My Birthday Month Has Begun!

I love to celebrate and what is the mother of all celebration? The day I was born!

One of my favorite things to do for friends and family is to make them feel special. I love celebrating engagements, showers, and birthdays. The planning and creativity it takes to put on a good celebrations is a natural high for this type A gal. My birthday is just an excuse to shop, eat, and gather my favorite people around me. 

Starting off the celebration if you follow me on instagram, twitter, or Facebook you might have noticed my new profile photo. This year's birthday is a milestone for me and I wanted to re vamp my career image as well as capture the years I've lived with new headshots. Thanks to Maus Photography for the stunning images.

I may have started the month off with a little online shopping madness. I just couldn't help it. Keep an eye out on my youtube channel for all the details of these pretty presents I treated myself to. 

My sister and nephew are in town and we started off by having some lovely hot pot and ice-cream macarons. 

How do you like to celebrate your birthday? What activities should I do this month? 

Don't forget to subscribe to my youtube channel for all the hauls, makeup, and fashion videos coming up as well as a HUGE announcement to be made next week!!! I'm squealing with excitement. 

Follow me on instagram & twitter for up to the minute updates on my month long celebration. 

Another Birthday Come and Gone

So as I reach another birthday I reflect on the last year of my life. It's been a little less than a month since my personal holiday.

Sometimes as excited as I get about celebrating my day, there's a deep rooted sadness that I feel around the 19th of April as well. As I get older each year the sadness becomes more prominent. This could be the fact that as a child you never imagine yourself past 20.

This year was the marking of truly feeling like an adult, yet still not quite. Do we ever feel our age? I seem to have age identity crisis a lot.

This I've done this year:

I planned a wedding and got married!
As much as I love being married and I adore my husband, who makes me the happiest woman on Earth, I never actually imagined being married before meeting him.

So as I look back at 2012, getting married was a huge milestone in my life and it happened last year! Just sitting back and reflecting on the whole process of being engaged. Planning the wedding. Getting married. It's all very overwhelming. No matter how much I knew my husband or how much I loved him before the wedding, something happens when the vows are said, the ceremony is over and that little wedding band is on both of our fingers. I can't explain it, but a shift happens. Expectations change, not bad, not good, things just change. It's you and him forever now. You have a partner for life. You are responsible for another's well being and hapienss. It's a huge adjustment mentally.

Youtube Beauty Guru
I've also become an active youtuber posting multiple videos a week on beauty, product reviews, makeup tutorials, and shopping hauls. I never would have thought of myself as a youtuber. If you asked me a few months ago even, I would laugh and be embarrassed of my endeavor to advise through youtube. Making videos has become an outlet for me. Videos fill my creative needs and also makes me feel productive and helpful to others. It's become my main source of daily expression and creativity. I get complete creative control talking about things I'm passionate about.

Yoga?
I became a Yogi in the last year as well. In college I hated yoga, I didn't see the point, now I need it. The breathing, the stretching, the community, it all calms me and centers my mind. The physical benefits are great too!

Independence
I've learned to be alone. Being alone use to lead to depression and feeling like a looser for me. Now I cherish the moments of solitude. To do my own thing and not be disrupted or worried about someone else. While I love my friends and always need them in my life, I have learned that as we age and grow up and build our own families, the time we do get to spend together is precious and rare. Just because I don't hear from them every day doesn't mean that they would be there for me if I needed them. This goes for them too. I don't feel the need to have to call them everyday, we are all busy and trying to live life. In fact my best friends are the ones I see the least.

Move On
This is something I'll always struggle with, but looking back at the last year, I've really improved this trait. It use to take me years to move on from the smallest slights or fights. Now mostly I figure it's not personal, but something the other person is going through. How often do I start a fight or get upset at someone because of my own insecurities or issues? Almost always. So 90% of the time if someone has beef with you, it's really not personal.

Growing up has made me a better partner and friend to those in my life. Do I still get a little sad around my birthday? Yes. I think it's the panic that I haven't done enough with my life or that I am not where I thought I would be, but honestly? Who is exactly where they thought they would be? Life is unexpected and beautiful. The control freak side of me needs to just shut up and enjoy the ride because looking back at the last year, It's been a pretty great one :-)

Another Birthday, Thank You!

