2017 Blog Recap

I started out 2017 on my blogging "A game". I was getting all time high comments, views, and collaborations with brands and other bloggers.  I was posting regularly. I took the time to take high quality pictures with my camera. But then life got in the way... my up and down roller coaster of frequent postings to being MIA continued yet again.  I honestly am blaming life for this.  This year has been a tough one for me.  It was certainly a transition year from being a college student to an adult. A year filled with losing people close to me and my family.  A year that redefined what it means to be healthy.  A year that taught me to truly count my blessings. Regardless of my excuses, I let you (my readers) down and for that I apologize.  I'm looking forward to starting a new year. I'm more than ready for a fresh start on multiple levels. My personal life, my health, my academic life, and my business are all ready to jump start the new year with a rejuvenated dedication to giving everything 110%. The end of the year is always one of my favorite times as a blogger. I enjoy looking back on the year to reflect on what posts you all enjoyed the most, what posts I loved writing and sharing with you, and making a game plan for the upcoming year. 

I hope you enjoy reading my favorite posts from the year! 

January

What's In My Bag-Student Teaching Edition

February

How to Plan Meals 

March

Tips for Conquering an Early Morning Gym Session

Creating a Personal Uniform 

April

Adulting Month Four

May

Adulting Month Five

June

Seven Summer Shoes

Summer Bucket List

July

What's in my Beach Bag

Productivity Tips for Summer

August

Creative Ways to Use Your Agenda

Charleston Summer Packing List

September

Bye Bye Summer

October

October was my month of being a bad blogger. I was so caught up in being a first year teacher that I didn't publish a single post. I had tons of ideas, but I never got around to sitting down for long enough to turn the thoughts I had into words/pictures. 

November

Thankful Thursday

December 

The Story Behind Our Engagement 

Reader Favorites:

January: Adulting: Month On

February:Styling Booties 

March:Daily Makeup Routine

April:Adulting: Month Four 

May:Adulting Month Five

June:June Favorites   

July:Planning for the Perfect Planner 

August:A Day in the Life of a Summer Nanny

September: September Playlist

October: no posts published

November:Life Lately

December: The Story Behind Our Engagement 

I hope you come back this upcoming week to join me on my adventure of becoming a better blogger!

Wishing you a fun and safe New Year's Eve!

XOXO

The Story Behind Our Engagement

In case you didn't figure it out from my post a couple of weeks ago... I have some big news to share with you guys. Last month Todd and I got engaged! I thought it would be fun to share our love story with you all from both of our perspectives, so today we are sharing with you how we met and our engagement story.

How we met:

Her version:
Before I give you the story behind the engagement, I want to provide you with a little bit of a back story.  We met in 2010.  I was a Junior and he was a Senior in high school.  We ran in similar social circles but our paths never actually crossed.  It was Labor Day Weekend, and I was playing in the annual season opener tournament for field hockey.  Our school always hosted the tournament, so we usually had a decent amount of fans (friends from school) present/taunting the other teams and referees. In between games the boys thought it was funny to try to play field hockey. Being the competitive athlete I was, I was slightly peeved that a stranger was using my equipment. Although, I did think the stranger was pretty cute. 

Disclaimer- it was a big recruiting season for me and I was just getting back to playing after a major concussion. I was very serious about getting recruited and I was worried what would happen if my stick was damaged. 

Looking back, I still laugh at this! Later that night my best friend and I went to our local grocery store to pick up a sweet treat.  We opted for what we thought would be the quick check out option, self check out, because we did not want our ice-cream to melt.  Well, the quick option was not so quick.  We continuously tried to scan our items, but each time we did our lane was closed.  We thought the machine was malfunctioning, but several minutes later we found out it was the stranger from our game earlier. He confessed to playing a joke on us and chatted for several minutes.  Later that night we became friends on Facebook. Within the week we started to talk on messenger and in the halls in between classes.

The following weekend we had our first "date".  He came over on a Sunday morning to make breakfast with me.  We made pancakes and bacon.  He was disappointed to find out that my parents house did not have a coffee maker. (Anyone who knows Todd knows his obsession with coffee. He drinks it morning, day, and night) At the time my culinary skills were sub par, so let's just say I was not a expert pancake flipper.  To this day he still makes fun of me for flipping the pancake onto the stovetop rather than the griddle. I guess my cooking skills didn't scare him away because a week later we officially started dating.

At the time I thought he would be a cute date for the annual Homecoming dance and somebody fun to hangout with, but I didn't have high expectations for a relationship with longevity as I was a junior and he was a senior.  He was Mr. Popular (homecoming king, junior prom prince, athlete) and I was just another junior girl crushing on him (honors student, athlete with hopes of being recruited for college, and a girl filled with goals).  I thought we would last through the school year if we were lucky, but clearly we were made to last much longer than that.

