Life Update, Tutorial, Round Up Of Randomness

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend and all the Mama’s were spoiled rotten. Life has been a little nutty for me lately, and that’s why I’m so excited about this post. I was inspired by Nicole of Just Live It! She recently set her blog to private – she missed the simplicity of writing about her days and sharing whatever it was that was on her mind. After reading that post, she honestly had me feeling the very same way!

I absolutely love my blog, but it has certainly changed a bit in the past couple of years. The blogging world in general has really changed. While I am so grateful for the sponsored opportunities that have come my way, I really do miss just writing for fun and sharing posts that require no fancy production and I want to break it up a bit! This Monday calls for a little chit chat, life update, and a run through the good ‘ol camera roll. Shall we?

So for those who don’t know, I work part time for my family business. Last year, my Dad had a heart attack and for the sake of his health, he has essentially been pushed (in the most loving of ways) into an early retirement. It’s a service based business, so my brother has taken over pretty much the entire operation while my Mom continues to manage the backend – I work alongside her! 🙂

A week and a half ago, my Uncle (and Godfather) :), who is our operations manager had a health scare and has been in the hospital. He’s doing so much better, but will be out for a bit as he recovers. My Mom was traveling last week, so I’ve been clocking in a little more more than usual. I’ve worked there on and off my whole life and I enjoy being around my family. Almost all of my cousins have worked there at some point, some still do, and the rest of the fam is always stopping by. It’s just nice to see people you love on the regular. It’s also great because as you know, my Mom is my right-hand woman! So we often sneak off to snap pics midday which helps me keep up with this blog. 🙂

Anyways, that’s the main reason why there have been a lack of posts on my blog and across my social channels the last week or so. Now that we’re all settling into our new normal, I’m starting to play a little catch up. I thought it’d be fun to just talk about a few of the things I’ve been up to and share some snaps I had hanging out in my iPhone.

A couple weekends ago it was absolutely gorgeous out, one of the first true Spring days! Mike and I really wanted to do something outdoors, so we grabbed some iced coffees (this was before I started whipping up my healthier low cal ones) 😉 and drove out to West Haven. No one was on the beach, but everyone was out and about! They have a really long boardwalk and a yummy little seafood spot (Stowe’s), at the end. So we spent the afternoon enjoying the weather…and the food! They may have the best New England clam chowder in CT.

Sometime last week, I was inspired to clean out my closet. Like hardcore clean it out! I am currently operating out of one teeny closet and am temporarily working with those horrid plastic drawers, but I was able to let go of quite a few clothes, downsize to just one set of drawers, and finally switched all of my bulky, white plastic hangers to slim, black velvet ones. Holy difference! I was able to hang at least 3X as many clothes and the claim is true, the clothes seriously do not slip. Highly recommend. Not the most impressive looking before and after, but boy does it feel like it!

I went to the Create & Cultivate Beauty Summit in NYC last weekend and it was hands down one of the most worthwhile events I’ve attended in a long while. All of the keynotes, panelists, and presenters shared so much knowledge with the audience. It was a full 8 hour day worth of presentations, but it honestly flew by! I learned so much and left with a lot of inspo and a lot of insight. I didn’t take many photos, but they fed us the yummiest food, had dozens of vendors, samples, flowers on flowers, hair, makeup, a 24hr coffee station (my favorite) and so much more!

Mane Addicts, Jen Atkins’ company was there creating fun hairstyles, and Rosibel gave me the most amazing effortless look using nothing but a straightener! If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I recently chopped my hair. A change that I am really loving. I’ve been experimenting with fun new styles and am determined to master that look at home! In the meantime, I recently filmed this big curly style that is so fun! It’s on my YouTube channel, but you can watch here:

 A cute snap of Lily, she’s been loving this weather. I realized I hadn’t read a lighthearted love story in forever (I was on a crime/murder/thriller kick for a long while lol)! So I picked up About A Dog by Jenn McKinlay on a whim and it was really, really adorable. It was a quick beach-style read and had such a sweet plot line! Um I had an allergic reaction to something, and my face totally broke out for like 5 days. I’m still not sure what it was, but Mario Badesuc saved the day, per usual. Someone introduced me to these OLLY Goodbye Stress gummies and I kid you not, they’ve changed my life – I want to do an entire post about them! I am loving all the flowering trees! If you’ve ever lived on a college campus, you know these little white flowers absolutely reek …but they are beautiful!

One of my best friends adopted a dog last week so Lily and I went to meet him! His name is Ryder and he is such a sweetheart. We brought the pups to Mexicue at Harbor Point in Stamford! 🙂 We were cracking up all night over how much work the dogs were. Ryder is still leaning to walk on a leash and Lily is so anti-social that she doesn’t even know what to do around other dogs except mark her territory at every single plant/bush/tree/flower/patch of grass we pass. Overall, we had a really nice night, but decided our next outing should be human-only. Side note, it’s really nice when restaurants allow your pup to join you on the patio. If you’re looking for places that accommodate dogs, check out my girl Meesha & her dog Bruce Wayne! They travel all over and blog about fabulous hotels, restaurants, and other amazing places that they go together.

I made dinner for my Mama (and family) for Mother’s Day and took my first stab at a homemade carrot cake (my Mom’s favorite). I wish I made the effort to snap some prettier pics, but it came out SO good and wasn’t as difficult as I thought it’d be. To be honest, my least favorite part was grating the carrots LOL. Here’s the recipe I followed – I highly recommend it! PS: I doubled the cream cheese frosting ingredients because lets be real, that’s the best part. 😉

So that’s a big round up of randomness LOL. If you enjoyed it, YAY! Thank you guys so much for reading. It’s nice to just unload the camera roll once in a while, I think I’m going to do it more often. Have a great Monday!

XOXO