Life Update: House Hunting, My Miscarriage & New Fitness Routine

It has been far too long since I’ve sat down to write a “feelings” post, or even just share whats going on in my life. It’s hard to really get across every little detail in Instagram stories, and if you’re new around here (hi, welcome), I like to share these posts every once and a while so I can really dig into and share with you all what’s currently going on in my life!

The House Hunt

First of all, we’ve been on the hunt for the perfect house for our family for a few months now and it has been no easy process. Dustin and I have been renting various apartments in the decade that we’ve been together (we’ve moved a total of 14 times. Yes, 14) and now that Stella’s been added into the mix, we want a more permanent place to call home with a great yard and space for our little family to thrive and grow!

The areas we initially started looking in were highly competitive and we learned after four solid (some even over-asking) offers, accompanied with personalized letters and a photo of our family, that we most likely weren’t going to be able to get the perfect house for us with all of the items on our wish list. These include: 3+ bedrooms, yard, and open living space/kitchen area. We’re SOOOO picky *sarcasm.*

We’ve since expanded our search and I’m excited to say we just put an offer in on an amazing home only a few miles away from where we initially wanted to live, but in a much less competitive area. It has a huge yard, massive living space with a beautiful brick fireplace and 3 huge rooms with ample closet space for yours truly! It is everything we dreamed of and more in a house and it is so much below what we budgeted for a house that I’ll get to customize the entire kitchen if we get the home! Yes, I’ll be documenting the whole process on the blog if we get the home. Cross your fingers for us, and subscribe so you don’t miss out on updates!

The Miscarriage

I realized I never really closed the door on my pregnancy loss with you all and I wanted to finalize it here in this post. I got my blood tested one last time and had a small amount of HcG left, by the next week I took a pregnancy test and it came up negative which means I am clear of any of the chemical signs that I was pregnant.

Read About my Miscarriage Story here

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m not going to have another baby for a while. I have been putting my energy into my business and growing my blog. When I first found out I was pregnant for a second time, the couple weeks following I became hopeless, sendentary and had feelings that my “life was over” since I’d be a mom of two little ones who’d be toddlers at the same time. How would I be able to blog? How would I have time for myself? How could I ever love another baby as much as my current baby, Stella?! I felt a little depressed because the whole thing was such a surprise and we didn’t plan to have another baby for at least a few years, if at all. That pregnancy also made me realize how little effort I had been putting into my blog. I love this platform, I love writing, photography, brainstorming ideas for content, and I love the endless to-do list of things that make me feel so productive (yet is never completed)! It also made me realize that I need to enjoy this time with my little girl. I am so fortunate that I get to be home with her every day and I don’t want to miss out on a thing. If I were to have another baby at this stage, I’d have to sacrifice half of my time, or more, for a needy newborn and I’m not ready to give up these precious moments with Stella yet!

I’m sure a lot of you noticed a visible change in my content during the time I was pregnant. My photos and content suffered, I hadn’t put up a blog post in MONTHS, and everything was just backsliding. Soon after recovering from my miscarriage, I kicked it into high gear. I decided to get into physical shape (we’ll get into that in a minute), I put myself on a blogging schedule and I made attainable goals for myself. Writing everything down really helped me. I wrote down my top 3 stretch goals for myself and my blog. I then broke those goals down into small parts that I could work on individually to help me chip away at my larger goals so I could see the progress and actually feel like I’m accomplishing things. This has worked so well for me, and I highly suggest this method if you are working to achieve some large goals too! I’ve been able to stick to my blogging schedule, I released my new Spring preset and I’ve been dedicating more of my time to Stella. I’ve gotten super efficient with my time!

Shop All of my Presets Here

My Health Journey

Early on this year I did a juice cleanse and I told myself I would stick to a healthy diet and workout routine following the cleanse. Of course a week after I finished I found out I was pregnant and my midwife urged me not to start any new fitness routine during my pregnancy (cue the feelings I wrote about above). I really got into some bad habits when I found out I was pregnant. I was eating whatever I wanted and felt so tired so I was doing a lot of sitting around. I did the same thing when I was pregnant with Stella but I was also very active and working full time in retail so I was on my feet all day getting good exercise! I tried to will myself to workout but I kept going back to “what’s the point?”

I have been really off and on with working out but Dustin and I are making a conscious effort to make all of our meals at home and creating opportunities for success by only buying food that is (mostly) good for our bodies. It has really helped that we both work from home so we can keep each other accountable easier. I recently found the Love Sweat Fitness workout app and I am hooked! I love their videos and the pace of the workouts. I’m hoping that sharing my fitness journey with you all that I’ll be able to make it stick this time! I have a feeling this Spring and Summer will be my healthiest yet!

