What I'm Loving...

What I'm Loving....March 2016

I want to be very clear from the start....I don't blog for money. No one is giving me anything for the things I am about to tell you about. They are just things that I am really loving this month that I hope you will get excited about. Maybe one of them is just what you are looking for! I tried to include a little bit of everything in my 5 things and MY FIRST GIVEAWAY is at the end! You can click on each picture for more details on the thing I love and where to get it!

1. The Wet Brush

I am a baby when it comes to having my hair brushed. My head is very sensitive. I can't even enjoy a head massage when I get my hair washed at the salon. This is unfortunate because I would love to be able to enjoy that. When I was young, my mom had to brush my hair with a soft bristled brush. I have a lot of hair. It is thick. It was often long. I am SO sorry mom! I was in Target about a month ago shopping for my trip to Mexico where my best friend was getting married. I needed a travel brush and saw the Wet Brush hanging there. It promised pain free detangling so I grabbed it and ran. I had very little hope for this brush. It must be a marketing ploy to get me to try your brush over the 20 others hanging there. But I would buy 100 of these now. My tangles come out with no pain and no effort in a matter of seconds. It is magic I tell you,  and whoever invented it should be sainted. Whether it is you who wants a new brush or you have a little girl who hates having her hair brushed out, go to the store and get one now!

2. Savor by Shauna Niequist

I've talked a lot about making small changes in life and taking baby steps to really get to what is important in life. This is one of those baby steps for me. I wanted to spend a very small amount of time on myself each day to make sure I was always working towards the best me and I wanted to do something that was contemplative so that I could really take time to reflect. I also wanted to write down a memory from the day so I would have something to look back on to celebrate the little joys in life while my babies are still babies. I wanted to savor my life in this stage even though it's a tough one. This book is the perfect baby step to do that. It is a 365 day book that gives a short reflection each day with a great question at the end. The book's tag line is, Living Abundantly Where Are, As You Are, and each day I get challenged to really unpack what is going on in my life. It takes 10 minutes to read so it doesn't require a huge life shift and I write a little sentence at the top of the page that gives a memory from that day.

3. The Day Designer Grocery List Printable Download

I hate going to the grocery store. I get overwhelmed by the packed parking lot. I get distracted by good produce. I inevitably wander in the wine aisle (because that's going to feed my family). I always forget something across the store from where I remember it and I find myself losing patience with the human race each second I have to be there. I must go with a list if there is any hope of redeeming the experience. I sit down at the beginning of my week and write out all of the ingredients I will need. Because of my personality, I would then rewrite my list (yep, you read that right) so that all of the ingredients that were together in the same section were together on my list. This took time. I don't have time. I certainly don't want to spend the time I do have writing 5 grocery lists for one trip. Then I found it! I have told you about the Day Designer before. On their website they have a great free printables area (http://daydesigner.com/collections/printable-library). There are no strings and it has some legit items. My favorite is their grocery list printable download. It has plenty of space and all of the categories that you need to make your list. It is only one sheet and makes life awesome. Try it out this week...it will change your whole shopping experience!

4. Yeti

A few years ago my husband put a Yeti cooler on his birthday list. I waltzed into Cabelas, found the coolers and went straight to the Yeti. I looked at the price tag, laughed and called my husband. Why on earth did he think that I was going to pay that much for a cooler when there was one, half the price, just 2 feet away and 3 times the size? He responded with, "It's bear proof!" Um.....we live in Denton, TX. Please tell me the last time you saw a bear in Denton, TX. Needless to say, I lost and a few years later we are the proud owner of a fleet of Yeti coolers in all sizes. 

Two Christmas days ago Clay and David, my brother-in-law, received 30 oz Yeti rambler cups from my mom in their Christmas stocking. I rolled my eyes and couldn't help but curse the Yeti corporation. Someone is making an awful lot of money on poor souls like my husband who just can't help but think they are the answer to hunting needs everywhere. When I asked him why we needed this he replied, "It will keep coffee hot for days!" Um....we don't drink coffee (never have, don't like it, never will). In fact, we registered for a coffee pot for our wedding and my mom used it once.

