• Home,  Life

    Life Lately During a Pandemic + A Gender Reveal

    April 16, 2020

    Hi friends. It’s been a while. I just wanted to stop in and share how we’ve been doing during this crazy time and see what you guys have been up to.

    Well actually first, let’s start off with the elephant in the room. I’m so sorry to leave you guys hanging with the gender of Baby Zin 2! This is very silly but I didn’t get any pictures from our little gender reveal so I kept thinking that I was going to stage a picture or something so that I could post about it, but then everything happened with Covid-19 and I also just didn’t come up with any ideas for the picture. So instead of trying to make this perfect, let’s just share the video that we took and finally announce that Baby Zin 2 is a….

    boy! We’re going to have two little boys and we are so excited! Today is actually exactly three weeks until my due date, which is so crazy. We can’t wait to meet you baby boy!

    How we’re coping with living in a pandemic

    So now that I’ve finally filled you guys in, (😆) let’s get to what we’ve been up to during this pandemic. So for those of you who don’t know, we live in New Jersey, which is the second most affected state in the US. Our state is in near lockdown with many people out of work. Thankfully Tommy is still working though so our life hasn’t been affected too greatly. It definitely has been nerve-wracking though at times especially considering being pregnant and having a toddler.

    I do sometimes wonder if the nasty sickness that we had last month (that I mentioned in my last post) was the coronavirus. It happened the same week as we had confirmed cases in New Jersey. Testing was hard to access though so when I went to the doctors they weren’t testing anyone at that point. Hopefully sometime soon they’ll come out with an immunity test and we can find out.

    Either way though we are still being super cautious and Shane and I haven’t left the house basically at all. Tommy runs our errands with a face mask and hand sanitizer. We’ve also been doing grocery pickup or delivery to limit his time in the stores. Once anything comes into the house we wipe it down with Clorox wipes. We are doing everything we can and then trusting God with the rest.

    What We’ve Been Up To

    To be honest with you, we are homebodies to begin with so this hasn’t changed our world up too incredibly much. Although it is different because we can’t attend church or run to the store when we’re feeling tired of being in the house. We’ve been doing our best to stay busy anyway though.

    I thought I’d share what we’ve been up to so that we can have this to look back on and maybe give some ideas of things to do too.

    Lots of baking

    We’ve been eating at home a lot more, which has been kind of nice in it’s own way. Shane loves baking so we made cookies together one night. We also made our sweet puppy a birthday cake because her birthday was on Saturday. And I made homemade bagels, which were seriously amazing and am planning to make again soon.

    Some home projects

    I painted the windows in Shane’s room, which look so much better. I still have five more windows to do in the house before we’ve finally gotten rid of all of the brown. 😅

    I’ve also been really starting to feel the nesting bug come on again and am planning on getting to a few more home projects within the next month or so. I will try to remember to take pictures so I can share.

    Cuddling, singing, + crafting

    Basically we’ve just been keeping busy anyway we know how. We’ve been keeping up with our digital church services, which Shane has been loving. It’s been so cute to watch him sing and dance. I’m actually going to really miss being able to do that as a family when we do finally go back.

    We’ve been cuddling, watching movies a lot and doing some crafting to pass the time. We’ve also been going on some walks when the weather is nice enough to.

    Basically that’s been about it since I last posted. What have you guys been up to? How are you handling the pandemic? I’d love to hear from you!

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  • Faith,  Home,  Life,  Self Care

    The Lie/Pressure To Do It All

    February 13, 2020

    As I mentioned in my post about my social media detox (an update on that soon), at the end of last year I was really discontent with where I was when it came to a few of my dreams and goals that I had. More specifically, I was really discontent with where my blog and Etsy shop were.

    I have had big plans for both this blog and my Etsy shop over the years but I haven’t really felt like I was able to focus on them as much as I wanted. Like I mentioned in my post about taking a break from social media, part of the reason was because I wasn’t giving myself the space to really be able to focus on them. I was spending too much time on social media.

    Something I realized during my social media detox was that I had felt this pressure to “do it all”. I felt like I needed to be the one responsible for everything that came to running our home, doing my part in taking care of Shane, and also be able to make a full-time living from home.

    That’s a lot. And I know that I’m not the only one who feels this pressure. Our culture basically tells us that if we are a stay at home parent, we aren’t as worthy because we aren’t bringing in money. And if you aren’t bringing in money, then your work isn’t as important.

