Quality Time

We stay at Tonia’s best friend’s house while we are in Calgary, we always do. However, this time around things felt different. We’ve spent so much time working that it wouldn’t be unusual for us to look at the clock and it be 9:45pm! Now that we’re staying where another couple comes home from work at a regular hour, it forces us to close up shop around dinner time so we can enjoy our time together with them. Something so small has really brought so much love and awareness to the importance of quality time.

Learning to balance your personal and professional time is a tricky thing when you’re so passionate about the lifestyle you’re building.

Quality time has even changed its meaning. Sometimes you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed and you’re scratching your head trying to figure out what’s wrong. You assess how you’re feeling, asking yourself if you’re tired or maybe coming down with something. Often, we find, it’s that we haven’t spent quality time somewhere in our lives. Something is out of balance.

The four areas we always find we need to maintain balance in:

1. Our marriage
2. Our alone time
3. Our health
4. Our Social Life

Quality Time For Our Marriage

This means everything from time away from our business, relaxing together and doing all of the things we all know to do for our marriages. Spending time in love. Sometimes this takes a back seat to the other three things, though that’s rare for us. How do we know we’re out of balance? We annoy each other, we’re snippy or we just aren’t communicating properly.

Quality Alone Time

This one is big in our house. We both have hobbies and areas in our lives that we need to pay attention to in order to feel balanced individually before we’re capable of being there for others. We all know that, but it’s not uncommon to fall out of sync with ourselves. Colin plays guitar and has since he was 14. This is something he needs to do in his life to recharge. Tonia loves to read and study (wine, oils, business). If we don’t put effort into this time for ourselves, we might not be at our best.

Quality Health & Wellness Time

Oh boy, this one tugs at us. This include fitness, holistic medicine which we feel includes things like seeing a natural medicine practitioner but also spending time with our yoga and meditation practices. This includes listening to our bodies and feeding it right. Using our essential oils with purpose instead of just popping something in to our diffuser for fun. When one of these parts of our wellness routines is out of whack, our bodies and our minds seem to shout the loudest at us. We tend to spend more time here, more focus, more effort than anywhere else. We could always spend more.

Quality Social Time

We can be introverts. We like to be at home. We love to host, cook and entertain people, though! But we’re home bodies and sometimes we forget that it might have been ten days since we saw someone else’s face besides each other’s and the lady at the grocery store. It’s something we need to commit more time to in order to balance out the other areas of our lives. We need to spend more time out together with our friends, but we also need time out separately with our friends. Balance.

As long as we continue to do everything we do…  Everything With A {Purpose}, we will find it easier to maintain balance in life, marriage, business, health and relationships. When you’re feeling off, what are the ways you can measure where your balance might be out of sync?

With Purpose,

Tonia & Colin

 

A Whole Foods Journey

After our last blog about the beginning of our rabbit hole journey with food we had quite a few friends reach out to us, which was fantastic! We both really love sharing about our journey and have been studying it (and listening to our bodies) for over five years now, so we feel pretty comfortable literally spilling our guts.

This morning we were reminded of a post-grocery store ritual we had shared with one of our friends and thought we’d like to share it here with all of you as well. First we’ll talk about a few things and then at the end of the blog we’ll share a very easy (and fun) way to stay on track!

When we first began down this journey we were learning how to make so many of our meals from scratch. Let’s face it, it’s super easy to go to the store and buy the pre-made, processed foods like pasta sauces, dips like hummus for snacks, frozen pizzas, etc. Most of the inner aisles of the grocery store are just that; processed foods.

Basically we had to learn a new language; whole foods. We had no idea what that really meant. Processed foods; did we even really know what that means? Definitely not, but once we learned more about the term it changed our lives.

Processed Foods

Definition: “The definition of what constitutes a processed food can vary slightly, but it usually refers to foods that are packaged in boxes, cans or bags. … In addition to going through many complex processing steps, processed foods often contain additives, artificial flavorings and other chemical ingredients.”

