Welcome and Thank You

Welcome to my corner of the internet! I'm a travel lover, reader, project-starter, casual runner, aspiring yogi, wife, and mom to a sweet little girl, living in the upper midwest. I love an adventure near home or far away, and it's my mission to focus on the good in adventure big and small. You can read more about my vision for this space here.

I recognize that the blog world is well-saturated and that the real world is buzzing with too many words, too much information, too many sound-bites. And yet, here I am. While several bloggers I love reading have been at it for more than a decade, what matters to me is that I'm starting and not putting it off any longer. I want to practice writing; I want to develop voice; I want to experiment with creativity; I want to keep memories. Saturated blog world and buzzing real world aside, I choose to believe there is still a place for my voice.

First, importantly, a heartfelt thank you for the bloggers to whom I regularly turn for inspiration.

You'll see in the coming list of inspiring, encouraging, and motivational bloggers that my interests are varied, but they share similarities in the way they make home life, travel life, and food simple and focused on relationship. Though I don't know any of them in person, I believe these women are beautiful, life-giving personalities on the internet - go meet them if you haven't already.

I stumbled across the lovely, multi-author food blog The Kitchn many years ago. I love food - eating it, savoring it, cooking it, reading about it - and so it makes sense that my reading began here.

Much browsing, recipe-making, and some months later, The Kitchn's food blog competition led me to Jenny Rosenstrach's Dinner: A Love Story. Credit for peaking my interest in the single author blog format truly belongs to her. Her recipes are both unfussy and delicious, and her writing voice is outstanding.

Jenny introduced me to Sarah Hart of @homeiswherethehartis and thus an Instagram account from which I could browse other people's lives for inspiration. Does that seem a little creepy sometimes? yes. Am I little hesitant and aggressive in my own privacy? yes. Do either of those things stop me from seeking inspiration, motivation, positivity, and glimpses of goodness in the world? no.

Sarah's feed is not only beautiful, but also heartfelt and routinely real. From this Instagram starting place, I somehow landed on @livefreemiranda; again inspirational and real. Miranda's feed and stories are upbeat and ancouraging; her blog Live Free Creative is full of fun, practical goodness. She's all about "less stuff, more adventure," which is right up my alley, and her recent content has been hugely inspirational in my day-to-day life.

At some point Miranda recommended Chasing Slow, Erin Loechner's incredible book; Erin writes Design for Mankind and is a guest host on Tsh Oxenreider's podcast "The Simple Show." Tsh started The Art of Simple and is also the author of a few great books, most recently At Home in the World. She merges travel and life at home - again, total inspiration.

Miranda also introduced me to Janssen of Everyday-Reading, which has been a happy source of book recommendations for my toddler. Our most recent delight from Janssen are cheery springtime rain boots for tiny feet from her company London Littles.

There are so many more creators I could point to, but these are the women I go back to again and again. Blogs, Instagram, books, podcasts - from what I've seen, these women choose to focus on the good.

Sure, they seem realistic about personal and more global problems and challenges; none of them are touting their own perfection or presenting the world as such. It's the choice to focus on the good that results in positive, constructive, inclusive words and actions.

Focusing on the good also seems to allow many of these women to push away the extras, the unnecessary fluff, and build intentional lives for themselves and their families. I'm not personally friends with any of them, and I recognize that I only see the pieces of their lives they choose to share, but I'm grateful to have a glimpse into some of their choices and the results.

The internet can be a confusing and weird place, but it's been such a gift to me to find one writer and then another and another, whose words resonate. I'm excited to create and process in this space; I hope that I too choose to focus on the good and be a force of positivity.

The various links and photos throughout this post will connect you with
the Instagram accounts and online work of these women.