Lately Katie has been weirding me out. She keeps pinning things that I love. Like this.

A chambray DRESS?? I love it! And so does Katie? I’m sure she’s anti the shoes and hat but still. She’s getting so fashionable!

And this one. I think we both have a thing for chambray. I actually wore an outfit almost identical to this the other day. Thank  you pinterest for making me fashionable.

And then there was this.

I’m obsessed. Mostly because I like to wear my cute tshirts that get pit stains to the gym. I’m sweating anyway so nobody really notices right? (Ha wrong which is why I need to do this.)

Random fact. My right armpit sweats WAY more than my left. Weird? Yep. Please tell me I’m not the only one.

My gym, Movement Minneapolis, likes to take picture of everyone working out and does fun memes like “Deadlift Friday” and “Strong has always been beautiful”. They did one (unannounced to me) after taking pictures of me doing pull ups in a pitted out tshirt. My chances of getting a guy went out the window with this pic.

Oh well. I was still flattered they made one of me.

Anyways, I hope you all remember this today. It’s true.

(Oh and weird, it’s a Red Letter Ink print! Don’t forget to sign up for the giveaway!!)

Well it took a little longer than we were planning on, but we are SO excited to have a giveaway with one of our favorite Etsy stores, Red Letter Ink!  Aimee, the owner of Red Letter Ink, has this to say about her shop:

Red Letter Ink’s desire is to celebrate the truths found in scripture by creating beautiful artwork with beautiful words. Think about it … it’s tough to fall away when you have constant reminders you see daily hanging on your walls, reminders of God’s power, grace, and mercy.

Amen to that!!  Red Letter Ink has SO MANY different options and styles of prints, it was hard to pick a few to feature in this post!  Jen and I both have Red Letter Ink up in our homes – I think my favorite is the print I have above Matea’s bed in her room:

Aimee has really gone above and beyond with this giveaway as she is offering THREE items to one winner!  Aimee is giving away one 8×10 print of your choice….(these are just two of our favorites)…

She is also including one 5×7 print of your choice…(again, just a couple of our faves)…

And to top it off, Aimee is also including a pack of notecards of your choice!  HEY-OH!  You can view all the notecard options here.

Did you catch that?  An 8×10, a 5×7, and a pack of notecards!!  SO EXCITED!!!

One of the things we ESPECIALLY love about Red Letter Ink is all the great adoption related items available.  Sometimes it is hard to find just the right piece of art for someone who is adopting, and Aimee has come up with some great pieces!

This month Aimee is donating 10% of her sales to The Sparrow Fund, an organization that supports families who are adopting internationally by by providing regular training opportunities as well as grants to families in financial need to enroll in programs specifically designed to provide counsel and comprehensive medical reviews of their referred child.  If something from Red Letter Ink catches your eye and you don’t win the giveaway we’d love to encourage you to purchase something this month as your money is making a difference!

Have we shown you enough prints yet?!    Lets move on to the giveaway!  All the ways to enter are listed below.  The giveaway will end at midnight on Thursday and we will announce the winner on Friday!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

I have an iPhone. Katie does not. She does have an iPod touch though which is nice because then she can have Instagram, we can FaceTime and I can text her photos that show up bigger than a fingernail. The whole iPhone subject was a little touchy for her for a while so I’m glad we can finally do this blog post. (Kidding Katie)

My iPhone cover cracked like 6 months ago and I was a huge slacker when it came to replacing it. I hated spending $30-$40 on a new one from Target or the Apple store. That goes back to us hating to spend money I guess.

Lately I’ve been on an etsy kick. I bought my mom’s Mother’s Day present off of etsy, my brother-in-law’s present off off etsy (we’ll be sharing them soon!) and now my new iPhone cover off of etsy! (bet you didn’t see that one coming, did ya). This is what it looks like.

Isn’t it amazing?

I searched forever and finally found the cute shop By Csera. This shop is run by a woman named Carly Ralph.  She is a young British nature loving artist based in Istanbul. Currently initiating a new unique collection collaborating with international fashion, tech accessory and interior design brands, she creates inspiring, magical, fully transportable mixed media art pieces. Her shop states that  it is ▼ S W E A T S H O P ▼ F R E E ▼,  ▼ N O ▼ M A S S ▼ P R O D U C T I O N ▼ and ▼ R E C Y C L E D ▼.

This is Carly. Say hi!