(Source – http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/processed-food-definition-2074.html)

Examples: Milk, canned vegetables, ready made sauces, dips, soft drinks, cereal.

Are all processed foods created equal?

Unfortunately not. Hence, the rabbit hole. Learning to recognize how manufacturers label foods is one of the most important parts to figuring out this maze of confusion, but that is also a tricky feat.

Look for logos on your food labels like:

• The Non-GMO Project
• USDA Organic

Whole Foods

Definition: “…a natural food and especially an unprocessed one (as a vegetable or fruit)”

(Source – https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whole%20food)

Examples: Nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruits, quinoa, rice, etc

While we just wanted to give you all a quick run down of these two very different ideas, we really wanted to make note of something important about the definition for processed foods. It clearly states that processed foods often contains additives and even chemicals. This means that chemicals are actually added to your foods that you and your family are consuming. What does that mean?

Additives can be anything from artificial (synthetically made) sweeteners, MSG’s, Trans fats – to see more on the subject click the link for a list of 10 additives to stay away from and why. These are not the types of chemicals we want to have in our bodies and so that meant we had to do something different. We had to commit to making some very big changes around our home.

It meant we’d have to start cooking from scratch.

Tips & Tricks When Just Starting Out

• Use your search engine and search for lists of whole foods
• Only shop from the perimeters of your local grocery store
• Avoid the centre aisles where foods are packaged in cans and bags
• Substitute things like whole grain pasta for brown rice pasta
• Start using raw, unpasteurized honey instead of granulated or refined sugar
• Buy coconut milk for sauces and soups instead of using heavy creams
• Make your own dough for pizza (holy cow you guys, we have the easiest, nobody can screw this up, vegan pizza dough recipe so there’s another quick blog we’ll put together soon!)

Now let’s get to the fun stuff. We want to share a tip with you that has saved us so much time, money and from having us stop for fast food (or just bad food choices in general), especially before we were both working from home.

Go grocery shopping on a day where you have no set plans. Dedicate your entire afternoon. Buy yourselves a bottle of wine. Why?

Every Sunday we would go to our local health food store and stock up on all of our flours (buckwheat, whole wheat, brown rice), nuts, seeds, almond milk, coffee beans (Kicking Horse, we love you!), spices, veggies, fruits, dried beans, peas (our favourites are split and black eyed, especially for soups), quinoa, rice, chick peas, substitutes like Veganaise instead of Mayo, etc.

We would pack up the car and head home to quite literally spend the rest of the day prepping for the entire week. We washed and prepared all of the vegetables into containers and popped them into the fridge. We’d meal prep, too, but it was also just easiest to chop up a whole zucchini and then when we wanted to add zucchini to a meal, open up the container and throw in a handful. Imagine if you did this with your veggies in a way so it was easy to grab a few carrot sticks, zucchini and cauliflower heads with the hummus you prepared yesterday, etc.

It doesn’t sound like much, but we really came to enjoy these afternoons. We’d pop on some music, crack open a chilled bottle of white and prep all day. OH! And we’d even save all of the vegetable trimmings and ends and make a big pot of vegetable stock to use throughout the week as well. It was kind of like a date day – all while making it easier to live healthier, happier, whole food loving lives.

With Purpose,

Tonia & Colin

 

Us And You

We’ve been away a while. With the best of intentions we both wanted to be able to contribute to our blog daily and as the Universe would have it, that might not always be completely feasible. Life is really exciting right now with plenty of changes both personally and professionally.

Everything With A {Purpose} has come to mean so much more than just the title of this blog series or a way in which to carry out our day to day life. Before writing our first entry we sat down to contemplate what it was we really wanted to share with you. What types of conversations we wanted to have, how we wanted to document our journey from here on out and that sort of thing. We were introduced to a few strategies through a business training we are a part of that really allowed us to tap into those ideas and they’ve been incredibly helpful. The idea is to write down your ten brand words and to be really thoughtful about what that means.

Creating Your Brand

Who Do We Want To Talk To?

