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? 

poverty luxe: coming soon to a craft fair near you! (assuming that youre near gardena, that is...)

so, i was hoping that id be able to jump right back into blogging at full speed with the "what is poverty luxe" series that ive been working on, but as you may or may not know (depending on how many social media outlets you follow me on), james has been working out of town for the past five weeks. 

five. weeks. 

and most of those weeks have included working on saturday, meaning, that for over a month now, i only have a husband at home on sundays. over half of which is spent at church and our new weekly trip to the revolving sushi restaurant and 99 cent store (which are conveniently right next to each other, thus proving that a low income, mostly asian neighborhood is the BEST PLACE EVER). so as you can probably imagine, writing a serious  series defining and explaining the somewhat abstract ethos of our lifestyle, well... thats not coming along as quickly as i had hoped. 

BUT! i do have some good news for you: (and also perhaps a handful of shorter, lighter posts both before and in between this new series):

poverty luxe (the brand) is officially booked for its first ever real life craft fair this summer!!!!!

the event is called CREATE 2014, and its happening on august 2nd, right here in gardena, you can read more about the event on their website, and i am so, SO excited to be a part of it (i seriously could NOT even make up a better jump back into the craft fair world!).

and since june has absolutely FLOWN by (mostly because of my exhausted and sleep-deprived state), i now have a little more than a month to prepare. which ordinarily would send me straight into panic mode, except that im already happy with the size of my inventory, so sewing more isnt necessarily a priority. 

i do have to make fabric labels and sew them into all my skirts though (does anyone know where i can get freezer paper around here?), make some signs, and build a clothing rack  (does anyone want to come over with some drills?. 

but i can do all that in a month, right? 

i really hope so, i mean, this booth is already paid for....

i just wanted you all to know im not dead or anything + refining my focus for poverty luxe.

you may have noticed that i havent been around in a long, long time. at least, i hope youve noticed. and i just wanted to let you know that no, im not dead, and no, this wasnt exactly intentional. 

well, the week and a half I took off in the beginning of May, that was intentional. but after that I was just burnt out from jamess school week and my finals happening at the same time and i just couldn't really get back into my normal blogging groove.

i had (and have) ideas. i made an editorial calendar for june. i just, didnt actually write anything new. 

at first this made me sad, because I missed blogging. then it made me fee guilty, because the unanswered emails and unfinished guest posts were piling up. then it made me feel anxious because after a few weeks, i started to REALLY worry about how i was supposed to catch up on all the life happenings and our family outings and little projects were working on and oh gosh they were piling up and how could i catch this all up and have it all make sense...

and then it hit me. 

i dont have to. im not going to. 

because I've done a lot of thought about this (just because i havent been writing doesnt mean that i havent been thinking about writing), and thats just not the kind of blog that i want this to be. 

i dont think i ever really intended this space to be a vanity project to keep everybody updated on all the little things we do in our daily life, because frankly, its not that interesting. we dont have an adorable and fascinating lifestyle blogger life and im totally cool with that. i have way too many diseases to be worried about being interesting. and im also not that into posting about our day to day life over and over every week, because were kind of in a season where home life is in a steady routine (most of the time), and i just cant write about the same stuff every week. i mean, if i dont even want to write about it, other people certainly dont want to read about it.

also were broke. so buying things/doing projects (which is like, 85 percent of typical lifestyle blogger content) are just not regular activities over here. i cant even pretend to be that kind of blogger. 

but none of that rambling is really relevant anyway because thats not my motivation for blogging anyway. 

working for jamberry, one of the things that gets talked about a lot is our "why", that is, the reason that we do what we do that makes us excited to do it. if we were talking about jamberry, my "why" would be that i need to be able to work from home so that i can be home with alice and finish fashion school and move on to be the independent fashion designer that ive wanted to be since i was a child. this is a highly motivating "why", and lo and behold its actually working. but i digress...

all this time ive been gone, ive been trying to nail down a solid "why" for this blog, because i feel like ive lost touch. i mean, i like posting outfits, and recipes, and projects, and outings and the like but none of that points to any particular theme or direction, and if i want to stay happy and motivated with this blog (and more importantly, for it to provide any kind of value for my readers), i have to rein it in quite a bit more than that. 

and i think maybe ive put my finger on it. it really all boils down to the name. that name that i get asked about all the time, that name that im constantly having to explain, the name that was once described by an old friend as "brilliantly evocative" (hi tom!). poverty luxe. 

so yeah, its a lifestyle blog, but its all about sharing the poverty luxe lifestyle. i want to share our ups and downs and tips and tricks and adventures and life lessons and weird quirks and how weve learned to love living the broke life.

why? because i want to educate, encourage, and maybe even inspire (even though i hate, hate the word inspire) all you folks out there, that even if youre broke, even if youre the kind of broke where this whole "paycheck to paycheck" thing that everybody complains about seems like an extravagant luxury (because trust me, weve spent a LOT of time as that kind of broke), you can still have an enjoyable life. right now if you wanted to. and that never ending always-out-of-money cycle? that can totally be broken, even without a magical increase in income (heck, we managed to do it with a constantly decreasing income). if we can do it, so can you. and im here to help. 

so, what exactly do i mean by poverty luxe? well, considering its kind of a long story and ive already been rambling for a very, very long time, ill talk about that next time. so stay tuned.

and since this was a long, boring post with no pictures, heres alice the last time we went to the beach: