Winners!

Rafflecopter has spoken, and it seems to like my sister! No seriously, as I was having it pick the random winners of the Cents of Style giveaway, it chose her THREE TIMES! I let her have her one win (which I would have done had it chosen anyone more than once) and continued to have it pick randomly until we had four (different) winners!

Winner of the Brooklyn bracelet: shopfreak!
Winner of the Kay hat: Rachel Newswander!
Winner of the teal earring set: Mandy Burt!
Winner of the wooden leaf necklace: Mallory Weeman!

Congratulations to you ladies, and thanks to everyone for participating! Keep an eye on my facebook page, because we are going to be introducing A LOT of new product over the next few weeks. There is also a promotion going on where hostesses can receive a free scarf, so let's book some parties!

I will be contacting winners by email, and they have 48 hours to respond before a new winner will be chosen. Thanks all!

10K Training Update

Today I ran 4 miles without stopping or walking. That might not seem like a very big deal to you runners out there, but I don't believe I've ever done that before. In fact, my longest runs before today were 3.5 miles, and I didn't run those straight through. My pacing is still laughable. In fact, my 5K time during this run was a little slower than my last 5K when I walked a little bit of it. I think I'm just afraid that if I push myself too hard I won't finish the run. I need to push myself harder, especially since my app tells me exactly how fast I'm running. I should be able to pick a pace and not let myself go any slower. I'll try that on some of my shorter runs this week.

So my Saturday long runs will just keep getting longer, but 4 miles is the longest that I run during the week for the rest of the training. Now that I know I can do it fairly easily, the training should be a breeze.

Saturday is still the best day for me to run because I can go out midmorning. During the week I have to run very early morning when it's still dark out, because Daniel has to leave for work before 7am, or I can run in the evening, but that gets in the way of dinner. A few times I've had to go running right after dinner- not fun.

Anyway, training is going well. I don't expect to finish in a respectable amount of time, but I do expect to finish! And it is my goal to run the entire 6.2 miles. It's all in the mind!

Ideas for repurposing formula cans!

11 Months

I can't even begin to explain how much joy this little nugget brings me every day! Vanessa is now 11 months, and she is the sweetest, most easy-going, loving little girl. She just loves to play and explore everything around the house, and when we go out she just loves to look at all the new things she sees. She is very close to walking, and I think she will beat big brother, who walked about a week after he turned 1! She is also just starting to say a few words. She says Mama and Dada, along with a lot of other babbling. I got her to say cheese the other day, and she has a peek-a-boo book and says "peek-a" when she looks at it! I also think I've heard her say "kitty," referencing her favorite stuffy.

She adores her big brother and puts up with a lot of rowdy "love" from him. The two of them play together a lot throughout the day. She makes the funniest faces and loves to laugh and eat! She's just so huggable and kissable, too!

Happy 11 months, Vanessa! You are almost 1 year old, my big girl!

Cents of Style Giveaway!

Here we go, folks! I'm doing a Cents of Style giveaway, now that my Facebook page has reached 200 likes (and counting)!

You must first "like" my Facebook page to get your first entry (or already be a fan), and then there are other ways for you to earn entries, including sharing this giveaway with your friends, getting others to "like" my page, placing orders, and booking parties! All the details are in the Rafflecopter widget below this post.

The first three items will be given to randomly-selected entrants. The fourth item is a bonus giveaway, for which I will select a random winner if I reach my sales goal of $1000 for the month of January (I'm less than $200 away, so keep those orders coming!) because I met my sales goal this month!

The giveaway ends on February 1st! Good luck!

Training Week 1

I did all my runs this week, which was an accomplishment in itself! I really didn't want to go tonight, but I did it anyway. Three nights ago I ran a 5k without stopping, and tonight I ran another 5k, with a little bit of walking, and I was three minutes faster than last time! That's a good sign. Also, I'm super sweaty, which means I pushed myself- also good!

I'm still very slow, but I feel great knowing that I have 7 more weeks of training to get in better shape and improve my time.

Now for some frosted flakes, Amazing Race finale (we are watching old seasons- never watched it before), a hot bath, and some reading! Also I have to do some work tonight, but I'm going to think more about the fun stuff! I knew I would appreciate relaxing tonight more if I went for a run first- mission completed!

Pin, pin, pin, all day long...

Neil

I've had too many "feeling horrible" days this week! Time to be awesome instead.

30 Before 30: #16

16. Run in a 10k race

Daniel used my "30 Before 30" list as inspiration for my Christmas gifts, so for one of my presents he signed me up to run the 10k that happens simultaneously with the Phoenix marathon and half-marathon. I started training for it on Monday, and last night was my second training run. I was supposed to run 3 miles. It didn't specifically say without stopping, but I'm assuming that is implied for all these training runs.

So I did it. I went out around 7:15, in the dark, and ran 3 miles. Actually I ran 3.1 miles to see what my 5k time would be. It's pretty embarrassing how slow I am, but I was very proud of running the whole distance without stopping. It made me know that I can handle 6.2 miles.

The longest distance I've run up until now is about 4 miles, and I've only run a full 5k maybe 2-3 other times in my life, and that was before having kids!

