Crystal Light

Guys! I finally got an amethyst geode!

Isn’t it beauuuutiful? As a child, I occasionally pretended my birthstone was amethyst, because I loved purple, and my birthstone was actually alexandrite, which is equally purple and beautiful, but very rare and therefore very expensive. I’ve always loved amethyst geodes, and now I own one! We found a whole store full of them in Savannah, and my mom bought me one as an early birthday gift.

Right now, it’s perched on top of our Beatles box sets in the living room, but I’ll find a better home for it eventually. Somewhere that isn’t in the damn office, preferably.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I’ve collected a few of my favorite geode inspiration photos. I realized while I was digging through my Pinterest account that many of them came from this great post by Kendra over at Haus and Home.

from Design*Sponge

from Lonny via Haus and Home

from The Coveteur via Arianna Belle

from Lonny via Haus and Home

from Earth Sea Warrior on Etsy (which by the way, has AMAZING things)

from Hannah Blackmore via Haus and Home

Apparently, amethysts are not the geode du jour anymore – it’s agate now, haven’t you heard?! But that’s OK with me. I also love agate, and will have one of those soon, too. Kate of Centsational Girl found a pair of blue bookends at HomeGoods for $20! You can bet your ass I’ll be checking our local store.

from Centsational Style

I’ll admit, though – I would definitely prefer purple.

Are you hot for rocks, too? What’s your geode of choice? (For the record, I’m still obsessed with druzy jewelry. Looooove.)

     

Savannah Sunburn

I’m back from Savannah! What’s that? You didn’t know I even left? That’s OK. It all happened so fast. One minute, I was scrambling to finish a boatload of work, and the next, I was eating broiled sea scallops at a riverside restaurant called Tubby’s Tank House.

This was my first time visiting Savannah, despite the fact that I’ve lived in Georgia for four years now, and I loved it! The Hubs and I made the drive with my mom and her fiancé, who were visiting from Connecticut. We scarfed down seafood, sampled local cocktails, walked down River Street, and soaked up the sun on Tybee Island. … Maybe just a little too much sun. Every single one of us was sunburned.

You can’t see it yet in this photo, but I was in the middle of roasting my chest so badly it actually blistered. I know. I’m way too old for that, and I should have known better. I feel really, truly stupid. Also, I’m not sure why I look six months pregnant in that photo. I swear I’m not keeping anything from you guys. Incidentally, how do you like my new fedora?! I’m not sure if straw fedoras are cool anymore, but I still love them.

We shopped a little bit in the City Market area, and I definitely need to share my souvenirs with you all at a later date – particularly a certain geological structure that I’ve been lusting after for a very long time. I shall take pictures this weekend, perhaps, but until then, I’ll just leave you with this lovely family photo of the four of us by the Savannah River.

Did I mention you can walk around outside with alcoholic beverages there?! I LOVE SAVANNAH.

What nearby touristy area have you been avoiding? Come on, we all have one – YOU SHOULD GO!

     

(Kind of) Going Green

Hey, strangers! Remember me? That girl who used to blog multiple times a week and now barely even stops by? Yeah, that’s me. Guilty.

So what’s new in the Glitter & Goat Cheese world? Well, first of all – my mom got engaged on Saturday! How awesome is that?! I’m so excited for her and her new fiancé, Rob, and am hoping they’ll let me get at least marginally involved in the wedding decor. I’m still upset that I didn’t discover Pinterest until the tail end of my wedding planning process. I would have been all over that shit. But I digress! Congratulations to my mommy (and happy Mother’s Day!)

The Hubs and I have been busy, busy, busy, and I know I always say that, but this time it’s for REAL. I work in one of those industries that gets CRAZY over the summer while everyone else is taking trips to the beach. It’s exhausting, but I also really love my job, so I’m happy to be challenged. At the same time, though, we’re still on a running schedule (my coach is now helping me get a little faster), and we’ve been really sleep-deprived, so we’re doing everything we can to take care of our health. And that’s where our brand-new Blendtec blender comes in!

