Friday Love!

Four things I'm loving this week:

1. Strawberry pickin' season is here! Strawberries are my favorite fruit, and NC strawberries are some of the best berries I've ever had! If it doesn't rain tomorrow, I'm hoping to head out the fields and pick a bucket full. I've pinned several strawberry-based recipes, and I'm planning on freezing berries to use in smoothies and w/yogurt. YUM!

2. Planting season is also here! Well, it has been for a couple weeks now... but I'm planning on getting in on it this weekend. I have a flat of impatiens that need to be planted out front, and I'm contemplating planting some vegetables in containers. Valentino also has the planting bug - he asked me to clean out one of his yogurt cups last week so that he could plant a flower in it! Then we picked out a packet of yellow zinnia seeds to plant in it. I love that he's so interested in such a wide array of things. Vic and I are also planning on adding some edging to our front garden bed, which should be an fun task. Not.

3.  IKEA inspirations. I have a deep aching to go to IKEA. It killed me last weekend that we were within an hour drive of IKEA, but we couldn't go {no space to bring anything home - boo!}. I have been pining over some shelving and a new entertainment center solution to spruce up a very empty wall in our living room. I'm hoping that we can go to the Charlotte IKEA soon... it's only a 2.5 hour drive {ha}. Until then, I will keep preparing a mental list of things I want to buy...

4. A new found interest in saving money. In my last post, I stated that my coffee habit was costing too much $. I'm embarrassed at the amount of money that I've spent on coffee when it could be going towards something more useful and fun, like our upcoming vacation or our savings fund. I feel the same way when we eat out (which we do a lot). Like I said, I plan on cutting out the coffee and soda, and planning/cooking meals at home more often. Why waste money on silly things? I also want to seek out online coupons more, and try to shop our local supermarket sales when they have good specials {like Harris Teeter's double coupon sale this past week - they doubled coupons up to $1.98!}.

Speaking of spending money, I actually purchased a few clothing items for myself yesterday - a dress, cardigan, tank, and a shirt, all for less than $45 {thanks, Target!}. I also picked up a cute throw pillow for our couch {$10} and some $1 mother's day cards {score!}. I LOVE Target {don't we all?!}, and I feel that I was frugal with my purchases - everything was on sale, and each was something that was *somewhat* needed.

4 mile run {43:19} last night, and a 7 mile run scheduled for tomorrow. Last night I also started my mypublisher photo books! So easy and fun, and I can't wait to see the finished product!

Looking forward to a lovely weekend!