My Outlook on 2020

This last year flew by. It’s like I snapped my fingers and then it was 2020. 2019 was a wonderful year but I learned a lot, a lot that I can apply to my life this year.

I have a list of goals and changes I want to make this year. I strive to work on that every day.

Self care- I learned a lot last year about self care. Self care IS NOT selfish. You are cheating yourself if you don’t take that time for you.

Skin- I have oily and acne prone skin and my goal for that is take as much time as I can and do anything I can to make myself feel good when I look in the mirror at my own skin. Remove my makeup every night. Yes I know it’s bad to sleep with it on but my goal is not to forget nightly this year. Once again- self care is not selfish.

Nails- My fingernails are one thing I treat myself to every two to three weeks just because it makes me happy. It makes me feel beautiful. It makes me feel put together. Once again- self care is not selfish.

Mind and body- I have decided to commit to getting healthier. Put that healthy food in my mouth rather than that greasy nasty fast food. It is not a diet- it is a lifestyle. I have learned to put myself first when it comes to my mind set. SELF CARE IS NOT SELFISH.

• Be myself- I learned that I need to be myself. No matter if it’s a good day or a bad day. People will or will not accept me during the good the bad and the ugly. I don’t need those in my life who do not accept me during the bad.
• Take up a hobby- instead of coming home and gluing myself to the tv I need to find a hobby. Something that makes me happy. Something I enjoy doing.
• Read- I’m a book worm what can I say? My goal is to read 2-3 books a month this year. I’m already on my second this month.
• Building my business (we’ll go over this business thing later)- I would like to grow and gain new customers and meet my goals every month.

I’m sure there will be more goals as the year goes by but this is my list so far. If I come up with more- I will update more.

I’m hoping this year- 2020 to be the best one yet not only for me but all of you!

XOXO,

Ashley

Let’s talk about mental health

Mental health. A topic that seems like… almost a disease in this century. I get so tired of the labels from people that are blessed without mental health issues or people that don’t even know they have them.

Some of these are Anxiety, Depression, Bipolar, Depressive Bipolar… the list goes on.

I am not ashamed. I’m not ashamed to say, “I HAVE ANXIETY!” Or “I AM DEPRESSED. I. HAVE. DEPRESSION.” I stopped being ashamed of myself and the issues I struggle with on a day to day basis, a LONG time ago.

I’m not ashamed to say I am on antidepressants. Why? Going to that psychiatrist was probably the best decision I’ve ever made. I was skeptical at first, thinking about how having to take pills will be a huge change but I have come to terms with it.

Sometimes [with depression] I struggle for periods of time and one teeny tiny thing can throw me off and I will be a blubbering mess. I cry and I’m not sure why. I have absolutely no motivation to do anything I’m supposed to be doing but guess what? That’s completely normal.

It’s okay to not be okay.

It’s okay to cry, hey sometimes it helps.

It’s okay to need your parents, your wife, your husband- some days that’s more comforting than anything.

Anxiety is one of those things that honestly- paralyzes you.

At my worst, I couldn’t leave my house. I could not step outside and get in that car to go to the grocery store, even if I was not alone. On the other hand, I couldn’t be alone either. Someone always had to be home with me otherwise it triggered a panic attack inside me.

When people say oh don’t worry, some days I just want to say “please step in my shoes and try not to worry.” I’ve learned worrying is inevitable when you have anxiety, you just need to learn to cope.

Speaking of coping skills, these are some I have found to help me:

• Breathing exercises (I know it sounds stupid but honestly, it works).
• Drink lots of water.
• Read a book.
• Cozy up in bed or the couch (I love using my weighted blanket).
• Stop drinking caffeinated drinks.
• Journaling
• Take a hot bath
• Listen to some music.

The list can go on and on. You will learn your body and what helps YOU.

I have also learned to think before I speak. Some days things come out COMPLETELY wrong.

