good bye summer; hello, fall.

First day of fall today, and was 88 degrees in Chicago! Ha. Love it. As sad as I might be to see summer go, I have to say that I really like when the trees are mostly green but starting to show tinges of reds and oranges. I got to see a lot of that this past weekend with another visit ~ this time to my hometown.

Was a good weekend. Included just enough good weather for one last taste of summer, while also introducing many new tastes of fall. weekend highlights:

• lots of quality family time, with fun celebrations. hard to believe my small nephew is now two, and not nearly as small.
• tax free fall clothing shopping. new clothes for new seasons are something that I can always get on board with. especially sans taxes.  now it's too hot to wear them, but I'm not going to complain about that!
• a sneaky kitchen cabinet hardware renovation project ~ gift idea my husband and I cooked up... anyone else have issues with figuring out what the heck your parents would want that they haven't already bought themselves, these days? both sets of parents have more gadgets than we do. happily, this idea was a success, and fun to do. 
• one challenging seven mile run over lots and lots of hills. Considering that all my training in Chicago is on a very flat lake front path, it was a surprisingly fun run. It helped that I was distracted by the scenic country views, made all the more lovely with the morning sun highlighting the early autumn colors. also, a very good workout, and I am still sore!

All in all, it was another much needed restorative weekend. This Friday is the big charity fundraiser that I've been helping to plan. It's been sucking up all of my free time lately. It will be nice to finally get to the actual event and hopefully have a fun evening ~ and I'm looking forward to regaining more free time after it's over! Have more things to say here, so hopefully time will open up for me to actually get around to saying them!