Summer: Rituals.

In this season, I’m finding that the rituals that we have as a family are the ones that carry me through the hard days of exhaustion, emotions, and crazy pregnancy hormones.

Even when I don’t sleep at night, I know that in the morning, there will be coffee and scrambled eggs and #fabfour smoothies and little boy snuggles.

After a hard week, we still have Friday night. Whether we stay in for tacos, or go out for Costco pizza, we start off the weekend together.

“We’ll always have Saturday” is my grown-up-mom-of-three-boys(!) version of “we’ll always have Paris.” Less romantic, for sure, but the nostalgia is still there. Even when we have no plans, we still have each other.

We stroll the farmers’ market, then hit the playground, then the library. Sometimes we go to church on Saturday night, so that on Sunday morning, we can sleep in – as much as you can sleep in with a toddler and a preschooler – before hitting our circuit of Starbucks, donut shop, breakfast burritos and sometimes Bagels & Brew.

We have rituals with words, too. I love you. I’m sorry. Do you want to snuggle? Can I kiss it better? Thank you, Jesus.

In the strongest relationships, the mind, the heart,  and the body come together to form a rope of three strands. Do you have my attention? Am I showing you that I love you? Am I physically present?

I hope that our little ones remember the trips and weekend getaways. I hope they remember what it feels like to roast marshmellows by moonlight at the lake and to jump into a pool surrounded by pine trees. But I hope they also remember the quotidien. I know I will.

On Fight & On Grace.

 “All is grace in our one brutal and beautiful life.” - Ann Voskamp

One of my very favorite places. Someday, I'll have an epic party on that rooftop.

I wonder if grace is written in the sunsets and the clear blue skies and iced half-decaf mint lattes by the pool and clothes that are not maternity but still miraculously fit. I wonder if grace is found in quiet mornings by the ocean, the perfect glass of pinot noir rosé, and running into friends at the farmers’ market.

I wonder if grace is holding both the light and the darkness, what is and what isn’t, the homecoming and the ache. I wonder if grace is being showered with love that you don’t deserve and never asked for.

Jen Hatmaker wrote a book about fighting for grace. I haven’t read it. It seems like an oxymoron – like fighting for peace, which doesn’t seem to make sense until you look back at all of human history and see that all peace was hard-won and paid for in blood, tears, and loss.

Maybe what we need is a little more fight and a little more grace. Maybe it’s in the juxtaposition that we sense more clearly, like with bitter and sweet. In Come Matter Here, Hannah Brencher describes fight songs as reminders to keep going.

She writes:  “I just hope you always know you deserve beautiful things. You deserve the chance to close chapters and write new endings and cry loud and not be sorry for whatever makes that wild heart of yours beat. (Fight Song #4).”

Here’s to reclaiming that wild heart and letting it beat, for the fight and for the grace.

Summer: Rhythm

We’re officially in the throes of summer. When July 1st rolled around, it might as well have been January 1st in my book, with all the excitement of a fresh start for the second half of the year.

I’m deeply grateful for how my year has looked so far. I’m thankful for how I’ve spent my time – from the drawn-out mornings to the nighttime rituals. I’ve accomplished fewer concrete things, but I’ve established better habits, which really, has been the goal all along.

In books that I read and messages that I listen to, I’m reminded over and over to number my days. We have approximately 1,000 weeks with each of our children before they’re grown, and as scary as that sounds – I haven’t even calculated the weeks that have already passed with my littles ones – there’s magic that happens over time, the magic of a “strong, regular, repeated pattern.” Rhythm is the pattern that happens over time, like a house built with bricks laid one on top of the other.

Rhythms change by the season. Summer doesn’t carry with it the allegro of fall or the adagio of winter. It’s speed is just right – a happy andante like the continuous lapping of ocean waves or the steady, circular pedal strokes on a bike.

The rhythm isn’t the color of our days, but the bones. Our habits and routines are the steady drum, the beat that holds constant so that the melody can sing.

