The Big One.

Throwback Thursday, 2009. Dancing in my apartment in my favorite jammies and favorite fuzzy hat. Somethings never change. 

Well y'all! It's hard to believe, but it's been one year since my semi-meltdown/rant and attempt at gaining more positivity in my life by starting this little blog. Exactly one year ago, I was dealing with a work situation that was toxic at BEST. I was paying too much in rent and making unhealthy choices. I was also 18 lbs. over where I was most comfortable with.

So much has changed and yet so little too! It's definitely a world away from where I was a mere 241 posts ago. For that, I'm super grateful. The hubs and I are healthier. We pay much less rent for our cute little tiny house too! The job situation has improved a bit and I even lost a few pounds too!

I try not to worry about the future as much as put forth the effort to ensure the utmost appreciation of it. That's my wish for this next year. To make the most of each and every single day so that when the future does arrive (as it tends to if we're lucky), the little chips I made in the stone will be revealing some pretty sparkly gems.

To you, lovely friends and loyal readers, thank you for joining me on this ride. It has definitely had its ups and downs. Format changes, ideas that never were realized and multitudes that have been. But I've had fun and I know y'all have too now and then.

I hope to keep you smiling and thinking positively in the next year as well!

I truly hope you have a wonderful day!

Friday Happies!

It's over y'all. You've made it to another weekend! Got any plans for Father's Day? I have to work all weekend, but I'll be calling my Papa in Nashville (can't say his gift on here because my folks are my most devoted readers- you cutie patooties) and spending time with my B after I get off work on Sunday (I'm lucky enough to have two men in my life to honor- though with wildly differing tastes). So, in honor of those great men in our lives, I've put a few fun gift ideas, some inspirations and some regular ole Friday Happy regulars to get you stoked for your weekend! I hope you enjoy!

*I <3 Dad chocolates! Because he's sweet and deserves a treat!

*This homemade shirt for Father's Day too, because Awww!

*James Taylor releases his first new album in over 13 years! It's great and what a good gift for a Papa in your life (or really anyone, because its so good!).

*How about keeping his favorite radio station pumping out the great music he loves? Donate here!

*A modern classic for him to enjoy. 

*A classic classic for him to enjoy.

*Why not make him a watermelon grill? He may just laugh himself silly! I almost did.

*A great cookbook for him too (as he loves to experiment in the kitchen)! I'm partial to the John Besh one myself.

*Awesome site of dads and kids! Like Iron Man & Iron Son above. Sooooo good!

Now on to the rest of the list!

*I want to try Graze.com's snack line!

*This is a great article not only on the tiny house movement, but on the "New Old" house movement (of which I am super into!).

*The cast of Gilmore Girls reflect back on one of the best episodes of the series, the dance marathon episode (*geek out*).

*Meet Lenore. She is 99 years old, and very interesting and self-sufficient.

*Have y'all heard of a She-Shed? Let's all go have these now, please!

*Well, here's one way to make lemonade. Due to her dog's rampant stealing of food, this photographer created an adorable series of...her dog stealing beautifully photographed food.

*I saw Jurassic World this week. I loved the action, could not ignore the sexism (really Hollywood?) and delighted in the references and Easter eggs hidden throughout. Oh, and I LOVED Jimmy Buffet's cameo! Loved it!!

*Then zookeepers around the globe began making memes teasing at the the image of Owen and the Velociraptors from that very film. It's called Prattkeeping. Silly and fun!

*I am super intrigued by this group of boys (The Wolfpack) and this documentary about their entire young lives spent locked in a tiny apartment together in NYC. Fascinating and resilient young men.

*Why is this photograph of Professor Sydney Engleberg holding a student's infant child during his lecture sparking conversations on parenting? Check it out for yourself, it's pretty great!

*The Elf Whisperer of Iceland?! Yes please!

*There is a facility/day school in Seattle that is for the very young and elderly to be together. It is awesome and makes me very happy to know it exists.

*This restaurant decided to restructure their financial system by barring tips April 1st. What happened? Their profits tripled, y'all! Their employees and customers all report better experiences all the way around. Check out their cool story!

