Hi! It's been a while, I know. Working 10+ hours a day, coming home and doing my self care, and going to bed takes a lot out of a gal! I figured I would share an update on why I haven't found the time to blog lately, and what's been eating up my time other than work.

I started this *little* program on Beach body called 80 Day Obsession back in mid Jan! I have officially surpassed the month long hull of working out every evening, 6 days a week, and sticking with a meal plan. Man, it's exhausting! My progress has shown me little weight loss, but the amount of strength and confidence I've gained from this program is more than I could have imagined! Within a month I've gained full bicep muscles, triceps, and my thighs feel like they could crush a watermelon. Okay .. maybe not but some days they feel like they could!

So this is my version of self care right now, and I have to say it's really helping. I have NEVER stuck with a program like this before, where I take in the meal plan as well and stick with it. While doing this, it's got me thinking that maybe I'd like to try and sign up to be a coach with BeachBody. But I know me, I know I struggle with "recruiting" people, or just overall boasting about myself, but as one of my work buddies may know, I share my progress a lot right now because I feel so proud of myself. (I probably annoy her form time to time, ha!) I don't think I'll go full on coach, but I have had a few friends and family members say that somehow I've inspired them to do their exercise. Which is crazy to me! Even one of my bosses started going back to her cross fit! I love that I've been able to do that from just caring for myself.

Enough about that, I wanted to share my other self care habit I've built. BULLET JOURNALLING!

It's 2018! Aaaaand I've decided to put my laptop on my lap to type away on here for the first time in a while. I didn't post anything for the last while because I was working 15 hour days, coming home to find zero motivation to kick my ass at a workout, or even to clean my apartment.

I am going to give the blogging another shot, but I think I need to find MY kind of thing. I know I want to work hard at my instagram, so I think the two will eventually go hand in hand.

2017 was a hard year for me. I went through a lot with my anxiety, friendships and finding confidence in myself. I'm still growing, still forever working at anxiety, finding the work/life balance, and also finding time to do something for myself aside from binge watching the latest Netflix series, ha!

2018 will be good to me, I can feel it. End of 2017 was good to me too, so I've got a very positive outlook right now.

I spoke to one of my closest friends about this a month ago, saying how my mental health is crazy good when I am working out 4 days a week and focusing on ME, so I'm going to do that again. I started back at it in December, and going back into it full force once again. I fell off the band wagon back in September when I started a different position, but I am good to go for this year.

Hello and happy friday!

I wanted to make my first "fashion" like post on here, as this week I wore these jeans I recently bought from the Gap and I'm still figuring out how to style them. I know I mentioned them in a few posts back, but they are The Gap 'best girlfriend' jean! I have had them for maybe a month now, and working out what to wear with them is still a struggle.

But this week, I wore them with a new cute red sweater I grabbed on a whim at Old Navy (very Gap clothing oriented here, can you tell I used to work with the company? haha) and I paired them with a belt! Surprise! I felt .. great? It's been hitting me the last year that, yes, I CAN look good in clothes I didn't think were "for my body type".  That's something I always compared myself to when getting clothes. Oversized sweater? Nope, got curves, can't pull that off. Stripes? Again, not a size small, don't do that!

Screw those thoughts! That is my motto right now. So here are some horribly taken photos of my cute denim and sweater until I can get out with my camera and a friend.

Happy Tuesday evening! Or alternatively, happy Wednesday. Hope you are all enjoying your week so far.

This past week has been such a quick one, but extremely eventful! As I mentioned in my last post, I had two friends come to visit me from New York and Boston, and we explored areas in my city that I haven't been able to see yet.

Now, when you think "oh this girl's form Canada", I'm sure you immediately think of snow, which is understandable. Once someone from the states asked me if I lived in an igloo.. sigh ... anyways, I'm getting carried away here. We decided to make use of a rainy Thursday afternoon and go up Grouse Mountain to ride the gondola up and check out the views. And of course, boom, SNOW! *insert all the cute same photos here of trees and snow*

Just quickly tying this up before I have to clean the kitchen and prep it for two friends coming to stay, but I know I needed to get a post up this week, as I've had a few personal friends ask me to get another post up (thanks ladies).

