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Week of Dec 10 Happy Planner Spread

December 12, 2018December 13, 2018 2

One of the things that’s been the hardest for me since moving to a studio is figuring out what to do (sometimes literally). I lost the space I had for photographing Poshmark inventory, so now I can’t really work on Poshmark stuff from home. HELP! I decided to dive back into being diligent with my Happy Planner, which I LOVE!

As someone who has always had thousands of stickers and pieces of paper and colored pens and such laying around, the Happy Planner is a PERFECT TOOL for me to stay on track – its fun, happy and customizable! I decided to spend the morning decorating my weekly spread and I was so happy. I watched a YouTube video of a planner (it’s a thing. people literally make videos of themselves planning and people like me spend hours wide eyed watching) who said when she first started she always put way too many stickers and it looked cluttered and I thought, “well that looks beautiful to me!”

This is my spread for the week! Over on the left I always keep my monthly goals because sometimes I will literally forget them if I don’t have them written down. I love to do lists. I’m learning that even if I don’t accomplish ALL OF THEM, I feel better if I accomplish SOME OF THEM and then ask myself why I didn’t finish the other ones (often I just didn’t want or need to do them but felt the need to make a full list).

My to do lists get done daily, not weekly. We tend to be very impulsive with our days “hey, want to go to Starbucks?,” working at my mom’s until 8:30, going to four Goodwills, and then the day is over and I think “should I really write 10 Christmas cards at 11:45 pm or go to sleep?” and I often choose sleep.

Something else to note: as I make progress on my monthly goals, what’s left to do is updated each week. For example, my monthly goal was to list 200 items on Poshmark. By the beginning of this week, I’d already listed over 100 of them so my goal reflects that I only have 82 left to go. I like to leave boxes I can color in for smaller lists, like the one about blogging.

The last part of my week. Listen, I’m not a perfectionist but that wonky to-do list on Thursday kind of drives me bananas. There are people who use little tweezers and stuff to put their stickers on but I am not there yet. So my choices are lazy with crooked stickers… or putting in the extra 25 seconds and having straight stickers. Listen, I did that math. Spending 25 seconds a day making my stickers straight will total into 2.5 hours per year. Do you KNOW how many episodes of Friends I could watch in that time? Read that like Chandler Bing. If you know, you know.

And in conclusion. This is a blogger I recently discovered who shares her planner spreads. They are SO CUTE and so put together! and make me want to buy ALL THE HAPPY PLANNER STICKERS!

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emotional life

Two years from now.

December 10, 2018December 4, 2018 0

The other day I was (wait for it) distracted on the internet. I was sitting at my desk, gazing at the paper mill from our window and my mind went down a rabbit hole, which I followed all the way to YouTube.

I saw a video that reminded me of a text I got two Decembers ago.

Two Decembers ago, Kristen texted me to tell me that Layla was diagnosed with alopecia and her hair was falling out. My precious little Layla, sweetest Layla in the whole world (I’ll fight you on it) and truly one of the best little humans I’ve ever known.

Otherwise healthy, but losing her hair. I remember laying in bed, sobbing. I remember thinking it would change her life, and what if it dimmed her spirit? I sobbed, and then a month later Ernie posted it on social media. That text suddenly became very real. It wasn’t a “maybe” or a “possibly,” but it was an actual thing. I remember standing in the church building we worked at, crying while Justen hugged me. and then I picked my phone up and told Kristen “I’m booking a flight out there, just tell me when.” I asked her to send me videos and pictures of Layla so that I wouldn’t burden her with any looks of shock or surprise or anything.

and a few weeks later, I arrived. To my delight, she was the same spunky Layla (with some extra emotional moments about random things). She asked me to put her hair in a ponytail for gymnastics, which I gently did with her wispy hair. Right before I went to the airport, Ernie asked me to help him film a video for his Patreon. He’d chosen Randy Travis’ “Forever and Ever Amen” which has the line “honey I don’t care, I ain’t in love with your hair, and if it all fell out well I’d love you anyway.”

As he was listening to the song, the girls were dancing around and he had his camera out. He got footage of Layla hearing those words for the first time (it’s in this video and it’s the point I feel myself turn into a giant tear drop of love because she is so excited). He also included little clips of the girls, and me with the girls, and I have watched this video so often.

Here’s the thing. It’s been two years since I got that text from Kristen about Layla’s alopecia. and those moments of worrying about it affecting her spirit, the nights of crying because I wished I could protect her from anything hard… they are memories.

Those hard moments are gone, those worries and fears and tears… in the past.

and now the unknown is normal. To Layla, her twin, her parents, her family, her classmates, to me.

I think of the things right now that are unknown. That worry me, keep me up, bring me tears. Mountains that seem unclimbable, decisions that seem unmakeable.. and I wonder what those will be like two years from now.

The brilliant thing about mountains is that they just get bigger and bigger the closer you get to them, but they’re smaller and smaller the more you move past them. and taking a tip from Layla, just shave the remnants of old life off and step into new chapters of your life with boldness and a resilient spirit.

ps if you made it this far without watching the video, that’s wrong of you. Watch the video. It’s my favorite.

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#goals

December 2018 Goals

December 7, 2018 0

Happy December! I’ve been working and scheming on some stuff behind the scenes to help my blog step out of the “Goals and empties” trap that it’s fallen into. Those are the easiest things to post, but it means my blog has no real content, lol.

I’m not even going to START on my November goals, because we had the topsy turvy-est month ever. We now live in a new apartment and spent a lot of time dealing with that! So here’s Decembers goals as we continue to get settled.

