Love Others Box

Wow!  Thank you guys so much for your response to my announcement last week.  I’m truly grateful and blown away. And I’m so excited to be back today to tell you more about it.

For quite some time now, running Faithfully Made has been a hassle.  Most of you know that I also work full time at a day job, and coming home and working for a few hours more every night can be exhausting.  When I went to Making Things Happen last spring, I thought I was going to walk away feeling like Faithfully Made was exactly what I needed to be doing. And I thought that I would know all of a sudden HOW to make it happen.  Neither of those things happen.  I was more confused when I left MTH than when I arrived. 

This past fall, things that people were saying at MTH started to make a lot more sense.  Like the question of “What fires you up??”  At the conference, I had a hard time answering that.  And it made me feel inadequate.  I couldn’t think of anything about Faithfully Made that really excited my heart.  And I couldn’t find a “why” or a purpose for running this business.  Besides my desire to be a work at home mom, running Faithfully Made did nothing for my heart.  But the past few months, Love Others Box has been on my heart.  And I would be thinking about it while driving home from work and my heart would be overflowing with joy. 

That’s when I realized that what fires me up about life is making other people happy.

Whatever it may be.  Smiling at them in the grocery store line. Holding umbrellas when it is raining outside.  Sending them fun mail so they know you are thinking about them.  That is the stuff makes my heart happy.  And that is what I want to spend my life doing.  Loving other people and helping others love people well. 

And that is exactly what Love Others Box is about.  Sending love to another’s mailbox.  Letting them know that you are thinking about them.  In the cutest possible way, of course.

We all love to receive snail mail.  Well, maybe not the bills, but the fun snail mail, like notecards from friends and a thinking of you package.  But sometimes sending that thoughtful gift to your closest friend can be a lot of work. You have to go to the store to purchase the gift, get packaging supplies, and then go to the post office to mail it out.  Often times, that gift never gets sent because it can be to much effort overall. That is where I want to help!

With Love Others Box, all you have to do is pick the gift you like, and I'll send it and do all the work for you!  And of course, you can treat yourself with a gift too if you'd like!  We all deserve a little something special for ourselves too sometimes!  

So, please join me on May 27th to see the goodies that will be in these boxes!  And to order one for your bestest girlfriend (or yourself!).

Abundance of Knowledge

The internet is an amazing thing.  These days, we have an abundance of knowledge right at our fingertips.  Anytime you want to know something, all you have to do is google it and the answer is there within a few seconds.  I’m not sure we fully understand how amazing that is.

Being a small business owner, in the process of starting a new business, this overload of information has been so helpful. There are hundreds of articles about launching a business, how to use Instagram to its fullest potential, how to brand and build a website. I mean, type any of those into Pinterest and you will be overwhelmed with the response. 

And this is great.  Any questions I have can be easily answered with Google or Pinterest, and I can learn from the best.  Reading articles from people that have been there before me is a good way to not make the same mistakes and do things differently.

But there is this huge downfall as well.  It makes me NOT do the actual work.  I keep thinking that I have more to learn.  All I do is read articles, or browse other peoples Pinterest and Instagram pages.  I want all the information before I branch out and do something myself.  And that doesn’t work.  I have to make the mistakes myself, and then learn from them. I have to try and fail, so that I know how to make my business better.  It’s so much easier to plan to do something, and learn how to do something, than it is to actually DO it.

So on that note, I’d like to announce that my new business, Love Others Box, will be launching on May 27^th.  (Man, even typing that out was super scary!)  I want to be able to help you show people your thinking of them.  This business fits perfectly with my heart.  I’ll be back on Monday to give you more details and I am so excited to share this little piece of my heart with you.

PS: I hope you enjoyed some photos from Notre Dame!  It was so beautiful to finally see this cathedral from the Disney movie I've seen so many times!

Be BRAVE!

Sometimes I think this blog will forever plague me.  I think that I will never quite figure out how to blog regularly, or how to know exactly what would be good content for this little space of mine. So instead of writing something that isn’t good, I just don’t write at all.  And I’m a big fan of “Progress over Perfection”.  If you are struggling with something, that is the first thing I will tell you.  Yet for this instance, progress is never made because I feel like my writing isn’t good enough to be read.

At the beginning of the year, I decided to choose a word of the year.  I prayed over it and thought about what would be an appropriate word to describe what I was hoping for this year.  While singing in church one Sunday morning, I realized my word is BRAVE!  I want to be brave in all my actions.  Sending an email to someone I’d like to collaborate with, going to a bible study with no one that I know, getting an actual business license.   These things scare me to death.  And somehow, remembering my word has given me the courage to get it all started.

But I haven’t blogged about it.  I haven't done the thing that takes the most courage, and told the world what my word for 2015 will be. 

So here it this: THIS YEAR I AM GOING TO BE BRAVE!

What if I fail??  What if I’m not always brave in everything??  -- That will be ok. At least I had the courage to try something big and scary.  Something that sets my heart on fire and gets me excited about life. And now I’m taking the courage to tell the world about it. And I'm going to continue to give myself a LOT of grace and keep blogging.  Even if it is only once every 2 months. 

If you are struggling with not getting something done, I do suggest you always remember “Progress over Perfection”.  Sometimes it helps to get something out there, so you can improve it and move forward.  Don’t let the fear stop you.  Whatever it is you want to do in life, remember to be brave!  And if you ever need some encouragement, feel free to send me an email!  I’d love to send you something back with lots of exclamation points and excitement!