Fast forward a bit.. We have been together for seven years now.  During this time we endured going to college at separate universities, a kidney transplant, breast cancer, field hockey games, conference tennis matches, many weddings, tons of family functions, beach trips, nights out with friends, and our fair share of growing pains.  We have been able to grow individually and as a couple, which is one of my favorite things about us.  

His version:

As I entered my Senior year of high school, all I wanted to do was have fun and not worry about any drama. The first three years of high school I played football, and for my last year of high school I decided not to play (We were not very good at the time...). So one Saturday morning I decided to volunteer to record the big east coast wrestling tournament. Our school was hosting the tournament, and I got extra credit in my TV and Video class for volunteering. We stood there with video cameras on a tripod and recorded guys wrestling in tights. Not how I imagined spending my Saturday morning, but like I said it was for extra credit. I got bored very easily, and my friend told me to leave the camera on record so we could go to the field hockey tournament. We walked down there and talked to some of the girls we knew on the team. I never thought that day would be the one that I was going to meet the love of my life. I had work that night. I spent the shift on the self checkout lane. I noticed two girls, who went to my school and who were on the field hockey team, were checking out in one of my lanes. I wanted to prank them, so I closed their lane anytime they tried scanning their items. They realized I was closing their lane on purpose, and I was laughing at them. Later that night, I received a Facebook request from one of those girls... after tons of messages we exchanged phone numbers and started talking more. Little did I know, seven years later, I would become engaged to this girl and my life could not be better.

The engagement story

Her version:
This past October we celebrated our seven year anniversary.  It felt surreal that we are actually so much closer to being together for ten years than we are to year one.  Over the years our celebrations have changed from gifts to the gift of experience.  My gift to Todd was tickets to the Eagles game on our actual anniversary, and his gift to me was a photo shoot with a professional photographer. I was honestly less than impressed, but I was a good sport while he assured me that "it would be fun because it's something we haven't done out of all the years we have been together." Plus we are the worst at remembering to take pictures together, so I guess the thought of having actual pictures wasn't so bad. I was a little surprised that he picked out a date, time, and location without consulting me, but I honestly thought nothing of it.  As the time got closer and closer, I began to get more irritated at the thought of doing this photoshoot.  I shared quite openly that I was not a fan of the whole outing as our dog was not allowed to come, work was at a stressful high for me, and we needed to save the money. I also pointed out that it was dumb to get pictures taken when we would just have to do the same thing in the hopefully near future once we got engaged.  Well..while I was busy vocalizing this to my closest friends, Todd was secretly busy showing them all pictures of the ring he bought me and sharing every detail in his engagement game plan.

The day of our photoshoot, I slept in like really slept in for the first time since school started.  I woke up at 11:00 am to a flurry of text messages from him about what time I would be ready, what I was planning to wear, and other silly things.  I cooked breakfast had some coffee, and finally woke up enough to begin to think about the day.  I had no idea what I would wear and was oddly not stressed about finding the perfect outfit.  Eventually, I managed to come up with three possible outfits.  I sent some lovely mirror pictures to Todd and my friends of my outfit options.  After several votes, I finally picked out my favorite outfit.  It was a chilly fall afternoon, so I opted for jeans, riding boots, a plaid shirt, and a black quilted vest. I spent longer than usual doing my hair and makeup simply because I did not have to rush off to work like usual.  I enjoyed taking my time, and was quite pleased with how my look turned out.  Part of me was actually getting excited for our date.

Todd picked me up and we were on our way to the park.  He was smily and pleasant as always.  He assured me once again that we would have a fun afternoon. On the way we chatted about what we wanted to dinner, but we never figured it out.  We got to the park and met up with our photographers. We walked around, posed awkwardly, and laughed for the first half hour.  I realized that I was actually having fun! About mid way through I looked over and thought I saw a dog that looked like ours, but my attention was quickly changed by getting set for our next picture.  A minute later my brother came around the corner with our dog.  I was so confused, and when I asked what they were doing. My brother told me he was bored and decided to come see us. Still I thought nothing of it even though we lived an hour away from the park.  I then turned to see Todd reaching for something tied around Brody's neck as he was getting down on one knee! I was so surprised. Todd said some things that neither of us honestly don't really remember.  I do know he said my full name and asked if I would marry him. .. the two key things in a proposal. We then spent the next half hour taking more photographs. Todd was so prepared that he brought signs with cute but corny sayings on them.  We took some pictures with our dog and of just us.

