This week has been full of early mornings, lawyers, resumes, a little boy's birthday, baby snuggles, deep cleaning our home, doctor's appointments, and relaxing with "The Weepies" Pandora station and episodes of The Great British Baking Show. You know how bad things supposedly come in threes? Well, ours came in like sevens. I'm not going to go into details because who seriously wants to read a blog about negativity? Not me. So I'm going to focus on what my blog has been about since the beginning: Finding Joy in Everyday Living.

Even though God throws us a bunch of crap sometimes, it's truly because He wants us to learn to rely on Him. I know that everything happens for a reason. And when I look back at my life in a year, heck, even six months, I will be able to see that He knew what was going on the whole time, even when I didn't understand, and He planned something better. We just had to go through some trials to get there. I can't wait for that day :)

I'm really working on cultivating a "deep sense of gratitude, of groundedness, of enough, even when I am longing for something more. The longing and gratitude, both. I'm practicing believing that God knows more than I know, that He sees what I can't, that He's weaving a future I can't even imagine from where I sit this morning." (from "Bread and Wine" by Shauna Niequist). I'm trying to not focus on having less or more, but focusing on loving what I have. One of our issues right now deals with money (money is usually the root of all problems), and we have had to cut back our spending severely. Now I love my shopping. Not spending money is going to be hard for me. So, I created a list of ways for me to stay busy :)

• Use my camera and understand it-I've had it for three years and still don't know what half the buttons mean...
• Make macarons, rather, make a batch that actually turns out...
• Watch old seasons of The Great British Baking Show (If you haven't watched this, do so now. It's so great. The judges are super nice, the hosts are funny, and the food is heavenly looking.)
• Go to the library- get three books to read in three weeks as a start (when I was a kid, I used to get like 25 books and read them all within three weeks. It's very sad that I don't have as much time as I used to to read books)

• Learn new culinary techniques from youtube and take notes. Since culinary school is so expensive and I don't live near one, I've decided that shouldn't hinder my ability to learn! Here I come, America's Test Kitchen and random youtube videos :)
• Finish painting the trim in our bedroom
• Video game day with Tim

This is my plan for the rest of the day. Relax and enjoy life. Here's to a fresh, more positive week.

Mrs. Fink

I'm married. Married. Like, I now have Tim's mom's name haha. Actually, not yet because I'm a procrastinator and have yet to switch my name over…Anyway, we were married October 11, which was a super perfect, sunny, 50-degree fall day. Yes, there were things I would have changed, but overall, it was a wonderful day :) 

For the past few months, our wedding/honeymoon were the only things on my mind, thus no blog posts. Now that it's over (actually, we still have 5 more days to our honeymoon), I can finally focus on doing what I love: eating. baking. taking pictures. blogging. pinterest (it's weird going on there and not looking at wedding stuff-I almost feel like I have a life haha). traveling. watching all of the seasons of Gilmore Girls on Netflix. along with every cooking show on there…and I get to update on here what the heck I've been doing for the past few months! 

Get ready for lots of wedding decor ideas, bachelorette pics, photos from my birthday, our honeymoon, along with a bunch of other random posts :) For now, I'll leave you with a couple pictures from our wedding, because our photographer is AMAZING and you should totally hire her!

That last one is unedited. Because she's amazing. Didn't she make us look GOOD?!

1000 squats wut?!?!?!?!?!

Um, a couple days ago I did 1000 SQUATS YO (felt like sounding a little ghetto there, apparently…)!!! Thanks to Cassey Ho, who's workout videos I've been using CONSTANTLY lately (extreme abs? good luck. it is INSANELY hard. BUUUUUTTTTT I've kept with it, and now it's not too bad!). I was actually surprised-yes, it was hard; however, I honestly didn't feel a ton of soreness in my butt/legs until I was completely done. Then I definitely felt it.

Then, because I'm real smart, yesterday I decided to do 400 lunges and 200 cross lunges on our treadmill along with running for about 3/4 mile afterwards. I also upped my weights for weight lifting along with 45 minutes of abs…I am SO SORE today I can barely move. It is SUCH a good feeling. 

