THE STORY OF MY ONGOING WEIGHTLOSS JOURNEY

About 8 years ago, I lost 40 pounds - I guess it was "baby" weight but I was well passed that stage! I worked really hard, walked daily, used Weight Watchers to help me keep track of every little thing I ate, and felt amazing. 

About 4 or 5 years ago, I began gaining back that weight. I hadn't changed my eating habits much and I was still working out. I was puzzled as to why I began gaining back my weight and started realizing my addiction to sugar and breads and thought that I needed to figure out a way to get that under control. Meanwhile, in the last 5 or 6 years, I have discovered all things natural, clean, organic, and wholesome! Our family now does as much clean living as possible. 

I found my haven in Atlanta

I went away for about five days last week and headed to Atlanta, Georgia for a bloggers’ conference called Haven. It was a conference specifically for home décor/DIY bloggers and it was just like its name – a haven! It’s hard to describe the camaraderie of bloggers. It’s something that most of us bloggers can’t really share or talk about much with even our close friends or family because they don’t understand the lingo, the online relationships, and the hours and hours and hours it takes to run a blog, and usually get bored hearing us talk about HTML, stats, and SEO. So staying up until 1 AM to talk and chat at the conference was pretty normal for all of us and worth the lack of sleep we all got.

Top Left: my new polka dot bag. Bottom Left: reading material on the plane. Right: My love note I found in my suitcase from my sweet Rachel.

What did I learn about? Well, there were lots of classes you could take. I specifically wanted to learn about SEO, running a blog better, PR, advertising, making money, photography, photo styling, blog design, and furniture painting. There were so many more classes I didn’t even get to like: thrifting, decorating 101, furniture building, and many more.

I have a HUGE to-do list now for this blog and that is going to take a lot of extra time to get through that list to make OMF better. To help you better understand what it takes to run a blog, each post that you see {three days each week} takes me an average of 5+ hours to put together. Surprised?  Well, it does. I have to DO the project. I have to take photos WHILE I’m doing the project. I have to write the post. I have to edit the photos. I have to edit the post.  Plus, there’s all the social media and link parties to get my blog known so you can find my organizing ideas!  There’s emailing with companies for advertising and giveaways, answering emails and comments from my lovely readers. You can see, it’s nearly become a full time job for me – remember I’m also a piano teacher with 15 students! Oh, and did I mention I have a family and home to run, too? Well, I know what it’s like to work because I’m about up to full time work hours, as you can see. But, I LOVE it – I absolutely LOVE to blog. I work every spare minute I can – just ask my husband and friends!

Top Left: Allison Hepworth. Top right: Beckie Farrant. Bottom Left: Andrea. Bottom Right: Anna, my roommate at Haven.

Now…enough about all that blog stuff and why I love it. Let me tell you about some amazing ladies I met and whom you might like to get to know. My roommate was Anna, of Ask Anna. She and I are both Christians and we both love organizing and decorating. We were a great fit as roommates. She is more of the “cleaner” than me – I just like to organize everything, I’m not so much the germ-a-phobe, which she’ll readily admit to. She and I are both from California and have been to each other’s houses, too! We had lots of late night talks and never seemed to run out of things to talk about.

I also got to see my friend {whom I roomed with at Blissdom}, Allison from House of Hepworths along with some of her Texan friends that she roomed with, Beth {of Freestylin.com} and Jamie {of C.R.A.F.T}. They were just sweet ladies and I got to talk a lot with them. FYI - I didn't take nearly enough pictures because I'm terrible at taking "people pictures" and usually just take pictures of stuff! So this is what I have...

I made fast friends with sisters Vanessa and Heather from AtThe Picket Fence. I had never been to their blog before and I can’t understand why. They have some great stuff and are amazingly good at what they do. We laughed and talked for hours about so much stuff!

Brittany, the Pretty Handy Girl, and I became friends at Blissdom in Nashville, and I had the privilege of joining her {on the day after our conference was over} at a Habitat for Humanity Restore in Atlanta. She spoke about recycling and restoring old items. She’s amazing and everyone loves to be around her – she’s definitely a people person. She can fix just about anything and has amazing tutorials on her blog about how to fix, make, and do so many things. I would recommend her as a great resource for all her great tutorials on DIY {especially geared for women}.

Then I got to meet Beckie with an “ie” – one of the most creative ladies I know who blogs at Infarrantly Creative {she’s also got two other blogs – Knock Off Décor and Road Kill Rescue}! She is an amazing businesswoman as well as blogger. She has a great handle on how to do this whole thing and had great advice for us on that.

The trip to Atlanta was absolutely worth the lack of sleep, the time change, the lack of not eating enough, and having to be away from my family for a short time. But, I’m still a wife and Mom, first, and it is good to be home with my family. It’s hard to balance working from home as a blogger and being the “COO” {chief operating officer} of your household. I hope that you will begin to see changes on the OMF blog that you like. To start, I re-wrote my “about me” page. I’m hoping to update my home tour page soon, too, but it takes a ton of time to do that so I’ll let you know when that happens.

I’m also going to be helping you with organizing your kids {and making your life a little calmer, hopefully} in a whole different way as I am partnering with Positive Parenting Solutions for a FANTASTIC webinar that she is hosting next month. If you’ve never heard of this site, I’m going to tell you more soon about it and, trust me, when I talk about having a calm and organized home, this is going to help a lot of Mommies with all of her great advice. I look forward to another great year of blogging and motivating all of you to organize!!!