Thought I'd give you a run down on this past week in some photos. Happy post-Halloween though, everyone! I celebrated on this past Saturday with the best of the best, and we went as Miguel and Tulio from The Road to El Dorado! Not many knew who we were, but it was still such a good costume in the end!



We also went to her friends baby shower, which HELLO BABY FEVER! Hitting me hard over here. I regret not taking more photos of their view of the ocean, because it was incredible.

We had no kids come to our door this Halloween, but likely because we are in an apartment complex. We had 2 kiddos last year, but none this year. Sigh. All the candy for Mike.

Today I'm off work for the rest of the week, and this morning was nice to have to myself and to sort out all my chores for the day. Sometimes I do wish I worked from home once or twice a week so I could be on top of the kitchen dishes, or just general tidy ... we can get a little clustered up! I decided to awkwardly take a picture this am on my balcony, because ... ya know, boyfriend off to work, so who else will take a cute picture of me holding my nice flash mug and basking in my morning coffee? Just me.  (Pretty sure the construction men were watching me lol)


Now that I've just rambled and shared some photos with you on a Wednesday AM, I'm off to go clean the kitchen and sort out the clutter of the living room, aka all the candy wrappers from said boyfriend. *eye roll*

Keep eyes peeled this week for pictures from my little "own city tourist" photos I'll be trying to upload into a few posts! I'm excited to explore parts of my city I've not been to yet. Do you have any week plans? Anywhere in your own city you'd want to go visit? I'm curious!

Have a great Wednesday!

I've been sitting on what the heck I want to do with our living room space for a few months now. Currently, it looks like a very basic Ikea attacked apartment living room, loads of clutter and just overall an unorganized mess.

You know those basic Ikea coffee tables that are usually up on craigslist? Yeah, those. We got one of those in the living room, and it does it's job. Currently holding a cup of tea, and loads of other crap, but it's too rectangular for my liking lately. We also have the cube like bookshelf, the Kallax shelving unit, but since it's lacking the back piece, things fall back through it fairly often.

So I'd like to show you my two choices that I want to switch out soon! I'm really feeling something more circular for the coffee table, since we have a couch with a chaise and I find that the current coffee table hides so much of the (of course, Ikea) rug that we have under the couch and table.

Oh hello there, 25. Nice to meet you, I'm Jena, a coffee addict who is trying to sort out her life right now.

My birthday was Saturday, and I had a moment where I thought "what are you doinnn girl!" Not in a bad way, really. More so just had things hit me that I wanted to change! I suddenly was hit with the fact I truly wanted to change my living room decor, I wanted to get all new furniture, aside from my wonderful couch that I'm sitting on while I type this. (the couch is named Kelsey for those wondering) I also had a moment where I wanted to change my style, fairly quickly too.

I have to thank Poppy Deyes for that, as she recently made a blog post herself about some Gap denim that she loved, so naturally, I went to get them. You can find her post about them here. She has some wonderful posts.  I also had a moment where I just felt so comfortable in the body I have, and I didn't care so much about trying to not wear a baggy sweater because it "looked too frumpy", I am comfortable, I feel cute, and that's what matters.

Basically, what I'm getting at here is that I'd like to welcome you here to my blog. You can expect things such as some fashion (if you could call me fashionable), decor, organizational tips, etc. I already have one post planned for later this week about what sparked my want to change my living room, and some decor ideas I have and what I want to purchase. I'm just your average coffee drinker, 25 year old who has a lot to say but doesn't want to bore her friends, so she types away.

I hope that this blog will become something of enjoyment to some, and I also hope to be able to share a lot with you in the upcoming months.

