Home {decor} Tour

 We finally made some time (I must say, Nick made it happen) to get our place looking more like home. I'm excited to show some of our home improvements, but have to show more happy days flowers first.

Nick surprised me with these amazing flowers along with dinner and sweet words when I came home from work one night the week before last. He's always so encouraging and thoughtful and these flowers hit the spot with what I needed to hear.

I had a fun photo shoot with the flowers too. They are just happy flowers!

 Thank you to the world's greatest husband:)

Back to the decor touches! We've been needing to get things on our walls since December. It's been bugging me constantly to feel like I have unfinished projects seeing bare walls the past few months. Part of it was also deciding what should go where.

We landed on this fun colorful painting which I love! It pulls together the colors well and is fun and inspiring as well. You'll also notice that Owlie continues to hold a prominent place in our living room.

This vase with fun potpourri is in our bathroom and I love the style (and smell!) of it. I may remove that top piece of potpourri, :) it's slightly out of place! 

This is our reading corner. We got the chair for free (!) and added the cute lantern to a hook that was already hanging in our bedroom. We also added a battery operated candle with a remote! Without the remote, we'd have to take the lantern apart and flip the switch every time to turn it on and off, so I'm loving the remote feature. The lantern creates a nice ambiance in the room when we're winding down our evenings.

Here's what landed on our "dining room" wall.  

Close up 

 Here's the new pillow for our couch! This pillow makes my heart melt.

 Close up

 I finally got some flowers to fill this pretty vase and really like what it brings to the room now.

  One of my most exciting projects was getting all of my jewelry hung! It was a complete mess (seen below) and was a disaster to find what I was looking for, let alone untangle it.

My old necklace hanger broke as we were leaving Texas and my jewelry has been in disarray since then.

Disarray no more!

It's like a breath of fresh air to have these organized and so pretty looking! 

 This frame was made by two of my great friends, Maggie and Hannah - check out their blog for similar unique pieces they remake and sell. 

I feel like I'm walking into a jewelry store now when I go into my closet. It's wonderful! I have even more fun picking out accessories now that I can see them all :)

In other news, I made gazpacho on Monday and it did not disappoint. It's so tasty and so so fresh on warm summer days.

Here are my blended veggies plus the tomato juice, hot sauce, etc. being ready to mix with the diced veggies. Yum! If you've never tried it, this summer is the perfect time to try it. Here's my post from last summer with the recipe.

Before I forget, I just have to note that last weekend was SUCH a great weekend for us. I finished my part time job and enjoyed two whole days off work (it had been over a month since I had a day off). We went to Lake Calhoun, checked out thrift shops, went out for breakfast (twice! Once with Nick and once with friends), went jewelry shopping, and explored our neighborhood some more. Talk about a "me" kind of weekend - it was great!

Lastly, here is today's Pinspiration:

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Mornings are the Worst

It's hard at times for me to write about updates on fibromyalgia and how I'm feeling. I'm not at a point yet where I have great news to share about finding a balance, so I'll be honest that I'm not feeling well most days. 

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Mornings are the worst. My knees hurt, my neck and shoulders hurt. My temples hurt (probably thanks to grinding my teeth all night), I have a headache, feel achy, am still exhausted, and I don't want to get out of bed. That's the hardest part of the day. Laying in bed trying to plead with Nick with a few reasons of why I want to stay in bed. Thankfully, he gently reasons with me and I get up and start the day. It's not easy. That's the way it is, every day. Ugh. I pray and hope for the day this is behind me, but for now, until I do x, y, z exercises or see a certain doctor at some point, this is it. 

As the day goes on, I fight fatigue and pains, drinking coffee to wake up, and adjusting in my seat to keep comfortable. I get through the day, one hour at a time and get home and rest. In the evenings, we're trying to exercise a few nights a week, but many nights I am napping when Nick gets home from work. I'm just so exhausted all of the time, no matter how much rest I get. 

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I go to bed surrounded by pillows to keep my posture in line to avoid waking up even more sore and achy the next morning. Then it repeats.

