March Goals + February Recap

Happy March! My favorite season is Spring. All things becoming new, light out of darkness, redemption, Eastertime . . . it’s just the sweetest and most life-giving season to me. But I have to say, for the first time in my LIFE, that Winter flew by! I realize there are still about three more weeks of winter technically, but March just sounds like Spring in my mind. I’m so excited!

February packed sooo much in to a little month. As a result, I blogged less here and got less done on my goals. So a few of them are carried over into March. Here’s how I did last month:

• Celebrate love: our 6 month milestone of marriage, and Valentine’s Day—yes! You can read about our low-key Valentine’s here.

• Do our taxes (first time filing jointly)—nope. Carrying over to this month!

• Month two of my spending challenge—yes. Believe it or not, I have not purchased anything for myself aside from groceries and essentials (like running out of dishwasher pods) since 2018. I’m loving it and will write more about it soon!

• Spend some time doing nothing every day—honestly, not really. This is hard for me!

• Walk at least 10,000 steps every day—every day? No. But did I go many more days of walking 10,000 steps than I usually do? YES! That’s what goal setting is all about I think. So I’m making this a goal again in March!

• Read Luke and Acts—only partway through Luke. But, progress!

• Start off every morning prepped for the day (from the night before)—sometimes, and it made a big difference.

And here are my March goals. They’re broken into two categories: financial and for-the-heart. Financial responsibility was a big overarching goal for me, so my monthly goals are reflecting that.

Financial:

• File our joint tax return

• Stick to our March budget + big (some might say crazy) saving goals

• Revamp our retirement account (very exciting, I know)

For-the-heart:

• Finish reading Luke, read Acts

• Make a Spring bucket list (similar to my Autumn bucket list - and I need to blog about my Winter one!)

• Write at least three longer blog posts

And daily, I’m going to try again to walk 10,000 steps every day.

I hope your month is off to a beautiful start! Happy Friday :)

February Goals + January Recap

I’m here (2 days late) with my February goals! I started the month in Miami for work, where I snapped the pic above. Because of that today feels like my February 1, and I’m spending some cozy time writing my goals out and getting the house, kitchen, dogs, etc. prepped for a great month!

Over the past couple of weeks I started hearing some inspiration for my February goals spoken into my life. One of them is to walk 10,000 steps every day. That might sound like a rather basic goal - every gal with a FitBit has probably done that at some point - but ever since I got mine I have been frustrated to end most days with about 8,000 steps. Just pushing myself to hit 10k every day is a big and meaningful goal for me, no matter how simple it might sound.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have felt myself called to infuse my day with more of the “sweetness of doing nothing.” Maybe that looks like just eating a meal by myself without feeling like I also need to be on my phone, jotting things down in my planner, or working on a blog post at the same time. Honestly, even just watching a movie without also checking email or posting something to my IG story would be an upgrade of “doing nothing” versus how my life has often looked lately.

Among a few other things, I’m also continuing my spending challenge into month 2! I can’t wait to share more about how not buying anything other than food and essentials (i.e. if we run out of laundry detergent or whatever) has challenged me and reshaped the way I think about STUFF.

So I’m very excited about my February goals! First, here’s how I did in January:

• First month of my spending challenge (no purchases other than food and essentials for January-March—part of my overall savings goals for the year)—yes! Feeling good going into month 2.

• Enjoy more items on our winter bucket list—yes, among other things we drove to see snow!

• Write thank-yous for my Christmas gifts—done

• Finish up a few small things for my name change (my legal name change is done but I need to update certain accounts and things)—yes! So much progress

• Set up our printer—yep.

Now, my February goals:

• Celebrate love: our 6 month milestone of marriage, and Valentine’s Day

• Do our taxes (first time filing jointly)

• Month two of my spending challenge

• Spend some time doing nothing every day

• Walk at least 10,000 steps every day

• Read Luke and Acts

• Start off every morning prepped for the day (from the night before)

Hope your February is off to a great start! If you’re in LA, stay safe and dry from this crazy weather!

