Change is Hard

Life around here has been a little hectic as of late. For those of you who follow along on Instagram, you are well aware that our little family is in the midst of some pretty big life changes. 

Since having children, our priorities have shifted and we have a completely different view on life than we did five years ago. Though we still love making our house a home and building and creating things, our focus is more on time together with a family - especially while these kiddos are so young.

My obvious lack of posts around here points to the fact that I have been feeling less than inspired to write and share what's going on at home. However, I've been feeling inspired by these changes we are making in our life and hope to begin documenting them. These new views and big changes don't really fit into life a la "First Time Fancy" though, so I am working on creating a new home for them. In the coming weeks I plan on putting together a new blog, switching over my Instagram name and really just start to share more insight into where our lives our headed.

Is First Time Fancy gone forever? Hopefully not. So much of our lives are shared here, including our growth from two to four, which is such a big part of how we arrived at this new beginning. 

For now, I hope you can be patient while we bring life to our new online space! I'll make sure to share more soon.

New Year and New Focus

Happy 2016! I hope that everyone enjoyed the holidays. We had my brother here visiting over Christmas and it was so nice to spend time with him and have him finally meet Nolan. Now that January has hit and we're into a new year, we are once again focusing on what we want to do around here.

Last week I shared a quote on my Facebook page, which highlights what has been on my mind for the last while. "We have traded our freedom for overfilled closets, and our passion for unnecessary maintenance. We have sacrificed life in pursuit of clutter".

This rings so true for me. I find when there is too much "stuff" around the house, or too much "mess", I feel stressed, aggravated and distracted. Instead of playing with and enjoying my children and B, I'm trying to organize things to either get them out the door or find them new homes. NO MORE! I want my children to remember fun and playing and adventures - not time spent dealing with meaningless objects. 

This past week our life has taken an unexpected turn (more to come on this), so B and I are taking some time to focus on what is most important to us. For the last year or more, we have done our best to make our focus our family and friends. To us, people, relationships and experiences are far more important than "things", "stuff" and "possessions". With that being said, 2016 has kicked off with us turning a focus to reducing the amount of stuff we have around the house. 

I have started this journey to live with less, and hope to share our progress with you along the way. It won't be something that happens quickly and most definitely not over night, but I hope that along the way we can find more time, happiness and money as we let go of the things that are cluttering up our space, as well as our time. 

In the last week, we have cleared out close to 40o items from our home and made almost $200 selling things we no longer need (mostly baby clothes or items). It's been so therapeutic to start removing things that take up space and time and I can feel the difference it is making in my life emotionally. At the end of the month I plan to report in with a total breakdown of how many items we have released and, as a bonus, how much money we have made selling some of these items.

Has anyone else attempted to live a more minimalistic lifestyle? What are some of your tips to help you declutter and release items that may have an emotional hold on you? 

Storing Those Holiday Memories

When I think of Christmas, what I love most are the traditions. Those feelings of routine and familiarity that come with the season. It is the best part of Christmas, but also the hardest part about living on the opposite side of the country from my family and all of my childhood friends. Though we have done our best to start are own traditions on the west coast, there was one tradition that I was able to bring out here with us, creating and mailing Christmas cards.

Ever since I was a child, I always loved jumping on the pile of mail that my Dad brought in when he got home from work and ripping open the Christmas cards that came in from all over the country. As B and I started our life together, I stuck to mailing out cards every Christmas and when Halle joined our family in 2011, I decided to start sending photo cards. I always loved receiving photo cards of our friends with families, and thought it would be fun to do as well. I've had a number of people who live far away, tell me how much they enjoy seeing our card every year and seeing how much Halle has grown. I was happy that our friends and family enjoyed them, but I wanted to make sure that I had a special spot to safely keep them, so that we could look back on them (and other holiday photos - like Santa & Easter bunny photos), whenever we wanted

The solution I opted for was easy and inexpensive - perfect for a family on a budget, like we are. I used a basic white 3 ring binder, and created a handwritten cover on black construction paper to slide into the front pocket. Inside of the binder, I use clear pocket pages to store the cards and photos. I've attached them to black construction paper using photo safe adhesive corners and labeled each memory with the year and where the photo was taken. 

I love pulling this binder out every time there is a new photo to add, and Halle enjoys looking back at herself as a baby too. I hope that Nolan will enjoy it just as much. I'll be honest, it's fun to see how B and I have both changed since we first became parents as well.

This years Christmas cards are my absolute favourite. We used photos from our family session (which I shared a peak at last month), and designed them on Tiny Prints. It was hard to pick my favourite design because everything was so gorgeous and they have a ton of fun options (like laser cut cards - so awesome!), but in the end I went with this beautiful traditional looking card as it matched the best with the colours in our photos. B and I also really loved the gold Christmas tree envelope liners! They are so fun, and add just that little bit of extra cheer to the mail!

As always I included one photo of all of us together and then highlighted an individual photo of each of our babies! Yes, Halle is almost four and a half... but she will NEVER stop being my baby!

I enjoy coming up with new ways to address the cards each year, as well. I mean, everybody loves receiving 'snail mail' in this highly electronic world, but it's so much better when that mail arrives in your mailbox looking beautiful - am I right? Not visible in these photos - some cute glittery red hearts that appear in different locations on each envelope. Halle keeps telling me how beautiful the hearts are and how much she loves them.

