Peace!

Welp, I think we're packed.  Tomorrow, Doad and I are off to New Mexico for one of my friends' weddings.  I'm super excited although right now, I'm just excited to crawl into bed.  Packing stresses me out.  And tires me out.

Actually, I don't know why I'm still up.  :p  I just wanted to write something real quick to say that I haven't forgotten about my new goals, but I doubt I will be posting much for the next week.  Don't miss me too much ok?  :)

Later gators!


PS.  Someone please help me!  What is up with my blog template?!?!? I can't figure it out!  :( :( :(

My Current Dreams

I just wrote last night about wanting to be better at sharing the real me and the dreams I'm chasing.  So here it is: the real, vulnerable truth about my current dreams and adventures:

-Blog:  So the moment I published that post - ya know, the one about not worrying if things weren't perfect?  Yea, the moment I published it I realized that something is wonky with my blog design and I haven't figured out what it is yet.  I apologize for all the random minus signs - it's not supposed to look like that.  :(  Somehow none of the images from my template exist anymore or something.  Anybody have any ideas??

-Learning Spanish:  I mentioned a while back that one of my dreams is for Doad and I to learn Spanish.   I loved it in high school and have wanted to become fluent since taking classes in school.  We are still plugging away on our CD's and I have even gotten a friend at work to help me out too.  It's going a little slower than I hoped, but I'm just happy that we are still working on it.  This is one dream that I think I can actually see progress in! 

-Home owning and decorating:  Since we bought our first house I have developed a love/hate relationship with Pinterest.  I can't get enough of their adorable ideas and clever tips for decorating and house keeping.  But I also feel a lot of pressure to have an equally adorable and clever house.  I've hardly posted a thing about our house because I'm waiting for it to all come together perfectly.  The truth is, I really love it how it looks right now, I'm just afraid it won't be Pinterest-worthy enough to post online. 

-Gardening:  I still feel like I have no idea what I'm doing here, but things seem to keep growing so I'm cool with that.  :)  I don't think our tomatoes are gonna make it, and we forgot to plant the zucchini, but the pumpkins and beans practically grow while you're looking at them!  I've been taking pictures of the garden for another update post - coming soon! :)

-Sew So Lovely:  Remember when I opened my Etsy shop last year?  Well, I had pretty horrible timing with it.  I opened right before the holidays and spent so much time sewing Christmas presents for everyone, that I had no time to sew items for the shop.  Then we bought a house and moved the second week in January.  I've just never caught up and/or gotten back in the groove so my shop currently has 6 items in inventory and absolutely 0 online sales.  Womp, womp... 

I haven't given up on it.  I'm actually still sewing regularly, just nothing new for the shop yet.  Hopefully that will change soon.  I have lots of ideas!!

So there you have it.  Some of my current successes and failures.  All dreams I'm still working on achieving in some shape or form.  Your turn!

What are you currently succeeding at?

What dream do you want to start chasing?  What's something that's holding you back?

Procrastination, Chasing Dreams, & Being Real

I can't sleep tonight.

I have too many thoughts floating around in my head and I need to get them out - even if it's just to a computer screen right now.

I've been feeling overwhelmed by this whole "blog world" lately.  My perfectionism and need to "get it right" have been getting in the way of me just being me.  Sadly, in my effort to publish perfectly polished posts (say that 5 times fast!), I've been procrastinating and writing very sporadically.

My "posts to read" list is also at an all time high - I don't know how I thought I could keep up with so many blogs.  For some reason, I subconsciously think that I need to have read through my whole reader before I write my own post - so every day I put off writing and try and make a dent on that enormous number of unread posts.  And we all know how that goes...



When I started blogging,  I wanted this to be a place where I could save memories.  Where I wrote about the dreams I was chasing, the adventures I was having, the life lessons I was learning.  I wanted to connect with some of the people who inspired me through their writing, and to maybe one day inspire someone else with my words too.

I feel like I've hardly done any of that...

So tonight, I've decided.  No more excuses.  No more procrastinating.

Life isn't perfect and neither am I so I certainly can't expect this blog to be perfect.  Even if I can't post pretty pictures or write more than a few paragraphs, I'm going to start posting more.  Because I want to.  Because I need to.