It became apparent to us that even with a Lifestyle blog we wanted to be thoughtful about who we are talking to. If we’re writing our blogs with purpose, we’re ultimately talking to people just like, well, us. People who resonate with a lifestyle full of dreams and aspirations that were bigger than the average day to day. We want to connect with other people who are married, following their dreams and working really hard to make them come true.

How Are We Going To Talk To Like Minded People?

This has single-handedly been our biggest hurdle in life, in our business ventures as well as with this blog. In order to align ourselves with the exact right people, we have to be the exact right amount of vulnerable. Ouch. It’s kind of comparable to ripping off a bandaid to a wound that actually needed surgery and then 6 weeks worth of rest. Vulnerable? How the heck to we do that without talking about some ugly stuff nobody wants to be honest about? Oh, you just do it? Ok….

When You Let Your Guard Down, Your Opportunities Are Limitless

The lesson, so far, has been that everyone has their own stuff and that everyone is a little more like you than most of us care to admit. We’re all the same. So we shared some of ourselves a little bit at a time and do you know what happened? People like you said, “ME, TOO!”

We shared a little bit more and then that gave people permission to say “ME, TOO” some more. Then, miraculously, people began to share their own stories and we connected.

Our Ten Words

1. Witty
2. Sincere
3. Genuine
4. Creative
5. Clever
6. Loyal
7. Flexible
8. Friendly
9. Bold
10. Spontaneous

These words represent who we are, who we want to always be and are important to the foundation of our life. Moving forward, we are excited to continue to make connections with you brilliant, brave and amazing people to help contribute to our story and us yours.

With Purpose,

Tonia & Colin

How To Manifest Abundance

Belief is a very interesting term. We’ve been doing a lot of reading together in the past year or so (we’ll refer you to some really good books at the bottom of the blog) and have taken some of the best advice that really resonated with us and put them into practice. Think about career, relationships, trips, money and health. Anything!

The Rules Of Manifesting Abundance

Dream

When we travel we like to stay in really unique places and rent apartments or homes, if at all possible. We like to plan our travel using sites like VRBO, Airbnb as well as Flipkey. The reason we really like VRBO is that we can search for places we are looking to visit and actually save rental properties into a “Favourites” list and categorize those lists however we want. For instance, we really want to travel to Croatia, so we looked for places to rent in three different cities so far (Split, Dubrovnik and Hvar). We created a ‘Favourites List’ for each place. We can now go back to VRBO at any time in the future when we are ready to go back to book our rentals, which will now take just a few quick seconds.

What’s important about being able to save these searches is the act of manifesting the trip to begin with. It’s a similar practice with what we’re doing in terms of building our dream home as well as building a successful business. Napoleon Hill talks a lot about taking your dreams and putting them into practice by understanding that you are capable of having what you want. If you can dream it, there must be a way of making it happen.

Plan

Get a Pinterest account if you don’t have one. We are on there all the time saving information from other lovers of travel. Follow our Travel: Croatia board there, too! YOU can easily find information others have shared about where to stay, eat, play and all other things tourist-ish about anywhere in the world. Of course, Pinterest is not limited to travel or dream homes. You can manifest an abundance of pretty much anything. With a Pinterest board, you are putting together places to eat, museums you’d like to see, hikes you’d like to take and quite literally planning your trip.

…the leading cause of sucking (staying broke, dating morons, uncontrollably crying in public because we hate our lives) is that we haven’t yet woken up to how truly powerful we are or to how massively abundant our Universe is – Jen Sincero

Take Action

Sitting down with your spouse on a Saturday night with a bottle of wine perusing through VRBO to a dreamy travel destination is going to set this trip in motion. You will have a changed and much bigger desire to make this trip happen, and if you’re spontaneous enough, you might even just book those flights. We’ve been there. Do it.

Belief can work in the same way for other aspects of your life as well. If you are thinking about buying a new car and all you do is research your new car, why you want it and how much it’s going to cost, you will also think about actually driving it. You’ll think about all of the reasons you need it.

