Shoe Karma

Last week started off with the great news that I won a pair of Starla Sandals courtesy of the awesomeness that is Stacy from A Girl's Guide to Shoes.


In all seriousness, I've been an avid follower of Stacy's blog for years. It's a constant source of shoe giddiness and delight all wrapped up in one neat package. Being that I have a limited shoe budget, I especially like that she highlights fantastic deals all the time. It gives my closet hope for brighter and future packages.

My mid-week got a boost this week when those blinged out sandals above showed up at my doorstep. I've been prancing around my house, blinding my dogs, and fantasizing about warmer (and drier) weather so that I can wear my shoes. It's only been a day, but in that short amount of time I can say that these sandals are going to get some serious wear and love this spring/summer and beyond because they're gorgeous and comfortable. My head is already spinning with how many outfits I can spice up with them :)

Thank you Stacy and Starla Sandals so much for the shoes. They are loved and will be continued to be loved by this red head.

And so, it is only fair that since I was gifted an amazing pair of shoes, that I gift an amazing pair of shoes to someone who deserves some good shoe karma. You see, I was out and about looking for a baby shower gift and ran into TJ Maxx to get more baby clothes when I found these lovely shoes just sitting on a table.



They weren't even in the shoe section! Someone clearly picked them up, carried them around, and then ditched them at the last minute due to a poor moment of indecisiveness. I instantly picked them up because their silver metallic patent leather just called to me. I saw that they were a size 7 and thought, "ugh, why don't they ever have cute shoes like this in my size?"


I flipped them over and here's the crazy part, they were marked down from the TJ Maxx price of $159 to $39. Yeah, my jaw hit the floor. Seriously, why were these in TJ Maxx and why on earth were they so cheap?



These are Guiseppe Zanotti mirror-like pumps. Yes, they're a few seasons old, but come one! These are designer Italian made shoes. These things are ridiculously expensive! They're Cinderella shoes.


I found these shoes from the 2007 Fall Collection and I think TJ Maxx held the conservative sister shoe.


Most importantly, my sister deserves some flash and sparkle in her life, therefore she needs these shoes. So they're in the mail and should hopefully bring my sister some happy shoe karma in a few days. I hope they fit her, otherwise I'll have to find another home for those beauties because they are not getting returned.

Isn't Carrie Bradshaw a size 7? It figures... when you find something adorable in a size 9, let me know.

He did it!

Well, he took a big step in the right direction.

One of my "big" goals for running this year was to get the hubs to run a sub-28 minute 5k. I figured that would be the time it would take based on his normal running pace to get him to run an entire 5k. Turns out he's never run an entire 5k before and that really bugged me. It's just weird because we do 5-6 mile runs together all the time, so a 5k should be a piece of cake!

We ran a St. Patrick's Day 5k together and I stayed with the hubs the entire time. I told him how far we'd run, what our pace was, where the next hill was, etc. I even volunteered to fetch him water so he didn't have to slow down in the water line! I think I was his personal trainer for the short race.

It was really funny because in the last half-mile I kept nudging him to go faster and he'd refuse. At one point he even said, "I'm good right here, you go on a head." Right, like I'm going to let that happen.

Then, a solid 20 feet before the finish line, my loving hubs darts between a group of people and charges across the finish line. As soon as we get across the finish line he has the dumbest smirk on his face. He knows that he can say forever that he beat me in that race. PRICK!!!

Fine. Whatever. It's cool.

Actually it's more than fine, it was really nice to hit up the post-race festivities, while noshing on bananas, chips, and beer (the runners diet!). The hubs was in a very good mood after the race and he was pretty stoked that he ran the whole thing. Of course, it certainly helped that we started the race with a bunch of our softball friends and the hubs was more than happy that he beat all of them. And they say that I'm the competitive one!

While he didn't finish in under 28 minutes, he did run the entire time, and he's looking forward to running more 5ks in the future. In the interim, I'm training for another half-marathon and the hubs is going to join me on all of my 5 mile and under runs, which will be very nice.