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About Me

Hello! I'm a stay-at-home mom with a passion for personal finance and healthy living. Join me as a I explore budgetting, eco-friendly brands, gluten-free recipes, capsule wardrobes, and everything in between! Want to learn more about me? Subscribe below and check out the About tab!

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Hope everyone had a joyful Easter weekend! We are not Christian, but we celebrate the spring season, Pagan-style, instead. I attempted to explain the origins of Easter to the kids, but they were most interested in eggs so we’ll circle back next year. If you’ve never done #weekendsoffline this last one would have been a great opportunity to start. But not to worry! Start thinking about how you can disconnect this upcoming weekend, make a plan, and put it into action starting Friday when you’re down with work, school, or whatever marks the start of your weekend. But if you did manage an intentional, social media-free weekend over the past few days, what did you learn? Any benefits you’ve gleaned to help motivate you towards more weekends offline?

It has been a productive morning around here. Lots of home projects and errands as we head into #weekendsoffline. One of those errands included picking this book up from library and getting in a little reading while the kids played in the children’s area. I’m about 50 pages in, and it’s been a great, easy read so far. While the worldwide phenomenon that is “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” was a big motivator in my early minimalism days, I would much rather have read Joshua Becker’s take on a decluttered home. One of the pieces of advice he provides is to work from least cluttered to most cluttered room as each small victory will be a motivator and leave you ready to tackle a bigger challenge - similar to the debt snowball method. This is the method that suits me best. Even Marie Kondo doesn’t have you sort through your kitchen and bathroom (both miscellaneous) at the same time, but instead has her clients move from room to room once clothing and books are managed. I imagine I’ll have completely finished this book by the end of the weekend, so if you’re local, get on the library waitlist if you need some minimalist home decluttering motivation! #laurenreadinglately

I’ve been in a food mood recently. I’ve been eating a lot of homemade yummy foods, day dreaming about recipes, reading cookbooks, and perusing the grocery store aisles for ideas. Unfortunately, all my healthy choices didn’t not offset my unhealthy choices aka too much sugar because I’ve been sick with strep throat the past couple days 😷 But I wanted to share what I’ve been eating non-stop recently in case you’re in a food slump, and need some inspiration. 2 salads - kale carrot ginger salmon & spinach sprout cucumber strawberry poppy seed 2 breakfast bowls - @gtskombucha coconut yogurt (I’m officially obsessed with this cheaper version of The Coconut Cult yogurt), berries, almonds, bee pollen and steamed spinach, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, and egg If you want details on the actual recipes, lemme know! Happy eating!

This Florida girl is very happy right now. It’s the season of shorts and air-drying my hair. And all the bright colors in my wardrobe 😍🌈👚 Did y’all know you can be a minimalist and not where black!?! I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out. The color (or absence of) in your wardrobe does not have any bearing over if your closet could be considered minimalist. I often hear people say they love colors and patterns so they couldn’t possibly have a capsule wardrobe. Just scroll through the #colorfulcapsule feed and you will see how possible it is. Another one I hear is “I can’t be a minimalist because I love to shop”. What’s really being said with this excuse is “I can’t be a minimalist because I don’t want to have any control over my shopping”. Your passion for something isn’t what makes you un-minimalist, it’s your lack of intentionality. A little bit of constraint can foster a lot of creativity. I’ll also let you in a little secret....minimalists go shopping, too. We still have to buy things. And some of us still enjoy the experience, with the added bonus of knowing we are going to purchase exactly what we need using money we actually have. Have you ever considered dipping your toe in minimalism or even just a capsule wardrobe? What is holding you back? I bet I could help you unpack your concerns and find a good place to start!