In this season, I’ve found that my rhythm looks like this:

Daily, I find that the best mornings are the ones where I’m up an hour or two before my crew, and I have some time to be myself before I’m mom and wife. I try to start the day off with coffee, a few books, Scripture reading, journaling about goals, and 5 minutes or so of centering prayer. This self-care time is so crucial in helping me be fully present and attentive to my family's needs. I aim for at least 40 minutes of creative time like writing or putting together design boards and no more than 30 minutes of personal housekeeping – ordering groceries, scheduling appointments, or checking in on our finances on Mint.

Sunday mornings are my absolute favorite. I try to wake up around 5 or 6 (if I’m not already awake thanks to my pregnancy insomnia) to have the quiet time needed to write out my plans for the week. Practically speaking, I use Moglea’s letterpress notepads and a ultra fine-point Sharpie for my brainstorm list, then transfer the priorities for the week to my Passion Planner. I’ve just started using the Passion Planner (it was gifted), but it seems to be great for connecting the week’s work with the month’s goals and giving space to reflect upon priorities and lessons learned. I’m never without my Day Designer for the day-to-day, and I’ve found their Intentional Living Worksheet and the Goal-Setting Worksheet to be enormously helpful as well.

I make a pot of coffee, and we eat a lazy breakfast at home. We put on music, strip the bed, and tidy the house. It feels so good to start off the new week with a (relatively) clean house. We head to church at 10:30, and then take it easy for the rest of the day.

Weekly, I aim for three workouts a week (Intervals & Arms on the Peloton is my go-to), ideally first thing in the morning before the boys wake up. Planning a date with my husband was on my weekly list for the first half of the year, but I’ve since removed date-planning from my to-do list, and now it’s on Dave’s! Mama has enough extra weight to carry, you know? I bullet out a few meal ideas for the week, usually on Monday, and make sure that the boys’ weekly calendar is populated.

Monthly, I’ve found that the month feels just the right amount of full when it includes a girls’ night, a dinner party, a lunch or coffee date with work friends, a dedicated beach day, and a family adventure day (for July, we’re heading to a butterfly farm!). We make time to stroll the farmer’s market and peruse the library at least a few times a month.

In her latest book, Off the Clock, Laura Vanderkam writes that people who feel like they have enough time “let go expectations of perfection and big results in the short run. Instead, they decide that good enough is good enough, knowing that steady progress over the long run is unstoppable.”

I’m learning that establishing a healthy rhythm takes the burden off of individual days – I can offer myself grace when I sleep in that one day after a few combined late nights and early mornings. I can say yes to rest, knowing that I’m playing the long game. I still pay attention to whether I’ve hit my day’s priorities, but more importantly, I’m moving to my beat.

Powder Room Design

I’ve come to the conclusion that the rooms that I create inspiration boards for are actually going to be the rooms that get done last. Nevertheless, here’s my vision for our downstairs powder room, which – fingers crossed! – we can have done by the end of summer.

This bathroom gets a ton of use, as we spend most of our time downstairs. It is also probably one of the ugliest rooms in the house – I’m talking a vanity that looks like it was decoupaged with dried blood, wall lighting circa the mid-1980s, and tiny rhinestones on the walls. It is literally bedazzled.

Since the room has no natural light to begin with – and because I want to have one darkly painted room in the house – I decided to capitalize on that and go moody and dark with black shiplap (Benjamin Moore Soot). My husband thinks shiplap will be easier to install than tile (the other look I was leaning towards), knock on wood. I’m still debating horizontal or vertical installation.

With statement walls, we can keep it simple with a pedestal sink rather than a full-fledged vanity, which helps keep the cost down. There seem to be an infinite number of hardware options (just see my Pinterest board) – do I pair polished nickel finishes with a brass pivot mirror? Or chrome finished hardware with a round oak mirror? I ultimately decided on a rattan mirror with polished nickel and a touch of white porcelain because the scale of the mirror I found was just right.

I love the idea of showcasing art in various places throughout our home in untraditional places, like the bathroom or the laundry room. I’m eyeing a piece like this one from Laurie Anne Art for above the toilet, but I’m not opposed to a Rose Bowl flea market vintage find either.

