Pop Open the Bubbly...

...and try on some jewelry! So...I've decided to start selling jewelry for Stella & Dot! My childhood friend, Dana, told me months ago that I should consider becoming a 'Stylist'. I was a bit hesitant...don't really know if I inherited the sales gene from Dad or not. But I took one look at the website and LOVED almost everything I saw! And what I didn't absolutely love, I liked a lot and knew someone else who would LOVE it.

I've been impressed so far with the training and stability of this company. In the past 2 years, it's grown like wildfire. Almost everyone I talk to has heard about Stella & Dot. My launch party is this Thursday! Check out the Evite by clicking here. If you're in the area and want to stop by, you are more than invited! Let me know or just come on over! And bring some friends!

So far, this is my favorite piece I've worn this week...

Yes...I realize it's only Monday and I still have 6 more days to go but I have a feeling I'll be wearing this A LOT this summer! And I'm hoping after Thursday, I'll be able to earn more free jewelry. Turquoise is hot this season and Stella & Dot has a lot of it!

Like this bracelet? Want to see more? Want this bracelet (or something else) for free? Want to host a show? Call me! Or email! Or...guess what! I'm back on Facebook so I'm absolutely, 100% accessible! :)

Lessons Learned from Bridge Run 2010

1.) Run on shoes less than 2 years old with thicker than 1 mm tread...your shins will thank you.

2.) Invest in an Ipod older than 5 years...you'll actually get to listen to your race mix while you run instead of while you update your blog 9 hours after crossing the finish line.

3.) Mexican food does not count as a carb loading meal the night before the race.

4.) Sangria, wine and beer will not hydrate you the day before the race.

5.) If you have friends with you who are not running race, make them dress in running gear and meet you at the bar afterward.

6.) 4 1/2 hours of drinking bloody marys and screwdrivers will most definitely result in a headache.

7.) Not that I need it...but running 6.2 miles is a great excuse to bring a bunch of people down to Charleston for the week.

That's all for now friends...having fun in my old hometown! Maybe I'll post pics soon????

Facebook Free for Forty Days!!!

Being true to my Catholic upbringing, I thought long and hard about what I should give up for Lent.

Ok...so that's a lie...it actually took me no time at all to decide what I needed to give up which I have to say is really embarrassing. When I found myself checking my Facebook account every 5 minutes on days that I was working out of the house OR checking it on my phone when I was in a school...I knew it was getting out of hand. How ridiculous is that?

So while some are giving up sweets, coffee, cokes (all of which I have done before)...I will be giving up Facebook. I've already started thinking of how I'll spend my time sans Facebook...

Made these as a follow up to a shower gift for friends' Beth and Matt's baby who was born just a couple weeks ago...

I had to knit them 'in the round' which is a pain...

...but when I finished, I wrapped them up with some green and brown ribbon left over from the shower and threw in a couple white onesies I had left over from another project...I certainly don't need them!

I hope they are helping little Walter Lewis Maleski keep warm in all this cold weather!

Which reminds me...can you guess where this picture was taken last Friday?

You might be able to tell from the Palmetto Tree on the left...

That's King Street in CHARLESTON and yes, friends that's accumulating SNOW!

I spent the weekend in Charleston at the Southeastern Wildlife Expo last weekend. The weather guys were calling for 3-5 inches of snow in Charleston to which I completely dismissed. In my 8 years of living in Charleston, I never saw a flake. So it completely blew my mind when I was walking down King Street on my way to dinner watching big, fluffy snowflakes fall from the sky! It was really cool, I have to say!

The Wildlife Expo is one of my favorite weekends in Charleston. I always work it...I sell beer all weekend...yes, you can laugh. It's funny, I know. But it's crazy money that I can't pass up so I'm going on 8 years working the Expo.

Colin entered his dog, Campbell, in the Dock Dog competition and she won 4th place! Look how proud she is of her ribbon!


Next year, I'm going to bring Sierra and enter her in the competition and try to give Campbell a run for her money...

...then again, maybe not.