Next, you’ll find yourself at the dealership test driving the car you will not be walking out of that store without buying. Why is that? You left behind your self doubt (and that shit’s heavy anyways, put it down) behind by focusing on what you needed. It was a dream that you optimistically, whether you were aware of it or not, put in motion.

So, How Do You Manifest Abundance?

You plan. You take action. You start believing that whatever you want to do can actually happen and any time you tell yourself you can’t have something, you’re putting up a make-believe barrier that doesn’t and never did exist. If you don’t believe us, buy these books and read them five times or until you’re cured. Whichever happens first. Welcome to the first day of awakening from what Jen Sincero refers to as the “BIG SNOOZE”.

• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• You Are A Badass by Jen Sincero

With Purpose,

T&C

Connection

Today I sat on my mat for a while and was able to just be present. That does not usually happen for me. I’m busy, distracted, there are always things to do.

I plunked a single drop of Frankincense (carterii) at the top centre of my mat and a few drops of Frankincense (sacra) in my diffuser. These oils pull me down to the ground and also crack my emotions wide open. Today, though, they were the right combination of soothing and yummy.

Yoga and meditation have long since been a part of my life, although, I must admit, fleetingly at times. Since our move to the Okanagan ten months ago I think I can safely say my practice in both areas has been the least consistent since the first time I ever laid eyes on a yoga mat. There has been space created for other areas in my life like our marriage, growing our beautiful team and learning everything we could about continuing to grow and support our business. So when I did take a minute to sit on my mat in these last months, it usually wasn’t focused or quite as meaningful.

Today, I felt compelled to shake off my mat and roll it out over the floor. I let the flow of my body just take me wherever felt good. Sun salutations, triangle pose, pigeon (of course, of course!), warrior 2, warrior 3, twisting in and out without even thinking. I kept my eyes closed almost the whole time and I just let the flow take me until I was in a seated position. I let my hands fall to my thighs and I crossed my shins over one another. Instantly I could feel the energy in the form of heat tingling through my hands to my thighs and both buzzed just slightly where they connected. Where there was contact.

It was so interesting to be in this moment. I was noticing connection in a time when there has been an emptiness or space I felt perhaps lacking this emotion to connectedness. It took me to write this blog for me to figure out what that lesson was, because there is always a lesson I take away from my meditation practice. Sometimes it comes to me right then and there, but sometimes it can take days. Today it took making lunch and a cup of chai tea after my playful, sensitive and freeing practice. The connection I have been lacking was from within me.

With Purpose,

T

Make A Wish

Let me ask you something.

Do you believe in magic?

We all do when we’re young like the first time we see a shooting star and someone whispers, ‘make a wish!”. You squeeze your eyes so tight as you think of the most amazing thing you could want in that very moment. You believe anything can happen, wishes do come true and you can have anything you want in the whole wide world.

What about now, do you believe in magic? When was it that we stopped wishing on stars and blowing the seeds off of the puffy, white dandelions? When were we introduced to real truths about how hard life can be? Who taught us how to put up the walls with just the perfect amount of space between wishful thinking and safe. All of those incredible years of building up those “yup, see there’s another reason to guard your heart and one more reason to believe that magic isn’t real” emotions and barriers. It’s here, while we’re building our wall that insecurities and negative thought are given the chance to become more prevalent than our beautiful, wishful, dream loving selves.

It took until about age 30 (ish) before the idea of negative narrative really made any sense. Reading all of those books about meditation (and actually having a very beloved meditation practice), motivation and self-development pointed in the same direction, slowly shaking that little person awake. That little child filled with dreams and wishes wasn’t naive, that child just wasn’t taught to be dedicated to their dreams. That’s the difference between time spent building a wall vs. building a future.

When was the last time a small child, wide-eyed with wonder, ever turned to you and said, “oh ya? Prove it!”…

You can make a wish and have it come true but you have to work for it. You have to do your research and break the mold. You have to be willing to take a step outside of the pack. You have to think for yourself. Scariest of all, you have to care not what others might think of you. The only thing within our control is ourselves and that is magic. We can be whoever we want to be.

