Tag Archives: Maps

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10 Random Things I’ve Been Pondering

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a through f – serious dog snuggles.

  • Women who wear only a sports bra and tight shorts or capris to a 5:30 am BodyPump class while it’s 11 degrees outside seriously bother me. There, I said it. You’ve got a great body, good on you. But working out basically naked is annoying and not fun to wake up to. It’s not like you can blame it on being overheated; you‘re just showing off. Put some clothes on. Whew! I feel better now!

 

  • After a few month hiatus, I finally stopped by the library to pick up some audio books for my long commutes. Why did I ever think listening to the radio was better? I actually look forward to being in the car! Not for the driving aspect or anything… but for the stories. I just finished my first book, Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan and while it wasn’t my favorite book in the world – it was enjoyable and got me all kinds of pumped up to listen to more. High five for simple pleasures.

 

  • Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by our society’s addiction to technology. I can definitely be grouped into this category as well, so don’t think I’m leaving myself out of this one. When did we start finding normal activities boring and begin to multi-task at every moment throughout the day? Seriously, I can’t even go a whole TV show without picking up my phone to check out Pinterest, look at my emails or reply to a blog comment. What did we do without smart phones and google? Now every time we see a new movie or show and wonder what else a certain actor has been in, we just whip out our phone to IMDB it (yes, that’s a verb). Being so connected has given us so, so very much – but sometimes I wonder if it’s really connecting us or taking us away from those we care about.

 

  • (Speaking of technology).. I’ve already mentioned this a couple times on Facebook, sorry if you’ve already heard this. But… I am in love with the movie Pitch Perfect. Here are some reasons why: 1. It’s hilarious. (seriously…? “I’m vertical running.. vertical running!”) 2. THE SINGING. Holy acapella. Come on! This remix? Love it. Plus, it makes me slide around the house in my socks screaming  singing “I’ve got the magic in me!” The singing literally gave Alex and me chills multiple times through the movie 3. That should be enough reasons. We’ve watched it four times in the last month or so. Embarrassing? No. I could watch it every weekend and be happy!

 

  • This is our third week of getting up at 5 to take morning classes. It’s been going swimmingly so far! Yeah, it’s kind of dreadful when the alarm first goes off – I’ll give you that. But, we crash so much earlier at night now, so we’re still getting plenty of sleep. I’ve found that I’m way more energized and awake in the morning and I think we sleep better since we’re pretty exhausted by the end of the day. It also seems like starting the day off with making a good, healthy decision leads me to make more good decisions throughout the day. I don’t feel like I’m working out to make up for what I ate through the day; instead, I feel like I’m exercising to start my day. Does that make sense?

 

  • I recently bought a map. A big, big vintage-y map that I can’t wait to hang. I’m counting down the minutes until it gets delivered. Can’t wait to show it to you guys!

 

  • Tomorrow is the big day that we’re getting our carpet replaced AGAIN. Read about why this is needed here and the first time around here. I can’t wait for this journey to be finished! We’ve had headache after headache trying to get this taken care of. The new carpet is a little plusher than our current berber, which I’m excited about. However, I’m still uneasy about how the color will turn out. Fingers crossed that tomorrow we’ll be pleasantly surprised.

 

  • I’m starting to plan our garden for this year in my head. I’m looking forward to trying some new produce, as well as starting more crops from seeds this year. Last year the only seed that I tried was for romaine lettuce and BOY, did it take off. Also, I’m thinking of moving our herbs to pots, which would free up an entire bed. AND we’ve been contemplating adding two additional beds. However, we typically have more fruits and veggies than we can consume already – so I’m interested in reading up about canning techniques to get the most bang for our buck. We’ll see!

 

  • Some friends of our family recently lost their mother from cancer. I’ve found myself pondering and reflecting what it was like when I lost my dad when I was twenty, right around the same age as these girls. My heart hurts for them, knowing what it was like to go through losing a parent at a young age. I know how lost, sad, and even angry you can feel at times. It won’t be an easy journey for them, but I hope that with each day their pain lessens. Stories like this bring you back to what’s important in life, doesn’t it?

