Hi there. Happy Monday. You may notice things are looking a little different around here today (Ahem, new layout). Over the next week you will see some more changes here. I am not completely done yet with the layout. This is just the barebones. I will put in time as I can to get my vision created. But now on to what has made me decide to put in the time to make the changes.

You may (or may not) remember me mentioning the book 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think by Laura Vanderkam. (Just an FYI, I won't make any money off of that link if you click it, because even after 5 years of blogging, I have no idea how affiliate marketing works! Ooops!) If you don't remember, it is basically a book reminding you of how many hours in a day you waste on pointless shit.  That is pretty much the jist of it.

Now you may think I am not digging this book by that statement, but that's not true at all. The book has reminded me that I once had a passion and some real time put into this blog. This blog was my life at one point, in a good way.

I loved coming here each and every day to work on something new for you all to read and engage in with me. Over time a life thing happened that really left a bad taste in my mouth, and from that point on my time here became less and less. I was looking at my archive list earlier. My first year of blogging was in 2014. I wrote 137 posts and I started blogging in May.

In 2015 I wrote 156 posts and really started to get some notice. I had brands who reached out to me. I did some sponsored posts. It was great! I loved to write and I was getting asked to write. It made me happy. In July, the life thing happened. Things slowed down a bit, but I made a promise to myself that I would at least blog through the end of the year, plus I had some commitments already that I had to honor.

In 2016 I was down to 123 posts and by last year I only had 73 logged. Here we are in 2018 and this will only be my 22nd post of the year. A majority of these posts only happened over the last 2 months. It seems I have found my passion again with writing. It doesn't even have anything to do with being sponsored or making money.

I just love it. Signs have been pointing me back to writing for awhile now. It is something I never thought I would enjoy so much, yet here I am. Inspiration at it's finest.

 Now back to the book I mentioned and how it inspired me to change my path here on the blog.

It reminded me that if I am passionate enough about something, I will make time for it.  There is no longer an adequate excuse. It's either I want to do it or I don't. There really isn't any in between.

You carve out time where you can. For instance, I am typing this out while I pump for baby bloob. I have mastered doing this lately. I write and I create food for my child. I am making time for 2 things that are very important to me.

You use all of your free time efficiently. It works.

If I can hash out time and multitask for something I love, then so can you. You just have to make a choice.

I plan to finish this book today, as it is due back to the library tomorrow. I plan to write down my week in hours next week. I will share how it goes along the way. I am excited to see how I spend my time.

Who's going to do it with me?

We hear this saying all too often. "Home is where the heart is", but do we ever stop to think how true this is?

Our bodies are ultimately our homes. We live in our bodies everyday. Our heart beating keeps us going. It also becomes the source of our emotions.

Sayings like "Putting your heart and soul into it", or "She was broken hearted when her dog passed away" will reference the heart with an emotion.

Today I am thinking a lot about the emotion side of the heart and body because of something that happened recently.

The other night I was sitting in bed with R and our cat Grace. She wasn't feeling good through the day and she had lost a lot of weight. She came up into the bed and was being super affectionate and cute like she is when she wants attention.

My immediate reaction was, something is really wrong. Maybe she's sick and she doesn't have a lot of time left. Maybe she is here trying to comfort me so it will be an easy transition whens she goes. I had all of the emotions running through me.

My heart was literally breaking and full of love all at the same time. I wanted to be strong for her but sad because I love that little cat like she's my child. I sat there petting her and the tears started falling. She just kept on butting her little head into me, like "Mom, it's going to be okay. Please stop crying".

My body literally reacted to the emotions before I could even make that connection myself. The heart and emotions are such a powerful force of nature. My body reacted to these emotions and helped the tears along, which alerted Grace to comfort me more. Such a powerful moment.

I was able to calm myself down and talk about it with R. I wanted to be in control so I could prepare myself if something was wrong and she didn't have time left. This pushed my emotions into a place of comfort while I remembered all the times I spent with her. My silly little furball, who will only be 3 next month. Too young in my opinion to be sick and dying.

