Reflection 2016

Hello Hello Hello Everyone!

Happy New Year friends! Its that time again guys.  Time to reflect on the past year and see just how much we’ve accomplished that we set out to….or in my case to reflect on all the shit I didn’t get done. Pardon my language, but I wanna do a bit of brain dump/journal entry with this post if you guys don’t mind.  There wont be any pretty styled photos or such in this post. Just a bit of  good old fashioned getting things out in the open..

Lets just be candid and real here for a second friends: 2016 was crap. I had so many hopes and goals for last year….both personal and for our home.  2016 was to be my year of focus.  My year of finally feeling like we were getting the hang of this downsized living thing.  My year of feeling grounded. The sad thing is I really only had like 2 home goals for 2016. I had hoped to tackle our laundry room makeover and give our son’s room some real attention. So how’d we do?  Well we made some strides in the laundry room, but Michael’s room never even got touched. Poor guy.  This was primarily due to the fact that he spent much of 2016 sharing his room with cousins.  Actually, if I’m being honest, pretty much all plans to get down in the trenches and tackle home projects last year got put on the backburner because of said cousins.  Those of you who follow me on IG  know we unexpectedly had 2 littles come to live with us for a bit. It was a complete shock to our systems in more ways than one.

When we downsized into this home we did so very intentionally and after great thought based upon our lifestyle….primarily upon the fact that we are a family of 4 and had no intention of increasing our family size. I mean there’s no way in hell we would’ve gone from 4 beds/3 bas to 2 beds/1ba if we either had or were considering having any more children. Yall, Naomi BARELY let me sell her my vision of possibilities with this house because it only has 1 bathroom.  The thought of taking on this kind of project with another child in tow wouldn’t have been something that would’ve worked for us.  I say all this to say…waking up one day with an extra 2 littles in our home was a bit of a doozie. And not just because we are cramped for space, but because it meant a complete edit to our daily routines. We suddenly found ourselves with 4 children in 4 different schools, with 4 different start and end times, and 4 different educational needs. We went from having two very independent children who know us and how our home, to adding two who didn’t as much.  Of course we made it work, but it wasn’t easy. And did I mention literally 2 weeks before they came Naomi was laid off of her job? After 10 years.  It meant big changes for us all.  And those changes meant all my “plans” went out the window.

The lay off was really tough for her and it meant my reentry back into the fulltime 9-5 work force. Yep. I’m back to work. Thanks to the fact that our household could be financially supported solely on one primary source of income, I’ve enjoyed being able to freely dedicate time and energy solely to homemaking, blogging, and building my design business over these past few years.  No longer having that luxury has taken quite a bit of getting used to. There’s no more me deciding to rip down siding or tear out cabinets on a whim. No more free hours during the day while the kids are at school to work on projects, photograph spaces, edit and create blog posts. No more free time for hours of product scouting, and scoping out flea markets and estate sales.  No more free hours of doing nothing, if I so choose.  But more than all that it meant I’m no longer a stay at home full time mom. I loved being able to be home with my kids.  It was important for me to have that time with them through our daughters middle school years and our sons entry into elementary.

With all the transition and changes within our daily lives something had to give.  There was just no way I could keep up and maintain it all.  Unfortunately, blogging had to take a back seat. I stayed super connected via IG since it was just a much easier and better option for me as far a time, but I gotta say….I missed this.  I missed putting thoughts to keyboard. One of my biggest goals for this year to get back to that.  Finding the balance may be tricky, but writing is something I really enjoy.  And oddly enough so is sharing my life with you guys.

2016 was a tough year for sure, but it wasn’t all bad.  There was a personal triumph.  For years Id been silently hoping and dreaming of being shop owner,  and even though it was scary as hell amidst all the craziness and uncertainty we had going on I took a leap and opened a shop.  It was the worst possible time, but also maybe  sorta the best.  I don’t know, I mean, is there ever really a good time to do something like that?  I’m not going to get too much into it just yet since we are still in the last stages of launching the website. But I’m incredibly excited (and quite honestly scared shitless) to be doing this.  I’m excited to be adding this layer to my passion for design and product.

This has been a year of challenges and adjustments and setbacks and minor victories all rolled into one.  Its been a rollercoaster of emotions.  Lots of second guessing.  Lots of worrying.  Lots of questioning. But alas we made it through.  My one hope for 2017: to get things back to feeling like our normal again.

Until next time friends…

Xo-Shavonda

 

Posted By: Shavonda Gardner · In: interiors