Money doesn't buy happiness. But it buys freedom, and choices, and opportunities. And those are necessities for me.

I suited my hubby up in this months prizes from our #milliondollarchallenge with our company and posted it to Instagram, initially just to share my fun swag we win ever month from our company and then my share turned into a blog post. That's how passion and my brain works. "Coincidentally" (not really) the prizes came on the same day that I was able to finish 95% of my Christmas shopping completely with MY monthly commission from my "side business" without touching our checking account. And the same day I was offered another opportunity within my industry. AND I purchased my tickets to our next business conference in January. CONTINUAL GROWTH. I can't tell you how on top of the world I felt. I DO NOT say that at all to brag, because let's be real I'm most impressed by modesty and memories over things, but I share it because my MINDSET with money and abundance has been something I've been working on diligently. 

Having enough while striving to grow can be a tricky line to walk. Do you feel guilty for wanting more? Greedy even? Is it hard to celebrate success, without fear of failing and losing it?  Does your gratitude and contentment cloud your drive or visa versa? 

Let me ask you this. Are you putting out a vibrational frequency that is a match for abundance? Woah. What? Let me say it again. Are you putting out a vibrational frequency that is a match for abundance? Lately I don't share much of my personal development too openly because quite frankly, I'm newer to it and it freaks me out a little how the universe responds so directly. I have a fear of sounding cray cray (because I'm finding my footing in this), but I feel I need to share because it has been so very powerful in my life. And I believe that sharing is paying it forward to open others eyes if they do choose. 

The beginning of this year 2016 we made a large family decision to have my husband resign from a job he loved and was doing well in as a regional sales manager (that involved a lot of travel) to take a local job that had potential to grow lucratively but took a step back initially in order to no longer have to travel. That was a scary choice for our family, but we knew it was necessary. If you can provide the necessities for your family, there is no price you can put on time with your family and we had missed that with my husband traveling so much for work. In this transition we also decided that I would be able to grow my business more to supplement the differences in lifestyle now that I had a husband home to help. And that's where BELIEF in being a sustainable business came in. Not just something I do because it gives me something to do for me. But an actual business, and I felt the shift. I can't tell you enough, if you treat your business like a side business it will remain just that. A fun hashtag #momprenuer, something you pick up when you want and put down when you want and makes you a few hundred bucks a month. There's nothing wrong with that at all!! If that's your goal. But if your goal is more, you have to work it differently, and your mindset must follow. But immediately when I started to make these shift I felt some personal blocks with doubts, insecurities and being uncomfortable with talking about the money side and growing creep in. To me that's always been something private, don't all about money it's tacky. BUT when you're in business for yourself and leading a team you have to have a clear vision of where you're going, and what your goals are and what their goals are and often that vision needs a tangible number. I struggled here. So I took to some deep business training and self development. Literally just this past Sunday working more on my fear cleanse self development I worked through some abundance and money mantras and then Monday was my hot spot of an abundant lucrative fulfilling aha day. The day after I focused on this training. Not a coincidence. I'm sorry, it's just not. 

One of the things I should mention is that when my husband gave up his regional sales position he gave up his quarterly bonuses we had become accustom to, and his largest bonus being his end of the year Christmas bonus. I never budgeted or saved for Christmas because we were able to use part of the Christmas bonus without worry. Since his pay structure changed we had to adjust, and this year was the first year without the set bonus that we were use to. Juggling, saving, and budgeting was stressing me out a bit to bs honest, but I was trying to have a positive mindset. These sacrifices were worth our big picture. Then without realizing our consistent, persistent, determined growth, my Isa bonuses and commissions more than covered Christmas and I didn't have to touch our savings or checking account. I can't begin to tell you how amazing that felt. I need to mention that I'm not talking anything away from my husband as a provider as he's exceeding his own goals but this was entirely new to ME. Personally. Again I say it not to brag at all but to share hope for those who understand that Mommy to boss position I'm feeling. I'm 34 years old. My husband has always been our family provider. I've worked part time and been an entrepreneur and contributed when it fit for our family, but never truly allowed myself to believe I could actually make a 6 figure income doing this. That's for rockstars, I told myself. That's for people with more experience. That's for people that have more time. Or for people who choose to work and not stay home with their kids. It wasn't realistic to me. In July I sat down with a great friend and mentor and told her my goals, then I backed them down and justified backing them down because I hadn't been successful in hitting them prior to this shift. She sat and said ~ your original goals are 100% realistic YOU just need to decide if that's what you want. Had I really decided prior to that? No. I had hoped. But didn't decide. Because my husband has been the primary bread winner my life didn't "require" those goals. We were comfortable. I was comfortable. And that comfort zone is where you go to die. I was dying. I was happy in my life as a mother and a wife, but as a business owner, an independent woman... I wasn't growing a business. I was making money off of a hobby I loved at best. I needed a shift. And it started in my mind. 