But one night, a few months later, I heard the clink of ice going into his metal Yeti cup. I heard the water run in and then he took off for the day. When he brought the cup home the next day I saw there was ice and water. Could it be? No, that couldn't be the same ice from yesterday. But it was. I need to drink more water. It's another one of those baby steps. But I hate water. I can only drink it when its really cold. By this point, we had 2 yeti cups. The next morning I snuck the cup, put in my ice water and have never looked back. Even writing this is proof of how truly awesome it is. Because if my husband reads this (and there is only a very slim chance he will) I will be admitting he is right. Yeti is awesome. 

5. The Happy Hour with Jamie Ivey

About a year ago a friend of mine from church posted a recommendation for the Happy Hour with Jamie Ivey. Episode two featured Jen Hatmaker and she loved it! At the time I was commuting and thought...why not? It has changed my life in so many ways. Jamie is an Austin girl who sits down each week with some of the coolest women on earth. Some are names you have heard and many are names you are going to wish you would have heard of before now. They are all women, just like you and me, who found a passion in life and followed it. From adoption to mission work, from authors to stay at home moms. It is just like sitting down with your girlfriends and a good cocktail. You will leave filled and motivated to do great things. Listen in the car, listen while you do laundry, listen while you walk. It is fun and it will make all of those necessary life activities fun!

Bonus: The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler

I told you that today would be my first giveaway and this is it! I have five copies of this book ready to send to five of you. Whether you want to fight smarter with your spouse, figure out how to make family dinners a reality (when time just doesn't allow) or you want to make mornings just a little easier, this is the book to read. It is funny. It is practical. It is not filled with the language of family therapists but told from a dad who has done his research and wants to share it with you. If you want to get a free copy there are a few ways to enter. Each way you enter gives you another chance at winning. Pick one or all!

1. Comment below with a time of day in your house that you wish would be easier? Is it mornings? Is it right after school when everyone is fighting? Is it bedtime? (Note: If you don't see the comments below, scroll up and click on the blog title. They should then appear at the bottom)

2. Like this blog post on Facebook and comment with something you are loving right now.

3. Like this blog post on Instagram and tag two friends that you think would love one of the items above. They can enter to win too!

The winners will be announced on Friday. Good Luck!

40 Day Plan

Day One: Decide 40 Day Plan is too overwhelming. See you on Easter, God!

Lent is one of my very favorite seasons. 40 days. 40 days to get it together and find my happy place. 40 Days to get back on track. 40 days to try to pull together my purpose for the year. Theologically,  this isn't really the way to put it,  but it's an accurate look at what goes through my head.  Last year, I cut those "stories" (aka terrible soap operas) out that I told you about in my mess. It was fine but I missed the drama of Genoa City  and am pretty sure that this was not the point of Lent, at all. I also decided to start some sort of exercise routine. Just a few weeks earlier I could have been heard saying to a friend at work, "I'm going to lose weight,  but it will have to be because of diet. There is NO WAY i'm working out." That was the nail in the coffin. I said it and immediately knew that it meant I needed to do exactly what I said I wasn't going to do. So what better time to get healthy than during the period where we prepare ourselves for the death and resurrection of Jesus. Needless to say, I missed the mark a bit with the whole Lent season last year. 

Do you see what I just did....I shamed myself. I said that my effort wasn't good enough. I wasn't holy enough, my motives weren't pure enough, I wasn't enough.  Friends, stop this now. It was what I could give. I can't find anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says "Your 40 days of lent didn't cut it for me, you blew the whole salvation thing to bits." 

This year I left local church ministry just a few days prior to Ash Wednesday (http://www.umc.org/what-we-believe/glossary-ash-wednesday). I have, for most of my life, defined Lenten study, activity and Easter meaning by the church's calendar. Working for the church, I followed the church's services, curriculum and patterns. Walking out the door of local church ministry provided an interesting void in my plans for Lent. For the first time in a long time I found myself faced with my relationship with God. I was no longer responsible for facilitating the discipleship journey through Lent for others, I had to face God for myself. I've always believed in the existence of God. I knew God was there, I knew God in stories but about a year ago when a mentor of mine asked the question, who is God, I realized that I wasn't really sure who God was to me. Who was this God that I taught about in real terms? What did God have to do with my minute to minute life?  What better time to start getting acquainted than in the season in which we prepare ourselves to hear the story of the son of God and the sacrifice made on the cross. I heard someone the other day say that they wanted to see, in the very same moment, both the beauty in the cross and the brokenness in which the cross stood. So how did I do that....

