In life, you learn there are things you're good at and things you aren't good at. Turns out, for me, blogging is something that I'm not good at. It's now July of 2017 and I haven't posted a blog post in over a year. Can you believe that? I'm sure you can. LULZ It's really not that hard to believe.
I'm really not sure why I stopped writing posts. Perhaps I had nothing to say, perhaps I got lazy, perhaps I just had too much going on, perhaps I thought there were bigger issues going on in the world and my nonsense ramblings about recipes, home projects, or haircuts were silly to even think of. Over the past year (and a month) I have started writing posts and there were a few drafts hanging out there, but I just never went back to finish them.
That brings us to today. Here I am! Still trucking along. You may have noticed (or maybe not) that I haven't really posted anything new in the shop or been very active on my (shop) social media pages. I also didn't meet my last yearly goal of 500 sales - most likely a direct result of not creating anything new or putting myself out there. You know what? I'm okay with that. As an artist / person sometimes the well runs dry and you just are not inspired. Life is a constant balancing act and sometimes things are put on the back burner, even if you care a great deal about them.
You know what though? Eventually things work themselves out and you get back on track, at least if you put in the effort. I'm not sure what happened, but I was suddenly just hit by a wave of inspiration. You'd think I was off doing something like.. visiting a museum or... reconnecting with an old friend or.... finishing a really great, important book.... but actually what I was doing was looking at recipes on Pinterest. In case you are wondering, both of these look bomb and I'm trying to decide which one I'm going to make this weekend:
Fiesta Ranch Chicken Bowl
Cuban Chicken & Black Bean Rice Bowl
(yes the comment inquiring about the mango salsa and fried plantain recipe is from me. Girlfran is dedicated.)
(A lot has changed since we last spoke. A big thing now is to make "bowls." Basically you just take a meal where everything used to be mixed together and now you separate it into each item and photograph it and then Instagram it - last step is very important and yes I'm guilty of doing it. As Sam says, "bowls are the IKEA of food dishes. You just give them the pieces and they have to assemble it.")
OH. And also Sam and I just went on a week long trip to Colorado. It was magical. We went to Boulder, the Rocky Mountain National Park (it was breathtaking - literally), the Stanley Hotel (spooky stuff), Fort Collins (drank many craft beers), Denver (cool, but I'm not much of a city person), Red Rocks (bucket list item was to see a concert here - CHECK!), and finished the trip in Manitou Springs (Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods). It was a wonderful trip and could also be the cause of my inspiration - no, you're right it's definitely the chicken bowls. However! I'm very very excited to have (almost) no plans for the rest of the summer. Running around all the time is cool and fun and makes you feel important, but it's exhausting and expensive. I'm looking forward to having more down time at home and banging out some new designs (I actually have some ideas, guys and gals! It's a beautiful thing.)
So, stay tuned. I'm going to try to get back into blogging because, hey - it's fun talking at ya!
Talk soon. <3
-- Alison --
