An Anniversary for TIAW

Started this blog one year ago, and it's pretty exciting to look back over my year here! One of the most surprising benefits of this blog is the feedback I've received. You have no idea how excited I feel when a friend begins a conversation with the words, "So, I read on your blog..." or "Is that one of your clearance finds?!". Not to mention how many fun things I've been asked to do or be a part of (parties, showers & weddings), simply because they were reminded or learned more about me and my crazy dreams from this blog. 

I've always enjoyed creating and imagining. But I got so busy and distracted packing up my schedule full of school, work and being a gym rat. It finally all caught up to me in the form of a lovely little thing called chronic costochondritis, inflammation of rib cartilage. Between my high level of activity (running half marathons and daily gym visits) and stress from packing each hour of the day my body (& mind & my husband!) had enough! Cutting back is hard, trying to make every moment the best use of time and pressuring myself to be perfect in accomplishments and body is a vicious cycle. So in an effort to enjoy life again, I started to pick up where I left off on the activities I enjoyed before getting caught up with 'adult life'. Naturally, I wanted something to help me keep track of ideas and projects to look back on. Because, lets face it, I do like to be busy and have lots of things going on, but its got to be in balance. Since taking turns in the backseat of my life, I've learned a few things: some things can wait until tomorrow (or next week-yikes!) and how to sleep in past 7 AM (that was a big deal!). 

There's been challenges let me tell ya. My body is not where my perfectionist mind wants it to be. I've had to experiment and figure out how I can exercise moderately and every time I go to far my ribs remind me. I think its just God's way of keeping me in line, exercise was kind of like my drug for a while there. This past fall I had the opportunity to be reminded that not being in fantastic shape with great muscle tone doesn't mean I'm fat and ugly. My good friend of AshWhitePhotography, who I also mentioned in the post about our Christmas photo, asked me (ME!) to get out my wedding dress and help her add to her portfolio. And guess what? My dress still fit! And best of all, I have a couple hundred photos to remind myself on my 'fat-days' that I have some good features (thanks mom!) and my husband isn't lying when he tells me he thinks I'm beautiful. 

(AshWhite Photography)

So not exactly the typical post here, but just wanted to take some time to reflect on why I am even doing this in the first place and what its meant to me to keep this puppy going for one whole year! Lets do it again, shall we?
Here goes year two!