Carly’s cases are made from start to finish by her in her studio and 100% genuinely handmade in normal and healthy working conditions.

By Csera is a member of several organizations and charities specifically targeted to prevent the exploitation of many adults and children involved in the sweatshop trade globally. We love this a lot.

When you purchase from By Csera, you are helping to support small businesses and unique talents. Many items are mass produced and are of extremely poor quality. By purchasing a Csera case, you are contributing to the sustainability of affordable, quality, truly unique hand crafted merchandise. YAY small businesses!

Every case is made from 100% recycled materials made from post-consumer plastic, resulting is less factory waste and pollution to the environment. They only use environmentally safe inks and recycled shipping materials.

The bonus is the cost of the case AND shipping cost about $10 cheaper than any of the cases I had considered buying. I am so so pleased with my case and this shop! The actual shipping took a while but when it was packed up super cute when it arrived and it looked gorgeous.

So, if you’re like me and you drop your phone a lot and break cases easy, check out By Csera.  You might just find a case you like.

And because Katie and I are both running these days, we will leave you with this. Happy Wednesday!

We are in a slump.

A blogging slump.  Not really sure why….but….we are.

This will all be changing VERY soon as we have a PHENOMENAL giveaway in the works that we think will be coming up later this week!

Ok, so updates.

Jen ran 20 miles on Saturday.  CRAY CRAY.  And she ran it super duper fast.  So one…two…three…GO JEN GO!

I did week 6 day 1 of my C25K training yesterday and it was good.  Well, I don’t know I’d say it was good, but, it was fine.  I am paranoid of getting charlie horses in my legs while I sleep.  GO ME!  or something.  I haven’t weighed myself for my 5 pound challenge.  It is the time of the month where I am typically a little heavier, so, we’ll just let it slide for a week. 

Ok, so I have a ton of really brown bananas, so I’m either going to throw them in the freezer to make smoothies OR I’m going to make these breakfast cookies.  Which are kind of more like muffins.  (You can find the recipe here.)

I’m kind of leaning towards the smoothies since it is going to be 90 degrees today.  YEAH SUMMER!  Have you guys tried green smoothies?  I think I’m going to try to make them this summer.  My kids won’t eat lettuce, which is fine, but if I could get them to drink spinach – win.  These vanilla lime green smoothies look really good!

Aaron and I bought a bunch of plants so our tiny garden will be planted this week!  I am also going to have a small flower patch in our yard so I am VERY excited about that.  I still need to go get flowers though.

Matea finishes school next week so I am planning on making quiet time bins for her this summer – something along these lines.

And that, my friends, is all my brain can muster for now.  Stay tuned for the giveaway!  We think you’ll like it.

Later!

Its Wednesday!  Yeah!  We’ve got things happening, but nothing quite ready to blog about (bedroom makeover for Jen, work in the girls’ room and my room, starting on the garden in the next week, coffee station, etc. etc.).  So in honor of it being May 8, I thought I’d write 8 random things that you want to know.  Actually, I have no idea if you want to know any of these.  But I’m writing them anyway.

Here we go.

1.  Costco rotisserie chicken gives you almost twice as much chicken as Target’s rotisserie chicken for almost 2 bucks less.  You’re welcome.

2. Even when it feels like winter will never ever end, Spring comes.  I think there is a life lesson in there somewhere.

3. If your dog runs off and you don’t realize it you should hope that she can’t find water anywhere.  It guarantees she will come back to get some.

4. Jillian Michaels is not totally right when she says it is mind over body.  Turns out I really cannot run 20 minutes.  (Seriously, couch to 5k, where did THAT come from?) I did run for 14 minutes though, that is a record for me.  Here’s a prespective check: in 14 minutes Jen runs 2 miles.  Yep.

5. Kids who are full of dirt at the end of the day from playing outside will sleep well.

6. I own 3 belts to wear OVER my clothes and I have still not figured out how to wear them….so I haven’t.

7. I lost one pound in my quest to lose 5 pounds this month.  I decided dairy products are my downfall (cheese and ice cream).  Thank you, Wisconsin.

{source}

8. Jesus loves you.  Its true.

Have yourself a great day!

Happy Happy Monday! What a great weekend it was. We had our Texas friend Marissa in town (aka Katie’s Latina Twin) which was really fun. Her and Katie are identical in a lot of ways and they had never actually met in person so that was really fun.

Apparently we forgot to take a photo of the two of them together. We’re terrible bloggers.

