Hey everyone! I wanted to write up a quick update on what my family is doing and where we’re headed in the new year. I promise, I”ll try to be brief. I love reading regular old “day in the life” stuff from the bloggers I follow so I hope you’ll tolerate something besides recipes for a few minutes.

I hope your holidays were peaceful and joy-filled in many ways. If they were not, my prayer is that you will find those things in 2018.

As we ease our way into the new year, here’s what’s happening around here:

• I’ll be doing another Whole 30 beginning January 15th. We have birthdays in the family in early January, including my own, so I never start a new eating plan January 1. Plus, that just seems like too much pressure to me. Starting mid-month is more my speed. As always, I’ll be chronicling how the month goes here on the blog so you can follow along and find inspiration for your own Whole 30, elimination diet or other eating plan. I have lots of resources for you, like these meal plans (this is just one example), so just look around. As always, I’d love for you to join me. Comment if you want to Whole 30 together!

• Blog posting schedule for the year….um….last year about this time I announced that I would be posting something crazy like five days a week, dishing about everything from the latest scientific research to new recipes. You know what they say about the best laid plans. I believe my ambitious posting schedule lasted about one week. The plan for this year, at least the beginning part, is for a What We Ate Wednesday post where I will give a quick and dirty round-up of my family’s meals over the past week. My hope is that this will help when dinner amnesia sets in and you need some inspiration. I am not saying that all my dinners will be something you should model, but they’ll give you ideas.

As a little sneak peak, here’s what we’ve eaten the past few days:

Other than that one post which I will attempt to publish regularly, I’m making no promises. As I create new recipes that are worthy of publishing, I will get them out to you. The blogging will just have to take a bit of a back seat for a while because….

• I’m going back to school! Beginning February 1, I will be a student at the Functional Medicine Health Coaching Academy. This is a program run in conjunction with the Institute for Functional Medicine and combines functional medicine training and health coach training. I don’t know what life will look like after I finish the program next year, but that is in God’s hands. This is where I am right now. Until I figure out how much time my studies will take, I have to put the blog in the lower priority category.
• AND…in case you didn’t read this post, I have another new part-time gig as a Beautycounter consultant. Beautycounter is the brand I have trusted for my skin care for a few years now and I’ve recently decided to join the company as a consultant for a couple reasons:
  1. It’s another way for me to spread the message that there is a better way to treat our bodies. We can put better food on the inside and we can put better products on the outside. I fully believe that Beautycounter’s skincare and makeup lines are superior in terms of the ingredients and performance.
  2. My hobbies (this blog, my further education) are expensive. I need to help the finances of my family and this is one way I thought I could do that and still stay at home with my kids.
• And speaking of kids…my number one priority has to remain my job of wife and mom (and homeschooling mom too). My family is at the top of my list so they come before the blog, school and Beautycounter, or any other business I fall into.

Where you can find me in the coming months:

I will still be here on the blog as often as I can.

I am over on YouTube pretty regularly as well. Honestly, that’s a lot easier for me than blogging because I just cook dinner like I normally would, but I basically talk to myself through the process, which is somewhat therapeutic. My husband does all the hard work on the back end.

It appears lots of folks received Instant Pots for Christmas because all those videos have been receiving A LOT of views. If you’re interested in whether or not you should jump on the Instant Pot bandwagon or just want to see the craziness of my cooking routine, check out some of the videos.

You can sign up for my newsletter (through that little popup window with the lovely donut picture). I send out a sort of summary email just once a month. It’s a good way to keep from littering up your inbox and yet still checking in. If nothing else, it’s a reminder to you to pop on over to the blog and see what’s new. Hopefully, each month there will be at least something new!

The blog is still my home base, even though I seem to have a much wider reach over on YouTube right now. Maybe people are starting to have less tolerance for reading and just want to watch all their instruction? I don’t know. It’s baffling to me why anyone would watch my videos, but they are! All that so say, the blog isn’t going anywhere. It’s the place I feel I can ramble about whatever is on my mind so I’ll always point you back here if you have a question. I am going on year three with this thing and I have put up a lot of content. Lots of recipes, lots of science-y stuff, lots of personal experiences.

Yes, yes, I have all the social media accounts too (you can find the links right on my homepage), but honestly, I just don’t have the time to be consistent over there. When I post a new recipe, I usually mention it on Facebook and I will very rarely remember to post it to Instagram. You certainly can follow me through social media, but again, the blog is home base.

I think that’s about it. I told you I’d try my best to keep it brief.

If you have any questions about my schooling, health coaching, functional medicine, Beautycounter or anything else, well, maybe not astrophysics, but anything in my realm, just leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to respond in a timely manner.

I hope you’re already off to a great start in 2018!