SimplyMal - God, Family, Crafting!

What Sparks Joy

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Hello!

I know. It’s been ages. Life has been busy and crazy and a tad bit insane.

Besides all the usual home upkeep and school shenanigans and family adventures, we got placed with a beautiful newborn baby girl named Mikayla right before Christmas. More on her sweet face later.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of the current Marie Kondo craze that started with the premier of her Netflix show. I’ve read her books and watched a bunch of episodes. There is a lot of truth to what She has to teach, that we are to declutter our lives and homes of everything that doesn’t spark joy.

Now I love a good declutter session. In fact I heard one of my boys ask his brother where a certain toy was. Brother responded with “I don’t know, mom probably donated it.” Truth.

I’m always going through drawers and closets because somehow 🤷‍♀️ The piles keep coming back.

Okay, it’s usually because I’m addicted to the thrift hunt and we have 4 children!!! Those tiny humans sure do collect ALOT of stuff.

A minamilist way of life is looking more and more appealing as I’ve had to spend my days maintaining all the stuff. But here is my problem: I also like pretty things. They bring me joy!

How do you become a minimalist who still loves shiny things?

You buy yourself a disco ball, and that is exactly what I did.

A little shop down the road from my house has had this disco ball hanging in random places outside during store hours every since they opened their shop. Every time I’d drive past I would search for the disco ball. It became my own happy little game of ISpy. It made me smile.

Well I decided I wanted that shiny ball of happy for my home.

So yesterday I went down and bought it. I’m almost certain I skipped all the way home.

Random I know. Where does one put a disco ball? Why does one need one? Doesn’t it go against all the farmhouse trendiness?! Yup. And I love it.

So here it is, currently sitting on my entry table, catching some afternoon rays and then sending them across the hallways bouncing off the walls making my heart joyful!

When was the last time you bought something for your home because it brought you JOY and not because it was what was trendy?

In complete honesty, I’ve tried the farm house look. I like a bit of trendy once in awhile but I started to realize lately it just isn’t ME. I love color and sparkle and patterns.

And as if I needed more justification to embrace my quirky eclectic side, I came across this great TED talk from Ingrid Fetell Lee. She does a great job reminding us to look for the joy in everyday moments.

Another thing I did that brought me joy: I went rollerblading yesterday. A mile racing down the bike trail, wind in my hair and thighs and buns burning like mad, but man, was it awesome and good for my being.

All that being said, what’s your disco ball item or rollerblade moment?!


Go First and Be Authentic

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At MOPs the other morning, we talked about being brave and going first when it comes to building friendships.  I was in charge of writing the blog, so I thought I would share it here as well.  

 

I don’t know about you gals, but I truly enjoyed this morning! Like a lot! The casual atmosphere in the room, the laughter, activities and blessed flow of coffee! There are not many MOPs mornings were you get the chance to chat with ladies from all over the room (and walks of life) so this morning was refreshing!

Racquel, our fearless leader, full of grace and humility showed true courage by stepping on stage and sharing her heart and struggles with making friends. Thank you Mama for going first!

Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but women can be mean. Then you throw being a fierce mama bear in the ring and the mud can fly! Women have always been bombarded with contradicting messages and agendas; how we should raise our kids, maintain our homes, what we should wear, how our body should look, to vaccinate or not to vaccinate, even down to how our life “in the bedroom” should look. It’s exhausting and discouraging and then we finally think we have it figured out and we think we have to find other moms with exactly the same way of life to make friendships.

Makes you want to crawl into a closet somewhere.

But don’t be discouraged, BE BRAVE! GO FIRST!

Be first, to look at your life and be okay with how you are doing, because Mama, you are KILLIN’ IT! Then turn to the mom next to you and give her a pat on the back, because guess what….She’s KILLIN’ it to! You both may be on completely opposite sides of the motherhood spectrum and could very easily be disagreeing on everything there is to argue about, but instead you can let it go and watch an awesome friendship flourish!

I have this awesomely awkward ability to strike up a conversation usually with anyone who comes within 10 feet of me. Sitting at the DMV, I’ve had some hysterical conversations with persons of wild character and we pleasantly passed the time in bored comradery. That old lady in the grocery store watching my kid throw her shoe across the aisle always has the best advice. And yes, I see you super award teen boy with your headphones on in line at Taco Bell, we gunna talk and you ARE going to respond. Awkward meet awkward. Are my conversations always met well? Nope, but that’s okay because I was brave and went first!

