At the beginning of the year I set a single goal to work hard at building sustainable routines that would benefit my family and me in our everyday life. I did pretty well for a while there. For a while there I was waking at 5am each day to stay true to my planned routine.

But of course, as life often does, things changed. I knew that my routines I had built up around my previous job would fall apart, but I didn’t know to what extent. Here’s what happened: I got a new job in July in the next county that I commute to daily. Then Clara started preschool, and Corey started getting into the more demanding semesters of his college education

Over the last several couple of months we’ve all been adjusting to new wake up times, new schedules, new eating habits (aka I’m eating out all the time because I never make time to fix a lunch), and figuring out how to balance work, family, school, and social lives.

But in the last few weeks since Clara has started school, I’ve been working hard at figuring out a new routine that works well with our schedules and doesn’t wreak havoc on our family. So here’s my Sunday Accountability post:

Sunday Chores

• Mopped the kitchen floors
• Meal planned
• Washed school clothes
• Made lunches for Monday

Meal plan for this week:

• Monday: Pesto Chicken (Hello Fresh)
• Tuesday: Apricot Chicken (Hello Fresh)
• Wednesday: Meatloaf and Potatoes
• Thursday: Spaghetti & Meatballs
• Friday: Chicken Taquitos
• Saturday: Leftovers
• Sunday: Pork Chops & Rice

My intentions for this week:

• Stay focused at work
• Be present at home
• Drink water

I’m sure I’ll share more as time goes by about how I’m getting my act together, but for right now, I just need this out in the ether.

Here’s the thing…I thought for sure that there was no way a meal delivery kit was going to be worth the money. I looked at all kinds of different ones and I figured that I was too picky to make it worth it. I’d skip every week. I also thought that it would be too expensive, surely more expensive than the weeks work of groceries.

Ya’ll I was wrong. So. So. Wrong.

For Christmas my in-laws got us a $60 gift card to Home Chef. It took a little while for me to get it all set up. I looked at a few different weeks of menus every now and then, but for some reason I was struggling to pull the trigger.

Eventually I just decided to go for it. I sat down, figured out how many meals our $60 would pay for with the 2 servings option selected and a few days later a box of food was at our doorstep. I didn’t have to go to the store, I didn’t have to buy a giant bottle of balsamic vinegar for one meal, and I didn’t have to go to the grocery store. All I had to do was open up my little bag and follow the instructions.

I eventually chose to try another meal delivery kit from HelloFresh. So far we have liked every meal we’ve made from both delivery services and not one of them has been difficult to make. We do skip weeks where nothing looks super good to us, and there are somethings that aren’t our favorite about the meals BUT I just keep buying the stuff to make some of these meals because they’re that good.

Another thing that the meal delivery kits have helped me with is my cooking skills. My husband will agree, that basically everything I make tastes better now. I almost never roasted anything before these things. In fact, I never even made fresh veggies with our meals because I couldn’t figure out how to make them taste really good. Meal delivery kits fixed that! I now cook a veggie with every meal.

Last but not least…pricing. So basically it costs around $60 a week for 3 meals at 2 servings. Sometimes we have a little leftover but most of the time we eat everything in that meal. While that isn’t the cheapest out there, I didn’t have to go to the store, I didn’t have to buy any ingredients I would only use once or twice, and I got some valuable time back. I can’t even tell you how important time is for me these days! To us, it has been worth every penny! And we also don’t get meals delivered every week so that saves us too.

Overall, if you haven’t tried a meal delivery kit I would highly recommend giving it a shot. This would be especially helpful for the following people:

• Smaller families feeding 4 teens/adults or less (if you have little kids, they often can split a serving)
• Empty nesters who don’t need a fully stocked pantry at all times
• People who want to explore new foods but don’t know where to start
• Those just learning how to cook or who are not super comfortable in the kitchen

After writing about lessons that I learned in 2018, I figured I ought to mull over 2019 a bit. I’ve always liked setting resolutions and I would say that I’ve achieved a lot of goals over the years that I set as part of something that I resolved to do in January. Last year I wrote a pretty detailed post about goal setting and how you set goals that set you up for success. Man…January 2018 Katie was smart. That’s some good stuff.