R comforted me to remind me we didn't know she was on her way out. We needed to trust that things were going to be okay. We needed to take her to the vet to have her checked out.

Yesterday she went to the vet, and miraculously she was feeling better. She was eating and seemed to have gained all this weight back, which I am not sure how that could even be. The night before she was so frail and I could feel every bump of her ribs and spine as I rubbed her back and belly.

I was relieved and felt whole again when the news came to me. I realized at that moment, that Grace is home to me. My heart reacted with those emotions because;

Home is where the heart is.  <3

Happy Monday. I am coming to you from my desk at work (Baby bloobs nursery if I'm being honest) while I am pumping and trying to get stuff done before I start work. Oh the life of a mom. Also a good sign I didn't get any posts done ahead of time.. oops!

Today I'm tired. I am reminded that I love sleep. I am cranky when I don't get enough. Maybe it's the extra-extra pounds I'm carrying. Maybe it's a little bit of my depression rearing it's head. I'm not sure to be honest, but I do know I am not as easily motivated or cheerful when I am tired these days.

The weekend was hot and a little more busy than I anticipated. We did some cleaning projects on Saturday, one in which we completely emptied the freezer and refrigerator. Everything got scrubbed down. Lots of stuff got thrown out. It's like a brand new fridge in there. Even rick had to check it out...




On Sunday, Father's Day, we spent a quiet early morning outside on the deck drinking coffee and letting R open his cards. I get him a card every year from our cats. I am that nerd. See exhibit A:



He did okay going, but was a screaming maniac on the drive back. We had to stop 2 times to calm him down. This requires taking him out of he car seat and cuddling him for a few minutes before strapping him back in.

We got home last night at around 7pm and between 730 and 9pm we had our stove catch on fire (everything is okay, just the stove suffered burns) and R fell in the driveway while playing basketball with his son. We had a pretty crappy ending to out weekend. Bloob fell asleep when we got home, so naturally he was up around 10, then 12, then 2. He just would not settle. He is currently wide awake and ready for the day. Mommy not so much. Where's the coffee?

I started reading a book last week that was inspired by the 100 Dream Project. While researching what other people had down as their dreams, I came across this book. It's called 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think. It's by Laura Vanderkam. Laura mentions using the 100 dream project as a way to find out if  you are wasting hours during your week doing things you do not enjoy.



It is interesting to look at your week in hours, rather than days. You have 168 hours in a week, and if you are actually "billing" your time out, you can see how much time you are actually wasting. Laura recommends tracking an entire week, hour by hour to see how you really are spending your time. She explains you are wasting way more time than you think, and people who claim they work too much, aren't really working much at all.

It is quite an interesting concept to me. I feel like I have wasted a lot of my time scrolling on Facebook for the last few years. Time I will never get back. I am thinking about tracking my whole week. I have not finished the book yet, so I want to do that first. I think it will be interesting to see what my week really looks like on paper.

What do you think? Would you track your week out? Are you wasting more time than you think?

Let me know! I hope you have a wonderful week ahead!

This is going to be short and sweet this week. This mama is exhausted. Between my first full week back to work, power loss inducing thunderstorms, and allergies, I am just beat. I am hoping to get ahead this weekend and write some posts ahead to I can keep on trucking on!

Here are the next dreams on my list! Happy Friday.

21. Win the lottery.
22. Do a professional boudoir session.
23. Own a vacation home by the ocean.
24. Watch my son graduate from high school, and then cheer him on to whatever it is the next stage in his life takes him.
25. Have a mentor.
26. Attend the Kentucky Derby.
27. Wear a fascinator (to the Derby right?).
28. Become an expert at something.
29. Speak another language fluently.
30. Live abroad for at least one year.

Make sure to catch 1-10 and 11-20 if you missed them!