Searching for a new job

Hey Guys!

So since moving to North Dakota, I had to give up my old job that I had working for our local County back home because they would not let me go remote unfortunately and it was also just becoming a toxic work environment for me and I needed to say goodbye anyways. But it has been about 3 months now and I still haven't really gotten many hits. I haven't had a single interview either. I have had a couple companies reach out to schedule one and after reviewing the job posting, the company on Glassdoor or just emailing with person who reached out to me I didn't end up taking the interview for various reasons.

Planning our Wedding

Hey guys!

So I wanted to talk a little bit about our wedding planning experience so far! I will definitely be doing a lot more posts on this topic now that we have a venue and a date picked but I wanted to talk about everything that happened up until we got to that point. 

That Time I Grew Out My Hair

Hey guys!

So this is mostly a post for me to look back on someday so I don't make the same mistake again haha. I'm just kidding! I thought it would be fun to put together a slow transition of me growing out my hair to finally see it's natural color. To start off, I have been dying my hair since I was in 6th or 7th grade! I really wanted to try dying my hair a different shade of blonde and since my mom had been coloring her hair for many years, she was totally okay with it. We tried a box dye at home and it did not go well! My hair turned like an orange/gold color and it was awful! I don't really remember too much about the experience except I got really upset and I think I had to go to school with my hair being an awful color for like a week before my mom could take me to the salon to get it fixed. But talk about instant regret! 

Getting A New Job - Prior to Moving

 Hey guys!

I'm not entirely sure why I wanted to write this post since it's kind of irrelevant now that I am no longer working in that position but I like keeping you guys informed about my life a little! So probably like this time last year, I was approached by my boss that there could be a new opportunity for me in a different department. The County hadn't fully made up their minds if the position was needed but they wanted to test me out and see if I could be of extra help. The new role would be in the department that I had wanted to work in for probably like a year or more at least but at the time there were only two spots in this department. One of the spots was going to be empty soon because someone was retiring and I was hoping that I would be getting that position but they ended up approaching someone else about it and not even offering it to anyone else. At the time I thought this was extremely unfair but then again when my turn came I thought it was totally fair and I was super happy that I was the only one being suggested for the position.

Update on 30 Things to do before I Turn 30

Hey Guys!

So I have a little less than a year and a half left in my 20's which is beyond crazy to think about. I am definitely nowhere near ready to turn 30. I still feel like I'm 22 most of the time. Honestly, this whole aging experience is kind of weird. I guess if I had settled down much sooner than I might feel differently but I am so happy that I did not settle down. I am so happy that I can still go to Disney or Universal at 28 and not have to worry about bringing a stroller with me, I honestly feel like that life is for your 30's lol. I never wanted to settle down early. Growing up I always had a rule that I would not get married until I was at least 25 and I think that a lot of this had to do with my parents getting divorced from their first marriages and not remarrying until they were in their 30's as well as my love for travel and independence. 

Getting Engaged

Hey Guys!

So if you've read some of my other posts I'm sure you've figured out by now that I am engaged! Yay! My fiancé proposed to me on November 4th, 2021! At the time we had been together for 4 years at the time that I am writing this we're coming up on being together for 5 years! We've been engaged for 7 months now and yes we are currently planning our wedding! By the time we get married we will have been engaged for a little less than a year and a half. We actually just started planning the wedding in April. It took us a little bit to find a venue. We had one that we both really liked but they some very interesting rules that we didn't really agree with. We were going to get married at this cottage on the property of a resort and they had this requirement that you had to rent out all 13 guest rooms inside the cottage and you could rent them out to your guests and the rates of the guest rooms were like $600. They said you get a discount but even with a 20% discount we felt we could not ask the members of our wedding party to pay those kind of prices for rooms that might not even hold their whole family. 

Working on my Master's

Hey Guys!

I just wanted to discuss getting my Master's with you all a little bit. Currently I am enrolled at Western Governor's University or WGU. It is a fully online program and they offer Bachelor's Degrees as well as Master's degrees. I currently have two Bachelor's Degrees; one in Business Management and the other one in Marketing. To be honest, I never really pursued a career in either of those fields. I didn't work at all when I was high school or college and I definitely think it set me back a lot. I really struggled with finding a job once I graduated and the best I could find was working part time retail for a couple of years after graduating to gain at least some working experience. Even though I had the education, I didn't have the experience and I have learned that employers care way more about experience than they do education. 

My Covid Experience

Hey guys!

I wanted to share a little bit about my experience with Covid. I did eventually end up catching Covid at the end of 2021. I was absolutely devastated. I had a two week long trip planned to finally visit my fiancé's hometown in Massachusetts as well as spend Christmas and New Years with his family. This would have been my second Christmas away from my family which is another reason why long distance relationships are really hard. You want to be with your significant other but you also don't want to miss out on those memories with your loved ones. Unfortunately I ended up getting Covid from a coworker like 3 days before I was supposed to leave for my trip. 

