Hello friends! Happy Sunday!
How is your weekend so far? We have been enjoying a few low key days where the kids can sleep in and there are a couple days off from swim practice and flag football. I love my babies and watching them play/swim, but I sure do enjoy some time off taxiing them around;)
The weather was a bit crazy this past week, too. Super hot and humid for a couple days and then the temp dropped and got really cold. Gotta love having on the air conditioning and heat within a few hours lol. It should warm up again this week, since I guess it is almost Summer??! There’s only a couple more weeks of school here and then the kids are home and another school year is gone. Next year I will have two kids in middle school and that really blows my mind….
Monday is officially Memorial Day and for the past 4-ish years of doing CrossFit I have done the Murph workout to honor those in the military that lost their lives. The workout is brutal but I always feel accomplished when it is over and I have shown myself what I am capable of doing. I always love how CrossFit honors military members and takes the time to think about those that have served and lost their lives. My husband has been in the military for the past (almost) twenty years and every time he goes to work I think about what he does and how dangerous it can be. It is not a small thing to dedicate your life to serving our country, and many do it knowing fully how risky it is. I believe this weekend can be about honoring those that have lost their lives and enjoying the freedoms we have and the extra time off.
Okay! Let’s get into 3 things to think about this week!
1) I was scrolling Instagram the other day and came across a post about someone who has recovered from disordered eating and in the process had gained weight as she got healthier and got help. Even if you don’t have this issue and it has been a weird year with weight gain, or just natural changes as we all get older, I loved the message. What struck me was that she focused on what she had gained (other than weight) from letting go of past eating habits and extreme exercise. Or maybe what we have gained this past year in insights, versus actual pounds or pants sizes.
It got me thinking, what have I gained this past year since (working on) letting go of disordered eating?
-the ability to enjoy food over the holidays without micromanaging everything I ate.
-letting go of what my family eats and the worry that came with it.
-my love of eating things I previously wouldn’t “allow” (bagels with cream cheese…)
-my ability to let go of my identity of being a certain size and loving myself more now
-working out to move my body and have fun, versus punishing myself to look a certain way.
If you are on a similar journey as me with this, what have you gained from letting go of diet culture or outdated ideas of how we should look?
2) This is kinda weird, but I was just chatting in my Instastories about letting go of using filters after dedicating my Fridays to it. I know this all sounds silly for most, but as someone who works daily on social media and has used filters and edits for years it can mess with your head. I have been blogging for ten years (!) and it is really very easy to edit pics and alter how you look. FaceTune can be used to blur out wrinkles and cellulite, and there are many apps that allow you to change how you look in pictures and videos. The real issue is, it is very hard to detect and I think so many do it that the people who consume this have no idea. We just see “perfect” and can’t see that it is editing, posing, etc that creates a certain look. It is also easy to hide the use of this stuff and to pass it off as real life (the Kardashian’s use it constantly.)
For years I used FaceTune to buff out imperfections and filters to blur of my videos. It always made me feel better to present my “best self,” but then I found myself being disappointed with my actual self. I would do ‘filter free Friday’s” on Instagram and look forward to getting the filter back the next day, because I liked how I looked better with it. I observed that, but then I noticed a few other Influencers who stopped using filters and I admired that. All of a sudden it looked real and I could see real skin and bodies and it made me feel good. I don’t even think I noticed how filters had infiltrated how I felt about myself until I saw some NOT using them.
I stopped using FaceTune to blur out imperfections a couple of years ago, and now I just use a preset on my Instagram feed for a cohesive look (it changes the colors of a photo to make them more professional.) Now I am going to stop using filters in my daily Stories. I want those that follow and watch me to see a real face and non filtered view of my life. I want young girls and women to not feel like they need a filter to be better, they already are amazing.
How do you feel about filters? Do you think they give false sense of perfection (kinda like Photoshop in magazines?)
3) Okay, switching major gears! I have been on a bedding search for this past few weeks for our bed. Long story short, I needed a lighter weight quilt option and after so much time researching a dear friend pointed me towards the Pottery Barn sale section.
Here’s the deal, I can go down a rabbit hole researching basically EVERYTHING. I go to the end of the internet and agonize over making purchases. Especially bigger ones. I hate buying things and having them not work out and feeling like I wasted money or made a mistake (HELLO anxiety!) I just wanted nice bedding that was good quality, yet wasn’t a million dollars. Insert the Pottery Barn sale section. Here is what I grabbed this weekend (with some of my blogging earnings;)
– First I read this blog about making the perfect bed. While a lot of these options are outside my price range, I loved the detail and instructions on how to make a bed look delicious. Did you know you should double stuff duvets to make them super fluffy????
-I ordered this quilt in warm white. I think most of my bedding with be white and I’ll add color in with pillows to make the bed classic.
-I didn’t buy the duvet yet, but when I do it will probably be this one. I’ll then purchase two inserts from Amazon to keep it fluffy.
-On to pillows! I plan on having 3 huge Euro pillows, and 4 King size pillows (which I own.) I bought these Euro covers in white (with Amazon inserts sized one size bigger for fluffiness), and both this and this for King shams (both in soft gray.) So! 3 Euro pillows and 4 delicious King pillows in soft pillow covers with a simple quilt. I can’t wait to it all comes and I can dive in!
Whew! As you can tell, I like to really get into detail with certain things and creating the cozy bed of my dreams has been my main focus. I’ll let you know when it all arrives and what I think (most likely in my Instastories!