2019 + January Goals

(images from the goal planner that I use)

Happy New Year, friends! I am writing this post on December 31 (and scheduling it to go up tomorrow, January 1) from New Orleans, Louisiana. Grace and I have absolutely loved spending our last week of 2018 here, and it’s been a fitting celebration to end an amazing year.

When I think about 2019, I think of a breath of fresh air. A chance to refocus and rest. 2018 brought SO MUCH CHANGE. And it was so good—we got married. It was our first full year with both of our dogs. I changed jobs, and Grace had a career shift too. We took some amazing trips, most notably our honeymoon. It was a year filled with the “next big thing” constantly right around the corner.

In 2019, I’m looking forward to chilling out. There won’t be a wedding to plan, and even though I can always improve and learn, there isn’t anything major in my life that I want to look different at the end of 2019. I just want to e n j o y t h e r i d e.

My “word” for 2019 is RETURN. Return to myself, return to “normal,” return to rest, and see returns on all the things I’ve invested in emotionally and spiritually. When I feel anxious or straying from what matters, I want to remember to return to the core important things in my life. I think the answers will always be there when I bear that in mind.

I set 7 overarching goals that I want to guide 2019 for me. They are, in no particular order:

• Be present and enjoy the ride.

• Love Grace well and get to know her more deeply.

• Save money.

• Take better care of my body.

• Cultivate faith.

• Seek humility.

• Don’t cut corners.

Some of these might seem vague, but all have many dreams, ideas, and action items behind them. I’ve spent some time this month mapping out what it would look like for me to stay true to these goals throughout this year. For me, the biggest motivation in accomplishing a goal is imagining how I’ll feel when I can say I’ve done it. If I focus on these 7 things in the new year, I know 2019 will be one of the most beautiful years yet.

I also set monthly goals for January. But first, here’s how I did on my December goals:

• Send our first ever Christmas cards—yes! Check them out here.

• Enjoy items on my winter bucket list (try to do at least one a week)—yes! I’ve had so much fun working on it.

• Get our first ever Christmas tree—yes, it’s still up! I love it so much.

• Decorate our house for Christmas—yes! You can see my Christmas decorations house tour here.

• Reverently and joyfully observe Advent—I could have been better about minimizing distractions during this season, but yes.

• Update my 60 before 30 list with progress so far—yep! Check out my update post here.

• Take an exciting trip just Grace and me—on it right now! (New Orleans)

• Set goals for 2019—yes :)

• Host my mom in our house!—yep! It was a really fun week.

• Wrap all Christmas gifts and mail the ones that are going to out of town people—done.

• Replace my phone screen protector—done. Such a random chore, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t do it unless I made it a monthly goal.

And here are my January goals:

• First month of my spending challenge (no purchases other than food and essentials for January-March—part of my overall savings goals for the year)

• Enjoy more items on our winter bucket list

• Write thank-yous for my Christmas gifts

• Finish up a few small things for my name change (my legal name change is done but I need to update certain accounts and things)

• Set up our printer

If you set goals for 2019, I’d love to hear about them! Wishing you a sweet, healthy, and peace-filled new year.

60 Before 30 Update

If you’ve been reading my blog since this past summer, then you might remember my 60 Before 30 goals list I posted! If not, basically 60 Before 30 is a list of 60 “bucket list” type goals that I want to complete before I turn 30. This isn’t about fear of turning a certain age - I am honestly excited for EVERY age - but more about using a set amount of time as motivation.

Some of the goals below just say Personal (and a category in parentheses), which means they are either private, have to do with surprising someone, or not fully my own story to tell. If they are done and I can share them, I have updated here :)

Since posting my 60 items this summer in June (when I had exactly 3 years until I turn 30), I have actually managed to complete more of them than I would have thought, less than 6 months later! In case you’re curious to read, here’s the original list, with bolding and notes added for the ones I’ve already checked off.

