2021

 

Well we sure had a lot riding on this year didn't we?

I'll be the first to admit that I had high hopes that when the clock struck midnight that we would be leaving all of the pain and suffering of 2020 behind. It didn't turn out to be so.

Instead we entered the year with another lockdown. We went from having a small bubble to no bubble. It was cold and scary and hard.

I'll just say it: I'm not doing awesome right now. Every day is a struggle. Between working from home, being stuck inside from the cold, being isolated from our families right now, regular old seasonal depression, trying not to each too much, drink too much, sleep too much, complain too much, look at screens too much and seeing the possibility of getting a vaccine seem further and further away, it's been a tough time. Most days feel the same right now. They contain a rollercoaster of emotions and a lot of pain for what we're losing and missing and yearning for. 10/10 would not recommend.

I don't really have a silver lining for this right yet. It just feels good to get it out. 

I've know this feeling before- in the past couple of years seasonal depression usually hits me pretty hard around January and February and I tend to be able to convince myself that the current circumstances are never ending. But they do end. And spring comes and a feeling of contentment and happiness grows in me again like a seed. I know that's what's coming on next. So we all just have to keep holding on a little longer. 

Until then I'll keep finding sunbeams to bask my face in.

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown

Tiny, Beautiful Things

 It's been a year of loss- to say the least.

We've lost some of our freedom, our security, people have lost jobs and worst of all, people have lost people. 

I'd very much like to stop living through historical events thankyouverymuch.

It's easy to sit and dwell on all these things but when I do that it makes me want to fill up my glass with wine and not stop filling it up until I forget all the things this year has taken from us. 

But I want to think a different way. This year has also given me a lot (a privileged point of view) but I think if we all took a second to think, we might see some things we've gained as well.

I'll go first:

- I gained the ability to work from home. I wanted to work from home so badly before the pandemic and it just didn't seem like a possibility. Then all of a sudden we all worked from home and somehow it worked. I've spent many days typing away in my pyjamas, happily moseying over to the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee and stopping by to pet Pete on the way. It's a calmer and cozier life than my one before and it feels good.

- I took up walking alone. Seems like a simple thing, right? Before the pandemic I felt like a bit of a nut going for a walk. I don't have a dog so I felt like someone aimlessly wandering the streets. Then I threw that limiting belief out the window and just left the house. I've walked almost every inch of town. I found a favourite route and listened to audio books and podcasts. I've stopped and took a giant whiff of forested air or paused to watch the leaves as the wind shook them from trees. I took photos of the simple beauties I saw like blooming trees, sun flares, and paths littered orange with leaves. I felt a lot more peace and gratitude.

- I had time to learn new things. Along with everyone else on the planet I learned to make rye bread. I learned how to make an amazing margarita. I tried baking tarts. We bought a bread maker and are experimenting with different recipes. I'm learning the piano. I've wanted to learn an instrument all my life- and dabbled as a kid but I've never tried again as an adult. Something made me feel like it was too late. This year I said screw it and asked to borrow my sister's keyboard. Now I'm taking lessons I find on youtube and just enjoying messing around.

- I established a morning routine. Oye. This one makes me feel like some instagram influencer who is about to tell you about running 7k before eating oatmeal and then doing her 50 step beauty routine but honestly, it's not that complicated. I found what works for me. I drink a big glass of water and then I stretch. I write 5 things I'm grateful for in a journal. The things I write are not big, obvious things like Jordan, or being healthy or having a roof over our head. They're small, insignificant things that I take time to notice each day. This way I'm always on the lookout for tiny, beautiful things in my everyday life, like how last week we got a bread maker and I woke up to the smell of bread, or how when you pickup the dish soap tiny bubbles pop out and dance around. Simple, beautiful, wonderful things. That's it. That's my morning routine and I love it. I used to meditate too but I realized I didn't like it. I'm trying out affirmations in the mirror right now and am still unsure how I feel about that. Try your own routines. Try your own acts of self-love. It really does a mind good!

- I'm knitting again. I haven't knit in a couple years and it feels so good to get back to it, to do something creative and work with my hands instead of letting them scroll through a screen.

- We've gotten super into hiking. This has truly been my greatest joy to come out of quarantine. Every weekend lately we've found a trail nearby, woken up early and gotten out to it. I can't describe how much happiness it brings me to be outside, to be away from screens and electronics, to move my body and to feel the calm and beauty of nature. It's opened our minds for more camping trips and winter hiking possibilities and now I'm dreaming of a day someday when we can have a cabin of our own and be in nature all the time!

This year has taken things from us in many different ways. We've lost the opportunity to connect with so many people, to see them, to hug them. We cancelled our dream, bucket list trip to Japan in March. We have faced uncertainty about so many things in the future. We've also been given so much this year. We bought a new house that we love and are so happy in. We've spent more time with our families than ever before. We've spent more time together doing new things and more time in nature. We've gotten as much as we have had taken.

I'm sure if you think too there's a lot that may have come from this year to you as well. 

From the Desk of:

Taylor Brown

2020 Survivor

Life Lately

 

It's basically lock down time again y'all!

