Q & A - The Answers to your Questions!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Q&A I posted on Instagram! Lets dive right in!

1. How do your days ago? How are you helping your kids to learn at home and do you plan ahead of time?

Great question! Right now we are enjoying the fact that Maddox is not in preschool and Jackson only has kindergarten in the afternoons! So generally we spend mornings slow and steady. We take baths, read stories, do puzzles, etc. before we have to get our day started around 11 am. I know - we are very lucky to have slow mornings together and I am soaking it all up while I can! We have decided to homeschool Jackson for next year (blog post about that coming - stay tuned!) so things will change soon. As for Jackson's learning, I don't follow a curriculum as of yet but we work through workbooks from the dollar store for writing, math, practice creative drawing and he reads the majority of the day as that is his all-time favourite activity!

2. What inspired your monochromatic theme on Instagram and how do you maintain it?

What inspired my monochromatic theme is my lack of interest in colour haha! If you have known me personally for any amount of time you can vouch that it is rare (except in Summer) to find me dressed in any sort of colour, and I was made fun of quite a bit in my early 20s especially for not having any colour in my home. Dont get me wrong - I do love colour and when helping others decorate who love colour around them I absolutely love adding pops of colour into spaces! However, I am a (some would say extreme) minimalist and having a monochromatic home just helps with my own sanity! My kids do have colourful toys which stay in the basement, having only books and lego upstairs. Otherwise, our home continues to stay monochromatic with the exception of some green plants!

3. How was your transition from one to two kids?

Oh man guys... I feel like I could do an entire blog post on this one. My transition from one to two Chunks was TOUGH. I had major postpartum depression which I didn't even realize I had until Maddox was about 9 months, and I was in a rough state. We had some things going on behind the scenes in our family that made things extra stressful and tough, but I found myself overwhelmed and alone. My parents live in another province than us and Hubs parents have 4 other grandsons so help was hard to get and that's what I needed most. When Maddox turned about 15 months I found more myself more grounded parenting wise and have found it much easier since. Comment below if you want to see a blog post digging deeper into this subject!

4. What is your advice for a new blogger? How do you post so often on Instagram and keep up with it all?

Great question! My blog has only been live since November so any advice you have for me is very welcomed! I am no professional nor do I have a lot of experience yet but my piece of advice is just to do it. Start it up and just keep writing content. So many people encouraged me to start a blog even years before I actually did and I should have started earlier! Just keep at it and follow your dreams even if viewing is low and your followers are few! It takes time... just get it started!

As for Instagram, I've always loved taking photos of my boys and have always found it quite easy - until my 5-year-old became a 15-year-old and now hates photos. Sigh. I now hire one of my favourite photographers to come in once in a while to take a bunch of photos that I need for collaborations and blog posts, and she is amazing enough to snap a bunch of candid shots of the boys which I use periodically. Otherwise, I find it so fun taking shots of my boys and Hubs is oh so supportive of my creative dreams and is willing to take photos of me and the boys! Let's all give him a round of applause, shall we?

5. How do you keep your marriage wonderful and keep the spark alive?

Our marriage has not always been this functional and smooth sailing... we've had our share of rough patches. Again, I feel like I could do an entire blog post on this subject, and let me know if you want to read it, but the start of our marriage was rough. The first year and a bit we almost didn't make it. Hubs worked 2 jobs, I was so young and going through some mental issues at the time and trying to sort it all out alone. Not such great decisions in the first year. We decided to move to Vancouver and it was the best decision for our relationship we ever made. It hasn't been perfect but we've continued to keep dating and compromising and seeing the best in each other. I think as long as you feel loved daily by the small things that your spouse does, the spark is impossible to lose.

Action shot of me smashing him in the face with a pillow

6. What has been your experience with potty training and what are your tips?

Stay tuned for this blog post in a few weeks!

7. Are you planning to have more kids?

Haha....yeah no. Hubs and I are soooooo happy and beyond blessed to have our two chunks. I have not had the experience of getting pregnant naturally and in our almost 8 years of marriage and no birth control we have never had a natural conception, however, currently this is still a possibility haha. Do we plan on having more kids? No. Is it a possibility still? Yes. If God wants us to produce yet another Chunk then so be it! But the plan is not there. Sorry to disappoint.

8. How many tattoos do you have and what is the meaning behind them?

A blog post all about this will be live in two weeks!

9. What inspires you with home decor and what inspired you to decorate like you did?

When we bought our house we were still living in Vancouver in a townhouse that was dark and that I had my dad paint ALL BEIGE. Shocking right? I thought I had style.... haha! Oh goodness. Its like I lived in the land of poop. So we bought this house, which to me was move-in ready....until we moved in. Thomas, a very good friend of mine who lives in Vancouver was kind enough to let me bounce ideas off of him as I crawled out of my beige and brown hole and walked into the land of greys and whites. And then it happened.... my obsession for white began. My poor Hubs guys... the poor guy thought he had bought this great house his wife was happy with until we literally painted it top to bottom and redid EVERYTHING. We still have a to-do list which is large but one piece at a time. We have also changed things a few times over as I slowly found my style with a few trial and errors. Since then I have come into my own style and have started studying interior decorating on the side (very much the side). I love decorating and finding peoples different styles, and it has been a blast creating the home we live in.

10. Hair tips, please!

Stay tuned for next weeks blog post! You won't want to miss it!

I hope this answered some of your questions! I couldn't get to them all but if you have more questions just leave me a comment below and I can do another one of these Q&A posts! Hope you learned something new about me and are excited about the fun posts ahead!

Photos by Carey Stevens Photography