Now, striking up conversations with strangers through out your day may not be your thing. And that’s okay! But, maybe there are things that you could share with those friends and acquaintances in your circle that maybe are difficult to share, but would beautifully deepen your relationships. When you step out in faith, knowing that yes, you could get burned, you are being courageous! You are taking a chance, and dear friend, the God who knows every hair on your head, knows your every fear but also exactly what you need.

There are a couple very precious women in my life, who if I hadn’t taken the chance on them and went first, our friendship wouldn’t have left that moment and I would be out a couple very dear friendships.
Thinking about going first and being brave and making friends reminded me of a blog I wrote 4 years ago where I laid out a bunch of mom confessions in name of being authentic and “Going First,” and the list really hasn’t changed 🤦‍♀️😝😳 So I thought it beared repeating.

“I’ve read a lot of blog posts, Facebook comments and heard many fellow moms talk recently about the desire, no, the DESPERATE NEED to connect and be real with other moms who are in the same boat as themselves. I strongly agree! It’s hard enough keeping our tired unwashed heads above water without feeling like we should be walking on it to! That’s Christ’s job.
So, I thought I’d “keep it real” by posting some good old fashion mommy confessions…
1. I rarely, if ever give my children vitamins
2. Instead of gathering and drying everyone off, I’ve peed in a pool
3. My boys have had frozen chicken nuggets 3 meals in a row
4. There are days I don’t brush my teeth…Coffee & gum works wonders
5. While potting training, instead of washing the poo filled undies, I throw them out
6. I have left Target on more than one occasion and have no idea how much I spent.
7. I have continued scrolling Facebook even as my boys are beating the tar out of each other.
8. I’ve never made my own baby food
9. Goldfish crackers and chocolate granola bars make great dinners
10. I’ve spanked out of anger
11. I didn’t say anything as my child continually licked water off the park playground
12. I nap. A lot.
13. One vaginal birth was enough for me. I loved my C-section, and I haven’t heard any complaints from either child.
14. I’ve be very prideful when I win the “my baby weighed this much” battle
15. I’ve probably forgotten your birthday
16. While running errands I think bribery in the form of candy or Hotwheels is totally acceptable
17. I’ve passed gas and blamed it on my son
18. We watch a lot of TV
19. While cuddling with my boys, everything else can wait (even the forgotten boiling pot of pasta)
20. I have played the Mommy Battle game, both winning and loosing and I am truly sorry

Here’s to ending the battles and instead lending a helping hand, a fresh cup of strong coffee and a friendly compassionate and GENUINE smile to your fellow Mommy whose just trying to make sure her kids turn out “ok” too.”

SO, confessed I have. Now it’s your turn to GO FIRST and step out in the name of friendship! Let a little bit of your wall down, share a bit of awkwardness and watch a friendship grow!
You won’t regret it!

Love you, dear Mamas!

From Dump Zone to Sanctuary

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Your master bedroom is supposed to be a sanctuary, a place of refuge and rest from the whirlwind of the world.

Ours is a dump zone.  Literally piles of laundry and technology and baskets of randomness we threw in there before company showed up. You’re welcome, company.

Not exactly the place that brings breaths of fresh air and romantic moments…more like death trap of frustrations.

Well, I had finally had enough (Jerad did too i’m sure) and decided to revamp and change it up a little cosmetically! (It’s definitely time to go through our clothes and drawers again, but that will be so much more enjoyable in a pretty room) 🙂

Currently we have an old pottery barn duvet cover and freebie curtains I got from a friend! They looked good and did their job, but now it’s time to say goodbye.

Here is the before picture: 😩😭🤦‍♀️

Not a pretty site is it? Doesn’t exactly scream “love nest.”    Definitely time for a change! Now, I didn’t have a huge redecorating budget for this project and wanted to use as little money and as much stuff that I already had! With my love for vintage thrifting it wasn’t too hard to do!

Here is the after photos: 😍🎉😍

 

Not too shabby huh?! I spent a total of $105 on the project! (And we all know I’m still not done tweaking) The new curtains were off of Amazon for $80, new duvet and shams for $20 on Zulily and two mustard throw pillows were clearance for $5 at Target! Everything else was items I had already around the house!

 

I added a fake plant (I kill all green things) in a vintage brass planter to my night stand, two sunburst brass mirrors I’ve had for awhile in a closet, a couple new picture frames, candles in the window and of course you can finally see and appreciate my awesome mid-century chair on wheels when the pile of laundry isn’t suffocating it.

The whole revamp took me about an hour one afternoon and I really love how it turned out! I am still looking for some awesome artwork to put inside the gold frames, but no rush.

