Happy Fall Y’all 🧡🍂

Wow 2 years! I can’t believe it has been that long since I have made a post. On my way home from work today I was driving along and thinking “man I really miss writing on my blog,” so here I am coming at you with a post 2 years later...better late that never right! :) 

cute fall cup

Here I've linked a similar coffee cup for those crisp mornings for coffee or even hot chocolate! YUM!

I found this cute picture of Pinterest a few years ago when I was creating a vision dashboard for my fall planner & find it perfect for this post! :) 

This is one of my favorite times of the year and I was brainstorming some ideas of what I wanted to do to my front porch this year and I thought why not share it all with you! I love getting on Pinterest and looking at everyone’s cute pumpkins and mum’s and it gets me so inspired for my own little porch. 

This is our current porch mostly everything came from Amazon and Hobby Lobby. My two favorite stores! 

hello sign//welcome sign//buffalo check rug//hello door mat//farmhouse lantern

farmhouse pumpkin //orange pumpkins

farmhouse pumpkin 

farmhouse lantern//orange pumpkins

I still feel like our porch is missing a few things and I have been wanting to purchase some colorful mums to put on our porch for the fall season as well. I am just terrible with plants. Last year I totally forgot to water them and they died :( whoops! 

Let me know in the comments some of you alls ideas on what would make this front porch complete :) or even how you are decorating your porches for this fall season. Pictures are always welcome too! Can't wait to see what everyone is doing to get into the season. Sooner or later HALLOWEEN will be here as well and I am sure some of you are decorating for that as well. 

Life Update // WE HAD A BABY!

Omgsh you guys it's been FOREVER since I have posted on my blog. My last post was another life update back from July 2017. So much has changed since then as well. Jesus and I ended up going on our very first vacation together that year in November. We had so much fun in Panama City, but we did not expect the weather to be chilly. Next time we are definitely going further south. 

December of that year literally 5 days before Christmas and Jesus's birthday we found out we were going to be parents! Now I was scared shitless I will be completely honest and Jesus was in shock I believe. We just were not prepared for what was in store for us. We were living with his parents, so that news definitely gave us the push to move out on our own. 

House hunting was a complete nightmare you guys! I never want to go through that process again. Every house we loved we would talk to our realtor about seeing, and it would have a pending status. Some houses she would start to set up and they would switch to a pending status, so we could not go see them. It sucked. We eventually got so tired of the disappointment that we looked into building our dream home. 

Fast forward to May of 2018 we signed our contract with a builder to build our very first home. We were super excited about this new journey, and ready to be in our home since we had a baby on the way. At this point I was around 25 weeks pregnant and getting anxious about having things ready in time for the baby. 

Pregnancy was really a breeze. I had zero sickness and my energy levels were pretty high. I was able to work all the way up until I had our little one. Our little princess was born on August 11th, 2018 at 10:54am. Let me talk about labor for a second. HOLY SHIT! Thank goodness for the epidural. I was trying to convince myself to hold off and try to have her naturally without medication, but let's be honest for a minute I am a complete pansy. 

I believe though if they didn't have to induce my labor my contractions wouldn't have been as bad. They put this little medicine on a string up there on Thursday night and left it in for 12 hours to see if it would start to open and dilate my cervix. When they took it out and checked it literally did nothing. So the next step was for the doctor to go in and scrap my membranes. This step freaking hurt I could've slapped her. 

Seriously being induced into labor was horrible. It made everything I had ever dreamed about when giving childbirth, turn into a nightmare. Scraping my membranes sped up the dialation process and when I finally got to 4cm she broke my water. After this everything went downhill for me. My paint tolerance sucks! Ya'll I lasted a few hours and said give me that epidural! 

Fast forward to Friday night...and ladies and gents I didn't have our baby until SATURDAY MORNING! So when I say this labor was exhausting I mean it. Holy SHIT. My contractions were getting stronger and the medicine was flowing into my veins. At a certain point I don't remember much just from what my boyfriend or parents would tell me. And can I say the one thing I will never take for granted is having them all in the birthing room with me. Since COVID started I feel for all you lovely mommas. COVID has ruined many great memories and experiences for us all. 