Having a relationship with God was not going to be me sitting in a silent room in prayer (if this is your jam go with it but I know i'm not going to be able to start this journey there).  It was not going to be tied to a church (been there, done that, need a change of pace in terms of developing my own personal God connection) and with two little children, God was going to have to be very patient about how sidetracked I was going to get in this process. "God, you're important but my two year old climbing to the heavens to meet you in my living room is going to require my immediate attention." Here....here is where I want to give up.  I want to be in a relationship with God just like I want to be more healthy but looking at the logistics wears me out thinking about it and I'm out.  

But not this year. This year I was going to make a real attempt on 40 days of meaningful time with God. I decided that I feel most connected to God outside. This is an odd statement for a city girl who appears to hate all things outside (pollen, worms, bugs, snakes, heat, cold) but there is something about being under the blue sky and next to the water that gives my heart true peace. I remember laying in our neighbors hammock on nice days when I was growing up. I would talk about nature, my dreams, my mom and looking back on those times, I was most in touch with God at that moment. I was a little girl sitting at the feet of her father talking what seems like nonsense about life and in the process revealing my heart  to my father. But I'm not that little girl anymore. I can't lay in the neighbors backyard talking to myself. Neighborhood gossip train here I come. "Mom snaps, talking to herself for hours in neighbors yard." I turned to what I know best, books. Books always fix it for me. They make me happy. I looked for a devotion but that didn't seem like enough. I ran into a book called Christ Walk. 40 days. 40 devotionals. And you choose a journey from the Bible and walk that distance over the course of those 40 days. I was sold. 

Purchase Here

I was sold and it is hard. The experience has taken me through the drudges of having to make my walk a priority. It's not something I fit in if I can. It's in writing and has some reflection with it so if I cheat someone will look in my book and know (yep, this will give you a glimpse into my personality for extremes-no one is looking in that book but I sure am not going to chance it) so i'm not going to cheat. When I started the walking part was good. I enjoyed being out and in my neighborhood. I walked alone some, I walked with my family or I listened to a podcast while walking. But walking everyday brings on all sorts of challenges. Not only did I commit to walking (my chosen journey equates about 20 minutes of extra walking a day) but I committed to doing this with God. I started by saying "God,God,God..." right out of the garage. I HAVE TO BE WITH GOD. I then decided that was not really relationship so I pulled back and just decided to walk. I found myself pound the pavement with quick hard steps to often walk out the stress of the day. As I walked on and started to feel the tension release and the rhythm set in I started to find my mind wandering to that place long ago in the hammock. I began to tell God my day and my story in my head as I moved through my neighborhood. Some days, I don't want to walk. I blame God, I don't walk with you. But no matter where I am, I find myself in the rhythm of the simplest walk and in rhythm with God. Some days I go to bed, read the few pages of the Christ Walk devotion and feel on top of the world. I gleefully write down the steps I've taken, the miles I've journeyed and the closeness I feel to God. Some days, I don't want to look at my fit bit because my steps have fallen short. Life has happened and I've failed. But this 40 days has taught me that there isn't failure in not walking quite as many steps or in relationship to God. There is life and the real success comes in owning the down days and getting up tomorrow with the hope of celebration.

May you take that journey this Easter week. May you live in and be present in the down, in the death of Christ, in the brokenness on the cross and then, may you find your hope in the new day. At the end of Lent each year the good news is proclaimed, Christ has Risen. But I can tell you, each morning is reminder that the good news, the beauty of the cross, is right here for us today. 

Cade's School Party-Meet the Tolin Bunnies!

My mess!

Want to exercise more...find a few good friends and go on a walk! Becky and Jillian are some of the greats in my village!

As promised, I didn't write my first blog telling you to own your mess and then walk away. I'm here today to own my mess and share some things I've learned on my journey. 

1. Not Enough Time: I am guessing I am not alone in this corner of my mess. I find myself as a mom, wife, professional, volunteer, etc...saying I could get it all done if I just had a few more hours in a day. If you asked me what I do in a day I would fill the space with being a mom, answering emails, cooking dinner, maybe sleeping but the truth is, I don't know the last time that I really evaluated what I do in a day. Why is it that I am always looking for more hours? 

I decided that before I can really say "I just don't have enough time" that I needed to know what I was really doing all day everyday. I decided for 48 hours to track what it is I did at every hour. I used the Day Designer (one of my favorite calendars) to keep track on an hour to hour basis of what I did. I was surprised by what I found and I think that you will be too. It is so different to really see where your time goes on paper versus just trying to think back through it. 

