A Bathtub Isn't Big Enough For An Orca

This post was sponsored by Munchkin to raise awareness for Project Orca. As always, all opinions are my own.

To be honest, I don't think I could count on two hands the amount of Munchkin products we have in our house! Wipe warmer, cups, baby gates, utensils, training potty, snack grabbers, car gadgets, and endless bath toys... just to name a few. Their products are always affordable, well designed, usually in stock at Target (which, let's be real, is the main place I go) and seem to be made for real families like ours. I love that.

Which is why when Munchkin asked me to create a post about their involvement with Project Orca, I was honored to do so. After 10 years of making an orca toy, Munchkin decided to put their principles before their profits and have removed the top-selling toy from their sea squirt lineup. As a response to the harmful practice of keeping orcas in captivity, a practice still in effect today, they have decided to kick-start a donation of $1,000,000 to develop the first sea side orca sanctuary in the United States via Project Orca!

(How cute is this little t-shirt they sent us!?!)

June loves animals, like most 2.5 year olds do, and was so excited to wear her whale shirt the other day while we played with her bubble machine on our driveway. I told her about Orcas and how they live in the ocean, and now I'm pretty sure she thinks we're going to see one this coming week while on vacation in New Jersey. 😂 Sorry Junie.

(Also, note June trying to pick up the bubble machine below. Ha ha ha ha ha!)

While I'm not an over the top "no animal should ever be in captivity" activist, it does sadden me that there are still so many Orca's held in captivity in the U.S. and world wide. Several years ago, T.J. and I watched the Blackfish documentary on Netflix (based on Tilikum, the Orca who killed his trainer) and it freaked us out... like for days. And for good reason. (If you haven't watched it, you should!) It was so sad to see how these incredibly smart creatures try to cope with living in tanks, separate from their families.

If you'd like to help support Munchkin's efforts, you can get a t-shirt for yourself, or read more about their campaign at The Whale Sanctuary Project.

And for those of you who I know will ask, the bubble machine is from Target and worth every penny of the $10.99 price tag. 😂 😘

My Favorites From 2016

Holy moly. I cannot believe it's the first of the new year. 🙀 Like most new years, I am so excited about everything that is to come in the next 12 months -- June's 2nd birthday, our new business opening, new traditions, and travel, and pool memberships, and meals on our new back deck, and time with family and a string of endless opportunities to slow down, enjoy the moment, and love those closest to me well.

As I scrolled back through the last year of my blog this afternoon, I was overwhelmed with thankfulness and joy. If you're relatively new here, you probably don't know that I was a wedding photographer with a large blog following for 7+ years. It's only been in the last year that I've stepped away from weddings (🎉) to focus on my job as the Creative Director at walk in love., and spend more time with my family, thus leading me to blog about my personal life. And I am so, so grateful that I did.

Besides the fact that I have a pretty terrible memory, so photographing things actually helps me remember what's happened in my life 😂, it was so awesome to scroll through the pages and see the things that I love show up time and time again -- T.J. + June, my house, food, and creativity. It has been such a fun "1st year of blogging" and I cannot to wait to share all of the things I have on my list for 2017 with you.

Below, I've compiled a post with some of my favorite posts from all of 2016 - just click the underlined text if you'd like to see the original post in full. 😎 In no particular order... here goes:

2016: The year of front porch living.

2016: The year we basically only ate snack trays. #notjoking

2016: The year of our kitchen remodel!!

2016: The year I spent in my new kitchen -- making all the things, and eating a lot of deviled eggs. Like, a lot.

2016: The year we ate sweet potato fries 100 times.

2016: The year we ate these cookies... 100 times. 😳

2016: The year we finally started a garden!

2016: The year June was a kangaroo for Halloween, and melted everyone's hearts.

2016: The year I simplified almost everything -- including my beauty routine.

2016: The year June tried her first cake pop.

2016: The year in which I was no longer embarrased for our bedroom.

2016: The year I took time to actually make things.

2016: The year I made a frame, and thus I printed one photo for our home. 😂

2016: The year we got family photos taken!

2016: The year we did Christmas cards with said photos. #whatareweadults?!

2016: The year June was 10x more stylish than I was.

2016: The year we made our house feel even more like home.

Thank you for following along, reading my posts, trying my recipes and posting your #snacktrayz photos for me to see on Instagram. It's been such a fun year! Cheers to 2017! 

A Merry Minted Christmas

You guys. I did it. I sent out Christmas cards this year. ( Fist pumps like Nick Miller. ) I'm pretttty sure the last time T.J. and I sent a Christmas card was in 2010, when we posed with all FOUR cats in our Smilebooth. 😹 Which, don't get me wrong, was totally amazing, but now that we've got sweet little Junie to take pictures with, pshhhh - our cats simply won't do.