I was supposed to fly out on the Wednesday before Christmas after I got off from work that day but I ended up showing symptoms on the Monday evening before. However, I actually got infected/exposed on the Friday before at work. My coworker had just come back from a vacation to Nashville and she came back with a minor cold (or so she thought) along with a few of the other girls on the trip as well. She worked from home for a couple of days after she got back and she also took a couple Covid tests and they kept coming back saying she was negative so she thought it was safe to return back to work. I pretty much avoided her all week as much as I possibly could but finally on the Friday we decided to take a walk together to Starbucks and pick up a Christmas gift for our boss and I am 100% sure that's where I was infected. My coworker ended up getting worse throughout the day and actually left at lunch and worked the rest of the day from home.

I then went the whole weekend acting as everything was fine because I had no idea. I went out with my family on Friday night, then my sister and I went to our friends wedding on Saturday night, and then we spent some time with extended family doing Christmas activities since I wouldn't be spending Christmas with my family. On Sunday night my boss texted me that we were going to be working remotely that week due to the fact that my coworker had tested positive on Friday night and right then and there I knew I was going to get Covid. I was trying so hard to stay positive because I didn't want to miss my trip. It's the trip my fiancé and I had been looking forward to for so many years. I had plan the next day to go get my nails done for the trip with my fiancé's sister on Monday evening and I warned her about everything and just told her that we could wear masks the entire time we're together and roll down the windows in the car or we didn't have to go at all if she didn't feel comfortable. 

We ended up going to get our nails done and as soon as I got home, it hit me like a ton of bricks and I knew I was sick. I had a stuff nose and I felt extremely tired. I could definitely tell my body was fighting something. I told my sister and we kind of avoided each other but at the same time we both knew we would be catching it. I went straight to my room to FaceTime my fiancé and tell him how I was feeling and he was trying to tell me it was all in my head and that I needed to focus on the trip and just stay positive. I tried really hard not to think about it but it was definitely happening. I actually couldn't sleep at all on Monday night and I ended up feeling even worse on Tuesday morning. We didn't have any at home Covid tests in the house so my sister went out and picked some up. I ended up calling out sick on the Tuesday and I had already had a pre-scheduled sick day for the Wednesday because I was going to go and get a covid test somewhere before my flight that evening but this was before I found out I was positive. I ended up testing at home on Tuesday morning and it came back positive and I broke down crying. I was absolutely devastated that I had to miss my trip. I had to tell my family and my fiancé and he told his family that I wouldn't be coming. 

After the initial shock set in, I started doing as much research as possible. I started taking every vitamin that they recommend and my sister and I called our mom who was actually a Covid nurse but normally she is an infectious disease nurse anyways. She recommended all of the vitamins to us and other things that they do in the hospital because I wanted to overcome this as quickly as possible because I still had somewhat of a chance to be able to visit my fiancé and his family. I started doing the math and cancelling my flights. I looked at my vacation days at work and the time we automatically get off for the holidays. In total by the end of the holidays I ended up having 11 work days off and a grand total of 15 days off. By the time I went back to work, it felt like I had been gone forever. I honestly had to relearn some parts of my job because I had only been in the job for about 3 ish months. I also came back with Covid brain which was very interesting and annoying. I honestly would forget a lot of things and it would be random. I would also forget how to do random normal life things as well. It was a very weird thing to experience. 

Overall, my experience with Covid wasn't really that bad. Thankfully my sister and I had the one that came right after Delta, Omicron and we are so grateful that's the one we had. It was much more mild than Delta and I don't know if I would have survived if I had Delta because I don't really have the best of lungs. But my sister was pretty much a day behind me the whole time. I tested positive on Tuesday and she tested positive on Wednesday. We ended up driving to a local testing site to get a PCR and a rapid test done just to be sure. Ironically, all of my rapid tests came back positive and my PCR test came back negative. 

I ended up having to miss the first half of the trip but thankfully I was still able to make it out there for New Years. I still got to see his home town and hangout with some of his family and meet some family members that I knew all about but had never met them. Overall, I wouldn't say that my Christmas was ruined because I got to spend a lot of time just hanging out with my sister and catching up. We watched a lot of movie and TV shows and just hung out in the living room a lot. I FaceTimed with my fiancé some and went back to counting down the days until I could be up there. I spent a lot time resting because honestly Covid is exhausting. I didn't even have it that bad but I definitely got tired doing some random things. On Christmas Day our mom My mom brought us some Christmas dinner and dessert and we ate it out on our back porch sitting on opposite sides of the porch obviously. 

