Marriage - Ashley Zin

Life, Marriage

Our Birthday Recap

January 27, 2017

As I’ve mentioned here before, mine and Tommy’s birthdays are just one day apart. His is January 21st and mine is January 22nd. It’s been a fun three years as we have gotten to have two full days of celebration together. This year I wanted to recap our birthdays to have it here for memories mostly, but also so you can peek into our lives and learn a little bit more about us. We are both admittedly introverts so low-key, simple birthdays are usually how we celebrate and honestly is all that we both really want. I debated on not doing this also because I don’t have pictures from either day (blogger fail, I know), but both days were special and fun so I think that will be enough to keep you entertained, whoever may be reading this. 😉 Oh and this year both our birthdays fell on the weekend so that was extra special and fun!

Saturday, Tommy’s Birthday

A picture from our first birthdays together three years ago

Saturday morning we slept in a little bit because we stayed up until midnight (which is very unlike Tommy), mostly so I could wish Tommy a happy birthday when it turned twelve. We woke up and I made us one of Tommy’s favorite breakfasts, Acai Bowls. Then we spent a lot of the day just relaxing, watching Parenthood, our new favorite show. We had it planned to go out and buy Tommy a pair of shoes (my birthday present to him), so we headed off to the mall around three.

We unfortunately didn’t find any shoes that Tommy liked, except for one pair but the store didn’t have his size. The mall we were at had a Michael’s (craft store), near it so we went to that afterward because I wanted to see if they had any porcelain paint.

After that I had planned for us to go to a skate park because we were experiencing abnormally high temperatures for New Jersey in January, and Tommy’s favorite thing to do is really anything active, and he loves skateboarding. He also had just gotten a new skateboard for Christmas. So we drove to a skate park and he got to skate around while I set in the car and watched vlogs (lol).

SOURCE

Once we headed back home I made Tommy one of his favorite meals, Sweet and Sour Chicken (pictured above), and a yummy dessert that we had made before and he really liked. It was a nice and quiet day, but was still really fun. Oh and right before we fell asleep, I had checked the website of the store where we had found the shoes that he liked and ordered them in his size! He was really excited.

Sunday, My Birthday

A picture of us from my birthday last year

On my birthday we woke up somewhat early to go to church. Right when we woke up Tommy gave me my present. (He was super excited about it since he bought it.) There was a pretty good reason why he was too because he bought me a digital camera! Best. gift. ever. I’ve been wanting one probably ever since I was little but even more so now so I can take nice pictures for my blog. Oh and I have to share the first picture I took with my camera of course! (Sorry it’s blurry, he moved.)

so cute 🙂

So anyway after I opened up my gift we got ready and had it planned to go to a new church to see how we liked it. We drove there for the first time and loved it. It is much smaller than the church we attend normally so we decided that we were going to go back the following week and see how we liked it a second time (but are pretty sure we are going to switch to this church).

After church, we went home and hung out. I played with my new camera and watched more vlogs, while Tommy watched videos on his computer. For dinner we went to Olive Garden and had a really nice dinner together. It had been a while since we had gone out to dinner so it was extra special. It was a really nice first married birthday.

So that’s what we did on our birthdays. They were nice and quiet days, getting to do things that we really enjoyed doing. What more could we ask for! How do you prefer to celebrate your birthday? Going all out? Or something simple and quiet like us?

Read More

No Comments
Faith, Marriage, Wedding

Zinhobls Say I Do: Our Engagement Story

January 26, 2017

The long-awaited day is finally here! I’m going to do a wedding series and I’m so excited! I have been talking about sharing our engagement story and wedding pictures for so, so long and I’m finally ready to take the plunge. I guess I haven’t done this before because I really wanted the posts not to be rushed through and to accurately display how awesome these days were and I never really felt ready to sit down and put the work in. I think I also wanted to keep putting it off because once I share them, then it’s really over and I’m just not ready for this newlywed season to be over!

So the way I’m going to do this is to share a post once a week from our wedding season, starting with today, Our Engagement Story! Then every Thursday after I’ll share wedding photos, and end off the series with a recap of our honeymoon in the Dominican Republic! I’m so excited to share all these details with you guys. I may even do a little series about how we planned the wedding as well, let me know what you guys think about that/if you’d be interested in hearing about it.

I’m going to take you guys back to December 5, 2015, one of the happiest days of my life. The picture above is from our engagement session, and you can just see the joy on my face. The way I’m going to recap this day is by letting you guys have a sneak peek right into my journal and share my entry from a few days after we got engaged. (I will not edit anything to make it sound less embarrassing or more “polished” so you can get an accurate depiction of exactly how I was feeling on that day.) Hope you enjoy!

