It's that time again

School is back in session! Today was Jack’s first day of first grade. He asked me about 1000 times how many days till school started this summer, and the long awaited day finally arrived with all the fanfare of a crisp PNW September morning. Last year I walked him to his classroom door every morning and gave him a certain number of hugs each day, agreed upon during our walk to school (“mom, I want 5 big hugs today” — big hugs are ones where I lift him off the ground). This year he wanted to walk in the doors all by himself, but we convinced him to let us tag along to get a glimpse of his new classroom.

Last year was hard. Despite having been to three years of preschool, and being in classes that were around the same length of a full day of public school, he had a really rough transition and I may or may not have cried in the Principal’s office on multiple occasions, including before the school year even started (thanks, Kindergarten Jump Start). He’s what Dr. Becky calls a DFK— a deeply feeling kid. If you aren’t familiar with Dr. Becky her work has been super helpful for us with learning how to better support Jack as parents. Loved her book and she has a great podcast too. I digress. Jack has really strong opinions, an intense sense of justice, and a really hard time being wrong. So all those things butted up against the reality of being in a school setting with lots of new kids, lots of daily transitions, and lots of conflicts with other kids. But his school was so supportive along the way, in a way I didn’t know that was possible at public school (and probably isn’t possible in a lot of school districts in this country).

Growing up in a private school setting from 3rd grade on, I got a sense of public-school-bad, private-school-good. The messaging was sort of that public school had less academic rigor, less support because so many kids attended them, and enrolled more “troubled kids,” whatever that meant. I haven’t been tempted to send Jack to private school, mostly because I have no interest in sending him to a religious school like I was, and also because we just straight up can’t afford it. But I was nervous last year sending him to public school because I still had those outdated messages swirling around in the back of my head.

Turns out, they were all wrong. I’ve been super impressed with the Tacoma Public School system. Jack’s elementary school was so willing to work with Jack to figure out how to support him. The principal was one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, the staff all knew Jack by name and they were so nice to him all the time.

So this year, I’m still worried that he might have issues and have moments where dysregulation causes behavior that lands him in the principal’s office, but it’s also nice knowing that this school is so supportive of him and actively want to give him the resources he needs to succeed. And it goes without saying that I’m thrilled to have him in a school district that supports LGBTQ+ students, and puts a huge emphasis on social emotional learning. I know we’re in a little blue oasis up here in the NW in some ways, but this is one way that feels really important right now, especially considering what’s happening in school districts around the nation.

Anyway, cheers to the new school year. Cheers to watching your kid grow up right before your eyes, and CHEERS to having 6 whole hours of time during the day where I don’t have to be a hands-on parent and can do stuff that I like, woo!

I'm... giving up DIY

I've spent my entire life DIYing nearly everything. Does my DIY impulse have any limits? I don't know, I once removed my own stitches to avoid having to go back to the doctor, soooo…

But this year has revealed to me that by insisting on doing literally everything myself has totally overloaded my bandwidth and is ultimately unhealthy. So, the past few months I've been working on implementing things that can make my life a little easier, take things off my plate, and handle the things that I cannot do. 

I do a lot of things. On top of the full-time gig of creating content that revolves around home renovation (which sometimes feels like 2 full-time jobs), I also take on a lot of the full-time responsibilities of being a mom and homemaker. “Liz… that sounds like… a lot? How do you do it all?”  Oh, how nice of you to ask! Well, my previous method was to just grind until I burned out, which didn't seem like a great cycle to keep churning out, so here are a few things I'm doing to take more off my plate, help me manage my household, and take care of myself. 

Will I be DIYing stuff on my house? Absolutely. But the reality is, there just isn't enough ME to DIY EVERYTHING. And I've been trying (and failing) for way too long. Something's gotta give, and it has. I don't take care of my mental or physical health because I'm too busy DIYing every nook and cranny of my life. It's too much, it's not working, and it's not healthy. So, in 2023, we're not DIYing everything anymore. We're creating healthy balance, we're outsourcing, we're able to focus more on the areas of life that we're excellent at and love doing and bringing in HELP (what a novel concept) in the areas that don't fit that bill.

We can do anything, but not everything.

We can do anything, but not everything.

