Just wanted to stop by and say Happy Father's Day to my amazing dad and my grandpa. My dad really is the best and I know I can call him with any question I have whether it's something technology related or if my car is acting funny or just to talk and catch up. I wasn't able to spend today celebrating with him but will be making up for all the missed celebrations when I see the family in July! I also want to extend the father's day celebration to all the other guys in my family who I've watched grow into amazing father's to their own kids, it's definitely a special bond to watch grow.
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I have completed 120 STRAIGHT days of practicing hand lettering as of the end of May. That seems pretty crazy to me, I've never really done an ongoing challenge like this but now that I'm 4 months in I'm just going to keep on rolling with it. Especially since I'm still enjoying it a ton and trying new styles and tools which keeps it interesting. I hope you enjoy, let me know if you have a fave quote, style, or anything else you'd like to see me do!
I took off for the long Memorial Day weekend and headed to the Fingerlake region in New York. It was partly so Kyle and I could do the 8k glassfest but it was also for some much needed R&R, wine drinking, and just fresh air. Brittany and Dustin also drove up for the weekend so it was a cute little couple's weekend! The drive was 5-6 hours but included a Sonic pit stop and wasn't bad, and there was NO awful holiday traffic so that was good. We stayed at a B&B in Watkins Glen with our race being 25 minutes away in Corning. Watkins Glen is at the southern point of Seneca lake so we had awesome access to a ton of wineries around the lake. It was a beautiful area. I have to say the town was not anything too amazing, but was a good place to recharge and just have a quite and simple weekend. We found a couple yummy restaurants, my fave being Nickel's Pitt BBQ mmmm. We went to quite a few different wineries and I found some pretty good ones, but it was crazy how cheap the tastings and wines were up there. Tasting's were anywhere from $2-5 and some refunded all of that if you bought a bottle. They had a large variety of wines at alomst every stop and they pretty much said "pick 6" for the set price, which was good some of the time. However I really like a "guided tasting" where they really go over the wines so I can learn more about them. But I will definitely go back, I mean wine is wine! Along with lots of food and drinking we did check out the Watkins Glen State Park which had a lot of pretty water falls and we ran our race. The race was an 8k (about 5 miles) and went really well with Kyle being super speedy finishing in under 35 minutes, and I finished at around 50 minutes. My goal was to finish by running the whole thing so I was really happy, even with the temps starting in the 30s when we got to the race, but was probably 40s when we ran.
May was a super fun month with a lot of celebrations all around including Kyle, my mom, and my dad's birthday along with mother's day! I wasn't able to celebrate in person with the parents but I was still able to wish them well and I will just have to celebrate extra hard the next time I see them. Kyle and I had a fun weekend in Pittsburgh celebrating (which of course included the now yearly tradition of banana pudding!) We also checked out Wigle's whiskey garden & barrelhouse for some drinks and music. I found a super could chalkboard map made for tracking what states Kyle has completed a race in. It also has hooks for medals and clips for his bibs. I think it turned out super cool and it's fun seeing Kyle excited to fill in the states! I found it on Etsy from the York Sign Shop if anyone is interested, they have a lot of cool products and the quality is awesome.
a few faves: PODCASTS
1. Starr Struck Radio: Official description - A weekly podcast focused on living a creative and inspired life. Mary Catherine Starr and her sidekick (and husband!), Ben, discuss all things related to navigating the world as an adult and finding joy in the everyday. My thoughts - This show just started this year and I am loving it, I found out about this podcast since I used to take Mary Catherine's yoga classes when she taught in DC and she had a yoga/creative/inspired life blog that I read. It's an entertaining dynamic between her and her husband Ben as they tackle a lot of fun topics and are very candid and real. 2. The Jillian Michaels Show: Official description - Jillian Michaels, America's Health and Wellness guru, brings you the Jillian Michaels Show. An entertaining, inspirational, informative show that gives you tools to find health and happiness in all areas of your life. My thoughts - I have been listening to Jillian's show forever, probably one of my first podcast obsessions and I just can't get enough of the episodes (I'm noticing a Jillian Michaels trend on my blog...). She not only covers fitness but everything healthy related along with hot topics and personal stories. 3. Balanced Bites: Official description - Diane is the New York Times bestselling author of "Practical Paleo" and "The 21-Day Sugar Detox" and is a Certified Nutrition Consultant. Liz is the bestselling author of "Eat the Yolks" and "The Purely Primal Skincare Guide" and a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. Each week, Diane and Liz dish on current topics in health, nutrition, and the Paleosphere as well as provide insights in response to listener questions - all with their signature wit and a healthy dose of joking around that'll make you feel like you're spending an hour with two of your best girlfriends each week. My thoughts - This podcast and the co-hosts are where I get a lot of my nutrition/health facts from. They follow a mostly paleo lifestyle but are not super strict and go more by "whatever works for you" as long as you feel good and are healthy! Which I LOVE! and while I don't follow paleo that close I do agree with a lot of the concepts in that lifestyle and the show has so much good information plus they are super entertaining. The show has been around for a few years and is new religiously every week so the archives are always fun to listen to if I have nothing new on my playlist. 