Blogger Birthday Collab and a Life Update

HAPPY “MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU” NERDS!

Before I get into my life updates I wanted to introduce one of my blogger friends!  I’ve collabed with her before but it’s her birthday and she invited a bunch of us bloggers to celebrate with her.

Ada from Elegance and Mommyhood

Every year that I have been blogging, since I became a mom, I thought it would be fun to have a Blog Birthday Party on my blog, including other fashionistas and blogging friends. It started in 2013 and this is the 6th year of this fun birthday tradition. When I first started it in 2013 as a beginner, I invited my closest 5-6 blogging buddies who came to visit, read and comment my blog on a daily basis. Over the last 3 years this fun party has grown and it has become a two-day celebration. This year I am joined by another 20 fashionistas who I am lucky to call my friends and who are all super stylish to boots. A lot of these ladies have been celebrating my birthday with me on the blog other years too and I am very glad and flattered to see them return. Thank you beauties for making this tradition super fun, joyful and fashionable once again! Cheers with a Pinot Noir! Here is to another year of getting older and hopefully wiser!!

Alright let’s get into some life updates since I’ve been super MIA in the blog world and Instagram world.  Trust me, I’ve been trying really hard, but it’s been crazy lately.

I’M CREDIT CARD DEBT FREE!

Ok, so I never talked about this on the blog because I will be completely honest, I felt embarrassed.  It all started almost 10 years ago.  I had racked up my credit cards because I was paying for my books at school, car repairs (my one VW was a money pit), and food.  To be honest, I didn’t have to buy food because my mom would make me food, but I loved going out to the diner after a long night of driving around.  I also loved going to concerts, but I usually never paid a lot because I wouldn’t go to huge festivals.  My one book was almost $600 though, so in my defense, I really did rack up my credit card bill every semester.  Then I couldn’t pay it down so I started paying interest.  Well, my boyfriend at the time got a bonus and paid off my $2,000 bill (that was A FORTUNE for me back then).  Then that boyfriend turned into a more serious boyfriend (this is before my current fiance).  Well, I turned into the personal bank because I had credit cards and most of his stuff like cars and insurance were all in my name since I was a responsible adult.  By the end of our relationship (which was a very toxic one and the breakup was terrible) I had been left with thousands of dollars of debt.  He paid off some, but left me with $5,000.  At the time I had just graduated college and had student loans to pay along with having a medical condition where the care and medicine IS NOT cheap.  With all of that and then having to pay for my car to get fixed because I got into an accident and didn’t go through insurance and had to pay a whole lot of money.  By the time I started my previous job 5 1/2 years ago I was close to $25,000 worth of credit card debt.  My debt had spiraled out of control and I never even thought I would be that person because I was always money conscious growing up.

I’m proud to report that after 5 1/2 years I finally paid off all $25,000 worth of debt.  I’m not going to lie, I feel so free.  I still have student loans and my car, so I’m not completely debt free, but I’ve been working so hard to get to this point and I finally paid off that last balance a week ago.  My plans now are to start saving money and now I’m going to make sure I have emergency funds in case something ever happens so I’m not left hanging.  I really don’t ever want to use a credit card again, unless I know I have the money in my account to pay it off and it has some kind of points program.  I love that my credit score is at an all time high now because I really worked hard to get there.  I probably could’ve gotten there a little earlier, but I like to shop lol.

My New Job

Ok, so I will be honest, it was extremely rough in the beginning.  I went from knowing the in’s and out’s of EVERYTHING, to not knowing a damn thing and being just fed to the wolves.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a smart kid and can usually figure everything out, but it was a lot of things being handed to me at the same time.  I finally got the hang of most things, at least I know where to start with those things now and I know (for the most part) the right people to talk to for help because there are SOOOOOOO many departments I work with on a daily basis. I still haven’t met everyone and I’m done with week 3.  I know I’m going to rock at this job, I just have to get a little more comfortable.  It’s been keeping me busy and I am walking a lot at my new job.  Everything is super high pace which I love.  I love constantly doing something.  At least now I have a reason to be tired after work.  My coworkers are amazing, they’ve been super welcoming and the one girl made homemade empinadas my second week, so I mean she won me over with food lol.  I’ll keep y’all updated, but so far so good!

Diet

Or lack thereof lol.  I’ve had people ask me about the Keto Diet because it’s gotten so popular.  I’m one of those people that as soon as a bunch of people start doing something I get turned off to it haha, I’m weird, I know.  I was getting so sick and tired of people telling me they’re doing the keto diet but that they are still drinking an insane amount of alcohol because it’s just a low carb/low sugar diet (major facepalm).  The ketogenic diet is called ketogenic for a reason.  You are supposed to be in a state of ketosis.  Ugh, anywayyyyyy.  I stopped doing it because it was extremely hard to maintain.  I did it for a little over 2 months and I’m not going to lie I felt absolutely amazing.  The problem was, the time that it took, if I got out of ketosis and had to get back into it I always felt poopy, and I started getting really bad cramping, especially charlie horses.  I looked it up and this can be either you’re dehydrated (which I can assure you, I was not, I was drinking a gallon a day) or that it may have to do with your potassium levels.  Well, sure enough, I have a potassium deficiency which I’ve known about.  I didn’t want to keep taking extra vitamins when I know that all I have to do is eat bananas and I’d be fine.  That’s literally what I do to keep my levels normal.  They have too much sugar for the keto diet, so I decided that even though I felt great, I needed to listen to my body.  I know I would never be strictly on the keto diet because my doctor will never ween me off of medication, so I was doing it moreso as an experiement to see if it really did have some kind of effect, and it did, in good and bad ways.

I’ve decided that I’m going to be diet free for a little bit.  I’m going to be conscious of what I eat, but if I want to eat an entire pizza in one sitting on a Friday night, I’m doing that.  I just want to be happy both in my own skin, and with what I’m eating.  I’m not saying I’m going to be eating junk food all the time, but I’m not going to be as worried as I was before.  If I want to lose a couple pounds, I already know the tools to do so.

Blog

Y’all, I really don’t know where I’m going with my blog.  I’ve been so crazy busy that I’ve fallen so behind with all of your amazing comments, and with everything in general.  I don’t post as much as I used to and I’m really sorry about that.  I’m hoping to be back to normal within the next two months or so, and then I’ll be off to Poland again in August so it’s going to be crazy around here!  I’m so thankful for those of you who are sticking by me through my really bad blogging time, and I hope you keep sticking around.

Happy Friday y’all!  Also, don’t forget to link up below and go to Ada’s blog to say Happy Birthday!