I hope you have a truly wonderful weekend, y'all! Don't forget the first day of Summer is this weekend!

 Keep the love and positivity flowing. Pour your gratitude out every day and make sure you always tell those special people in your life that you love and appreciate them. 'Specially those daddies! Ciao!

New Obsession

Admission. When I was a little bean I took my handy dandy faerie identification guide out into Grandma's gardens and spent HOURS looking for signs of faerie life. I built houses and left flowers and fruit and it was genuinely magical.

As I've gotten older, I've always kept them in my pocket. The idea of faeries. But I never liked the tattooes (thanks Britney) or the hokey tchotchkes that forced me to keep my love of that childhood magic a secret.

In fact I've even been known to roll my eyes and scoff at the myriad of faerie accoutrements I've seen in my local favorite nursery...until recently.

Recently I've been thinking of making a seasonal planter to celebrate the changing of the seasons. See, I come from a long line of decorators. My mother, grandmother and great-grandmother's seasonal decor was something to be wonderstruck by. I've never been good at that whole-hog type of decorating because- quite frankly- I don't want clutter and I don't want to store a lot of things.

However, I believe celebrating the seasonal changes is beautiful and simple and kind and good for the heart. I want to do that like the women before me.

But in case you haven't noticed a trend with me...I gotta do it my way!

All of this to say, I want to make a Summer faerie planter for the first day of Summer, this weekend!! I'm super geeking out about it and have been researching like a lunatic about it. Ahem. At least I'm honest about my lunacy.

Check out these awesome sites for making faerie gardens or "miniature gardens" as the grown-ups would say...

*The Garden Glove.
*The Juice. (Or gardening with adorable little ones!)
*The Magic Onions (great name for a gardening site!!)
*This, That & Everything In Between.

Would you do something fun and whimsical like this or is your garden a more structured type of homage to the seasons? How do you acknowledge the passing of the months? I'd love to know!

Friday Happies!

Pineapples.

Hey y'all! What do you have planned for the weekend? I have a family reunion here and I'm going to take off a few days for myself to recover from the insanity of the past month as well. Yay! I most likely will be going to see this one afternoon to snort laugh by myself. Anyway, here's this week's list of funs, happies, pretties, interestings and what-nots to get you geared up for your weekend whatever you may have going on!

*Have you had fish grilled in pineapple bark? What the what?! It sounds amazing!

*Some guy took a picture of a woman nursing her infant at a restaurant (a total stranger mind you) and posted it to his Facebook, shaming her for feeding her kid in public. She wrote back.

*I love this summer time gift wrap! So cheeky!

*Now that is how I'd wear a one-piece swimsuit (add high wedge heels and dramatic hat and shades).

*I have to bring something to the family reunion this weekend that can get warm and not kill anyone. I'm thinking this. Any standby recipes you make for gatherings like that? I'd love to know!

*It has been said at times I have the sense of humor of a frat boy. National Lampoon's anything, 21 and Over- those are my movies I watch alone while I laugh like Beavis & Butthead. All of this is to say, THERE IS A NEW VACATION coming out!!!

*And the bluegrass side of Ed Helms (who happens to be in the new Vacation film). He's so talented!

*Molly Ringwald at 47. She's so cool!

*This was so sweet! A dad stops the father-daughter dance at his daughter's wedding to play catch with her. Ack! I ugly cried.

*The British Prince and Princess's debut photographs side by side.

*Fifteen words to eliminate from your vocabulary to sound smarter! Yeeeeah, I pretty much use them all...

*A sweet video of an expectant family and their dogs. Aw!

*For the new front porch (my house is yellow).

*Smart kid. He gets paid to wait in line at one of the most popular barbecue joints in Austin.

*This picnic blanket is awesome!

Have a wonderful weekend, y'all!

Checkin' in!

Early morning at the lake!

Hey y'all! How's your week going? Mine has been eventful (tummy bug- ew and still moving). Today's all about the updates, baby and here we go!