So, other than knitting (which yes, I realize makes me sound like the 82 year old cat lady down the street, but whatever...) and taking trips down to Charleston, how else am I going to fill my time away from Facebook?

Just to show you that I'm NOT turning into the 82 year old cat lady from down the street...I'm planning on keeping up with my gym routine so that in 40 days, I'll look like this...


Hopefully, I'll have more time to read. I'm reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil for Book Club...a group that I started by the way and have yet to finish a book that we have read.

I'm also hoping to spend a lot of time with these two books...

I'm starting a new Bible Study tonight and I'm looking forward to it. We're studying Beth Moore's new book, Breaking Free. I hope I enjoy it as much as the other ones she's done!

And while knitting, working out, and trips to Charleston will definitely occupy my time during the next 40 days, I think I'm most looking forward to spending more time in the Word and working on strengthening my relationship with the Lord. Because I think that's really what Lent is supposed to be about....giving up something worldly so that we can learn about something more Godly.

No Further Uneasiness

I'm still here. I promise. I know I've said it before, but I am...I'm here. Reading over my last post, which was way back in June, it's fun to see what has changed in the past 6 months. The sweltering weather that I enjoy so much in the summer turned to cool Fall days and then to a downright freezing, somewhat dreary Winter. The plants I planted went from looking like this...

...to this...

Why I haven't uprooted them and planted something else, I have no idea.

While there are no gardenias that reside on my bedside table anymore as they did back in June...

...it's interesting to see what now rests on my bedside table...

In June, I was rereading Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World. If you haven't read this book, you should! It had a profound impact on my life! And the sequel is just as powerful. My sweet friend, Jenn Klein, gave me a gift card to Barnes & Noble for Christmas so I used it to buy Joanna Weaver's next book, Having a Mary Spirit. I thoroughly enjoy the quiet time I get to spend each day learning more about our Lord and how He is working in my life.

A few days ago, I was reading about a monk, Brother Lawrence, who joined a monastery in an effort to serve God. With all of his effort, he tried to be holy and without sin but he constantly failed. When he succeeded, he gave all credit to the Lord. When he failed, he acknowledged how dependent he was on the Lord to do right. And then "he gave himself no further uneasiness about it."

I've been thinking about that quote a lot in the past few days..."he gave himself no further uneasiness about it." Can you imagine how your life would be if you could acknowledge when you screw up and then walk away from it, knowing that you are forgiven? I still have uneasiness about the garage sale I attempted to have 2 years ago that I overpriced everything and only made $80! Every time I see a garage sale sign, my heart begins to race thinking about how I could have/should have done things differently.

Lately, there have been so many other situations that have made me feel uneasy and I pray that God gives me a spirit like Brother Lawrence had 300 years ago to acknowledge his sin, pray to the Lord for forgiveness, and then have "no further uneasiness about it."

"It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession. Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God's upward calling in Christ Jesus."
Philippians 3:12-14

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Back in June, I was just getting back into knitting and had NO IDEA how addicted I would be by now! The weeks leading up to Christmas were consumed with yarn and needles and handmade crafts all over the house. I've come to love to knit and have to stop myself sometimes from finding another project to start! There's something very forgiving about knitting something. There is always a mistake in any project that I do, and for the most part, I just don't care....in fact, you might say that I go on about the project with "no further uneasiness." Oh, if only every other area of my life could be that way! Here's a sample of what I've done so far...and there's only more to come!

Ah...Summer!

I have to say...summer is my favorite season! Even though when the air turns cool in October and the leaves change and I think Fall might be my favorite...or when the flowers start to bloom and everything turns green and I think Spring might just be the best time of year (I don't care what you say...I'll never like Winter)...then summer rolls in with the 95 degree heat and 100% humidity and I'm reminded of what it means to truly be from the south. We don't just tolerate the heat and humidity...we live it. We don't hide from it...in fact, we intentionally plan our days outside, right in the middle of it. This past weekend was the perfect summer weekend...

I spent most of Saturday out by the pool which is practically in my back yard!