Technically my city is in the red zone because 8 months into the pandemic we're now introducing colour systems. We'll probably be in the red until well after Christmas I suspect with maybe a lock down afterwards. Oh the world is full of fun possibilities innit?

What this means for me is I'm back to working from home and stressing about if I am gonna get the coronavirus from the heightened cases of community spread. Yippee!

All jokes aside we're pretty lucky that the only thing we've sufffered from in our house is a case of boredom. I'm am happy to be officially missing out on the days of having to heat up my car before I go to work and bad weather is actually super nice when you don't have to go out in it.

So what have I been up to lately?

- My new favourite thing to do is to post up on our coach on weekend afternoons. I pull the tv out as far as I can on it's wallmount, get my weighted blanket, grab my knitting and a big cup of coffee and just watch movies or Netflix. Bonus points if it's snowing outside! Recently I've been watching the Queen's Gambit and last weekend I watched The Family Stone. 

- We've gotten some snow around here finally and I want to give some winter hiking a try! Hopefully the snow sticks around till this weekend and Jordan and I can try it out on a trail we're familiar with. I just think it will be so freaking beautiful!

-We got all of our Christmas shopping done! Woohoo!

- Our Christmas tree is up and it has really been contributing to my cozy, weekend rituals! I'm working on finding ways to keep Pete out of it. I've tried putting orange and lemon essential oils in a spray bottle with water and spraying it on the tree and that still hasn't stopped him. I'm gonna try putting orange peels in and around the tree and see if that works. He truly is a demon.

I'm so glad December is finally here. We've only got a few weeks left of work and then it's Christmas time! After new years Jordan and I are getting away to a little Airbnb and I'm super looking forward to that. We love getting away in the winter and extending Christmas break by a few days doesn't sound too bad either.

Hope you're finding ways to stay busy and sane out there pals!

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
December Enthusiast 

Pour Yourself a Cup of Ambition

Working 9-5 what a way to make a living- amiright!?

I bet Dolly Parton didn't image that working 9-5 would look like it does in 2020: working from home, wearing a mask in the office, massive buildings filled with empty cubicles. Ahh the apocalypse!

I know a lot of us put together some rag tag set ups when it came to a home office when all this went down.

Here's what I was working with:

Not awful- just not somewhere I was excited to sit down each morning.

Then we all thought it would be a good idea to order a desk at the same time and then all waited months and months to get them. I know it wasn't just me or I would have had my desk way before August- I tell yah that.

Regardless of how hard to get this desk played- when it did come it was worth the wait. 

Isn't it just so ding dang pretty?!

Now I get to sit at this dreamy little set up in my pajamas and take breaks for home made americanos and dream about never having to wear a blazer or pair of dress pants again. I'm really not too broken up about working from home if you can't tell.

The desk is from Structube and it's really great quality- can't complain there. What I can complain about it their backlog on shipping things out. They tend to sell things expected to be in stock in the future and then when that date comes and goes all you can do is wait. It's a bit frustrating but not the biggest problem we've had this year.

Here's to hoping for more days working from our safe, warm and happy homes and better days ahead.

From the (new) desk of:

Taylor Brown

Pajama Wearing Paper Pusher

I'm Okay. You're Okay.

OYE!

(I think that pretty well sums things up).

This year though guys, I mean is it just me or has it been tough? Kidding, kidding.

I was talking the other night about how hard this year has been to adjust to. Since March (much like everyone else) I've gone through so many swings. At first things were scary but we were all convinced that it was all so temporary- I mean Jordan and I were in Florida when Trudeau told everyone to come home and we seriously considered "waiting it out." Oof.

Then there have been beautiful moments where everything feels okay and our focus on getting through the day makes you stop and admire the trees on your walks and how they look so strong, and resilient and climbable and you wish you could climb one now, or you spend afternoons in the kitchen baking and noticing how much you love the way that flour floats in a cloud around you after you clap your hands in front of your face (which you do often to invoke this tiny little joy).

But things change rapidly and just when I'm approaching a new normal, the world shifts again. 

We moved and had all of the stress and excitement of a new home. I went back to the office and my routine once again changed. Now the days are getting shorter and we're trying to fit in every socially distanced fire and fall evening walk we can before we're shut inside for six months of unchartered territory. 

Each time things change my adjustment period includes a lot of growing pains and a few glasses of wine but this year has shown us our capacity for adaptation and for joy and for gratitude.

Every damn day I (and the ones I love) have survived something trying to kill us. Nevertheless, we persist. 

So this post may not have much of a point but it's my way of saying I'm still here, you're still here. Take the walk, drink the glass of wine, cuddle with your pet, persist, persist, persist.

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
Lifetime Survivor of Life 

Paint It Black

In the 9th grade I had a lot of feelings . I was completely struck by this new music that I had discovered. It was Taking Back Sunday, and The Used, and Panic! at the Disco , and Coheed and Cambria and I was completely sure that I was the only person who truly felt all of these deep feelings that I would one day feel in a studio apartment in New York City, probably smoking cigarettes out my window with my chipped black fingernails. I wore black on black to school every day, I listened to my walkman (yes, you read that right, my WALKMAN) as I travelled from class to class and I kid you not when someone asked me what I was listening to I told them "You've never heard of them." Man oh man!