If you read this and walk away, take this… It will get easier.

XOXO,

Ashley

Wedding Series- The Dress

Let’s face it, every girl dreams about what they will look like on their wedding day from a very young age. We all dream about looking like Cinderella meeting her Prince Charming. Ball gown and all.

Yes, I dreamed of this… until I got engaged.

When I got engaged, I took to Pinterest to look at dress inspiration… I had no idea about any of the million styles of wedding dresses offered. Pinterest overwhelmed me with dresses. I just kept thinking… “What am I going to wear?”

I showed up at the bridal shop and let the lady know that I wanted no bling, beads, and very little lace… other than that I had no idea what I wanted in a wedding dress.

We picked out three dresses… one was full lace with pockets (YES, POCKETS!), one simple mermaid style, and one that was flowy. I tried on the lace first and fell in love instantly. The other two didn’t even compare when I put them on. I just wanted to put the first dress back on.

I ended up buying the first dress I tried on.

After I had the dress in my possession, already paid for, I became worried for a few fitting issues. The hem was too long, the halter was too loose, and the dress was too big. I was worried certain issues couldn’t be fixed, let alone be fixed by early September for my wedding.

Today, I had my alterations appointment. The seamstress pinned the dress in all the right places… the dress is perfect. It looks like a whole new dress. It flatters my figure and makes me feel confident about my body.

I’m ready to walk down the isle now, September can’t come soon enough.

My advice to any bride just buying their dress, go with your heart. When you try on that “perfect” dress, you will know. I promise. Don’t let alterations scare you, I learned this myself. If that perfect dress is too big, opt for some alterations so it is fitted for your body. I know wedding dress shopping is scary, its also a beautiful experience. Sometimes you just need to conquer that fear. Follow your heart. 

Feel free to leave any questions below!

XOXO,

Ashley

Favorite Books- June 2018

This month I have gotten back into reading more. I’m more of a romance type a girl. I’m a sucker for a sappy young adult romance book.

I have always read A TON, even when I was younger. My mom used to call me a book worm. I’m pretty proud of my bookshelf but my Kindle Fire is my ultimate best friend when it comes to reading every day.

This month I have been really into Micalea Smeltzer books… my favorite author!

I just finished reading this one, The Other Side of Tomorrow was one of the best books I have read in a long time. It was one of those books when I sat down to read it, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I had to keep reading it. It honestly only took me like two days to finish.

The story of Willa and Jasper was so unique and it pulled at my heart strings. I’m not going to spoil the book but Willa has been through so much in her life but somehow, some way she always had managed to keep positive and look on the bright side of life. It inspired me to want to be more like her. Jasper… Jasper was broken but with Willa, all his pieces seemed to fall back together.

This is DEFINATELY one I would recommend anyone to read, it was truly an amazing book.

Broken hearts…

I have read every other book in this series and followed all these character’s journeys, Jace and Nova pulled each other through so much.

Jace and Nova seemed to pull each other out of the darkness. Nova had a hard past… Jace helped her through the struggle of her past. This was one of those books that I almost teared up at a few points in. Their story was beautiful.

That’s all for that one, I don’t want to spoil anything!

 

My series to read for July is Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout. I keep seeing bits and pieces about this one and I’m intrigued. Have you read these books? Were they good reads? Do tell!

XOXO,

Ashley

Sale Sale Sale!!

I wasn’t going to blog about this because I thought the sale had ended… but it hasn’t guys, IT HASN’T! Right now on ULTA.com you can buy the Too Faced Chocolate Bon Bons eyeshadow Pallet for 50% off!

This is a super amazing deal, as Too Faced doesn’t put out sales like this very often. I had seen this earlier this week and couldn’t wait to get my hands on the pallet so I caved and ordered one for myself. I couldn’t pass up this amazing deal.

Here’s a look at the beautiful pallet, on sale now for only $24.50! Go grab one for yourself before this amazing deal ends! you can buy it using this link (NOT AFFILIATE)… Ulta Chocolate Bon Bons!

