• Life

    What’s Up Wednesday: February 2017 Edition

    February 22, 2017

    Hi friends, I’m back again this month for What’s Up Wednesday! I really cannot believe it’s already the end of February. It went soo fast. Let’s recap the month! 🙂

    This post contains affiliate links.

    WUW Questions

    What We’re Eating This Week

    Lots and lots of soup. It’s kind of weird timing because the weather is finally getting warmer but it’s still not too warm for some yummy soup! I had the meat ingredients in my freezer for Italian Sausage, Spinach, and Tomato Soup, so when I went food shopping yesterday I picked up the rest of the ingredients because the last time I made it, it was delish. I also have plans to make Beef Bourguignon, the recipe that’s in For the Love because Jen Hatmaker made it sound so, so good.

    What I’m Reminiscing About

    That time when Tommy and I attempted Paleo eating for a couple of weeks back when we were dating. I’m honestly not really sure why I have been thinking about it but I really want to do it again. Maybe sometime in the near future?

    What I’m Loving

    That the weather is starting to warm up! It’s usually very cold in New Jersey in February but this week it has even hit the 60’s! Tommy and I and my cousin and her boyfriend even went hiking this past Sunday and it was awesome to just get out of the house. I’m really hoping it stays this warm!

    What We’ve Been Up To

    what’s a road trip without Starbucks?

    This past weekend Tommy and I went up to Lake George with his parents and it was really fun despite it being much colder up there. We went out for Hibachi, which was great and Tommy and I had a nice date at our favorite coffee shop. (The pictures I took are on his phone though, which I’m kicking myself now because I really want to add them to this post!)

    What I’m Dreading

    Honestly nothing 🙂

    What I’m Working On

    Oh boy. This question. I have been working so hard the past month or so that I kind of ran myself into the ground. I have been spending so much of my time researching as much as I can about blogging. I’m learning so much too!

    I also am working on setting up an Etsy shop but don’t think I’m ready to divulge the details yet! I will as soon as I think it’s a good time to though, and I’m super excited about it!! I’ve been spending even more of my time working on making the products for the shop.

    What I’m Excited About

    Tommy and I have been married for 9 months today!! I can’t believe it’s almost been a year!

    What I’m Watching/Reading

    Well like I mentioned before, I’m reading For the Love by Jen Hatmaker. My favorite place and honestly only place I’ve been reading this is in a nice warm bath, which is why I have barely read at all this month. #oops.

    SOURCE

    We just finished watching Parenthood last night and I’m so sad it’s over. It was so great. I need all the Netflix suggestions because I’m lost on what to watch next!

    What I’m Listening To

    I’ve just been starting to get into Podcasts. I listen to one by one of my favorite bloggers, Blair called Simplify Everything. I need some suggestions for that too though!!

    What I’m Wearing

    Oh gosh this is embarrassing but 9 times out of 10 I’m in sweats now that I’m working from home. But honestly it’s because I only really have corporate attire and I am not about to wear clothes like that at home. I really need to go shopping for more casual clothes that are comfy but not sweats.

    What I’m Doing This Weekend

    It looks like it’s going to rain this weekend despite it being in the 60’s! (insert crying face). Oh but Tommy and I have a nice date planned for Saturday morning! He wants to take me to this really yummy bakery so that should be exciting. Then on Sunday morning we will be back at church after 3 weeks off! I don’t remember the last time I’ve missed that many weeks in a row of church, but I am very excited to be going on Sunday.

    What I’m Looking Forward To Next Month

    The weather getting consistently warmer and also to continue blogging and working on my Etsy shop!

    What Else Is New

    Just that I’ve been talking more openly about my choice to be a full time blogger with my family and they have taken it way better than I thought they would. I even shared my blog on my regular Facebook page, which I was really nervous about doing.

    I also started using essential oils this month and I just love them already! Do you use essential oils? Or are you tired of hearing about them yet?

    Bonus Question: What Is Your Go To Beauty Product

    I honestly don’t use makeup very much normally and now that I’m home most of the time I really don’t use it. But I really want to start putting it on every day again and learning how to really do my makeup, not just mascara and coverup. If you have any tips for me they would be very much welcomed because I honestly do not know where to start!

    Bonus: Visit last years What’s Up Wednesday for February to see how much my life has changed since then!

    I am linking up with Shay, Shaeffer, and Mel! 

