Encouragement

There were so many things I looked forward to when I was pregnant with my first son. I'm not even embarrassed to admit that I daydreamed about making cute personalized items for him more than I wondered what he would look like. In fact, one of the ways I passed the time breastfeeding was designing his birth announcement, family stationery, and even play date cards. But even before Pinterest, I have always loved baking, designing, party-throwing, and crafting. So needless to say that two kids later, I am a full-fledged crafty mom. But I feel guilty about it most of the time. I blame Pinterest and social media for the pressure it has put on moms as a whole to send...

I'll be there first to admit, I love me a good ol' family gathering. I love the holidays. I love all the magical chaos that comes along with it. I LOVE to entertain in my home, to host my family and friends and entertain their faces off ... I really really do. What I loathe? All of the freaking prep that goes along with it. I mean the holidays are crazy ... crazy like my kids after their Paw Paw gave them a super sized Icee for the first time ever. Crazy as in the time I did all my Christmas shopping at midnight two days before Santa was to arrive. Crazy. This year, I'm hosting Christmas day at my house....

A few years ago, I found this cute printable that read "Do What Matters" in gold letters. It was pretty and I thought it was, of course, a great positive message. So I printed it, gave it a crafty little paper frame and pinned it to my cubicle wall. "Yeah, what I do matters," I said to myself, like some self-motivating, successful phrase while focusing on whatever I was doing. Two months ago, I lost our third baby. Out of nowhere, at 19 weeks and 5 days, I started leaking and cramping. It just felt like early Braxton Hicks tightness, but I was wrong. I was in pre-term labor. We sat in the emergency room waiting for the OB-GYN when...

The holiday season is upon us and I don’t know about you, but I get overwhelmed with getting so much done in such a short amount of time. I know, I know ... I have all year to prepare but I’m apparently a procrastinator. Thankfully, we have a very small family but there are so many holiday / Christmassy things I want to do and I only have so many days to do it. So if you’re anything like me and need to unwind and do some de-stressing, here are a few of my go to’s that I love to do during the holiday season. Hot Cocoa and a Christmas movie My favorite hot chocolate is Ghirardelli and I add crushed peppermint...

I think that if you were to take a  peek inside of my head, you would see something that would much resemble Target after Black Friday: everything everywhere, in desperate need of organizing, and too much chaos. There are wheels constantly in motion, trying to get ahead of the game but never quite succeeding.  You would see the woman who tries to be a good wife, who tries to remain calm in those moments where she wants to throw her hands up and walk away. She can’t stand arguments with her husband and apologizes at the first chance she gets. The divorce rate is increasing. She would never want to be that statistic.  There is the mom who does way too...