Did you buy one for yourself? How do you feel about this pallet?

XOXO,

Ashley

Getting Back Into my Groove

I’m slacking. I created this blog with the utmost intentions to blog regularly, to have a schedule. What can I say? Life has gotten in my way.

I have apologized in my past few blogs for being absent, saying I was going to get a hold of myself and start posting regularly.

To be honest, I have started a new job at a property management full time and I have started selling Paparazzi Jewelry ($5 jewelry!) these past few months and now I’m just starting to get back in the groove of things.

I am going to start planning my posts so I can start getting back to posting regularly.

Thanks for all of your understanding!

XOXO,

Ashley

SALE! SALE! SALE!

 

Hello, Lovelies!

Today I was going through my morning routine… waking up, checking emails and such. While I was scrolling I stumbled upon a Nordstrom ad and discovered a Too Faced Natural Matte palette for only $12.97. Yes you read that right. $12.97.

It gets better… They also had their Natural Eye Palette for the same price… $12.97!  I think this one may have sold out… Yes they are both similar eye palettes but with this pricing, man I couldn’t pass these babies up!

I work in an office and some days I am in such a hurry that I don’t get to finish my makeup so compact palettes are very easy for me to carry back and forth. These colors are also so simple and elegant at the same time.

For the fun of it, I just kept scrolling through the Beauty sale section and I found some more gems!

Ofra Liquid Lipsticks! I love the formula of their liquid lipsticks. They are so creamy, non drying and they last forever on the lips. I ordered the colors Sao Paulo, Havana Nights, Brooklyn, and Bel Air for only $3.74!

The last time I checked for $3.74 they have Havana Nights, Staten Island, and Dubai left. For $9.97 they still had Santa Ana, Mocha, Laguna Beach, Mina, Plumas, Sunset Beach, Rio, Harlem, and New Orleans.

This is just a small section of what they had avaliable for sale… they had brand names like MAC, Smashbox, Bobbi Brown, LORAC, etc.

Go check and see what you can grab before its gone!!

Wedding Series- Save the Dates

Welcome to part 3 of my wedding series! I’m so happy to be making these posts for you guys!

Today I’m going to be talking about my Save the Date cards.

My save the dates were actually postcards! I ordered them from Zazzle.com, I got 96 for about $0.89 a piece. Yes I only have a 60 person wedding but I knew I had to send one to certain people who I know aren’t coming to the wedding… why you ask? Good question… I don’t think I have an answer.

When I got the postcards I was super happy with them but the back was blank besides a line through the middle like a normal postcard. Sadly I had no idea how to fill out a postcard… go ahead… call me stupid. I looked it up online then started filling them out.

Once I was ready to stamp them my mom informed me that postcards have specific stamps that are less money than normal stamps, I had no idea! When I bought the postcard stamps, coincidentally they were also beach themed!

After I sent them all out, I started to get compliments on my save the dates and people were telling me how cute the cards were.

What I learned: buying your save the dates and customizing them isn’t as hard as others talk about, filling out your save the dates can be easy if you just sit down and focus on them, postcards have cheaper stamps, HOW to actually fill out a postcard, and also the design of your save the date isn’t the most important.

The save the date design doesn’t matter so much to people, they won’t remember those postcards they received in the mail 6 months before your wedding. In my opinion, what matters is your invitations. That’s what a person will remember if they even remember that at all. So if you have a budget spend less on save the dates and more on invites.

Thanks for reading! See you with my next wedding series!

XOXO,

Ashley

Wedding Series- The Disneymoon

Hello loves! Part 2 of my wedding series is going to be my Disney World/Honeymoon planning post.

Let me tell you out of all the planning I have been doing for everything in my wedding, this has probably been the hardest/most time consuming out of it all.

Let’s start off with how the place was chosen…

My fiancé and I planned on going road trip style, down the beach to Disneyland to stay a few days.

