I’ve been thinking about this here blog for the past few weeks. It seems I’ve developed a blogging pattern that consists of getting really energized and having a lot of ideas, and all I want to do is sit and write and share with you, but then I lose steam and feel like nothing I write about is very interesting or worth reading so I disappear for a week or two until I get energized again. I don’t like that pattern and I’m sure it certainly isn’t fun for my readers, but impostor syndrome and feeling like a fraud is really hard to shake. If you experience it, you know what I mean!

But I’ve really started to evaluate my role as a blogger — or, more accurately, my desire to be a blogger — because I was watching Instagram stories the other day and I found some of them to be riveting. And that made me wonder what it is about these stories that caught and held my attention, and I realized that it’s because I could relate to them in some way; my stories aren’t that much different from theirs. So maybe what I have to share really is *that* interesting… or maybe not since it’s already been done. Are you catching on to my thought process here? It’s exhausting to think this way all the time.

I’ve been thinking about the blog because I want to write more consistently. But blogging takes a lot of work and effort. Sometimes I feel that if I spend too much time blogging then I’m not being truly present in my life and I’m missing out on time with my son. But then I’m neglecting my blog and my passion. So how do I find that balance of being present in each moment but still devoted to blogging about those moments? How do you other bloggers do it? A few of the bloggers I really like have given birth recently and I love seeing stories about their beautiful new babies. I have a baby, and I’m sure that sharing stories about our day and the silly things he does would be pretty entertaining.

Anyway, this post has been a draft for a while now. Why? Because it wasn’t finished. It wasn’t perfect. It didn’t have the right pictures. I didn’t think anyone would care. Any maybe no one does care. Maybe I’m yelling out into the void. But if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear, does it still make a sound? You betcha. So, I’m pressing publish and making my sound. I just hope there’s someone out there in the forest who wants to hear it.

Ya’ll, I love Love LOVE Halloween and dressing up. It’s my favorite holiday and, in my opinion, the best time of the year.

Last year was Sebastian’s first Halloween and he actually got to wear two costumes, one at daycare and then a family one. He was a precious little fox by day, and then was Sebastian the Crab in our family Little Mermaid costume. We didn’t trick-or-treat because he was too young and we were too tired from working, but he’s going to be halfway to two years old this year, so I think we’ll have some fun! We haven’t quite decided what we want to do this year but Nick and I are pretty famous for our awesome couple’s costumes, so I wanted to share some of our past costumes and maybe give you some inspiration if you’re also looking for matching/couples/family costumes. Enjoy!

Labor Day, the unofficial end of summer.

We were invited to my friend’s wedding in Wilmington, NC over Labor Day Weekend this year and decided to turn it into an end-of-summer family vacation. We brought Nick’s mom, brother and sister-in-law with us. We played in the ocean, had a date night, went to the aquarium, and attended the wedding, and a great time was had by all!

It’s too dang hot out here.

We spent Saturday morning at the beach. It was Sebastian’s first time, but he loves sand and water so we figured he would have a blast. At first, he was not having it. You can see in the photo above that he thought it was just too damn hot outside. He’s very much like his father that way. He wasn’t sure what to think about the ocean or the waves, and he was a little afraid at first, especially when the tide would roll out and his feet would sink into the sand. He was not a fan of that at all. However, he liked the water when it wasn’t knocking him over, and of course he loved the sand. The beach is one giant sandbox, after all. Toward the end of the morning, he was feeling much more brave and started running toward the waves!

I’ve been trying really hard for some time to clean out my closet. At the beginning of the year, I went through a minimalist phase — which I would still like to continue to do but have admittedly fallen off the wagon — and got rid of so. much. stuff. It felt good and I couldn’t wait to get rid of more. But then life happens, as usual, and I haven’t kept up with it as well as I would have liked. Each day I take a long, hard look at my closet and try to grab at least one thing that I know I can part with. It’s hard because I like my clothes, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought them, but some of them just don’t excite me anymore.

This is as boho as I get. This skirt is about 4 years old and a tad too big.

Then I read this blog post by the amazing Alissa of The Adored Life about how she got rid of half the stuff in her closet. She describes how the woman her closet reflected wasn’t the woman she sees in herself because her clothes were from a different point in her life. This resonated with me SO. HARD.