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  • Faith,  Marriage

    An Open Letter To My Husband

    February 21, 2017

    I know I have been writing a lot about marriage the past couple of weeks but it’s just so hard not to. It’s obviously such a huge part of my life and it’s the thing that I most feel like I can help others with, not because I’m an expert but because it’s very real to me right now and I’m still learning. I’ve always loved writing about things while I’m still in the process of going through them myself so that whatever I’m writing about will be hopefully be relatable.

    This post however is probably not going to help anyone though, but it is still something that I really want to write. Mostly to document this newlywed time well and to also encourage my husband too. This letter is actually part of the challenge at the end of the Wife After God book (affiliate link). The challenge is to write a letter to your husband and present it to him in a meaningful way. I just thought I’d share it with you all as well. 🙂 I would actually encourage anyone reading this to try it with your husband (or boyfriend) and let me know how it goes! I think it will be a really special time.

    To My Tommy,

    I finished the Wife After God book probably a little over a week ago or so and at the end of the book there is a challenge to write a letter to your husband. I’ve been really excited about this but also haven’t done it yet mostly because I honestly lack the words to really get across to you how much you mean to me. That may sound so cliché but I really mean it. I thought if I waited a bit I could think of the words or the perfect way to present this letter to you, but I don’t think I’ll ever find the words to perfectly communicate how much I love you.

    Anytime that I take the time to think about how our life is together, I am in complete awe that God would actually allow this much goodness in my life. I’ve dreamed of getting married for honestly as long as I can remember. Sure I’ve had tons of dreams but being a wife and mom were always at the very top of my list, and honestly the only two that I truly cared about seeing come true. Now that they are coming true, this life is way better than I ever dreamed it would be. And not just because God answered my prayer. I’m sure I’d be happy no matter what if I just got the chance to be a wife, but I’m amazed that God allowed me to be your wife.

    I know I don’t say it anywhere near enough but I’m so proud to be your wife. You make this life easy. You are always putting my needs first and working so very hard to provide for us, and those things never go unnoticed, even if I forget to thank you for them. 

    The way that you have been supporting my dreams of making a living working from home, even though it makes our lives more difficult in this season is a true reminder that you care so much about me and my happiness. I’m so thankful that I have someone who encourages me to chase my dreams. I’ve never had that before and it’s such an awesome thing. 

    I love the way that you aren’t afraid to step out of your comfort zone for us. Whether that be at work, trying your very best to make a living for us, despite the odds against you sometimes. Or whether that be in your faith. You lead me so well with your faith. I think we compliment each other so well when it comes to faith. You never hesitate to take the next step that we need, whether that is to start praying together, or joining a small group, or changing churches. You are always listening to my needs and trying your best to make sure that they are being met. 

    On top of all that, as if it could get any better, you are my very best friend. When something great happens, you are the first person I want to tell so that we can celebrate together. Or when something not so great happens, you are still the first person I want to tell because I know you will be there to encourage me through it. I love doing things with you, even if it’s just hanging out in the house all day. We always have fun together and that’s such a great gift to have in a husband.

    I still don’t feel that these words accurately display just how much you mean to me but I hope they at least scratch the surface and they encourage you. Thank you for being such a loving husband and my closest friend. You are everything to me. I love you.

    Love,
            Your wife

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  • Faith,  Marriage

    How To Pray For Your Marriage

    February 20, 2017

    I wanted to write a post about how to pray for your marriage because even though I wrote about how to pray for your husband, I think praying specifically for our marriages is actually different. I know that this will make it a lot easier for myself to pray for my marriage, so I figured it would help others as well.

    Just like in my praying for your husband post, this post will also be outlined based off of a chapter in the book Wife After God: Drawing Closer to God & Your Husband. If you are interested doing this study alongside your husband, there is also a book Husband After God: Drawing Closer To God And Your Wife. (Please note these are both affiliate links, meaning if you make a purchase I may receive a small commission for the sale, but the price does not change for you. Thanks for your support!) It may also be a really special time to ask your husband to pray for your marriage with you.

    1 | Thank God for the gift of marriage

    No matter if your marriage is easy or hard, God still has given you marriage as a gift and I think it’s important that we try to see it as such. (This obviously is easier in some seasons than it is in others.) Thank God for the gift that is marriage and having a partner to do life with. If you are going through a hard time in your marriage and are having a hard time seeing your marriage as a gift, ask God to change your heart to be able to see your marriage as a gift.

