Stephany Writes

Categories: Life

10 Things I Loved in December

1) A belated birthday date with Bri. The first Friday of December, Bri took me out for my birthday. We went to a fancy Italian restaurant in Tampa where we filled our bellies with delicious apps and pasta. We ordered a side of Brussels sprouts and, I kid you not, I am still thinking about them today. They have to be one of the top-3 foods I’ve ever had. I’d go back to this restaurant in a heartbeat just for those Brussels sprouts. Anyway, Bri spoiled me way more than I deserved and I am so lucky to have someone like her in my life.

2) Making gingerbread houses with coworkers. I got together with three coworkers in mid-December to decorate gingerbread houses. It was so much fun! My friend who hosted has an adorable dog who was so friendly and just wanted us to pay attention to him all night. No problem there, bud! I haven’t seen any of these coworkers since March of 2020, and it was so, so nice to see them and hug them and talk IN PERSON.

3) My promotion. In mid-December, my VP set up a last-second meeting with me. I don’t know about you, but those last-second meetings are always anxiety-inducing. Am I getting fired??? The opposite, in fact! She wanted to let me know that she was promoting me to content team manager in January. !!! This was something we had talked about at length, specifically at my review in January 2021. Over the course of 2021, she had given me lots of management-like tasks to help me hone my skills and explore that side of things. I have loved (and excelled in, if I do say so myself) those tasks, so it was truly an exciting conversation to have. I’m really looking forward to this new role and all it will entail (like no more writing!!!).

4) A sweet package from Kim. You guys, I can’t even tell you how much this Christmas package from Kim meant to me. She spoiled me! She sent me the softest cat blanket, a pair of adorable cat earrings, Christmas dish towels and a sweet toy for the cats that they just loved. But the sweetest present, the one that made me all teary, was this beautiful painting of Eloise and Lila. Look at my babies! I was particularly impressed with how she got Lila’s calico markings just perfect as well as Ellie’s. She even got Ellie’s little patch of white between her eyes and her uneven white feet markings. I have it displayed on a floating shelf in my dining room, and it makes me smile every time I see it. (The painting is by Sunrise Stone Art!)

5) A Christmas brunch. The week before Christmas, I got together with some friends to have a Christmas brunch followed by a Blind Date with a Book exchange and a Christmas movie. It was so much fun! The brunch was delicious and I was really happy with the book I “blindly” picked (it was Last Girl Ghosted by Lisa Unger!) And then we watched Home Alone. While that’s not my favorite Christmas movie ever, it was super enjoyable, mostly because Kevin reminded me so much of my younger nephew!

6) Annual Christmas cookie decorating night. Our annual Christmas cookie decorating night took place on December 23rd (we usually do it much earlier in the month, but we had scheduling difficulties). My brother and nephews came over and we had such a fun time cutting out the shapes and frosting the cookies. My younger nephew was adorable, too, saying things like “I tried my best on this one!” and using up all of the sprinkles on one cookie. He’s six, so he’s still getting the hang of cookie decorating!

7) Christmas Eve dinner. Going out for a fancy Christmas Eve dinner is a new-ish tradition (this was our fifth year doing it!) This year, we went to Bern’s, which is a Tampa establishment, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I always love getting dressed up and having a super delicious meal with my mom and stepdad. Bern’s has a special dessert room (yes, a dessert room) and of course we had to finish off the night with something sweet. My mom and I shared a seven-layer chocolate cake that was to die for.

8) Christmas! I had a lovely Christmas Day with my family. I slept in, lazily got ready, and headed over to my mom’s around 11:30. I played with the dogs while waiting for my brother and his family to arrive and gave them one of their presents, which they promptly set about destroying. Of course! My brother, sister-in-law, and nephews arrived around 1 and we ate a delicious meal that was mostly cooked by my stepdad. He did a great job! Then, we opened presents and afterward, my younger nephew asked if we could get Lucy out to play with. (We always put the dogs away when my younger nephew is over, as he’s timid around dogs.) She’s 1000x more relaxed than Chip and is so, so, so sweet around my nephew. He will even tug on her ears, play with her feet, or touch her snout and she won’t do anything! She doesn’t bark or growl or do anything that would scare him. It’s like she knows he’s not completely comfortable with dogs and alters her behavior to suit him. Anyway, we all headed home around 4:30 and it was a very successful Christmas, if I do say so myself.

9) A week off. My last day of work for the year was December 22nd. It was so amazing to have 11 days off work, and I was really proud of myself for not turning on my work computer once during my time off. A part of me felt guilty for that, but a larger part of me felt very silly for feeling guilty. I have earned this time off! I am not obligated to work! Argh. (Work/life balance was never an issue for me until I started working from home full-time!) Anyway, I used my week+ off to reorganize my kitchen (I pulled everything out of the cabinets!), have a fun day date with friends, meet up with a friend for a coffee date, and take looooots of naps. It was the perfect mix of relaxation, friend time, and productivity.

