Fabulous weather and sweet deals!

The ridiculous humidity finally took a break and so today was a lovely day for a run.  Unfortunately,  I did not go for a run.  I did, however, go for a 3 mile dog walk with both puppies.  We went for a faster than leisurely walk through Lynn Woods.  Partly it was faster than leisurely because I wanted to get some exercise in some form, and partly it was because we saw another dog  coming towards us  so I had to turn back and out walk that person and her dog.  I must say, having Nala certainly adds a bit of cardio to basically any walk you go on, whether you want it to or not, so there's that going for her.
During our walk I could feel tons of little rocks poking into my feet, rocks stuck into the bottoms of my climacools.  When I got home, I thought you might appreciate a picture of my shoes, just to see what I'm talking about.  Listen, these shoes are pretty great, but I could really do without the rocks.

Here are the bottoms of my shoes.  If you look at the heels, you can clearly see rocks stuck in between each flexy piece.

This is the pile of rocks I then pulled out of the bottoms of the shoes. No joke.  It's definitely no fun walking/running with all that stuck in the bottoms of your feet, poking into your heels.

I did do a little bit of running in the walk, just a few quick runs up hills.  I have a long night of making brooch flowers, so I wanted the dogs to be tired and I wanted to feel like I got some type of a workout before I sat around.  Speaking of brooch flowers, today my mom and I went exploring the thrift and antique shops in Salem to see what we could find.  There were a lot of nice brooches at the shops, and a lot of not so nice price tags to go with them.  But then I found this.

OH YEA! This is exactly what you think it is.  A giant ziplock bag full of brooches, necklaces, and assorted clip-on earrings.  Trust me when I tell you it was a fantastic price.  So, this was a nice star even though it was basically the only major score we got.  My mom bought a few pairs of earrings we found at another jeweler, but other than that, no awesome brooches to brag about.  I did get some green ones off ebay, which I intend to use as the lower base, to blend with the leaves that I may or may not be using.  I figured I could resell all the extra jewelry from that big bag up there to the next person who might need something for their bouquet, when the time comes.  Tomorrow, I'm going to an estate sale and really hoping that there is some pretty awesome brooches there too.  If not, then I think I'll change my bouquet into an earring and brooch bouquet.  I really don't mind have a ton of smaller pieces if I can't find enough large pieces.  We'll see what happens, but in the meantime, here's some more pictures of the assorted jewelry pieces I have so far.

These are the green ones and the ones I chose from the giant bag.

These are the larger ones that I got from Michael's, wired and wrapped, ready for bouquet making!