Hey There.

I believe I’ve mentioned before that my mother edits my blogs for me, and half the time I almost hold my breath waiting for a text message that reads, “Huh?”

I know sometimes she must shake her head at me, her crazy daughter, and wonder how did I get so “woo-woo.” (I’m going to go ahead and blame liberal college and friends for that one btw.) But I don’t think I’m too terribly crazy . . . Remember that going forward.

You know when people tell you things, and you just kind of nod and shake your head and go, ok . . . For years, I felt like positive affirmations fell into that category –   somewhere between healing crystals and hypnosis for weight loss.

It’s always sounded just a little too out there for me. However, the more podcasts I listened to and articles I read regarding growth, development, and success, the more I learned about the importance of mindset and your internal monologue.

The fact is it’s pretty darn hard to change the way you think. Your thoughts have comfy, little patterns set in your brain, and it’s a bit painful for them to change.

So just for kicks, I decided to try listening to some positive statements before bed and in the morning. To my surprise, they really worked!

My mood has drastically improved, and I’ve been able to cling to a few little mantras when my work environment got stressful. I even went to a party and managed to use a phrase or two to help my socially awkward self make some new acquaintances. I think I’m hooked! (The fun, calming music in the background is also a plus.)

Even if it is a little “woo-woo,” I think we should all be open to trying anything to make ourselves happier and improve how we treat ourselves. If you haven’t given positive affirmations a try, check out this one. It’s just a quick 10-minute video to remind yourself – You’re awesome, and you’ve got this!

Hey There!

Have you ever met someone and forever after whenever you think of them the image ingrained in your mind never ages? No matter how long it’s been they are forever the same as when you first met?

I’m bad for doing that. There are people in my life who I’ve known for more than a decade and even though our relationship has spanned from AOL instant messenger to Myspace, then Facebook and on, when I think of them I still imagine them so much younger than we are now.

It seems that I do this with myself as well. I felt like I’d be 17 forever; then I hung on to 19 as long as I could, and in a few days I’m getting ready to say goodbye to 25, but I think I’m going to be feeling it for a long while yet.

We spend so much time when we are growing up wishing we were adults. Now, looking around at my “adult” friends, I don’t know what type of adults I thought we’d be. No one has it together like my mother always seemed to, but if different, we’re all doing pretty well.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this upcoming birthday. I wish I’d done more things in my early 20s, that I’d gone on more adventures before things were quite so serious with a full-time time career, a house, and husband when travel becomes ever so slightly more difficult. (What is it with the US and their 2 weeks of vacation time? Europe has 3 weeks y’all. Can we hop on that bandwagon?) But now I have my own cozy space to call home and someone waiting for me when I get there from my little adventures.

There are things that I still want to do and places to explore. I can’t wait to see what 26 brings!

Hey There!

Whew. Heading back into work after our vacation has been ROUGH.

I hoped the relaxation of our vacation would last more than a week, but my shoulders are tense, the eye twitch is back, and I have absolutely no motivation to do anything when I get home.

I can’t be the only one who experiences this, right?

All day at work I’m engaged and working, making sure that everything gets handled, and I make lists of all the things I need to get done in the evening, but as soon as I cross the threshold at the house, I’m done.

Try as I might it’s nearly impossible to summon any energy to do any of the things on my list. I manage to get dinner made and most times to do dishes but outside of that . . . it’s #netflixandchill.

Half the time I convince myself that tomorrow I WILL get up early and take care of things, but 5:00 hits and so do I – the snooze button that is.

I’m considering getting a coffee pot with a timer, so I have the promise of caffeine when I wake up, but I hate the thought of being more caffeine dependent. I’m down to about 1 cup a day at the office.

What are your tricks for beating the end of day slump and getting up early? I need your help!

Hey There!

(source)

Hey There!

I hope you had a fabulous weekend. I know we did. Despite the rain, we went out with friends, worked on some projects around our cottage, and I got a little bit of baking done.

Now, about that baking – The Fellow has always been on board for living a more natural existence. I, on the other hand, have been eating diet foods as long as I can remember. I’ve used artificial sweetener in my coffee and tea my entire life. I think I went on my first diet around age 13. Well, no more. I’m joining The Fellow in his way of thinking and am making an intentional choice to eat more naturally.

While we’re embarking on that journey, I’m also not dieting or limiting my intake of foods. If I want ice cream, I’ll eat it, and I’m also putting some heavy focus on not acknowledging any sense of guilt associated with that bowl of frozen deliciousness.

My hope is that once I stop depriving myself of things that I won’t binge them when I “fall off the wagon.” If it’s not a forbidden fruit, I can just enjoy them when I want them. In reality, The Fellow and I’s meals are really not unhealthy. It’s my snacking that needs some fine-tuning. I’m excited to see what my body does on real foods when I truly listen to it.