So here are some of the mantras I've been working with: 

"Manifestation is just becoming that which you desire. 

Become the belief system that you want to attract. 

Yes I am worthy. 

I am open to creative possibilities. 

Money flows to me freely. 

I earn abundantly for my great work. 

Working on getting my energy into a place of prosperity, receptivity, worthiness and an abundant mindset. "

You can continue to HOPE you get what you desire or you can work to change your mindset. Work to change your vibration. And work to BECOME the belief system you will attract. If you are reading this now and saying I want that. Can I do that? I'm telling you YOU CAN. Am I an expert? No. Am I at the top of my goals yet? Hell no. But I am clearly on my way and reaping the results of the changes. I've found tools, classes, books, groups, trainings and I simply won't stop until I get there. Hello universe and other Boss Ladies that are ready! I have stepped up and it feels amazing. Thank you for allowing me to shine even when I try to dull my own light. 

If you want to learn more about the training I'm doing with Gabby Bernstein here is a short video on this subject: https://youtu.be/wGpACxNYozo

~Define Who You Want To Be 

I choose to see love instead of fear - Day 3 of 42 FEAR CLEANSE

For the next 42 days I am working with an amazing group of women and a guidebook by Gabrielle Bernstein on a FEAR CLEANSE. A guid of subtle shifts for radical change and unlimited happiness. Why? Because it's 100% FOR ME. Unapologetically. I feared how to post this correctly and not use my children for a conceived "political/racial stance". But here goes... 

"Dear Inner Guide: I am committed to transforming my fears to love. I will open my heart and mind to love and I will let my intuition guide me. I welcome all the spiritual assignments that may come and I am ready, willing, and able to smother my fears with the light of love. I choose to see love instead of fear." 

Fear- is homeschooling enough, am I doing right for my kids? Am I doing a good job? 

Fear- what are the opportunities my children will have because of our position in life? How can I balance improving that without losing site of what our family philosophies are? 

Fear- what does the future hold for minority children? Are we going backwards in terms of hate and equality? Will my children have to fight a battle that I myself have truly never had to? 

Fear - will sharing this make me look crazy or weak? 

"There's always a loving perspective. Today I welcome new perceptions. I am willing to let go of my old limiting beliefs and let love enter in. I choose to believe that there is always a loving perspective. I choose to see love."

SHIFTS

🔶Homeschooling is currently the fit for our family, I feel it in every ounce of my being. My kids are thriving. It's not always perfect, but in 16 years of parenting I've yet to find the perfect education fit that fits into our needs and lifestyle. This makes sense. My kids are happy, curious learners, blossoming. I choose love, not fear.

🔶You can give a child every opportunity in the world and if they do not have the respect, work ethic, and drive to follow through with those opportunities it won't mean anything. I make it my full time job to give them as many opportunities as possible and open their eyes to all of the possibilities. Will everything be as easy for them? No. We don't have access to every opportunity, but we will concentrate and focus on the opportunities we do have and focus on action based goals that surround those to know they always are taking advantage of what's in front of them. The least opportunity with the best follow through and attitude is better than the best opportunity that is taken for granted. I choose love and gratitude. 

🔶Yesterday I drove four beautiful, smart, well behaved (two Christian, two non denominational) minority homeschooled children into Boston to take a class at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A STEM class learning with their hands and building prototypes at MIT. They do not fear their future, they do feel like "minorities", or "weird homeschoolers", they feel like lucky kids who get to learn in cool places! That's it. Should I feel bad that I don't relate to fear here? From the time I was able to remember that race and gender could actually be an issue I've loved and lived by this: " I was raised to believe that excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism. And that’s how I operate my life." – Oprah Winfrey 

And that's what I want for them. No apologies. Does it mean I'm not teaching them reality? No. They will know their truth. But I choose love. 

