Tag Archives: slow living

life, lifestyle, Motherhood, New Year

Hello 2025

It is that time of year again where I write my blog post about all of my New Year’s goals and acknowledge that it has been forever since I have been on here and blah blah blah.

Well, it is a new year, it has been a long time since I have written, and it is okay. I am actually proud that last year I wrote six blogs, it was definitely an improvement from the year prior. Of course I have a goal to post more this year, I want to publish a blog once a month (at the very least). I think that is doable. The hold back I have had with posting I think, is that my content is changing so much. I have been in a shift, really for the last few years, where my blog and I are evolving. We started off silly and tragic, then shifted fully into style and fashion, now… we have been trying to figure it out. So much has happened over the last four and a half years, both good and bad, but priorities and just life itself has changed. I met the love of my life, married him, and had the best baby boy ever (who is now a one year old toddler and is absolutely everywhere).

I still love style and fashion, but to be honest, I have let it slide… A LOT. It is something I want to get back into this year, mostly for the reason that I want to feel good about myself. I have written time and time again, that feeling good in an outfit gives you such a sense of confidence, and I want that back. I need that back. So I am making changes this year.

The last two years I have had the same New Year’s resolution: Change My Entire Outlook On Life (see the 2023 post here and the 2024 post here). How naive of me to think my entire life could change in a year, and even after adding a bonus second year. My sister and I talked IN DEPTH about changing our entire lives, and we still discuss it today. We came to the conclusion that year one was a “prep” year. Although things did not LOOK different with us, we felt different, our minds were different and changing. Year two was when I thought it would all be put into action, but I am still not there yet. You always hear change doesn’t happen over night. I KNOW this, but here we are on year three and still working towards our goal.

I think part of the delay (for lack of a better word) is that along my way on this journey, I am figuring out exactly what my goal(s) in life is and fine tuning it. It is funny how one of my goals last year, and is again this year, is to slow down, and then realizing all of this change is SLOW. I guess it all goes together and is a lesson to be learned.

This past year, and mostly the last few months, I have been able to envision CLEARLY what I want for my life and my family’s lives, and it makes me so excited. I day dream about it all the time and it is like watching a preview to a movie I really want to see. My husband and I want to move. We do not want to stay in California. He never has (and has left once before), I don’t know if I ever cared too much about moving. I think I thought about it more when my sister moved out of state, but even then I had no plans. But when I met my husband for the first time in Montana, my eyes were opened. I still don’t think I have ever seen a more beautiful place. A place that just gives you feelings. I just felt such a sense of peace out in the open land, away from a big city, with fresh air and mountains. I want that. I want to feel like that every day. It took me a while to admit that. I thought about it A LOT to myself, but was afraid what it would mean to say it out loud. What actions it would spark. I have never moved away like that. The farthest I have lived is Orange County. But I am ready, and not just ready, EXCITED and CRAVING. I want it. I want the change. I want a new place for my son to explore (not that he has explored a lot here, he has only been walking since November, but I want him to grow up somewhere else).

So what do my husband and I envision for us? We want land, we want to build a house and a shop (maybe even together), and we want simple. I want our dogs to have room to run, I want goats and chickens, he wants horses and cows, I am determined to add in a donkey and alpaca somehow 😆. I just want the simple, slow life where we spend our days and nights together and exploring. I want my son and future children to play outside and not care about screens. I want to have to drag them inside when it is time for dinner. I want summer dinners outside under beautiful sunsets, and family time around a fire pit under the stars. I want a cozy house when it is winter, with a wood burning fire place and piles of warm blankets. I want both of our families to come camp on our property and just let the cousins run wild and all be together. I dream of all of this. I yearn for it. The want is clawing at me in a motivating way.

I know there is a trend of this lifestyle. It can be seen all over social media. But I have made it a point to start following all of those accounts that have the lifestyle I dream about, and I watch their posts and stories not in comparison, but as inspiration. It is like a live vision board that constantly gets updated with new things.

What are my goals for this year then?

  • Work towards our family vision, which is definitely a work in progress and will take some time
  • I want to continue to slow down. I have learned it is a practice, you cannot just decide to slow down, especially when you have been a go-go-go girl all of your life like me
    • Not only do I want to slow down for myself, but I want to slow down for my son. I do not want him to have a rushed and stressed mentality like I have and grew up with
  • Along with slowing down, I want to be more intentional with my time. This has a lot of factors:
    • I don’t want to waste my time on useless things, like scrolling social media endlessly. I want to scroll with a purpose, or give myself an allotted time and stick with it
    • I try really hard to be intentional with my son, but there is always room for improvement
    • I need more intentional time with my husband
    • I don’t want to waste my time on drama, or complaining, or gossiping. I have much better uses for it
    • Lastly, I don’t want to give my time to people who do not deserve it or do not respect it
  • As always, I want to read and write more
  • I want to make more homemade food (my husband is the chef, but I have had such a spark to expand my cooking skills and make more things from scratch)
  • I want to get healthy
  • My last goal, which is a new one for me… I want to be more adventurous this year. This doesn’t mean crazy things. One idea I have already is to kayak. We live on a lake. My husband and our roommate have kayaks that they never take out. I want to get my own kayak and have family outings on the lake. I want to go camp more places. I want to do more hikes or explore more places nearby or close enough to be a day trip
    • I can be such a homebody, which is fine, but I need to push myself to get out there. I know once I finally get out there, it is so worth it. I think my struggle is that our family is so busy already, adding in new things can feel exhausting. There needs to be a balance of activities and recoup weekends at home.