I'll end this post here, with a picture of these beautiful flowers my mom got me on my birthday.

Happy monday everyone! I am not at home today, and I am not able to take photos ... so all credit goes to google.

I wanted to do a blog post on the 2 current dry shampoo's I've been using. If I was home, I would show you the results, but we will have to make do today.
The 2 dry shampoo's are the collab tropical volume dry shampoo, and the batiste XXL Volume dry shampoo.
As you can tell, I like to try to achieve volume into my lifeless hair.

                                                                           

Hello everyone! I am doing a bit of a different post today. I've always thought of this blog as having a bit of real life thrown into it, instead of just beauty and other things.
I wanted to touch up on what I do for a living, and that is nannying. If you are looking for a blog post on beauty, I'm sorry but you may as well just click the X, unless you are interested in what I do for work.

I am a nanny. I am a fully licensed Early Childhood Educator, and no, this doesn't mean I'm just a fancier babysitter. This means I can legally work in a daycare or preschool if I wanted to. I did, and for my own personal preference, I did not like it at all. The position I was placed in, was not something I enjoyed and I was thrown around. That's all negative and now in the past. Now I am working as a nanny for some families, and I am loving it 100x more than I did at the daycare.

So, a little fact about nannying. Yes, you can go abroad, but no you don't have to. Some of the things I do during the day are usually preparing the snacks and meals for the kids, taking them outside and finding fun activities to do with them so they are able to grow their mind. Most of the families I help, they have their kids in preschool (those that are preschool age), and so I basically continue their learning throughout the day. I don't sit with them and do math, but I do challenge them by seeing how far they can count, and getting them to count out the cars when they are playing. Little things like this helps with their continued learning.
Some nannies, like my friend, pick up the kids after school and drop them off as well. I will be doing that in September with a little preschooler. We care for the kids, make sure that we have their safety first, but just playing and being with the kids is the best part of my day.

There are so many different types of nannies; some that house clean and some that don't. Some that are from other countries, and some that are from down the street.

I get asked all the time if all I do is babysit for a living, but no I don't. I think that a babysitter is someone who throws on a movie because they are babysitting at 6 or 7 pm when the kids are usually already in bed. I was one of those babysitters, but now as a nanny, I hardly ever turn on the tv, unless we are all having a tv rainy day, which maybe happens once a month, but I do play a lot of music.

All in all, my point was that I am not a babysitter, but a nanny, and I am loving it. I may be trying to fill in some gaps for hours, but it's only until September. I just think that people should really understand what nannies do for kids, and if anyone wants some of the ideas/activities I do with the kids, leave me a comment or shoot me an email.  I'm thinking every couple of weeks, I want to add a blog post in with some of the things I've done with the kids that were either a hit or a miss, and compare what went wrong, etc. Let me know if any of you would be interested in seeing that!

Have a great day!

Toodle-doo!

Hello everyone. It's been a long while! I got super busy with life and work, and I figured I would throw in an update for you. I went away with my family to a cabin/camp ground over Easter break, and I loved it. I took a couple photos I wanted to share!

Hello lovelies! Today I wanted to do a post on the Morphe Brushes 35w palette. It is currently not available on their website, but they should stock soon. I bought this last year in the fall, and I will admit, it's not fabulous, but there are many colors that give off great pigmentation. I have been told that their single eyeshadows perform better, but honestly, for someone who just enjoys makeup, it's not a bad palette to have! I have some photos to show you, but the eyeshadows don't have names, so I will do it by rows!

Happy Friday! I am so ready for the weekend, even though I work Sat, it's all okay! I had the afternoon off today, so I figured I would bust out a blog post that I've been meaning to do since I got this product.

I was given gift cards for Christmas and as a goodbye gift from my old coworkers to Sephora, so off I went to go lust after this palette. I had looked at it for a while, but I was originally going to get the Smashbox one, but the pricing was like 2$ off, so I didn't care.