On Sunday I ran a half marathon. It went amazingly well and I beat my best time by 7 minutes. I ran a 1:38:16. I was really really excited. My friend took a finisher pic of me so I had proof I actually did it. He declared it “Sun out, Guns out” and made me flex my muscles.

When Katie and I were chatting the night before the race it come up that I keep myself preoccupied on long runs by doing long division. I never thought that was weird until I actually told people.

Most of my long division will be figuring out the pace I would need to run in order to finish a race in a certain amount of time. I sort of feel like this.

Am I weird? You can tell me.

I had a request from this post to explain the steps I used to paint my dresser. Unfortunately I’m a terrible blogger and I didn’t do a step by step photo shoot of it. Basically this is what I did.

First up I hauled my bedside stand out to the yard.

Second I took off the handles.

Third I sanded it. It has a shiny surface and I was worried the spray paint wouldn’t stick. I wiped it off with a household cleaner to get all the dust off.

Fourth I spray painted. I used this spray paint.

I tried to do a bunch of coats and not just pile it on. I’m also not very patient but it actually worked really well.

I let it dry for about 20 minutes and then brought it in. Katie and I are not very good at being patient. Luckily it was dry enough so no paint got on my carpet.

So that’s how I did it! Does anyone have any tips for spray painting that I should know about? I see a lot of it in my future.

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYBODY!

Here we go with a random post.

Wednesday night Aaron and I hit up needtobreathe for their concert in Minneapolis!  So. Much. Fun.  I have never seen them before, but we are HUGE fans.  The concert was amazing and I’m so glad we went.  We didn’t get home till 12:30am….we never do that.  We don’t even go out on enough dinner dates, much less an entire night!!  Any other needtobreathe fans?

If you aren’t a needtobreathe fan you should be come one.

I saw this picture on pinterest via Apartment Therapy and I LOVE it!!  I think I want to put a bookshelf in my bedroom.

source – Apartment Therapy

Naturally that will require a trip to IKEA.  I already have ideas in my head.  I have been pinning lots of bedrooms on my bedrooms board….Aaron and I DESPERATELY need to work on our room.  I had no idea, but apparently I really like white duvets.  I NEVER would buy one, but most of my images have white beds.  So, this is interesting.

I know it is kind of hard to see; I’m not super techy.  I could barely figure out how to take a screen shot. 

Speaking of bedrooms, I think Jen needs this blanket for her room.  I think it would go super well with her room makeover that she is working on:

source: bhg

I think that is all I have for now.  It has been SO COLD here this week, theoretically we’ll be warming back up by Monday.  The bushes and trees are just barely starting to show their leaves, and the willow trees that I go by on my C25K “runs” are a bright, neon, spring green.  It is coming.  It may be a few weeks late, but spring is coming.

It snowed again last night.

I remember back in December when it would snow and I would get all giddy and watch it come down while drinking some cocoa.

It looked so pretty back then!

Now when it snows I close all the curtains, blast the heat and sit under blankets pretending it’s 80 and August.

We now feel like this.

And seriously – if this is you, please stop!!

Maybe by my birthday in AUGUST we will have normal temperatures and no more snow. A girl can dream, right?

Katie and I are both training for running races – Katie’s training for her first 5k and I’m training for a marathon.  This whole winter at the end of April is really messing with our plans. I typically like running in the winter but when I check the weather and it says 40s and I pack capris and a long sleeve to run in and I leave work and attempt a run in a blizzard with no hat, no jacket, nothing that is practical in 20 degree blowing snow weather then I strongly dislike running in the winter.

With that being said my marathon training has been going decently well! I did 16 miles just under an 8 minute mile pace which I was really excited about. I have to run an 8:12 pace to qualify for Boston so I’m right on track. Only 10.2 miles to go……

Moving on.

I found this bathroom on pinterest a while back and am kind of obsessed. It looks so happy and cheerful!

We have a plant in our bathroom but that is about how far we go to matching this room.    Maybe when I actually own a house I will do something like this.

Katie and I will be attempting to be better bloggers as soon as the snow melts. When that finally happens we will be sharing some of the following:

my closet makeover

my bedroom decorating (I’m only like 1/4 of the way through this so this will be good motivation)

Katie’s bedroom decoration

and Katie’s closet overhaul

We also will continue updating you on our running progress (assuming the snow ever melts and we actually continue running). We hope you all have beautiful Tuesdays!