Living – Page 11

Christmas• Living

Holiday Travel Essentials

I can’t believe it’s almost Christmas. We won’t be traveling as a family for the holiday, but I may be scooting out to New York for New Years weekend to kick it with the homies. The few times that we have traveled during Christmas, I feel like my nerves were a complete wreck by the time we got where we were going.

You know, we have to get the kids stuff together, and our stuff together, and clean the house, and wrap presents,and fit said presents in the car. It’s so much to keep up with.

When traveling during the holidays, it is really hard to predict what will happen with delays, lost luggage etc. so as they say, stay ready so you don’t have to get ready. Whenever I travel, I always keep my essentials with me in a carry-on. I include a change of clothing, something to read, my phone, laptop, chargers and any personal items I may need.

Personal items to include: deodorant, feminine hygiene, soap, lipstick, bobby pins, scrunchies, you know those things that can turn a situation with lost luggage into something that you can work with.

While I don’t experience bladder leaks, the reality is nearly 1 in 3 women do, and that number increases to 1 in 2 for African American women. If the possibility of holiday travel shenanigans isn’t a reason to keep the protection you need in reach, I don’t know what is. If you suffer from bladder leaks, Always Discreet offers extraordinary protection that you can barely feel, leaving you protected and comfortable as you go about doing all of the things, and traveling to all of the places.

Normalizing our body changes… hello 40, I see you, should be discussions women are having in the open, and in our private circles. Here are a few statistics on the reality of bladder leakage in women: of the 25 million adult Americans suffering from some form of urinary incontinence, 75-80% of those are women. In fact, 1 in 3 women have experienced bladder leaks. So, spoiler alert – a little leakage is something most women have or will experience at some point in their lives, but it doesn’t have to disrupt your fabulous life.

Always believes body changes are part of being a woman, and that as you move about in the activities you enjoy doing, you shouldn’t have to worry with having the proper protection that you are comfortable in.

You can pick up Always Discreet at Walgreens… and if online shopping is your thing you can purchase at Walgreens online.

Need to do your research? Want to know more about the Always Discreet line? All of the info you need can be found here.

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Holidays• Living

Christmas Gifts Packaged with Love

Thank you to Blurb for sponsoring this post.

Remember back in the day when people carried photos in their wallets. Someone would ask about a child and the parent would pull out their wallet and shove photos of said child or family member into their hand. Those days are long gone, but what I’ve found is older family members still long for tangible photos of nieces, nephews, grandchildren etc.

Photo books make for great gifts. They mix a little of the old with the new while still capturing and sharing valuable memories. Blurb books has made the process of creating a thoughtful, handmade gift easier than ever.

Their easily downloaded software, BookWright provides pre-made templates if you aren’t creatively inclined. If you want to bring your vision to life, there is also the ability to freestyle the layout of your book.

If you need a little inspiration, Blurb offers an online bookstore, here you can browse through books to get ideas for your own creation.

To make the process easier, I suggest gathering at least 100 photos together before beginning. The software easily integrates with your social networks so you can easily pull them from Facebook, and other platforms. If you’re like me you’ll also have to pull them from your computer.

Once you have all of the photos uploaded let the fun begin. It took me about an hour to create our book which will go to grandparents as gifts. The user-friendly interface made it easier than ever to drag and drop photos. I love that you also get error messages if you need to resize the photo to ensure it’s shown as clear as possible once the book is printed.

With a grandmother in Miami, it’s hard to see her reaction upon receipt but I wanted to make the package pretty for her. Wrapping paper, ribbons, and handwritten notes add just the right personal touch.

As much as we would love to be with our loved ones during the holidays, sometimes its just not possible. Thoughtful, handmade gifts that are wrapped with love can hold us over until we can see one another again.

What’s the best DIY gift you’ve ever made or given?! Do share.

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Holidays• Living

Blurb Photo Book: Gifting Memories for the Holidays

Thank you Blurb for sponsoring this post.

I’m one of those sappy moms, for my kids and yours too. I’ve been blogging for over 8 years, and during that span of time I’ve built lifelong friendships with people in the internet and watched their children grow like I’ve watched my own.

Say what you want about social media, but one of the great parts of it involves capturing and freezing memories and moments in your life. I’m all for nostalgia, and I’ve been trying to do better about taking those moments out of my camera/phone and put them into tangible books that can be displayed in our home for other people to see.

I recently decided to do a through the years look at my children. I dug and found photos of them from years ago until now. Once I pinpointed a few of my faves from over the years, I went to Blurb and created a small square 7X7 photo book of memories to gift the grandparents this holiday season.

The process was fairly easy. The most challenging part of the process, hands down was selecting the photos. To create the book layout I utilized BookWright, Blurb’s free desktop software. The software integrated easily with my Dropbox, and social accounts making it easy to transfer photos into the software.

Once the images were in the software, the fun part involved playing around with the plethora of page and cover template options. I found this extremely helpful, especially if you are not creatively inclined. The templates made it easy to create a beautiful photo book out of your photographed memories.

There were a variety of paper options. I was extremely torn between going with the matte paper option and the lustre/glossy one. I finally decided to go with the lustre finish on premium paper. You can request a swatch kit to get a literal feel, and look at the available paper options. I highly recommend this if you plan on making multiple books.

I remember my mother having boxes of printed photos. I think we forget the satisfaction that comes with looking at printed photos. Looking at a printed photo will never get old, I was blown away at the quality of the book and the sharpness of my photo images.

Photo books make great gifts for grandparents, aunts or other family members that don’t get to see you or your family often…and seeing them on social media doesn’t count! Have you ever given a photo book as a gift?

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DIY• Home• Living

One Room Challenge Week 6 | Master Closet Reveal

We did it. In six weeks we transformed our small, non-existent closet from nothing to something. In the event you weren’t keeping up we signed up for the One Room Challenge.

If you have missed the last few weeks, let me catch you up. We participated in the one room challenge. Which is a six week challenge where designers, and guest participants share the transformation of a room from concept to completion. It’s quite inspiring to see so many people transforming their homes during a six week period. You can follow along by going to the link above or scrolling #OneRoomChallenge on Instagram.

My last update post was on week 4. During this week we had to rip out the first cabinet that Adrian built and re-do it. For the details on why, click here.

I was a little apprehensive that he would get it completed, and there are still a few things that need to be done, like crown moulding, adding a mirror and a new door but the major things have been completed.

Here are a few photos of the transformation during week 5.

After this photo, the floor was grouted and I ended up adding some removable wall paper from Target into the nooks of the cabinet.

…and here is the final reveal

I can’t tell you how happy I am with the way this turned out. With the mishap and having to re-do the cabinet, this project still came in under $325 total. These photos do it little justice, it is a very tight space to photograph and there is no natural light so I did the best I could. We still have to put in a light, and finish the crown moulding, I’ll do an update in about a week once that is completed.

We’re hype and have now decided to attack the basement next weekend. I think we’ve finally found our home improvement groove!

To see the before photos along with the progress of the closet during the past six weeks, here is the breakdown

Week 1 (before photos), Week 2, Week 3, Week 4.

I feel a lot of outfit of the day photos in my future! Here’s to hoping it stays clean and organized.

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