Q&A Answers part 1 + Family Pictures
Happy Monday! I am FINALLY sharing the family pictures that we had taken a couple months ago! I absolutely LOVE how they turned out! Things are a little more calm for us to start this week because after a year of design work and construction, we finally made the move into our new home! Now that the house is done, I don't know what I'll do with my newly found free time. Today I thought I would start by responding the questions I received in my Q&A post from last month. Hopefully this will help you get to know me a little bit better! 1. What did you major in at college, and what do you think you’d be doing if you didn’t blog full time?Great question!! I majored in Communication with an emphasis in PR. While I was in school I worked full time (40-50 hrs/per week) at Marketstar/HP. I did inside sales. While I worked there I knew I didn't want to do that full time. I didn't like sitting behind a desk and didn't get face to face interaction with anyone. I think I would have loved to do interior design or something really creative. 2. Please do more in depth posts on your workouts/running program! Also, what you eat on a daily basis. I love your fashion posts, but I think you are very inspiring by your healthy approach to life. I SO need to do more posts on this because it is something I am passionate about! I LOVE to eat, and if I don't eat, well... then I can get a little cranky. Just ask my hubby! ha! I try to keep my diet as simple as possible, I'm not a huge fan of complex diet fads. My motto is eat when you're hungry and don't eat when you're not. I don't deprive myself of certain foods but rather focus on calorie intake. Your body uses calories for energy, so I never eat more than what my body is asking for. My one downfall is that I am definitely a social eater. I will never turn down a lunch date and would NEVER turn down In n Out Burger. Life is just to short! 3. As a foreign reader, I love to see you and your sister so sophisticated and always looking perfect (very american!). This is great inspiration, that regardless of the events of life (birth..) you manage to look absolutely stunning. On the other hand, I often wonder if it’s possible to have such a perfect life. Maybe if you showed a bit of the difficulties too, that would help your readers understand how you manage to do it all. Maybe you’re a very organized person ? And I’d love to see more of your home too (do you have tips to redesign an entire home ? Mistakes to avoid ?). And of course I’m very curious about your diet :) I love this comment and I get it a lot. I always try to highlight the good things on social media. I want to give inspiration to my readers. I do have hard times and my life in NOT perfect, nobody's is, but honestly I use my blog as an outlet to focus on things that I love. At times it can take a village to keep my blog running and be a full-time mom. I have the best husband in the world and he helps me a TON with pretty much everything in life. I think it is important for people to know that social media is not always reality and that's OK! You just have to remember that one perfectly styled photo is five minutes of my whole day. Instagram and social media are awesome things as long as we keep them in perspective. 4. I really admire your health and fitness dedication. Would love to see a post on your daily diet and how to eat healthy. As I mentioned above, I don't really follow any specific diet, or fad as I like to refer to them, but here in the next few weeks I will try to post some of my favorite recipes (mostly healthy)! 5. I’ve been following your blog for a few years now. I love that is a great balance of fashion, family and your lifestyle (especially home and decorating). I love that your fashion is conservative but I do find that lately, as a mom, I haven’t been relating to your outfit choices as much. I love your shoes but heels just aren’t practical chasing children. I would love to see more outfits choices like you use to post. Thanks for your question! Heels are definitely not practical for chasing kids around. Most of my outfits that I wear and post can usually be taken from day to night. I don't ever wear heels around during the day. I am mostly in flats. But if I have an event or a dinner I can easily throw heels on with that same outfit. Heels are more fun (to me) so I tend to show those on the blog more. 6. Hi Emily! I would love to see you do a tutorial on how you get your hair so voluminous & bouncy whilst keeping the ends curled. It always looks so fantastic! I need to do a tutorial and probably will here soon. Things have been so crazy with building our home, but now that we are settled in, I should hopefully have more time for these kind of posts! For now I will tell you that I use the hot tools 1.5 inch curling iron most days. I find that that curling iron gives me the best curls. I don't wrap the curl around, I just curl it up and use the clamp. Does that make sense? If not there will be a tutorial soon! 7. I’ve been following your blog since the beginning! I found it a few years ago and have been a daily follower ever since. My favorites are your outfit posts and home posts. And I have a couple questions! If you could wear only one designer for the rest of your life, who would it be? Also.. I’m sure bloggers have to be careful around this, but I would love to see/read more about how you integrate your faith into your daily life! I think the platform you have as a well-known blogger could be great way to reach people who don’t believe. LOVE this question! Okay one designer?? in my dreams it would be Valentino. If we are talking of something a little more practical, then I would love to wear Tory Burch. I love love love her clothes and her accessories are always on point. As far as sharing my faith, I try to just set a good example and share what is most important to me and is really central to my faith and that is my family. If people have questions or want to know more, then I am always open to answering those questions via email etc. 8. Love your posts Emily! Very inspiring and I love your classy and sophisticated style. I would love to hear about how you first started blogging and some must-know tips and advice for life and style bloggers. I first started my blog one year after Capri was born. I had just graduated from college and wanted something more. I was staying at home full time with Capri and needed a creative outlet. My sister, Rachel mentioned that I should start a blog. I did, and it kind of just took off from there with a lot of hard work, sweat and tears of course. I think some tips would be 1. post post post. Have an editorial calendar and stick with posting even if no one is reading. eventually people will catch on. 2. Get involved in the community. Go to conferences, make friends in the industry. You can all help each other, there is room at the top for everyone and its important for everyone to help each other and be supportive! 3. Stick with it and don't give up. It takes a LONG time to build a following. 9. Are you planning to have more kids/how many kids do you want? How did you meet your husband? And I hope this isn’t too personal, but are you in your 20’s or 30’s? Yes! I would love to have more kids. Ideally I would like to have 4. Hopefully that can happen but for now I'm just taking them one at a time, I have to:) 10. How did you and Taylor meet? I have gotten this question quite a bit and there is no short answer. So... Taylor was going to BYU had walked on to the basketball team his Freshman year. I have grown up going to games with my family and we are lucky to have some pretty good seats. As I got older I paid more attention to the boys out there playing and in Taylor's case the ones dressed up on the bench (sorry honey!). We both noticed each other and then he FINALLY took the initiative to find out who I was. We messaged a few times and waved to each other at the games then the rest was history... or not! We dated for about 4 months and it was all bliss until one day and completely out of the blue he DUMPED me. I was devastated! Rude I know. We were broken up for an entire year without any real contact, the whole thing was just not very fun. I ended up getting into another pretty serious relationship knew it wasn't right and broke things off. My sister Megan, who was always Taylor's favorite, messaged Taylor on Facebook to let him know. The next day Taylor asked me out and this time the rest really was history. I of course was super skeptical the whole time because he had just broken my heart the year before, but I just went with it. We dated for 5 more months, got engaged in April, and were married in July. It was a long hard road, but I couldn't be happier with how it all turned out! Life is crazy sometimes. I never thought that I would have to go through all that heartache to find the one! I will post more of these questions next week!! Have a wonderful day!