New Chapter

I think it's time to put this blog chapter to an end. I loved blogging on this platform. I blogged in this little corner for years. But like everything, there's a season. I'm moving onto my next chapter and thankfully, that still involves writing and blogging. If you would like to follow along, catch me on this website: TheHenryHome.com 

Thanks for reading!
Love, Katrina

Sewing: New Curtains and Pillows

Sewing a bunch of stuff for the home. Wrote about it on my other blog: TheHenryHome.com

FASHION & FABRIC & FLOWER DISTRICT

Wrote about my trip to downtown LA and buying some things from Fashion, Fabric, and Flower District. If interested, click here.

I should update you...

I made yet another blog. I have a general idea of which friend reads on which blog so I want to update all of you on what blog is what.

TUMBLR: I made this in early college (?) if not late high school, I think. I still have a few friends who read on there. Even until now, I love Tumblr humor and posts. So I often go there to get rapid-fire updates on what's cool in the Tumblr world.

BLOGGER: I made this at the end of college for friends who asked about my blog during the end-part-college of my life and I was too embarrassed to direct them to my Tumblr page. Basically, blogger and tumblr have the same posts. I'll write my posts on blogger, publish it, then copy and paste the text/pictures and post the same thing on Tumblr.

Now, a bit of background:
Russ was kind enough to make me an official website at the start of this year. At the end of December in 2015, I blogged about my new condo a lot and I got too many views on my katrinaandwords blog that it made me really anxious. Normally, by looking at the stats, I know how much my average views and reads are. And it pretty much correlates to how many people I know read my blog. But when I opened up my blog one day and saw a dramatic increase of view counts on my page, I didn't like it. Mostly because I didn't know who was reading my blog. I'm okay with one or two stray readers, but not a ton more. I told Russ this and explained that I didn't like knowing that there are people who find my blog now and are able to go back all the way to 2011 and see what I wrote. It's part of the reason why I made a blogger account years after making a Tumblr account. I get shy about what I've written in the past. It's basically a diary. So if I met you in the later part of my life, you get my blogger account URL without all the cheesy stuff I reblogged in my college days, when I used my Tumblr account primarily. Does this make sense? I'm rambling.

I blog in stages. Sometimes I feel like I outgrow an old blog so I start a new one. When I write in my personal journal, I get to end that diary when I write on the last page then I get to start a new one. I love the process of going into a shop, browsing different journals, picking the right one, and knowing that I get to use that journal for the next few months or even years. With the internet, I don't get to do that. I just get to write and write and write until one day I realize that I never got to end a chapter. It has pros and cons. Even with my personal journals, I hate going back and reading what I wrote years ago. I cringe. But I love the process of writing. I'll never stop loving that.

ANYWAYS, Russ made me a website where I feel comfortable sharing home renovation stuff plus crafts I'm doing. This site I blog more freely about house stuff knowing that if people run into that site, it's purely life updates/moments I don't mind sharing with strangers. And I get to be more artsy on it. It's a nice new grown up space. So if you're interested, check it out. Now I'm all shy. It was such a built up. Whatever. Here's the URL: TheHenryHome.com

February Ramblings and Some Random Goals

Happy February, everybody! I know it's technically a week into the month already, but I haven't properly blogged in awhile.

Don't really know what to update, or what I feel like updating. I am, however, so glad that it's February. This means that Russ has managed to successfully - and independently - work from home. I haven't blogged about this yet, not sure if it's news that I necessarily want on the internets, but Russ and I were sort of plunged into a sharp career change. Sharp change because it happened so suddenly and all at once. The holidays were insane. But now I think we're getting a better handle on things. And things are starting to look up.

January consisted of a lot of networking. To have a successful company, or to even be a successful freelancer, you need a lot of contacts. This is not my strong suit. Thankfully, it's Russell's. He's been to loads of networking events, talking about our small startup and making connections with lots of people. It takes awhile for gigs to come in, but they're coming in. Hallelujah! It's manna from heaven.

