My runner gals and I have a summer Saturday morning tradition of run – coffee – farmer’s market. For those of you outside of Chicago, we have a lot of farmer’s markets but the biggest and the best is the Green City Market on Wednesday and Saturday in Lincoln Park. It is so awesome when the summer bounty comes out. What could be better? What? Let me tell you! Stacy and I ran up to the market after I did the Big 10 5k and grabbed a coffee at Elaine’s Coffee Call in the Hotel Lincoln (our new fave coffee destination – sorry Starbuck’s!) They have friendly service and yummy goodies and delicious iced coffee right across from the Green City Market.
So… run/race/run, water/iced coffee and we hit Green City – all good. We walk a few steps in and we are greeted by a cute young man who asks us if we want an awesome red tote bag from Organic Gardening Magazine. Free? Awesome tote bag? Filled with samples?! YES, PLEASE!
We follow him over to a series of tents (wish we had a camera to document our fun.) We got our red Organic Gardening tote filled with awesome samples of Meyer’s dish soap, whey protein, homeopathic eye drops, all types of natural sweeteners, several magazines, Smucker’s all natural peanut butter and more! Then we met Marilyn Santos-McNabb who was giving out super cute cilanto plant samples and great gardening advice. She is a doll (and is Pastry Chef Instructor for the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts-Chicago – may need to take a class – or at least Stacy should!) She hooked us up with Garden Safe gardening gloves and another awesome tote for our farmer’s market haul. She then gave us more advice and sent us to the next tent where they were preparing organic recipes and giving out recipe cards and tasted some butternut squash soup. Last station was more samples!
The LOOT
Then we filled our totes with fruits and veggies and hauled it all home on the 36 bus (which is always entertaining!) What a great way to start the day! Totally awesome!
Some Deals I Found This Week (so far):
– I am not going to lie – I almost squealed with joy when I saw this one! (Just for the sheer pleasure of being able to write about it!) Tippr has $20 for $40 credit on Objex sports bra or cami with a pocket in bosom. So why the excitement? We have several runner gals that use their sports bras as pockets for energy gels, keys, ipods – you name it (oh the chafing!). We have had many conversations INVENTING this very item. The first company that we saw trying it a while back didn’t look as good as this one. I am convinced they heard Rhys or Molly C talking about it! This version looks a bit more natural. Not sure it is for me — I am obsessed with finding running clothes with zipper pockets. So there you have it. If you want to try this, you can get an additional 20% off with the code objex20 at Objex Sports.
– Want to do good with a very small effort? Saw this on NBC this morning — Groupon is supporting a school supplies drive for CPS students $11 or $18 will help a CPS student get school supplies w/Kits for Kids — virtually no work on your part! Use ebates to access the groupon site and you get cash back! A win-win!
– Hey New York Friends, what are you doing August 12th? Living Social has half off on the International Food Truck and Beer Festival at South St Seaport . Now that looks like fun!
– Bloomspot has some great travel deals right nowincluding a smoking one for Ojai Valley Inn and Spa where my MIL took me for my 40th – it.is.awesome! and reasonable with this deal.
– Athleta has 20% off their summer sale with the code SUMMERFUN. Use ebates to access the Athleta site and you get 2.0% cash back!
Links I Like (no particular rhyme or reason today):
– In honor of the Olympics (YAY!) – Shape has the 20 Sexiest 2012 Olympians – what do you think?
– Speaking of the Olympics… WalkJogRun has the 2012 Olympic Running Schedule! (ooh and lots of running coupon codes, too!)
– The Well Daily has two great posts: one about committing to a change by taking a 30 day challenge (and why) and one offers more reasons why running is awesome. (Like we need those?)
– My friend Andrea has a great post on her blog “Life Begins at 39” on lessons learned from Noah’s Ark. I like them all but especially “Don’t listen to critics; just get on with the job that needs to be done.”
That’s all for now – have you found anything good this week? Let me know!