Hi hi! Firstly, you should know that there is a bomb giveaway on TBB Podcast today, featuring Silver Fern Probiotics & an amazing convo with the Co-Founder, CEO & Chief Nutritionist of the brand, Charity Lighten! To enter the giveaway, just rate & review the podcast on iTunes + email a screenshot to me. 🙂
In the ep we discuss gut health, microbiome, eating for cancer (Charity’s husband is battling stage 4 colon cancer), living a vibrant life despite tons of challenges, running a growing brand, probiotics obvi, and so much more.
And if you’re not into the whole giveaway thing, then you can also order from Silver Fern using the code BLONDE for 20% off all products in their site! They are my GO-TO probiotic brand and my current fave chocolate plant-based protein powder.
Anyway, onto the topic(s) of today’s post… a few updates! Mainly in the arenas of wedding planning and recovering from surgery… the two biggest things in my life right now. In a way? I feel like everything going on right now is pretty big, but these two are taking up most of my headspace.
Let’s start with wedding planning! Something fun and lighthearted. 🙂
Wedding Planning EEK !! //
You guys know I am VERY picky. I am also very indecisive. I am a hopeless romantic and even though I have had images of my future wedding in my mind for years, the fact that it is now time to actually plan it has my head spinning with ideas and thoughts.
The one thing J & I have always known is that we want our wedding to be about celebrating our love, and celebrating love in general. We want everyone to feel special. The vows are hands down my favorite part of any wedding. I plan on pouring out my heart and soul during our vows, and I cannot wait to see what Jonathan writes… and when I think of our wedding, that is the part that stands out as the most exciting and special to me. The rest is just icing on the cake.
Another thing we have known for a while is that we want to have someone who we know personally officiate our wedding, and we have a few ideas in mind. 🙂 Other than that, who we are surrounded with is the other most important part to us. Jonathan asked all of his groomsmen to be in our wedding before he even proposed (lol!!!) and I have not asked my bridesmaids yet but I know who they are (and they probably do too!!!) and I have asked my Maids of Honor to be a part of our special day… and I have decided to have multiple MOH’s. You know I am not traditional in any way. 🙂
We just want to include all of our loved ones and make everyone feel special and amazing. Oh and we know who our photog is too and that person is a longtime dear, dear friend and one of the FIRST EVER (okay actually the very first ever) photographer on TBB. You can try to figure out who it is hehe that will be a fun game. I will be announcing it at some point soon!
Then as far as LOCATION my head has been spinning. Jonathan is letting me very much take the reigns, but ultimately we will decide together when it comes time to choose THE place. For a while I was 100% thinking nearby, since we live in such a gorgeous location… So Cal. My initial thoughts were somewhere in Malibu (SoHo House Malibu if you would ever allow a wedding we would be there in a freakin heart beat… our engagement spot!!) or Ojai, which are both still very high on the list.
Then I started thinking destination rather than close by. I won’t say where, because I feel like if I do say where I will get so many opinions my head might legitimately fly off (and I think it already did fly off today just trying to make the decision between destination or not). Destinations definitely have their pros and cons. I love the idea of having something more intimate and just being surrounded by our closest of closest of people, but I also love the idea of not having to cut our list too, too short.
We have a lot of people in our lives who we love, so it would be hard to cut down!! And this particular destination I have in mind has very spotty weather which worries me. Or maybe I am just nervous to commit because that is a whole ballgame in itself. But of course something (I mean everything) tells me that when we find our perfect location it will just feel 10000% right.
Here’s the thing: I do not want this to be a stressful or overwhelming experience. I am a very low maintenance gal. I have the highest hopes & dreams for our wedding and I know it will be perfect for us wherever it lands. I am so lucky to have my mama and my epic MOH’s to help me make the decisions that may start to stress me out, not to mention the most chill fiancé in the world who will help make any and all decisions.
Lastly… my health is definitely one of my thoughts when it comes to planning. I would marry Jonathan tomorrow if I could. I just want to be mindful that my health is in a better place than it is now when we get married. Of course I cannot control that too far out, but I have a feeling if we wait a litttttle bit I will be feeling quite a bit better than I am currently.
We have gone back and forth about dates and that is something I will share once we have it set in stone!! EEEK!! Oh and we have our wedding hashtag all picked out and I CANNOT WAIT to share that!!
I can’t wait for all of it. I freakin love celebrating love. I am so madly obsessed with J and I cannot wait for him to be my husband. But I also want to enjoy the process and remember to slooooww down wherever possible. <3
SURGERY RECOVERY UPDATES !!
I am coming up on two weeks of recovery from my abdominal myomectomy. I am still sleeping about 11-12 hours a night, so my body is still recovering like CRAZY. I mean I cannot physically wake up before 9am even if I needed to for a massive emergency. My body is NEEDING the sleep, so I am embracing it.
Beyond the sleep… the other thing is just major amounts of brain fog. I haven’t had a whole lot of focus for the last few weeks. It’s kind of like my regular Lyme brain fog but amplified times 25. It has made it hard to get a lot done, but blogging every day has been nice. Just chatting with you guys. It has made me feel like I am somewhat staying on top of things which feels nice.
For the most part my pain has been getting better and better every day. The one day that was not the case was on Sunday. I woke up with the most excruciating pain in my lower back on the side… it kind of felt like kidney or liver pain, which concerned me that maybe I’d been taking too many pain pills or Ibuprofen! The pain was SEVERE, I couldn’t even stand for most of the day.
But other than that the pain has been easing up with every passing day, which makes me so happy. I have been going on long walks with my mom and with J, and I have worked up to about 3-4 miles a day which feels SO DAMN GOOD after being in bed for a solid week, barely even able to walk around the apartment!
I think the best thing about the surgery has of course been feeling so much lighter having that massive grapefruit out of my body, and there is no more pressure on my bladder or lower back. I used to get up multiple times a night to pee, and I haven’t had to do that even once since the surgery. That has been amazing.
The other nice thing has been creating really strong boundaries and sticking to them. I haven’t seen many people, and the people I have seen are my dearest friends who are here with me in the darkest days and the best days. In other words — my unconditional humans. The ones who will lay on the couch with me and bring me smoothies and expect nothing at all because they know I can’t even move. The ones who will go on a walk around the block with me when I really can’t move faster than a snail. As a recovering people pleaser, it has been nice to have zero obligations for the last two weeks.
Here are what the incisions are looking like right now. It amazes me how quickly they have been healing!
So those are the updates!! Thoughts?! Wedding thoughts / surgery thoughts? Be sure to enter that Silver Fern giveaway, so exciting !!! And use code BLONDE for a discount of course. <3 XX