Memories.

Today is one of my favorite days of the year.

In case you were wondering, December 24th is my favorite day of the year.  Followed by Christmas.  And then whatever day we go to Universal's Grinchmas.  And then Thanksgiving.  But today is on the list of my favorite days.

Its our annual candy making party!  Because, in my mom's words, you need to find a way to involve candy with Halloween once you get too old to trick-or-treat.

Tonight will be fun.  We'll make some great candy, but we'll also mess up a lot.  We'll burn some, ruin some, and some simply won't turn out right no matter what.  But we'll laugh about it, talk about life, and make memories.

That's why nights like tonight are my favorite.  Because I love making memories with the people that I love.

We can get caught up in being busy.  In thinking we're important.  We can often become overwhelmed and think we have too much to do to take time to make memories.  And that's just sad.

A friend of my parents passed away last night.  They went and sat with his family after, and my mom said his family sat around and told all kinds of stories about his life and the memories they had made.  In that moment, I'm sure it didn't matter how busy they had been over the years.  How important their job was.  How overwhelmed they had been twenty years ago.

I'm sure they were incredibly grateful for the memories they were able to hold and cherish in that moment.

Don't be too busy to live your life--really live it.  Don't be too caught up in the stress of every day to notice when a moment is begging to become a memory.  Don't walk away from that because you think your current circumstance is too important.

Memories are a beautiful gift, and one that you can give yourself.  Live your life open to moments like that, and suddenly, the business you thought was so important?  It won't be.  It never was.


[PS:  Do you have a shop?  The second handmade fair is coming up soon and we would love to have you participate!  Email me for more information!]

Today I believe.

{Thank you so much to everyone who entered the giveaway!  The winner has been notified.  If you would like to participate in the next giveaway, click here}

Today I believe in being thankful.

It is truly amazing how much your perspective (and sometimes even life) can change with just a tiny bit of effort to start being thankful.

I made a reverse bucket list this week, and it was incredible how much my attitude changed just from looking at pictures and trying to remember all the exciting things I've done in my life.  I wasn't having a bad attitude about life before, but as I looked at those pictures and sifted through my memories, I couldn't help but be overwhelmed at just how full my life really was--and is.

I had such a good day after doing that, I decided from now on, I am going to make a real effort to be thankful.  Overly, annoyingly, utterly thankful about everything.

Fall is here.  {I know that most of you think that fall doesn't actually start until October.  I'm sorry.  You are wrong.}  For me, fall always brings about a feeling of thankfulness.  It starts my favorite time of  the year--September 3rd-January 1st.  It means pumpkin spiced everything, baking, decorating, turkey, Christmas music, and feeling incredibly grateful for my life.

This year, I'm going to be crazy thankful everyday.  I am thankful for my pumpkin spice lattes, obviously.  But I'm also going to be thankful for the small things.  For the moments in the morning where I can sit with my coffee and it's just me and Jesus.  For the books I read.  For the fact that I live in a state where I can drink a pumpkin spice coffee in the morning and lay out in the afternoon.  For good movies.  For sweet texts.  I'm going to be thankful for all of it.  And if writing that reverse bucket list was any indication, my days are about to get a whole lot happier.

Care to join me?

Talk about good things.

{I will start this off by saying this will not be another post about Miley Cyrus.  So, you're welcome for that.}

I wish that I would have kept count of how many blogs/instagrams/tweets I've seen in the last few days talking about Miley's interesting (?) VMA performance.  Everyone and their mother has had an opinion, and it's been almost disturbing to see how many people have felt the need to write long, drawn out play by plays of everything they feel was wrong about it.

Like we don't have anything else better to post about.

This is an ever-growing trend in social media: talking about issues that we have absolutely nothing to do with.  Slandering someone's name who we have never met.  Siding with issues and being extremely public and vocal about things we honestly have no idea about.

I've blogged about things like this before, here and here, and I don't really have all that much more to say on this topic.

But I'll say this:

Can we start talking about good things for a change?  Talking good about people we actually know, instead of badly about people we don't?  Can we talk about something amazing/hilarious/exciting that happened to us, instead of ranting about chick-fil-a/starbucks/insert whatever business everyone suddenly decides to have a problem with?

I think that would be good.

Your words are precious.  Don't waste them on things that don't matter.

Happy Wednesday.


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