Of course I have more small goals within all of these goals, but this is the general idea. I am excited for this year. I really feel deep down that this is going to be a year of significant changes in myself. I am pointed in the direction I want, and I am going to keep working and building until I get to where I want, giving myself grace where I need it. Change is slow, and slow is okay. Slow is what we want. Cheers to 2025 ✨

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lifestyle, the.B.Law

March & April 2024 Words: RESET & DOER

If you saw my Instagram post on March 24th, then you saw that my March word was RESET. I had plans come the beginning of March. I was going to do things. I was motivated to do things. I was ready to keep trying to live out my new outlook of slow and intentional living. I think part of why I was so ready and motivated was because February was a busy blur, and I was ready to get back on track.

March started and it was fine. But the second week SUCKED at work. It was so busy and I was so mentally exhausted. Actually, it was the last two days of the second week. Then the third week sucked at work, like the whole week this time. I ended up letting work derail my entire month, I was just so tired and felt like I couldn’t do anything.

To be honest, I am a little annoyed at myself for letting work ruin an entire month for me that I felt motivated for. So I want to learn from it. I was getting pretty good at leaving work at work, but it is a constant practice, and in March I let it bleed into personal time. I will NOT do this again for April. I only get so much personal time, whether that is for me actually personally, or with my family, and I do not want to waste the small time I have thinking about work or even talking about it. I have never been that great at work/life balance, but that is something I want to work on this year.

So March turned from DOER to RESET. It is what I needed. To give myself grace for temporarily losing motivation, and to not feel so disappointed that I didn’t get anything done, or rather couldn’t. I needed time to just rest and reset my mindset. I think if you don’t give yourself that reset time and you just keep pushing, I am sure for some people it works and you can push through, but in this case for myself, I needed it.

Now it is April and I feel ready. I am ready to try again and DO the things I have been planning, and I am excited! April word: DOER. I will be a doer. I will do the things. I will leave work where it belongs. I will do the things at home that bring me joy.

It is quarter TWO of the year people, WE CAN DO IT!

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lifestyle, the.B.Law

Changing My Entire Outlook on Life – For Real This Time

It’s that time again. A new year is upon us. The time when everyone sets goals and hopes to meet them. I posted only TWO blog posts last year (shame on me), and the first one was my 2023 New Year’s post, which if this title looks familiar, it is because last year’s post was called “Changing My Entire Outlook on Life” and you can read it here.

This year I mean it for real though, and I have compelling reasons to believe that. As you can read in my last year’s post, my sister and I talked about all the ways in which we wanted to change our lives. Over the past year, nothing really physical changed, so to most, it probably looks like I accomplished nothing. But a lot actually did change. My sister and I had so many therapy type conversations over the past year that involved so many self realizations. As 2023 neared its end, we realized that we actually were changing our entire outlooks on life and that the whole past year was a PREP year. At the beginning of 2023, we knew we needed change, we just didn’t quite know how to put it into words. It turns out, we were not quite ready for all of the changes we wanted. You always hear, “You need to work on yourself first”, and I truly get that now.

I realized a lot about myself. I don’t want to say DISCOVERED because I think I have always known how I am (I am far too self aware for my own good), so I will use the word REALIZED since I was actually able to say things out loud. Something I really want to practice this year is setting boundaries. I put so much responsibility on myself for others: for how they feel, their reactions to my decisions, and even non-existent conversations of how they MIGHT react. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR OTHERS EMOTIONS. I have caused myself so much stress and anxiety over the years. Me. Myself. I do this to myself, and it is time to stop. I literally need to start chanting that I am not responsible for others emotions every day.

One of my biggest realizations has been I am NOT overly empathetic like I always thought, but I am an EMOTIONAL MONITOR. Because of this, I am always putting everyone else’s wants, needs, and emotional well-being before my own. It is so bad that I cannot even bring myself to say what I want on the simplest decisions like “What do you want to eat?”. I almost always say it doesn’t matter and want someone else to choose because what if whoever I am eating with doesn’t want what I want and are unhappy eating it?

I need to understand the difference of being actually selfish, and what I think is considered selfish. I can make decisions for myself and for my well being without being considered selfish.

So this year, I want things to be different. I want to slow down and be more intentional. Time is valuable and I so easily give my time to others and don’t always prioritize it for myself. When I finally have time to myself, I am so exhausted that I don’t want to do anything. As part of this, I want to really be adamant about having a better work/life balance. Not just by leaving work on time, but to not bring work stress home with me. I need to be better about leaving work at work where it belongs.

I am also ready to finally be a minimalist. I have accumulated so much stuff over the years that I don ‘t need. Part of my problem is I often feel guilt to keep things that people give me, but I am working on ending that. I have already started with my closet and donated three big bags of clothes. I have also already done one clean out of my bathroom and am ready to do another pass. I have been doing what I am calling “research” on both slow living and being a minimalist (by research, I mean following a few Instagram accounts on the topics), and something I read that really stood out to me was “Everything must have a home”. That is going to be my mantra while I work on decluttering. If my home has no place for it, then I have no place for it. I feel like being rid of the clutter is going to contribute to slowing down, and definitely contribute to less stress.

I am really excited for this year. It will be different than any other year, not just from the personal growth I have had and am excited to work on, but I have new motivation that I have never had before. My second and last post of 2023 was on February 15th. Three days later, I found out I was pregnant. Flash forward to today, my husband and I have a beautiful two and a half month old baby boy. His name is Wylder and he is our entire world. I not only want to slow down for myself, but for my family. I don’t want to look back and feel like I wasted any time with them.

Accountability will be key this year. My sister and I will have check-ins each month to ensure we are staying on track. I am looking forward to what the year brings and what my life turns into because of it. I am ready for changes, and I think this will be only the start to a great life my husband and I are ready to start for us and our son. Cheers to 2024!

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