10) New Year’s Eve. I spent NYE at home for the first time in quite a few years. At one point, I looked at myself in the mirror and had to laugh because I looked like a hot mess. Sweatpants, big t-shirt, hair in a messy bun… I was the epitome of I Give No Shits About NYE this year. I spent the night reading, working on blog posts, and watching episodes of Brooklyn 99. I was snuggled in bed with the cats when I looked at my phone and saw that it was 12:20am—I hadn’t even rung in the new year properly! Ah, well. I said “Happy New Year” to my girls and that was that.

Tell me one good thing that happened to you in December!

Categories: Life

10 Things I Loved in November

1) NaBloPoMo. A true highlight of November was participating in NaBloPoMo this year. I’ve never attempted a blogging challenge like this because writing a post every day for 30 days straight sounds really overwhelming. But it was actually super fun and I’m glad that everyone who reads my blog also enjoyed hearing from me every day in November, haha. I hope to do it again in 2022!

2) Turning 34. I had a wonderful birthday this year! I truly felt the love from all of my friends and family—and from all of you wonderful people who read my blog. I enjoyed a handful of birthday dinners, a special birthday pedicure, and lots of birthday kisses from the dogs and birthday snuggles from the cats (okay, so they probably would have done those anyway, but just pretend for me). I am really excited for what awaits me at 34!

3) Day of Stephany. I had another successful “Day of Stephany” this year! I woke up around 8, showered, and then headed to McDonald’s for a quick breakfast. While my massage was a bit of a disappointment, it was still relaxing and isn’t that the point? Afterward, I met with Mikaela for a pedicure, which was so enjoyable. (Side note: The salon had The Princess Switch 3 playing and now I must do a marathon of all three movies sometime this December!) I then went home, took a nap, and then went to dinner with my mom, stepdad, brother, and nephews. It was such a lovely day!

4) Running of the Wieners. It was so fun to return to our annual Running of the Wieners event, which was canceled last year. While Chip and Lucy didn’t win their heats, they seemed to have fun and enjoyed being around all the doggos. Plus, they were so good at the event! I was convinced Chip was going to bark at all of the other dogs, but he was just happy to walk around with us and sniff some butts. 🙂 Maybe next year will be their year?!

5) Olive’s birthday party. What a joyous celebration! There was an almost 90% chance that she wouldn’t be here to celebrate her second birthday, which is just unfathomable. She’s here and she’s thriving. We celebrated with an outdoor party and Olive truly had a blast. For my part, I got to hang out with a few of my closest friends so that was really fun!

6) Returning to Starbucks for writing dates. As I mentioned in a weekend recap post, Mikaela and I returned to Starbucks for our writing dates. We’ve been doing these writing dates for many, many years now, typically at Starbucks, but then the pandemic happened and we moved our writing dates to Zoom. Once we both felt comfortable meeting in person for writing dates, Starbucks’s dining rooms were closed so we opted for Panera. But now Starbucks is back open for in-person dining and so are we! It feels so good to be back.

7) Turning my apartment into a Christmas wonderland. I always love decorating my apartment for Christmas. Every year, I seem to accumulate more decorations—I can’t help it! I love them so much. I’m usually pretty minimalist in my decor, but all bets are off when Christmas comes along. I have a lot more places for decorations this year—two extra bookshelves and two floating shelves—which means more places for cute decorations, garland, and lights. I can’t wait to show you my little Christmas wonderland soon!

8) Buying a new car. I didn’t expect to buy a car this year, but I received quite a generous raise at work last month and it made me start seriously looking at buying a car. Before this raise, adding a car payment to my budget would have made things very, very tight. But now, the car payment won’t even cancel out the raise! So it was a no-brainer for me. It was definitely time for a new car (I didn’t even have Bluetooth!) and I am so happy with my new baby. She is everything I wanted in a new car, and I still smile so big when I see her in a parking lot. She’s just so pretty!

9) Thanksgiving 2021. I had such a lovely Thanksgiving with my family. My cousin and her husband hosted us. They supplied the turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing and everyone else supplied the sides. (I brought deviled eggs and cookies.) My cousin killed it with the food—the turkey was so tender, the mashed potatoes creamy, and the stuffing delicious. I left with a full belly (and a full plate of food to eat later, hehe). It was such a lovely day, though, and I feel very lucky to have the family I have.

