Gosh, I don’t even really know what to tell you about this month! Perhaps the most exciting thing to say is… IT’S THE MONTH MY SISTER MOVES TO NORTH CAROLINA! Yes! I never in a million years thought I’d get to type that sentence, but here we are. Kate’s husband starts a new job near Charlotte tomorrow, and the rest of the crew will be here, in their new home, before the end of the month. This will be the closest we’ve lived to immediate family since we moved South, and to say we are excited and grateful is an understatement.

Though that is by far the most exciting thing happening in October, it’s certainly not the only one. Between travels, visitors, events, and my return to work (for the biggest CWM week of the year, no less!), there’s a lot going on. I’m here for all of it :)

Exploring after Hurricane Florence

On my calendar this month:
— The NC State Fair (biscuits, goat showmanship, and giant slide, here we come!)
— The sixth annual pumpkins and soup party
— The third anniversary of Articles Club!!
— A trip to Asheville with my younger sister
— Our dear college friend’s wedding in New Hampshire – our first time flying as a family of four!

What I’m loving right now:
— I have made several batches of these power balls since Shep arrived – so delicious, especially with some of the chocolate chips subbed in for cinnamon chips!
— How big of a nerd are you if you watched the Jeopardy! All Star Games live draft? Asking for a friend :) But really, it was so fun — counting down until February!!
— This article was a great reminder of what matters most. I thought the part on beauty was particularly interesting.

What I read in September:
— Sacred Marriage: The first half of this book seemed a little more focused on troubled or difficult marriages, but I appreciated the reminder of the importance of sacrifice and service toward our spouses!
— The Book of Essie: Blew through this one in two days because I couldn’t put it down.

Revisiting my goals for September:
Start every day on my knees in a short prayer, offering my day to God (Did not do this perfectly, but the goal served its purpose and it was so good. I felt it on the days I did it and on the days I did not.)
Sort and price all clothes for my favorite consignment sale
Make an itinerary and reservations for our upcoming trip to Asheville
Bake apple cider scones for June’s teachers on the first day of fall (Sweet girl!)
Cull and edit all 2018 iPhone photos (Done!! The progress is slow but so gratifying!)
Experiment with listing a few things on Poshmark (Done! I even sold something, ha! You can shop the rest here, if you’d like!)
Do something to welcome our new neighbors (We introduced ourselves to them, so I’m counting that as a win :))

October goals:
— Prepare well for returning to work
— Frame new family photos for Shep and June’s rooms
— Host a pumpkin painting workshop, with proceeds going to Hurricane Florence relief (if you’re local and would like to come, register here!)
— Watch Won’t You Be My Neighbor? on Amazon
— Order supplies and finish Halloween costumes
— Take down June’s pelmet and replace with curtains, creating a reading corner
— Order our Christmas cards (using newborn photos!)
— Work on Shep’s baby book and update June’s
— Clean out our coat closet and donate anything we no longer need
— Organize June’s art supplies (they are a HOT MESS right now)

Question for you all: I know this might seem early, but I’m curious whether you’d like to see gift guides on the blog in November? If so, what categories/price points/recipients/etc. would be most helpful for you? Let me know what you think!

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Hi friends! Today in our How We Do It series we’re talking about relationships! I know what you all really want to know is how I maintain friendships without text messaging or getting together with girlfriends, so let’s start there! :)

To catch up any new folks: Nancy Ray and I are writing an eight-part series every Tuesday in January and February covering “how we do it” in eight different areas: the rhythms, habits, and routines that help us get things done and make the space and time for what matters most. You can read more of the backstory here.

To be clear, as I clarified on the first post in this series, I do both text and get together with girlfriends – just on a more limited basis than I perceive my peers do. First off, I always reply to texts sent to me :) In general, though, texting just doesn’t seem to be the main way my friends communicate (I’m more likely to send longer-form emails). And, as much as it gets a bad rap, one of my favorite ways to keep in touch with faraway friends is through Instagram! I think it can be an amazing way to be a part of the mundane parts of each other’s lives that we wouldn’t normally think to discuss on, say, a phone call.

A few years ago, I started two practices that made a huge difference in some of my closest relationships. Every Monday on my drive home from work, I call my Mom. We’ll talk or FaceTime at other times throughout the week, but even if we don’t, I always know we’ll connect then! Similarly, every Tuesday I have a Google Hangout with my two sisters. We’ll occasionally miss a week, but having the standing date on the calendar means we chat more weeks than not. Both have been easy habits that have paid dividends in these relationships!