Day 8: I did pretty great considering it was my B's birthday and we all went out to dinner. I had a yummy salad with grilled chicken on top (though it had a marinated that I'm sure had sugar in it), everything else I did was on target!

Day 9: Sorta kinda did okay except I had the longest day at work (open to close) and resisted the first offering of a glass of wine. Upon the second offering, I gave in. I had two glasses of wine and ended up with the worst headache in the morning (aw, I'm growing up!). Still was totally worth it in the moment.

Day 10: I gave in a little for dinner. I did great up until the offer for homemade Chicken Parm came rolling in and it was lovely! I nixed the extra cheese and didn't eat the pasta (so I didn't go totally nuts). I even skipped dessert.

Day 11: Being so busy and exhausted this week prepping for inventory, I really didn't nourish myself very well. I packed healthy snacks, but failed to really make any quality meals the whole week. Therefore, by the end of a very busy day I was spent and basically just drank water and fell asleep.

Day 12: However...my non-Paleo day was so fun but I learned a lot. First things first, I had such an INSANE craving for chicken and waffles one may have thought I was knocked up (I'm not). So, I planned a brunch with friends and proceeded to devour said chicken and waffles and mimosas and it was all I could have asked for. The problem came when the hubs and I also went out to eat again and had a couple beers (again, amazing). By the end of the night however, my body was like "Um, excuse me...you done being an idiot yet? Nope? Let's see about this!"

Day 13: I get a stomach bug that I feel fairly confident in saying I would not have gotten it if the hubs and I had dialed it back a bit. We had eaten fried food, bread, dairy, sugar, and booze! I know the sudden influx of all that shocked my body and the bug that was going around work last week found me. Barf. Literally.

Day 14: I did well, though my appetite wasn't really back yet. I've been depending on my trail mix a lot (unsweetened coconut and unsweetened cranberries with almonds, pepitas and sunflower seeds) and carrots because that's kind of all I can keep down and it keeps my blood sugar more stable than other snacks seem to. However, I made the time to make sure meals are prepped in advance for next week so I can better nourish my body instead of just getting by (which is really what it felt like this week- surviving).

All in all, I lost an inch (accidentally wrote a pound! ACK! No thank you!) from my bust and no weight. That's okay though, last week's results were pretty damn amazing and I did get a little loosey goosey this week. I managed to walk 1.8 miles every day regardless of all incidences of which I am so incredibly proud, I can hardly stand it! An increase of over 4 miles from the week before!!

My daily yoga sessions (online) got a little derailed but I made it 4.5 days out of 7 and will exceed that heartily this week. Anyway, my measurements say I haven't budged an inch, but my workout pants and leggings kept falling down yesterday which makes me think my body is just lava-lamping. You know, moving the curves around to new places...I'm totally cool with that. I'm a sexy lava lamp lady!

I'm still feeling so motivated and happy and inspired that I can't wait to see next week's results!

I truly hope you have a wonderful day!!

Thoughts on Time Part 5

Alright friends, today's the last day of my series on time management and it is a long one- but it's worth it! I know I've learned a lot, have you? Well, today I have four simple tips that are usually reserved for organizing and decluttering projects that are, in fact, extremely helpful for time management. But I also have a breakdown of how to apply everything we've learned so far. So, without further ado...here we go!

Apples & Oranges.

#1. Group like with like.

This helps not only with organizing your stuff, but also with your tasks. Instead of running errands on different ends of the planet all the time, group tasks, chores and errands into categories. I also like to plan a route so that I a) save gas b) save money c) save time d) save my sanity. Keep this in your mind, there will be a visual example at the end of the post!

...

               

#2. Divide and conquer!

As with grouping like with like, dividing tasks into workable groups or sub-groups helps to take huge chunks out of your list with far greater ease than if you just made the list and started going with bullet point number one and worked your way down. Threes work for me. Three types of things that need to get done. I can look at that and take whatever is in the group I choose first and knock it out. Keep this in your head too, kiddos! It's all going to be revealed to you visually shortly.

#3. Handle things once.

