Look What I Made

Home to Chicago

I flew home to Chicago Tuesday night for work. I'm happy to be home and staying with my parents. I am not happy about having to trudge through many inches of snow and slush to get to the office. The snow is so pretty and peaceful before the rest of the city gets up... and then it turns to dirty, brown slush. No bueno. Also, wet socks? Not fun. Don't you wish you could bottle up nice weather and use it in a pinch? Me too.

And for the record, this is the snow that shut down the city of Austin last week.

A Random Bunch of Photos

01  I caught the sunrise one morning last week. It was hard to capture a good picture of it. There were so many colors!  //  02  I have a little Anthro bowl where I keep all my small little bits for layouts & Project Life. It's overflowing right now.  //  03  A peek at a layout I worked on over the weekend. It's my current favorite.  //  04  We made shishkebobs last weekend!  //  05  A photo of the Chicago skyline from my long run this weekend.  //  06  Billy & I at the Gold Cup this weekend.  //  07  USA vs. Panama. (We won!)

Normally I've been sharing marathon related posts on Mondays. But, honestly, today I had nothing good to share. It's going. I'm running and CrossFitting. A lot. I hope to make a big update to my minibook and share soon. We had a pretty busy weekend. Billy & I babysat all 3 of my nephews (all under the age of 5) (at the same time) on Saturday night. They are so adorable and so fun but it was slightly insane for a couple hours. Only 1 major meltdown so we're calling it a success.

On Sunday, we got tickets to watch USA vs. Panama in the Gold Cup final. It was at Soldier Field which is a hop, skip and a jump away from where we live. It was the perfect day to be sitting outside. We had a couple jumbo hot dogs and jumbo beers and enjoyed some time together.

A Walk Around Museum Campus

The weather on Sunday was absolutely perfect. We were lounging around all morning being lazy so I decided to go out for a walk and take pictures. We are fortunate to live so close to the lake here in Chicago. I walked around Museum Campus, behind the Adler Planetarium and along the water. I sort of just wandered around and ended up being gone for 1:45 minutes. I took 141 photos, not all great (but some great!). I'm still trying to use my camera in manual mode, so lots of expirementing happened on Sunday. I feel like I am finally getting the hang of it, learning about light and aperture.

I am planning to include these photos as an insert in my Project Life for last week. I had a lot of fun taking these photos, but I'm really glad that I feel like I have a place to put them too.

Adventures in Urban Gardening

My mom gave me this herb garden and a pot of basil over the weekend. I really hope that I don't kill them. We live in a high-rise on the 14th floor, so gardening isn't something I thought I'd be able to do while we're living here.We have an old Ikea table (that is not meant for outdoors) on our patio that we meant to throw out, but has really come in handy when we are grilling out there. And now, I have a place for my plants! 

Semi-related, I finally switched my camera over to Manual mode and can definitely see a difference in my photos.

The Moon.

We are back from our fun weekend in D.C. I have a bunch of pictures to sort through and eventually share, but very little energy to do that right now. In due time. :)

I wanted to share these photos I took of the moon last week. We were sitting in the living room and coule not help but notice the huge moon out our window. It was so big and seemed so low. It sort of felt like it was not supposed to be there. And it was amazing. These pictures don't really do the scene justice but you can see how bright it was by the reflection below on Lake Michigan.

Glazed & Infused

Yesterday, in the middle of the snowstorm, I decided to go for a walk to take a few pictures of the snow. That part didn't work out so well, but I did find myself stumbling into a really great donut shop, Glazed & Infused.

Obviously, the donuts are amazing. They are baked fresh everyday. The shop is adorable, the branding is perfection and the people are really nice. They have a ton of different donut options, including a Maple Bacon Long John, which has an entire piece of bacon on top of it. I had the Blueberry-Lemon Cake donut. 

I love little places like this and love that they are growing. I saw on the website that there are now 4 locations around the city. I need to remember to venture this way more often, maybe when the weather gets a little better though... 