Sunday I spent out on the lake with good Greenville friends and forgot to take pictures but CLICK HERE for a synopsis of the last lake trip I took with these friends and you'll pretty much get the gist of the day...sans Sierra!



I spent the better part of Monday and Tuesday filling planters with pretty plants that hopefully will make it through the summer alive!

For some reason, I think a chair is one of the best spots for a plant...

And then last night, as I was walking up the steps to my deck after turning Sierra out for the final time, I smelled something that always reminds me of summer...so I clipped a few, threw them in a bud vase and sat them on my bedside table...just like my mom used to do when I was growing up.

Is there any better smelling flower than a Gardenia?

I'm Back...

...but who knows for how long! When I wrote the last post, I thought I'd follow it up very quickly with a long one about what I had been up to. Well...it's been two weeks, and I'm less motivated to fill you in on all of my 'happenings' than I was back then...and I'm sure by now you're thinking, "Geez Megan...we are so not interested anymore!" :)

Well...just in case any of you were curious about what my month of April consisted of...

The first picture in the previous post was the glass ceiling of the botanical garden in the Bellagio in Las Vegas! I took a girls trip out to Las Vegas and then on to Pasadena to visit a childhood friend from April 16-22! It was amazing and definitely worth a post all of it's own. Hopefully, I'll get to that one of these days!

The next picture was a piece of the one above. This was another Edisto wedding for another one of the daughter's of the Mother Daughter group that gets together every Christmas. Below is my favorite picture of the night with all the Moms. Look at Gretchen (the bride) and her mom holding hands...




And finally...I've started a new project. I'm knitting again. But I'm still going to keep this one a bit of a secret because I haven't finished the project yet and it's going to someone who checks this blog from time to time, but let's just say there will be another little one besides my precious Godbaby that I'll get to spoil very soon and I can't wait to meet her!

Other than that...life has been pretty normal lately. I've been in and out of town so much lately that I haven't been able to go to my Bible study all that much and tonight was the first night I was able to go in quite a while. We are studying a book that I started reading one year ago today! Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World is a book I would recommend to any girl out there trying to figure out how to fit it all in! I thought at first that I wouldn't be able to relate to the book because I didn't really have a household to run or family to raise...but oh, how I was wrong! Ladies...if you haven't read this one yet, stop now and click here and order it right now! It is so powerful!

Anyway, I found this group of women shortly after I moved to Greenville through a Catholic young adults group. Some of the women are married with and without children, others are single. Some are Catholic, others are Protestant. All are very nice. But I've struggled with this group for some time because there's not a particular leader to the group. I am used to a Bible Study that someone prepares for and actually leads. We normally sit around and go page by page through a book and discuss what we have underlined. One of the things I enjoyed about Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World so much was the discussion questions for each chapter in the back. So tonight, I suggested that we discuss each question and actually read the Scripture passages that the author suggests (imagine that?). We had such a wonderful discussion and I think each one of us walked away having learned more about each other and the work that the Lord is doing in each of our lives.

The reoccurring theme of the night was trying to overcome discouragement. Whether it's dealing with the struggle of being perpetually single (wonder who's struggle that is???) or not being able to conceive a child or never ending stresses at work...all of us realized that we were putting these discouragements in place of our relationship with God. I have prayed over and over and over again for a husband and have started to realize that the better prayer is for peace, contentment, patience and most importantly trust in God that He will provide and that all things are beautiful in His time. It was a wonderful night of coffee, discussion, Scripture and the Spirit!

"He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts, without men's ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done. I recognized that there is nothing better than to be glad and to do well during life. For every man, moreover, to eat and drink and enjoy the fruit of all his labor is a gift of God. I recognized that whatever God does will endure forever, there is no adding to it or taking from it. Thus has God done that he may be revered. What now is has already been; what is to be, already is; and God restores what would otherwise be displaced." Ecclesiastes 3:11-15

What Have I Been Up To Lately?

The answer is...lots of things...well, except for blogging obviously. I'll be back, I promise. Sometimes, my muse just isn't with me I suppose. So for now, I thought I'd leave you with a peak at what I've been up to lately...can you guess what I've been doing from these pictures?