The photo shoot ended, and my brother said he was taking the dog home because Todd was taking me out to dinner.  We parted ways and headed to the restaurant Todd made reservations at.  I tried to call my both of my parents and neither of them answered! Todd offered that they were probably sleeping. We got to the restaurant where I was greeted by my second surprise of the day. We walked in to find both of our families seated waiting for our arrival.  It was so nice to be able to share our night with the people that are closest to us.  I was even lucky enough to have my aunt (who is a jeweler) join us and put the ring guard on my ring since it was too big.   At the end of dinner, the restaurant's manager kindly provided us with complementary champagne (my favorite) for a toast.  Before heading home, I was provided with surprise number three of the day.  Todd arranged for my brother's best friend to dress up and be our driver.  It was so funny! Plus after a few drinks neither one of us were in any shape to drive home.  My parents were generous enough to keep the celebration going by having everyone to their house after dinner. We kept the champagne flowing, had dessert, and continued to share our excitement as a big family.  Once we got home, Todd surprised me again.  He gave me three bottles of wine each with my new monogram on the label.  By the end of the night I was exhausted and over joyed.  The day could not have been more perfect from the weather to how awesome our photographers were to the little details that Todd thought of.

I am so excited to begin planning our big day and to be able to spend the rest of my life with someone who has such a big heart.

His version:
The day we got engaged was on a beautiful November afternoon and she had no idea it was coming. I hired a professional photographer to take pictures of us. Mich thought it was just for fun because we never had them done before. Prior to that day, I told Mich our son (dog) Brody was not aloud to come because the photographers were not "dog people". She was not pleased with that one bit. 

Little did she know, I had a plan in place. She and I were going to go the park, and mid way through the shoot I'd have her brother bring Brody with him to the park so he could deliver the ring. As we were getting pictures taken of us, her brother showed up with Brody and she was so confused. Her brother walked Brody up to us, and I had a pouch on his collar. As I knelt down to get the ring out of the pouch, I asked my best friend to marry me. 

After she said yes, I told her we had dinner arrangements at a restaurant for the two of us.
She tried calling her parents on our way to dinner, but they didn't answer. Thats because I surprised her by having her family and my family meet us at the restaurant! 

Lastly, so we didn't have to worry about driving home, I asked her brother's friend if he could drive us home...after a few celebratory drinks it's never a good idea to drive. As we were leaving, I gave the keys to her brother's friend and he pulled the car around. As we walked outside, her brother's friend had a chauffeur's hat, white gloves, and a bow tie on. We got home that night and made a toast to our engagement. That is my side of the story of how I asked my best friend of seven years to marry me.

We would like to give a big thank you to our wonderful photographers! They did an amazing job. If you live in our area and need someone to snap your important moments, contact us for their information and a referral!
(No this is not an advertisement..just genuine appreciation)

We hope you enjoyed reading our sappy story!
xoxo

Wishlisted

I have never had so much trouble coming up with a Christmas list.  This year it has been such a struggle to create my list.  Usually, I'm able to write it within a half hour or so.  This year it has taken me several weeks to come up with just a small list. I'm not sure if it is because I am getting older, I'm working so I can purchase what I want, or if I'm just so content with life right now.  I'm thinking it is a combination of these three things. For probably the first time ever, my mom had to ask me for my wish list on multiple occasions.  I generally have it made and shared by mid November. 

Each year that I get older I find greater joy in giving gifts rather than receiving them. I take a decent amount of time to pick out thoughtful gifts rather than giving something meaningless out of obligation.  I enjoy watching the joy that is brought to my friends and family when they open something that was picked out special for them.  It makes me feel good when I can make others smile.  While this should be the reason that the holidays are considered the season of giving, I think the true meaning behind giving gets lost in the commercial shuffle. 

After lots of thinking I finally created my list. I consulted my Pinterest boards, some of my favorite online shopping sites, and thought about some practical items that I could use.  

BB Cream//Naked Palette // Laptop Shell// Tassel loafers // blanket scarf//
  Fitbit band //Armband // headphones 

Keep in mind that this is a true wish list. By no means do I expect to find all of these items wrapped under the tree Christmas day.  It is a true wish list- a list of things that I would like to have.  I do have to say I am a fan of the element of surprise, so I always enjoy a surprise gift or two! My mom is always the best at knowing what I want without me even realizing I wanted the item.

I'd love to hear what's on your wish list this holiday season.  Wishlist posts are one of my favorite to read! Feel free to comment with the item(s) your hoping to unwrap this year!

XOXO