Right now, it's been even more difficult since I've been working my "day job" and my part time job still on weekends, so I don't have a day off in May. This isn't helping my exhaustion level, but it will be changing soon.

Here's an excerpt from Sue Ingebretson's book Fibrowhyalgia, referring to who she calls fibrofolk, "When we wake up, pain is usually at its worst. As we move, we loosen up, our joint and muscle pain begins to lessen..." "...I wake around six-thirty a.m. and start to feel quasi-human by nine or so. That's my burn off point." 

It still amazing to relate to someone else dealing with this same condition, these same struggles day after day. There are other times she describes in detail how challenging mornings have been for her. I'm so thankful for her book!

I also found some fibro related pins on Pinterest the other day:

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This woman trained her dog to help with her fibro! It's pretty interesting. I can't get the video to paste in here, but you can watch it here.

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A friend with Rheumatoid Arthritis told me about drinking this tea that has rose hips in it. I've started drinking it before bed (on nights I remember) and really feel that the achiness is reduced the next morning and I can get up a bit easier. I don't know if it's one of those things that the body adjusts to over time and loses effectiveness, but for now, it's been a noticeable difference in the mornings! There is research out there (like this article) showing the effectiveness of rose hips on pain.

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I'm really not trying to complain, just to document these days and hope that at some point, I can look back at my old self and have perspective for how far I've come. For now, I'll put one foot in front of the other.

Pinspiration for the day: Brighter days are ahead.

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Date Night

Nick and I had a date night on Saturday and it was such needed time away together. 

Since moving back to Minnesota in November, pretty much all of our weekends have been work. Literally working for me and Nick was busy with studying for his exams for his job. Aside from our fun vacation to VEISHEA, we've been tied up in life and unable to really enjoy a weekend. We just have a few weeks of this crazy schedule left, but needed some fun in our weekend. 


Nick purposed the idea via text message Friday morning and I excitedly replied. I love date nights! Nick did the planning for it so I got off work and we were headed to downtown!

We ate at a great Asian restaurant (so many dairy free options!) and Nick tried socky for the first time. He took a recommendation from our waiter on which type of sake to try and when we got our bill, there was a bit of shock on his face. It was $16 for that relatively small glass! Haha, we don't typically splurge on things, but a date night is a good night to do so.

After dinner, we walked over to Target Field and sat outside during the end of the Twins game. It was beautiful outside and nice to just enjoy the atmosphere.

 It was great! Date nights every weekend, please :)


We also are trying to get our place decorated now that we're finally getting time to think about it. Here are a few things I picked up this weekend:

Pier 1

Pier 1

I'll get photos of them in our place once it's more settled. And once we decide what exactly we're keeping. 

Here are more date night ideas that are easy to make time for. Let's be sure to make time for us!

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Our VIP VEISHEA Experience

I'm a winner!! But you already knew that:) The premise of this post all began with an e-mail. This e-mail to be exact:

Subject: ISUAA Fan Drive Winner!

"Marissa!

On behalf of the ISUAA Young Alumni Council it my pleasure to inform you that you are a grand prize winner of our Facebook Fan Drive!  The package includes a "VEISHEA VIP" package for you and a friend with lodging, event tickets, souvenirs and VIP parade access during VEISHEA weekend, all sponsored by the ISUAA Young Alumni Council."

I literally read the e-mail and was like "Hmm, I didn't sign up for any contest"... so I forwarded it to Nick letting him know I'm thinking this is a spam message. He replied back pretty quickly confirming this was indeed a contest they advertised in their newsletter (which I never seemed to make time to read, oops!). So it sank in, I'm a winner and we can go back to ISU for VEISHEA and have a fun weekend getaway with most expenses covered!

First off, I have to clarify for those who may not know, VEISHEA is an acronym for ISU's colleges at the time the festival started in 1922: Veterinary Medicine, Engineering, Industrial Science, Home Economics, and Agriculture.

After clearing our weekend, we were set and on the road to Ames!

It never felt better to see our old stomping grounds (which reminds me we didn't get to go to Stomping Grounds while we were there! Shoot. Next time.)