    2 | Ask God to protect your marriage

    As it says in the Wife After God book, marriage will always be a very fragile thing. Since we are two sinners living together, there will always be arguments and hard things, so I think it is so important to ask God to protect our marriages. Ask that God will protect your marriage from the schemes of the devil and from your own sinful desires.

    3 | Ask that God will increase the intimacy between you and your husband

    Increasing intimacy will obviously make our marriages stronger. If we ask God to increase the intimacy between us and our husbands, he will be able to help with this. Sometimes this might not be so easy apart from God, but with his help, he can open our eyes to ways that we can bless our marriage. He may also show our husbands how they can also pursue us better as well.

    4 | Ask God to help you center your marriage on him

    This is important because without a firm foundation, marriage can very easily crumble. We know that if we build our relationships on God, our foundation will always be secure. Ask God to show you how to center your marriage more on him.

    5 | Ask God to show you what you need to pray for

    This one is great. Sometimes we honestly don’t know what may be lacking in our marriage or where we can improve so all we need to do is ask God to show us what does need prayer. It may not be automatic, but this is a prayer God will definitely answer.

    6 | Ask God to help you with your finances

    I think this is a great thing to ask God as well. No matter how well we think we are managing our finances, God knows what is down the road and the best way we can handle them so it is so important to ask for his help. Finances can also be a huge stressor on marriages, so asking for his help with this can ultimately eliminate an issue within your marriage.

    7 | Ask God to strengthen your marriage

    All of these things will obviously strengthen your marriage but if we specifically ask God to strengthen our marriages, he will. Ask God to give you an increased desire to spend time doing the things that your husband enjoys, and vise versa. I don’t know anything quite as helpful to a marriage than spending a lot of time together, doing things that you both love. Ask God for help with this.

    These are just some ideas that might be helpful to pray over either by yourself or with your husband. Inviting God in always improves our situations, including our marriages, since marriage was always about God anyway.

    What other things do you pray for your marriage for? I’d love to add it to my list as well!

     

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  • Marriage

    Our Love Story In 10 Questions

    February 17, 2017

    This weekend my husband and I are taking a little getaway trip up to Lake George, New York with my in-laws. (They have a house up there.) I’m excited but also a little sad because it’s supposed to be almost 60 here in New Jersey this week and not that warm up at the lake! But I’m sure it will be a ton of fun so it will hopefully be worth it. But anyways, I say all that to say that I admittedly needed an easy blog post topic today because I still need to pack for both my husband and I (I’m such a procrastinator) and we are going to try to leave by 2ish. I’ve also seen two of the bloggers I follow do this (both Amanda from The Lady Okie and Morgan from The Truelife of MKH) and I just love, love stories so I figured I had to join them too!

    Also before I dive in I wrote out mine and my husband’s love story on our one year dating anniversary so you can check that out if you’re interested. (Part One + Part Two)

    Our Love Story In 10 Questions

    When did you meet? We met at a Dunkin’ Donuts in February of 2014.

    How did you meet? We had a mutual friend who was hanging out with Tommy and a bunch of other people and he kept asking me to come because he wanted me to meet Tommy and I was so nervous I almost didn’t go! Meanwhile Tommy never even knew I was invited until I showed up! (Although technically we met at a party two years prior at another mutual friends house but never stayed in contact after that.)

    First Date: April 20, 2014. It was Easter and after we both had spent time with our families, Tommy came and picked me up from my uncle’s house and took me hiking. It actually ended up getting dark and he held my hand on the way back to his car. I definitely had butterflies and it honestly felt like a movie. I took this picture as the sun set.

    Date you got engaged: December 5, 2015

    Marriage Anniversary: May 22, 2016

    What is your song? We don’t really have a song, but our wedding song is When You Got A Good Thing by Lady Antebellum. We also both really love Eric Church so those songs really remind me of him.

    Do you remember the first movie you saw together? Hmm nope not really. I believe the first one in theaters was The Fault In Our Stars.

    First road trip together? I have the worst memory ever honestly, let’s see… probably one of the times we drove up to Lake George I would have to guess. I honestly really don’t remember.

    Who was interested first? I would say it was mutual but he was the first to act on it and start talking to me.

    Who said I love you first? He did. I think. Omg I’m the worst!

    Here’s some more fun real life pictures from over the years!

