My favorite room in our house is easily Owen’s nursery. I planned it out many months before his arrival and Drew helped make my dream a reality. While I wasn’t able to do as much as I would have liked, it was such a fun process creating this space for our family – mainly for me because Owen didn’t even sleep in there for the first month. The Vision I’ve used PowerPoint to “vision board” a few rooms in our home to help visualize the space with things we already have and potential new pieces. It has been super helpful to see how the different variations of a room would…
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My Breastfeeding Journey & Essentials
My journey with breastfeeding has not been ideal. Breastfeeding was another area of motherhood that I was not properly prepared for. Thankfully I was surrounded by friends and family who supported the “fed is best” mantra (which I did and still do too). I still felt like I saw a lot of positive breastfeeding content that subconsciously made me feel like I HAD to breastfeed. Spoiler alert: After over two months of breastfeeding and many consultations later, I am feeling MUCH better about it. Feel empowered to get as much professional help as you need and remember, there’s no right or wrong way to feed your baby, no matter what…
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Hospital Bag Must-Haves
We just had our baby boy Owen on Valentine’s Day 2024 and I read all of my favorite bloggers’ “what’s in my hospital bag” posts. I had a master list of what I thought were the “must haves” and the “nice to haves”. Now that I’ve gone through the labor, delivery, and hospital recovery experience, my master list went from about 50 items to just a fraction of that. Our main focus was to 1) safely deliver our baby boy (duh) and 2) be as comfortable as possible for our stay. We were planning for a vaginal delivery (which I did have) but you never know what could happen, so…
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Owen’s Birth Story
Our son, Owen Wiley, was born on February 14, 2024 at 4:43 pm. My overall birth experience was amazing and I feel very thankful for the hospital nurses, staff and of course, my doctor, who thankfully was able to be there for the delivery! The Week Before The week before Owen’s arrival, I had experienced minor cramps in the early mornings, sometimes waking me up, but they weren’t any worse than period cramps. Since this was my first birth, I wasn’t sure if those cramps were real contractions or Braxton Hicks contractions. I was on high alert for the 5-1-1 rule (contractions that are 5 minutes apart, that are 1…
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My 2023 Vision Board
In addition to my theme of the year, I’ve decided to try vision boarding! I’ve never made one before but I was influenced by TikTok that vision boarding/manifesting may actually be effective (major TBD ???). While most vision boards that I’ve seen are physical boards, I’m trying out a digital vision board. So thanks to Pinterest, I put together my 2023 vision board: The Process For those who haven’t used Pinterest, it’s a website/app that allows people to save and share images or “pins” on specific pinboards. You’re can search for specific words or phrases and it will return different images that match or are related. If you find an…
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Hello 2023 + Theme of the Year
Hello 2023! For some reason, this has been the most excited I’ve ever been going into a new year. Maybe it’s because I’ve entered into my 30s or maybe because I finally feel comfortable setting and enforcing my boundaries. I’ve done some serious self-reflection and left my insecurities and worries behind, or at least have tried my best. I used to be a big “near year resolutions gal” because I love a good list. But I found myself feeling that I “failed” the year because I didn’t check off all of my resolutions. I hated feeling defeated at the end of a year, so last year I moved away from…
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2022 Recap: Books
I can proudly say that this year was a big year for reading for me! As I’ve mentioned before, I started my adult reading journey in 2020 as part of the 101 in 1001. My original goal was to read 10 books over the course of 1001 days but achieved that goal before the end of 2020. In 2021, I had a goal of reading 15 books and actually read 31. In 2022, my goal was to read 36 books but as of writing this post, I’ve read 91 books this year!! I know – it’s hard for me to believe too. This year, I purchased a Kindle Paperwhite for…
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2022 Recap: Travel
As we near the end of 2022, I’ve been reflecting on all of the fun places we’ve been able to go to this year! This was the first year in our “pandemic era” where we’ve had the opportunity to travel, including international travel. We’ve been itching to travel for the past few years and we really got to do that this year. This year had a lot of trips to Tampa for work and many fun trips with friends. Take a look at our 12 months of travel throughout 2022! January We started off the year with a family ski trip to Durango, Colorado! It was our first ski trip…
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My 30th Year
Today is my 30th birthday! Thirty years of life filled with so many wonderful memories, but also with heartbreaks. I’ve learned so much about myself this past decade and celebrated many milestones, including graduating college and starting my career, marrying my high school sweetheart and purchasing our first home, expanding our family by adopting Gordo, finding my community, and exploring the world. I know most people think 30 is “old”, but I’ve been looking forward to this next decade of life for a while. While I wouldn’t wish anyone to experience the hardships I’ve gone through the past few years, it truly has made me the person I am today,…
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7-Days in Germany & Austria at Christmas!
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I wrote this blog post back in 2018/2019 but never got around to publishing it! So almost four years later (and just in time for the Christmas holiday season), here is everything we did on our trip to Germany & Austria! I’ve added Author’s Notes anywhere that 2022 Vivian is commenting throughout. Back in December 2018, Drew and I went to Germany and Austria with his family. I spent a full 7-days there before coming back early to spend Christmas with my family. We visited five cities across both countries during that time. This was our first time visiting either country. I had “visited” Germany in passing via…
