mid-year thoughts.

outfit details: 

top: urban outfitters (theyre having a killer clearance right now, this top was $6!)

skirt: vintage

sandals: shoemint

sunglasses: zenni optical

camera bag: kelly moore

its july. i know that because im right in the middle of that awkward transition between datebooks. 

this means were more than halfway through 2014. this is really weird, because, i swear that yesterday it was MARCH. but they do say that time flies when youre having fun. 

and apparently time really flies when all the pieces start to fit together and suddenly, you can sit back and enjoy living the life that you had always dreamed of. 

so, just in case anyones been worried that i havent been writing because something absolutely catastrophic happened (after all, i did keep writing through all of the awful things we went through over the past year and a half since ive been blogging), i just wanted to reassure you: i havent been writing lately because life is awesome. 

see, so far this year has been full of changes. the kind of changes im not used to. good changes. for all of us:

after (almost exactly) two whole years, jamess job has finally turned a corner from being a great job in theory, to actually being a great job. his hard work and persistency is really paying off; hes halfway through his apprenticeship program, earned a pay raise that is well above our current needs (even after the absurd amount the union takes out), and, unlike last year, hes working. a lot. (he hasnt had a day off since memorial day).

im working from home. legitimately working from home. making more money than i ever have before, on my own time, able to stay home with alice, slow down, and keep the household running without having to be an uptight, overstressed to-do list nazi.  

and alice gets to reap the benefits of both, she gets to have me at home, with the free time and energy to do more fun things together, AND since we have a stable income (for the first time, like, ever), we can do normal things like eat at restaurants and browse the clearance racks at target and even occasionally say yes when she asks for things for no reason without obsessively fretting over every last penny. 

its nice. if james hadnt spent the last five and a half weeks working out of town (though it does seem that more in-town work is happening), id maybe even go so far as to say things are perfect. 

there is one difficulty im struggling with right now though, and thats where this blog fits in with our new, comfortable, exactly-the-way-we-like-things life. when i started this blog, and  really up until a couple months ago, our life was looking like the exact opposite of what we had hoped and planned for. and to be completely honest, a lot of my inspiration and motivation for writing this blog came from the struggle to find and achieve the life we wanted as a family. but now that thats been more or less achieved, where do we go from here? 

what am i supposed to write about now that im, dare i say it? content with the way things are. how am i supposed to come up with new goals and projects when we dont really need anything? when am i supposed to write when i now have things id much rather be doing? 

what are your thoughts? what do you want to read about?