4. Sleeping With The Boss: Official description - Sleeping With The Boss is a weekly show about relationships, work life balance, and entrepreneurship. Hosted by a couple that live, work, and sleep together - Jason Zook and Caroline Winegeart. My thoughts - This is a pretty new show that started out as a couple's experiment to do a podcast daily for a whole month and then they loved it so much they kept it going as a weekly show. I found this show through Caroline's website MadeVibrant which is who I took the Better Hand Lettering course through! The show is short and entertaining and just about 2 creatives who live/work/sleep together (don't worry it's PG) and it's fun hearing their perspective on a lot of things considering I'm kind of a creative person too. 5. The Chalene Show: Official description - Tips, resources, interviews and practical steps to help you improve energy, balance, organization, health, fitness, relationships, focus, faith and happiness. Each episode is designed to give you strategies and simple steps you can implement today to become a better, more balanced, happier version of yourself. This podcast will feel like you're sitting down to chat with someone who believes in you, adores you and only wants the best for you! The Chalene Show is fit life coaching, personal development, personal growth, priorities, productivity. faith, family, fashion and humor all rolled into one. My thoughts - The past year I tried out the PiYo workout and really liked Chalene and then found out she had a podcast so I downloaded it and have been hooked. She covers a broad range of topics too, not just fitness. You can tell she really has a passion for helping people and just getting information out there, she's just so real and I love that. She also puts out a lot of episodes ranging in length so I can usually pick and choose depending on how much time I have. 6. The Lively Show: Official description - The Lively show is a weekly podcast designed to add a little extra intention to your everyday. Episodes will touch on various aspects of our lives including possessions, personal habits, relationships, and career. Entrepreneurship and online business also appear from time to time. There is a special emphasis on the blogging world and each episode is designed to uplift, inform, and inspire. My thoughts - This is another new to me show I've become hooked on. Blake Lively interviews a different person each week and is very focused on living life with intention which I want to try to instill in my life more. It's invigorating hearing all these people's stories and I look forward to each episode which is weekly and usually around an hour. There are my favorite podcasts, I listen to a few others but these ones I'm waiting each week for the newest episode. I'm always on the lookout for more favorites if anyone has suggestions! a few faves: ORGANIZED LIFE
1. inkWELL press planner: I randomly stumbled upon inkWELL press LiveWELL planners at the end of last year and decided to give a big fancy planner a try this year and I have loved it! This planner is so much more than just a planner with all the extra pages like the monthly mission boards, year goals, fun pages, etc. It has helped me look at each month and be more intentional at planning goals and how I want to live each day. Also the weekly view has room for planning my workouts, meals, and anything I want to get done at home. I'm enjoying being able to look back at past weeks and months to see what I've done and how my goals are coming. I will definitely be ordering another one next year, plus the company is starting to expand and selling a few other fun products that I may have to pick up too! 2. LearnVest: Budgeting and saving money and all that stuff is always in the back of my mind but I feel I can never seem to get a handle on it completely. I have used different tools to try to track my accounts and spending, over the past few years I have been using LearnVest and I really like all the features and functionality. I also like being able to see all my spending in one place and am able to set up budgets that I (try) to follow. 3. Wunderlist: I'm a list maker and found Wunderlist which is an awesome app for list making and checking them off one by one. You can also check lists online which is nice to double check it if I'm online. On the app I am able to group lists in folders by category which is fun to compartmentalize them and I can also set up dates for them. It's a great functional, well designed app. 4. Pinterest: I'm not sure I remember life without Pinterest! hah but seriously I love this site it has so many great uses that keeps me organized. I know it can be a total time suck but I've set up my account to work for me. I like using it for design inspiration and just storing items online that I like. However using Pinterest as a "recipe box" is the main reason I use and love it. I organize my recipes by some category breakdowns but I also keep them in a new board for recipes I want to try and then a cooked & good or cooked & bad board. This way I can always go back and find my favorite recipes plus I have a whole board of new ones to try. So there you have it, a few faves that keep my life organized. These are tools I use on almost a daily basis just to keep myself sane and life in check, that way there's a little less to worry about and I can live my life full of intention and happily! I started practicing hand lettering on February 1st and posted all of them on my graphic design blog here and then I continued into March with #MeetYourselfMarch and they are all posted here. I decided in April to continue on since I'm really enjoying that small creative part of my day. It's kind of like exercising or eating healthy, the more I do it the more I enjoy it, the more it becomes a habit, and the better I get at it. I also continued to use the prompt list from Caroline at Made Vibrant. I have been so inspired by her Instagram posts plus everyone else using the #BetterLetteringCourse hashtag, it's so much fun seeing everyone's lettering day after day! April ended up being a good month, with one of my sketches being posted to Caroline's blog here (if you scroll through her gallery examples it's the word 'action') and also winning the random draw for Aprils challenge so I will be receiving a fun hand lettering kit and I can't wait! I do the daily practice for me but it's still fun to actually win something.
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