And I've got some randoms for ya....

1 - I got some V-neck tees at Target last week (cause I only wear V-necks, HATE crews) and oh.my.gosh....I'm ready to buy a hundred more! I'm amazed at the incredible softness of them. Best part is that they're only $8.

2 - I have a new favorite summer drink: Absolut Ruby Red with Tonic and a lime. My "old faithful" summer drink was Bacardi Limon with Sprite, but my new drink has a little bit of a bite to it, which I love.

3 - I FINALLY got a folding lawn chair! You know, those cheap plastic tri-fold ones? I wanted one last summer, but of course could not find one in all of this town (and I went to every possible store that would carry them). So when I saw them at Target last week I snapped one up, and I can't wait to lay out on it! [the little things, right?]

4 - I love my job. I love the work, I love my boss, I love the people I work with (Mel!), I have never loved a job in my life, so this is a very good thing!

5 - Is anybody else following the Casey Anthony trial? I've mentioned it a few times on Twitter. For some reason, I've gotten really sucked into it and have been listening to the trial live all this last week. I think it's very clear that she did it, especially if you take time to read case docs that detail the way she lived her life after Caylee went missing, and even just watching Casey during the trial...if your daughter actually drowned and you had to bury her, you'd think you'd show emotion, which she hasn't done at all. And, her defense team is really not doing her any favors, they're terrible.

6 - I had gotten pretty excited about the idea of running a half marathon, but because it's such an extreme amount of training/running and I actually really like running right now, I think I'm going to wait until a later one, or wait til the time feels right. I want to join a fitness class at my gym, and maybe find other forms of working out. If I were to train for a half, I'd be spending all that time running and truthfully, I'm ready for a change-up in my routine!

7 - If you're big in working out and you're not taking yoga, I highly recommend it. My yoga class has strengthened my core and I've definitely noticed a difference from it.

....and I think that's it.

We have chairs, people!

For the last three (three) years, Brad and I have been doing the unfortunate eat-in-front-of-the-TV move because in this little house we live in, we do have a dining room but it's about twice the size of our bathroom. And our bathroom is what my good friend Dan would call a "shoilet" - basically a shower with a toilet. It's way, way small. So that makes our dining room way, way small as well. And on top of having a postage-stamp sized dining room, we didn't even have chairs for our dining room table. Hence, we ate in front of the TV.

One thing we do have in this cute little rental that I love dearly and will be sad to move from, is a back porch enclosed with windows. When I first moved into the house, we spent a lot of time painting every room and making the little house a home. Needless to say, the ugly back porch didn't get a lot of attention that year. Or the next, or the next. Until this weekend!!

I set out on the long task of painting the windows white. If you ever feel like you need a very justifiable reason to stab your eyeballs out with pencils, just paint a couple tiny window panes and you'll be grabbing for pencils in no time! Thankfully my sweet husband rescued me at the right moment - the "Just SCREW it, I don't need this porch finished anyway!" - and helped me finish painting the whole room. [For the record, he is usually GREAT about helping me with house projects. But he hates painting, and further, I'm terrible at starting a million things that I take forever to finish, so....]

Anyway - I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

BEFORE

This top photo is how the whole room looked - wood walls and tan windows. The bottom photo is how the initial progress on the windows on the opposite wall.

AFTER

The chairs I ended up finding at an antique store in town, literally because they were the only place I could go to find a set of 4 chairs. How's that for no options?? But honestly, I love them! They're antique wooden folding chairs, and the shop owner figured they date back to the '20's. They're also pretty sturdy and have a rustic patina to them that fits with the light tones in the room.

Needless to say, I love it out there now! It's so nice to sit out there and eat dinner and have a glass of wine with the windows open.

I'm on my own tonight as Brad's out fishing, so I'm going to finish my glass of wine and get crackin' on the laundry!

10k!

The 10k was this morning, and it went GREAT! My official time was 59:47 (even though the clock said 59:55?) and I couldn't have been happier with it. I was so dang nervous, even up until the 3rd mile (which let me say is a really uncomfortable feeling - breathing hard, legs hurt and you want to puke for nerves) cause I was just so worked up over the hills. Maybe I mentioned it, but there's not many hills in my town to train on, or at least, they weren't a part of my training program!

The first three miles of the course was pretty much uphill - there were a few short hills, and one LONG MUTHA OF A HILL that I couldn't even look up at, I just had to keep my head down and push push push. But the last three....all downhill! At one point I thought to myself, "If I hit a patch of gravel, it will not be pretty" cause it was pretty steep in certain areas. So, even though I'm so proud of my time, I'm pretty sure that were it not for those hills, I would've finished a little more around 1:02 or 1:03. But either way...my own two legs carried me across that finish line and you take your advantages where you get them, right??

Here's a picture of my "cheering section" - my husband, Brad, me, my father in law, mother in law, and my good girlfriend, Bobbie. It's so great to see people cheering for you at the end!

I also have to send a big CONGRATULATIONS to my friend Mike, who is the husband of my friend Annie over at Little Running Feet. He finished the Fargo Marathon today in 2:55, which is really, really, ridiculously amazing!

stationery

I'm a Minted addict. Seriously. If money would've been no issue for our wedding, I would've done every.single.printed item in letterpress on heavy cardstock paper. I dream of throwing parties and getting personalized invitations, of one day sending out sweet family Christmas cards, and am always on the lookout for pretty stationery.