This has been a huge help to me. I had a boss say it at work almost ten years ago and it has stuck with me. I've always been kind of a walks-in-circles kind of person. I live a lot in my head and when I get overstimulated especially I have a tendency to wander. It's taken a lot of hard work to teach myself to just pick that thing up and put it away where it belongs and be done with hit. In the past I would have carried it through every room of the house before I found a place that didn't bug me as much. It works with possessions, paperwork, and especially tasks on your to-do list. If you sit down and dedicate a given amount of time to a task and just get it done, it won't haunt you or grow bigger or nag you and make you feel bad or overwhelmed. It will have simply been handled, once. Handling something once can be done every day too. So instead of checking emails 34 times a day, do it once at a given time...period. Unbelievable time saved.

Cut it out!

#4. Ruthlessly cut away the unimportant.

I've touched on this a bit when I explained time thieves. However, a lot of unimportant things occupy our "to-do" lists. There are a million things we all do that aren't necessary but for some reason we still waste/piddle time away doing them! Think back to that time audit you did...where is your time going? What are the things that are unnecessary, outdated, annoying, or unimportant that you could cut from your life?

I know I waste time complaining about work. If I added up all the time I spend in a week bitching about stuff that happened at work and put it toward learning to sew (something I've longed to master for years), I'd be making a garment or decorative pillow a week (and I'm not kidding)! Or I could have put out a dozen more applications for another job in the meantime until my creative things take off more. I have to learn to cut the unimportant things too. We all do.

And don't worry, baby steps are the most important steps of all!!

So that brings me to a visual example of all the things that I have talked about these three weeks. Here's the summary:

1. Time management is energy management. AKA, Know thyself.

2. Develop a sleep routine and start getting to bed (and waking up) earlier. It's what the cool kids are doing.

3. Use the concept of "control" a little more wisely. Time management is about working smarter, not adding more stuff to do so you have no peace. Peace and joy are the goals here, people!

4. Write everything down and utilize a calendar. 

5. Determine what is urgent vs. what is personal priority.

6. Get the no-fun stuff done first, freeing up more time for the stuff that makes you happy and fulfills you!

7. Plan. Plan for tomorrow, then have a contingency plan (or two).

8. Delegate.

9. Learn to say "No."

No.thank.you.

10. Eliminate (or greatly reduce) distractions.

11. Be aware of your time thieves.

12. Focus on the tasks that will accomplish the most (the Pareto Principle).

13. Do a time audit. See where your time really goes (be honest!).

14. Learn how long it takes you to accomplish your tasks and be real about that too.

15. Schedule time to relax. Leave room for the joys of life!

16. Group like with like. 

17. Divide & conquer!

18. Handle things once. Even if its every day.

19. Ruthlessly cut away the unimportant. 

Here's a to-do list for my day off as an example. Before time management and after...

Before

1. grocery shop for the week (U)

2. do laundry (U)

3. get oil changed in car (U)

4. write blog posts for Monday and Tuesday. (PP)

5. make dinner (U)

6. pick up Mom's birthday gift (PP)

7. get hair cut (PP)

8. check emails and respond (U)

9. clean upstairs bathroom (full clean) (U)

10. wash the pup (PP)

11. call out of town friend to catch up (PP)

12. work on sewing project (STG)

13. call Credit Union with questions about IRA. (LTG)

I went ahead and added identifiers to the list to immediately indicate which items are urgent, which are personal priorities, and which were either short-tern or long-term goals. 

After

Morning: Out of house errands (arranged in a horseshoe/circular pattern so the first and last tasks are closest to home). Starting at 8:30 a.m.:

1. get oil changed and use the wait time to...

     *call CU with IRA ?'s (should take 5 minutes). 

     *call out of town friend to quickly catch up (5-10 minutes).

2. get hair cut

3. pick up Mom's birthday gift.

4. grocery shop for the week (30-45 minutes).

Early afternoon: In-house tasks. Starting around 12:15 p.m.:

5. start first load of laundry and...

6. prep food and snacks for dinner and lunches (30-45 minutes)

     *switch out laundry and...

7. assemble dinner in the crock pot or oven 

     *switch out laundry and put away. (30-45 minutes)

8.while upstairs and laundry is put away...