We’re in our third week, and I’ve made some great steps. I went from 5+ beverages a day (most with 2 packs of Splenda) to using a tablespoon of real sugar. We swapped our lunch meat out for whole turkey breast without any preservatives, and I decided that I would try to make our own sandwich bread.

My first attempt at bread making was an overwhelming success. They had a beautifully even color and were perfectly sized loaves of honey-sweetened bread. The recipe made 2 loaves and lasted us about a week and a half. The Fellow said it made for the best French toast he’s ever had.

Fast forward to Sunday night – I went to make the same bread for our next week’s lunches. I decided to experiment and see if I could squeeze by with regular all-purpose flour instead of bread flour. It was also a little bit warmer in our house. The dough went wild. I’m not sure if it was the flour, the temperature, or the amount of time I let it proof, but it exploded. The dough expanded over the edges of the bread pan dripping everywhere. It was a monster!

I trimmed the overflow off (which, of course, you should not do, as I was later advised by our friend who is in culinary school) and popped it in the oven. Half an hour later, I pulled the massive loaves out. After letting them cool, we managed to pry them out of the pans. The overflow had cemented the bread into the pans. I tasted some of the baked spillage, and it tasted nothing like the amazing loaves from the previous week. I double checked the recipe and there it was – salt. I was baking the bread amid dinner preparations and neglected to put in the salt!

The fellow says it tastes fine, just too sweet, but all I taste is disappointment. I didn’t even photograph it for on here.

(Update, if I spread it with butter and sprinkle some sea salt on it, it’s actually a nice snack.)

It was certainly a learning experience though, and I gained some valuable knowledge about bread. I am excited to try again next week.

What are your best recipe fail stories? Share them with me in the comments so I know that I’m not alone!

Hey there!

Part of my focus on intentional living is taking better care of myself, and self-care Fridays are one of the things I’ve implemented to do just that.

On Fridays, the Fellow goes out with friends, and I get the house all to myself. Now I love my husband, but we both live and work together so we’re together all the time. When he goes out on Fridays, I relax. There is no rush to get dinner made and get things done so we can get to bed at a reasonable time. I stay up just a little bit later than usual. I watch the terrible TV shows he hates and paint my nails.

My self-care Fridays are the time I intentionally set aside to rest, recharge, and reinvest in myself. Giving myself permission to enjoy my “me time” has been amazing. I have to manually turn off my brain and say, “This is OK.” I don’t allow myself to feel guilty if the house isn’t clean, or I should be working on MIAT, or whatever else has been pressing on my mind (like the bathroom closet which needs to be reorganized). I enjoy the little things that bring me happiness, like a new nail color. Knowing I have Friday night coming and that I am allowed to use that time to decompress makes such an impact on my week.

I  started getting acrylic nails a year or two ago and learned that I love how my hands look when my nails are done. I don’t have the daintiest of hands, but long nails make me feel feminine and graceful. I work in an office so I stare at my keyboard and hands all day. I’d much prefer to look at well-manicured nails than chipped and uneven ones.

Having my nails done make me feel that much more put together. It makes me want to pick out my outfit for the next day and do other things to put my best self out there. What are some of your favorite self-care practices?

Hey there!

I wanted to sit down with you today and talk about that little Intentional Living button in the menu bar. If you noticed a few weeks ago, Moonshine In A Teacup (MIAT) got a new layout, and this little button appeared. Up until now, that category has been empty. I want to share with you why that spot appeared, what it means, and why I’m choosing to live more intentionally.

The next section here is very real. I am going to be upfront and open with you about my life behind the curated blog posts, and my decision to start trying to live more intentionally. I decided a long time ago if something I’ve experienced could benefit someone else, I would share it. But I haven’t done a good job of that here.

I love MIAT. It’s a fun way to chronicle what I’ve been up to and share it with all of you.  That being said, I’ve had a hard time sometimes fitting it into my busy life, and that makes me sad.  I look on Pinterest and compare my blog and my home to the perfect snapshots of other people’s lives on social media. I think, “Why am I doing this? It’ll never look as good.” Or worse, I think, “I don’t want friends to come into my house because it’s not perfect.” I’m jealous of adventures other go on because I don’t have the time or funds to go globe-trotting. I go out shopping and grab whatever fits and I like in the moment, or because it’s on sale, and it sits unworn in my closet. Or I wear the same outfit with it every time because only a few things match. I stress and obsess about being sure everything is done; everything is perfect. That I am perfect. Food and I have the worst relationship, and every time I eat something that isn’t a salad, I feel it’s the worst failure or a justifiable reward for something that’s happened. I have a hard time letting go of anger.

All of these things are the reason that little “Intentional Living” button appeared. I’ve never been one for New Year Resolutions. See above. I don’t do failure well, and whoever succeeds with those?

