a little embarrassed

Friends.

I'm a little embarrassed by my lack of blogging lately. I'd apologize, but I think sometimes it's necessary to take a step back and kind of recoup from the blogosphere. The month-long absence wasn't entirely intentional, but a friend of mine put this quite well: I've noticed that I tend to feel "burnt out" on blogging especially when life includes a lot of big decisions and/or hard, weighty things...

That's kind of spot on for me. When there are things that I may not want to post about or am distracted by, coming up with my quota of weekly blog posts feels draining instead of inspiring. There has been a lot going on in our lives lately, a lot of stresses and decisions and shifts. It felt unnatural to try and force constant, lighthearted posts when I simply wanted to focus on life, and take lots of naps to recover from the day to day. For the month of June, I am working 10 hour work days Monday-Thursday which has proven to be very tiring. I know it sounds stupid, but sitting on your butt in front of a computer all day is a total energy sap. I have to go lie down just to recover from sitting down.

AND, we finallllyyyyyy closed on our house yesterday!! The house hunting emotions are over, and it's finally finally finally time to turn this house into a home. You know, now that it's 111 degrees all day err day, let the summer projects begin! We are so thrilled. We kind of naively thought that the hard part was getting The Bank to accept our bid, but that was just the beginning of nearly two months of struggling to get to this point. The journey was an exhausting one but now we have a [not-so] brand new home that's all ours [as soon as we replace the carpets, paint every wall, and deep clean the bajeezus out of it].

I've been working on a video tour of the "before" of our house, and I will be posting that here probably this week! I can't wait to show you all how grimy the place is, and hopefully spread our incredible excitement for the potential it has. You just gotta look past all of the scattered gummy bears stuck to the stairs and the moldy refrigerator, and you'll be running up inspiration lane.

See you soon!

life lately

Easter came and went and April is being very quickly chewed away, just like the bags of leftover candy that I have hidden in my purse and in my belly. We celebrated my husband's 26th birthday, a barista renamed me KayKn, and we legitimately have a year's worth of candy still in our house.

Speaking of, let's take an almond Snickers break. Because the sweetness of life can sometimes be found in....the quite literal 21 grams of sweetness they cram into these mini chocolate bars the size of my thumb. Sheesh!
Maybe I'll have two. 

I have a few important announcements:

1. I am an official contributing author over at Hello Giggles! My first article on the joys of being an aunt was posted last month in their guest post section, and as of this month I am a regular contributor. My first post was published Easter weekend, and it was about the beauty of sisterhood (coming from a gal who grew up sisterless). I am over the moon about this part-time writing gig and I cannot wait to publish more articles! You can check out my personal contributor page to keep track of all of my published articles.

2. We are house hunting. Big news! We are hoping to find a dumpy house with tons of potential to fix up over the next few years and eventually resell. Our ultimate plan is to build our own home, so this project will hopefully provide us with enough cash to start building our dream home. We're in no rush, so it's an exciting (instead of stressful) endeavor at this point. We saw a house yesterday that was pretty disgusting - we're thrilled!

3. I made the most beautiful red wine pasta dish last night (recipe courtesy of A Beautiful Mess) and I'm now obsessed over one-pot pastas. Did you all know about these?

recipe via abm

4. The Harry Potter Book Club is finishing up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone! Come back on April 15th for the review and discussion here on the blog, and don't forget to join our group if you would like to jump in. Better late than never!

5. I just finished reading The Republic of Thieves, the third installment in Scott Lynch's epic Gentleman Bastards series and I feel quite forlorn about it. I have an uncanny attachment to these books. Go read them, unless you're particularly sensitive to language, thievery, violence, and crudeness. Stunning endorsement, eh? But really, The Lies of Locke Lamora (book 1) is absolutely incredible. A must read, in my humble opinion. They'll blow your mind but they'll also make you blush. My favorite thing in the world is to recommend great reads to friends, so follow me on Goodreads and let's talk about stories. 

What are you reading?

instagram post