Back to the story...it's now Saturday morning at 10:54am and we finally welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world. She is really our greatest blessing in this crazy thing we call life. She couldn't of been more perfect. I still remember to this day seeing that beautiful face full of dark hair like her daddy and tan complexion. It's crazy to think this current day that I am writing this she is 3 years old! Time really does fly by.

I hope you all enjoyed reading this mess of a story and made it to the end with me. I'm starting to get back into writing so bare with me if it's a little rough. I hope to be back writing with you all a couple times a week and bring some fun content to the blog again :) 

Life Update // July Edition

Hello loves! Happy Monday and welcome to the blog. It's been a great year and I have so much to update you all on. My man and I have had lots of adventures together this year and we are planning our very first vacation together. We could not be more excited!! I can't wait to share it with you all on the blog. 

As of lately back in March we added two fur babies to our little family. They have been the best addition to our lives. 

Meet our babies Max and Toby

Max 

Toby

The boys are huge now compared to what they were when we first got them. It's crazy to think that in a few more months they both will be 1! 😭 Excuse me while I go cry my eyes out. I don't know how I'm going to handle having actual children 😬. 

Other than the our newest additions to our family we've had lots of celebrations around here as well. I turned the big 2️⃣5️⃣ back in June which was depressing. Just another year older. 

The best thing thought was going out to dinner with my family. They spoiled me to a nice meal. 

Love my parents ❤️

& my grandma she is the cutest lady.

 

Another celebration we had was our nephews first birthday and baptism. 

He is the cutest little dude. Can't believe he is already a year old! 

The party was a success with lots of food and piñatas 🎉. 

Lastly we've had some fun in the sun by going to our state park. We enjoy being outside doing active activities such as hiking and swimming. Swimming especially since it's been flipping hot as hell year. 

I just love this man❤️. Just this past weekend I had my wisdom teeth removed and he has been the best caregiver I could have ever asked for. He's brought me lots of food that I can eat and made sure I'm not in pain. We've binged watched our favorite shows and cuddled up on the couch. The best ways to spend the weekend in my book. 

I know this post was a little boring I'm out of my groove. I haven't been writing lately which is something I hope to get back to very soon. 

If this is your first time here on the blog welcome! I hope you enjoyed this post and subscribe to Simply Pure and Beautiful for alerts when we have posted new content. 

Also check out our Facebook page @simplypureandbeautiful where we like to post daily inspiration and motivation. 

Also follow our instagram page as well @simplypure_and_beautiful. 

XOXO 😘 

Shelby 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy New Year!

Holy cow 2017 came so fast! I can't believe it's already January 7th! It doesn't seem possible. Feels like just yesterday it was Christmas and we were enjoying the holidays and our days off from work. I definitely enjoyed my 4 days off from work relaxing with my love and spending quality time with my family. 

This year is all about balance for me. I know we all come up with New Years resolutions but this year my goal is to just focus on being present in the moment. I've noticed our generation is so wrapped up in social media and technology that we are missing out on life. At least I know I have been. Not spending time focused on my friends or family when we are gathered around but yet my face is buried into my phone scrolling through facebook or instagram. 

So this year my resolution is to find balance in life and be present. Finding balance is huge for me also because I for the past 4 years have been so focused on health and fitness that it's been an obsession to where I was restricting myself from enjoying life. 

Cheers to the New Year & I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. 

Xoxo, 

Shelby 

Let's Get Spiritual!

Hi loves! I know I've been absent from blogging for a few weeks and I just wanted to fill you all in on what's been going on in my life lately! First off I just want to say thank you too all my readers who keep coming back and reading, because without all of you there would be no Simply Pure and Beautiful. As I have taken some time off from blogging I have begun to dig deeper into my spiritual side and I have been doing some soul searching. This is something that is very new to me and actually quite outside of my comfort zone, because I really dislike change in my life. 

So to bring you up to speed, this past Thursday I left my job of 6 years. This was a very huge decision, but in my heart I feel I am making the right move in my life. I have prayed a lot about this decision and I feel that it was my time to leave and switch companies. With that being said I am super anxious and nervous for what is to come at my new place of employment. The job I left was my very first job so it just felt like home and definitely was routine in my daily life. I am super excited though behind all the nerves and anxiety for a little change up in my life. I know I am being guided in the right direction, so this is why I am much more excited about the change. I'm ready to learn more about my work ethic and what skills I can develop as well. 