 

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Updates, Vacation, and More...

As most of you know, I was away last week in Boca Raton, Florida with my husband, and I shared many of my craziness in pictures on Instagram. He was there on a business trip so I travel with him to this particular conference each year with him.

  

Here are a few of the photos from our trip. In the first photo, I am trying on an outfit deciding if I should buy it! In the second photo, I had a lot of schedules to prepare: house sitter, kids, and even wrote special notes for each kid on each day we were gone. 

  

I got my new business cards the afternoon before we left. Many of the people I meet have no idea what a "blogger" is and so it's nice to have a business card to give them. The second pictures shows that I hate packing....it's the one thing I procrastinate doing. When I go with my hubby, I have to plan several outfits a day, plus jewelry, and shoes and all that so it's a lot of work. I took that photo at 9 PM the night before we left.

We left EARLY...seriously, can you believe what time we were up? But, traveling with my hubby has it's perks!

  

It rained for four of the days we were there...then the last day finally got sunny! I was able to get two good days of vacation while in Florida. But, I actually spent two more days of my "vacation" working. Yep...working! I'll tell you why! I have been wanting to update the OMF website for months and months....but, it takes hours and hours and hours of interrupted work to get that done. So, THIS was the perfect opportunity. I had so many wonderful bloggers who filled in for me while I was away so I could do just that.  So...let me tell you about all the NEW things I've done to make OMF a better blog for YOU.

First, on my right side bar, I have updated all my ways you can connect with me - and I have a LOT of ways you can keep up with OMF! Twitter, Pinterest, Scribd, RSS Feed, Email, Google Plus, Instagram, Bloglovin', and Facebook! Whew...that's a lot of social media! Now it's all in one spot so you can click on whichever button to follow me on whatever you use - whether it's some or all of them!

I also have been wanting a way for the many of you who search for all kinds of organizing ideas, but make it in an easy way. So, I have a NEW tab at the top of the page called "Organizing Ideas" and it is FULL of every single organizing idea I have done for the {almost} two years I've been blogging, broken down by category, to make it easy for you to find just what you're looking for - with pictures you just click on to take you directly to the post. Anytime you wonder about how to organize a specific area of your space, GO THERE! I have so many ideas...and many, many more to come. This will be updated weekly so as I post about organizing, the page will keep filling up with my ideas of organizing made fun!

I also wanted a place to go to for all the projects I've done on OMF. So, I created another tab called "OMF Projects" that has all of them categorized in one place. It's easy, you just click on the picture and it will take you directly to the post. This will also be updated weekly so keep checking back.

Another thing I did was make my very popular series "31 Days to {Cheaply} Organize Your Home" and made it much more easy to navigate.

 Another tab called "Organizing Series" is new to the top bar with a collection of every organizing series I've done. This will help you go back through each one you're interested in {or forgot about or didn't know about} and see what I've blogged about}.

Last...you can ALWAYS use my Search engine or the "Labels" on the right side bar if you want to find something else. I also have an OMF Amazon Store because I often get requests about where to get certain organizing and cleaning items, or books that I use. I have tried finding products that are reasonably priced and yet going to do what you need them to do. This is also towards the bottom of my OMF page in the right side bar. I hope you are as excited about all these updates as I am to have them! Please feel free to pin ANY of the new pages and to pass them on to your friends who are looking for ideas to organize or decorate or do projects around the house.  My goal is to keep you motivated and I hope this continues to do so!

When you get a chance to look through all the changes, let me know what you think. Does it make it easier for you to find what you're looking for? Are you excited to have it all in one place? This is YOUR resource, too, so use it like that!! I'm happy to be able to provide this for you, so I ask that if you're happy with OMF to "pin" what you like and pass it on to your friends when you are excited about something! Thank you to my wonderful readers!!!

 

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Some new things going on...

I realize that I don't "typically" post on Sundays! However, I wanted to let you know of a few things that are happening at Organizing Made Fun!

First of all, you may have noticed {if you are directly on my blog} that I have a few things flashing on there now, and some sponsors! In order to improve upon OMF, I need a little bit of income to do that. I want to make things better for you and become a better blogger, also!

Also, I now have an Amazon store on my sidebar. I have set up this store, exclusively with keeping YOU in mind.  I know you want to find things that I mention on OMF, but you may not have ever seen them. So, I have found those items and more FOR you. Just click on the "OMF Store" and it will take you directly to all the items to look through.

There are three categories {currently}: organizing, cleaning, and books. The organizing are products I have found at VERY reasonable prices for you to use in your home, should you need them. The cleaning products are ones that I use at home or recommend using. And, the books are ones that I have read or recommend reading - either spiritual, or on organizing, or autism.

OH, and let me tell you....GOOD things are coming on OMF.  I have planned out some fantastic things this month and next...well, I've even got plans for the new year, too {that's the planner in me}! For all my wonderful readers, I've even got something special for you. SO, be SURE to come back or subscribe or follow because you do NOT want to miss out on some fun organizing "things"!!! And lastly, please always know that you are more than welcome to PIN anything you like here! That's what the button below is for!  Happy Sunday to you all!

 

 

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