So there you have it, our simple solution to storing our holiday cards and memories... along with a look at our most recent Christmas cards.

Do you send Christmas cards every year? Does anyone else love sending photo cards to friends and family, and do you keep them to look back on? I'd love to hear what you do, and most specifically - how do you display cards that you receive. I still haven't found my favourite way to display all of the cards that arrive in our mailbox!

Family Photo's & Outfits

It's that time of year again, and everyone is thinking about family photo's (if they haven't had them done already). I love updating our family photos every fall (you can find a look at our past one's here: 2011, 2012, 2014) and it's one tradition I plan to continue, for as long as possible.

This year we had Shana of Art and Soul Photography take our photos. We lucked out with an absolutely beautiful sunny day for our first photos as a family of four.

I am really happy with outfits I picked out for everyone. I wanted us to coordinate without being too matchy-matchy, and I didn't want to go out and spend a ton on new clothes either. I decided to go with cream and gold for us girls and brown and red for the boys with dark jeans.

I started by choosing my dress (It's a lace H&M dress from about 4 years ago, that I had altered a couple of years ago). Then I went through Halle's closet and found the gold sequin shirt (it's a Joe Fresh shirt that I bought second hand) and the adorable skirt she got as a gift. Brett already had every piece of his outfit in his closet, so then I just had to pay a visit to my favourite second hand kids store to find Nolan's outfit.

Once again, I am so thrilled with our photos (as I have been every year), and I'm glad we found Shana! She also did Nolan's newborn photos for us, and we can't wait to see her again for his 6 month and 1 year photos.

Do you get family photos done yearly? Have you had any done this year? I would love to hear how you pick outfits for your family photos!

Around the Island - Coombs & Nanaimo

Welcome back! I hope you all had a safe, happy and fun final long weekend of summer! We went on another camping adventure out towards Kamloops with friends and had a great time and today our darling girl has her first day of preschool - I am so excited for her. Before I get to this past weekends camping trip, I wanted to share some more photos from our Island adventure last month - this time with photos from our stops in Coombs and camping in Nanaimo. Once we left Stamp River, we headed to Coombs Country Market for lunch, ice cream and groceries (for our stay in Nanaimo). We enjoyed a delicious lunch on the patio at Cuckoo and then enjoyed huge Ice Cream cones after grabbing our groceries (a must stop for ice cream when on the island for sure). 

{My loves colouring on the patio at Cuckoo}

Once we wrapped up there, we were off to our next campsite at Living Forest in Nanaimo. This stop allowed B to work during the week while the kids and I could play and have fun in the area. We had some other friends camping at the same site so we were able to spend time with them as well which was fantastic. I also took an afternoon to spend some time with the kids in Downtown Nanaimo - somewhere I knew we would have fun after our "Staycation" there last summer...

{the view from our campsite}

{Down at the beach at the camp ground}

{Family Dinner at the campsite}

{Watching the float planes in the Nanaimo Harbour}

{At the park, reading a new book & flying her kite when B got off work}

{An evening dip in the Nanaimo River}

It was a nice camping trip in Nanaimo, but after 4 nights we were off again to our next destination - our friends' family lake house on Sproat Lake. We spent the final weekend of our little family summer vacation surrounded by friends at the lake house, swimming, eating, drinking and just enjoying great company. It was a fantastic way to break in our Boler and we learned a lot about what needs to be fixed over the winter! We have big plans to update our little trailer and make it more comfortable and functional. Should be some fun to share on here!

What did everyone get up to this past long weekend?

Around the Island - Ucluelet & Stamp River

As sad as we were to be leaving Tofino (and as beautiful as the drive in and out of Tofino is, I wasn't looking forward to it with an almost 3 month old in the backseat), I was looking forward to checking out Ucluelet. It wasn't a definite thing to do until we packed up our campsite at Crystal Cove that morning. B suggested we just go since we weren't sure the next time we would be back on that side of the island. So off we went and after lunch we found a beach to explore and spent a long time on Big Beach enjoying the views, fresh air, waves and lots of climbing opportunities for our little monkey...

{Our first unobstructed view of the ocean on our approach to Big Beach}

{My favourite adventurers, climbing the rocks before the tide came all the way in}

{Some attempted kite flying... which didn't really pan out}

{Rock throwing.... of course}

{There was a wedding just about to start at this resort behind us, so we left the beach before the bride arrived. Halle loved seeing the girls in pretty dresses and the guys in their suits}

{When we got back to our car we were greeted by this deer that actually got quite close and had no fear of us}

When we were finished in Ucluelet, we packed up and headed to our next campsite in Port Alberni at Stamp River Park. It took us longer than we hoped to arrive so we stopped in Port Alberni for dinner and then only had enough time to set up camp and play some card games with Halle that evening. In the morning we barely had enough time to eat and pack up and then decided to take a hike along the river once we left our site. It was such a beautiful park and I highly recommend camping here if you are planning a trip to the area!

{We had a beautiful site right on the river - if only we had more time to stick around and enjoy it}

{The Salmon resting after coming up the fish ladder in the River}

{Watching some of the Salmon that were attempting to jump up river... before they made their way to the ladder instead}

We left here after and made our way to our next stop in Nanaimo. More photos to come after the long weekend! Anyone have any trips planned for the long weekend?