We are heading to the desert over the Christmas holiday again and I am stoked for a new adventure. Whenever I plan a vacation, no matter where or how long, I get pretty detailed about the itinerary. I like to squeeze every ounce of fun-juice I can out of every location I visit. A true planner in all areas of my life, I can get a bit obsessive about the details. Anyone who travels with me should just buckle up and follow because I have no doubt planned some interesting, beautiful and most likely weird things to see. I scour things like Atlas Obscura and other such lists that get you a little deeper into any location than just the top 10 basic things to do in any given place. I’m pretty excited for what we will see on this upcoming desert trip. We are starting in Vegas and then heading to the magnificent national parks is southern Utah. I can’t really share too much about all the things we are planning to see without giving away the opulent visual results I will share later. What I can share is what the trip represents to me.
At this time of year I suppose it’s normal to reflect on what has transpired over the past months. I love looking at last year’s desert trip blog posts and imagery and seeing how much I’ve grown in just one year. It was almost exactly one year ago, as i was planning details for our holiday 2016 desert trip to Arizona, that I started this blog and my new Instagram persona. The planning for our trip and covering the various things we saw and what I wore were some of my first blog posts. Starting a blog was something I had always wanted to do however at the time I found many excuses to not start it. Around the time i started i was really needing an additional creative outlet but on top of the very busy full time job I already had, I was a new mom with a 7 month old baby girl and a body that had not bounced back as fast as I hoped. Not really the most optimal time to start a new venture showcasing your life and body. I was discouraged, sleep deprived and overwhelmed….but I knew I had something to say and could create a platform for myself to share what I love and promote the things I believed in. So I jumped in! No classes, no mentor, no model…all I had was my love of art and fashion, my quirky persona and my overflowing creativity.
A year later I would still in no way call myself an expert in this and in no way some smashing success yet. While my Instagram following is just now growing at a rate I like, and I feel like I’m finally packaging my “brand” in a way that is the true my real self, I still have a lot to learn. What I do feel like I’m almost an expert at is knowing and loving myself! Writing about what I do and about love has given me some fantastic new self knowledge and a self love I was only faking before. And although my body finally has bounced back to my fighting form, the fact that is was confident able to showcase my life for a year throughout my whole body transformation and feel good about myself was invaluable to my self confidence. I hope I can inspire someone else to jump feet first into something they aspire to. I can’t wait to go deeper into this world and have more fun doing it in 2018!
~SG
A Colorful Art Fashion Blog 