Throughout my time soul searching and figuring out what is the best for me and my boyfriend, I got in touch with my spiritual side. This has really helped me find peace and clarity throughout all the tough decisions I had to make, and I can say I wish I would have started earlier. I've learned that in these times we need our mind/body/soul to be working in sync. I have this lovely feature on my apple watch that allows me to mediate throughout the day. It's just simple breathing exercises to help bring a sense of calmness throughout the body. I love it and I use it at least 5 times a day. 

Meditation doesn't have to be very long as long as you can quite your mind for a few minutes of the day. Calming your mind is probably one of the hardest things to do, but it is vital for letting your instinct come through. One way I love to mediate is right before bed. Laying flat on your back and just focusing on the calmness of your breathe. Feeling the air move into your lungs and out through your mouth is one of the most relaxing feelings for me. Another way to bring a sense of calmness throughout the body and get in touch with your soul is through yoga. I've mentioned this in other blogs before that I just started up yoga a few months ago. This has really opened my eyes to being in touch with our bodies. 

As I am still learning more about my spiritual side I would love to encourage you all to join me on this journey. It has been nothing but rewarding and I feel as if I'm a new woman through it all. The toxic thoughts and emotions are slowly fading and I am seeing a brighter future for myself because I am not only working on me, but I am asking Him for answers and clarity. 

I hope you all enjoyed todays post. I just wanted to catch you all up to speed on my life lately and I hope to be back in the blogging game really soon. I am not sure yet what hours of the day I will be working with my new job, so I hope I get my blogs up on time for you all to enjoy them :) 

God bless you all! 

Xoxo,

Shelby

Relationship Advice & Weekend Fun!

Hi loves and welcome back to Simply Pure and Beautiful. Today's blog is all about the exciting weekend we had over here and maybe a little bit of relationship advice as well. I love WEEKENDS because I get to relax and enjoy time with my family, which is something that is very important to me. Spending that quality time together is what grows our relationships with one another and we learn how everyone's week went.

 This weekend was no different than any other weekend we usually have around here. My man worked all weekend so I spent the majority of my hours watching chickflicks on netflix while laundry was in the washer and dryer. I also spent some time planning in my happy planner which I have not posted about in awhile, so for that I'm so sorry. If you all do love those kinds of posts please let me know in the comments so I can bring them back for you! 

 Jesus works odd 2nd shift hours so he usually gets home late in the morning and loves to sleep until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. This has been hard to adjust to for the last 4 months, but we are making it. If anyone of my readers is reading this post and has any advice for couples who work opposite shifts, I would love to know your secrets of how to keep emotions in check. As a woman I find it harder to deal with than he does, because my emotions get in my head and make me feel a little lonely at times. I am by no means unhappy I just require a lot of attention. What girl doesn't? Sooo...

On Sunday we got to have date night, which is something we haven't be able to do for a while now as I've pretty much laid out for you above. Haha. We had a double date with some of his friends from work. I forgot to get some pictures but the place was very delicious. I highly would recommend it to anyone, especially if you like Authentic Mexican cuisine. 

This restaurant is location on 38th street in Indianapolis, Indiana. If you're ever in the area go check it out! They serve a lot of seafood. 

This massive bowl is what he ended up ordering and I got the buttery shrimp platter, which came with rice, salad, and bread. It was all really delicious. His food came with an assortment of seafood and I got to try a few new things out of that bowl. One of them being octopus, yes I said it, I have never in a million years imagined I would try it, but it was actually really good!  After we ate we made a trip to the grocery store where his friends got a few things they needed and then we all made a trip back home. I'm pretty sure we made it in bed by 8:30. We are old farts I tell ya! Driving home at 6:30 it was already dark and it felt like it could have been 11pm. I sure am not a fan of it getting dark this early. 

Well that is pretty much my weekend in sum. It gets pretty boring around here at times, but we do try to go out every once in awhile and do something to spice up life. What do you all love to go out and do on your weekends off? 

