Re-focused (#7QT)

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After taking a month-long blogging break for our move, I'm coming back to blogging with a completely different mindset.  In some ways, I had been feeling that my blog was controlling me more than I was controlling my blog.  I was, quite honestly, burned out and my writing showed that.  After a month off, I realized that I liked the idea of only blogging three days a week.  (Or maybe not at all.)

I've been joining the Blog Planning Boot Camp put on by Howtheyblog.com this week and doing so made me realize that my blog has lost it's purpose and focus.  This blog has evolved quite a bit over time, but at the core, my intent is the same as it always was: to create a place for women to find encouragement from like-minded women.  Originally, I focused on other newlyweds and now my focus is more on marriage and motherhood, but the idea is the same.  At times in our lives, we can find ourselves isolated and lonely.  Wondering if we're doing things right.  Sensing (or maybe just hoping) that other women must be feeling like we do but not knowing who or how to approach the topics.  And just thinking about that focus, that intention has invigorated my desire to write and my love for the blogging community.

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I wrote a new tagline for the blog to summarize my new focus: "A place to share the joys and embrace the challenges of marriage, children, and Catholic womanhood." Do you think this is a good representative of what I have been writing about?  Does it describe what you'd like to see me write about?  I want to be clear that everyone is welcome here, you need not be married, or a mother, or Catholic, or even a woman.  But that's who I am, and those are the things that are important to me and that I know, so they are the things I write on.  We live in a culture that is in many ways anti-marriage, anti-children, anti-faith, and anti-woman and in my life offline, as well as here, I love to share with others just how false society's views of these things are.  There is so much joy to be had from marriage, parenting, womanhood, and religion, and while they come with challenges and difficulties, don't all endeavers worth doing? 

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Many bloggers struggle with finding a balance between blogging and other obligations (family, work, other projects).  And yet others have found that balance, and I think I know how.  Through passion and direction.  Writing becomes much easier if I have a plan and a purpose.  I feel like now I can sit at my computer, immerse myself in writing a blog post our two, really pour my soul into it, then when I'm done I can leave and devote myself with just as much passion (are you kidding?  MORE) to my husband and daughter and my other pursuits.  Plus, three good, solid content posts a week is better than seven days of boring life updates and streams of conscious. 

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While on the topic of passion, I must share with you how much David adores his job.  And how happy that makes me.  After a year-long job search, then what seemed like a million mile move BACK to where we lived a year prior, it's wonderful to know that all was not for naught.  David went into this job thinking of it as a career move and it seems that it is.  Praise the Lord!

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I love reading about faithful, life affirming athletes and celebrities.  I was blown away by this interview with White Sox catcher Tyler Flowers.  Here's a little snippet of the goodness:

Another way that Mary has led me closer to her son is through the sacrament of reconciliation. I appreciate it a great deal because of the relief it can bring to your soul as soon as you finish. The dead weight of sin is lifted off your shoulders, and you experience the great love and refreshment this brings. You’re freed to live as a child of God because the grace to do this is imparted to you.

St. Augustine said it is a greater work to make a just man out of a sinner than to create heaven and earth. This is amazingly accomplished by Jesus when you go to reconciliation, and I’d strongly encourage those who haven’t experienced this in a while to do so this week. Get back to Jesus and get renewed in his grace.

It was so difficult for me to choose a quote from the interview because it is so, so quotable.  He not only talks about his faith, his and his wife's difficulty conceiving, and his devotion to the Blessed Mother, he goes deep into theology and the relationship between Mother and Son.  Now this is an athlete that makes a great role model for our children!

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How do toddler parents get ANYTHING done?  Lulu is what one might call "high needs" right now, but I don't think she's more than other 20 month olds.  She's just so busy and so into everything.  Curious, you might say.  I'm chasing her around and cleaning up after her messes and playing with her and I call it a good day if I do a half load of laundry (either the putting in the washer portion or the hanging up portion) between waking up in the morning and nap time.

Don't you just love this dress?  I looks like something I might have worn (or my mom).  Timeless!

 
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How do you decide which pictures to hang in your house?  Between engagement, wedding, maternity, newborn, milestone, and now anniversary pictures, we have a ton of pictures that we love and limited wall space.  I found a great deal on a 16x20 photo canvas for only $26 (only $20.80 with code "AugBest20" plus $4.95 shipping) and ordered picture #4 from our wedding re-do photo shoot.  I see these deals come up from time to time (although not usually quite that amazing of a deal) but I just get so flustered having to choose which pictures to get printed that I never get any.  Obviously, I can't have the 10 pictures I love from each shoot, so how would you narrow it down?  

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