1.     Marry Grace Baldridge - YES.

2.     Go on a honeymoon - yes, we went to Hawaii for 2 weeks and it was truly perfect.

3.     Legally change my last name to Baldridge - yep! So glad I got it done quickly!

4.     Build an emergency fund of 6 months’ living expenses with Grace

5.     Start a collection of Christmas decorations - yes, and they are all up in our house right now and making me SO happy! I’m hoping to post a Christmas decorations tour soon

6.     Increase planned/intentional charitable giving

7.     Host a baby shower or a bridal shower

8.     Switch to all natural beauty, cleaning, and laundry products - slowing doing this; I wouldn’t call it done yet but I am making progress

9.     Personal (career) - now that this is done, I can share it: this one was to leave my current job (at the time I wrote these goals). I honestly thought this one would happen toward the end of my 20s, but I was blessed with the most amazing turn of events and I already did it!

10.  Get first Christmas tree of my own (for my first married Christmas) - yes, the cutest best smelling Fraser Fir. I never want to take it down!

11.  Personal (spiritual)

12.  Go somewhere wild/exotic/remote (some initial ideas are Bora Bora, Antarctica, or Kenya)

13.   Personal (family)

14.  Personal (spiritual)

15.  Make a beautiful heirloom-quality wedding album - YES. It is stunning and I know we will have it for the rest of our lives.

16.  Make a beautiful heirloom-quality album of pictures from our Alaska road trip

17.  Make a beautiful heirloom-quality album of pictures from our honeymoon

18.  Make the outdoor spaces of our house special

19.  Make an awesome and welcoming guest room - still a lot of progress to do here, but we have now had our longest-term guest (6 weeks), so that counts for something, right?! haha

20.  Combine all finances with Grace and have both our names on all bank and credit accounts

21.  Personal (surprising someone)

22.  Celebrate my mom’s graduation from divinity school

23.  Celebrate my sister’s graduation from college

24.  Go back to Elon with Grace (maybe for her cousin’s graduation, or for homecoming?)

25.  Visit D.C. to see two of my best friends and my grandmother, who all live there - yes! This is another one that I thought would not happen for a long time, but a couple of months after making these goals, my grandmother offered to fly Grace and me out to DC and I got to see her, as well as my best friends who live there! It was a super short visit so I want to go back, but so happy that this officially happened.

26.  Do a month-long contentment/spending freeze challenge

27.  Celebrate our first and second wedding anniversaries

28.  Find a dentist in LA

29.  Personal (health)

30.  Send out our first ever Christmas cards (as the Baldridges!) - YESSS! Best moment putting them all in the mail!

31.  Personal (career)

32.  Personal (career)

33.  Go a week without social media

34.  Be able to say, at least at some point, that I’m in great physical shape

35.  Go back to Grace’s hometown in Belgium

36.  Fix our closet and hallway lights - thank goodness for Grace’s parents - they did this while they were pet sitting for us at our house over our honeymoon!

37.  Give a speech at a wedding or rehearsal dinner

38.  Have my blog featured somewhere

39.  Personal (surprising someone)

40.  Personal (health)

41.  Blog every detail of wedding planning and the day itself - yes, I’m so proud of my wedding planning series and so happy with how it has been received by sweet readers.

42.  Personal (surprising someone)

43.  Upgrade/change up my car when my lease expires in 2019

44.  Replace our foundation mattress (we just got it, but it’s from IKEA and not good…)

45.  Offer to help a friend with some aspect of their wedding: hand-addressing invitations like I did mine, serving as an informal day-of coordinator, passing down my collected wedding décor items, etc. - I definitely want to do more, but we did pass down our table numbers to some of our best friends who got married about 6 weeks after we did!