Let us know down below in the comments. Maybe we can all inspire one another and give each other ideas that we might not of thought on our own. 

Hope you all have a wonderful week! I promise to have more posts to come this week so be on the lookout! 

Xoxo,

Shelby

Plan With Me Sunday // WEEKEND RECAP

Happy Sunday loves and HELLO FALL! I want to first apologize for not posting last week. I took some time to myself and just brainstormed some ideas for upcoming blog posts and enjoyed time with my friends and family. There are weeks where I am not pleased with the content I've created or feel like there is more I can share with you all and last week was one of them. So I decided to take a week off and regroup myself. I hope you all will enjoy what is about to be brought to the blog for weeks to come! I know I am super excited so I hope you will be there with me along the way! 

Okay so let's just talk about the amazing weather we had hear in Indiana this past weekend. Saturday was beautiful and I am pretty sure I am not the only one who thought so. My family and I took a shopping trip and the stores were packed! Everyone was out and about shopping and enjoying the nice weather just like we were. It was even nice enough to dress like FALL! Oh yes, I broke out my boots, skinny jeans and a cute leather jacket. 

I love this time of the year because I personally think it's the best season for fashion. You can put on a cute sweater and not sweat your ass off 10 minutes later, unless you are booking it to a 11 am lecture on campus. I've had many of those days. You end up stripping off three layers to just put back on two.  You know you have done that! 

Gosh do I not miss those days. 

I did pick up some cute to-do lists at TJMaxx because if you know anything about me by now you know I love me some to-do lists. The best part about them is the huge magnetic attached to the back so I can throw them on the refrigerator and glance at them daily.

We also made a stop at Gordmans where I happened to find myself buying a coffee mug and a rug. WTF Shelby! I almost put both of them back but then said screw it we are checking out and I'm buying them. The rug is going to be for my bathroom next year when I purchase my first home. I've slowly been buying things here and there so I'm not overwhelmed all at once. I am though saving the big purchases like furniture and some appliances for me and my babe to make together. :) He loves checking out furniture just as much as I do so we love being able to dream together. haha. 

That pretty much sums up how my Saturday went. The morning was super busy with getting in a workout, scheduling a nail appointment and then coming home to get ready, but other than that the evening was perfect.

Today I just plan on taking a rest day. Catching up on some sleep, grocery shopping, and getting my meal prep done for the week so I can start up the 31 Day Challenge with the Tone It Up girls. I was going to be starting it last week, but I was not prepared at all and ended up eating whatever I pleased. 

This week though we are getting back into the game and going strong. I've got my grocery list all made out, my Happy Planner planned out, my workout clothes laid out for the week, and a clearer mind to tackle this week ahead. I've learned from past experience that it is really easy to become overwhelmed if you try to plan to far out in advance, so it's best to just take one week at a time. That is what I will be doing for the remainder of the challenge. I hope to become better at taking care of myself both mentally and physically. 

Workout Wednesday // The Ultimate Burn

Woohoo it's finally Wednesday! This week has been going so slow but it is officially half way over. Today I am bringing you a workout from the girls over at Tone It Up! I love doing their workout routines so I thought I'd share one I got today from their website. This is a Ultimate Ab Burn routine that came strictly from the girls at Tone It Up. 

https://www.toneitup.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/mobile-ultimate-total-ab-burn-tone-it-up.jpg

Hope you all like this exercise I am about to do it myself right now too! I love fast routines for when you are on a time crunch so if you are anything like me you'll love some of their workouts. Check them out! I'm participating in their 31 Day Challenge starting up this Saturday October 1st and would love to have some accountability partners 💕 

Feel free to comment down below if you wanna join me for this challenge :) 

Can't wait to hear from you. 

Xoxo 

Shelby 
 

 

Organization of Planner Products

Happy Monday! I hope everyone is having a wonderful day. Monday's can really set the tone of the week so I want to start this week off on a positive note and bring a little organization post to the blog today. It has been a while since I've blogged about organization so I figured hey why.

Today's post is going to give you a glimpse of how I keep all my planner products organized and how it keeps me sane. I have a ton of different products so staying organized is important. One so I know where things are and two so it makes using my happy planner products easier and quicker to find. 

