I started this 6 years ago for a place to basically dump my random thoughts. I was almost 40, struggling with infertility, trying out clean eating, and striving to grow in grace.

Since that day I lost some weight, had a miscarriage, had my beautiful daughter, struggled with undiagnosed post-partum depression, had my family life nearly implode as my husband went through a difficult employment period and dealt with medical issues, saw our finances take a direct hit, did the hardest work of our lives to restore our stressed-to-the-max marriage, changed roles twice at my job and, after quickly losing the baby weight, gained somewhere around 70 stress pounds in about a year.

Tired from reading that? I definitely was, and my eating habits sure didn’t give me any extra energy to deal with it all. I didn’t want to feel the way I did, but I knew I had to deal with my emotions before I could deal with the weight. Bit by bit, with counseling, and fresh honesty, and many prayers, things got better. Or we got better at letting go of what didn’t matter.

On 5/9/17 I turned 45. I knew I was ready, and I decided to sign up for Weight Watchers. I started on 5/12/17 and set my goal at a healthy weight for my height. I’d been some version of overweight all my life, and I’d always hedged my bets by “just trying to lose 20 pounds and see how I did.” This time, I was all in. And as of 3/18 I’m down about 85 pounds so far.

Many things about my life are still in the process of changing. I’m several sizes smaller, so I’ve had to deal with discarded clothes and new clothes, but since we’re also tackling our finances, I have to be pretty savvy about how I keep my wardrobe updated, and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. We’re working towards being debt free, which is overwhelming and exciting. I’ve completely changed the way I eat (and boy can that be a budget-buster too) and I have some great meal ideas and snack tips. My daughter is now a preschooler, and I’m continually learning how to mom and do it with grace, humor, and again, a budget. And feeling so much better in my skin (and my brain), I want my environment to match, so I’ve been gradually organizing/purging/konmari-ing our house. Got some good ideas there too!

So to get all those ideas out, I’m re(de)fining my content here. You can still read all those old posts under the Archive category, but going forward, my content will mostly fall in these three areas:

• Simplify: Organization, budget streamlining, time-saving
• Beautify: Weightloss, fitness, meal planning, possibly even some crafty type things
• Glorify: I know that everything I do is nothing if it is not grounded in the God who created me, redeemed me, and rescued me. As I seek his face, I’ll share my journey into Grace.

Come along for the ride! You can click the Follow button at the right (or at the bottom on mobile)  to be notified when a new post goes up, and follow me on Instagram to see what I’m into!