Life Lately: dealing with stress, girls weekend, and a new home

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a post like this… but considering there is quite a bit going on in life at the moment I thought I’d share some things happening lately.

My weekly FMK readers may have noticed I haven’t been sharing blog posts on my consistent schedule lately. I typically share a new post Monday/Wednesday/Friday. But between preparing our new home to move into, work and travel, my schedule has been thrown off a little bit. Normally I would find myself just working through it. Keep going. Get it done. No matter what. 

But as I take on more projects and my body starts having negative reactions to the stress I’ve put myself under, I’m slowly starting to realize I need to give myself permission to take more breaks. The Type-A in me wants to do it all, and do it well.

Stress

I didn’t realize I had put myself under so much stress until it was too late (I feel like it always happens like that, right?) … too late as in there was nothing I could do once psoriasis flared up. This particular bout of stress happened to make itself evident on my lips. It was not only annoying, but painful. Oh and stressful because when you have skin-related issues on your face, that in itself brings on more stress, you know?

Anyways my lips were irritated, patchy, blistering (sorry for the visual). I reached out on IG and heard back from several nutritionists and wellness practitioners about diet–avoiding inflammatory foods, sugar, caffeine, etc. I started to watch my intake of those foods, and even got rid of coffee for several days–yes it was kind of terrible. But really I didn’t see any true relief.

It was also suggested I think about what kind of stress-relieving activities I could incorporate into my routine. So I took naps, went for walks outside, and just found myself lying in corpse pose/savasana on the floor for 5 minutes at a time. I also decided I would lessen my work load for the week, and essentially not post here on the blog as normal. Just giving myself permission to skip a couple days of recipes/new posts took a lot of weight off. If you ever find yourself in that sitauation of being so stressed out and not knowing what to do, TAKE A BREAK. Seriously. Whatever the situation is, you can take a break from whatever is that you think “needs” to get done. Trust me, it can wait.

Chicago Girls Weekend

Last weekend I made a trip to Chicago to hang out with blogging buds turned real life friends Erin and Jess. We were texting each other beforehand about how the overwhelm of work and life was creeping in, and the remedy was clearly a fun girls weekend.

Erin basically toured us around Chicago showing us all of the good eats. And good they were…

We even got in a Corepower yoga class Friday night, and a killer boot camp class at BTY training Saturday morning.

Oh, we also happened to visit four different Whole Foods in the city. It was both ridiculous and awesome at the same time… Mostly awesome though.

So really the trip revolved around food, some workouts, a little photo shoot… but mostly food and laughs. The perfect girls weekend.

By the time I came home on Sunday my lips were almost fully healed. Stress be gone!

Our New Home

So something else going on right now is that Drew and I are getting ready to move into our new home! We’ve been painting a few rooms, packing up stuff slowly, and re-doing the kitchen cabinets. I don’t really have any good pictures at the moment but I’ll be sure to share some later on when we finish. I’ve been sharing parts of the painting process in my Instagram stories in case you’re curious.

I’ve learned that painting is a lot harder than it seems… I mean I went into the process with the whole mindset of “How hard can it be?”

When in reality I managed to royally eff up the second coat of the living room. Which I think is hard to do… but somehow I’ve managed to screw it up. You can see so many brush strokes when the light hits the walls. At first I was all “Oh I’ll be the calm and collected Ashley. No stress. We’ll just decorate the shit out of these walls…”

But now I am all “Good lawd those walls look atrocious…” And I would have to make the entire living room gallery walls to cover up all of the terrible paint strokes. So even though we’ve removed all of the tape and plastic (because I told Drew it was fine/good to go) we are going back to do a third coat. Because the true perfectionist in me just can’t handle seeing all of those paint strokes… Poor Mr. FMK.

let’s chat

• What is happening in your life lately?
• Have you been to Chicago?
• Are you good at painting walls?

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