46.  Personal (misc.)

47.  Personal (gift/surprising someone)

48.  Start a tradition with Grace of having tea in the evenings - little by little we are doing this more :)

49.  Take a trip with both dogs (instead of boarding Bean like we’ve been doing while he’s a puppy)

50.  Take Grace to my parents’ place on the Chesapeake Bay

51.  Hang art or photos over our bed

52.  Introduce Grace to my grandmother (finally!) - yes!! on the DC trip mentioned above.

53.  Have 10+ baby books in my collection (Grace and I started a tradition after we got engaged of collecting baby books on special trips we take . . . it might sound crazy, but I love the idea of having an amazing collection of books from special places for our babies if we’re lucky enough to have them one day) - still building our collection, but we did add one from Hawaii! And I want to get one in New Orleans when we go there at the end of the year

54.  Swim (actually swim) in the ocean 10+ times - working on it! Swam 3 times on our honeymoon (I’m talking actually treading water not just wading out)

55.  Visit Ojai at least once a year

56.  Have a dinner party using our beautiful new kitchen wares we’ve gotten as wedding gifts - yes!

57.  Get orthotics/generally get my flat feet assessed by a professional (I truly have the flattest feet on earth—like the palm of a hand—and I need to be more proactive about the health problems my lack of arches will cause me as I get older)

58.  Go skiing with Grace (and stick to the bunny slopes because of the knee issues we both have!)

59.  See Carly Rae Jepson live with Grace

60.  Have professional photos taken of Grace and me each year of our marriage - so far, we’ve gotten one set: our professional honeymoon photos in Kauai

So far, I’ve completed 13 out of 60. I still have 2.5 years to go, so I’m feeling good about this!

If you have made a similar list, please feel free to share a link - I’d love to see it!

December Goals + November Recap

“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the time has flewn—how did it get so late so soon?”

—Dr. Seuss

Really, I cannot believe it’s December. Just yesterday it was the beautiful midsummer eve when we were married. But I’m thankful. I’m hoping to write more about this here, but this has been my FAVORITE Fall of my whole life and I am actually looking forward to Winter for the first time I can ever remember. I’ve always loved the holidays, but to me Winter has meant darkness, cold, and the blues. I’m finally really embracing the season and it feels so special. A big part of embracing Fall was my Autumn Bucket List, and I made one for Winter too! I will share it here soon for sure :)

In addition to being the first winter I've ever been excited for, this December will have a lot of other firsts for me! For a long time I have wanted to save certain things for being married (or at least engaged as the case was with living together). Two of those things I’ve waited for are sending out Christmas cards and getting our first Christmas tree. I’ve never had my own! We are also taking a big trip at the end of the month and I’m so excited. Overall, I think this month will be incredibly sweet. I know it will fly by so my goals are intended to help me savor it!

First, how I did on my November goals:

• Spend Thanksgiving in North Carolina with my family—yes, it was wonderful.

• Celebrate Grace turning 28!—yep! We spent a fun weekend in Joshua Tree with friends.

• Send lots of fun happy mail to friends—a good amount!

• Design our wedding album—yessss! It just arrived today and I am waiting until Grace is here to open it, but I’m SO EXCITED!

• Host a dinner or brunch at our house with friends—yes, we had a small dinner party that was very special.

• Take better care of my body—I like to think marginally better. I worked out while I was home in Raleigh and it felt great.

• Rest, be present, and be thankful—I can always do better but I’m proud of how I did on this.

• Do all my Christmas shopping (and take advantage of Black Friday sales) so I can spend December resting during Advent—done and done!!!

My goals for December are:

• Send our first ever Christmas cards

• Enjoy items on my winter bucket list (try to do at least one a week)

• Get our first ever Christmas tree

• Decorate our house for Christmas

• Reverently and joyfully observe Advent

• Update my 60 before 30 list with progress so far

• Take an exciting trip just Grace and me

• Set goals for 2019

• Host my mom in our house!