In 2018’s I came up with a word that I used as a theme. “Consistency” and I built a few goals surrounding that one theme. If I were to give myself a letter grade for how I did on those goals I would probably give myself a D-. Not quite failing, but may as well have.

I want 2019 to be different. 2018 was busy. I would even say it was way too busy. If I had actually achieved all the goals I set for 2018 I would be amazed because I’m not sure I even had time to breathe the whole year…After evaluating how things wen in 2018 and thinking about what I want to change I have chosen my main focus for the new year.

Our whole lives revolve around routines, and if you’re super disorganized like me…your life revolves around your lack or routines. Every morning I’m scrambling to get dressed, get Clara ready, get lunch packed, and get out the door. Every evening I’m scrambling to get home and get dinner cooked then not cleaning it up because I’m exhausted. Then at work I’m drowning because my email keeps distracting me. Then when it’s time to work out, or clean or, read…there’s just no time because of the chaos that hangs over me like a time management nightmarish cloud.

So here we go. Wish me luck in building routines in 2019.

Most years I sit down on December 31st and reflect on the year in my rearview mirror. I usually think about all the things I wish I could have changed or how this or that or the other thing just didn’t go my way. And while there are a few of those things, they’re mostly disguised as life lessons I’ve learned. Without further ado…

I also need to let you know that this post contains a few affiliate links. If you click through a link and make a purchase I earn a small commission and no extra cost to you.

1. I am not a wedding planner. Not only am I not a wedding planner, I am the furthest thing from one that you have ever seen. While I’m very excited to marry the love of my life. the fact that my wedding is currently in 20 days is giving me so much anxiety I just have to not think about it. God forbid I ever get married again, it will be in a courthouse.
2. Being a mom is more fun than I ever imagined Don’t get me wrong here…I was never like man, being a mom sure stinks…but the beginning is really tough. It feels like so much work because it is. However as Clara has gotten older and learned to be a little (read wayyy) more independent, we have so much fun together. She has so much personality and is basically fearless. I love being her mom so much.
3. If your job sucks find a new one. This should be obvious right? It isn’t. It’s hard to just up and leave a job after you’ve been there for a while. Especially when you feel like you’ve done pretty well thus far and you don’t want to make any waves that could hurt that. Well I’m here to tell you, if you hate your job, find a new one. It’s not worth dreading going to work every day. You spend more time at work than you do anywhere else. Don’t stay miserable. Update your resume, fight for a new position or a raise, seek new opportunities. Don’t lay there stagnant because you think it’s your only option. News flash: It’s not.
4. Just because it’s good for you, doesn’t mean it’s good for me. I read about this concept in Amy Poehler’s book Yes Please but it didn’t really sink in for me until this year. Basically Amy looks at what another person is doing or some advice that some gave her and evaluates if it’s a good fit for her. If it isn’t a good fit, she used the phrase “good for you, not for me”. And it’s so true. I’ve never heard a truer thing as a parent, an almost-wife, a daughter, a sister and basically every role I play in life. We are all so different. Our personalities are different and what works for you may not work for me and that is okay. 
5. Missing out isn’t all that bad sometimes. Have you heard of FOMO (Fear of missing out)? It can be so real. You want to say yes to every invitation because you don’t want to be the blitz. You would have to be saying “Ah man!” as everyone explains the epic moments of the event you skipped. But listen…It’s going to be okay. If you miss out on one night out or one party or one trip out to lunch to finish up a big project at work, or maybe you decide to skip an even or a class or whatever it is because your plate is a little full. It’s going to be okay. Its true, you could miss out on something fun, but if it’s better for you, your family, your mental health to sit this one out, then do it. I promise you, the world will not end.
6. Personality types matter. I learned this from Rachel Hollis. While I have done several personality tests, I’d never really put a lot of stock in them. That was until I took the Enneagram Test . If you’ve never taken this test (or any personality test) I highly recommend you take it and DON’T read the possible outcomes. It will help you to answer more honestly and avoid any skewing of the results. I’ve found that is I desire to be one personality type over another my results might not match my true personality. Be honest and take a test. The reason I like the Enneagram test is because it shares about how you deal with others as well as how you deal with yourself. It really helped me get to know who I am as a person and why I am the way I am.
7. Moving sucks. My mom, my sister, and I all bought new houses and moved in the summer and fall of 2018. Each transaction was stressful. Boxing everything and moving it was labor intensive. It was also very emotionally exhausting. My parents moved out of my childhood home which was also my mom’s childhood home. As much as we love the new place it’s tough knowing the place I became who I am is getting torn down to make room for a highway.
8. Taking on more than you can handle doesn’t make you a superstar it makes you a stressed mess. I tried to work full time, run my household, be a parent and a partner, buy a house, help my mom move, take 3 college courses, and start a business. Oh, and “plan” a wedding. All this has done for me is make my life so hard. I put so much pressure on myself it was nearly impossible to feel successful. In the end things have worked out okay but it was really hard. I am doing things much differently this year because of this lesson I had to learn the hard way in classic Katie fashion.
9. Podcasts are life. I have learned more from Podcasts than basically any other medium in my life. I can’t even believe I didn’t know Podcasts existed before 2017. Okay so I did know that they existed, but I did not understand what kind of amazing content they might contain. I have learned so much, had my perspective changed on so many things, and have also been very entertained over the last year of Podcast listening.
10. I am a bad housekeeper. Just kidding. I always knew that. This is definitely NOT something new to me.
11. Baking isn’t actually that hard. I always thought I wasn’t a good baker and that I shouldn’t bake because I didn’t know all the tricks. As it happens, you actually have to bake to learn the tricks. Over the last year, and even more in the last few months I’ve been baking a ton and things tend to turn out okay.
12. A Brazilian wax will never not hurt. I’m not going to explain this…
13. I’m not my 18 year old self. I have been in denial for a while now…thinking that I’m really just my 18 year old self. That I can eat whatever I want and stay up all night and everything will be fine. No. I’m wrong. I can’t. I’m 25, almost 26 and I cannot in fact do those things anymore without consequence.
14. Amazon Echos are actually really cool. When these things first came out I was like…”Are you serious? This is a real thing? Why on earth does any person need a little speaker that adds to your grocery list?” And then I got one. I use it literally every day. I even have a dot that has replaced my alarm clock. I love it and I take back everything bad I ever said about them.
15. Meditation actually does not suck. When I meditated for the first time I didn’t get it. I thought it was dumb. It did nothing for me. But then I started doing it and wouldn’t you know, it doesn’t suck. It actually helps a whole lot.
16. Personal finance is no joke. I decided to go back to school, as mentioned before, and personal finance is a part of my degree…It’s tough for me! It’s especially hard because it has been quite some time since I’ve taken a math class, but it’s crazy how important it is, and how little people (myself included) know about it.
17. An empty sink is overrated.
18. Sometimes people let you down and that doesn’t say anything about you, but it says a whole lot about them.