However, in January I started to think about my life. I know I mentioned it a bit in posts about the wedding, but last year was rough. There were some wonderful spots! The wedding, our honeymoon, time with friends, but I spent a lot of time trying desperately to claw my way out of the depressed, anxious place I was in. I took on too many large projects I truly couldn’t handle. There were health issues in the family. We bought a new house, work stress – then I was promoted to a new team that met me with a lot of resistance, the wedding, not being able to work on our house because I was working on the wedding. It was all just too much, and I couldn’t handle it. I gained 20 pounds and had to buy a new wedding dress. For three months, my anxiety level was so high that I had chest pain and sometimes heart palpitations. (Yupp, that’s a thing.)

I could never do a minimalistic life, but I can live an Intentional Life. This is what I’m working towards and it’s hard. It’s very hard. If I’m upset, emotions are emotions. What I can do is intentionally make an effort to not to let that impact those around me. I can choose to flip the situation and intentionally find something good in it. I can intentionally plan my wardrobe and purchases so they make a cohesive look, and I have the money to pay for better quality items that will last and serve me. I can intentionally schedule my day so I have time to work on the projects that I love.

This blog and sharing with you guys is one of the things I love. Thank you for listening and sharing in this adventure with me. I hope you enjoy the new topics and posts coming, and I promise to be more open with you.

Let me know what questions you have or topics you want to hear about. Ask me anything, I’ll answer.

“With age comes wisdom and with innocence youth, so listen, my friend, to the cautions of the young and the wise.”

If you hear the same advice from more than one older person or from the mouth of a child, it may just be something you should listen to.

I recall when I had just started to stretch my ears, and my parents hadn’t noticed yet (Sorry, Mama!), a girl at camp, who was maybe 15, had stretched hers out so large that only surgery could reverse it; she said that she regretted her decision. I thought about that, getting life lessons from a child, and immediately took out my gauges.

There was an older lady at the nail salon the other day who was sharing stories about her life as a young adult in Paris, and she said to me, “That’s one of the best and worst things about getting old; you look back at the things you could’ve done but didn’t and think, “Man – I could have done some stuff, and the reasons I didn’t weren’t good enough to not have done them.”

As I was driving to work last Friday, I heard women on a morning talk show talking about how stressful it is to purchase a swimsuit. I recall my first bikini, and the sheer panic and up-talking it took for me to step out in it. I had spent years of sweltering summers in jeans because I hated the scars on my legs and my stretch marks.

The expectation of perfection is everywhere. We are constantly bombarded by imagery of what we should be. The sizes of our jeans are tiny and fluctuate from designer to designer. It’s difficult to find a two-piece above a size medium. Regardless of size, we’re subjected to judgement. We are either too skinny or too fat. In a room full of women, we are constantly discussing, analyzing, and apologizing. I don’t recall the last time I wasn’t on a diet; the last time I ate a giant cheeseburger without feeling guilty or apologizing; the last time I didn’t barter with myself for a cookie, or the last time I wasn’t hyper aware of exactly how many calories were in my meal.

I’ve been 180 lbs. and 150 lbs. I’ve been called hefty and athletic. I’ve baked cakes and pies and worked out at the gym 5 days a week. I’ve taken diet pills and starved myself. I’ve eaten low carb, counted calories, used artificial sweeteners, done cardio and lifted weights, and I’ve seen countless other women in my life do the same.

To quote the song, “Time takes its toll on a body; makes a young girl’s brown hair turn grey.” My skin will wrinkle and my hair will grey, and my body will change – it’s supposed to. We trade in youth for experience and years of life. That is exactly how it should be. We’ve forgotten how to celebrate age, and we idolize youth and perfection.

This is our struggle, a society of judgement.

When packing for the beach this year, I needed a new swimsuit. I’d gained a bit of weight back, and my instinct was to grab my one-piece and shield myself from being the girl who should’ve known better on the beach – and then I rejected that thought. I’ve struggled with body image; some days I’m content and some days I’m embarrassed, but the fact is I work out several times a week. I eat more vegetables, whole grains, and balanced meals than I ever have, and I have nothing to be ashamed of. I may not be a Victoria’s Secret model, but I am in the best shape of my life.

I try to dress professionally at work and pretty modestly at home. I keep my hemlines reasonable and my tops decently cut. There’s a quote attributed to several famous women which says, “A dress should be tight enough to show that you’re a woman but loose enough to show that you’re a lady,” which I tend to follow. Sometimes though, I just want to cut loose and wear whatever ridiculous trends are happening in the world. I figured, I’m on vacation, why not? I grabbed a crop top, high waisted shorts, and a bikini and said, “My body is acceptable just as it is” and headed off to the beach.

You know what? I wasn’t the thinnest or thickest girl there, and I had a blast.

We all need to tune in to the positive and accept what we are at the moment. Society judges us; we don’t need to also judge ourselves.