Well my soon to be mother in law called us and said “why don’t you two go to Florida to Disney World?” We had told her that was too expensive for us and that’s why we were doing something closer to home. She said no no… find a hotel and get the best room and stay for a week, I’m going to do this for you guys, it’s your wedding.

Yes. I was in shock.

So we looked and looked, it was kind of difficult because we hadn’t been to Disney World before so we had to go by pictures/distances from parks/recommendations from cast members.

We finally decided on Hotel Contemporary, this hotel is pretty great, the monorail runs right through the hotel! We have a Theme Park view room so if we’d like we can see fireworks/etc.

As a Disneyland AP holder I haven’t had any experience in half the things you have to do for Disney World, example making dining reservations 6 months in advance!

Yeah that was an experience… one of the hard things was we had never eaten at any of these places before so we had no idea if they were good or not but I can’t imagine anything being bad in Disney World. Another difficult thing was that a few things I wanted, the reservations were filled by the time I even got on! Yeah that was nuts!

But, this is our honeymoon… I’m going to go with the flow and everything is going to be amazing because I will have my Hubby with me!

My soon to be hubby is so easy going, he’s just letting me set up plans and just going with the flow and all he has to do is show up!

Let’s just say our Disneymoon is going to be perfect no matter how we spend it, no matter what the Florida weather chooses to be… because I’ll have my Husband by my side!

XOXO,

Ashley

Wedding Series- The Venue

Why helllo lovelies!

It’s been awhile since I have had the chance to sit down and actually write a blog post but I’m back!

As many of you know, I’m getting married soon- September actually… so I decided to kind of start a “wedding” series. Hopefully you all enjoy my wedding series and maybe it can help you out even at some point planning your own wedding.

The first thing we did was of course find my venue, all I knew was I wanted to be married on the beach and when I say on the beach I mean toes in the sand. Conveniently the only venue that did weddings on the beach was the hotel my family stays at every time we visit the beach.

As we were checking out from our vacation my mom and I mentioned having a wedding there and they gave us a information folder with all the information we would ever need to know about having a wedding at their hotel. As I looked through the packet I knew I wanted to be married there- my mom knew that was the place also.

We did some thinking and looking at numbers, when we settled on a date we called the Wedding Coordinator and booked the venue for September 16.

The venue included the upstairs restaurant for the reception and neither of us had seen the room so we scheduled a meeting time and made a meeting time to view the room where our reception would be held.

Oh. My. Gosh. Talk about beautiful, there’s a cute little room off to the side with hardwood floors and that’s where the DJ and the dance floor are during the reception. We are also given use of the outside deck which faces the ocean… major heart eyes guys.

My wedding is a Sunday afternoon wedding, 11-4, perfect sunlight pictures and hopefully perfect weather.

As of right now, I’m leaning to only serve mimosas and beer no hard liquor… it’s early and I want my wedding to be classy as possible… don’t get me wrong, if you serve alcohol at your wedding more power to you! It’s just a decision I’m going to have to really think about.

Along with the venue comes with the colors- linens, flowers, cake etc. As of now I’m thinking blue jean blue, burlap brown, peachy pink, and like a leafy green. More natural colors.

The linens have been a hard decision for me but I think I have finally picked which color out of those I want to use, buuutttt you’ll have to wait and see what I choose closer to the date!

The wedding coordinator has made the venue much easier. She will take my decor the night before and put it all up for me and get my whole wedding ready for me and all I have to do is show up to my wedding. That’s another selling point of my venue.

Along with my venue, on our anniversary every year we get a free nights stay at the hotel, free of charge just because we got married at the venue. Yes I’m serious- a free nights stay at the beach… I’ll take it!

Well, that’s my “Venue” post… hopefully you all enjoyed it and maybe it helped you out! If you have any questions feel free to leave them below!

XOXO,

Ashley