The other night I watched the movie To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before on Netflix.  There has been a lot of talk about it since it’s big debut and I felt compelled to talk about it. 

1// How awesome is it that we are seeing an Asian-American lead in a movie that isn’t at all about race?  In fact, I’m pretty sure that race is only mentioned once and it’s about Sixteen Candles.

2// Man how cute? So romantic! I wish my life was like that in high school!  How lucky that there are so many people with YA Fiction Novel Lives. 

The first one is 100% awesome.  The second one…is the biggest lie in the universe.  Yes, the movie was adorable. Cutest one I’ve seen in so long, and I got the warmest fuzziest feeling watching how it ended. 

BUT THAT IS NOT REAL LIFE.  We read books and watch movies to escape our real lives, not to watch them play out on screen. If you watched my life in a movie it would be the most boring and probably painfully pathetic movie you’ve ever watched.  If it went up to present time there’d be some good stuff, but DEFINITELY not high school.  

No one wrote a contract in highschool for a fake relationship and fell in love, got married, and lived happily ever after. I’m just here to tell you, that isn’t real life. 

If someone had written a book or made a movie about what my young adult life was like it would go like this.

Opening credits would probably be me and my mom painting my bedroom an awful shade of orange and green that I deeply loved.  It would show the actors and the producers and while we painted over the lens with our rollers and my mom wearing her painting overalls. 