A Year of Dates

Last year, I somehow found a link on Instagram to a blog post about planning out a year of date nights.  I thought it was a really good idea at the time but never acted on it.  That's not going to happen this year.  With some help from Phil, we've started to come up with a date idea for every month this year.

Because like the writer, I believe in date nights!  

I believe we should spend quality time together now, before we have kids. Enjoying these times where it is just the two of us.  I believe we should make it a priority to focus only on each other, without our phones or social media, for at least one night a month.  I believe that dates help us to remember why we started dating in the beginning.

I also believe that dates don't have to be expensive to be fun.  We usually try to find fun ideas around town that don't cost a lot.  While the money spent is completely worth it, I don't feel the need to spend a lot of money to make the date feel real.  As long as I'm with Phil, that's all that matters.

Here are the ideas we have so far!  Can't wait to see how this works for us...
January - Ice Skating Downtown
February - NCSU basketball game
March - STOMP! at the DPAC
April - One word -- PARIS!
May - Picnic at the park
June -
July - Day trip to the beach
August -
September -
October - Go to the State Fair
November -
December - Christmas Lights

While we have a general idea of what we will do most months, everything hasn't been completely planned out.  And I think that will work better for us.  We can just go with the flow and see what works best for us.  Maybe even bring the sweet puppy on a couple of the dates.

There are still a few months we haven't figured out yet!  Maybe we should try something new, like dance lessons.  I'd love to hear any ideas you have.

2015 Reading List

One of my goals this year is to read 15 books!  That seems like a big number without an idea of what I'd like to read.  So today, I'm going to share with you a list of books for the upcoming year.

I've ALWAYS loved to read. When I was a kid, you could find me curled up in the corner with a book all the time.  Getting swept away to another land or falling in love with the main character is my favorite feeling.  Even now, Phil will walk in the bedroom at 1am to me crying over a really good book.  Reading is a huge part of my life.

But, this is the first year that I've started off with a list of books I'd like to read.  I normally finish a book, and then spend the next few weeks trying to figure out where to go from there.  Or getting over not having the characters in my life anymore (anyone else do this??).  So I wanted to try something different and come up with a list of books to pick from.

Usually, I only read fiction books.  I'm a huge fan of Young Adult fiction and currently I am re-reading the Harry Potter series.  With that being said, this year I am going to try to mix it up and read from some different genres.  I think it will help me to grow in other areas of my life and maybe learn a thing or two along the way.  I'm also going to try to keep my GoodReads account up to date, so at the end of the year I can see a record of what I've read. It took me a little while to get used to using GoodReads and now I love being able to see the dates I started and finished a book.

So..here it is!  I'd love to hear any recommendations you have too!

Fiction
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
The Selection
The Elite
The One
All the Light We Cannot See

Business
#GIRLBOSS
Make It Happen

Spiritual
Crash the Chatterbox
Ordering Your Private World
Weird

Life
Let's All Be Brave
The Best Yes
If You Find This Letter

2014 & January Goals

source

Happy New Year!

I hope your 2014 was everything you wanted it to be.  And if it wasn't, I hope you can look back at what went wrong AND what went right and make the needed changes for 2015.  That's the great thing about a new year, it feels like a fresh start.  Put all the bad and old behind you and look forward to the changes you want to make.  These past few days, I've been praying and working on creating goals for the upcoming year.  I'm sure this list will be adjusted and changed as the year goes on.  But it is so nice to have somewhere to start!

Last year, I bought the Powersheets from Lara Casey.  Before you begin the actual goal planning, you are instructed to list what worked and what didn't work for the previous year.  One thing that did not work for me last year, was not filling out my powersheets every month.  So instead of buying a new set this year, I repeated the work in a journal and I'll use the remaining monthly goal pages from the set I have.  If you need help getting started on making goals, I recommend getting a set. They are worth every penny!

And it's not to late to start.  Like I've said before, there is nothing special about January 1st.  It's never to late in the year to start setting goals and making what matters most happen!

2015 Goals

-Read 15 books (would love any recommendations!)
-Exercise more...at least 3-4 times a week
-Read through the whole Bible
-Plan our anniversary trip
-Plan more dates with Phil
-Mail 3 postcards a month to friends and family (email me your address if you'd like one)
-Hang up prints and photographs around the house
-Learn French
-Bike 125 miles in the BikeMS weekend
-Start new business I've been dreaming about (Can't wait to tell you more about this!!)
-Be an encouragement for Phil while he works towards meeting his weight loss goals
-FINALLY clean, declutter, and organize the craft room

January Goals

-Apply for passports
-Go ice skating downtown with Phil
-Start "The One Year Bible" plan on YouVersion
-Learn more about getting a Small Business License
-Meal Plan every week
-Set up a blog schedule and STICK to it
-Finish Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and start #GIRLBOSS
-Organize fabric in the craft room

If you make goals for the year, I'd love to hear them and help keep you accountable.  Feel free to leave them in the comments!

Let's make 2015 our best year YET!!!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Y'all! I just recently found out about BlogLovin' and I think I am going to love it.  You can quickly follow your favorite blogs and keep them all in one place.

I'll be adding a link soon so you can follow my blog on there. :-)

Hope you have a wonderful New Year's Eve tonight!