10) A much-needed hair appointment. I haven’t had a hair appointment since June and my hair was a bit of a mess. It needed fresh highlights and it definitely needed a fresh cut. I was shocked when I called my salon in November and was able to get an appointment with my stylist the day before Thanksgiving! (She’s a popular stylist, so I usually have to wait much longer for an appointment, especially during the holidays.) It was lovely to finally get all those split ends cut off.

What was something you loved in November?

Categories: Life

NaBloPoMo Wrap-Up

It’s the last day of November, which means it’s the last day of NaBloPoMo! Noooooo.

I am finding myself very sad to be ending this blogging challenge because I had so much fun with it. It was also fun to follow along with the other bloggers doing NaBloPoMo—it felt like we were all in this together! I’m really proud of myself for sticking with the challenge and publishing a blog post every day this month. And I am definitely ready to do it again next year.

Here are some of the things that I think helped me make it through NaBloPoMo:

  • I was coming off a three-week blogging break.

Before November started, I hadn’t published a post on my blog since October 6th. I was more than ready to get back into my blogging habit. I decided to do NaBloPoMo on a whim, after seeing San post about it a few days before the challenge was set to begin, and I had a ton of blogging mojo built up.

  • I planned out my entire month ahead of time.

This was probably the best thing I could have done for myself! Before NaBloPoMo started, I opened up Google Calendar and planned every blog post I would write in November. There was only one time when I nearly ran into the issue (the blog post I planned for, I didn’t end up wanting to write), but then I drew on inspiration from another blogger doing NaBloPoMo and used one of her post ideas as my own! (Thanks, NGS!)

  • I set up recurring blog features four days a week.

On Mondays, I had “A Weekend in Pictures.” On Fridays, I had “TGIF.” On Saturdays, I had “Ask Stephany Anything.” And on Sundays, I had “Stream of Consciousness Sundays.” This meant that I only had to figure out blog topics for three days per week, which made planning out my posts much, much easier. I always keep a running list in my Notes app of blog post ideas so I just pulled from that list. I also utilized some of my semi-regular series, like Three Things Thursday, Snapshot of my Day, etc.

  • I lessened the pressure I place on myself.

My normal blogging schedule is MWF and I really try to make each blog post a sensational one. If a blog post is under 500 words, I wonder if it’s really worth pushing publish on. I hold myself to a really high standard when it comes to the blog posts I publish, and I’m proud of that standard, but sometimes it can make me hold onto blog posts if they aren’t perfect. During NaBloPoMo, you can’t do that! You must publish a post every day, which means you just have to get it done. Telling myself that I didn’t have to publish long-winded blog posts and giving myself the grace to publish something even if it doesn’t meet my high standards helped me get through NaBloPoMo with my sanity intact. I’m hopeful that I can continue to lessen some of the pressure I have on myself when it comes to the blog posts I publish—it’s just a blog and it’s supposed to be something I’m doing for fun.

  • I knew I wasn’t in this alone.

I think the most fun part of NaBloPoMo was doing it with a cohort of other bloggers. Some of them I didn’t know before the challenge began and others I had been following for a while but got to know much better during November. It felt like we were all in this together, working hard to publish original blog posts every day. And we did it!

I am so happy that I took on this challenge and I am forever grateful to San for organizing it and keeping all of us motivated. Thank you all for reading my many thousands of words this month and for cheering me on from afar. I can’t wait for November 2022 when I can do it all over again!

Categories: Life

Tuesday Morning

It’s a chilly Tuesday morning and I have a lot I want to get accomplished today, specifically hanging up this set of floating shelves I bought off Amazon months ago. I’m always intimidated by hanging up shelves, so I’ve put off this task for longer than I should have. But I have some Christmas decorations that I want to put on the shelves, so I need to get them up. Fingers crossed for me!

A few weeks ago, NGS wrote a “five senses” post and I loved the idea of it, so I decided to steal it for myself.

See: Aside from the laptop screen in front of me, I can see a bunch of Christmas decorations sitting on the table. Some of the decorations, I am going to donate to Goodwill. They’ve served their purpose. Others will be placed on the floating shelves. Beyond the table, I can also see most of the ingredients for the cookies I will be making tomorrow for my family’s Thanksgiving meal.

Taste: I’m sipping on iced coffee, which has been sweetened with caramel sweetener. Mmm, it’s so good!

Touch: I just touched the cold glass of iced coffee and then the side of my back to scratch an itch. I’m also touching my laptop keyboard.

Hear: I can hear the girls’ little water fountain, which makes a little tinkling noise that is comforting. I can also hear the traffic outside (the downside of living right next to a busy highway).

Smell: Hmm, there’s nothing near me that smells, whether good or bad. Maybe I need to bring out a Christmas candle!