It gave me the freedom to look to the areas where I want to spend more time and see where I could schedule that in. It also forced me to own some of the things that take my time. My whole life my mom and grandma watched As the World Turns. Mimi called them her stories and I followed them into those stories when I got old enough. Now, there is not any more As the World Turns but I still watch The Young and the Restless. 40 minutes out of my day (on DVR) friends. I have to decide if that is in the "Top 5" priorities or not and I have to decide to own that I am choosing those 40 minutes to watch my stories over using that time for something that is in my top 5. 

If you are joining me on this journey I invite you to journal every hour of your day for the next 48 hours. What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about your time?

2. I want to lose weight. Yes, I want to lose weight. I want to get back to looking the way I did when I was about to get married and before I gave birth to Cade. I tried all sorts of plans, diets and supplements. I would lose a few pounds here and there but nothing that felt like it significantly stuck. Why? Why couldn't I do this if I wanted it so badly?

The truth is, I wasn't being honest with myself about my mess. The mess wasn't the weight I've gained, it was all the stuff piled on top of me that led to weight gain. So here is the list of things I needed to own in no particular order:

A. Fast food is easy and it's tastier when fried. It takes far more effort to really pick through a menu and find the healthy choices than it does to order some chicken nuggets right along side my children.

B. I've never eaten healthy food. I've been a picky eater all my life. Bless my mom's heart for trying but I never liked vegetables and never ate fish or salad or anything else that might be good for me. I don't drink milk and forget trying new things. If I want to lose weight, I have to start eating like I want to and that means embracing green things.

C. It's not about the weight, really, its not! I want to be healthy. I want to have energy to run around with my boys. I want to get up in the morning 30 minutes before everyone else to help get the day on track. I want to feel good and be at my best. Eating Lean Cuisines 3 meals a day might help me lose weight but it is not going to make me healthy. So I give up. Pounds off but feel like crap. So its not working. NEXT fad diet! I know better. You know better. Want to be healthy and lose weight....eat right and exercise (you know I'm right).

D. I'm all in, all the time. In order to make a lifestyle change to lose weight and get healthy you have to start one day at a time with something that makes sense for you. For me...it is a combination of weight watchers, jazzercise and walking. I will talk about these things in a special blog devoted to my weight loss journey coming up but those things have helped give me the tools to eat right and exercise in a way that makes sense for my life now.

Is this part of my journey something you are interested in being a part of?  If so, I challenge you this week to write down all the things that haven't worked for you up until now. What is standing in your way? Email me about them and lets work through it together!

3. Heartgate 2015: This all came to a head on Valentine's Day of 2015. My children had their parties at school and I bought us all matching outfits. Yep, you can say it now, i'm THAT mom! They had little red shirts with black and white ties and I ordered a black and white dress with a sash to match. It was perfect. I was going to be the perfectly dressed, pinterest success Valentine making, snack bringing mom. I went to put on my new dress and it was not going over my hips. So I improvised, I pulled on a pair of jeans, tied the sash around the waist and wore it as a shirt. But let me be honest, let me own this one. I was pretty crushed in my heart. This was supposed to be my size and here I was, too big to get it on. It looked fine. It looked like I meant for it to be that way. But when I look back at that picture,  it reminds me of why I started this journey. It wasn't just about the dress not fitting right, I'm down 15 pounds since then and the silly thing still fits funny. It was about the feeling of disappointment in my heart. I needed to get my heart right, my self image right so that I could let go of the notion of a perfect anything and be present in the right here and right now. 

Meet Cade, my handsome oldest. Here we are on Heartgate 2015.

4. Mom Shame: My mom was a stay at home mom. She was the best. She is the best. Pancakes for breakfast every morning, perfectly ironed clothes, picked up/cleaned up/tidy always house and we were never late to anything. I'm not her. I work and I really love to work. I needed to say that, own it and believe it. My work makes me better, period, and I owe it to my tiny humans to be the best version of myself. I'm a mom and I really love being a mom. But I also really love having a village that help to raise my boys.

What does being a mom look like for you? If you're not a mom yet, what does being a daughter, wife, ________fill in the blank with your desired role, look like for you? I'm not looking for the answer that compares you to someone else and I'm not even looking for you to answer with what you think you want to be. What does it look like, right now, in all the glory of your mess to be the best you?