🔶And last but not least - I am crazy, I am weak. It's part of me. Not something I particularly ENJOY sharing. But it's my story. My truth. The more I stand in it, the more I attract people who understand what I mean by that. Passionate, energetic, outside the box people are all a certain kind of crazy, we just have to harness it. That's a constant work in progress. But more importantly the more I stand in my own truth and struggles without fear of judgement the more I attract people who work on self development themselves because they know, we can all ALWAYS be better. We can all always learn. These are my people. I have no fear sharing with them. Those who react negatively are not my people and that's ok. I choose love. 

Whooooo  I feel better but my hands are shaking.

Fitmomma Fun shopping and staying on a budget!

So here we go 6 hour plane ride home and I needed something to keep me busy. I decide I wanted to write something out for mommas. Mommas like myself who want to look nice, but also want to stay within a budget. Now I loved Cache, Bebe, express, and even going to a boutique where they ask me if I'd like something to drink and can they get me another size with the best of em. In fact one of my best friends owns a boutique and may want to cringe at my fashion advice and cheap habits haha but sometimes a Momma's gotta do what a Momma's gotta do. For my lifestyle right now with my personal financial goals and four children, I don't particularly enjoy spending a lot of money on clothes that I may not wear often, BUT I do like to look nice. So although it takes more time and effort you CAN look nice and shop on a budget. I'm gong to share my finds! I got SO many compliments on my outfits, jewelry, shoes this week and people asking where I got things, so I figured I'd throw this little blog together. At first I wasn't going to do it because the Mom in me was like "IT WAS ONLY $17!!!!" when someone complimented a dress, but I kept telling myself that's tacky as hell Stephanie stop telling people how cheap you are! Haha But then I thought a step further... a lot of Moms are like me. They may want to shop, or get a few nice outfits but they don't want to take a lot of money out of their family budget to spend on themselves. For me I'm a numbers gal I like to plan. So my tradition with the kids that has worked for us is every season I spend $150 per child for new seasonal clothes. I buy the bulk of their clothes. I use sales, coupons and deals and can get a majority of their stuff. But if you've spent any time in a store or online looking at price tags you know that's NOT a lot of money at all, and it goes quickly. Then if we have an event or a special occasion or holiday we certainly purchase outfits for those and a little more for back to school but the $150 per child per season is my "budget" for the most part. So you can imagine when I started planning an event and ONE GOWN was upwards of  $150 and I needed a few outfits I really cringed at the thought of spending as much on my clothes for my trip as I spent to actually book the trip!



Below I will break down 5 outfits, including accessories, one formal gown, and a bikini and give you my total. Before you read any further lets play a game. I want you to do the math in your head and I want you to estimate how much I spent. Be realistic. Write it down and comment at the end and tell me your guess. I want to see how close you came, and if I really did as good as I think I did. Now I am including in my purchases - 5 new outfits with accessories, 2 new pair of shoes, a formal gown, AND a bikini!! What's your estimate that I spent?

Outfit #1- Romper from Charlotte Rouse - I love the way this clor brightens my skin and floral is so in right now. Romper - $26.99 Necklace - $5 (nude shoes - basics I owned).

Outfit #2 - Black and yellow
Simple black dress - $17.90 at Forever 21
Shoes I already owned but I got them off amazon for $22
Since yellow is not really a popular color for jewelry it was so easy to find clearance pieces (spent about $20 on jewelry).

Outfit #3 - Gown - This one is one of my best deal! Being off season after Prom Season I was lucky. Well I was and I wasn't. There wasnt a ton to choose from, and the sizes were scattered. I went to MANY a store at the Rockingham Mall in Salem and found NOTHING. Because my of my body type I was reluctant to order anything online. So I went to the Burlingotn Mall and found many more options. This was on clearance from Macy's off prom season rack there. $170 was the gown original price - on clearance it was marked down to $23!!!! PLUS I had a $10 off if I spent $30 coupon so I spent $13 on this dress! Because of the neckline no necklace was needed. I added a big drop earring for $8, and wore a basic black heel that I owned.