A few of the products I keep organized are all my washi tape, stickers, planners, and pens and highlighters

My washi tape I keep in this storage container. At first I only had a few rolls but over time is has grown quite a bit, so I needed something to keep them all together. 

My stickers I created a sticker book so that they are easy to find when I am planning out my weeks on Sundays. I saw someone using one of these when they were doing a plan with me on Youtube, and I thought this idea was genius so I decided to make my own as well! 

Here are some short steps on how you can make your own sticker book as well. 

#1: You'll need some expander rings and either your own covers or I just used the dashboards from MAMBI. These worked great because they are hard plastic and sturdy. 

#2: I used old planner pages and cut them down to size of the sticker sheets. If you are someone who likes to save their planners to look back on then you can get regular paper and whole punch them with a MAMBI punch to fit in the dashboards. 

#3: Take the stickers out of the packages and organize them how you prefer. I organized most of my stickers by functionality. I have all my fitness stickers together, chores, etc. 

#4: Here you will glue down your sticker sheets to either the planner paper or regular paper with a glue stick. 

#5: Here you will start inserting your stickers into the expander rings and then continue steps 2-5 until you have your finished sticker book.

I love my sticker book it makes going threw my stickers so much easier than flipping threw each individual sticker set. 

I also keep all my planners together in one place so I don't have to search my room for which one I want to use. I am currently only using two of my planners. One fitness planner and one regular planner that you see on Sundays. 

That is all of my products so far I only have a few pens and highlighters I use which I keep in the bottom drawer with my washi tape. Everything is pretty much all in one place, which works great for me. I like to spread out all my products on my bed on Sundays and plan out my weeks right here. Then when I am done I can return it all to its correct place. 

Hope some of these ideas help you stay organized. I am sure there are other planner fanatics out there who have way more products and cuter organized spaces. I would love to see some of them, so if you have a blog or picture feel free to share with us down below in the comments. 

Hope you all have a wonderful week! 

Xoxo, 

Shelby

Plan With Me // Week #38

Happy Sunday! Welcome to another Plan with Me on this fabulous Sunday. I hope everyone is having a relaxing weekend where you were able to take a minute or two and just relax with your family and friends. Around here it gets pretty crazy with working on the weekends and trying to get everything caught up between laundry, grocery shopping, and meal prepping. Not to mention trying to keep things organized. That is why I love using my Happy Planner and making out a schedule for myself each week. I am much more organized with how I should be spending my time and when I can take a moment for myself and just hang out for a bit. 

I love Sundays because I tend to use them as relaxing days only. There are some times when I will wake up early enough to squeeze in a quick morning workout, but most of the time I use it as a rest day. Sundays as I have mentioned before are days where I do all my planning for the next week. I get out my planner and fill out the week so I am ready to hit the ground running. This time is "me time". It tends to take me about 30 minutes to decorate my spread how I want it to look then I will gradually fill in things here and there as the week goes on. I fill in all the important stuff on Sundays, but then jot stuff down later. 

This weeks spread is more calm and has a taste of fall to it! I am getting more excited about the seasons changing, if only the weather would just catch up. It has been in the 90s this week here in Indiana and it is just crazy how stinking hot it is staying. I am ready for sweatshirts and jeans people! 

So with all of that being said let's take a look at what my planner looks like....

My washi tapes is from Me and My Big Ideas they came from the Fresh Floral set and Brights set. 

The animal stickers came from a set I had found at Wal-Mart I believe I purchased them for under $1. 

The heart checklists, the boxes backgrounds, the "lazy day", "coffee first", and the "put your heart into it" stickers came from the color-coordinated sticker book from Me and My Big Ideas.

The "hello fall" and leaves stickers came from the seasonal value pack sticker book from Me and My Big Ideas as well. 

That is a list of all the products I used for this weekly spread. I tried to keep things pretty simple this week and I went with this color scheme to shift more into the seasonal change as well. Summer is officially over, now let's just hope the weather catches up. 

Hope you all enjoyed today's post. 

Have a wonderful week! 

Xoxo,

Shelby