I was browsing Minted today when I came across this stationery:

[front]

[back]

Holy me on a piece of paper. Black & Cream....stripes....a little bit of French "just a little note"...some cursive & print. I love it!

nerves

As I've mentioned before (about a million times), my first 10k is coming up this weekend. Want to see ALL the information I have on it? Yep, it's this little teeny ad right here. They also threw in a map of the course, which looks like something Columbus used to navigate his way into America. Really, no street names?? Odd. That's a small town for you.

Anyway, I definitely know that I'm prepared for it. I've ran (almost) the full distance, done a lot of running and training the past few months, and yet I'm still terrified that the day of the race I just.....won't be able to run it? I don't know what I'm worried about! But I almost get sick with nerves when I think of it.

One thing that I think is throwing me is that there's a couple hills in there, and I really haven't trained on hills at all, as we just don't have many in our town. Map My Run has a great feature that will tell you the climbs on your run, how long they are, the incline in feet, the grade of the hill, etc. And the biggest hill I'm worried about is truthfully not that big, but still. I'm worried.

I'm going to do my 3 mile run tonight on some hills in a more remote part of town, which I always hate cause it's road running and you just never know what crazies you might run into. BUT I carry mace so that helps me feel better.

Any advice for a 10k first-timer??

shopping!

I'm on lunch, so this will be quick!

This weekend my mother-in-law and I went to visit my sister-in-law since all the men were out of town. It was a fun weekend spent with Brad's family, and it (again) reminded me how thankful I am to be close to my in-laws, especially my mother-in-law.

So, here's the damage, 1st at Target:


I am obsessed with these shirts! I have to say, the website pictures never do the clothes justice. But anyway, these are the Mossimo Military Tunic in Pebble & Black, and yes I DID buy them in both colors. I bought them both cause I really couldn't decide which one I liked better, and as soon as I got home I knew I would have to keep them both. They're a lightweight silky material, fit like a dream, and can be dressed up or dressed down. I wore the Pebble yesterday tucked into black skinny's (skinnies? Anyway, promise it was cute) with my gladiator sandals that are the same color. Oh, and I also don't button it up that high, and wore a thin white tank underneath.

Also bought this shower curtain, which I love. The picture, again, does nothing for it. I recently painted our bathroom off-white, so this complements it well. I'm going to accent with the Robin's Egg Blue that's in the curtain, should be pretty!

Finally, I bought these two shirts from American Eagle (on sale for $10!):


If you know me, you know I am absolutely, completely, fully, ridiculously obsessed with big navy stripes. Brad rolls his eyes when I buy shirts that are navy/white striped now cause I already have so many of them! But they're my favorite. Anyway, these shirts are a perfect summer-y thin material, and I actually bought them to wear as a swimsuit cover-up. Sure, I'll wear them other places, but I loved the deep V-neck, the looseness and the gauzy material. Just felt like the lake to me!

I also bought a couple Old Navy tanks that they actually came out with last year that I LOVED - seriously, they're amazing layering tanks. Kind of a heart shaped neckline, deep v-neck (I also am all about V neck and rarely wear crew neck), and have thin lace straps (which I'm usually not a fan of but for some reason I don't mind these). But they brought them back this year and I added white & gray to my collection.

And finally I bought a new white Nike Cotton Dri-Fit tank. Best workout shirts, in my opinion!

Speaking of workout, I did a 6 mile run yesterday! Okay - technically it was 5.97 miles which really chapped me cause I had mapped out 6 miles, but I took a shortcut so I wouldn't have to run on a busy highway (downside of living in a small town and on a busy highway, it's hard to map out long distance runs that avoid them), but it ended up cutting the run short about .25 miles. Anyway, my legs got tired, but my breathing/endurance felt good to the point that I wasn't even winded when I finished. My pace was between 9:30-9:58, and while I'm sure I slowed down some on my own, the wind was absolutely wicked yesterday and running on an open highway (on a running path, thankfully) didn't help it at all. My knee is a little sore today, which concerns me some since my 10k is this Saturday. But I think I only run once this week, per my Hal Higdon plan, so that should help.

Okay, this was MUCH longer than I planned, so I obviously need to blog more, ha!

lonely nights...

well, it's about that time of year when the work starts rolling in (on overload - Brad thankfully has work all year!) and I don't see my husband too much. The last couple weeks he's been working until 8 or 9 on weeknights and also on Saturdays. While I am so very thankful for the income, it's not only tough to not see him often, but it also is pretty stinky sitting at home every night by myself. I usually spend my evenings at the gym or running, and then I come home and make dinner, do some laundry or dishes, and then hang out on the couch until he gets home. Yep. Lonely.

Anyway...here's a couple pictures from the last month. These were take at an photography studio's Open House here in town. The first one is of my mother in law, sister in law, and myself, and the second one is what I've dubbed my "Realtor Shot" cause it reminds me of the photos you see of Realtors on billboards, haha ;)

In other news, my 10k is in 2 weeks from tomorrow! I'm pretty nervous. I didn't run much this week, maybe a total of 7 or 8 miles? I'm planning to do a long run tomorrow - 5.5 miles. Next week I'll do my 6 miler!

Oh! I also just finished this book:

I really liked it. Maybe it's cause there's Southern in my blood, but I loved the story of Skeeter and Aibileen. Now, for me personally....I felt like this book was a little un-finished, but I'm also the girl that loves Christian romance novels cause I love the finality of them! But, that was just my personal opinion and my literary views are nothing to take seriously.

Well, shouldn't be too long before Brad is home, so I'll wrap it up. Happy Friday!