So I know I can run the distance, probably without stopping or walking, and now I would just like to improve my speed! I have 8 weeks of training before the race on March 3rd, so hopefully that will help me to get a little bit faster!

Regret

I'm happy to say that I don't regret many things in my life. Sure, I've made more than my fair share of mistakes, but I like to say that if things had been different, I wouldn't be where I am now. And I like where I am now, so I'm happy how things have gone.

But one of my regrets that I do have is that I didn't buy my wedding dress. Okay, now that I wrote that it makes me feel superficial and dumb.

When I got married, I wasn't crazy young, but pretty young (21, engaged at 20). And I didn't know a lot about temple weddings, so I got a lot of advice from my sister-in-law. She had rented her dress, so I went to the same place and rented my dress from them. I love this sister-in-law and don't blame her at all, but I really wish I had bought my dress. The same place I went to sold the dresses too, so I could have bought the exact dress that I ended up with (which I did love). Or at least the tiara I wore in my hair!

It wasn't even a question of money at the time. The cost of my wedding was extremely modest, when you consider the average cost of a wedding, and my dad was more than willing to buy me whatever dress I wanted.

I decided to have fake flowers, which I'm happy about, because I still have my wedding bouquet. We still have the crystal temple from the top of our cake, and a few other mementos. And of course lots and lots of pictures (although I wish we had paid more for those too- they are good but not great).

I just googled the place I rented my dress in Tucson (Gowns by Pamela). They are still in business, and it might be a strange request, but I wonder if they would be able to find my dress and sell it to me if they still have it. Or at least the tiara! But that's a no-go as far as money is concerned. And superficial. And dumb.

And this is all just because I saw a pin on Pinterest of a little girl sitting in her mom's wedding dress. I'm sure it's just hormones, but it hurts my heart a little bit.

I am a genius.

As you can see, I'm not much of a "magnet" kind of girl:

I don't like the front of my fridge to be messy, and I like having things that match my kitchen decor. Functionality is also good. I have a shopping list notepad that I use regularly, the big magnet actually flips up to reveal a list of phone numbers for babysitters, and the circles are buttons that I made into magnets, with colors that match my kitchen, for times when I do need to post something on my fridge. I'm not entirely heartless. I do put up my kids' artwork from time to time!

But after having our heater fixed the other day, our repair guy gave me this big ugly calendar magnet with his information on it. He's a nice guy who did a great job (fixed our ac in the summer and our heat in the winter- yes we were that lucky this year), and I do want to keep his information handy, but I didn't want to compromise the beauty of my uncluttered fridge appearance.

Then a stroke of genius hit! The heater must be magnetic, right?!

BAM! Slapped that baby onto the heater itself, so now his information is not only handy, but it's right in the place where I would need it and not on my fridge!

Okay, so maybe other people already do this? I don't know. But it was pure elation when that magnet stuck onto the heater. What can I say, I have a love for organizing!

What do you think? Genius or something everyone already does?

January goal

I want to be able to do this by the end of the month!

My pushup challenge in December went great. By the last day I was able to do 40 deep, controlled pushups in a row. I figured I should have another goal for January. This one is maybe a bit ambitious, and I also don't have a day-by-day plan to get there! I guess that's something I should do. It's a little harder to quantify flexibility, but we'll see how it goes!

I will also be doing lots of running in January and February, preparing for my 10k in March! I'm sure stretching after every run will help a lot. I'll post a picture of my best attempt...maybe!

Cash Only- 2012!

I guess you could call this our major resolution for the new year- we are going cash-only in 2012!

It's a little bit of a scary venture, made even scarier by the major reactions from relatives! But I think we can do it. We will be budgeting from week to week and withdrawing actual cash each week (8 days from Daniel's paycheck to mine, 6 days from mine to his, which works out well because his is larger!). We will use that cash until it's gone and then...it's gone! We will pay our bills as usual, but the cash allowance will need to cover groceries, other food, gas, entertainment, and any other things that come up. We are hoping that this method, along with just deciding to scrimp for a year, will help us to pay off our credit cards and see a debt-free 2013!

I think this is going to be great. It will help us get a better idea of how we spend our money, limit unnecessary expenses, and we are only committed for a year, so if anything comes along that I want badly, I can just tell myself that I only have to wait until next year (or budget for it)!

We've done really well in the last 5-6 months, paying off our car 8 months ahead of schedule and (almost, give us 5 more days!) paying off Daniel's credit card. Now we just have mine to worry about, along with our regular bills.

We both definitely want to have another baby in 2013, so we are planning on doing the "prep work" during the last half of 2012. ;) In clearer language, I want to get pregnant this summer. And when baby #3 does come along, we will be in the market for a minivan. Hopefully that will come close to coinciding with the demise of our PT Cruiser (Did I say demise? I meant we'll be finished using it.). Our goal is to make the PT last the entire year of 2012 and then we will probably sell it early on in 2013 to hopefully get some money to put toward our minivan purchase! The car has been very very good to us, so we're knocking on wood. However, it's almost a given that it will not be reliable during the daytime hours this summer, so we will be limiting our summertime driving (except in the early morning and at night)!

I'm looking forward to a lot of other things in 2012, but this cash-only deal is going to be a pretty major effort. I feel really good about it though.

Happy New Year!