Sometimes I'm stressed. Sometimes I'm happy. Many times Russ and I are both so excited. Many times I forget that I am excited and am back to being stressed. On these days, I moan to Russell about how unhappy I am and he sits and let's me feel those feelings, then he picks me back up and I am happy again. Honestly, it's so exhausting. Let's just say that I am thankful for 1) a strong, encouraging husband and 2) community group on Tuesdays. I'm humbled knowing that I am far from perfect yet I am loved just the same.

I'm talking writing rambling too much.

Here are my goals this month:

• Make almond milk tomorrow morning. Got my almonds soaking in the fridge and am so excited to finally be making my own almond milk. I'll try to take pictures. Because I am that excited. (!!)
• Sew more! I love it.
• Write. Ugh
• Get back on my devotion plan. Russell has been able to correlate the days I haven't done my devotions to the days when I am cranky. Ha.
• Make more efforts to have a zero-waste home. I'm nowhere near to this but I have sewn us some reusable dinner napkins. One day, I hope to sew unpaper towels. I even got the snaps for them.
• Declutter. Do you like getting rid of stuff? Because I do. I love going through cabinets and closets and getting rid of things. This week, my goal is to go through the kitchen cabinets and get rid of kitchen things I do not use. I'm eyeing you, you no good "nonstick" frying pan.
  Side note: Unfortunately, husband won't let me declutter his DVD collection on my own. Apparently that's one cleaning venture he wants to do together. 

Okay, okay, I need to end this blog post now because it hasn't gone anywhere and has simultaneously gone in 10 different directions.

Wishing you all a good February!

Virtual Home Tour: The Guest Room (Before & After)

It's been awhile, but it's time to continue the Virtual Home Tour. Here's a look at before and after shots of our guest room plus some text about some things. Enjoy!

THE GUEST ROOM

I love our guest room because it's actually very spacious, has a gigantic closet, and is the one room in our house that gets a lot of sunlight. Our first step when we decided to do up this room, like every room in our condo, was to paint it white:

Yay!

But we wanted to make it fun, so...

Stripes

We decided on green stripes because a) It's gender neutral (we're optimistic about starting a family and making this into a nursery one day, so...), and b) Why not? It's so fun.

And now, time for current shots of how our guest room looks like:  

Guest Bed

Here we have the guest bed that Husband built. We can't claim the idea for this. I love looking through home decor blogs and pictures - this bed was inspired from this post.

Little triangle shelf Russell built

Work Table

Add caption

I love this window sill. It gets a lot of indirect sunlight throughout the day. We also make it our makeshift greenhouse. Most of our plants thrive when we place them here. I've taken to rotating the plants in and out of this room. But one of the recent things we've added is this little herb garden attached to the wall.

Another thing Russ made

Here's the door. Only two of our walls are painted in stripes.

Hey there

The third wall of this room consists of one giant closet. The mirrors also make this space that much bigger which is why I love this room so much.

We've christened the guest room as our creativity room. Husband will normally work in here during the day. We store our art and crafts items in here. I didn't really do a close up shot of our bar cart, but it's the blue cart from IKEA which I use to store all my sewing supplies. The yellow chest in this room (also from IKEA) is meant to be an entertainment center but we use it to display plants and artwork, and in the drawers we store canvases, paint brushes, paint, etc.

Thanks for reading! I hope you liked this installment of The Henry Home tour :)

Original post on The Henry Home.

I've been reading and writing more lately. Did you know I've kept a diary since I was 9? I would keep notebooks by me and write. Then sometime around the age of 12 or 13, I began to write even more regularly, about 2 - 3 times a day. Then when I was in high school, I wrote in my journal at least once a day. It wasn't anything special. Mostly I recounted my day in my journal because I didn't feel comfortable sharing the minutiae of life with any of my friends. And for a good 3 years while I was a teenager, I kept a public livejournal where I made lots of virtual friends through the internet. My virtual friends and I would read each other's livejournal entries and comment on each other's day. They actually did feel like my friends, even if I had never met them in person. This is not sad. Please don't read this and think what a sad life. It was actually the opposite. How wonderful that I was brave enough to share my teenage written true-life stories with strangers! I'm no longer that brave.