Now, listen to the narrative of your life as you go about your day tomorrow. Open your eyes tomorrow morning and remind yourself that you’re going to truly listen today. Do you tell yourself that you can’t wear that shirt because you look *insert negative comment*? Or do you pick out an outfit that makes you feel proud and happy? This is the voice in your head that dictates what you tell yourself about your own self-worth. This voice has been trained to talk to you the way it does over the course of your life, ever since you were first told to make a wish on that shooting star. Every day from this day forward, work your way back to that little person with their eyes squeezed tight, wishing on a star because when you believe in magic you can do anything.

Do you know what happens when you believe in magic again?

You start to create a living. So close your eyes and make a wish.

With Purpose,

T&C

 

Might As Well Jump

After discovering what we did about the food industry and making some big changes in our lives over the next few years, we also grew increasingly impatient with the lack of direction in our lives. You know that feeling when you just know that you want Brunello instead of the sale rack choice of the week. Until about two years ago our mindset was pretty typical of a lot of people around us. We had what we had, we weren’t happy about it but what could we do. Classic shrug your shoulders and live to see another day.

Sometimes people only halfway through their lives give up because their perspective is that it’s easier not to care anymore. We’ve seen both first hand in our families and people in our community… happening right now. We love these people, but we did not want this to be our story. We know what it’s like to go to a job everyday that you don’t like, or worse! We also know what it’s like to go to a job you do like but it’s not enough. People purchase lottery tickets in hopes of one day cashing in and buying that yacht or going on that dream vacation or really sticking it to their boss.

What about knowing that you want better and can have better but you go through the motions because the way out isn’t clear or is seemingly unattainable. It’s why most of us never do anything about it. OH, maybe next year, we might say. Or that seems too hard so instead we’ll drink a beer after work and watch the big game and get back at it again tomorrow, building someone else’s dream for them.

Why not you?

What is the one thing you tell yourself when you think about why you are where you are, assuming it’s not where you want to be? You’ve got it all! A happy marriage, a scruffy dog, a nice and reliable car, food on the table and a roof over your head. You are loyal, you work hard, long hours and have a pretty good life, so why are you not happy?

What is missing? Freedom? {Purpose}? What about community? 

Something had to give for us, too. We finally had spending money but a six day work week to thank for that. We paid for our wedding in cash, saving for only 10 months. We thought that would make us so happy but nothing was sustainable. We’d traded something we love (our freedom and time) for something that we thought was more important (money and comfort). We looked around and we didn’t belong anymore.

We recognized a few things:

1. We had been making excuses for years about hating our jobs and doing nothing about it
2. We didn’t live where we wanted to but stayed because it was easier and more comfortable than taking a leap of faith
3. We had a lot of personal growth to work on in order to be the kinds of people we truly wanted to be

So we jumped.

We bought in to a company with an opportunity to build a business on our terms. Six months later we moved to a place we’d talked about going when we retired. We stopped thinking that this life we actually wanted wasn’t for us, because who even made those boundaries for us? We stopped believing mediocrity was a lifestyle.

Are we nuts? Totally. Is it scary? You damn right it is! Are we millionaires? NO! Let me tell you what we had though, the minute we started….

Freedom. Time to spend together. {Purpose}. Days that begin and end like we want them to. No alarm clocks. No boss to ask for permission. Independence. People that want all of the same things we do. HEY! Are you still reading this? If you are, maybe it’s time you reached out to us and we’ll help you to do the same. We know you’re out there and we know how scary it is.  But, it’s worth it!

With Purpose,

T & C

 

Coffee Dates

When you see all of the diet fads going on, luckily all the time because Social Media doesn’t let us forget, are you like us?

Diets are silly. They’re a temporary solution to a longterm problem. They don’t work and people are disappointed with themselves or the diet, or both. What’s incredible is that so many people want to do better and that’s where the focus should be. We all want better quality foods for a better quality, more sustainable life. The bad news is a diet is not going to give us what we want because cake is happiness and starving is not. Right?