We are officially into the warm weather season here so I switched over the kids’ wardrobes from Fall/Winter to Spring/Summer! ☀️👕 It took about 30 minutes with our current system. Each kid has a canvas bin with folded, out of season clothing so I just switched it out, making sure to add anything that was too small to the donation box. They currently have about 7 F/W outfits that we might be able to use later in the year depending on how much they grow in the next 6 months. After removing too small items for S/S, we have 14 outfits! I anticipated we have a lot since we have a lot of hand-me-downs and these kids grow up, not out, but I’m still surprised at how packed the clothing rack is. I’m still planning to make a second rack so they each have their own. One of the most fun parts about doing the seasonal capsule with the kids is how excited they get to see their old clothing again. Just pure joy and audible excitement for 30 straight minutes. It’s like Christmas morning if we actually gave them presents on Christmas 😂 But it reaffirms for me that I should stick with a seasonal wardrobe instead of a year-round version. Every once in awhile I like to hang up everything for a week or so to make sure it’s all cohesive and I’m being intentional about purchases, but I don’t want to lose that thrill that comes from seeing well-loved pieces you haven’t worn in months. Do you have a seasonal wardrobe for your kids, or have you considered doing one? I can’t sing it’s praises enough, we save so much money, there’s less to wash, it makes getting dressed easier, it teaches my kids to love the things they already own instead of just wanting new everything, there are no negatives whatsoever.

Back from #weekendsoffline and we’ve hit the ground running over here. 5am barre for me and these two woke up in the best moods. Can I take a moment to just focus on baby girl who is all the things in this picture? Literally a superhero mom. She slept with her new (to her) baby doll last night, and as soon as she woke up she was changing and feeding this doll before doing anything for herself 😍 She picked out her Lilly top and her brother’s shorts to wear which is the cutest combo. Topped with her The Flash sweatshirt which she zipped her baby into so she could finish getting ready for school with both hands. Needless to say, she makes my heart swell ❤️❤️❤️ But after a weekend of volunteering, running errands, baby showering, and instructing, I am ready to get this house in working order. This week’s main goals are the household admin in preparation for a weekend of lawn work (weather permitting). We’ll be pressure washing, trimming bushes, mowing, and visiting the nursery for landscaping ideas. Who else has big (or little) goals for the week?

On the days when I don’t get a lot of time for lunch or dinner (like today when I’m preparing for an evening exam), puréed veggie soups are my jam. You may have seen my Stories where I share which veggie soup I heated up at 6:30am and stored in my Yeti tumbler to sip later at 10:30am on the way to school after barre. I love a veggie soup. So I figured I would enjoy @ohsheglows 6 vegetable & “cheese” soup, but I didn’t realize just how much. It’s a vegan take on broccoli & cheese soup with a really simple ingredient list and preparation process. Everything was out of the fridge and into my belly in less than 20 minutes. And my husband who normally refuses to eat celery, sweet potato, or broccoli had two servings 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻 I’m starting to think this cookbook is the secret to slowly converting my family to plant-based 💚🌿🍽

Real talk, I’ve been trying to come up with a concise description of what it’s been like to go back to college as a 30-something, married mother for a week. But every time I sit down to type something out, it is just a stream of consciousness or an exact snapshot of how I’m feeling in the moment about everything in my life. And since I’m not trying to post a novel every time I share something online, here’s the best I can come up with - the coursework is easy, the balance between all of my other responsibilities is not difficult, but the biggest challenge is my habit of procrastination. Procrastination is one of the biggest reasons why I was kicked out of college the first time around, and it was what I was most afraid of confronting when I started back. My proclivity for procrastination is a remnant from my days as a perfectionist. When I have a challenge in front of me, I want the conditions in which I meet that challenge to be the ideal. Motherhood, minimalism, and past job experiences have taught me how to do meaningful work in less than ideal environments. But I am still challenged with putting off assignments or studying until the last minute as a student. And in those moments I have to push myself through the discomfort of studying while the kids play loudly with a dirty kitchen behind me and no dinner plans in sight. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel like kicking myself for not getting it done the first time around, and I wouldn’t dream of being in a graduation ceremony when this is all said and done, but I am glad I have this experience to help force me to get things done, no matter how much I want to put them off.

Getting back into outfit planning so that I actually get some use out of my wardrobe instead of staying in my workout gear after barre. But to ease the transition, I’m pairing two of my activewear tops with my regular capsule. This week is the usual schedule of instructing and college courses with a pre-k meeting, lunch with a friend, and girls’ night thrown in there all of these outfits will work for. I’ll try to snap a few photos of me actually wearing these outfits for Stories so check back for that!

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