Okay, let's do this

The Fourth

4th of July felt very uneasy to celebrate this year what with our border “situation” but we got to spend some low-key time with great friends watching the kids play, throwing pop its, and enjoying time together. It feels like such an immense privilege to be able to do all that. To have a cozy house to come home to, regardless of its unfinished state. To be able to move freely to visit friends. To get to tuck my son in at night and read him stories and sing him bedtime songs. I know so many mothers out there would give anything to have that. Instead of spending money on frivolous 4th of July stuff (okay, other than that $1 flag— Jack wouldn’t let me leave Target without it, haha), I ended up donating to TogetherRising to help stop the child detainment and separation at the border (though RAICES is also an amazing organization too, if you’re looking to donate!).

Since Dan had the day off work we did some tiling and we’re in the home stretch now (well, for the kitchen. we still will have to do the bathroom and the laundry closet). Everything now is just edge cuts so I’m back on duty as resident tile cutter. If you’ve never cut tile with a tile saw, let me tell you… it’s pretty fun. But maybe my idea of fun is a little different than yours, haha.

Life Lately | June is crazy

June, guys… whew! This month has been crazy town. I can’t even believe this has been one month, it’s felt like ages. We haven’t even lived in the flip house for a whole month yet! I can’t believe we moved in on June 1st, so weird. I guess if you didn’t get the news, we moved out of our other house, turned that one into an Airbnb and are now living in our not-yet-finished flip house. I’ve been given a crash course in managing and turning over an Airbnb because we had guests every single night during the month of June except ONE night. Holy moly. July is looking to be just as busy and while it’s a lot of work to clean and do the laundry on a nearly daily basis, I’m super thankful for two things. One: we are making enough on that house’s Airbnb income that it pays for itself plus some! and Two: I get to work and have my kid hanging out with me the whole time!

One thing that ‘s been hard for me after having Jack was the fact that I wasn’t financially contributing to the family. I know that what I’m doing as a mom is arguably far more important than bringing in money, but as someone who has always contributed to our income, I’ve just felt like a drain on our finances, so being able to do something that brings in an income while also getting to spend time with Jack during the time we go clean the house between guests has been really nice.

While it’s been nice to be bringing in a more steady income (I was doing the odd blog/instagram sponsored post before, and some photography gigs here and there, so not nothing, but also not steady), it’s also been pretty hard adjusting to living in a house that is basically still partially unfinished. The master bath is down to the studs and we just taped up plastic over the doorway to it. The kitchen floor has been plywood for 3 weeks and now, as we’re starting to prep for tiling, we don’t have any of our appliances in the kitchen because they all have to be out so we can tile under them. So our living room is full of appliances and the kitchen island and we’ve been eating take out for almost every meal which sounds great in theory, but really I’d just love to be able to cook a meal again. And have a living room that doesn’t have an oven, refrigerator, and island in the middle of it.

And in totally unrelated news, I finally bleached my very grown out roots and re-dyed my hair! I finally got the color I was originally wanting! It ended up more neon green the first time around, and this time I got the more mustard-y chartreuse yellow I was looking for. If any of you are crazy like me, it’s Arctic Fox Cosmic Sunshine and I added a little Iris Green into it.

Blogging as it was

When I started this blog in 2008 it was both an online journal and a way to share myself with others and, in turn, be inspired by other bloggers. It was on a really random internet rabbit hole adventure that I found fashion bloggers and having recently gotten more into personal style I just decided on the spot to start one as well.

None of us had any idea that blogging would become a huge industry. No one knew what we were even talking about when we said we were “bloggers.” Back in those days, sharing our daily lives and inspirations wasn’t about getting clicks, affiliate link income, and landing sponsorships. It was just connecting with others and enjoying the creative outlet of writing and photographing our days. Poorly lit photos and all.

I’ve been wondering lately about infusing some of that back into this space. Adding anything into my life these days is a process of vetting it for worthiness of taking up my very limited time. Is writing little diary posts up here even something I want to spend the energy doing? I’m not sure. But what I know is, we don’t need any more perfect blogs or perfect instagrams filled with professional photos of perfectly posed “candid” shots, and kitchen renovations done in a magical month. So I guess, I just want to share more of what is really happening, in my life, on the regular. Like, hi guys! I’m a person! I do lots of stuff (too much?) and have way too many thoughts about all the things.

So I’m gonna take things back a little bit here. Back to blogging as it was. We’ll see how it goes.