Excuses, excuses

So, yeah, that whole posting every week during my #100happydays challenge ... pretty much dropped the ball on that one. I swear I do have good excuses, but I won't bore you with how insane work and the holiday season has been ... or how lazy I've been. Instead, since I'm a couple days out from wrapping up the challenge, I'll share my thoughts. Good? Good.

The challenge itself was just that, challenging. It really made me look at the simple things in life and challenge myself to find a smile everyday. I truly enjoyed spending the last few months focusing on finding happiness. Did it get me out of my funk? A little. Did it help clarify what makes me happy? Absolutely.

So what does make me happy? That's easy. Flip through my Instagram feed and you'll quickly see lots of food and drink posts. Some of these were much needed glasses of wine at the end of a busy day or a special meal made by a special hubby. But a lot of them were centered around being out -- either with friends or on a date night. It made me realize as much as I enjoying being at home (and trust me, I like it a lot), I'm happier out than sitting on the couch being a bum.

I also realized that I'm not happy with how I look right now (queue the head slap). I know. I know. How long ago did I post about that and how many times have I not done something about it?  But going 100 days and only posting 2 photos of myself made me realize some serious change is needed in my life. I can't play at this anymore.

More than anything, my takeaway from this challenge is to not let life pass me by. I need to cherish the small moments in life and make sure to do something every day for myself that counts. It's too easy to fall into the trap of every day looking the same and following the same routine. This challenge reminded me that change really is good and finding small moments of happiness every day can do a wonder on your mood and outlook.

overwhelmed

Walking into our new home, I knew that I'd feel excited and proud. The feeling I wasn't anticipating was overwhelmed. Having lived in our townhome for 9 years, we knew where everything went, had a home for everything, and had a system for mail, cleaning, etc.

We're starting fresh with our new place. On one hand it's great because it means we can try a new system without the constraints of habit. On the downside (and I'm feeling a lot of the downside now), it means that nothing has a home and that we have piles of mail, trash and orphaned items all throughout the house. It also means that our house is a mess. I know, it hasn't been a week since we moved in, but everything still feels very temporary ... and messy.

I think after all of our planning I expected to walk into our new house knowing where everything should/would go and that after a couple days of unpacking, we'd be good to go. That hasn't been the case. Top that off with a slew of delivery nightmares, puppy problems and some unplanned expenses, our move-in week hasn't been as exciting or smooth as we thought it might be.

Hopefully over the next week things begin to fall into place, until then I'm going to go be overwhelmed on our temporary couch with a glass of wine.

chaos

Life has been a little chaotic as of late. Between my regular job and catering all weekend for the past 18 weeks, I'm getting a little burnt out. I'm simply exhausted. Aside from recently purchasing nightstands and a dresser, we haven't had much time or energy to focus on house stuff, which is both a curse and blessing. 

Tomorrow we're two weeks out from moving in and I'm finally feeling the stress of packing up at my dad's, moving and unpacking. And because I don't have anything to share that isn't whining or bitching, I'll share a photo I took while sitting on our back patio looking at Red Rocks.