Sorry about previous post!!

If any of you are totally confused (I would be), B's interview is this coming Friday. I had tried to save the post and it apparently wanted to publish yesterday instead of on Friday. Soooooo, please think of us on Friday in the afternoon. It would be much appreciated!!

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Can't wait to hear what you have been up to!

A funny little movie for your Monday morning blahs

One of my friends sent me this movie awhile ago, and, every time I watch it, I can't help but laugh. Seriously, she's adorable! Enjoy!

Prayer request for Friday

Ladies,

B and I would truly appreciate your prayers today. B has an interview today that would be a huge life change for us- one we really would love to make. He has already had a phone interview with the company, and, since this is an out of state interview for him, they are doing the next two sets of interviews this afternoon. He has one interview with four people at 1 p.m. eastern, and one with another group of people at 2 p.m. eastern. The job isn't in his "wheelhouse", meaning that though his current job has very similar skills, job description, etc, this is a totally different industry for him. Actually this is something he probably wouldn't have considered except for the location is where we would love to start our post-master's life! If you can say a quick prayer today that the interviewers can recognize his wonderful personality, his hard work and determination in his work life, and his amazing ability to communicate well, we would both really appreciate it. I am at work all day today, and we aren't supposed to have our cell phones on at work- AUGH!!!! Anyone have calming words for me???

**He's found other jobs out there that are closer to what he is currently doing, yet the locations aren't ideal. If this interview does not work out, he will start applying to other jobs which, of course, I will support with all my might. He is an amazing worker and provider and has a lot of pride in what he accomplishes on the work front. I truly just want him to love his next job as I know how important that is for him. It would just be hard for both of us to move further away from family and friends- I'm sure most of you completely understand this.**

EDIT---- How many times must I save the "future post" option on blogger in order to get it to cooperate????? I honestly must be one of the most technically challenged people out there!! Sorry for this post being much earlier than necessary!!! I still would love for you to say prayers on Friday, if you can remeber that far into the future!

Our Honeymoon!!

B and I weren't able to take a honeymoon right after we were married due to time conflicts with school. We decided last year that we would take a honeymoon right after my graduation in May. We discussed a few options, but B was pretty insistant on Europe, as I have never been, and he wanted to go there together. He has a family friend who has a seaside house in Spain that has been oh so generously donated to us, so Spain it was!! B speaks Spanish pretty well, so the language barrier wasn't a deterrent, and since I hadn't been anywhere, I was willing to try anything.

We talked through so many options on locations, time in each spot, what we wanted to do, how much we could spend, etc. We bought guide books, researched the internet, and watched shows on the travel channel, PBS, etc. Finally we decided on 3 days/nights in Barcelona, 6 days in Moraira (the seaside town with the house), 3 nights in Seville, and one night in Madrid. We would have avoided Madrid entirely as it's out of the way, but we are using frequent flyer miles for our tickets (yea!!), and our only options for our dates were to fly into BCN and out of Madrid.

Santa Maria Del Mar


We sat down on Friday night and finalized most of the BCN plans. We've decided on lunches for each day, dinners for two of the three nights, things we really want to do/see, etc. We already have our hotel organized as well.
Lunches include Cal Pep and Mercat de la Boqueria as well as a tiny Catalan place we found on Chowhound.
Dinners so far are Cinc Sentis, a light meal at a tapas bar plus this phenomenal dessert place.


Cinq Sentis
Cal Pep

Things we still need to know:
1. We would love ideas for another dinner place if you have any!!

2. We are still debating between spending all three days in the city or taking a day trip out to Monserrat to hike, enjoy the views, and see the boys' choir. Any suggestions on this decision? Have you been to Monserrat?

3. Where to shop, ladies???? B will only tolerate so much shopping, so this has to be "snuck into" our other daytime activities. Is there anything in Spain (besides the saffron I must bring home for my grandmother) that needs to come home in my suitcase?