    The way that I was dealing with this lie was to tell myself that I needed to handle it all but I also needed to be successful at making money from home. Because then I had it all. I was doing it all and that would mean that I was enough.

    It’s tough too because when you logon to any social media platform — whether that be Instagram or Youtube or any other place, there are countless pages where everyone is showing you what they are doing well. And when you combine them all together (say after scrolling for 20 mins), it now feels like everyone is doing everything. People aren’t talking about what they aren’t doing, or not as much as they are talking about what they are doing. It put this pressure on me to do it all and do it all really well.

    Not only do I need to be responsible for meal planning and grocery shopping, but I need to plan the healthiest meals and then grocery shop myself. Not only do I need to be the one who cleans the house, but I need to have a very specific cleaning schedule where my house is spotless all the time. Not only do I need to blog and create new Etsy shop items, I need to be blogging regularly and every season need to be putting out new items.

    I got each of these pressures from other people that I follow and felt that I needed to be as good as each of these people in each of these areas. That all takes a lot of time, never mind the mental energy each of these things take on any given week.

    Back in the beginning of my social media detox I was having a conversation with my husband about how I was not content with where I was with blogging or with our Etsy shop. I was mostly just not content with how consistent I was being with each of these things. I knew I could do more but wasn’t understanding why I wasn’t.

    I was mostly just venting about not feeling like I had the time. He told me that he would support me and take care of Shane if I needed a few hours here or there. Basically he was (lovingly) telling me that I just needed to make it a priority and he would do what he could to help. It was then that the words, “I just can’t do it all then” came out of my mouth.

    It was like it finally hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t be the one to be responsible for all of our home responsibilities, also spend however many hours a week was needed to grow a blog and Etsy shop, while also taking care of a two year old. I needed help.

    I needed to stop buying the lie that I had to be good at everything. I quickly realized where I needed help the most and asked Tommy to start helping me with that. For me personally, it was grocery shopping and cooking dinner. It just felt like too much to be the one to plan and cook each one of our meals. Tommy eagerly agreed to help and things have been a night and day difference.

    Before I was trying to do it all well and instead wasn’t doing anything well. It’s true when they say you can only pick a few things you want to do well. Allowing Tommy to share the load of grocery shopping and meal planning with me freed up my brain with enough energy to be able to focus on other things. I can now see things more clearly because I’m not trying to focus on it all.

    I wanted to share this because I thought maybe that I might not be the only one who felt this pressure to be responsible for it all. I believe that if we spend too much time on social media that we start to believe this lie that everyone we follow is doing everything really well.

    I think limiting our time on social media and then stopping to realize what parts of our lives is causing us the most stress and then asking for help in those areas if possible can make all the difference.

    What about you? Can you relate? Do you put pressure on yourself to do everything well? Is there something you can ask for help with? I’d love to hear your story if this is something you have ever or are struggling with now.

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  • Home,  Life

    We Bought A House! + Life Update

    November 1, 2019

    You guys, is anyone still here? I have barely blogged at all this year and I honestly am having such a hard time even starting this post because it feels so awkward!

    So lets just jump right in then shall we? We bought a house! Actually we bought a house over a month ago 🤦🏻‍♀️. It was a crazy stressful process, as I’m sure you already know if you’ve ever bought a house. There were a few things that happened where we thought we would have to back out of the house. Like the seller wouldn’t do anything at all to fix the house (which there was a lot to do) and then the well water failed for bacteria 😱! It was quite the adventure.

    But we overcame all of those obstacles and are officially homeowners! Like I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot to do here. Mostly minor renovations though. But add in an almost two year old and it gets quite overwhelming as you might imagine.

    But we are slowly working on the things we want to get done (we’re putting up a fence this weekend!) and maybe if I can get my act together enough, maybe I can even blog about some of the projects we are doing. No promises though. 😉

    Oh and another big thing… I got my wisdom teeth out! One week after closing on our home! Womp womp. That was not fun at all, and it’s actually been something I have been straight terrified to do for like my entire life. But I did it! And it really wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be. Not a fun experience, but not the worst thing in the world either.

    Also, Shane is going to be two in January! Totally not okay. I don’t understand how time goes so quickly. He’s learning and growing so much and it’s both awesome and so very sad. We watched all of his baby videos the other day and it just made me so emotional. I wish he could stay little forever.

    So those are basically the big things that I haven’t written about in months but things are finally starting to settle down here so maybe I can keep this space a little more updated over the next few months. We shall see!

    Thanks for reading! I’d really love to know, how have you been lately??

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