     

    The night we got engaged. Real life. We could not get a nice picture no matter how hard we tried!
    Our first Christmas together

     

    Our first birthday(s) together (our birthdays are 1 day apart)

     

    Our first vacation together at Lake George. This very well may be from our first road trip, haha

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  • Wedding

    Zinhobls Say I Do: Bride + Groom

    February 16, 2017

    Hi friends. I just wanted to start out by saying thank you so much for all of the support you guys have been giving me lately, especially since my last post about chasing my dreams. All of your comments really mean so much to me so thank you! Today I want to continue on for the fourth week sharing our wedding pictures! (Hopefully you aren’t tired of them yet! ;))

    Today I’m going to be sharing the pictures of just Tommy and I that happened right after we got married. We were tossing up the idea to do a first look, and even wrote letters to each other (which you saw in the last wedding post, Getting Ready) but we actually ended up running out of time and didn’t end up doing the first look. I wasn’t disappointed or anything and it all turned out fine, but if you are considering doing a first look I would say go for it. I think it helps a ton because it saves you time after the ceremony because you will cut out a lot of picture-taking.

     

     

    I thought I’d better end the post now before it became overkill, haha. Now I’m wishing we could go back to that day. I can’t believe next Wednesday it will have been 9 months ago. Time just goes so fast!

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  • Faith,  Life

    It’s Okay To Chase Your Dreams

    February 15, 2017

    I had scheduled to write this post today since the beginning of the month. It turns out that today is actually the perfect day to write it. I’m actually so excited too! Let me explain.

    This month has been rough so far. I’ve been doubting my plan to try to make a living from working at home like a lot. I have been so worried that we weren’t going to have enough money to pay the bills and thought that I had chosen the wrong path, and that I should just go back to work. I have been so worried about how other people were going to see me that I haven’t had the motivation to really put too much effort into this plan.

    But something shifted in me the past two days and I honestly really believe that this is possible again. I actually believe it now more than I did when I first made the plan. A lot of that definitely has to do to my husband’s hard work and support of my dreams. He has been working so, so hard (like working the past 3 Saturdays) and has been able to pay all of our monthly bills plus some medical bills that we’ve been putting off for quite some time now. I am so in awe of both God’s provision and my husband’s will to walk in it. Every time I get down about this plan that we made, about me staying home, my husband has shown me that he 100% believes that I can do this and that makes all the difference for me to persevere through the times that I don’t believe that I can do this. I have without a doubt borrowed his faith some days.

    I also have been doing a ton of research about blogging and starting an Etsy shop (because that’s my next step!) and am learning so much. I’m learning different ways of how other people have become successful and adopting them as my own. The most exciting part about all of this is that I’m really passionate about these things. I love showing up and interacting with whoever may be reading this. I’m also so excited to start my own Etsy shop and be able to bless others in that way. I wanted to share with you guys an entry that I wrote in my journal from the beginning of the year where I had just decided to quit my job a week or so before and really had no idea where God was leading me. I believe that this is where it all started, God really showed me that he was about to take me down a path that I never could have dreamed of, and that this is only just the beginning.

    January 9, 2017

    In Isaiah 28, if I am understanding correctly, God is talking to a land or people (Ephraim and Judah) and is saying how that land was supposed to be “the resting place” but they would not listen. God gets angry because of this and punishes them. It shows me that there really is a time and place for rest. This season, although it can be challenging, is teaching me that. Sometimes I feel like I am just being lazy or am too broken right now and that’s why God has me home. But then I remember he has me home because he is teaching me here and is showing me it is okay to chase my dreams… wow!

    I remember writing that last sentence and almost not believing it or why I was writing it, which is one of the reasons why I added wow to the end, haha! God was only just introducing this idea to me and I was a little afraid to believe him honestly, but the more I walk in this path, the more I really believe that he really is showing me it’s okay to chase my dreams. I don’t want this to sound too preachy and weird, but I’m writing this to encourage anyone else who might feel like God is nudging them to do something that just seems crazy. There’s so much more to my story that shows that God had his hand all over this and that I couldn’t have made it up myself. I’ll have to try my best to try to share the rest of the story if you’re interested. If you can relate to this at all, leave a comment or send me an email and let me know how I can be praying for you. I know how tough taking that first step but I want you to be encouraged that if God is with me through this, he will be with you too! It’s okay to chase your dreams!

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