Now, the room looks great, but I know you are all wondering if I’ve kept it this way.  The honest answer is no, I haven’t. 😒😬 Life is busy and messy and well, I tend to be on the lazier side.  BUT it has greatly motivated me to be better at working harder to keep it clean  and peaceful! The laundry doesn’t stay piled as often and I actually make my bed once in a great while! (My mom and friend Jess are my hero’s for making their bed everyday.)

So, cheers to a finished project done on the cheap and to keeping our bedroom a place of respite, comfort & marital bliss 😳😍😝 instead of the cluttered dump zone it was!

Now it’s your turn! What’s an area in your home that needs a quick revamp and refresher!?

Time for Tea!

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I don’t know about you, but I love tea, and tea time is seriously the best time! Growing up, having tea parties was one of my best memories! I would fill my little tea pot with all the peppermint and fennel leaves I could find and go hide out in my playhouse!

Even now as an adult, I still love having tea parties and visiting tea rooms, though it’s not just about drinking a delicious hot liquid, it’s also about the conversations and the event itself! So pinkies up ladies, because it’s tea time!

Last week I purchased this adorable pink (of course) PersonaliTEA pot with matching cups and a couple different loose leaf teas and cookies from Adagio Teas and we were not disappointed! I’ve become so lazy with my tea bags and have sadly strayed away from loose leaf.  This was a refreshing reminder how much better loose leaf tastes!

*Side note: Did you know that tea bags were an accidental invention!? Me either! Apparently around 1908, Thomas Sullivan a New York tea merchant started sending tea samples in small silk bags instead of the usual tea tins.  This confused people, who then just added the whole bag to their water. Thus was born the tea bog.  Mind blown.  You can learn something every today.  But sadly the tea bag doesn’t allow for full flavor and nutrients that loose leaf does. 

So, yesterday afternoon with the sun finally warming the front of our house, we threw open the front door and set up our party in the sunniest spot we could find! Emmy was estatic about getting to use the new pink tea pot, and the Peach Serenity tea we used smelled absolutely divine! Seriously guys, I could carry around a small bag of it with me all the time and Emmy kept sticking her face in the diffuser! 🙂

 

Plus, I think Emmy and I had as much fun setting up our tea party with my favorite vintage tablecloths, floral napkins and jadite cake plate! She added the silk flowers and mint leaves, while I added the Berry White tea cookies also from Adagio….I will neither confirm or deny that we ate the whole bag of these buttery rounds from heaven.

Best part of this afternoon tea was spending it with my sweet girl! She invited her baby, who happily didn’t eat any of our cookies, and we talked about her day and the weather and how much we love cookies.  An invite was even extended to Cohen, but the only with the promise of LEGO tea time and a share of cookies, would he come.  Of course I agreed!

It was all around a relaxing afternoon, with great tea, amazing company and cute conversations! We still have a couple different bags of new Adagio loose leaf teas to try and thankfully more cookies left! Now the biggest problem is deciding which Vintage tea tins I want to use!

 

Thank you to Adagio Teas for Sponsoring such a fabulous afternoon tea time!

Simplifying your home starts at the heart…

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Happy New Year! What a year it has been!! It was full of adventures, lazy days, fun-filled days and days of heartache. The new year is always my favorite, with it’s chance at new beginnings and so called “do-overs.”  

I usually start the year off with a huge overhaul of our home, cleaning and organizing and decluttering.  But this time around, something was missing, and then our Mops group watched a video from Kathi Lipp about organizing and how it starts at the heart; you have to come at it from the right place.  

It struck a nerve with this mama.  It both challenged me and encouraged me.  

Also I was in charge of writing the recap blog for that day so I thought I would share it here with you! 

 

I don’t know about you gals, but the Kathi Lipp video was exactly what I needed this morning. Yesterday was a tough day emotionally and the clutter that was consuming my home turned me from emotional to grumpy to darn right mean in the time it took me to walk from one end of my home to the other. I was so overwhelmed by the piles, the projects and the things I needed to do that I lost all motivation to do any of it. Everything seemed monumental and too much. Shoveling it into a giant dumpster seemed like an easier task than simply putting it away.
This defeated feeling was so frustrating because organizing and decluttering have always been a favorite of mine! I was that girl growing up that would take absolutely everything out of my room and start from scratch, going through every drawer and box and rearranging my room until I found joy in how it looked.
So why do I have such a hard time now?! Why does my home continually look like some magic genie came and transported articles from one room to another, right before a massive nuclear bomb went off?!!

I know I am not alone in the feelings of complete frustration that happen after a long day of cleaning and organizing, you turn around to catch a break and BAM…disaster strikes again!

Those sweet little dears….