For most of college, I kept up my habit of writing in my journal everyday. In addition to that, I'd even write hand-written letters and send them via post. I remember I had a callus on my right ring finger where my pen often rubbed against. I no longer have that callus and it causes a deep nostalgic pain in my heart. All for a missing callus. Most people try to get rid of their calluses but that is one callus I wish I could have back.

But sometime in college, I met a boy who is now my husband. Sometimes I wonder why I don't write as much anymore. And I beat myself up over it. I want to record my days in my journal, just like I used to since I was 9. But sometime in college, I met a boy. During my last year of college, for the first time in almost a decade, I stopped writing in my journal everyday. I wrote almost everyday, but not every day. That was a big difference. My journal no longer became my confidante. It was no longer the holder of my secrets or--let's be honest--the keeper of all my boring stories. Sometime in college, this beautiful boy suddenly started listening to all my retellings about my days, and he actually enjoyed them. He wasn't a blank empty page waiting to be filled. He was a human being who responded to my stories. He'd laugh or smile, groan and scoff at the right moments. I don't know why this is so important to write down. But I need you to understand that when I stopped writing consistently after a decade of dedication, it was for a good reason. One that I never regret. I started loving a boy, and he loved me back.

Now, I am writing and reading more. And the beautiful boy who I met while I was in college lives with me. And now it's him who nudges me towards my laptop or notebook. Now he's the one encouraging me to write, and who understands if I'm not ready to share a story yet but instead tells me to write it down.

It's come to a full circle and I finally have the same joy and passion I had when I was 9 -- when I received my first diary and discovered what it meant to write.

Currently...

Took down the Christmas decorations last week and finally got around to transforming the living room into a new seasonal look. I was going for more of a winter look, but this is as close as I got.

A couple changes for this new look:

• Sewed new pillow cases. Stuck with a white, gray, and blue theme. Money spent: $0
• Hung new wall art above the mantel. Russ and I found the stick during one of our walks. Then I bought a ton of oranges that were on sale for 19 cents/pound. Dried the oranges and strung them together because oranges are a winter fruit, right? Money spent: $1.05 for the oranges
  
  Tutorial on how to make the Bohemian Orange Garland can be found here.

It's the little changes that make me happy. Happy winter, everyone!

P.S. I swear I don't pose my dogs for these shots.

2016

Hello 2016!

In 2015, I...

• Stopped working full-time in an office and went completely freelance/contract-based.
• Launched Budding Goods with Russ.
• Traveled to Seattle and Portland to celebrate two years of marriage.
• Did my first art show booth with Russell to feature our Budding Goods products.
• Moved out of Carlsbad and back into Orange County.
• Bought a condo in Foothill Ranch (!!!). I still can't believe I did such a grown up thing like buy property.
• Spent months fixing up said condo--painting walls, buying furniture, building furniture, and adding little touches to make our condo a home.
• Bought a ton of plants.
• Learned how to sew on a vintage sewing machine. Also learned how to do macrame, needle felting, embroidery, and cross-stitch.
• Traveled to Florida and visited The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando!
• Traveled to Chicago with my husband, brother, and sister-in-law.
• Found out I'm going to be an auntie!!

In 2016, I...

• Will write more.
• Hopefully launch Living Moon Studios successfully with Russell. (Ah, yes. Haven't really written about this, nor have I really talked to any of my 1-3 readers about this.)
• Will get over the fear of failing and to keep trying new things.
• Will pursue more creative outlets, even if it's for fun. Because that's the best kind.
• Will try to exercise more.
• Will finish writing and stop seeing every step-back as discouragement.
• Will hopefully get to start a family...? ;)