Think about all of the things we’ll miss and then binge eat when we’re done our ’21 day diet’. We’ll have a pity party about all of the weight we gained back and then do our 21 day starve ourselves diet all over again like a cycle of never ending doom. Isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over again but expecting different results? What if we started thinking about diets as a lifestyle change on step at a time type basis.

Here’s what that might look like. Let’s take everyone’s favourite thing in the entire world before wine is the acceptable beverage of choice; coffee.

It’s the reason we both get up in the morning and it was one of the best parts of our lifestyle change! We love our morning coffee. Tonia used to brew (gross, gross, gross brand coffee in huge container already ground, mass produced yuckiness) an entire pot to herself and drown it in those creamers that come in Irish Cream, hazelnut and many other chemical laden flavours. We had no idea! Making a simple switch, one thing at a time enabled us to still enjoy the things we loved while also making health conscious decisions. We did some research and found that freshly ground coffee was full of nutrients and pretty darn good for you so we bought organic, local coffee beans and used our Magic Bullet mini blender to grind up our coffee each morning.

Since refined sugars were the very first thing we kicked out of bed when we revamped and adopted our healthier eating lifestyle, organic and unpasteurized honey was our sweetener replacement. Wow! What were we ever using anything else for anyway? Top off our freshly ground coffee, brewed each morning in a french press (after finally throwing away the oldest of coffee pots), a dollop of natural honey and a splash of almond milk. No dairy. Slightly nutty. So delicious.

It’s one change at a time and habit setting that forms a lifestyle around making better choices. Now, we’re only talking about the incredible, enjoyable coffee beverage. Just think about the many other areas of our ‘diet’ that could survive minor tweaks and adjustments to up the quality of the things we are consuming. Refined sugar is linked to so many diseases that we’re not even going to get into here – but the point is that… We can still have our coffee and drink it, too.

With Purpose,

T&C

 

Raw Deal

Have you ever asked yourself how you actually got here? This place where you’re at?

The last year we’ve been working hard towards some incredible goals together with our marriage, learning how to work side by side from home, elements like healing from our pasts and working towards just being better human beings. We both believe it’s healthy to be honest about where you came from so that you stay humble when you get to where you’re going. Let’s take you on a bit of a blast from the past.

Just over five years ago we were both working full time jobs and living in an upstairs suite of a house beside our crazy, lazy and less than ideal landlord. We had just moved in together and we had what we had. Life was less than glamorous, but it was our life. With two weeks off together over the holidays, we had decided to spend that cold winter break cuddled up in the living room watching movies. One single movie was the twist of fate that changed the direction of the rest of our lives. We watched a documentary based on the food industry in the western world which turned into two solid weeks of watching every single documentary known to man at that time…  about food.

I wish we’d written down the names, especially the one that I had to ask Colin to pause before I walked into the kitchen, sat down at the table and cried. I felt defeated, betrayed; I couldn’t wrap my head around the quality of food I’d been putting on the table everyday for us. I thought we were eating so well and it turned out we were not even close. We threw the baby out with the bathwater and completely started over. Everything we had that was processed basically went in the trash and the first thing we substituted was sugar. Ironically, I had just purchased a new 1kg bag of white, bleached, refined sugar a few days prior to this documentary marathon. I couldn’t even find it in my heart to donate the sugar because I didn’t want anyone to use it at all. (In fact, we carried that same bag of sugar around from house to house with us when we moved until finally we threw it away years later! No joke.)

We replaced items like refined sugars, with raw, unpasteurized honey, apple sauce (and I hate cooked apples, so this wasn’t an easy transition, but a healthier one!), organic sugar cane molasses for rare baking occasions and that sparked many other changes in our home as well.

We spent days, weeks and months afterwards making lists of nutrients, vitamins and minerals our bodies required every single day in order to function properly. Then, we took each of these and made lists of the super foods that contained these ever important ingredients and started revamping what we would now know as our shopping list. Foods we’d never considered before became a part of our usual diet. Spices we’d never even heard of were now in the pantry in bulk. We bought large glass cylinder shaped containers and filled them with dried beans, legumes and peas.