Isn’t she beautiful? The backstory: I’ve been wanting a juicer for some time now, but I just couldn’t get Brad behind the idea. He’s a smoothie guy – he wanted something to replicate the fruity concoctions you can buy at Smoothie King. I’m a big smoothie fan, too, but I really wanted something to encourage a balanced diet – I wanted to drink kale and carrots and stuff.

While we were in Nashville, our friends’ friends Betsy and Mark were kind enough to have us over their home to carbo-load before the race. At their apartment, we were introduced to three fascinating things: two toilet-trained cats named Gronk and Izzie (you need to read their blog right now), and a Vitamix. Long story short, I found out that there are things called GREEN SMOOTHIES that you can make with vegetables AND fruit (and protein powder and flax seed and whatever else you want to throw in there), and you get to use the whole fruit/vegetable instead of just the juice, which gets you extra fiber. Sold!

Brad and I were trying to figure out which of our televisions we were going to have to sell in order to buy a high-powered blender when his parents came to the rescue and offered to buy us one for our birthdays. A few days later, our Blendtec was sitting on our counter. Thanks, Bill and Cheryl!

If “Blendtec” sounds familiar to you, it might be because you’ve seen the whacky “Will It Blend?” videos. We haven’t tried putting our iPads in there yet, but so far, it has blended everything we tried. This morning, I mixed up some Vita Coco, spinach, flax seed, frozen strawberries and blackberries, and fresh grapes.

(I did not spill those flax seeds out of the bag for artistic photography purposes – I just knocked it over by accident.)

For this particular combination of ingredients, I just hit the “Smoothie” button (with certain things, you have to try different cycles, even though they’re all smoothies). Then, the magic happens.

First, it chops up the greens.

Then, it pulls in the rest of the ingredients.

Last, it blends everything together into a smooth, drinkable consistency.

It doesn’t always look pretty, but 99% of my mixtures so far have been delicious. (I still drink them when they come out yucky-tasting. Produce is expensive, y’all.)

For the record, strawberry seeds are very stubborn. I haven’t quite figured out how to pulverize them, and they always seem to end up stuck in my straw. But everything else blends up perfectly! We’re still doing a lot of experimenting. I bought some protein powder today in hopes that it’d make my smoothies a bit more filling.

So, that’s what’s been going on over here. Hopefully my next post will be about something a little prettier than blended spinach and running gear! What’s been new with all of you, lovelies?

     

Finish Line

This one time, in Nashville … I ran a half marathon!

It was HARD, you guys. It was so freaking hot and sunny out, and so much of the race was on open stretches of road with no available shade … I thought I was going to melt into a puddle of sweat. But I kept dragging myself toward that finish line. I’d been planning on running eight miles and walking five, but at the last minute, my coach said that I could run up to 10 if I felt strong enough. So I did!

I took a couple quarter-mile breaks between miles 6 and 9, and then walked from mile 10 to mile 12. I was exhausted, but I forced myself to run the last mile so that I wouldn’t cross the finish line looking like a lazy slug! Just a few yards past the finish line, a group of volunteers was handing out medals. I was so happy to snag mine. IT’S GLITTERY!

I felt so lucky to be able to do this. I thought my knees were going to send me to the spectator area, but they didn’t even bother me for the majority of the race! No knee pain, no shin splints, no nothin’. Just some good old-fashioned exhaustion and soreness. We even got to see some sights in Nashville. Not all of ’em, but enough for one weekend trip.

We went out to a bar called The Red Door Saloon near our hotel.

We went to the Country Music Hall of Fame (I’m pointing at that dude because my husband recorded him a few months ago).

I checked out Elvis Presley’s gold-leafed piano and desperately wished I could have it in my house.

We ate at 12 South Taproom, which had decent food but terrible service.

And we all ran the race! Brad, our friend Courtney and I ran the half, and our friends Matt, Kelly and Ed ran the full. This was Kelly’s first marathon, and she finished in 3:42. Frigging insanity.

I feel so badly that I’ve been such a bad blogger, but I think I’m still recovering. For now, it’s time to watch Game of Thrones. See you again soon!