. But on the other hand, I'm awful with knowing where to put the apostrophe with certain words that end in 'S'.

3 - I drive a Pontiac Grand Am that will be all paid off here in a few months, and I HATE the car. I hate it a little less than I did a couple years ago, but no lie: I've hated since a couple days after I drove it off the lot. It was a good example of not making a decision on a whim.

4 - I used to win lots of contests. Some of the stuff I've won is a new computer and concert tickets, but my BEST ever was winning a trip to Nashville on CMT.com in 2005! It was amazing.

5 - My hair is currently down to the middle of my back. It's looong. In 2003 I got it all cut off - think Mandy Moore with her short, cute haircut - and no lie, I've been growing it back ever since. I've toyed with the idea of cutting it but my husband would literally fall over and die if I did that. He has an attachment to it.

6 - From May of 2007 til July of 2008, I traveled to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Sweden, France, Thailand, Sicily, Denmark, Spain, and Bali. I traveled to France three times, and flew Business class for two of those flights [not on my dollar!]

7 - I love nothing more than taking baths. I get a book and a glass of wine, and you may not see me for an hour or so!

fall clothes & where have I been?!?

holy smokes. It's been so long! still no new computer or camera. but....we're working on it?

ANYWAY.

so, um...I don't even remember the last thing I wrote about. But, it's been busy up in the north 40 here! we had a fantastic end-of-summer. Lots of boating & barbecues, hanging out, going out to our favorite little lodge bar and listening to live music (country! LOVE that). But unfortunately as soon as September 1st hit Summertime took her tank tops and flip flops and hit the road. It's been COLD up here!

So - with that being said, here's a few things I have my eyes on for the fall:

btw - Over the Knee boots. Pretty in Pink Megan did a blog post about them today with some very good points about how to & and how to NOT wear them. My jury is still out on them, but I really like this pair from Ann Taylor LOFT.

SKINNIES! SKINNY'S? Every girl needs a good pair of black ones. I learned that in Europe. My pair that I currently own is....wow. In bad, faded shape.

Adorable. It looks like, perhaps on a normal torso-ed girl and not a 6 foot tall one, this sweater could be a little longer? And could maybe be worn with above skinnies [skinny's?] OH - and the boots! Or would that be too much?

I like the bow on the sweater. I'm totally into frills/ruffles/flowers. Even though I only own like, one shirt that has flowers on it. And I never wear it cause it's black and the flowers are black but they look navy. Ew.

Alright. I'm off to take a bath...my husband is in football-comatose [1st game of the season! Vikings v. Saints]. Tomorrow's Friday and one of my favorite days - Casual Day at work! Mornings suddenly become much more enjoyable, no?