Happy New Year! And welcome to Week 1 of #MySweetandSticky story. There are 52 Weeks in a year, and I’ve got a theme for all of them.
Intro Week Post 1
This week is all about taking a step back and introducing myself or reintroducing myself if you’ve been here for a while. For which I am grateful.
After taking a bit of a break for the last few years I wasn’t sure what to do with my Instagram account… So now I think we’ve got a plan for this year: Each week I’m going to tell you a story in 7 posts, one per day, at 9 am each day this week. Each Week has a theme that works you through my whole blog. It’s basically my Email Series in Gram form. It worked well to start last year, so we’re trying it again.
I hope you stick around and discover something sweet. Until tomorrow…
Intro Week Post 2
Once Upon a Time… I used to plan weddings. I did 36 of them a year in fact, right up until this little guy came along. As soon as Cash was born I began the process of liquidating my two company buildings for Green-Eyed Girl Productions- The Planning Office and the GEG Events Rental Company. He was born in July, and by 12/31/13 both buildings were empty and I had transitioned into working from home. By the next year, I had started my second blog, and Wyatt was well on the way. I still coordinated weddings in person for another 3 years and met with brides the hard way, by driving all over town. But that would soon change.
Intro Week Post 3
Cash was my best little assistant inside the tiny little at-home office of our first home. We all outgrew that quaint house quickly. In fact for the entire year of 2014, while I was pregnant with Wyatt, Billy had “moved” to Salem. So Cash and I were just home all day, waiting on Wyatt and writing blogs. (I also got to spend a lot of time with my niece.) Billy was hired on with the State of Oregon and had to be a certain distance from the shops. He *moved* up north to begin looking for real estate while living in a 5th Wheel Trailer. Eventually, he found our Camp Kelso…
Intro Week Post 4
Wyatt was born on Friday, we came home Monday, listed our house for sale on Tuesday, and sold it on Thursday. Wyatt and I took our first road trip up to Stayton at 1 week old to tour this little diamond in the (quite a bit of) rough. I was immediately sold on the wrap-around porch and the inevitable #ACKLporchview we would have. We moved into Camp Kelso on Wyatt’s 1 month birthday and I said goodbye forever to all my Eugene Wedding connections, finalizing my transition into a full-time blogger.
Intro Week Post 5
Enter A Cotton Kandi Life and #MySweetandSticky story of motherhood. Now in Stayton, out of the wedding world, I turned my efforts to Mom Blogging. I returned to my roots as an educator (formerly kinder and SpEd before wedding planning) and launched a Mom School blog. This blog began as a way to reach out and connect with other moms so I wouldn’t feel so isolated in a new town with nobody I knew. In 2016 I joined Facebook, and Instagram to share my first post about How to Pack your Hospital Bag…
Intro Week Post 6
Well, that blog post went viral, and so did many of the following posts. Before I knew it I was blogging about Mom School and sharing lesson plans on Instagram daily. I became an affiliate for Dollar Tree which is where I found most of my materials for simple lessons like this one… #MySweetandSticky story took off on Pinterest too, and eventually surpassed my Wedding Planning Blog, bumping it up to Priority 1 on the Work from Home schedule.
Intro Week Post 7
The rest is sort of history… I am fully a full-time writer now, which gives me weekend freedom from the wedding industry. I actually can’t imagine spending 36 weekends a year at a wedding anymore. Not to mention the coordination behind each one all year long. I write as much as I can while coordinating the busy schedules of #MySweetandSticky, who are very, VERY busy. Last year I won my 5th and final writing award before announcing my “retirement” from the wedding industry in June so that I could dedicate more time to the boys’ school. This is my first year solely focusing on this blog (as well as my two Etsy Shops) and I built an aggressive schedule for myself (so that “retirement” word means nothing) I want to transition this blog into traveling with kids as they’re now so much older than when I started writing over here. I will still offer the occasional post for managing behaviors, which is my actual background, I have a Master’s in Behavior Management; and Psychology. It pertained to the bride world quite nicely. 😉 Next Week I’m calling Camp Kelso Week, where I’ll tell my #7PostStoryACKL on how we made this abandoned property a home. Stay tuned for tomorrow 😉
Blog Posts for this week:
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