Recap of Our Engagement (Because I Do Not Want To Forget Anything)

Tommy called out of work on Saturday to spend the day with me. He told me he was going to do this on Friday night and he was so lovey and it was awesome. A thought went through my head that maybe that was going to be the day but I didn’t dwell on it because I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

So Tommy came over on Saturday morning and we spent the day watching our favorite show on Netflix (Dexter) and we baked Christmas cookies and just laid around relaxing (one of my favorite things to do with him). Then at night we had it planned to go to a Christmas Lights Festival because I don’t think there is anything I love more than Christmas and I was really excited for this. Tommy asked if there was anywhere we could walk around afterwards because it’s a drive-through light show and he also mentioned that we would make it really memorable so at this point I’m still really trying not to get my hopes up, but also getting excited at the same time. So we got there and it was really fun and just what I hoped it would be. I definitely want to go back every year (especially now!).

Afterwards Tommy and I parked and walked around a bit. There was a cool archway near a restaurant that I didn’t know was near the Christmas light show. Tommy stopped us near that and started talking about how he can’t believe how far we’ve come and how even when we first met he felt like I might be the one.

Then he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him! And I said yes of course! We walked back to the car and on the way home we talked about how exciting this all was and I told my mom and she cried because she was so happy.

We eventually went back to my house and my mom was so happy. I told my close girl friends and they called me and were so excited. I was blown away by everyone’s love and support and that was only the beginning. The next day we told Tommy’s parents and were a little afraid what they were going to think. (Okay I was very afraid.) But it went well, everyone congratulated us and his mom had me try on her wedding dress.

Later on that night, I posted about the engagement on Facebook and Instagram and I was blown away with everyone’s love and support. It was beyond exciting. And the same continued at work the next day. My friends and co-workers were so excited for me.

Starting out, before we made the choice to get engaged, Tommy and I were afraid of everyone’s reactions because we weren’t sure if everyone would understand. But we took that big step of faith and God showed up in a huge way.

Oh I almost forgot – Sunday at church was an exciting time too – I have never felt God more than on that day. I felt Jesus pouring down his love on me and showing me that he really does care about me and the things I care about. We ended up playing two of my favorite songs at church and I was so overwhelmed, I tried to keep from bawling my eyes out. It was all just so wonderful and I am incredibly grateful that God allowed such goodness in my life. Now onto wedding planning!

Typing that all out made me so happy and excited all over again! I prayed for so long for an answer to this prayer and as you can see, waiting on God for something this big brings about so much joy when he finally answers your prayer. If you are still waiting for a husband (or wife), please let this be an encouragement for you that God does see and hear your prayers! They are not lost on him! Waiting for his blessing when it came to dating was one of the greatest things I’ve ever done.

Also, I mentioned in the recap about how we we’re nervous to tell others, (especially Tommy’s family), about our engagement. It wasn’t because they disapproved of our relationship, it was because we we’re both pretty young and we knew that they thought it was better if we waited longer to get married. (Tommy was 21 and I was 23 when we got engaged.) We felt God was calling us into a deeper relationship, and we learned that it is not wise to date for too long because of temptation. We also both believed that dating was for the purpose of marriage and we both were at the place where we knew we wanted to marry each other so we knew waiting to get married would not be wise. As you can see from the story though, everything worked out because I feel like when we take a step of faith, God really works out the rest for us.

If you’re interested in seeing the rest of our engagement pictures, I shared them here. I also did an Engagement Confessions post here. Check back next Thursday for our Ceremony Pictures!

Read More

2 Comments
Faith, Marriage

The Most Important Thing To Remember In Your Marriage

January 20, 2017

I usually would never title a post with such a serious name. I am always skeptical when I read an all-encompassing title such as this one. I’m skeptical because well, how could another person possibly know what is the most important thing for my marriage. Whatever they’re thinking probably is the most important thing for their marriage, but certainly can’t be for every marriage. So if that’s what you’re thinking, I will encourage you to keep reading. I think you will agree with me on this one. And even if you don’t believe it’s THE most important thing to remember, I am convinced that you will at least agree that is in the top three most important things to remember when it comes to a healthy marriage, and will understand why I named it the most important thing for a marriage.

I actually read this little bit of advice from a book, Love and Respect. (I actually did a book review on it a few years ago, so if you’re interested you can check that out here. It is definitely one of my favorite marriage books. It really opens your eyes to what a husband or wife really needs from their spouse.)