For me, the best me is the one that works hard at meaningful work that I am proud to go home and tell my children about. The best me is the mom who parents along side all of the other great people in our lives. From outside adventures with El Dad and Grandma to indoor art escapes with Nana; from getting to write with Papa's red pen at his desk to getting as messy as possible with Aunt Sissy; from racing cars with Uncle Chase to the countless other Aunts and Uncles that are in their lives; my children are the best version of themselves because we surround them with loving people who will be a part of their village for a very long time. Instead of spending valuable time wondering why I can't be everything to them all the time, I now spend a lot less time trying to figure out how to do it all and a lot more time filling our days with people who make us better! 

Is this a part of the journey you are taking with me? I challenge you to sit down and write out the best version of you. Throw out all of the "if I had enough time, if I was more like so-and-so, I used to be" and really look at all of the best parts of yourself. What do you find? 

Now that I've shared some of my mess, I look forward to sharing my top 5 priorities with you soon! 

You can find the day designer I talked about in the blog at www.daydesigner.com. They have an awesome free resources page that will give you a printable that you can track your 48 hours on and one of my favorite grocery list printables!

Owning Our Mess

Meet Tiny (also known as Case). He's my youngest and #1 at owning his mess!

I've tried it many times...get healthy, lose weight, eat better, be a more involved parent, be a more attentive wife, work out! And friends, none of it worked out. Sure, I lost a few pounds here and there, made some awesome Valentines that made me look like pinterest mom of the year and even walked around the block a few times. But there was no lifestyle change and no magic new life. 

It's truth time. I tried a lot of great programs and strategies but I wasn't ready. I hadn't identified what was really important and what I currently did in my life that stood in the way of my grand dreams. It was time to own my mess. Are you looking to do the same? Do you want to lose a little weight or read a little more? Try these three steps to get headed in the right direction:

1. Priorities: I heard someone say the other day that you can have it all but you might not be able to have it all at once. Marketing, social media and blogs often tell us that you can have it all and that makes me angry. It's silly and unreasonable. Lifestyle gurus get paid a lot of money to tell us that life is a balance beam or a seesaw and trying to keep it all stable means we can have it all. I have to tell you....I just don't buy it. I read A Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes recently and I have added it to my list of must reads! She argues that really life is more like a swing. Sometimes we're up and great at one thing but the other side will probably not be getting equal attention until we swing up to the other side. She contends that life is always in motion and we can't always be in the air or on the ground. We may be making awesome projects for our kids but that means we may not be answering 100 emails at work within the hour. We might get a promotion in our career based on our hard work on a project but our children might be taking store bought Teenage Mutant Ninja Cards to this year's party. So.....what are your top five priorities? Not what they are today but what do you consider the five most important areas of your life? Write them down.....

2. What is your mess? Now that you have the top 5, go through a day, a week or a month and pick which one of those five categories each of the things that occupy your time, head space and heart space go in. If they don't fit in one...shove it over to the "other" pile. Often times, we  spend a lot more time in areas that we didn't realize. Of those 5 places where do you spend the most time? Where do you spend least? Do you need to reorganize your time? All of those items in the other category are reserved for careful consideration. DON'T BE FOOLED, you can't just get rid of them but if they don't contribute to the top five most important things in your life it is probably time to prayerfully consider if they are part of the mess in your life! There is freedom in really naming your mess. Then if you choose to let it creep up in your top 5, you can't sit back and say that is just the way it is. It is the way it is because you made the choice to let it have that much space in your life. And that's ok but its time to own it!

3. Name your mess! Once you've put it out in the world it's time to write it down. What's your mess? We can't ever start making healthy lifestyle changes until we own up to all of the stuff standing in the way. And let me be clear...just because you are owning it does not mean that its suddenly gone or you can do a clean sweep of life in 24 hours and be ready to start all anew again. That's not sustainable and its not real life. Instead of concentrating solely on eliminating the mess in the way, start by identifying ways that you can slowly edge in the things that support your five important areas and let them take the place of the mess. Want to be more active? Give up a TV show (even though I know you've DVR'd it and its far less time because you fast forward to avoid the commercials) and walk during that hour of the week. 

Now, I'm not telling you to do all of this and then bow out. Coming up on the blog later this week I'll be sharing my 5 most important areas, owning my mess and telling you the little steps I'm taking each day to get to a healthier me.