Livin' the Dream in Lima

This past Saturday, I held a grand opening for my little cupcake counter downtown. It was so much fun! (And so much work, haha.) The cupcake counter has been open since the beginning of July, but I wanted to do a grand opening of sorts to make it 'officially' open. If that makes any sense. It turned into more of a grand opening/fall open house. My parents even came out to visit and help with it! They haven't been to visit since the cupcake counter has been open, so that was fun. As soon as they got here Friday afternoon, I put them to work. Yes, my dad learned how to use the blow torch on the S'mores cupcakes. He did a pretty fantastic job, if I do say so myself. (Mom, you did great with the pecan pie filling, too. :-P) In addition to having cupcakes for sale at the counter, I planned a few more activities to ramp up the excitement of the day.  I held a Create-a-Cupcake Contest in the days leading up to the grand opening... anyone could submit th

Yea, that happened this week. It's actually now only 5.5 weeks away. Yikes! Sure, why not? I haven't been in a running routine since I was training for Boston last spring. Through May & June, I kind of lost my running mojo and it was really hard to get motivated. I told myself I was 'recovering' from Boston. (Which is totally legit.) Somehow I squeaked out a 5k PR on July 4, without doing much speed work at all. I've been running most of the summer, but no real training plan or focus. At the end of August, I found myself telling someone that I was still 'recovering' from Boston... 4 months later. Lol, don't think I can use that as an excuse any more. :-P So, one of my running buds here in the Bean Town runs the Columbus Marathon every year, and I have run the half-marathon the past couple years. I've done a few of her long runs with her, and last weekend we did 14. I felt pretty good, so I decided to go ahead and sign up for t