Camera Practice // 02

Soldier Field, Chicago, IL

I've been trying to practice a little more with my new camera. I'm slowly starting to figure it out. Eventually, I'd like to take a class but for now I'll just learn by trial and error.

I took these pictures last night. Since I work during the day, it's hard for me to spend some quality time during the day (with the good natural day light) taking pictures. I changed my ISO setting to as high as it can go and took these photos from our balcony.

I love pictures of cities at night. They look so peaceful.

Friday Lunch Break

It's such a nice day today so I snuck away on my lunch break to take some pictures around the city. I grabbed a Starbucks and walked around the West Loop for about a 45 minutes. It felt good to get out and away from my desk for a little while! 

CARA 20 Miler

On Sunday, I ran my last long run in my training schedule for the Denver Marathon. 20 Miles. I signed up for the CARA Ready to Run 20 Miler so I didn't have to do it alone. I did it in 2010 too and loved it both years. Last year, I signed up to run with the 8:30 pace group. By the end of it, I was burnt out. I finished but my legs were dead. It was too fast for me and I was using all my energy just to keep up. This year, I signed up for the 9:30 pace group and, all things considered, felt pretty good. I was able to maintain the pace for the entire 20 miles and my legs didn't cramp up towards the end. Good sign. I finished with a time of 3:13:26.

I cannot say enough good things about the entire event. Everything was so organized and planned. The pace leaders of my group were right on. There were 8 water stations, evenly spaced out. We got cool finisher t-shirts at the end. About half way through the run, it started to rain. Not too hard, it was actually a little bit refreshing. After the race, it was really coming down. That was a little unfortunate because the post-run party last year was fun. Instead, Billy picked me up at the finish and we went to my parents house for homemade waffles. Thanks Mom & Dad.

Now that I've finished the longest, hardest run of my training, it's all down hill. Our flights are booked, hotel reservations made. There's not much more I can do to prepare for the marathon now. Crazy. 

* that's not me.

Weekend Recap

FRIDAY

Dinner at Jimmy Greens. Billy and I sat outside, drank beer, ate and talked. 

SATURDAY

Rain postponed my long run so we decided to go get some brunch at the new breakfast place down the street, Waffles. BUT there was a 2 hour wait so we settled on lunch at Pita Heaven.

The rain really started to come down while we were eating lunch so we (literally) ran across the street and ate ice cream at 11:30 am. 

In the afternoon the weather cleared up and we felt like bums. Billy and I decided to go for a walk on the lake. 

At night, we went to dinner at Zapatista. We tried to go to a new restaurant, The Scout, but that had a 2 hour wait as well. Billy and I decided that we're not going to get into any of the new restaurants near us for a few months, when the novelty wears off. That's fine though because all the restaurants around our place are new to us. 

After that, we went to see Horrible Bosses. So funny. So much funnier than we thought it would be.

Saturday felt like 2 different days.

SUNDAY

Sunday started early with a long run for me. I'm not convinced that Mexican food is the best thing to eat the night before an 18 mile run.

I ran from 18th to Foster, then back to Roosevelt. The Air & Water Show was going on so I was able to watch a little bit of that on my run. There were a million people watching so it was pretty slow from Fullerton to Ohio Street Beach. The entire run took me just over 3 hours. I am glad I got up and out early so I could try and salvage some of my Sunday. Didn't really happen though. Once I got home, I crashed. The rest of the day consisted of food, shower, food, nap. Too exhausted for anything else.

Dinner came from Homemade Pizza Company. I did muster up the energy to walk and pick up the pizza. A whole 2 blocks (1 block there, 1 block back). Go me.

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All in all it was a good weekend. We ate a lot of good food. The super long, weekend runs really suck a huge chunk out of my weekend. Only 2 really long runs, 2 sort-of long runs, 1 half marathon and 1 single digit run (8 miles) away from the marathon. I cannot believe how fast summer is flying by. I'm trying to soak up the good weather while it's here.