I literally squealed at my desk when Minted ask to partner with us on our Christmas cards. I have ogled over their cards for years - all beautiful and letter-pressed and metallic, and did I say beautiful - and was thrilled to order ours through them this year.

The entire process was incredibly easy and user friendly. They even have this awesome "Find It Fast" feature that you can toggle on, where it'll insert the photo you uploaded into every design. This was a life. saver. Because, I had a whole folder full of "favorites", but when I saw my actual photo in the designs it was super easy to pick the perfect one! 

Everything arrived - invites and return address printed envelopes - in a beautiful box, lined with the names of some of their designers. Being a small business owner who frequently hires other designers to do work for us, this made me smile.

I quickly pulled out our cards and got to work addressing them cause I was so excited! I could have had Minted address both the front and back for me, but I actually like addressing envelopes, so I opted out of that feature.

I've even made you a little guide to addressing your own envelopes, and I'm going to share that with you all tomorrow. (So, come back!) It's really fun to be able to do it yourself and then love the way they turn out. Give it a try this year! (And of course remember, grace not perfection.)

Once I had everything addressed, I used the cutest Charlie Brown Christmas stamps and a piece of colored washi tape to top it all off. 😍 Seriously, washi tape is easily one of the best things to hit the U.S. in the last 5 years. If you don't have some, get some. (Preferably the brand MT, cause they're the best.)

I chose one of my favorite family photos for the front of the card, and a few extras for the back, from a session my friend Liz did for us back in October. You can see all of those photos in the post just before this one -- right HERE. 

So there you have it. Our 2016 Christmas cards. I am so thrilled with how they turned out. And I can't wait for many of you to receive them in your mailbox this week!

Also, I totally believe in YOU to address your own like I did. Just practice each letter a few times on scrap paper and then take your time. Not only is it fun, but I try to take a little moment and think about who I'm addressing it to, how they impacted our 2016 year, and say a little prayer for them.

Merry Christmas ya'll!

This post was sponsored by Minted, but all opinions are my own. There's still time for you to get a baller Christmas card for yourself - shop Minted today! 

Balance | with Amazfit

Balance has meant many different things to me over the years. When T.J. and I were fist married, it looked a lot like trying to live within our smaller budget, working hard at our wedding photography business so T.J. could quit his day job in a warehouse, and spending time with friends/family.

Fast forward 7+ years and over time we had to learn how to balance two full time businesses, friendships, employees, family, church, quality time together, having a BABY, staying fit, and a million other things. Like vacuuming all. the. time. because we have four cats.

But honestly, it's only in the last year and a half that I can say I've actually found some sort of balance in my life. T.J. has written about this season of our lives quite a bit on his blog, with my two favorite posts being Throw Away All The Things (when we found balance by, well, like he said.. throwing out all of the things) and, Balance Is A Moving Target (where he talks about balancing less things as a whole, and not always in a 24 hour mindset.) 

For me, my days all look a little different. I work at our walk in love. studio twice a week when my parents watch June.  Sometimes I have extra photoshoots for friends and family throughout my week. Or playdates with Junie and her friends. But most of the time there are always several categories I work hard to keep balanced in my daily life - food, family time and fitness. The latter certainly being the hardest for me. 😬 I mean, c'mon... running? It's the worst!

Balancing family time often looks like reading books to June in her room and choosing to stay off of my phone. June loves to read. Her current favorite book is this silly little book with all black and white drawings of animals and things. She makes all the sounds they do and sniffs the page with flowers on it every time. (See photo below 😂.) Not that the page actually smells good or anything... she just thinks it's what you're supposed to do.

When Amazfit, an incredibly stylish fitness tracker, reached out to me about partnering for a post, I felt incredibly comfortable saying yes. And I have loved having a way to track my steps, calories and sleep over the last several weeks, all while stacking it like a bracelet next to my other cute accessories.

It has been fascinating to track my light sleep and deep sleep, and how they correlate with how I feel the next morning. My goal, of course, is to always feel as happy when I wake up as June does while reading her books. #goals

One of my favorite ways to find balance in food is our snack trays. No joke, we eat them all the time. (You can see my recent Thanksgiving one here.) It's just a simplified, fast way to eat things that we love, coupled with the things we "should eat more of" on a daily basis. Aka: it's how we justify eating a lot of cheese.

A close second to our love for snack trays though, is quesadillas. I did not grow up making them at home, but with T.J.'s family being part Mexican, they certainly did. Back when I was 22 and all the things were smaller, I'd load it up my quesadillas with cheese and bacon and chicken and eat every single slice. Nowadays, I seek to find balance by first loading it up with tomatoes, peppers, onions, avocado, black beans and corn... and then add the cheese. And honestly, it's so much better than the ones I used to make.

Note to self: do a recipe post on the different quesadillas we make, cause that sounds delish.