The more we continued to learn about GMO’s as well as the long lists of pesticides and herbicides used in the farming and agriculture industry, the more determined we both were to continue cleaning up our food practices.

Two things started happening:

1. We began to notice that all of our food had started tasting much sweeter as though our tastebuds were changing.
2. Our bodies were responding in really good ways. We were losing inches, we had more sustained energy levels and Colin’s favourite disclaimer: we were both having much healthier bowel movements.

All of this just from eating better quality food. Which meant that all of the food we’d been eating for our entire lives up until then was crap. What does Maya Angelou say? When you know better, do better?

We dove off the deep end with our food. We were angry. Generally speaking there are two emotions that inspire all of us to take fierce action: Love and Hate. When something makes you so mad that you blow up your life because of it, obviously in this case a good “blow up your life”, you know you’re in it for the long haul. We have learned to appreciate our food on such incredible levels and don’t take the knowledge we’ve accumulated for granted. However, this was painfully tricky for us for so long. I hated cooking but the alternative was hire a chef (ha!) or eat processed foods. Since neither were happening, I had to learn not only how to cook but also from scratch.

It’s become something we both enjoy doing together. It was hard, very hard. Sometimes it would take hours to just prep food for soups or pasta dishes. Sometimes making food from scratch took more out of me than the grocery shopping to purchase everything we needed. Eventually though, after a lot of heavy lifting on the back end, it became so easy that it is now second nature to us. We can make pizza dough from scratch in minutes without thinking about it. Completely clean (and also vegan!), simple, minimal ingredients and perfect every single time.

The lessons that Christmas staycation taught us are endless. We learn new things even still, five years later. We make adjustments and move forward always doing the best we can. The most important lesson is that you are never done and you can always do better. Start with one thing, one step and then check it off the list.

With Purpose,

T&C

 

 

 

Stepping Stones

Over the summer last year we were looking through house designs on Pinterest trying to see if we could find the exact image of what we’d been visioning for our dream home. We each had clear thoughts of what specific parts of the house looked like, but obviously no way to show each other what we’d come up with since neither of us mastered anything more than stick figure drawings.

After spending years and months and weeks in the past searching for just the right fit we both said, “THERE!”. There it was, this house that looked nothing like we’d imagined but was everything we wanted and more. It was just right there and we both knew it the second it came into focus.

We envisioned a small walkway that separated two sides of the home; one for entertaining and another for living in. The house still had the picturesque-ness of the A-Frame/cabin style but with a modern twist that I think we both craved a teeny tiny bit of. What was most important when we first saw this image was that we had planned a gathering in our home within minutes and had already built LIFE into what this photo was showing us. We could already imagine us living our lives in this house. It was our Dream Home.

So last night we stopped adding photos of the outside of homes to our Dream Home board on our Pinterest account. Our Dream Home has a face.

The next step is one we are so excited to be ready for. We found a site quite similar to Pinterest called Houzz that was recommended to us from a vendor at the Home And Garden Show in Calgary, AB a couple of years ago. It’s similar to Pinterest in that you select photos to add to different boards you can categorize and what not. How it differs, though, is that you can actually find companies or manufacturers who sell each of the items you’re looking for and you actually become invested in the intricate details that give character and personality to the bigger picture. For instance, one of the light fixtures we were looking at a while ago that we have saved in our Houzz account popped up today when we signed in to let us know that the seller has put this item on sale. How cool is that?

If we all took life in these stepping stones, think of the dreams we’d actually get to live out? Does Pinterest seem silly to you? Take a few days, weeks, months and think of one thing you really have to dream real big for and take our Pinterest challenge the way we did. Look at everything. Poor a glass of wine with your spouse and sit on the couch together. Search, “Dream House”. Put your plan on a dream board and let it actually transform into the realness it CAN be if only you let it.

Sometimes you can’t even see the next stone until you take the next step. The good news is you can always turn around but you won’t, because you’re not going that way.

With Purpose,

T&C