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A Public Apology

It’s been a crazy year. We’ve moved twice…I started this blog and my business…Charlie is growing like crazy…Paul got accepted to grad school…and those are just a few of the big things making our lives hectic and awesome. In that time, I’d like to think I’ve done a lot of growing and learning…but…

I’m very ashamed of something.

I’ve forgotten about some of my oldest friends. Friends that were there for me before I ever had a boyfriend, or started worrying about how I looked. Friends who always knew how to comfort me when I’d had a bad day, and were capable of making me lose all track of time by simply being with them.

These friends are rarely pushy, and seem to know exactly what I need. Sometimes they can be pretty serious downers…but they also have the abilities to lift my spirits out of the proverbial crapper.

More importantly, however, they always have a story to tell, and their pages smell like past and warmth.

I’m embarrassed to say that, until last week, I hadn’t read a single book since early August…and before that, I hadn’t read one since April. This is embarrassing for many reasons…one of the most obvious is the header at the top of this blog.

Last week, I read this blog post. And it made me feel pretty lame. I stopped for a second and realized how much of my time I wasted on Facebook and Twitter…and felt pretty crappy about it.

Then I logged out.

I’m not going to play the “I am sooooo much cooler than all you FB sheep, and I’m deleting my account” jazz…because I use Facebook to communicate with a lot of people, and that would just be kidding myself. I’d reactivate my account within the week. I am, however, not letting my social media sit there, logged in, screaming, “Hey! Lauren! Someone liked what you said on that one person’s status! Please drop everything and come look at it!” So, like I said, I logged out…and can you believe what happened?

By golly, I read a book. A whole book. A delicious morsel of Chick-Lit that had me turning pages and forgetting to blog. And I feel better about life in general. Sitting on the internet, overloading myself with current information, tips, and opinions was filling my head with a lot of negativity and too much (gasp, too much!?) snark.

So, to my book-friends, I’m sorry. I promise I’ll be better. I promise I’ll read you when Charlie and I are having cartoon-snuggle time. I promise I’ll replace some blog-reading with book-time. I’ll make as many promises as you want…will you take me back?

Who am I kidding? Of course you will.

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A Little Decorating Help

As I sat down to add this week’s guest post, I realized that I didn’t post at all last week, and the last post up here is, well…a guest post.

It’s been a long week. I also just typed the word ‘post’ 4 times in one sentence…so, yeah. My brain’s about done.

It’s a good thing I’ve got my friend Erin at Goldiluxe Events and Consulting to offer up a post for you guys, along with great advice to help me with my decorating phobia. I know I’ve got a lot of crafty buddies, but I also know I’ve got some secretly decorating-challenged friends out there who share my problems.
Decorating, for me, is like cooking fried eggs. I always think they’re going to be great…I get big ideas for things like egg sandwiches and bacon-dipping…and then, rather than being perfect, they’re lopsided and hard and stuck to the frying pan.

They never turn out the way they look in my head.

I’m hoping I can take some of Erin’s tips and make myself some decent breakfast.

Hello darlings!
I really love when the spaces I’m in feel organic and inspired. I want to be welcomed into a space so, when I tackle interior design (and believe you me, my house is in a constant state of interior design), I try to approach it the same way I approach event design. I find if I break it up into components, distill my vision and follow a few simple rules, I can usually come up with something pretty amazing.
Since I’m probably not the only one with a serious design situation, I thought I might share some of my best tips with all of you!

1. Set some goals for the room. Don’t be afraid to write down the main functions of the room in question. The goals for my office are: a place to meet clients, to feel inspired, to have organized craft/project storage and to house my reference library.

2. Accept the things you cannot change. These are the less than stellar aspects of the room. My designer friend (she helped me develop my method) calls them “give-ins”. They can range from things like “I’m a renter and can’t paint” to “this room is only 14 × 20”. Once you identify and accept your give-ins, you can move on to your more feasibly brilliant ideas.

3. Declutter! Go through that room and get rid of everything that doesn’t fit the goals you’ve outlined for the space. If you can use it in another part of the house-awesome! If you haven’t touched it since you moved in-maybe donate it or send it to a thrifty resting place. My aforementioned designer friend had me make three piles: keep, purge, and donate. It was amazing.

4. Go shopping in your house first. Can you repurpose items you already have? Doing this will not only help you make decisions about what you need to make your room functional, it will also help keep costs down. Not to mention a little spray paint goes a long way. Also, a house with littles is also a huge source of art. I once knew a girl that turned her kids loose on some paper with a palette of blue crayons and paints. What she got was amazing wall art that fit her vision for the room.