The most important marriage advice I’ve heard is to remember that your husband (or wife) is a good-willed person, specifically when they do something that hurts you. Remind yourself that he loves you, and whatever he did to make you upset doesn’t change that. Also remember that whatever it was, he did not purposely do it just to hurt you. He might not have even known that it did hurt you.

I think this might be better shown through an example. Let’s say you ask your husband to take out the garbage the following morning, and he forgets. And let’s also say that you guys have been going through a harder season where it feels like he seems to forget a lot of things that you ask him to do lately. I think it can be so easy to jump straight to the conclusion that he keeps forgetting to do these things because he doesn’t care about you. (I am always very quick to jump to this conclusion.) This is when it’s important to remember that your husband is a good-willed person. Remind yourself that while it may be easy to think that he did this because he doesn’t care about you, he more likely didn’t do it because he forgot, and that’s it. I think it’s also helpful to remind yourself in this moment of the last thoughtful thing your husband did for you so that you don’t jump to the conclusion that he doesn’t care. Dwell on the reason why you know he cares.

While I’m not saying that this will just make everything better. It still might make you upset or angry, and I am not saying that those feelings are wrong or not justified. I just think it’s important not to run with those feelings. Once we start believing that our husbands do not care for us, we get into very dangerous waters. I believe if we start thinking that they don’t care, that’s when the foundation of your relationship starts breaking down and it can only get worse from there. Without trust there is no relationship. We really need to be able to trust our husbands for us to be able to work out issues or for our relationship to thrive.

Please note that I do recognize that this may not be true for every relationship and that I am aware that there are abusive relationships where this basic truth does not apply. If you are in a relationship and you do not feel that this is true, and you do not feel that your husband genuinely cares for you or know that he does things to purposely hurt you, please think about seeking help. You do not deserve to be in a relationship that is hurtful or abusive.

Read More

No Comments
Faith, Life, Marriage

Here’s To Blogging Full-Time + Why I’m Choosing This Path

January 17, 2017

It’s official! I am a full-time blogger and stay at home wife. I can’t believe it. That sentence just brings me so much joy. In my last post, I explained how my husband was waiting on some big news from his job regarding a promotion. We heard back about that job and it was not at all what we were led on to believe it was. At first we were very disappointed and confused. We really felt like God was leading us on a new path. But since the job was not what we thought it was going to be, we weren’t sure how this would be possible anymore. There was a lot of confusion, some anger, and some tears, but God showed up big time like he always does. To make a long story short, Tommy is continuing to work with his dad as a welder, and learning as much as he can about his dad’s business in the coming years, to hopefully eventually take over the business down the road. We are so thankful that everything worked out to an even better plan than we originally thought!

So what that means for me is I get to pursue my dream of blogging full-time! As you can see, there has already been a lot of changes on my blog over the weekend. I ended up switching over to a self-hosting site (which was the biggest headache ever), and was able to customize my blog to finally look the way that I’ve always dreamed of it looking.

Why I Am Choosing To Be A Stay At Home Wife

I know that I keep mentioning that I feel like God is leading me to “stay at home” or “work at home”, so I want to explain a little bit more about what that means to me and why I feel like God is calling me to it.

As a little girl, the one dream that I can remember far outweighing all of the others was being a wife and mom. God answered my long-standing prayer of being a wife on May 22, 2016. It has been a dream since then honestly, but not at all what I thought it would be like. Since then, I’ve written so much about how lost, far from God, and confused I’ve felt. I’ve also written about how much anxiety I have been struggling with since getting married. It honestly didn’t make much sense to me because this is what I’ve always wanted. Why was it so hard?

It took me a long time and a lot of seeking God for it to finally make sense. God showed me that I was feeling so stressed and lost because I had too much on my plate. Working full-time, at a pretty demanding job no less, didn’t give me much time and much less energy to really get things done at home. I always felt like I was behind on my chores around the house, that I was failing at cooking healthy meals, and that I just was always tired and always on edge. Not exactly how you want to feel during your first year of marriage.

This was particularly hard on me because my husband and I believe that as a wife or husband, our first priorities should be our family. This just looks differently for both of us. As a wife, that means to me that it is my job to manage my home, meaning cooking healthy meals, cleaning and organizing our home, etc. While we believe it is my husband’s job to provide. So because I felt such a high call to manage the home, I felt like such a failure because I knew I wasn’t doing this to the best of my ability. (Please note, my husband does help me around the house and I really do enjoy working at home. He does not expect these things of me or get angry with me if I am not doing a good job with them. He always lovingly helps me if I am behind.)