I’m rough estimating our budget to be around $3,000, but I think we’ll get it done under that amount. I stalk sales, free shipping promos and cash back deals like my second job. Also, we’ll do the labor ourselves – you can bet that I signed Dave up for the upcoming How to Install a Toilet workshop at our local Home Depot.

Side note: I'm completing re-doing my laundry room design because turns out, it's been done! (Unbeknownst to me at the time I published). Sorry, Hartley Home, I promise I wasn't trying to pose! I have another idea in mind, and the wallpaper was going to be a hassle to put up anyway (and probably a little bit too girly).

Sources

• Rejuvenation Mist double sconce in white ceramic and polished nickel (purchased)
• Lulu & Georgia Sunetta mirror, natural
• Delta Cassidy faucet in polished nickel
• Kohler Memoirs toilet and pedestal sink
• Laurie Anne Art Desert Sanctuary original art
• Rejuvenation West Slope toilet paper holder and towel ring
• McGee & Co River Grass Basket
• Calacatta hex honed marble mosaic tile
• Powder bathroom designed by Studio McGee

Note to Self.

I had a student at work ask me recently for advice. I gave her the advice that really, I needed for myself. What I said:

Intentionally develop your voice. I love how Sheryl Sandberg (my patron saint of all things business) says it: “People aren’t brands. That’s what products need. They need to be packaged cleanly, neatly, concretely – I don’t have a brand, but I have a voice.” Practice pitching ideas – in meetings, but even with friends. Practice disagreeing with people – forcefully or sweetly. Practice writing on a personal blog because you are the boss on that blog (side note: Learn to be the boss. Own your decisions). Know the rules before you break the rules, so to speak. Practice and refine, so that your voice can bend to accommodate the audience or the topic, yet still stay true to your essence.

Engage in the disciplined work of moving towards your goals (and be ok with your goals changing). For a few different seasons in my life, my priorities did not revolve around creative practices. I needed international experience, so for over a year, my discipline revolved around the daily study and practice of Chinese. My “creative” practices felt to the wayside. They felt fluffy and less important. There are seasons – with a newborn or acclimating to a new country, for example –  when it can feel impossible to create, but totally possible to observe. So observe, instead. Progress can come in different forms.

Read, as much as possible. This is something that comes naturally to me, because I’m a librarian’s daughter, because I consider myself a curious person, and because I love words and ideas. I’m an ENFJ, and I especially love how words and ideas act as the inputs that allow me to draw connections across genres and disciplines and areas of learning. It may take 4 months to finish reading a single book. Or you might juggle between 18 books at a time (me, currently). Reading is like eating your veggies. It makes you healthier.

It’s ok to be “behind.” I recently completed – and I use the term completed loosely – a writing workshop. “I’m so behind!” I emailed to the instructor. She replied, “There is no behind. There’s just where you are.” I love that. Start where you are, with what you have. Jess Connolly wrote, in my new favorite devotional, Always Enough | Never Too Much: “Maybe it’s time we look down at what He’s given us and get busy multiplying it. Maybe we should stop thinking about when we’ll get more and start thinking about how about how we can give what we’ve got.”

Make time to appreciate art in community. In my 20s, I was part of a book club where we not only read books together, but we cooked together and ate at the cutest cafes. I am one thousand percent a goals person, and the working life comes easily to me. In other words, I can be overly pragmatic and very intent on “accomplishments.” Communal appreciation of beautiful and interesting things pulls me out of that tendency and brings much needed balance and richness to my life. Don't sacrifice joy on the altar of work.

Leave room for white space. This has been a game-changer in my life. Since I’ve started the practice of a “daily office” – regular time for Scripture reading, centered prayer, and silence – I’ve noticed that the days I practice are more balanced and more centered than the days that I don’t. Also: margin is everything. Silence and margin are two sides of the same way of being that have been hugely impactful in my journey to maintain healthy habits, develop new insights, and engage in purpose-driven growth.