I'll do two other posts on the other parts of our trip later, but I'd love to hear any experiences you have had in Spain. What to eat, what to see, what you loved, what to avoid, etc. Did you study abroad there? Fill me in on everything!!!

Salmon Cove Discount

Do any of you know about Salmon Cove? They make a fantastic polo shirt that is just screaming to be in all of your preppy summer closets, girls!! B got me my first SC shirt for my birthday this year, and the minute I tried it on, I was in love. It's the perfect length, has the perfect amount of stretch, and the cutest collar!!

Right now they are having a 40% discount on their shirts with the code "NHL" (I'm not sure if it needs the quotes or not, so try it without if this doesn't work!). This definitely makes them a steal and worth every penny. I'm debating between another short sleeve (I currently have the navy with the orange collar) or a long sleeve. B is going to get one for himself since he didn't order one when he picked out mine in the fall. He did say he had excellent customer service when he ordered, so don't worry about that at all!


**PS- The best part?? You can have them monogrammed!! Mine has my new married initials (go hubby for thinking of it), and it's adorable. They use the color on the inside of the color to monogram it, and I think you can have it monogrammed in a few different places and in a few different styles.**

Once

Have you seen this movie? B rented it last year one cold weekend, and, suffice it to say, I wasn't all that interested in it. I hadn't heard of it, and I was hoping he would bring home The Other Bolyn Girl which I had been dying to see. He convinced me to watch it, and thank goodness he did. It's one of those movies that just gets into your heart and settles right in. I was SOBBING at the end. Not a cute girly "oh it's so cute" cry.......oh no, this was a gasping for breath, break your heart, sobbing!! I can't tell you what I said at the end (it'll ruin the movie for you) but B still says it outloud sometimes and always starts laughing! He rented it again on Valentine's weekend, and, though I didn't expect it to affect me as much because I already know what happens, there I was on the couch again with heart wrenching sobs! It is such a touching, honest, raw movie that is in no way overdone. If you've seen it, let me know what you thought. If you haven't, rent it soon. I promise, it is worth the 1 1/2 hr investment!

PS- It did win an Oscar for best song- Falling Slowly. I tried to upload the video clip from youtube and couldn't, so head on over there if you want to hear/remember which song it is. Just lovely!

Adorable Dresses

Aren't these simply gorgeous dresses? I love the colorblocked for it's elegance and detailing, and I love the plaid for the way the top is designed and the very cool plaid. Both are $168 at White House Black Market. We have three weddings this summer and our honeymoon in May, but I already have dresses that I'm planning on wearing. The colorblocked dress is too dressy for any of the occasions (it looks pretty wintery and more formal to me than any lakeside wedding can justify) but the plaid one would be SO cute at our wedding on Labor Day weekend. I may just wait to see if it goes on sale as I don't need it- it's just a want!! What do you girls think about it? Is the plaid too wild/weird?

On another note, my boys in blue (GO DUKE!) won last night and have just one more regular season game before the ACC tournament and the big dance. It's a HUGE, HUGE game on Sunday vs. UNC. I cannot wait!! Plus, B comes home on Friday and doesn't have to travel again next week! He's been gone for a total of 7 weeks since January, and it will be so nice to have him home for more than a day and a half! I do have to work all day Sat and 1/2 day on Sunday which is a bummer, but at least next week we can have dinner together EVERY NIGHT!! Yea!

Have a great day, ladies!

100 titles

I stole this from Magnolias and Juleps and thought it would be fun to see how many I have read. Can you believe the average is only 6 per the BBC? Really? I mean the HP series is 7 book in its entirety!!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen ()
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien ()
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (x)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x) (own all seven!!)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x)
6 The Bible - (x) (okay, not every last word, but a lot!)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ()
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (x)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (X) (trilogy and I've read all three)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens ()
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ()
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (x)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (x - a lot but not all)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (x) wonderful!!
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ()
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (x)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (X) one of my favorite books of all time. The characters are so real and so wonderful!
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ()
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (x)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (x)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ( )
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ()
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ()
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ( )
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ( )
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (x)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (x)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ()
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (X)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (X)
34 Emma - Jane Austen ()
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ()
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - (x)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ()
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (x)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ( x)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving ()
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ( )
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ()
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (x)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (x)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ()
52 Dune - Frank Herbert ()
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ( )
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ()
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zifon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (x) My favorite English assignment ever!
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ()
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (x)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (x)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ()
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (x)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ()
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ()
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ()
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (x)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ( )
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ()
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (x)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ()
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (X)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ()
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ()
76 The Inferno - Dante ()
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ( )
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ()
80 Possession - AS Byatt ( )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (X)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ()
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ()
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ( )
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ()
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (x)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ()
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ()
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (x)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ()
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ()
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ()
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (x)

Apparently I need to pick up some Jane Austen as four of her books are on here. I've tried to read Wuthering Heights and just cannot get through it. I just feel they are insufferable characters! Are there any on here that I haven't read that you feel are "must reads"? Clue me in as to why! I need 8 more to get over the halfway mark. We have Life of Pi at home, so maybe I should start with that!

I was surprised to see I was at 42. How many have you read?

So proud!!

Girls, I am NOT a runner. Never have been. I'll go out and run with B if the weather is perfect or if we're up north and don't go to the gym. The farthest I've ever run is 3.5 miles, and I always hate it. I love the eliptical, I love classes, I love lifting weights, but running just isn't me.

So, I married a man who loves to run!! This is new for him in the past three years, but he loves it enough that he's running the Chicago marathon this fall. He's been wanting me to run a 10K for the longest time, and I have never agreed to do this. I've done a few 5Ks and a sprint distance triathalon and have done fine with them, but 6.2 miles????? That's crazy!!

A few weeks ago, we were talking about it again and there is a 10K race here in Chicago at the end of April. It's the start of the official marathon training program. B, again, asked me if I wanted to do it. I have sort of agreed to do this (again, I may just be crazy!). I've decided that I'll train for 3 weeks, and if I feel confident at that stage, I'll officially sign up.

So last week I had to complete 2, 2.5, and 3 mile runs throughout the week. Each and every run was miserable and I couldn't do one without stopping. I really dislike running on treadmill as it is, and it's must much easier to stop (because I don't have to get home like I do when I'm running outside). Today I went to the gym knowing I had to run 2.5 miles. I got there, started running, and I felt great. I mean like really good, no cramps, strong legs, etc. I just decided that I would keep running until I was ready to stop------ AND I RAN 4 MILES!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have never done this, ever, and I felt really good when I stopped. So maybe the rest of the runs this week will also be good as long as I keep practicing? Girls, there might be a 10K in me somewhere!!! WooHoo!!

**Maybe this running combined with the sweets I've given up for Lent will help me lose 8-10 lbs so that I'll be hot for our honeymoon????**

J Crew Wishlist for Late Winter/ Early Spring

These are just a few items from J Crew that I am craving this spring. The Crocodile Cocktail Jacket (image 1) would be great for any dressy spring occasion. Cute with a pair of jeans and a white shirt for dinner out, cute with black pants and a black fitted tee right now! I also think it would look great with yellow- always a great spring color. The Frenchie Jacket (image 2) would be a cute, yet practical, spring coat. I don't have much in this color at all, and it appears to be a great spring neutral. It would look great with a pink pashmina on cold spring days and with bright colored pants/capris and a white button down. I am loving ruffles lately, and this coat has adorable ones!! Image 3 is the Crown Bangle. I tried this on in the store and fell in love. It's so feminine and dainty with just the right amount of sparkle. If any of you are wearing light pink or accessorizing with gold for your summer weddings, this would be beautiful on your wrist! And at $34, the price point isn't bad either!


My body type doesn't work well with shifts, but if yours does, please buy this dress! It's the Ellora Print Shift (on sale for $228), and I love the colors and the pattern. It would be adorable for any cute summer occasion (or if you are in the south, any spring occasion as well). I can see this with adorable gold flats or heels and a bold bangle. Let me know if you buy it- I'd love to see pics!

What is your current lust from J Crew??