5. Tart it up! Make that room beautiful! I’m all about inspiration boards and look books. If you need a slight nudge to get creative, sites like Pinterest are ideal to get the wheels turning. I also recommend taking a trip through your local antique store. I once designed an entire room around one, totally fab table. Eschew the trends. For me, style is all about that which enhances the essence of you. For instance: Capture your personal style with an eclectic mix of textures and colors. Cast off matchy-matchy color schemes in favor of those that simply coordinate…

But! The most important thing I can say about decorating your home is: “Have fun, trust your instincts and run with them!” You are the best judge of what “beauty” and “function” mean to you. If it makes you and your family feel happy, comfortable and safe in your home-you can’t possibly go wrong!

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A Guest Post about Stepping Into New Surroundings

Hey, everybody! I’m really excited to have a lot of good guest posts lined up for the coming weeks, and I’m going to kick them off with one from Deb. Deb is adelightful blogger I met in Lincoln via the social media scene (Lincoln totally has a social media scene, by the way) and I wish I would have met her sooner. As it turns out, both of us ended up moving away from Lincoln, and have found ourselves adjusting to life in a new city…and we’ve both realized that you’ve simply got to just Step In to your new surroundings if you want to enjoy them. This, of course, breeds fodder for a perfect guest post…so grab a cuppa of whatever you please, enjoy the post, and please leave some comments for Deb!

Shortly after we found out we were moving to Minnesota, we took a road trip up north to look for houses. One of the first houses we pulled up to had wood siding falling off the front of the garage and shingles peeling off the roof so bad that you could almost see the attic. I convinced myself it was okay because I wasn’t a fan of yellow siding, so it would have to be fixed anyways. Besides, it might be dreamy inside. Maybe the house had a stunning entryway with a spiral staircase or a master bedroom that was so phenomenal that I would never want to leave it’s awesomeness! Then a mouse came out to greet us as the Realtor was attempting to open the lock box. I looked at the Realtor and said, “We have to go. This isn’t the house for us.” The next house and the house after that weren’t much better. It was a defeating day and it left my husband and I wondering what the heck we had done.

We had a pair of Realtors working with us and we were pretty sure they were life partners as well as business partners. I was so happy to have a distraction the entire time we were house hunting with them.

“Do you think they’re more than business partners? They do share a car after all,” I would ask my husband.

My husband would say, “What did you think of that red house? Do you think 3 bedrooms is enough? And what do you think about that yard?”

I’d say, “And they live downtown. In a condo. Doesn’t that say something?”

It was perfect for me and kept my mind off the ugly red 3 bedroom house with a pitiful yard. The second day of our house hunting trip, we took our Realtors to no land they’d ever seen before. We took them 30 minutes southwest of the city to a small town called Waconia. We entered the city and were immediately in love. Our Realtors thought we were crazy— who lives outside the city?! Peshaw! (See I told you there was something there…) Waconia has a huge lake and tons of character. It’s like a town you’d see on a movie. Kind of like Desperate Housewives, but without all the drama. It’s cute and perfect. And it has a Target to boot. That’s when I was sold.

We found our cute 3 bedroom home with a nice yard and with a fully intact roof and siding. We put in an offer and all was well. Then we realized that the easiest part of our moving adventure was over. We still had to spend 6 weeks apart… which meant I had to be a single parent to a 4 month old and 3 year old boys (and a crazy dog too). That was the hardest part of the entire process and I remember driving over the weekend with the boys to come see my husband just so I could get a full night’s rest and a couple hours with down time. It was so exhausting.

Fast forward to the move. We moved at the perfect time… April. The snow was melting and the weather was beautiful. We’ve been outside ever since we moved. I know the winters are rough here so I’ve been absorbing as much Vitamin D as possible. Shortly after we moved and the “honeymoon” was over, I was sad. I missed my family, friends and the wonderful community of Lincoln, Nebraska. Like Lauren’s husband, my husband is busy. He is working more than full time and going to school for his MBA. Most weeks we are lucky if we see him a couple nights a week. Life was really lonely for awhile and I knew I had to get out and meet people. After all, I wanted to treat Minnesota as my new home. When I lived in Lincoln, I had friends with husbands that attended law school and sometimes they would have the “we’ll only be here three years” so what’s the point of getting to know anyone or figuring Lincoln out? It drove me completely nuts. I so wished they’d explore what Lincoln had to offer and give it a chance. So that’s exactly what I’ve done in little old Waconia. I have no idea how long we’ll be here—- 3 years… 5 years, or maybe forever. Who knows. It’s a small city, but I’ve definitely fallen in love.