What can you hear as you comment on my post? 🙂

Categories: Life

That Time I Bought a Car

The title gives it all away, but… I BOUGHT A CAR YESTERDAY!!!!!!

Isn’t she so beautiful? I am so in love with her. She’s a 2022 Kia Soul and she drives like a dream. It’s amazing to drive a car that’s 17 years older than the one I was driving (a 2005 Scion xB). She’s got so many bells and whistles, and I am so, so happy she’s mine. But let me back up and tell you the story of how she became mine!

Yesterday, my mom and I went to our nearby Kia dealership so that I could test drive a Soul. I’ve always been enamored with these cars, ever since an old boss bought a new one (this was in, like, 2012 or 2013). They always give me heart-eyes when I see them on the road, and their build is very similar to my xB—an SUV crossover-type vehicle.

As the car salesman was getting the key for the Soul so I could test drive it, my mom turns to me and says, “What if you fall in love with it and want to buy it today?” And I admitted that I was entirely sure that was going to happen. I kind of knew it was, honestly. It’s a car that I’ve always had my eye on, and I just needed to test drive it to make sure I liked the way it drove.

Driving the car was so much fun. One of the positives of the pandemic is that now you can test drive a car by yourself—the salesperson doesn’t have to be in the car with you. I really enjoy that because it can be very awkward to drive with a salesperson! It was nice to just take the Soul off the lot with my mom and drive around by ourselves. I was really sad to pull back into the car lot when the test drive was over. I wanted to keep driving it!

I didn’t exactly know then that I would be leaving with the car that day, but I knew that I had found the perfect car for me. Whether that day or another day, I would be driving a Kia Soul.

After the test drive, we went into the dealership to talk pricing. I wanted a darker-colored car (black preferably, but they had a really beautiful blue/gray car on their lot that I had my eye on) with dark interior. Thankfully, both the black and the blue/gray car fit the bill! The blue/gray car came with a few more safety amenities, like lane assist, rear cross-traffic assist, and forward-collision assist. I really wanted that rear cross-traffic assist safety feature because I have a hard time pulling out of parking spaces sometimes. It’s especially difficult in my apartment complex because I usually can’t see above the cars around me to notice if anybody is driving by as I’m pulling out of a parking space. So I wanted those upgrades.

Once the salesperson had pulled all the numbers, the blue/gray car would only be about $11 more per month than the other car. It was a no-brainer. But the monthly price was making me a little anxious. It was going to be $390 and I was really trying to keep my car payment around $350. But I also knew that all of the other cars I was looking at cost more than Kia Souls, so that price was probably the best I was going to get.

My mom asked me if I would feel better leaving and thinking about it, and then coming back. And I agreed that I would, so I told the sales guy that I just wanted to think about it for an hour or two.

I want to stop here and say: I am not a negotiator. I am an enneagram 9, which means I am someone who hates confrontation and just wants to make everyone around me as happy as possible at all times. I wasn’t even using this as a tactic to negotiate a lower rate. I seriously just wanted to think about it for a little bit. After saying that I wanted to think about it, the sales guy nodded and said, “Okay, let me just get my manager to sign off on this.” Or something like that. I didn’t even know what he was talking about, but it didn’t ring in my head as any sort of sales-y tactic. The manager came over and he essentially wanted to know what they had to do to get me to leave with the car today. And it wasn’t until he said, “A lower price?” that it clicked in my head that this was a negotiation! I had power here. (I’m still shocked that they even cared to negotiate; I found out while I was waiting for all the paperwork to be processed that they only had three Souls total on their whole lot!) But I said if they could lower the monthly payment, I would be more inclined to buy today.

And they did! Somehow, I negotiated them down to a $350 monthly payment! WHAT. After that was all over, I turned to my mom and said, “Did I just negotiate with a car salesman???” In the end, I put down a $4,000 down payment and my trade-in car value was $2,000. And my excellent credit score also helped me secure the lowest interest rate for my loan! (This is especially gratifying to me, as the last time I bought a car, I had terrible credit and my mom had to cosign the loan.)

All in all, I have to say that buying a car was a supremely satisfying experience. Throughout all of this negotiation stuff, I never felt super pressured to buy. It really felt like they cared about me and knew I really wanted this car, and wanted to do whatever they could to help me get it. Maybe that’s my own naivete, but even my mom agreed with my assessment.

So now I have a new car! I am so very happy with my decision. This morning when I woke up, I immediately looked out the window to stare at my new car! I’m glad I don’t feel any sort of regret or panic about buying the car, and I think that’s because a) it’s something I’ve been planning for a really long time and b) I know I have the financial means to handle the car payment without it affecting my budget all that much. I truly wasn’t expecting to leave the dealership with a new car yesterday, but I think it was possibly the best early birthday present I could have given to myself.