When life is hard, but love is real.

Sometime marriage is really magical. You feel on top of the world like you're actually working toward your dreams and aspirations.. then other times you feel like you can not possibly handle one more day of bad news. Sometimes you wonder if this is really your life and how your tear ducts can possibly keep producing liquid.
Because I want this to be real and try to be open here I am going to tell you what's been going on in our life.

Monday Greg and I were in a car accident. I was driving... Avery was in the car... and we were 10 minutes from home after a five hour drive home from Jersey.
I am more than happy to tell you we are all okay. I do not really want to go into it, just know we are all safe, but Greg's car is not.
Besides it being a completely traumatic experience in which I have relieved every night when I try to sleep, the next few days have been almost as horrible as the crash. Everyday has felt like getting an airbag to the face and we are just trying to figure it all out.

Getting another car is not in the current plan to say the least. Being newly married generally means you're at a pretty consistent state of broke, so my heart hasn't wanted to accept what I knew was probably coming next.

Greg and I have been saving to go on our honeymoon this summer. When we were planning our wedding we had SO much going on and SO many details we found ourselves saying things like "ugh I keep forgetting to look into honeymoon stuff" and we figured if that was the state our heart was in we should put off the honeymoon until we could give it the proper research and time.  So we have been saving since the wedding, dreaming and looking into where we really would love to go for our honeymoon and what we needed to do to get there.

It took all of 30 seconds for me to realize all our hard work and planning was over. That we would need to use all the money we had saved to buy a new car... my heart was crushed and I couldn't help but be five and cry and say it's just not fair.

So even though I'm sad I'm trying to keep moving. I keep being thankful our little family is safe and that we have each other. I'm thankful for a husband who can stay calm in a crisis. Who can see his car in pieces and just keep kissing me and telling me its okay. I'm thankful for friends like Maria who find out from someone passing us we were in an accident and immediately rush to the scene to get us and then let me call and cry and vent to her in the days after. Thankful for our family the Babiuks who take us out to movies to take our minds off everything, just a night of fun. Thankful for Kyle and Lizzie who know us well enough to know if we want to be alone it probably means we need people more than ever. And for all our friends and family who have been praying for us. We really love you all to the moon and back.

Sometimes life is really hard. Sometimes being a grown-up is really hard. But love and support are real. Community and family are real. And sometimes a good cry is just the medicine you need to get up the next day and try to move forward.

I do still have all my photos from last week... I will be back with them on a brighter note soon.
Thanks for letting me share.
xoxo j

5.6.13

 

1. dollies in disguise
2. best friend
3. snacks with love notes
4. flowers for mamas
5. jars full of magic wands
6. shopping date with little sisters
7. nom nom

This week was so rejuvenating. The sun was out for more than one day which helped us both mentally and productivity wise. Spring cleaning for both the home and heart.

We brought Avery to the market this weekend which was so ridiculously adorable we decided that family outings need to happen more often. Avery just cannot help but bring smiles everywhere she goes.
I have been chatting and dreaming with my sister-in-law recently which is good for my soul, I am lucky to have her.
We get to travel to Jersey this weekend to see our loves and witness a marriage for one of Greg's oldest friends, she's the loveliest. eeeeeeeee!

xoxo j

4.29.13

This week was a little harder. Maybe I just had a lot on my mind.
Sometimes when I am doing lots of creating it is because I am inspired and sometimes it is just because I have things on my mind I do not want to deal with.

1. my happy place
2. berries
3. crafting outside
4. smoothie season
5. tag, you're it

4.14.13

1. My LaLa obsession might be becoming a problem
2. Baby sister and I in Colorado for her college visit
3. Pretty cakes
4. Old buildings
5. Downtown Denver
6. I brought one of these home for my Love
7. Loved this store, sucker for supporting handmade!
8. A little piece of Denver home with me

until next week... and maybe sooner:)
xoxo j

Finding your feet again.

So here we are again. Weeks which turn into months between updates and I am left feeling a little defeated. I have received many sweet messages, notes, and pushes of love about when I will be blogging again. I would simply respond "soon" until I started being honest.

The real truth is I feel a little lost.
I went from planning a magical DIY filled wedding to a complete season of newness and change.
Which has in turn left me feeling uninspired and, bluntly, like I do not have anything left to contribute to the creative world. As melodramatic as that may seem, in the past I could not go a day without sewing or even a day without journaling about something I wanted to make. Now I rarely sit at my machine and my empty notebook pages are crying.
I feel completely overtaken by life, the grown up-ness of it all. I feel unsure which direction I want to go in this new phase or what I have really accomplished thus far. It makes my heart heavy not to be sharing with you because my life with Greg is the beautiful part. All the fun and laughter that goes into our days together I so want you to see but internally I am so, well, blah that I have no energy to even share the happy parts with you.
I am thankful for friends who get me in this adjustment period. For long distance loves like Beth, who encourage me on, who help me brainstorm, and reinvent my ideas.
Thankful for people like Hayden. Who treat my tattoo touch ups like therapy sessions and helps me know I am not alone in this season. That makers and creators of all sorts have hit this place and made it out okay. And for my love Greg, who would literally do anything to make me feel myself. Who I am sure would reach into the sky and bottle a piece of the sun if I needed him to.
SO WHAT AM I DOING TO GET OUT OF THIS PLACE?
well, seeing that I cannot seem to figure out where I am going from here the only thing I can think of is to dig down to the roots of what may have changed and replant.

Project One.
Take more pictures.
If you know me you may think this is impossible. Since I was a little girl I never left home without a camera and in my adulthood I have rarely left the house without two or three different kinds of cameras.
But in the age of the iphone I have to admit I take WAY less pictures with my actual cameras (meaning none). It's just so convenient! My iphone is far less weight to cart around in my little handbag, and I have built in editing that I can do on the go!
Except when I look back at the previous months it infuriates me that I am scanning through my phone instead of looking at my computer screen. I feel like I have no real photos of our memories lately.
So I am challenging myself to take at least five photos a week.
Here are some I took in the last two:

1. drinking out of straws is the only way to go.
2. a belated birthday celebration.
3. babysitting a new friend.
4. a sea of painted dinos.
5. my little peach.
6. family time.
7. coffee catch up with a dear friend.

Hopefully this is a step in the right direction. I love this space, I have been growing here four years now and I would hate to lose touch completely. Maybe some newness is all we need.

"This is what it's like

Finding your feet again

The part of you that couldn't 

Finally thinks you can"

xoxo jess