• Wrap all Christmas gifts and mail the ones that are going to out of town people

• Replace my phone screen protector

I hope you enjoy and make the most of the very last month of 2018! xoxo

My Autumn Bucket List

Today I am sharing all about my Autumn Bucket List, which has brought me so much joy this season! I got the cute template for the list through A Beautiful Mess, one of my favorite blogs that I have been reading for years. They send out these templates each season to their newsletter subscribers.

A little backstory: I am NOT a Fall-loving gal at heart. I love spring and summer. I had wanted to move to California since I was a little girl specifically because it’s warm almost all the time (later, I realized it has other amazing qualities, but the biggest draw for me was always the weather). I have a distinct memory in 5th grade of trudging through dead leaves in our driveway thinking, Fall is so depressing. I think this was the first time I ever thought of anything as being “depressing.” My whole life I have struggled with major blues when it starts getting darker and colder. I don’t love Fall colors, I have only recently started enjoying Fall foods, and I typically look forward to absolutely nothing about Fall. I guess these are all probably signs of seasonal affective disorder, but as I have never been diagnosed with anything like that, I hesitate to use any official terms.

Although I cannot change how Fall affects me, I can change my approach to it! Last Fall knocked me off my feet with feeling sad from the change in seasons. I was so busy I didn’t have any time to counteract it. But this year, for my first married Fall, I wanted it to be a happy time. Making a fun Autumn Bucket List and intentionally checking off the activities has made the BIGGEST difference in my attitude toward Fall this year. This has been the happiest Fall of my whole life!

Also, I am married to a Fall-obsessed Scorpio, so it’s been a lot of fun to do the bucket list together since she already enjoys the season so much.

If you can’t read my handwriting above, here are the items on my Fall bucket list:

• Haunted Hayride

• Try a new WeHo (West Hollywood) restaurant

• Light our fireplace candelabra

• Refresh guest room

• Bake something festive

• Add some indoor plants

• Make a home office

• Send lots of happy mail

• Make pancakes

• Semler album release (Grace’s musical project is called Semler)

• Take dogs on a day trip

• Plan our New Orleans trip

• Spooky movie night with our popcorn machine

• Have friends over for brunch

• Put flannel sheets on our bed

• Homemade soup

• Donate extra kitchen stuff

• Trip to DC

• Make our wedding album

• Read a cozy book

• Order our first ever Christmas cards

• Slow cooker meals

• Buy candy corn

• Journal more often

• Hot chocolate in our “B” mugs (B for Baldridge)

• Underwood Family Farms

• Autumn stove simmers

• Open the windows in nice weather

• Host a dinner party

• Decorate seasonally

The ones I’ve highlighted on the list are ones we’ve already completed (but some we’ll do again for sure - like homemade soups and sending mail to friends).

Not all of them are strictly seasonal—like going to DC or making pancakes—but all are designed to help me savor the season.

Here are some photos from us doing the things on my bucket list

Adding more indoor plants:

Semler album release (we had a fun release show at the studio where Grace recorded the album). These are the guys she recorded it with. And yes, Grace dressed as a skeleton:

Going to Underwood Family Farms (our favorite pumpkin patch—and so much more. It’s about 45 mins out of LA and SO FUN. They have tractor rides, tons of cute goats, all kinds of produce to pick, pumpkins, seasonal food booths, and more):

Going on the Haunted Hayride (we went with a few of our close friends and although I shut my eyes the whole time, it was really fun):

Hosting a spooky movie night with our popcorn machine:

I was super proud of my orange-and-black Halloween snackboard I made for the movie night.

Making pancakes (using a pancake mix our friends brought us back from Hawaii recently!):

Decorating seasonally:

Making my home office (still not totally done, and far from done in this photo):

Baking something festive (these are pumpkin-granola muffins, and I also made pumpkin bread this Fall):

And although not on the bucket list, everyone in the family dressed up for Halloween!

Bean and I dressed as Toto and Dorothy

And for a friend’s party, Grace and I went as Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein (perfect newlywed costume, I think!)