As another birthday quickly approaches, I suddenly started thinking a lot about where I’ve been and where I’m going to go. When I originally started this blog at the tail end of 2011, I had just started to put my life back in order. While many people in my life still don’t know this, I was incredibly unhappy and depressed. I didn’t like who I was. Nothing was working, I was completely loss. In the beginning I blamed everyone else and the universe. Then after reading a blog post that originally I subscribed, to support a friend, I started thinking about how to get better and make things better. Her blogs were always so positive and interesting, but this one post really made me want to change things. It made me think I wasn’t alone in feeling this way.

Now I haven’t even seen this girl in years, but her voice spoke to me. I can never be thankful enough to her. With the combination of her blogs and some professional help, I started to take small steps to change things. For a while I completely disconnected from everyone. I had to be alone to figure things out. Only recently have I started to slowly reach out to past relationships to find new ways to build them back up with the new me. I realize that I may have lost some because I wasn’t able to be open to them while I was figuring out how to heal and that hurts, but it’s something that I have to deal with and figure out how to prevent in the future. I have changed and many won’t like the new me. I have to except this. A part of me feels a betrayal by people who didn’t notice how unhappy and depressed I was, while they continued to live these happy fulfilling lives. Now I know this is all perception and how could they even know what was going on with me when I started to pull away? I’m not saying this is logical, but it’s how I felt and sometimes still feel. So as I start to navigate my new and old relationships, I’m a little more cautious and awkward (if that can be possible).

A few key things that I learned for myself is that this will always be an ongoing process, to find happiness and keep it. It helps that I’m learning to cherish the little things and celebrate achievements that may seem small to others, but are big for me.  For example this past Sunday I ran 6mi at 1hour and 8 minutes. This is really big for me. I’m not a runner. I hate running. I want to usually give up before I even hit the .5-mile marker, but I’m training for a 10K in support of PCRF, so I need to run, for the kids who can’t. I may not be the fastest runner, but I can do this.

Stay busy. Now I’m not saying to be so busy that I don’t have time to think or process what’s been going on in my life, but to do something. I became complacent and lethargic. I was wasting time in front of the TV. While I love my shows, I wasn’t even watching TV, just sitting in front of it and sleeping A LOT. My sweats were my best friends. Now, I plan my days including meals, and workouts, which I have learned I have to have to stay mentally healthy. I try to keep a normal sleep schedule by getting up before 8am and going to bed no later than midnight. Sleep is important and having a regular schedule is even more important for me.

Feeling a sense of achievement too is important, that is why I started the blog originally, to have a place to express myself in a positive manner, to have something to do at least once a week. So I want to thank everyone that is reading this right now. You have helped me heal. You have kept me positive. You are doing more than you think, just by opening a link or e-mail.

Being honest with myself. This one is hard because it can be hard to look in the mirror. I promised this year that I wouldn’t compromise myself for anyone or anything. I won’t do things because I feel obligated and guilty for not wanting to participate. This one is VERY hard for me, but oh so important. I have always done things to make others happy, to make others comfortable, and to make sure everyone gets what they want. This is very dangerous because I start to compromise my wants and needs for others and my life becomes about pleasing everyone around me and making sure they get what they want. It’s time for me to learn to say no, when I am overwhelmed or simply because I don’t want to.

My best friend reminded me today that I don’t owe anyone any explanations. Somehow I always feel like I have to sugar coat things, which end up confusing people. It is my right to say no and that’s it. I can’t control how people feel, so all I can do is be honest and leave it at that. Everyone is better off.

I still have my moments where I feel like I’m slipping back into my old self, but I’m starting to see the signs, one being my choice in wardrobe. How I feel is usually how I dress. So while I may not notice my mood or understand my feelings right away, I can see it in my choice of clothing. Noticing the signs are important for me. It helps me to take action before a bad day turns into a bad week or even months.

Now I have so many things to be grateful for and am so excited for the possibilities and where I’m going. I’m getting married this year to a wonderful man who has always believed in me even when I stopped. I am starting my own business, so that I can work for myself doing something that I believe in and feel good about on my schedule. So as my birthday quickly approaches and I spend it quietly with my fiancé, I am incredibly grateful and happy for everything I've learned and gone through. I do believe everything happens for a reason and that there are lessons to be learned. Though all this I rediscovered my passion for fashion and decided to take control of my work situation by working for myself. None of the good would have happened without the bad.