I had no idea how I would ever have the time to do these things well, but when my anxiety got to be so bad, my husband and I felt the only healthy option I had was to quit my job, and seek God as to what to do next. It has been a long, long road but this is why I am choosing to be a stay at home wife and finally feel like I have the time to really manage my home and set the peaceful atmosphere for my husband and guests that I’ve always wanted to.

What You Can Expect From Me + What Topics I Plan To Write About

I’ve always, always talked about wanting to post more on here. I honestly have never posted consistently. I plan to have a post up every day, Monday-Friday! As far as topics, I plan to write about my journey to getting a handle on being a stay at home wife – including things like meal planning, my cleaning schedule, and how I budget. I also want to continue on with the healthy eating series I just started. I want to write more extensively about marriage and what I’ve learned so far. I am also going to start sharing wedding details and sharing our pictures, which I’m really excited about! That’s it for the most part, I plan on sharing book reviews when I have them and as always, what God is teaching me. I’m so excited for this new season and am so thankful to be able to share it with you!

Read More

4 Comments
Marriage

An Update on being a Stay-at-Home Wife

January 13, 2017
Life has been vastly different for me since quitting my job three weeks ago. I have so much more freedom than I can ever remember having. It can be a little overwhelming sometimes. Other times it can also be super inspiring. I’m learning to lean on the latter. I have so many plans, both big and small, about what I want to do with my time now. The only thing that’s holding me back is uncertainty right now.

You see, as I’ve shared before, my husband is in limbo right now and we are waiting to hear back about a job that we were almost certain he was going to get. (Seeing as the owner of the company told him that he wanted him for the job!) There have been a few hiccups though but we should be finding out very soon what is really going to happen.

I share all that to say that I have been having a hard time finding a “rhythm” as a stay-at-home wife because I am not 100% sure how long I’m going to be able to do this right now. I haven’t wanted to take the time to make a stay at home schedule if it is only a 1-2 month thing, and end up having to go back to work, whether that be part or full time because that would again change my schedule.

When I first started “working at home”, I also was unsure how I was going to like it. It seemed like an awesome fit before doing it because it gave me a lot more time to focus on the things that are very important to me – cooking healthy foods, cleaning our home, setting a relaxing atmosphere, etc. I was very excited for this because I always felt like I never had enough energy to really devote myself to these things. But I remained skeptical because I was very nervous about what others would think, (and I worried that would affect me so much that I would not be able to stay motivated at home), if I would have too much time to do these things and get bored, how it would affect my marriage, etc.

Staying Motivated

All of this has caused me to be confused about how I actually feel about this situation. But I have learned that I definitely could enjoy working from home. I have learned that it is very important to stay motivated as well. For the first few weeks I made a list of things that I wanted to get done around the house while I was at home, but didn’t have the motivation to start them because I felt like I should wait until I found out if I was going to stay home permanently or not first. (Because I wanted to plan out every detail and felt like I couldn’t just yet.)

While most of my anxiety had gone away after quitting my job, I still had some really bad days and I was really confused as to why. One day I was feeling particularly anxious, while I was thinking about one of these projects that I wanted to get done, and I just decided to just jump right into it. Forget planning. Forget having the “perfect” time to get it done. And I felt so much better for the rest of the day. I was actually amazed at how much better I felt.

That day I realized how important it is to stay motivated even when you don’t necessarily have to get something done. It’s so important to my well-being to be able to feel like I can accomplish things. I also have been looking more seriously into blogging full-time and I am getting really excited about that.

What Has Changed Since Being Home
- I have much less anxiety.
- I have less stress.
- I can actually enjoy what I’m doing.
- I am much happier.
- I feel more “myself” again.
- I have more motivation.
- I pray way more.
- I have a much better relationship with God.
- I have clearer skin.
I attribute all of these great things happening to having more time (obviously). I also believe that these things are a result of listening to what God has planned for you. I believe one reason why we experience a lot of stress and anxiety is because we are trying to live a life that God has not intended for us to live. By taking a step of faith and listening to what God called me to do, I believe it opened up these blessing into my life.