Bean went as a hot dog for our spooky movie night

And Willie was the cutest pumpkin

Another really fun thing was that we got our first trick or treaters this year!! Even though we were living in our same house last Halloween, we didn’t get them for whatever reason. Our house is in a neighborhood without that many kids, so I’m actually surprised we had any, but it was so fun and sweet! I think having our Jack o Lanterns lit up on our front steps helped :)

It’s only the beginning of November, so I’m excited to keep checking off more of our bucket list items all month long. We are actually trying out a new West Hollywood restaurant tonight, so I can check that one off tomorrow!

We keep our bucket list taped to our fridge and I really do think it helps me focus on enjoying the good stuff this season. I’ll be making a winter one too—I’ve already been collecting ideas for it!

Hope you are enjoying Fall too, and if you normally don’t, try making a bucket list to see if it helps!

November Goals + October Recap

Sweet November, you are full of good food, time to reflect and be grateful, and a chance to prepare for the Advent and Christmas season ahead (my favorite). I am savoring my first married Autumn (Autumn Bucket List blog post coming in the next few days!) and am excited to settle deeper into this season over the next month.

I’m happy to say I pretty much checked off all of my October goals! Here’s my recap:

• Start my new job well—yes, I can truly say I LOVE my job and it’s the best feeling

• Set up my home office—yes, although I am looking forward to clearing the clutter and making that space work better for me

• Finish my honeymoon blogging and start blogging our wedding!—completed all my honeymoon recaps and although I haven’t started my wedding posts yet, you’ll find one here very soon!

• Enjoy things on my Fall bucket list and savor the season—yes and yes :)

• Make progress on my name change—yep! Made major progress and am officially using my new name almost everywhere

• Finish sorting all of our wedding gifts and writing thank-yous—yes, except we have a small handful of gifts that came with no information and we don’t know who they are from. This has been stressful to me, as I worry the gift-givers don’t know they were anonymous. As weird as it might seem, if you are reading this and sent us a wedding gift and HAVEN’T gotten a thank-you note from us, PLEASE let me know! I would love to thank you!

• Take a trip to DC to introduce Grace to my grandmother for the first time!—yes, so sweet! It was an incredibly short but special trip

• Order our first ever Christmas cards—yes. So so happy and cannot wait to send them out in December!

And here are my goals for November:

• Spend Thanksgiving in North Carolina with my family

• Celebrate Grace turning 28!

• Send lots of fun happy mail to friends

• Design our wedding album

• Host a dinner or brunch at our house with friends

• Take better care of my body

• Rest, be present, and be thankful

• Do all my Christmas shopping (and take advantage of Black Friday sales) so I can spend December resting during Advent

Wishing you a happy, safe, and warm November!

October Goals + September Recap

Hello, October! I don’t think I have ever felt so at peace and ready for Fall to start. I’ll probably share more soon in a personal essay-style post, but Fall, shorter days, and colder temperatures have always been really hard for me. This year feels different for many reasons and I finally feel ready to embrace Fall. I’m so excited!

A lot happened in September. Biggest of all, I decided to switch jobs. I will probably not share more here because I tend to keep my professional life very separate from my blog. But I’m SO excited about the change and think it’s going to be great on so many levels. Because of that major and unexpected change, some of my September goals didn’t get checked off, so I’m rolling a couple of them over. But I did make good progress on others. To recap:

• Finish blogging our honeymoon (read the first recap here)—I’m about halfway done, so continuing this into October!

• Open all of our wedding gifts and incorporate them into our house—not fully. I made a lot of progress but want to totally finish this in October.

• Write all wedding thank-yous—same. I made good progress but just didn’t quite get them all done.

• Host two back-to-back weekends of houseguests towards the end of the month—yes! So fun. Some of our best friends visited us this month and although both were very short visits, they filled us up.