Bake cookies & watch a Christmas movie
(being honest… I’ve got almond butter chocolate chip cookies in the oven and The Grinch playing right now because I made this list last week!)
Read a book
Blog 10xs
I actually started another blog (for essential oils, don’t get too excited haha!) and it’s been so much easier to dream up and draft content for that, so this 10 times includes that (which can be found here in case you’re interested!)
Send 10 Christmas cards
Post apartment tour YouTube
List 200 items
A HUGE goal, but I’m already over 1/4 of the way there so I’m on track!
Organize closet
I’ll post more about this later, but our new closet is a big adjustment and I’m in need of a day figuring out how to get it organized to function well.
Paint my nails
It’s the little things.
Pay off the Disney Card
Last month I’d wanted to pay off ALL credit cards, but I had LITERALLY the worst sales month almost all year long, so that definitely didn’t happen. Taking it a small little step at a time.
Change dōTerra & IQ name
My dōTerra checks (they’re like $50/month, so don’t even start thinking I’m trying to build some big oil business, it just pays for 1/2 of my monthly dōTerra budget – we use more than just the oils) can only be deposited at our credit union account because they both still have my maiden name! I’m working on getting them both changed, though.

and I’m working on trying to be more present, more aware of what I’m accomplishing on the daily.

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beauty + fashion empties

Empties vol. 18

December 6, 2018 0

Well there is nothing like downsizing to get you to throw away garbage you’ve been keeping for months so you could one day blog about it! If you’re new around here, my Empties series is where I just post pictures of the empty products I’ve used and give a quick review of what I thought of them (if I can remember, because the last time I did this was in freaking March).

Just a tiny lil’ empties this time around! I think a few months ago I threw out a bunch of empties on accident and then I set aside a basket for empty products… which strangely hasn’t happened in awhile! I threw away a bunch of old/replaced products the other day when we moved into our new apartment, so one of these posts might be awhile away again.

Pink Warm & Cozy shimmer body butter
Warm & Cozy is my favorite scent. Here’s the thing. I know these things are bad for us, but seriously they just smell so good. I love essential oils but essential oils don’t smell like Warm & Cozy amiright?! My plan of action is to use up the stuff I have but not replace it, so soon these empties will look way different!

St. Ives Energizing Coconut and Coffee Scrub
In July when I was in Nashville, I forgot basically all of my toiletries at home so we made a trip to Target. Coffee + coconut, two of my great loves. I really liked this scrub! It was scrubby and smelled great, but alas… that dirty little fragrance ingredient, so this is the end of the road for us.

Beauty Protect & Detangle Spray
I love this smell. I love this product. I have a bigger one I received from Birchbox as a sample. I’ll be going through that and then… freaking fragrance. Fragrance is in EVERYTHING and fragrance (as an ingredient) is SO BAD! Aye aye aye.

Coola Dawn Patrol Primer
Confession: I never tried this, I just decided I didn’t need it.

Benefit Roller Lash
I LOVED this mascara! It was a dream to apply and in staying power, but when I thought I was buying the full size version of it, I was wrong. I’d replaced it with a different Benefit mascara. Goodbye old friend, you were so good to me.

If you want your world rocked, go ahead and look up “fragrance” and “toxic” and then welcome to the club. :]

Check the rest of my empties posts here.

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life

That time we moved like 30 feet away.

December 4, 2018 0

My head is spinning right now. Not literally but it’s getting there.

Last Monday we got a notice to vacate our apartment. A week later, we turned in our keys.

Here’s what happened. Last year, there was a leak in our apartment. Last month, they replaced the roof above our unit and around our skylight… aaaand then it leaked some more. It wasn’t just normal leaking this time, though. This time the plaster on the ceiling started peeling and falling.

The property maintenance manager asked us if we’d like to permanently move into the studio across the hall, to which we said no thanks. After a looooooong Thanksgiving holiday wondering if we would have to leave our first little home, on Monday we got the official notice to vacate.

I called up the maintenance manager and asked if we could be first to know when 202 was repaired and she said absolutely, though they had no idea of a timeline. I thanked her for the offer to move into the studio and said we’d be willing to consider it if we could be put on a month-to-month lease instead of a year, because obviously it would just be temporary while we waited for our unit to be fixed. She said absolutely. On Wednesday morning we checked out the studio, and on Wednesday afternoon we signed our amended lease and got the keys to our new, smaller living space.

They asked us to be out of 202 and turn in the keys by end of day Monday, which meant we had 5 days to downsize, pack, move, and process that we would be moving. We immediately moved our bed, desk, coffee pot and Christmas tree over to our new unit. Followed by all the things and all the stuff and bada bing here I am, sitting at our desk in our new apartment on the first day we don’t have keys to the only place we’ve lived as the Martians.

It’s been really challenging. Justen is fairly minimal in his belongings and I’ve been trying to constantly donate bags and boxes of things I just don’t need, but unexpectedly needing to downsize AND move AND process was really hard for me. I’ve never considered myself materialistic but I was actually shocked to see how I responded to the thought of not having something I didn’t even remember I owned until I found it in a cabinet.

One thing I really regret is the way I was never happy enough with 202 to share it. I was constantly telling Justen “once I get this little area figured out, I’ll take pictures and post them on my blog,” or “it’s too messy to take pictures,” or something similar. I kept waiting and waiting to share our basically perfect apartment and I missed the chance. So once we’ve finished hanging one box of pictures, I’m sharing photos of life in our little studio apartment overlooking downtown Camas.

And here’s the thing: sometimes the waiting is really the hardest. Once you have the information you need, you can do something, but waiting to find out can be the worst.