     *use the time upstairs to clean the bathroom (takes 30 minutes for full clean).

Late afternoon: In-house tasks:

9. check emails and respond while last load of laundry dries. (30 minutes or so).

10. work on Monday and Tuesday's blogs (30 minutes for Monday & 15 for Tuesday). 

11. Finish up the last of the laundry and put away. (30-45 minutes)

You are done. It's about 4:35 p.m. and the rest of the night is free to do what makes me happy like work on that sewing project I've been wanting to do or getting in a little yoga. I can have New Girl or The Mindy Project streaming in the background as I do so too! The things that make me truly happy get a chance now, all because I got all that no-fun and urgent stuff out of the way in a well-thought out manner. I bet you'd feel better with those big, urgent ones out of the way as well as those personal priorities too.

Exactly how I feel now after my to-do lists!

Do you think you'll use any of these ideas? I know I have been incorporating them bit by bit every day. I hope this series has helped, y'all! And I hope you have a truly wonderful day!

Friday Happies!

Southern Belle vintage Valentine!

Good Friday, kiddos (and a Good Luck Friday the 13th too)! I cannot believe how fast the weeks are flying by these days! Geesh! I hope you have a nice relaxing weekend planned, I'll be working for part of it and celebrating ValenGras (Valentine's + Mardi Gras) for the other part! Woohoo! So, without further ado, here's this week's list of sweets, funnies, pretties, happies, interestings, and what-nots to get your weekend off to a great start!

*The hubs and I enjoyed this speed dating prank...and how awfully cheesy these guys were on a supposed blind date. Ouch.

*Photographs of sweet pits with flower crowns to help people see the sweetness there beneath the bad reputation (it's the people who hurt them, not the pups themselves, y'all!). I think Mr. Fantastic is thinking "Yeah, that's right- I own this look!".


*I go nowhere on Valentine's Day on principal (traffic, crowds *shudder*). However, this would be a beautiful number to wear for a romantic dinner for two any old day of the week.

*Dear Potatoes...Will you be my Valentine? I love you so!

*While we're at it...Valentine's Day is apparently totally different for "Millenials". Technically I am a part of the "Millenial" generation (though I definitely have some thoughts on that), but I have to say...it's totally true!

*Y'all know I loved Anne of Green Gables in 2015! Check out my girl Lizzy Bennet in 2015...totally nailed it!

Mardi Gras beads in the trees!

*Oooweeoo! A DIY Mardi Gras statement necklace (that doesn't have to be so tacky or "I think I have too many beads" suffocatey").

*Sniff! Oh my goodness! This commercial is so sweet and so heartbreaking! I couldn't even remember what it was for! Whoopsie!

*I'm in big-time need for stationery and thank you cards these days. I really liked these. Call me old-fashioned but I am a bit turned off by cards that say "Thanks". Is it too much trouble to say "Thank You"? It's like saying "Yeah" to the Queen or something. I guess it's better than no thank you note at all thought, huh? I've totally been guilty of that before!

*What a cool little birdhouse! This would make a good gift for my Mama. We both have a thing for acorns.

*I thought this was kind of cool. Three woman of various ethnic backgrounds get transformed to look like a royal ancestor.

*Who knew John Reilly could sing like that?! The hubs and I have been listening to this over and over for a few days now!

*Y'all know I'm a candle whore. Every candle on Terrain needs to be at my house right now.

*Well, if this didn't come along right when I needed it. Geez Louise!

*I don't have the best track record for baking...but I wanna make these. Should I even try? I miss New Orleans right now (because that means I can eat them but don't have to attempt to make them)!

Have a great weekend, y'all! I hope it's an awesome one and super relaxing and lovely!
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pssst...And here's one for only those with a slightly foul sense of humor. You have been warned (I no likey to upsetty).

Okay, so obviously I'm a movie trailer nerd. But, I love a romantic comedy that's not a romantic comedy, and Amy Schumer and Bill Hader are both my jams, respectively. Enter "Trainwreck". Super not safe for work because of language and hilarious raunch. It looks so funny!!