As much as I love Valentine’s Day, I haven’t really done anything festive for it since I was a kid and my aunt threw parties dripping in pink, white, and red décor, chocolate candy, and homemade “lovebugs.”
I don’t mind though, I’m still very much in a hermit-y time of my life — I’m happy on my own, and don’t feel like sharing my time with many other people.
But there is one thing that I do enjoy doing for this fleeting February 14th holiday.
And that’s make a pink cake.
Typically I do a themed photoshoot for Valentine’s Day; like for Valentine’s Day 2023 (my bangs era), when I had a gorgeous vanilla/strawberry cake as my prop (shoutout to beet juice for dying the frosting pink).
Or Valentine’s Day 2024, when I went 100% in by cutting out paper hearts and sticking them to my wall, and gluing red confetti onto my cheeks (I did panic for a split second when I took the confetti off and saw that the glue had made them bleed heart-shaped red spots onto my face, but thankfully it washed off…although not before it seeped into my bloodstream and poisoned me, I’m quite certain).
This year I just wasn’t ✨inspired✨ to do a photoshoot, but I was inspired to do a little something different. I celebrated an entire Valentine’s Day Week™ on my YouTube Shorts page by posting a [mostly thrifted] Valentine’s Day outfit every day of the week.
Here are the looks, and the links to each video!
Like I previously mentioned when I painted some donation pieces for Barn Sanctuary’s auction: I love donating art. If I could make a living off simply donating art, I would. The pressure of getting every detail of someone’s beloved pet is off, and I just get to loosen up and enjoy the work.
I chose to paint Colin the cow, and Kellen the goat for Woodstock Sanctuary’s Harvest Picnic Gala, and I couldn’t have been happier with the outcome ❤
click the photos to enlarge them
In the last week of May Mom, Riley Mae, and I planted our gardens — one of my favorite times of the year.
Sure, my family and I always tend to lose some interest in the gardens during the hottest dog days of summer, and then we kinda just let them go to do their thing (we’re always surprised to go out to harvest the winter squashes and discover just how many were hidden in the leaves!).
But springtime? We love getting everything all cleaned up, going out every morning to water, and seeing the baby plants grow!
irises (left), and bleeding hearts (right) blooming
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Back in 2017 I took to Instagram to try and rustle up a following and audience to launch one of mine and my family’s grand ideas.
Spoiler alert: the idea was a joint-effort blog and business called Follow Us Home, which we successfully sustained for a couple years, before eventually shutting it down. I shared DIY tutorials; my mom shared vegan recipes, and all-natural cleaning products; my younger sister promoted sustainable, ecofriendly, and fair-trade clothing companies; and my older sister highlighted important charities that we supported. It was a wonderful, and exhausting, dream.
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art by jordan rae 