On the girlfriends (and really, friends in general) front, I’ll say this: I am a major quality over quantity person. I don’t really have that many, but the ones I do have are a treasure to me and get extra doses of my love and affection! Our close couple friends we try to see at least once a month. Most of the remainder of my girlfriends live in my neighborhood or on my street, so I get together with them casually just being outside without organizing specific “nights out,” etc. I do have two structured get-togethers each month, which are easy for me to plan for and organize: Articles Club (of course!) and a neighborhood book club.

Here’s one thing that can be a bit difficult, both organizationally and emotionally: getting more than one couple together. For example, we wanted to have three husband and wife pairs over for a game night for my upcoming birthday. I swear, it took no fewer than 25 text messages between the four ladies to figure out a mutually agreeable date from the eight options I originally proposed. Since we don’t have a million close friends, we can’t just throw out a general invitation for something like this and expect anyone to show up, but feeling so dependent on so few people can leave me feeling self-conscious or inadequate, especially around special occasions. In the end, though, that’s just the type of people John and I are, and these friends are worth it :)

A tool that I sometimes use for gauging the best date for larger gatherings: Doodle! I’ve mentioned it before, but it can be a great timesaver when organizing with a bunch of busy folks.

I keep track of birthdays in a pretty perpetual calendar, which I keep out on our counter and reference during my prep days. MY PREP DAYS! They are another key to keeping things organized in my personal life. When I thought about what had stopped me in the past from doing kind and fun things for the people I love, it wasn’t a lack of money or time, it was a lack of preparation. Starting last year, I designated one day a month (the last Sunday of each month, usually) my prep day, and I take about two hours to walk through a few steps to prepare for birthdays, holidays, events, date nights, etc. You can read more about them here.

On those prep days, I always have blank floral cards on hand from Rifle to use for birthdays, anniversaries, congratulations, or condolences. I usually buy a few packs on Black Friday, which cuts down on having to run out and buy a card for every occasion!

A few final tips around holidays: I keep all of my mailing addresses in a Google Doc (I know a lot of people use and love Postable, too!). I keep track of past Christmas and birthday presents (only for John and June) in other Google Docs. Future present ideas go in my Notes app so I can update it on the fly!

As always, I feel like there was so much more I could cover under the very general “relationships” heading, so if there’s something you’d like for me to tackle in a future post, please let me know! Can’t wait to see what Nancy has to share today, too! :)

P.S. I didn’t really touch on tending to my marriage in this post because I feel like I talk about it fairly often – for more on that topic, check out this category!

The rest of the series:
Time: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Finances: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Home: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Personal Lives: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Work: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Relationships: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Kids: Em’s post and Nancy’s post

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Friends, thank you so much for sharing in our excitement earlier this week!! It was an extra sweet Valentine’s Day due to your love. Two kiddos — it’s a whole new world here at Em for Marvelous! :)

Our Valentine’s Day was otherwise low-key. I started celebrating a bit early with a Galentine’s Day edition of Articles Club on Tuesday night. We kept the pink and red table decor for our family dinner on Wednesday, where the menu was beef ragu (our go-to celebratory meal!), cheesy garlic bread, sparkling cider, and surprise Girl Scout cookies John brought home from work! Samoas for me and Thin Mints for him :)

Inspired by Lara, I wrapped up a Walk in Love tee at each place setting to remind us that the greatest love comes not from each other but from the one who first loved us. So happy they’re offering kids tees again!!

In preparation, June and I had a little crafting party last weekend: she did some free-form painting for cousins and grandparents while I worked on her class valentines. I originally was going to help her make thumbprint hearts and add a punny “thumb-body loves you” line, but her thumbs were a bit too small to make recognizable hearts! So, swirls and circles it was. Next year I want to try Valerie’s celery heart idea!

This was our first year making class valentines, and we only had to make 10 (whew!). I was planning to use Lay Baby Lay’s printable but couldn’t get it to save to my computer, and so ended up designing my own inspired by hers. Here’s the file if you’d like to try it yourself! We ordered the plastic cats from Amazon – considering how in love June is with the animal figurines she got for Christmas, I’m hoping these were a big hit with her classmates. They turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself! And easy easy easy.

We ended the night cuddled on the sofa watching our 45-minute wedding video, a tradition that started the first Valentine’s Day after we were married when our full-length film was delivered to us just a few days before the holiday. June was definitely into it this year, calling out the names of each family member along the way. Nothing like listening to your wedding vows to bring back the warm fuzzies :)

Next year I think we might add more of a festive breakfast or something like pink milk – betting she would get a kick out of that. Did y’all do anything fun to celebrate?