The whole reason I'm working out so hard it because I'm getting married in 62 days, and not only do I want to look good for my soon-to-be hubby, but I was also told by my dress alterations lady that if I wanted to be able to breathe comfortably, I should lose 5 pounds haha. So I have :)

With a mix of upping my workouts, cutting out carbs, juicing, taking vitamins, and drinking protein shakes, I have not only lost the 5 pounds, but I just all around FEEL better, my skin is clearer, and I can see myself getting toned. It's wonderful.

chicken burgers wrapped in lettuce with a sweet potato

 Tilapia with brussel spouts, zucchini, red peppers, a large salad, and a smoothie. I have this A LOT-it's so yummy!

 My breakfasts: scrambled eggs with spinach, kale, tomatoes, and garlic. I've stopped making juice everyday because it's SO pricey, but I would normally make some sort of mix between grapefruits, oranges, apples, cucumbers, kale, spinach, strawberries, blueberries, ginger, carrots, and celery.

 Our snack drawer, filled with things to help if we have any sweet or salty cravings.

 More dinner. Seriously. Tilapia is so good. You should try it.

Salad shrimp with zucchini, onions, peppers, and garlic couscous. This was SO good.

I think the only way I've been able to eat like this is because Tim is also trying to tone up, which means he has his own meal plans. He cooks his own food. He hates seafood, so if he wasn't "dieting" also, I'm almost positive I'd be eating carbs with every meal.

It's been so nice actually seeing results from eating healthy and working out. I'm pretty sure Tim and I won't continue eating SO crazy healthy after our wedding, but we've seen what eating healthy can do, so I'm sure our eating habits will continue to be at least slightly changed for the better.

What healthy eating habits do you have?

T minus 90 DAYS!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, we are now under THREE MONTHS until I'm married! What?! This past year has gone by so fast, and I definitely feel like I'm in crunch mode to get everything done in time. While I'm busy buying more stuff for the wedding, I thought you'd enjoy seeing some of my favorites from our engagement shoot with erikamarie photography. She did SUCH an awesome job, and I can't wait for her to do our wedding too! Here they are (sorry for the overload-she took 84 pictures, so it was hard to narrow down :D):

Sooooooo…..I wish I had seen that Tim had his cell phone in his pocket haha

You can actually SEE the mosquitos in the above photo-we were completely surrounded!

Didn't she do an awesome job? Tim absolutely hates getting his picture taken, but you wouldn't know it from these photos! He's actually smiling in some of them, and I can barely get him to do that for the pictures I take!

Birchbox is the coolest. I started purchasing a box from them three years ago. Birchbox is a company that, once a month, sends you a box normally with five or six samples of beauty products, ranging from nail polish, shampoo/conditioner, to even samples of snacks! While I may not love everything I get from them, it is still so much fun to get a box full of surprises in the mail each month :)

You can purchase the full-sized products right from their website; and with each $10 purchase, you earn 10 points. 10 points = $10 that you can use on any product. Due to some late shipments and whatnot, I ended up having a total of 300 points, so I decided to do some shopping. I wanted something kinda quirky and something that smelled good. Here's what I got:

Those cute tins are tea bag tins :) They're made by Ahmad, and they come with 60 black tea bags. I don't necessarily like black tea (I'm a decaf green tea drinker), so I haven't tried the tea yet, but I sure do love the containers :) Tim and I would love to visit London some day; but for now, we at least have a bit of London in our home :). You can get it here.

The Votivo candle scent is Pink Mimosa. I had seen this about a year ago at one of our downtown shops and loved the smell because, honestly and weirdly enough, it smelled like me! They say it smells like strawberries, mimosa, and rum…I don't know what that says about me haha, but it sure smells good! Actually, I normally smell like that because of my favorite perfume, SJP NYC (Sara Jessica Parker). The perfume's website says:

• Top notes- Italian bergamot, white osmanthus, wild red strawberries
• Mid notes- Honeysuckle, red rose demascenia, mimosa
• Base notes- Sandalwood, vanilla, rum, creamy musks

How the heck can you smell like that many things?! All I know is I smell good when I wear it. And my house smells good when I burn this candle. You can get the candle here. Check out their other candles too-I might have to purchase some other ones in the future! Doesn't their "Speakeasy" sound great? It has a spicy blend of chai, clove, and cinnamon layered over a woodsy base. That just sounds like the perfect fall candle to me. For now though, seeing as it's almost summer, I should probably get in a summery mood and use my Pink Mimosa candle :).

P.S. All these thoughts are my own, I wasn't paid to advertise for them. I just think they're an awesome company. Although, Birchbox, I will purchase more of your products and talk about them on here if you do pay me to advertise for you :)