“Life in My Eyes” is a series that highlights my favorite things across entertainment, beauty products, and everything in between. Enjoy!

And now to Fall 2018 …

(Disclaimer – The below content does include some affiliate links and sponsored content, but all thoughts and opinions are my own.)

If you read my newsletter (sign up in the sidebar if you’re not on the list), you know that this Fall is when my year starts to pick up steam.  After a relatively slow Summer, this season is where I’m collaborating with new brands, developing a partnership on the social media marketing side of my business, moving homes, spending a lot of time out on the town, and my little pup is getting a surgery procedure to correct some birth defects.

With all of the hustle and bustle, I’m blessed to be able to say that I’ve been enjoying (almost) every second of it.

Cheers to a little stress, a whole lot of fun, and amazing tidbits of life that help us smile all along the way!

Life in My Eyes – Fall 2018

Cute Party Invitations

I’m currently in the process of planning a certain fiesta scheduled for the near future (can’t share more details yet!), and I’m LOVING creating the invitations with Basic Invite.

This website offers an almost unlimited number of invitation colors, over 40 envelope colors, custom samples, a variety of different foil options, and a really cool address capturing service that lets you send out a link for your family and friends to fill out their addresses and it immediately gets tracked in your account.

For the function I’m planning, I’m leaning towards one of these custom party invitations, and I especially love this masquerade birthday party invitation. I think they’re so much fun, with a festive, lighthearted feel, while still including all of the necessary information.

I’ll be sure to share more details on the function I’m planning in the near future.  But, in the meantime, Basic Invite is offering you guys 15% OFF with code 15FF51.

Let me know if you order something! I can’t wait to see your holiday cards and party invites. 🙂

Intelliskin Foundation Tee

I’ve written SO many times about wanting to improve my posture.  (See here and here as just two examples.)  But, no matter how much I focus on it, I seem to struggle with maintaining a good postural stance all day.

As a perfect example, I just visited my chiropractor following my half marathon.  It seems that while my body was overall in great shape and not entirely out of alignment, I was most likely running the whole thing slightly hunched.  Not good if I’m thinking about doing longer runs in the future.

But those are just some of the reasons I was super pumped to learn about Intelliskin.  Essentially, this brand designs products that are based on Kinesio Tape methods, where the specially designed fabrics are mimicking the tape to support proper stability and alignment.

I’m a super fan of the Foundation Tee (linked above), which I’ve been wearing a lot thus far.  I’ll share a picture of me rocking it in the next week on my Insta Stories, so be sure to check it out!

Home Photo Shoot

A few weeks ago, I started freaking out a bit about a totally blogger-style issue.  I’m about to move out of my lovely one-bedroom apartment, but I didn’t have any pictures in my space!

To be fair, it’s rare that I take any pictures at home, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve taken pictures with a professional photographer.  BUT, this current space has been where I’ve gone through some incredibly transformational moments. It’s where I got my pup, rediscovered who I am meant to be in this life, met some amazing friends, reconnected with some of the most supportive people in my life, and it’s been saged so much with the best of energy and intentions that the next residents will surely think it’s supposed to smell that way (hopefully, eek!).

So I contacted a good friend and amazing photographer, Jenna Sparks, to help me out.  She just sent me the pictures and I’m in LOVE… way more than lust. She captured the everyday life of the pup and I seamlessly – even down to where I regularly sit when I have friends over, which is seen above.

Now sitting in my home with all of the furniture gone (seriously, a cooler is my desk right now), I’m both sad and excited to head on to my next adventure.  But I’m so happy that I’ll have these pictures to look back on years later.

Thanks, Jenna, for being awesome!  (I’ll share more pictures in the very near future, too. 🙂 )

Rock’n’Roll Half Marathon

A few months back, after finishing my most recent triathlon, my close friend Alex (pictured above, with me looking super tired… cuz I was) asked if I wanted to join her in running the Rock’n’Roll Half Marathon.  And, after about a night of sleeping on it, I decided.. why not?!

10 weeks of training later, I found myself at the starting line of my first half marathon in the dark of the morning on a slightly chilly October Sunday.

Thanks, in big part, to my training schedule staying fairly on track, I flew through the majority of my miles with adrenaline taking the lead. Around mile 12, I got my first and only cramps, but got through them knowing the race was almost complete.  The folks at rock’n’roll made the event a BLAST with several bands and music blasting from every mile marker.  There were stilt walkers cheering from the sidelines, I passed a barefoot, running Elvis around mile 2.5, and I was getting texts from friends and family tracking me from all over the globe throughout the entire race!

While I just made my goal at a 10:13 per mile pace, Alex CRUSHED it at a 7:20 per mile pace!

Congrats to all finishers and a huge THANK YOU to my friends and family for your support throughout this entire training and race.  I couldn’t have done it without you.

(Also, I’m in the middle of planning my races for next year.  If you have any tips or suggestions, send them my way!)

Speechless and Atypical

Compared to your average bear, I don’t watch much television.  Though there are certain shows that grab my attention.  “Friends” is always hilarious, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” has me hooked, and I’ve become a regular in “Game of Thrones” fan circles.

But currently, I’m finding myself hooked on two shows that deal with difficult topics in a somewhat lighthearted way, which both normalizes them and teaches us about how others experience life… a little bit differently.

Just recently renewed for a third season, Speechless tackles the both serious and humorous challenges a family goes through in raising a child who is disabled.  Somewhat the main character, JJ, is a high schooler who has cerebral palsy, which has left him nonverbal and in a wheelchair.  Communicating with headgear with a laser pointer to indicate words and phrases, the entire show (JJ included) is full of sharp wit and a cast of characters that leave you wanting more.  I highly recommend.

“Speechless” is on ABC Wednesdays at 8:30/7:30c.

In a slightly different vein Atypical, a Netflix original show, follows a family raising a child with autism in a unique way.  While I personally think the writers of the show try to push too much random drama (you’ll know what I mean if you watch it), I like the way they share the experience of Sam, the child with autism.

Sam regularly shares pieces of his internal dialogue, which has a way of teaching the viewer about an autistic life experience. For example, how he learns how to start dating, what he experiences when there are loud noises, or why he gets stuck on certain words in the middle of conversation.

While it’s far from a documentary, I still come out of each episode feeling like I learned a little something new.  And it’s that feeling that I appreciate the most.

“Atypical” seasons 1 and 2 are available on Netflix now.

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