The move forced me to downsize my overly active lifestyle and figure out the importance of motherhood. Duh, right?! I’ve know motherhood was important all along, but I always wanted an escape. An escape from the 2 year old throwing tantrums, an escape from a nursing baby, an escape from cooking a meal no one would eat. So I started filling my life with little escapes and before you knew it, I had over-filled my plate. So the move has forced a much needed clearing of my plate and my mission is to keep it that way. I’ve realized that there are seasons to motherhood. Rough patches, patches of bliss where you don’t want to miss a moment, and patches of in between. The rough patches don’t last forever, even if it sometimes feel like they do. I want to be present as a mother and not filling my life with little escapes. I do, however, still want a little escape, so I’ve met a lot of different friends through working out, church and walking our neighborhood religiously. It’s amazing how many people you can meet tagging along two kids and a dog. I’m hoping the winter won’t be so bad and we’ll have plenty of play dates in the snow.

The only thing I can’t figure out is grocery shopping around here. Everything is so expensive and I have to use the ads to shop. By that I mean you physically have to cut out the grocery store coupons. I thought that was so 10 years ago, but apparently they like slowing me down at the checkout with 2 screaming kids. Who knows…I guess if that’s the least of my problems I have it pretty good.

What about you? Have you had to move? How did you adjust?

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I’d Like to Introduce You to an Old Friend

When I was younger, say junior high, I had a little obsession. This obsession still, remarkably, will float in and out of my dreams, even as a happily-married 26 year old.

Not those kind of dreams, though. Come on, now, get your heads out of the gutter.

These dreams are filled with ridiculous adventures, where I totally kick ass, know things about impossible technology, and travel the globe next to a mop of tousled blonde hair.
Yes, this obsession was with a man…I guess you could call him a boy. I liked to pretend he grew with me as I got older, so that I never had to feel like a pedophile.
A good chunk of my closer friends have probably figured out who I’m talking about by now. For a few years, this dude was my ideal dream-guy…somebody who didn’t think I was weird, thought I was so much cooler than all the popular jerks, and had fabulous Zach Morris hair.
I was in love with Jonny Quest.
I know, I know…he’s a cartoon. But he was just so cool…and going on crazy adventures where there were no popular kids, no Buckle clothing, and no gossip was so much better than living in Elwood, Nebraska. Now, before we get going here, I’d like to clarify that I was in love with this Jonny Quest:

Not this Jonny Quest:

Because that would just be wrong.

Anyway, the point of this freakishly long intro is that Jonny introduced me to a new love, a love much stronger than the bad, shop-vac-esque kisses, 3-hour phone calls, and embroidery-floss-covered class rings I thought meant “love” in high school:

Writing.

One day, while using this fabulous “search engine” thing to find Jonny Quest websites, I stumbled upon something wonderful…something magical…something almost as geeky as playing Dungeons & Dragons…something called fanfiction. I had found a place in which other JQ fans were taking the stories they had in their heads and putting them down on paper (or rather, new-fangled word-processors)…as though they were extending the canceled show into infinite episodes. I was hooked…and after a few hours of reading, decided that the stories in my head were better.

At this time, my bedroom was in the basement, and my dad had built up a wall in the middle, so that Alli (my little sister) and I could each have our own rooms (she wanted green bedding, I wanted maroon bedding…our current arrangement of sharing a room and a queen-sized bed simply could not go on). There were little built-in desks that were perfect for making me feel like an official writer.
I have vivid memories of waking up early before school, scribbling furiously on loose-leaf paper, and letting out loud groans when my parents told me it was time to go to school.

I can’t believe what I’m about to do.

If you Google the words “Lauren Blessing Jonny Quest,” you will find something…something that has managed to live for almost 15 years on the internet without discovery…something I’m about to just offer up to all of you in a link.

Before I do that, however, there are a few things you need to know:

I was in 6th grade when I wrote this…give a girl a break!
If you’re wondering what in the hell is going on when you read this, click here. That should give you a decent rundown…
If you don’t feel like reading that, then just know that “Questworld” is a form of virtual reality and the Quests are using it for time travel.

Yeah, I know. Shut up. Anyway, here it is. Notice that they didn’t even spell my name right. Oh, well.

If you don’t want to read it, that’s totally cool, because really, that’s not the point to this post. The reason I’m divulging my utter geekiness to all of you isn’t to make you think I’m a ridiculous nerd…most likely, that will have happened, but what I really want is to remind myself of something.

I loved writing fiction. I always had dreams of writing a novel and getting it published. That junior high kid would probably look at me and be like, “Hey! What am I doing all this scribbling for? Come ON, future self!”

So I’m going to replant that seed in my brain. I’m probably not going to just leap into writing a giant novel at the moment, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right?