 

  • Have I told you that Alex is currently working towards finishing his degree? He’s taking his second consecutive semester right now. He finished his first semester with getting STRAIGHT A’s! I’m so proud of him! I’m sure that getting back into the college mindset is incredibly difficult after taking a long break, but he’s been doing so well! It’s so important to celebrate those little victories in life :)

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a. a beautiful day spent wandering around downtown Frederick b. my morning view c. an awesome barn sale we went to over the weekend. how gorgeous is that barn?! d. a stunning red door that I loooong for!

What’s going on with you guys? What are some things that you’ve been pondering? Have you started making spring plans already? Are you weirdly obsessed with any movies? Any great books that you suggest I check out? Any map enthusiasts out there? Please tell me that I’m not the only one that hates on naked people at the gym.

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Updating with Art

Sunday again… How did this weekend go by so, so quickly? I hope you had a fantastic weekend though! Hopefully you’re Monday back at work won’t completely stink. In fact, hopefully it won’t stink at all!

Ever since we finished our bedroom makeover we haven’t started another big project yet. We’re still not 100% sure what we want our next little stint to be, so in the meantime we’ve been making a ton of updates with art!

Since we moved in a year and a half ago (how did that go by so quickly??), our tastes have already changed. We’re realizing that some of our earlier art purchases aren’t fitting in with the style that has somehow emerged in our home. We sold some in the yard sale we had two weeks ago and moved some pieces around the house to other rooms.

Another thing we’re realizing, is that you don’t have to get the first piece that kinda meets the bill. We’ve been holding out until we find “the one” lately and it has made all the difference.

For example, we got new white lamps for our bedroom. However, we first bought some lamps that had big white shades but crystal bases, thinking it would do. We brought them home and realized that while they were better than what we had, we would probably replace them again in a few years. We returned them and waited around for a few weeks until we found exactly what we had in mind.

Here is our original makeover picture with our old lamps…

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Now… here are our new chunky, white, geometric new lamps!

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Close up…

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Such a beaut…

Next up… remember when we did our bathroom remodel? We originally bought three pictures (two purple and one blue). And after months and months of looking at the one random blue picture, we decided to replace them with a couple of matching purple ones…

Old..

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New!

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Thankfully, we found a very similar blue picture (same shape and frame) and was able to repurpose our bathroom outcast into our newly painted bedroom… Here it sits with it’s new bestie now..

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Alrighty… moving on to our upstairs living room. Remember the picture that we used to have hanging?

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Well.. we found one we that we thought matched our upstairs décor a little better. We grabbed the new picture and moved the existing cityscape-umbrella picture into the basement.

New upstairs picture..

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And new home for the cityscape..

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Of course, once we hung the cityscape we realized how sterile our basement seemed. Even just this one photo made the space seem 100x more cozy. So for the last few weeks, we’ve had our eye open for some killer pictures to adorn the sides of the TV.

Here is our old empty wall…

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And… drum roll.. our new city maps! HOLLA.

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What? You want another view of this awesome sauce picture? OKAY!

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Sorry for the ridiculously long post of pictures of other pictures. Seems strange.

Couple things to clear up – we gathered these photos and lamps over the last month, so at no point did we drop a ton of money on artwork. We also purchased 100% of these at either HomeGoods or Hobby Lobby. Actually.. I think all of the ones here were from HomeGoods. So again – we didn’t drop a grand or anything on pictures. Each of our pictures ranged in price from $20 – $80, so don’t think we’re made of money. We saved for what we wanted and budgeted accordingly. You too can update your space with some budget friendly photos. Pinky Promise.

AND—if you’re still actually reading this… you know that I like to go to bed SUPER early.. so I GOTTA GO. I’m already late for a really important date.

Goodnight!