Then we got to see our goodie bag in our hotel room! SWEET! I love free stuff. Can you tell what is in those goodie bags by the way? Look closely. Back to that in a minute. 

I have to say, the team that arranged this VIP package and coordinated with me was great. I sent them photos of our weekend and they were all so great and excited for us. If you are an ISU alum, you should totally join the alumni association :) They didn't ask me to say that by the way, they were just great. 

Back to those goodie bags above. Yep, they had Iowa State cherry pies in them! A serious ISU tradition since 1919. Amazing. I pretended they didn't have dairy and scarfed it. It was amazing. Like Iowa State in food form.

That Friday night, after scarfing our cherry pies, we headed to campus to grab dinner and check out the concerts!


Don't mind these poor quality phone photos.

The food vendors! Not many great dairy free options - let's say dairy was indeed consumed a few times that weekend (even in the form of CHEESE pizza! Ugh. Difficult food options + time crunch = goodbye dairy free). It didn't even taste as good as I'd been dreaming of for months now. 

The campanile all lit up that night.  

 Rocking out with Eric Hutchinson! 

We got our VIP badges at the dignitaries breakfast Saturday morning and a nice laminated reminder of our schedule for the day! We were pumped.

Here's ISU's new president, Steven Leath, as the keynote speaker at the breakfast.

Everyone settling in before the annual VEISHEA parade

It was a rainy morning, but fun was had by all.

Steven Leath was also the Grand Marshall of this year's VEISHEA parade. 

AND one of my very favorite ISU people, Coach Paul Rhoads encouraging the fans with a thumbs up. 

CY and I had a moment at the parade. He's clearly showing some love to this VIP winner.

Here's the basketball team. I was hoping to find Royce White there, but he must've been busy in the big leagues. 

Here's another one of my favorite ISU people, Jeff Johnson. He was a TOTAL highlight of our day. He sat at our table at the dignitary breakfast and talked with us for at least thirty minutes. It was SO COOL! He's basically the top guy in charge of the Alumni Association - he told us about his doctoral studies, his huge passion for keeping alumni connected to their roots, and let us into his life for a short time. If you've been to ISU games, he's also one to get the crowd chanting and riled up - he's got a zest for life and for ISU that I completely admire. 

Back to the parade, here's our pep band! Chanting along to our fight song brought back so many memories.

After the parade, we had to visit the campanile. I love the campanile. 

For old times sake, here's one of our engagement photos ('09) laying in front of the campanile:

After grabbing some quick lunch, we had to take a quick break from the schedule (things we had already done) to visit Nick's fraternity. They've done lots of remodeling the past few years so it was great to see. Although it made us feel so OLD since so many guys we (mostly Nick) know have graduated by now.

We enjoyed some more tours after that (some are totally free and you can schedule for yourself any time by the way!) and got to meet up with Rachel, Jared, Judah and baby Haven for dinner. 

We also snapped some photos on campus since we don't get to make it back that often.

Judah and the guys! He loved Nick and wasn't too far from him that night - it was too cute!

I also got to meet and squeeze Haven for the first time! She is SO darn adorable and has such soft skin.

Ohmygoodness, she was so sweet. How cute is that face??!

Good ol' Lake Lavern - seen from a different angle in our engagement picture here:

At the end of a packed day (it looks like it, HA!) with my VIP badge. I kind of want to wear it every day as I enjoyed being VIP status. It was SUCH a great day and a well needed break from the norm. By the way, have you seen VEISHEA's wikipedia page? It's pretty impressive to learn about the history of this event! I love being part of something big like that. Check it out here. 

It was a quick trip and Sunday morning we were on our way back to the Twin Cities as I had to work that afternoon! 

Is that the Bahamas?!? 

No.. it's Minnesota..

It was a gorgeous day. Hope there's many more where those come from this month!

I also skipped over Nick's birthday mid-April, but I got him this awesome beer glass set! It's a set of 6 and each shape is for a different kind of beer. He can have fun trying different beers in the mugs. I was glad he liked it, I think it's so cool!

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Cheers!

I'll close with some Pinspiration as this spring continues to blossom with new growth.

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