How Slow is a Slow Start?

As a Leo woman, I am used to falling for someone to hard and to fast, so dating a Taurus that likes to take things slow is out of my comfort zone. I am not the only Leo woman who is in love with love and the feeling of love more then the person they should love. Jennifer Lopez is the queen of Leo women who love felling love. She has gone through many marriages, engagements and relationships just to feel that amazing feeling of a man adoring you. For my whole dating life, I have been the same way.... Until now!

I have been dating "teacher" for over a month now and have been on dinner dates and sleepover dates but there is no rushing to feel to much because I can't read how he feels.... EVER! Being a Taurus (which is a first time for me), he likes to take thing slow and anazlyze everything. I'm used to the abundance of compliments, texts and feeling like I might be the one. The Teacher has me wondering if he going to answer my text, am I the only one he is dating or at least sleeping with or when will I see him again. Between his busy schedule and mine, our time together has been once every week or sometimes every 2 weeks. 

There is no denying that I crave more of his time and attention and the slow pace does frustrate me at times. There are moments where I feel like this is the right pace for us because I appreciate the time we do have together like when he fell asleep in my arms while watching a girlie movie. All I hope is that I can deal with the slow pace and keep my lioness calm for a while..... Happy Dating!

Misery Isn't Allowed in my Company

 Of 23. 

They say misery loves company which I am living with on a daily basis right now. For as long as I could remember my mother has always been miserable, always complaining and finding the negative in everything just to scream and holler about. There was time in my life, before I had Lily, that I cut my mother out of my life for 2 years. I went through stressful situations including having Lily and becoming a single mom all without her. 

Lily was about a year old when I came back home because I needed help as a single mom and I believed she had changed. That the 2 years of silence had taught her to appreciate her children not take them for granted. Well that lasted until my little brother, who was the favorite, unexpectedly died at a young age of 23. When he died she got worse, she tried to control each of our moves and actions because then she could make the "right" decision for us since she couldn't save my brother from his bad decisions. 

The years of living with her wore me thin until I finally broke 2 years ago. I couldn't take things anymore so I got help in finding an apartment which I struggled with paying rent and eventually got evicted. I moved in with a friend until he ended up in the same situation and I ended up making the worse decision ever....I moved back home. 

I have been back for about a month and each day I wake up more miserable then I did the. Isn't before which I didn't think was possible. Usually, I read positivity books, say affrimations and mediate. Since I have been back here, I have not read or mediate and my positive affrimations have been few and far between because I have started to believe I am this horrible person that doesn't derpserve anything good or to be happy.

Tonight I am making the decision to not give into her misery and negative attitude. I am working hard on my life and keeping happy. Yes money is stressful for s single mom but I have learned to start selling  things I don't need in my life on facebook yard sale pages and networking other ways to sell my products. I am as strong as I feel and today I am strong enough to cut the negative people out of my life even if that includes family!

I Am Just A Girl With Feelings

 I am a girl with feelings which is what makes it so hard for me to date. My weakness is that when I feel something, I tend to fall hard and fast. I never look at the potential for hurt until I start feeling to much for a guy which I then proceed to find a way to make him break things off with me. Maybe it's my wall of insecurities or my own stupid girly ways or both but it's never going to land me the guy of my dreams. 

I go into this insecurity discussion because I am dating someone right now that is know as my Bad Boy... From the outside he is my perfect match! He is full of tattoos, has a beard, rides a bike ( yes totally hot even if I'm scared as hell to get back on a bike!) and is just so sexy to me and is just the ultimate bad boy. From the moment we started talking again, there was an instant connection I couldn't deny. We talked all day everyday for over a week though it felt like months. We talked about everything, even my darkest secrets which even some close friends don't know about me. Everything just felt right....

This is when I ruined my perfect man....

I turned into a girl in the worst possible way, I got jealous of his ex. I knew the situation from day 1 but the closer I got to him, the worse my brain twisted things in my head. I am firm believer that our thoughts create a reality. Well my nightmare of his ex getting close to him came true. He stopped talking to me cause I was flipping out with jealousy and as the mother of his child, his ex came before me. It hurt like hell because I then felt like I was just a fool for feeling something for him, telling him intimate things about myself and believing that when he said he felt the same it was true. His ex got jealous of me.... Which no lie felt good and in turn forced him to set boundaries with her. Problem was he still didn't want me....

