Hello, Beautiful!

I can’t believe we’ve officially got the first week of 2018 under our belts! Happy New Year from me & the Blush+Bourbon Blog! I hope your year is off to an incredible start – may it be your best year yet! I know I’m going to do everything in my power to make darn sure that 2018 is my year.

If 2017 wasn’t exactly (or anywhere close to) what you wanted it to be – or even if you had the most beautiful year of your life – let’s start each day in this brand new year by reminding ourselves:

We. Are. Enough.
This. Is. Our. Year!

If you’ve been following along with the blog and my Instagram, then you know that my 2017 had its ups and downs – to say the least! It’s really important to me to be as straightforward as possible on this blog, every chance I get, especially because it can be so easy to perceive pretty pictures on Instagram as someone’s reality. Pretty pictures aside, 2017 brought me both excruciating pain and sincerely held joy, the most heartbreaking of downs and the most wonderful ups. If I had to narrow it down to my biggest struggles of 2017, I believe they would be:

Battling with (sometimes irrational) fear, depression, and anxiety before and after my spine surgery in February 2017.
Encountering tons of financial difficulty, from our law school being shut down by the federal government shortly after we graduated to our car breaking down with a new problem like clockwork every month.
Accepting that I may never understand some things, like when two of my very best friends – who stood beside me on my wedding day not so long ago and who I have loved more than anything for years – just weren’t interested in being my friend anymore. They officially stopped texting me back and started ignoring my calls, and ultimately stopped loving me despite how much I’ve loved for most of my life.

I am so thankful for the joys we experienced this past year, too. As my mama always says, we can’t be afraid of each day’s purpose, each season in our lives: be it sorrow or joy. Joy prepares us for sorrow, and sorrow prepares us for joy. We will not live life all with one or the other, because God knows that whatever sorrow sweeps from our heart, room is being made for great joy to take place.

In 2018, let’s take our battles, our sorrows, our heartbreaks, and recognize them for what they are: the very leaves and rotten roots being shaken from the boughs of our hearts so that green leaves and new roots can grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place if you just believe in yourself and have faith.

Our 2017 joys include Thomas graduating from law school, studying for the bar exam and passing on his first try, my spine surgery (and God) healing me, launching this blog of mine, opening our Etsy shop together, Thomas landing his current legal compliance job at Wells Fargo, two of my closest girlfriends tying the knot on two of the most beautiful days of the year, sweet friends’ babies coming into this wonderful and wild world. God surely does provide for us!

When I list out my ultimate greatest joys & biggest accomplishments of 2017, I think it’s pretty incredible to see how they correlate with my biggest struggles I listed above:

Achieving my top 2017 goal of getting strong, learning more about my back, and ultimately getting certified in Pilates and Barre as an Xtend Barre Fitness Instructor.
Overcoming various financial struggles and working our booties off to ultimately buy each other matching brand new 2018 Fords (an Escape for me and a Focus for the hubs) for Christmas.
Learning to let go of what I can’t control and embrace what I can control, which includes my love for others and the way I treat them. Sometimes we have to accept what we may never understand with a loving heart, and simply move on. There is beauty and strength in that, and it opens up our hearts to make new friends and experience new opportunities along the way! I am so very thankful for the new friends I made in 2017 and for what my past friendships have taught me!

As we step into 2018 with grateful hearts and the best intentions, I want you to remember to keep loving yourself, even when it’s incredibly hard to do so. Whatever we go through this year, let’s remember that something will grow from that experience . . . namely, us.

You have nothing to prove to anyone but yourself, and the only thing you should be reminding yourself of is the fact that you are more than enough. Pretty enough. Good enough. Strong enough. A daily work-in-progress, but always enough.

Maybe your path is different from others. This does not mean you are lost.

Maybe you are experiencing a failure. You will learn more from this than from experiencing success.

Maybe you cannot control what just happened to you. You can at least control how you react to it.

Maybe you are afraid of everything that could go wrong. Take a deep breath and remember all the things that could go right.

Maybe the smallest step in the right direction feels like the biggest step of your life. Tiptoe if you must, but take the step.

If you find yourself struggling with self-doubt, I hope you will return to this post – just type any word from this post, like “2018” in the search bar over to the right! – and remind yourself how lovely and capable you are. We will all inevitably experience negative feelings throughout this and every year – after all, we are only human.

I challenge you to remember that you’re only human in 2018 and fight to remind yourself of how wonderful you really are on a daily basis.

Wishing you happiness, growth, kindness, love, strength, and faith in 2018!

Confession Time: I have yet to sit down and write out my goals for this new year, but it’s something I always do, either in December or January. I have been thinking a lot about the state of mind and attention to self love I want to have and give myself this year, because that overall mind frame and daily commitment to myself is really important to me (and my sanity). I promise to share my 2018 goals with you as soon as I’ve put pen to paper and thought them through myself, but one goal I can definitely speak to right now is my commitment to growing Blush+Bourbon . . . and to YOU!

I want to bring you my best blog content yet in 2018! I hope to partner with some of my favorite brands that I’ve always known and loved, with whom collaborating would be a total dream. I’m going to take more chances and send more collaboration emails to the brands I admire and am truly passionate about, instead of limiting myself or getting in my own head about silly things like my Instagram follower count or the comparison game that’s so easily played on social media these days. I truly love sharing my shopping tips, favorite brands, fashion advice, fun new recipes, and everything about this crazy-beautiful life of mine in-between.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for following along with this blog and for trusting me to be a part of your week. I really can’t put into words what your support and sweet blog and Instagram comments mean to me.

If you’re reading this, I totally LOVE and ADORE you. This blog is for you, and it wouldn’t be possible without you.

I hope we continue to get to know each other, interact with each other, SUPPORT each other, collaborate together, and grow even closer in 2018!

Shop my first look of 2018 here:

appy shopping, babes! Most of these black/white striped tops are UNDER $10 – major steals! The over-sized camel sweaters I’ve linked are all around $20-$30, so grab yourself one before they sell out! I L O V E an over-sized sweater mixed with a striped tee, especially with some ruffles mixed in to the look to keep it feminine.

Leave me a comment if you have any questions about the linked items above! I would also LOVE to know what you’re interested in seeing on the blog this year, so be sure to let me know what tips, tricks, or recipes you’re looking for! This blog is for YOU!