You’d see a lot of montage shots of me walking the halls with my ear buds in so I didn’t have to pay attention to the fact that most of the friends I had were either my sister’s friends or my ex-boyfriends friends who I didn’t really talk to.

PS I did have a couple of very genuine friends in high school that I still dearly love. We don’t talk much now, but I know they’re always around for the big stuff. 

There would probably be even more shots of me driving to my grandma’s house every day for lunch because I didn’t want to deal with not having friends to sit with.  

You’d see that I only attended dances where I asked the boys because they didn’t ask me.  There would be a few moments where I tagged along with my friend’s friends, maybe some nice notes exchanged between me and some boy…And you’d see me failing classes and not doing my homework because I was bored and struggled to focus.

During my senior year you’d see me driving to school in my beat up old Maverick that I loved to death and would still have if I had a place to keep it. You’d see me on the drill team with a bunch of girls who were probably teasing me most of the time and I just went with it…laughed with them per se. And you’d see me getting dumped.  You’d see me pining after boys I’d never date.  Probably wouldn’t even talk to.  You’d see me being jealous of my much prettier and much smarter friends (all three of them).  

You’d see me barely graduating, joining the military, getting engaged, getting dumped. 

That is real life. For a LOT of people.

As much as I like a cute story, sometimes I wish that adolescence was portrayed like it actually is for most of us:  Awful. 

When I started into this whole WordPress blog thing to say I was terrified would be an understatement.  I had no idea where to start and I was honestly nervous about it.  People kept telling me it was the only way to go if you wanted to really grow your blog.  But I had ZERO clue how to do this thing. People kept recommending “hosts” to me and I was like…what’s a host?

*Just so you know, this post contains affiliate links.  If you click on them and make a purchase you

That is why I am so grateful that I listened to these smart people and went with SiteGround as my host.

In case you don’t know, a “host” is basically just a fancy internet word for the place that your website lives.  It lives on their server and you go through the host to build your site connect your emails, manage your domain, and other back end administrative things. Having a good host is really important.  For me, there were some really important factors that went into choosing a host.

1// Their customer service had to be KING.  

I have worked in customer service enough to be very particular about customer service.  It’s really important to me that when I am choosing a service that if I need help, the people on the phone will be able to help me and they’ll do it nicely. I’ve had to call SiteGround customer service a couple of time (beginner ya’ll…) and they were so kind and so helpful.  They fixed my problems in minutes.

2//  It had to be pretty easy to use.  

I wouldn’t say that I’m technologically challenged, but I’m also not a pro.  Whatever host I went with it had to have a good knowledge base, easily google-able info, & be generally easy to figure out.

3//  It should work well with my chosen platform

SiteGround has auto-installers for WordPress.  It was so dang easy to set up.  All I did was put in my domain, click the platform I wanted and I got started.  I was in writing posts maybe an hour later.  It was so quick and easy.

4// It had to have good reviews and come highly recommended. 

This may seem a little silly, but I have seen SO many complaints about sites crashing, poor customer service, and all around poor hosting.  I was very worried about picking a host that would really deliver so I sought a host that everyone was raving about.

For me that host was SiteGround.  If you’re looking to start a blog, I would highly recommend giving SiteGround a try.

If you already have a self-hosted blog, why did you choose your current host?

A few weeks ago, I was blessed with the gift of a new camera.  Well, new to me.  And it wasn’t really a gift.  I bought it, but how it ended up in my hands, it seems like it was a gift.

I had just decided that it was time to take the leap and buy myself a DSLR camera when a friend of mine posted hers on Instagram for sale.  Of course I knew it was meant to be.  So I messaged her and a couple days later, it was mine.

I had been preparing by studying Pinterest graphics on how to set up in manual exposure and all that, but let me tell you…It is hard.  Getting it just right for the setting and the light you’re in is a real skill. I’m still working on it but I thought I’d share some photos that I’ve taken since I got it.

I haven’t really ventured into the world of presets yet in Lightroom, so all of these photos were manually edited based on the light I took them in…So please be gentle. I’m learning!  Can you tell that my baby girl loves the camera?

They’re not perfect, and to be honest, I shot most of the pictures on auto…But I’ll get there! Hope you enjoyed these pictures of my adorable little girl.