• Pray impossible prayers (hoping to blog more on this soon. Believing in the “impossible” is really good for the soul, I think!)—yes. See new job, above :)

• Celebrate the anniversary of our engagement (which is also the anniversary of the day we “officially” started dating when we were babies, haha)—yes! We had a really sweet dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Mozza.

• Start changing over my IDs and legal documents to my new last name—yes, but a bit of a slower start than I would have liked. Wanting to check more off in October.

• Go to the beach to celebrate the end of summer—yep! It was a sweet, simple beach day.

And now, my October goals!

• Start my new job well

• Set up my home office

• Finish my honeymoon blogging and start blogging our wedding!

• Enjoy things on my Fall bucket list and savor the season

• Make progress on my name change

• Finish sorting all of our wedding gifts and writing thank-yous

• Take a trip to DC to introduce Grace to my grandmother for the first time!

• Order our first ever Christmas cards

I posted my Fall bucket list on IG stories (I got the download from abeautifulmess.com) and a lot of people asked about it. So I might share more here soon! I think it’s such a fun concept and it’s really helping me cherish the season I’m in, even though summer will always be my favorite.

Hope you all have a beautiful start to the month!

September Goals + a Bit of Life Lately

August was so, so good to me. I couldn't have asked for more. My cup runneth over--etc. etc. It's hard to even express how much our wedding day meant to me, and there are so many precious memories I cannot wait to relive for the rest of my life (especially once we get our wedding photos back!!). Needless to say, I accomplished the only three goals I set for August: to marry Grace, to spend a relaxing 2 weeks in Hawaii celebrating our marriage, and to give thanks endlessly for the first two. Well, I could have always done more of that last goal :)

It's still August, but I'm setting my September goals a little bit early so I can get a head start on them. I have had an auspicious, sort of magical feeling ever since getting back from our honeymoon, and I think this fall is going to be a sweet combination of things changing and things staying the same/feeling "normal." I'm really really excited. That said, I'm a summer gal through and through, and I'm happy that MOST of September is still summer (it's only fall on the 22nd)--YAY! So I have one of my goals as going to the beach one more time this summer.

Here's the full list:

• Finish blogging our honeymoon (read the first recap here)
• Open all of our wedding gifts and incorporate them into our house
• Write all wedding thank-yous
• Host two back-to-back weekends of houseguests towards the end of the month
• Pray impossible prayers (hoping to blog more on this soon. Believing in the “impossible” is really good for the soul, I think!)
• Celebrate the anniversary of our engagement (which is also the anniversary of the day we “officially” started dating when we were babies, haha)
• Start changing over my IDs and legal documents to my new last name
• Go to the beach to celebrate the end of summer

The two weeks that we’ve been home from our honeymoon have been kind of a wild ride for both of us. It’s all good stuff, but in the past 10 days we have seen each other for probably an hour TOTAL while we’re both awake. We’ve been ships in the night on opposite schedules and I am so ready to move past that! I’m just excited for all that is to come and feeling really lucky. Thanks for reading, xoxo

August Goals + Farewell Until After the Wedding!

Well friends, August is HERE. I am writing this live on August 1, and I get married in 3 days. As the wedding day draws nearer, I have had less and less capacity to blog and keep up with social media etc. Not really because I'm running around with a mile-long to do list, but because I'm appreciating more and more the value in just being present with everyone who has traveled so far to be with us this week and weekend. Both sets of parents are in town, we've had close to a dozen people roll through our little house already, and it's such a full and happy time. With that in mind, I didn't end up getting to pre-write blog posts for during our honeymoon, so HDWD will be pretty quiet for the next 3 weeks or so. I can't wait to write a whole slew of posts on everything that will have happened once I'm back!

For now, here are my August goals:

1. Marry Grace Baldridge.

2. Spend a relaxing 2 weeks in Hawaii celebrating our marriage.

3. Give thanks endlessly for 1. and 2.

I hope everyone has a super sweet month! xoxo