Projects That I Have Completed/Want To Complete

I want to also share exactly what I’ve been up to since I’ve been home. Before I quit my job I had projects in the back of my mind that I always wanted to get to but never had the time/energy to do so. Since I’ve been home I have been able to:

I should have taken a before picture … This is much better than it was!
- Clean out our bedroom closet (see above picture) – This was the biggest mess you’ve ever seen before I was able to clean it up. I feel so so much better now that it’s done.
- Catch up on a lot of deep cleaning – I am still working on this but I did 6 loads of laundry yesterday! (3 loads of regular laundry, towels, sheets, and our comforter!) I was also able to dust and really clean the floor in our room (even under the bed!). There are some more deep cleaning projects that I plan to do within the next week too. (Deep cleaning the bathroom, the cars, and the floors in the rest of the house.)
- Organize our drawers – I have not started this but plan to because these drawers are a mess.
- Organize the kitchen cabinets/pantry – I want to do this, not because the cabinets are necessarily a mess but because we got a Ninja blender for Christmas and I have nowhere to put it so I haven’t been able to use it! Need to get to this one soon!
As you can see having more time at home has opened the door to me actually being able to feel like I have a handle on what is going on in our home, rather than me feeling like the house is always one step ahead of me. I feel like I can actually manage the home, which is such a great feeling. Once I get all of these projects done, I plan on making a cleaning schedule and keeping up on all of them. Depending on if I am able to stay home going forward I also plan to make detailed meal plans for each meal of the day and am super excited about that! (I will definitely share more about that going forward!) I hope this answers any questions about what I have been up to the past three weeks! 😉
Read More

No Comments
Life, Marriage

Year In Review: 2016!

December 29, 2016

So I must say, going into 2016 I thought it was going to be the best year yet, seeing as I was going into the year on a high, just having gotten engaged. On the other side of the year however, this has definitely been one of the most challenging years of my life. I wouldn’t say it wasn’t a good year, but it was definitely filled with some of the highest highs and a lot of the lowest lows. Getting married has literally changed everything.

J A N U A R Y

The first have of the year was filled with all things wedding planning. It literally consumed all of my free time. In January I found and ordered my wedding dress! We also celebrated both mine and Tommy’s birthday. Tommy took me out to a really nice Italian restaurant and bought me the sweetest gifts. I also began working basically by myself this month at my old job, Hudson City Savings Bank, because most of my floor was laid off.

F E B R U A R Y

February we had our engagement party, hosted by both of our moms. This was a really fun time, having both of our families together, celebrating us.

M A R C H

In March we took our engagement pictures, which came out so nice. I also was laid off in March and started another job exactly a week after I was laid off. Tommy also started working at the quarry this month. This month was filled with answered prayers!

A P R I L

In April, God answered another huge prayer of ours, and blessed us with the awesome condo we now live in. I was really struggling with my home situation and was super stressed out because of it and God answering this prayer really showed me that He does care about the little details of our lives. I also had my bridal shower this month, and we went on both our bachelorette/bachelor parties!

M A Y

May was a HUGE month for us because we got MARRIED this month! It was such a dream come true to marry my best friend. We left from the wedding and took a limo into NYC where we stayed for the night and flew out the next morning and spend a week in the Dominican Republic. Soo wishing we could go back to that now!

J U N E

I honestly don’t think we did much of anything in June. We needed some much needed rest from the craziness of planning a wedding. We finished setting up our home and started to get used to our life as husband and wife.

J U L Y

July was another quiet month because we were still recuperating and getting used to married life. We celebrated 4th of July with my family at a state park and spent the day hanging in trees. 🙂

A U G U S T

In August, Tommy and I went to Wildwood with my mom, brother and his girlfriend for about a week. It was a nice little trip with lots of family time. We also went down the shore almost every weekend this month after because we realized that we had spent most of our time inside this summer.

S E P T E M B E R

In September Tommy learned to surf! It was such a cool day and really awesome for me to be apart of. The rest of the month was pretty quiet. Tommy took me on a really fun mini golf date to celebrate being married for 4 months and bought me a new pair of boots.

O C T O B E R

We crossed off one of our fall bucket list items and went apple picking in October. This was such a fun time, I even blogged about the day here.

N O V E M B E R

In November we celebrated our first married Thanksgiving! I also surprised Tommy with a wetsuit and a trip to Ocean City, Maryland this month. We had a nice little trip, and can hardly wait for it to warm up again so we can go back!

D E C E M B E R

We celebrated our First Christmas being married. Spent tons of time with family. Baked lots and lots of cookies. Exchanged presents. We also visited the tree in NYC with my brother and his girlfriend, and my cousin and her boyfriend.

It’s hard not to look back on this year with gratefulness in my heart. Even though it was a little hard, and there were lots of changes, God still showed up and brought so much joy to my life this year. I cannot wait for 2017!

Read More

1 Comment