Welcome Home, An Update of Life Lately + A Video Of Summer!

Hi friends! Welcome back to Lauren-Likes! I am so excited to be back in this space. I truly love sharing bits of our life, our travels, new craft projects, book reviews and so many creative projects with you here. I am really grateful that you also show up to follow along with this space too.We had the most magnificent summer. We visited 5 countries, saw so many family and friends, celebrated new families at weddings and by meeting new babies and warming new houses, ate so much good food, took approximately 1 million photos, drove hundreds of miles, explored new beaches and towns and just had a magical few months. You can see our summer travels in 1 second clips below! I love making videos of our trips with this app. You can read all about my process + tips here. https://vimeo.com/179143404Then we came home and dove right in, literally, to the new school year. We welcomed back our students, staff and friends only to jump right into decorating, planning, teaching and sleeping. I always forget how exhausting it is to stand up and talk all day. I am simply out of words by the end of the day and can barely stand. But it's getting better each week...ish.I've also embarked on a new healthy living journey. I decided to set a new challenge for myself this summer. My friend Sabine, who inspires me SO much (ie my 365 Creating Everyday Project and this photo walk) started a new year of cups projects and I thought I kind of wanted to try one also, but with feet photos (my fav). But I decided to tie it into my Fitbit goals and use it as a way to track how often I was hitting my step goals. Then slowly, one thing led to another, and I've decided on a full lifestyle change, one step at a time with very low pressure. Apparently this is the best way for me to achieve goals, because I have surprised myself at every turn and have so easily followed these goals. A little bit of prep with very low pressure goes a long way in my world. I have quit drinking soda (!!!) and we have been preparing our meals solely out of the Skinny Taste Cookbook (4 stars for sure). Ive been pretty consistently hitting my step goal, taking a lot of fun feet shots and working out with girlfriends often. It's been one of those changes that just makes sense which is making it much easier to keep up with. It's amazing how much better I feel doing these things that have, in no way, been a burden or issue. Im not shooting for perfection but trying to accomplish at least one of my goals each day: eat healthy, workout or at the very least hit my step goal. You can follow along on instagram as I have been posting random updates about my journey under the hashtag #ayearonfoot. My goals for this lifestyle change/project/goal is to simply live a healthier lifestyle. I have no big goals or pressure, I just want to reap the natural benefits of exercise and eating healthy.Not much else is new around here, just the normal work work work, craft craft craft, travel travel travel. Ive been redoing my craft room/office/studio space (I need to decide on a good name for it) and sharing it on instagram of course. We have been knocking out some fun weekend projects together, like this quote board and paint holder.

We are already planning our upcoming trips. Our goal is to travel somewhere each month this year. Most of those will be in Korea, since we bought a car (!!) for that purpose. So far we have a trip planned to Andong and Sokcho in Korea, and then to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. That about covers this semester, then we will start looking into new destinations for next semester!Ive been spending lots of time over at Get Messy Art Journal, making pages, writing tutorials and hanging out in the Facebook private community. We would love for you to join us! There are annual and monthly options to suit everyone's commitment levels and budgets. We also released a few new artists interviews (for free) over on Youtube. They are A-mazing.If you missed my new Big Picture Classes class, it is the PERFECT class for you to play catch up on and scrapbook some of those fun summer photos you took at the beach/pool/lake. Try it for free with a free membership trial here.I think that really is all that is new/that you may have missed. Now that we are all caught up, there will be lots of fun new posts coming to this little blog over the next few months along with some new classes and exciting secret projects!See you tomorrow! In the meantime, how was your summer? For real, I want to know. Tell me!