After 6 months of house shopping, 30 showings, two really creepy serial killer-esque basements (seriously... like a Dexter episode), and countless MLS emails, we finally FOUND OUR HOUSE!!!!!  I am SO excited, but I have to be honest and say that even though we are only 2 weeks away from closing and moving, I still have not wrapped my mind around the fact that we are purchasing this as our very own.  I mean really, a house!?  Yikes!!!

The whole process with this house has been sort of surreal.  When the images popped up on my computer screen, I had a feeling deep down in my gut that this was the house God had chosen for us. From that moment on, it became more and more clear that this was in fact where He wanted us to be.  I shared more about this process over on Circle of Friends, where I'm a contributing author.  There you'll find the full story about how God paved the way and communicated to us through His peace that passes all.  I am so thankful, and still in awe of the way that God provided for us- but making my first attempt at rifling through our storage space and organizing boxes, it is really easy to forget all that peace that has marked this experience and feel myself starting to get anxious and stressed out.

Feeling myself getting worked up, I decided that instead, I am going to try with everything that is in me, to make this whole moving process stress-free.  I know that sounds a bit crazy, and somewhat impossible but I am going to be as disciplined as possible to make it true.  This isn't the first time that I've chosen this mentality.  From day one of wedding planning I told myself, and everyone else in the process that I was bound and determined to have the process be stress-free.  I think people thought I was crazy when I said it. Wedding planning without stress?! Of course, it had it's moments, but honestly, making that choice from the beginning played a significant role in the peace and joy that I felt throughout the entire process as well as on our special day.  I look back on that time and am so thankful that I made that decision early on and stuck to my guns, giving myself the opportunity to focus on the joy and not on the stress.

God didn't create us to be stressed out, anxious people.  We have a choice to either get all worked up about the details and the craziness, or focus on the joy that can be found in each and every moment.  I know that this is going to be a difficult mentality to maintain.  I already found myself fighting off the stress as I thought about the packing process (I hate packing with a passion).  But I am going to work my tail off, and do whatever I can to remain stress-free.  God is so good, and He has blessed us so much with this house- I want to do what I can to remain in His peace and run from the stress cloud that can so easily devour us.

If you think of me, pray for me in this process?  It is going to be a difficult, yet so joyful time- I just know it.  Can't wait to reveal more about our lovely abode!! More images and hopefully fun home-projects to come.

For quite sometime now, I have been dreaming up how I want to re-organize and re-design my little space on the web.  I am still in the process of dreaming this up- it is on my ever growing list of things I want to do... but I've felt the need to wait for a "big reveal" sort of moment when I had all my little eggs in a basket and had every corner of my blog re-designed and set to go.  But then last night, as I was playing with the A Beautiful Mess app on my iPad, I created a little placeholder for what I hope will someday be an amazing and fitting header.  It was fun to make, and I like the feel of it so I decided to get over my perfectionistic attitude for a little bit and allow myself to throw it up here until I figure out my new and complete redesign.  (And this header finally has my new blog name on it!) I had been so stuck on this "wait till it's perfect" mentality, that I think I took away some of the fun of having a blog in the first place.  I felt a sense of returned freedom as I let go of that mentality and simply changed the image that took place at the top of my page.  So this is me saying, watch out- I'm cutting loose and letting myself have fun with random changes and redesigns on my page.

I really look forward to the day where I can look at my page and feel proud and satisfied with what I've created.  I know that it will come, someday.  For now I am just going to keep plugging along, keep learning (I'm taking a class about re-designing my own blog by the ladies over at ABM called Blog {Design} Love!) and keep dreaming up my perfect design.

Who knew I was limiting my own freedom and fun?!  Cheers to cutting loose and finding joy in things that are less than perfect.

Happy Fourth of July day, nails!  I know the fourth has come and gone, but thought I'd share a pic of the holiday sparkle nail that I wore on the the special day.  I was a bit lazy in my attempts to create a firework nail or some other fancy new creation, but was happy with the end result consisting of patriotic colors and a bit of sparkle.  It's about time I got my head in the game and created some fun new art to add to my repertoire.  Perhaps I shall put that on my list for the upcoming weeks...

Hope you had an excellent 4th of July, and that your summer is amazing thus far!
xoxo