Hello, hello! I’m a little late to the little things post this month because… well, Easter was coming. And before Lent started I didn’t think about the fact that I work for more churches this year than I did last year, which means more work in preparation. But Easter came and now I can take a breath… and blog again. How was your month?
At the beginning of March my coach and I talked about planning and I started to incorporate a new question into my planning routine: how do I want to feel? It was a great month to ask that question because I had a trip coming up at the end of the month. I asked myself how I wanted to feel on that trip. The answer: not as frazzled as I did when I went to this same place the previous year. And I actually wanted to get more than 3 or 4 hours of sleep while I was gone. As I planned out my month I made sure that I wasn’t going to take a lot of work with me.
Let’s take a look at all the little things that made March great (or, in one case, made something sad a little bit better).
What better way to start than with Miss Mina? She’s the sweetest.
In addition to talking about planning, my coach and I talked about perfection and imperfection. She suggested I read Brene Brown’s book on the topic.
When I sit on this couch Mina likes to wrap herself around my shoulders and I 💙 it.
My nephew had a jazz concert and it inspired Hold Her Mic.
Just a little Ash Wednesday selfie with the pup and the accupressure pillow. And a Snapchat filter, so unfortunately no, that septum piercing is not real.
This was in some way weather-related. And also pretty.
The things you find when you repot plants. There was a step growing off of the roots of one and I had to cute the nursery pot off of this root system. It was intense! (Also, this plant is growing, but it’s kind of weird. The new branches are so much longer than the old ones. And it’s a fern, so I’m still kind of waiting for it to die since I usually don’t have much luck with ferns.)
I went to see the Corpse Flower at the University of Minnesota conservatory with my niece and a friend of mine. The corpse plant is a rare plant that smells like rotting meat when it blooms. He didn’t smell when we were there, but my friend went back on Tuesday. He hadn’t bloomed yet (like they anticipated), but apparently, he smelled like dead mice. I don’t feel bad about missing out on that smell. 😂
We toured the conservatory (more on this another day) and then went out for lunch.
Spent the night at a friend’s who lives closer to work and grabbed a cup of coffee from Bruegger’s Bagels on the way in. I love, love, love their handcrafted vanilla hazelnut creamer.
I also liked this iced coffee from a gas station that we stopped at on the way to my uncle’s burial.
My uncle died in February and was buried in March. It was a sad day, but the service was everything he would have wanted. Afterward we drove by the farm he owned and I saw the fields he let me “drive” the tractor through when I was younger. (With his help, of course.)
And then it was off to New York. The first place I toured was the New York Botanical Gardens to see their orchid exhibit and everything else they have.
The next day I went to the Museum of Modern Art and saw Van Gogh’s Starry Night. I can die happy.
It’s a must-visit museum. But more on this later.
Whenever I see a cathedral I have to go in. (Also, you know you work in church communications when you grab all the marketing materials you find in churches while you’re on vacation.)
I went to New York for a conference called VoxCon and it started that night. (I also went last year and shared 5 Lessons I Learned at VoxCon.)
I loved the nighttime view and the lighting from this window. (I look a little tired even though I wasn’t. 🙈😂)
There were a lot of great speakers, like Jad Abumrad, Jonathan Merritt, and Kirsten Powers. But more on the conference later.
After the conference was over I toured the Guggenheim and made my way over to Times Square to have dinner with a friend.
I’m kind of enamored with nighttime views of this city.
I spent the last day of March with family in New York and it was beautiful.