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Friends, I am so excited about this series!!! I loved hearing your guesses — everything from another round of Marvelous Mama to an extended personal finance guide (both of which sound marvelous, by the way) — but dare I say what we have planned is even better…?

A month or two ago, I was searching on Nancy’s blog for something when I stumbled upon the “organization” series she wrote in 2014. I remembered loving the posts when they were originally written, but as I re-read them, it hit me how much her life had changed in the last four years! I thought about how I would love for her to revisit the same topics, and then realized that they dovetailed perfectly with the most-requested topic from my reader survey last year: rhythms, habits, and routines. How do I make space and time for what matters most in all areas of my life? How do I get things done? How do I do it???

Well, I most certainly do not have all the answers, but one thing I have been given is a confidence in the decisions we make for our family and a willingness to share them. So here we are! Nancy was totally game for a revisit when I proposed the idea to her, and what I love most about this is that throughout this series, you’ll get to hear from two people who have similar hearts but different ways of living them out. There is no one right way to do things! Instead of a prescription, we hope to offer you inspiration, ideas, tools, tips, and encouragement. I am so excited. I also have WAY too much to say on each topic and am already having to rein myself in, ha!

Let’s start at the beginning: with time.

Readers who’ve been here awhile know I’ve written about this topic before, and I would definitely encourage you to check out those two posts! The most important takeaways: I have a permanent moratorium on the phrase time is flying by, the response busy but good, and anything else that sounds remotely similar. I also have learned to embrace this paradox: time is both precious and plentiful. To have as much time as I need for the things I want, I must be ruthless about not filling time with things I don’t care about or that aren’t a priority for me.

So let’s start there. What do I NOT do? Here are a few from a very long list of things. In general, I do not…

— Paint my nails
— Browse in stores or go to the mall
— Wash my hair every day
— Clean (well, I do clean – ha! But I pretty much do the bare minimum and let the rest slide.)
— Tidy (again, I do this – but there are MANY days and hours when things are NOT in their proper place.)
— Sell clothing I’m getting rid of (I just donate it.)
— Scroll on Facebook
— Get together with girlfriends (except for Articles Club and a neighborhood book club)
— Switch my accessories (I wear pearl studs and my wedding and engagement rings and that’s it.)
— Own a dog
— Volunteer
— Text (pretty much only with my family and only in reply to texts sent to me)
— Curate my Instagram (I am a stylist by trade – if I spent more time on it, it would look different!)
— Binge watch TV shows

Are any of these things bad? Not at all. But in a full season, I have to say a firm no to good things to make way for better things. (Things like puzzles with June, prayer, making dinner for my family every night, reading, weekly calls with my sisters, evening walks, writing on EFM, and SLEEP. I love sleep and get 8-9 hours every night.) I look forward to doing some of these things in other seasons. Your list might look very different from mine, but it’s important that you have it.

An integral tool for helping me prioritize my time and clarify my yeses and nos: PowerSheets. Y’all have heard me talk about them extensively at the end of each year and in my monthly goal posts, but they deserve a mention here, too!

As for how I organize my time from day to day, I am a paper calendar gal. In fact, I am an old-school paper calendar gal: I use an *original* Simplified Planner, purchased in 2012, which is really just a pretty blue binder that I fill with printable monthly calendar pages. And yes, though bulky, it travels to and from work with me every day I’m in the office! :)

Why paper? I want to see every event on every day of the month at the same time. So much of what I’m scheduling needs to happen in relation to other things, and I hate having to click back and forth between days or switch between the day view and the month view so I can see every event happening on a certain day.

You can read more about how I use my Planner here.

A Lindsay Letters Creatives calendar is the newest addition to our home, and I think it will become increasingly important as kiddos grow and our schedule gets more complicated! It hangs in our kitchen, and at the beginning of every month I transfer over from my Planner events that affect both of us as well as our meal plan for the week. We’ve only had it for a short while, but so far it has been super helpful to get John and I on the same page!

A final tip: there is NOTHING in my life that makes me feel more like I’ve wasted time or that I don’t have enough time than scrolling on social media. Nothing. If your schedule/life feels out of your control and you spend any amount of time on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, that might be a good (though hard) place to start. More about this and my social media boundaries later in the series :)

Friends, I hope this post was helpful for you and that you’re excited for what’s to come!! Don’t forget to read Nancy’s post here.

How do y’all manage your time? Are you a paper or electronic calendar gal? What do you say no to? I’d love to hear!!

The rest of the series:
Time: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Finances: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Home: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Personal Lives: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Work: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Relationships: Em’s post and Nancy’s post
Kids: Em’s post and Nancy’s post

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