Since the height of Covid and after getting Covid I would say that my life has pretty much gone back to normal. I was vaccinated but with only two of the vaccines. I never got my booster because I had immunity after getting Covid and now I just stay indoors all of the time since I don't work right now. Honestly, this whole experience has been kind of crazy and I definitely can't wait for life to go back to 100% normal. 

Thanks for stopping by!

XO, Steph

Turning our house into an Airbnb

 Hey Guys!

So today's post is about turning our house into an Airbnb. As of last October 2021 it has been 5 years since my sister bought a house that we both lived in together. We don't really know what we will do with the house in the end but we initially had the plan to buy the house together but unfortunately at the time we closed on the house I did not have a job or any income so my name could not be listed on the mortgage. I think depending on how we do with it or where we both end up in future situations we might just refinance the house to have it both in our names and just keep it as an Airbnb. 

My sister was the first one to move out in July of 2021 as she moved to Orlando to pursue her Master's and I moved out in April of 2022 to move to North Dakota. Since no one was living there anymore and we still need to pay the mortgage, we decided to turn it into a rental property. The house is fully furnished still and we have a lot of great amenities to offer our guests. We left behind most of our own pieces of furniture and then we bought and/or made a few new pieces if something was really special to us. It has been a long journey to finally get the house listed but it is finally live on Airbnb and I wanted to share some of that info on here. The house isn't fully ready yet but we made sure to make the available date a tangible one and it will be fully ready by the time our first guests arrive! Here is the link to the house and please enjoy a little tour of the house that I said I was going to do a post on so many years ago and never did! 

Please feel free to share this post with anyone who might looking to come for North Fort Myers, Florida and rent a home on the water. I hope you enjoyed todays post!

Thanks for stopping by!

XO, Steph

Living in Grand Forks, North Dakota

The outside of our apartment building

Snow shortly after I arrived

The snow melting a week later and a view of the field across from our apartment

The pretty skies after the sunset

Hey Guys!

Currently I am residing in Grand Forks, North Dakota and I wanted to do a post about living here. I recently moved here in April of 2022 and I will most likely be here until April of 2023. And why Grand Forks, ND you ask? Well my fiancé is stationed here with the Air Force. I probably won't be saying much more than that or be using his name a lot due to the nature of his job and other things but after 3 years of being in the Air Force he was finally able to move off base and after us being in a long distance relationship those entire 3 years we decided that we wanted to be together. To be honest, I really struggled with this a lot! I grew up in a Christian household going to Church every Sunday and living together before marriage was something I never really pictured myself doing. Granted, I pictured myself getting married at 25 and buying a house and having a perfect career, and life just being absolutely magical. I never imagined to fall in love with someone 5 years younger than me, who joined the Air Force and moved away only a year and a half into our relationship. 

I don't really have anything to justify my choice other than it was a choice that I made for myself. Ultimately it came down to I didn't want to be away from my best friend and the love of my life anymore, oh and by the way in case you missed it, we're engaged now (but that will be for another post)! We had been away from each other for 3 years already and even though I thought we were going to get married much sooner into our relationship, you can't make someone get married when they aren't ready. Marriage is kind of big a deal. Both of our parents have been divorced and are on their second marriage. Thankfully these ones have worked out much better for them this time around. We both just want to ensure that this is it and that we want to spend the rest of our lives together which so far the answer is yes we do! 

Anyways, onto my experience of living here so far. I was born and raised in Florida and have lived there my whole life. I had always wanted to move away from Florida because dealing with snowbirds is very tiring! The traffic is just absolutely awful during season and unless you don't really have to leave your house very often it's not fun to deal with. With that being said, I never in a million years would have thought that the place I'd be moving to someday when I pictured myself finally moving somewhere outside of Florida would be North Dakota. I had always planned on it being New York City but if you have read my previous posts then you know I chickened out of moving there after college because I didn't want to move so far away from my family. Well the joke was on me because I moved even farther away from my family, about 2,000 ish miles away from my family. When I was younger I could also picture myself moving to either North Carolina or Tennessee. I absolutely love vacationing in both of those states and I just think that it would be so peaceful to move to one of those states. Also, shortly after my fiancé started dating we talked about moving to Massachusetts because that's where he is originally from. He didn't move to Florida until he was a Sophomore in high school. 

I have been here since about April 9th, 2022 so in total I've been here for a little over a month. I say that because about 2 weeks after getting here I left on a 17 day long roadtrip with my parents who flew up to Minneapolis and we drove around visiting different National Parks for my moms birthday! We also drove back down to Florida to go to Disney for one day, on my moms actual birthday! Yes we are that Disney obsessed! I will do a few posts about that trip as well later on. We visited some very cool places that I will talk about in more detail. Anyways, the only conclusion I have come to is that I'm ready to move back home! My fiancé has a little less than a year left and I am definitely counting down the days. Our #1 goal is to make it back home but we really have no idea where we will end up because it all kind of depends on where my fiancé is able to get a job. The main reason he joined the Air Force was because they pay for all his IT certifications that he needs to get a job once he gets out plus they offer gaining experience as well. 