Lastly... fitness. Ugh. Working out is not my favorite thing to do. I have gotten better over the years, for sure, and have learned what I do and don't like to do, along with what does and doesn't work for me. But for the most part, it's the little things that all add up. Choosing to walk to work instead of drive, jogging with the stroller on sunny days, and continuing to remind myself that it's all a journey. Oh, and that being able to make humans is an incredible thing, and that I shouldn't be too hard on myself for weight gained in the process.

I'd like to tell you that I always look this put together while working out, but that's simply not the case. Just last week I started walking at 6am with my neighbor/friend Leah, because at some point in her "I haven't worked out since 1999" thinking, it seemed like a good idea. Trust me, when I meet Leah at the corner of our two streets, my sweatpants are all but duct tapped to my ankles to keep the wind out, and I've got four very unflattering layers of heather gray on. But hey! At least I'm walking 3 miles. #balance 😂 Leah, if you're reading this, please burn this well-lit, posed image of me in cute workout clothes into your mind, and think of it when I see you Wednesday morning in the dark. Thank you.

If you'd like to get an Amazfit for yourself, you can use the code MYAMAZFIT to save 40% on your purchase. In the first photos, I am wearing the Moonbeam tracker, which looks a lot like a super cute watch. In the last images, I am wearing the Rainbow wristband, with the blush colored metal details! You can also take out the ceramic tracker and wear it as a necklace. 😍 They also have loads of other styles and wristbands (for guys too!) on their site, so check them out. So really, there is no excuse to not track your activity anymore... cause you no longer have to compromise your personal style to stay healthy.

This post was sponsored by Amazfit. As always, all opinions are my own. Thanks for supporting my blog and the awesome people who sponsor it.

That Front Porch Life

I have always wanted a front porch to live on - to sip iced coffees, and read books, and have long afternoon conversations on. A porch to hand out Halloween candy from, decorate for Christmas and dry pool towels on in the heat of summer. I mean, technically we've always had a front porch. When we moved in to our little 1929 house seven years ago, the front porch was sufficient, but missing a railing. It left you feeling very open and exposed if you sat out there in your morning pajamas, or jammie-jams as we call them in our house, which wasn't very enjoyable. Years went by and we basically never used our front porch.

BUT NOT ANYMORE! Last fall, our talented friend Josh built us a porch railing and I'm so in love with it. I'm obsessed with the way it looks and the design he came up with. My only instructions to him were "something horizontal and stripe-y", while waving my hands side to side real fast, trying to picture what it would look like completed. 😂 Not only did we need a railing period, I also wanted it to look more modern and "us" than something we could have picked out at a local hardware store. Again, I'm so thrilled with how it turned out!

I'd been in the market for a baby gate for awhile when Munchkin reached out to partner up and promote their Vibe Baby Gate. It couldn't have been more perfect timing. June adores being outside and playing on our porch, I however, do not adore the idea of her falling down the porch steps, or climbing down them and half way across the block while I pop back inside for an iced coffee refill. I really didn't want to put a gate out there that was, for lack of a better word, ugly. Ha ha! Enter: the Vibe.

The weather has been beautiful lately. Yesterday we were out on the front porch for almost two hours playing with toys, reading books, eating snacks, pointing at airplanes, and all of it made my Momma heart so happy. Note June's dirty little feet in the photo below... I just... I can't even... 😍

One of my favorite things about the Vibe gate, besides how sturdy it is, is the mesh panel in the middle. Hello privacy. Not only does the color of the gate happen to match our front porch perfectly - like, weirdly perfectly - the clean and modern design fits seamlessly with our new railing. Amazing. Knowing the front porch is safe for June has quite literally added a whole new room to our house during the warmer months.

If you're in the market for a baby gate, I'd highly suggest Munchkin's Vibe Gate. It's baller. (Register for it if you're expecting, too!)

June's neighbor and bestie, Clara, came over yesterday to play. June was pumped up when she saw Kim and Clara coming across the street. I love watching her get so excited about things!

Now that kids are back in school, June loves watching the school buses drive by our house every afternoon. I picked up a toy school bus at a thrift store this week for $2.75 and she loves it. When they drive by she claps and yells "YAY!" for them, like it's a parade.

Clara has started giving kisses and leans in with this face when she wants to give you one. 😂 It's so cute. I can't imagine not having awesome neighbors like we do. You have no idea how often Kim and I text each other with "Can my kid come over and stare at yours?" when we're trying to keep them awake, busy or are just looking for an excuse to eat cookies together.

I'm already thinking about how I want to decorate the porch for fall. And Halloween. And Christmas. And next spring...  And then I get thinking about our back deck and all the possibilities that holds if we get that redone! (It's currently really ugly and sinking into the ground. For reals. 😂) Dinner parties and sandboxes and comfy chairs and all. the. plants. Next year!

This post was sponsored by Munchkin. As always, all opinions are my own. Thanks for supporting my blog and the awesome people who sponsor it.