That all eventually faded as I navigated into young adulthood and whatever you would call the stage I'm into now. It's held on through my continued love of punk and rock music (please insert rock and roll emoji hand here), my appreciation of a leather jacket (and biker boots if you've got 'em), and my adoration of all things Halloween. There's still a spooky emo girl inside me somewhere.

When it came time to move to our new house I couldn't get the idea of black statement walls or black french doors out of my head. I just wanted to paint it freaking black. 

It took a heck of a lot of convincing but I did eventually get Jordan to sway over to my side and agree to hand me a paint brush and let me go wild. It helped that we had painted a mantle and our wetbar black and Jordan really liked it (don't worry- I'll be showing you every inch of this house and all the things I goth-ed out but that's not for today).

I started with painting a statement wall in our bedroom black. It was honestly so fun to do! I made a playlist of all of my favourite emo songs from my youth and let the 14 year old me live her dreams henny! Now, again, that's a tour for another day.

Painting our bedroom wall black and doing a good job at it gave me free reign over the rest of the house with my charcoal dipped brush!

I had my eyes set on the back of our front door. That's right- the back! I've always wanted to infuse a space with a pop of colour on the back of a door- or, if you will, a pop of an absence of colour.

Here's what the back of the door looked like before:

Nothing horrible or awful- but was it helping my live out my wildest emo dreams? No no no.

And I present to you the door now:

Ain't she cute!?

And my apologies for the lighting on the door- yah girl is still learning her way around a camera and is having a heck of a time figuring out how to take pictures of walls with windows on them without bleaching out the window or covering the rest of the shot in complete darkeness. It's a process.

As consolation for the learning curve I will award you with one tour of my front entrance. I know you wanted to see them deets!

If you would have told me a year ago that I'd be sitting around thinking about a cute way to store our face mask collection I would have laughed in your face. 2020 is a trip my friends!

Previously I've never liked a house that was a split (to be honest we don't know how to define our house- side split? Front split? Raised something or other?) but I really haven't minded it with this house. The front door walks into a sizable landing and I've enjoyed decorating this little entrance of ours. The other bonus is that under the stairs is a crawl space which has been great for storing things we want to keep out of the way and organized in bins. I also enjoy the fact that the stairs are only a half flight because I've already fallen down a set. It was traumatic.

So there's the front entrance of our home. It has come a long way from it's wallpaper-ed beginnings and feels like a calm and beautiful introduction to our home. 

Can't wait to share more of our home with you- oh and more tales of my delusional adolescent thoughts- that's probably what you come here for too! 

So I'll leave you with this: my paint it black emo playlist that warms my little black heart even to this day.

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown

Feeler of Very Serious Feelings since 2005 

I Said Hey, What's Going On?

 

<<Just me cosplaying as the girl who works at the fashion magazine but doesn't take it seriously because she wants to write real stories about war-torn countries and starving children>>

Hey y'all!

Things have been b-u-s-y busy around here!

Our house is in a perpetual state of chaos because we're renovating. We got the house in June and had plans to have the whole place painted, torn up and put back together before we moved in in July but unfortunately our contractor broke his leg so we had to wait until mid-September for him. We were able to get all of the wallpaper taken down and the entire house painted before we did move in and that made a huge difference. We also changed all the light fixtures, had some pot lights installed and changed some other fixtures along the way. The kitchen is now getting the finishing touches today and the bathroom is completely demolished and should be finished within the next couple weeks. It's definitely been a process living amongst projects and renovations all this time but it's also been super fun. We really decided to go for it with this house. Our last house was an income property so when we did make any changes they all had to be neutral and with renters in mind. This house is all ours! That means I've finally been making the renovation decisions I've dreamed of (can you say blue kitchen!?) Don't worry I'll be showing you every last detail here. I'm just so dang smitten with it! 

Now that I'm back to blogging I'm so excited to share all of the things we've been up to around here. I started taking some pictures on my iphone of some of our upgrades and quickly realized that my iphone is just not up to snuff. Then I pulled out my canon and it didn't have a memory card (face palm). That's been the delay here. I've finally found my memory card and I'm going to work on getting some pictures taken this weekend. 

Things I'm hoping to share in the next little bit:

- Fireplace facelift (this one blew my mind)

- Upgrading our bar (how adult are we!? a bar!)

- Painting the wall in our bedroom black (hi, my 9th grade emo dreams came true)

- Painting the back of our front door (a long held dream of mine)

- Adding hanging plants to our dining room (Jordan has expressed hatred towards this but he is wrong)

- The kitchen remodel (oof this is going to be a big one)

-Eventually our bathroom remodel

- The honeycomb shelves I'm building (these have really stalled but I have every hope to work on those this weekend!)

There has been so much going on here lately and it's all be wonderful and hectic and busy as heck!

Can't wait to share it all!

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
Joanna Gaines in Training