Whether it is your business, your side hustle, your night time hobby. Whatever it is you are wanting to showcase and promote and be creative in on your Instagram, how can any of those things I said above be seen as negative. How can any of that be avoided because of the negative connotations placed in our minds. There is too much goodness to be spread to not pursue it. I created this guide to do just that. To show what to prioritize, to offer tangible and actionable steps to showing up on your Instagram and creating the space you know you can. The space you want to use to encourage.

Not everyone knows what they want to be when they grow up & that is okay. This was not the case for me, however. I always knew exactly what I wanted to be. It consisted of dreams filled with home cooked meals, a stocked piled room of toys & a home filled with people that needed me. Watching all these strong women in my life taking great care of their homes & loved ones demonstrated so much grace. Grace that I longed to one day have.

The other week held one of the most fun things I have done yet with Our Blue Abode. My dear friend, Ashleigh Kluck asked me to join her on an episode of her inspiring new podcast “Have Camper Will Travel”. What a joy it was to not only chat voice to voice - we are Instagram pals, never met! - but it was so good to have a push of creativity in a platform I had never been apart of before. I left the interview with Ashleigh so motivated & inspired to keep doing this whole Our Blue Abode thing because of her infectious, creative personality & welcoming attitude.

This February, we didn’t to participate in a No Spend Challenge. There are so many different ways to do these, so we kind of made our own way. I describe here why this challenge is coming at the perfect time, some of the benefits we are excited to see in this & I also included our template for Instagram Stories to help keep yourself accountable. I have set so many one month challenges up in my life & until the end of 2019 it seemed like I could never complete them. Now that I feel such a sense of motivation, I am really excited to see progression in our savings from this type of challenge. The best part - it is something we can do together.

January is on the mend to being almost half way over & I can honestly say 2020 is going by way too fast. It has been 11 days & I have had way more bad days than good days. My list of goals & habits to do every day are not filling up with checked boxes like I had planned. Feeling like a failure can come pretty quick & easy when you are a new years resolution chick like me. However, this year feels so different maybe because I am maturing & growing or maybe because I actually started my 2020 goals back in October. Maybe I am seeing more that not every day has to be perfectly beautiful, but rather every day needs to have at least on small baby step in the right direction to mean success.

I spent a couple years really fighting my inner demons. Fighting my sensitivity & fighting my worth & it showed. I let the ugliness I felt for myself on the inside seep into how I let my outward appearance show. In turn, this affected my mood, my motivation & my relationships.

Last year’s Resolutions Post can be found here.

It is so fun to look back on this blog of mine & see how far I have come. For me, it has only been a year but still so much growth & passion can be seen. I look back especially as the new year arrives. I wrote a story last year at this time about how 2019 was going to be my year. Now that it has ended, can I truly say that? Well, no, but have I set forth routines & habits this year that will lead me to success for this next one.

Little by little I seem to be taking myself more seriously. It seems like the women in the movies or the public speakers all do a million things. Not only do they do a million things, but they are good at all of them! However, they will tell you “I am only human, I mess up, my sink is full of dishes, I skipped the gym last week…” Well I have skipped the gym for a decade. I have no dishes that are usable & I, myself, am a mess of a human. How is it that people are out there accomplishing stuff & all I can do is dream about it? Well, like I said, little by little I am picking myself up & for the first time in EVER I can see how this can happen for me.

A year ago we NEVER dreamed we would be where we are at today. Living full time in an RV was not exactly in our plan book, but then again, when does our own plans actually happen.

I always thought we had a cool story. Being high school sweethearts, moving around different states & still finding our way back together. Getting married young. The lady at the pet store told us we were a Hallmark movie. I like to think so. There is one part though, I guess our plot in our story. You know, the infertility detail that I sometimes talk about. The part of the story that is keeping us at the edge of our seats - actually more on our knees, if you know what I mean. The BIG part of our story that is shaping us & creating us as a couple in Christ.