where did I go?

I haven't been out at my clothes line obviously.
I haven't been sewing clothes, avoiding processed foods, or teaching my 3 year old her to write her ABC's.
I haven't been pinching pennies to buy chickens or drinking bone broth or reading regularly.

When I left this little blog eight months ago, I think I was tired. I was tired of being inspiring, I wanted a break. I wanted to just live. I wanted to just... be.

Writing a blog is a lot of work, even a little one like mine. 
You have expectations to fill (both yours and your readers). You have requirements to meet. You have... accountability.

I mean, who wants that?
I definitely didn't.

I didn't want to be forced to live a certain way just to entertain others. I didn't want to miss out on things that "don't fall within community beliefs"...


Then a few weeks ago I realized,
What on earth am I thinking?


I do want accountability. I need accountability. I need discipline. I need community. I need to inspire others because it means I'll need to seek inspiration for myself regularly.

I'm angry.
I'm angry I wasted eight months of my life living the exact way I don't believe in. And I'm done waiting for something to happen and snap me back to my focused, creative, intentional, growth-minded way of living.

So I'm back here. Back to change myself. Again.

I'm ready to hold myself accountable and hopefully find others that will too.
I'm ready to start living with purpose instead of passively.

I don't know how often I'll post and what the topics will be. But I have a lot of ideas. Talk to you soon!

I'm coming back.

It will take me a bit to gather my thoughts, reorganize & update certain things. But I'm coming back.

See you soon!

Pops of Green in My Home

I've been wanting to create a gallery/focal wall in our playroom for months. My desire was to create a space where I could artfully display Evelyn (and Will's) artwork or other child-themed prints (like the white one in the above picture that I created after being inspired by an identical one on Etsy).

After I finished making these curtains for the kitchen sink window, I decided I wanted to use the pea green flecks as the color for my gallery wall since the kitchen and playroom at open to each other - only "separated" by a peninsula).

But deciding I wanted to paint this wall a bold color was met with some resistance. In fact the night I bought paint and sent this picture to my good friend Megan she told me, "I honestly could not hate that color more." To her credit though... this is no where close to what the actual color is!

Luckily that's what makes each persons house unique -- it's styled for them and not others :) The color is Behr's "Retro Avocado". It's probably the most difficult color to truly capture so if you're skeptical come see it in person before buying it for yourself!

This is after the first coat. Very yellow-y and brown - yikes! (I also painted the window and baseboard white - you can see the window to the left hasn't been painted yet.) Also you can see to the right is where the kitchen peninsula is.

Here she is all done with some artwork up! It's much greener in person. We also replaced both outlets/cover to white ones to give it a fresh look since the existing plugs where a cream/black combo.

All of the frames were from my mom except for two that I bought for $1 from Salvation Army. My original plan was to paint them all the same color but part of me loves the eclectic look of them mismatched. I still haven't decided. I'll probably paint them all to match later when I want to mix it up!

Tommy is framing out an old white board I have which I then plan to paint yellow and hang on the lower part of the wall for the babes to color on. Because of the bar stools, we can't really put any furniture there.

I'll also be adding a roman shade in some type of neutral/patterned fabric. Eventually :)

This was the Valentine's Evelyn made this year framed and put on top of some scrapbook paper.

The second place I painted is the door that goes into the side hallway/entry. On my computer this is the most true representation of the color. Very pea green :) I love having this pop of color in our very white/light gray kitchen.

I still need to touch up the trim here and strip the hardware and spray paint it in a bronzed finish. All in good time :)

Now I just need to find somewhere else to use up the other half gallon of paint...