Thankfully there are IT jobs pretty much everywhere but we also looking at which jobs pay the most and offer the best benefits because we both have this goal of retiring earlier than average person. So we kind of plan on living a somewhat frugal lifestyle to gain a higher savings for retirement. We both want to be able to spend as much time at home with our future children as possible and also be able to travel the world more. Once he gets closer to getting out he will primarily be searching for jobs in the Lee County area and then if nothing is panning out there the goal is to end up somewhere in Florida because at least we would still be in the same state as our families. There are a couple other states that he has been looking at as well but if we end up in one of those states, it will most likely be temporary until he gains enough experience to be able to relocate back to our hometown in Florida. 

As far as where we live, we live in a very nice 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment on the second floor in a very nice area but honestly there is nothing to do here besides drinking and staying indoors. Two things I'm not very good at. Since I don't really have a job, I don't really leave the house much and fiancé leaves the house every day to go to work and on the weekends he struggles with wanting to leave the house. I definitely don't blame him. When I worked full time I loved getting my errands done first thing in the morning only to come back home and spend the rest of the day just relaxing in comfy clothes and watching a movie. We're both very much homebodies but at the same time I grew up in Florida, going or doing something every weekend. I'm not much of beachgoer but the typical Floridian goes to the beach on the weekends. The land here is very flat, I'm pretty sure it's flatter than Florida even and there are barely any trees. It kind of blows my mind and I've been visiting here since 2020. Also the sun does not go down until like 10 pm and it rises at like 5:30 am. It is all very weird and it definitely has been hard to adjust my sleep schedule. I am a morning person but with the sky still very bright I have a hard time getting tired in the evenings and wanting to fall asleep early. 

My fiancé's sister and her boyfriend recently came to stay with us and we had a wonderful time hosting them. Neither of them had ever been to North Dakota so at least they got to cross that off their list. We showed them around town, the base that my fiancé works on, and we went out one night to check out a few of the local bars/breweries. It was a lot of fun and we can't wait to have more visitors. My fiancé's parents are coming in about a week and we are very excited to have them as well. We have a ton of stuff planned to do with them and it should be a lot of fun. One thing for sure is that the trips are never long enough but we definitely enjoy getting to spend any and every second with our loved ones.

I think that pretty much sums up my experience so far but I will definitely keep you guys posted on how things are going! Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed!

Thanks for stopping by!

XO, Steph

June 2022 Life Update

My dog Dooney and Me in the snow in North Dakota

Hey Guys!

Long time no talk! But no, seriously, it has been a while and I have really missed blogging! I want to start off by apologizing and even though I know that I really only had like maybe 5-10 people reading my blog posts and most of those were my family and friends, I want to say I'm sorry for taking such a long hiatus and for just randomly not posting anymore. Honestly, life got a little crazy! I mean, I think a lot of peoples lives got crazy once Covid became a thing. I really don't have any other excuse besides Covid and probably some mental health issues just like a lot of people kind of dealt with during Covid. We all had to stop seeing our friends and family and we all became shut-ins for a little bit. 

Anyways, I wanted to give you guys a little life update on where I have been since my last post in February of 2020! When I posted last, I had just started going to school for my Master's and Covid was just kind of in the beginning stages of being spread around the world...yay so fun! I was still working for the County at the time (remember? The job I constantly complained about) and my boyfriend had recently been stationed in Grand Forks, North Dakota and only had been living there since October of 2019. Wow that sounds so crazy to say! Time really does fly by! In the time since then, I was promoted at work to a job that I had really wanted for about a year or more, I am still currently working on my Master's, my sister went back to school for her Master's and moved to Orlando. We still have the house that we shared together and are in the process of turning it into an Airbnb/long term fully furnished rental property. My dog was also diagnosed with Cancer and we almost lost him. After 4 years my boyfriend and I got engaged, and I recently quit that job I was promoted to and moved to Grand Forks to be with my fiancé. I think that pretty much sums it up but if I miss anything I will probably blog about it later. 

I really want to get back to blogging, not necessarily full time seeing as how I am a full time student, searching for a new, hopefully fully remote job, and planning a wedding all while living 2,000 miles away from family and friends! I already have a few posts in mind that I plan on writing today, which is a Sunday and then finishing some of them up throughout the rest of the week. I will explain my current situation in a little more detail in one of the posts and as well as some of the other items I mentioned above. As for now, I hope you guys have a fantastic week and if there is anything specific you would like me to blog about please leave me a comment below! 

Thanks for stopping by!

XO, Steph