But then again, nothing breaks my heart more than having to tell my kids “not right now” or “I can’t play because I have to do chores…”.
I’m tired of the time it takes to manage our stuff and keep it cleaned up and organized. I want to be able to tell my son “heck yes I will play Legos with you!” Without feeling the guilt of towering dirty dishes, scum ringed toilets or the mountains of laundry.

Now where to begin? Naturally my thoughts turn straight to Pinterest where I have quite a good organization board going, and those great books I have on the subject of decluttering speak great ideas and solutions to help the drowning woman. But I’ve realized this time around that I need to start at the heart….my heart.

I have an addiction to the high of a great purchase. Not just any buy, but the great deal buy. I’m pretty sure my gravestone could easily say “But it was only $2.00!” Hi, my name is Mallory and I’m a thrift store junky. I love the hunt, and saying no to that random something that is just too amazing to pass up because it’s just so cheap is my downfall. So, I bring it home, put it where it needs to go and the piles increase.

Whether it’s the great deal, the freebie, the happiness or keeping up with the Jones, we all have our justifications for buying that something.

But what if we stepped back, looked around our home and saw all the stuff that was holding us back from living our best life, and decided to make a change so that sitting on the floor playing block towers with your toddler didn’t mean neglecting anything else; to really be in that precious moment without being distracted by our own leaning towers of clutter?

Never a better time to start than in the New Year! I want this year to be the year of saying “NO” to the clutter, to the managing of stuff and impulsive buys! Remembering that clutter in our homes actually manifests itself in our attitudes and hearts!

Just like Kathi said, just take 15 minutes today to start somewhere! Clear out a closet, a drawer or simply your diaper bag. Only keep those items that you truly need or bring you joy!
I’m thinking about my closet right now knowing I could easily fill a bag with all the items that no longer bring me joy, and don’t even get me started with the toy situation in our home.

Grab your laundry basket and walk your sweet home, filling it with things that arent’ where they belong and put them away! Scroll Pinterest for easy organizing ideas and start a declutter challenge! Ask a friend for help! Organizing and decluttering your home is way more fun with a friend and a box of chocolates (cleaning burns calories 🙂 you’re welcome)

But remember that it has to start from the heart first to make a real change in your life. Ask God to help you see through the mess to what’s important, ask for strength and patience with yourself, ask for perseverance and some blessed energy to tackle your home. Remember grace for yourself that it won’t happen overnight and you’ll probably buy something in the next week you don’t need. But also Remember the reasons you want to make your home a sanctuary for your family. Think of all the time you will have to do the things that really matter when you are not slaving away managing all the stuffs. When you get rid of the stuffs, you can make room for something better.

“Choose today who you will serve. But for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. For He alone is our God!” Joshua 24:15,18

“Clutter is anything that doesn’t bring you joy and stands in the way of the things that do.”
-Leah Martin

“We were never meant to live a life accumulating stuff. We were meant to live simply enjoying the experiences of life, the people of life, and the journey of life- not the things of life.”
-Joshua Becker

 

Choose Your battles and Roll with the Punches

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This morning was picture day for Cohen.  This is the outfit he chose for said picture day.  With a laugh forming in the bottom of my belly, I calmly asked him if he’d like to wear a different pair of shorts, to which he responded, “Nope I like these ones.”

Cool Beans.  You do you kid! Plaid on plaid could very well become a trend in the near future so maybe he knows something I don’t.

There are many, many things that motherhood has taught me but one big one is that you have to roll with the punches, pick your battles and laugh it off.

I could have entered into a huge battle with Cohen this morning about changing his shorts, lecturing on the proper way to dress nicely and yada, yada, yada.  But did I want to change THE WHOLE course of our day over an article of clothing?! Plus, the argument would have wiped his proud little independent smile right off his face, and as I watched him strut down the street in his mismatched plaid I just had to chuckle.

In the land of Motherhood, you can either struggle and strive and stress all day trying to keep up with everyone else, or you can DO YOU! It would be really easy to blame it on the world and it’s pressures, but at the end of the day, you are the one who held yourself to unrealistic expectations.  Don’t get me wrong, those pressures to be and do and appear are strong and I have fallen to them numerous times, but I’m also the mom who forgot shoes for school pick up one day.  I decided to own it and walked my barefooted self proudly down the hall.

So the next time you find yourself at the battle field crossroads with your child, remember to ask yourself this: “Is this battle over something that truly matters, or is it because of an outside expectation I have put on myself.”

And all these moments, these mismatched plaid moments are the ones we will remember with fondness and a laugh for years and years to come!

“Whatever you declare as important to you, I hope it is done with intention, purpose and reason.”

-Maria Goff, Love Lives Here