Read About How I Only Drank Juice - No Food For One Whole Week!

The Blog

I am so thankful for making relationships and growing my network this year. I have been able to up my photography quality and amount of content I create by connecting with fellow local bloggers to trade taking pictures, and have also garnered some fantastic opportunities from those same contacts. I have always been pretty introverted so this is huge for me, I’ve made it a goal of mine to try to grow my network even more and create more relationships within my blogging niche this year!

I’m proud of where my blog is at currently and I see my blog growing into something really fantastic this year with the momentum I’ve gained in only a couple short months so far. I’ve re-done my blog theme, and customized it to make it my own. My newsletter goes out bi-monthly and will be full of fun exclusives for my loyal readers. My Spring preset is having even more success than my Winter one and I am so proud of my accomplishment of being able to figure out how to create, package and launch it all on my own. I’ve put myself on a schedule and have been a better mom because of it. My time is spent more wisely and I’ve been able to dedicate more time to Stella and still work toward achieving my goals faster than ever before

I look forward to pulling this post up at the end of the year to see how far I’ve come and what I’ve accomplished. I was looking back at the content I was putting out this time last year, when I was only really putting in half (or less) of the effort than I am now and the improvement and change is astronomical. I still can’t believe how far I’ve come since last year and with the momentum of the past few months this year will be full of many more accomplishments than ever before! I’m so excited that you chose to follow along my journey and I’m humbled by the support I receive on a daily basis. It truly means the world to me that you read my blog and allow me to share my life as a part of my job. I could not be more thankful for YOU!

Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to subscribe below!

xo

Life Update, Chit-Chat and What to Expect in October

It’s been a while since I’ve done an update and I wanted to share what’s been going on in my life, and what to expect with Style by Julianne going forward!

Outfit Details HERE

Outfit Details HERE

I created this blog as a portfolio of my fashion, and kept is secret for a long time. I am naturally introverted and have some anxiety which led me to feel that people would judge me or think I was weird for posting pictures of my outfits on a website that I created. Instagram helped me to come out of my shell, my blog began to evolve as I grew a following and I found a community of fellow bloggers and creatives on social media. I quickly realized there were so many others like me! Introverted, creative, maybe a little awkward in real-life but wanting to create and share their passion with other like-minded people. Blogging became the perfect outlet for me to get to know new friends and ultimately share my hobbies and passions with others! I am honing my entrepreneurial skills and learning so much about myself in the process. With much still to learn in this ever-changing industry, I look forward to what the future brings!

Style by Julianne as a brand is constantly evolving, I try my best to keep up with trends and fashion, but my main focus is to create meaningful content for the community of people who have grown to keep up with my journey. In September I decided to redirect my energy from Instagram to my physical blog page. Like we’ve seen with other popular social media channels (*cough* MySpace *cough*), one day Instagram will be gone. And with it, all of the content that I spent hours editing, researching hashtags, engaging on, scrolling though. Poof! The great thing about having my own website is that I own this website, I pay for it, it isn’t going anywhere until I make it go. I want to make my blog the best it can be for my readers (you) and as a creative outlet for me!

With all that being said, in October expect to see more lifestyle content, and local themed posts (Portland people, where you at?!). I want to get more personal in my posts, I enjoy writing and I haven’t done enough of it on here. Expect to see more topics that you can relate to on a deeper level vs. just outfit details, although I’ll still share a ton of fashion! I also plan to share blogging tips as this is a very common topic of conversation in the Insta DM’s. I am by no means an expert blogger but I am always happy to share tips for any topic that gets enough requests! I find it’s much easier to share in a blog post than reply to each individual message. Expect to see new posts every Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 8AM. I will communicate via Instagram if anything changes but I’m really challenging myself to stay on top of this schedule. If you have any blog requests of topics you’d like to see comment them, DM them, Email them to me!

Ok now for a little life update, Dustin, Stella and I are moving! Surprise! We’ll be moving back to Portland at the end of this month and we could not be more excited. It took us moving out of the city to realize that we are not suburban living people, we love the city! The energy, the convenience, the walkability, there are so many things we enjoy about living downtown. We didn’t think we’d be able to find an apartment with the space we needed for a price we could afford but we got super lucky and snagged a townhouse at a great deal! If you want to see moving blogs/vlogs comment below.

Whew, if you got through that whole blog, you are AWESOME, and your support is what keeps me going! Thank you for taking the time to read, Hope you all have a fantastic week!

THANK YOU

xo