Even if my reader has over 1,000 unread posts in it right now (please, tell me I'm not the only one),  I'm gonna write something, before I start reading.  Maybe not every day, but definitely more than twice a month.

Even if my dreams are barely getting off the ground - I'm gonna write about them and learn from the flops.  I'm gonna share the adventures while they're still fresh and the lessons while I'm still learning them.

I want this blog to be real and to be me, Jess.  Just Jess.

How do you keep from falling into the perfection trap?  

What dreams are you chasing right now?

Oh, Canada!

*Sigh*  I love vacations.

We are back from Canada and sorely missing it already.  Our adorable, quaint little cabin.  The peaceful island all to ourselves.  Endless amounts of fresh air and lakeside scenery.  A little slice of perfection.

Our first morning began around 4AM - Doad likes an early start to the trip and the traffic is considerably... nonexistent at this hour.  We made it to Canada around lunch time and met up with M &  D at the dock. They had just finished grocery shopping and hadn't even been to the cabin yet, so we loaded up the boat and took off for the island.

It got a bit adventurous when we got to the island.  The lock box wouldn't open and we couldn't get a hold of the renter.  While we were waiting for a call back from the renter, the ladies got resourceful and made lunch for everyone.  We used barbecue tools for cutting open the lunch meat and slicing cheese, pretzel rods for spreading mayo, and a bowl and bottled water for rinsing the lettuce.

When we finished our front porch feast, the guy still hadn't called back so Doad got resourceful, found a ladder and found an open window on the second level.

Finally, we could unpack and settle in.  We spent a chill evening watching James Bond (Casino Royale) and eating grilled cheese and tomato soup.  A perfectly, lazy start to our vaca.

A, B, and The Cuteness arrived early the next morning.  I woke up to this adorable sight out on the dock.

Grammy and The Cuteness feeding the fishies.

 Finding Nemo is one of his favorites so he absolutely loved seeing the fishies all weekend.

The day was perfectly sunny so we decided to go out and explore on the boat while we could.

This is The Cuteness during a pre-nap energy crash.  Too cute.

Me and B

Our evening was again spent with James Bond (Skyfall this time), manicures and pedicures for B and me, and some snuggles from little nephew.

 It doesn't get much better than this.  :)

Garden Beginnings

Doad and I have embarked on our latest and greatest adventure: the world of gardening.

My is it intimidating.

I really just thought you stuck seeds in dirt, waited for the rain, and then picked your veggies at the end of the summer....

Ok, so that might be a slight exaggeration, but I was surprised by all the preparation and different methods there were to gardening.  I am a researching nerd so of course I looked at twelve million different websites and pinterest boards and gardening blogs before getting started with my own.  And then I had a panic attack.  

JK!  But I was a little stressed out - mainly because I then felt like I knew even less about gardening than I realized.  But then I stumbled upon this little gem of a website: www.smartgardener.com.  It helped a bunch!  Basically, it does all the planning for you.  You enter in the dimension of your garden, pick what type of plants you want to grow (they recommend them for you based on where you live and what season you're in), and when you want to grow them and voila!  They plot the garden for you, tell you how many of each kind to plant based on the number of people in your household, they even give you a weekly to-do list!  Cha-ching!  Gardening made easy again. :)

This is our garden after we first planted it.  We planned to do everything from seeds except for the peppers, but a neighbor gave us some cucumber and cherry tomato starts so we used those too.  I started getting really skeptical after we planted - I mean, how weird is it that you put a tiny, dead seed in the ground and it turns into a huge plant?  I wasn't holding my breath.  

But we watered and weeded faithfully (all according to our smartgarden.com checklist, of course!) and here is our garden just a week and a half later!

The seeds are sprouting!  Yay!!!!  

Check out these cute little peppers!  I'm so proud! :)

The weeds are also taking off like crazy ;P  We decided to only use part of our garden and got lazy with keeping the unused part weeded.  I'm hoping to tackle that soon just to keep the area looking nice. It will not be happening this weekend, however, as we are off to Canada for a weekend on the lake with hubby's family.  Hellooooo Summer vaca! :)

What are your latest adventures?  

Do you garden?  Please, pass on your wisdom!  :)