Or so I thought! We ended up talking things out and I learned that I need to take a step back from the hot and heavy even if he is indulging my heart with loving things. One of the important things to him is that I don't punish him for what my exes have done in the past. We spent the day together which was amazing but I can still feel things are different. I am just a girl with feelings, it's hard to change my old ways but for him I'm willing to try. 

The Handmade Ice Queen and Her Sister

Ok this post is a little late but better to be late then never happen.

Every little girl wanted to be Elsa this year including my little Lily. The exception was that Lily wanted her mommy to make her costume and not buy one at the store that every other little girl would be wearing on Halloween.

This costume has been my biggest challenge and now have profound respect for wedding dress creators that hand stitch the dresses. I hand stitched about 90% of the Elsa costume because the material is so delicate that when I attempted to sew with the machine, it would pull and pucker. The dress itself had ended up being sleeveless which worked out perfect for the Halloween parade the Saturday before Halloween. The costume won 3rd place in her age category!

As the week winded down to Halloween, the temperature dropped about 20 degrees which means Lily couldn't be sleeveless. As Lily told me "Mom, the Queen CANNOT wear a COAT!!", so I surprised her by hand sewing a hooded cape to match her dress to try and keep her as warm as I could on that cold Halloween night. She was so excited when I showed up to school with her surprise cape and dressed as "Mommy" Anna to match my Elsa!

Her hat was the highlight of the costume because she can wear it all winter long. Her fellow Elsas at school loved the hat and a couple of moms want to put in orders for the winter. If you are interested in an Elsa or Anna hat please visit my Etsy shop Red Shoe Artisan  I have a 2 week time frame for custom orders right now.  

Did you have a Handmade Halloween? If you did please feel free to share with us!

My Return to Blogging

It has been a year since I last blogged and though I have had thoughts of writing in the past something always came up and I would put it off until another day. There has been a lot of ups and downs in the past year and way to many changes for the bad. The past couple of weeks, I have been working very hard on changing those negative experiences into a positive experience and life.

I am human, I got overwhelmed and pulled into the deep, dark hole of negativity that has surrounded me. With every negative situation, I would get sucked deeper into the self-pity. Self pity is a party of one and not a pretty place to live. Instead of happy, positive affirmations; all I could hear myself saying was "my life is horrible", "I am broke", "  I am a failure", "I am ugly and fat" and many more. How could life be good when I just kept saying those horrible things to myself? I cried myself to sleep more then once and even cried to my friends.

At my lowest point, I figured out that I need to pick myself up and start fixing myself and my life. No more negativity, no more crying and no more pity party for one! I started to read positive books again which gave me ideas of how to incorporate positive affirmations into more of my daily routine. I created a wishboard (which I will be explaining further in a future post) and hung it on the wall across from my bed so every morning that is the first thing I see and read. My next idea was a positivity jar.

The positivity jar is my way of focusing on a daily positive affirmation every day starting in the morning. After hours of research, I printed out tons of affirmations and quotes plus wrote some of my favorites and placed them in an old mason jar. I am placing the jar on my night stand so every morning the first thing I will do is pick an affirmation out of the jar and read it. This is my way to start my day on a positive note from the moment I open my eyes.

I believe in children leading a positive life in a world full of negativity especially school aged children. My Lily is 7 going on 17 and has had issues with self confidence since starting school. She has been picked on because she has to go to special classes for reading help, clothes she wears or that her single mom can't afford to take her places that other kids get to go. My heart has broken for her to go through this at school at such an early age. She is in a new school this year which she loves but I want to help boost her confidence so I started a positivity jar for her as well.

I am excited to see how this added boost of positivity will change our lives. I am going to do this for the next 62 days (until the end of the year) and post the affirmations on my Instagram, Twitter and Facebook pages. Once a week, I will write a post about positivity and update how these changes are making a difference in our lives. I hope this will inspire others to make positive changes in their lives.