Outfit #4- Believe it or not this was the most I spent on any of the outfits. Because it was plain and simple dress so I just grabbed it to try on. It fit like a glove and I just felt AMAZING in it!!! It wasn't on sale, wasn't on clearance although I did get to use my 20% off coupon so it brought the original $41 down to $31.80 still so inexpensive. I wore black shoes I already owned and threw on a pearl necklace and pearl earrings I already owned. I didn't do much to accessorize this outfit really. It just goes to show that when a woman feels good in a dress, one she buys it without thinking, and two she doesn't need much else when it just makes her FEEL AMAZING!! That's pretty priceless. Oh and it was purposely a snug fit so I had to run out into the hall at my hotel and kindly flag down a housekeeper, who was so kind to come in and help me zip that bad boy up. There was no way I could do it alone!

Outfit #5- A white cocktail dress for Maroon 5! Seriously words cannot express how much I am infatuated with Adam Levine. Know when a girl goes to a concert she is dressing as if she may meet the singer. She knows she really isn't, and she knows even if she did she would probably spill her drink, laugh and snort or babble about her four kids, but still you have to look good!!Concert rules. Celebrity crush rules. I needed white because it was a white party. This was my most difficult to find. Mostly because a I don't ever really wear white (it's just not very forgiving for someone short with curves and has birthed four tiny humans out of her body. And 2- I'm kind of a hot mess. Wearing white is like asking for stains. I stay humble and fumble in my black. I literally sat on a seat the first day and the girl next to me said "oh be careful someone spilled coffee there" as I was sitting down and I said "oh no worries, I'm wearing black." See. Que sera sera. You can't do that in white. So I actually found this cute little white party  dress at Macy's that I really liked. I tried it on and fell in love. I thought... this is the dress Adam Levine is gonna fall in love with me in. Hahaha I kid. Kinda. But when I tried it on the back wouldn't zip up :(  It fit so perfectly every where else. Accentuated my waist perfectly, felt like it flattered my bum (and that's not easy in white) but the back was wayyyy too small. So I snapped a pic in it anyway to send my husband for his opinion. He liked it. I don't know if you've noticed but I'm a little top heavy, so often when something fits my bottom half it might not fit my top and this was the case with this dress. If it's a stretch material (which as you see is what I ended up going with- it'll work because it'll hug the right places.) So let that be a note to everyone: girls with curves don't necessarily always WANT to wear clothes that hug their curves, however usually that's the most flattering fit. If I bought the size that fits my largest part it sometimes looks like I'm wearing a tent and it ain't pretty. Well this dress material had no give. So I needed to go up two sizes to fit my top half (listen, I don't care if the reason you have to go up in sizes is because you're smuggling in all the gold in the world, it still is not a great feeling.) So I went up the two sizes and bought the dress. But what I didn't really accept or realize was that when I did that the dress no longer looked the same. It fit up top but now around my waist and bum was all this extra material. It would bunch up and look frompy. Totally changed the look of the dress, from sleek and hot to just not. When I was younger (my parents where much better planners than me)  they would buy me dresses for these conventions we use to go and even as a teen 14-16 my body was curvy so I would purchase a dress and then go to the tailor and have it tailored to fit me better so that it wasn't frumpy extra material. I could have done that here but now as a busy Mom, ain't nobody got time for that. I mean I could see doing it for a special occasion for sure but not for a party dress. So long story long I needed a new dress. I mean I kept it just in case to fall back on, but I really wasn't feeling it. So I took to online. A friend told me they had ordered  formal dresses on Amazon and I thought, why didn't I think of that? I literally order from Amazon Prime weekly. So here's what I did to find this dress. I went on Pinterest! Good ole addictive Pinterest. And I typed in the search bar "white cocktail dresses". And as I found ones I liked I clicked on the links. Forty dollars, sixty - nine dollars, fifty dollars not bad at all. The problem I was facing now though was time of shipping. I was under the gun for time and to ship faster was SO much more money I felt like it was a waste. Enter my trusty Amazon Prime to the rescue - 2 days and it's there like clockwork for no extra! So I found a dress I liked from Pinterest and I copied the description, brand etc and pasted it into Amazon search. Voila it was staring at me with that beautiful blue Amazon Prime check next to it AND it was $12. Yes for two five dollar bills, and two one dollar bills I could have this dress on my door in two days! I though what if it's crap? What if it fits weird? And then I thought its $12 and I don't like the fit of the dress I have so there's that. I clicked. Paid. And crossed my fingers! So here you have my final outfit, my $12 white party dress. Since I paid so little for the dress and it was really plain I knew I needed some good accessories and a new pair of sparkly shoes. The good thing about keeping the dress itself inexpensive is that you can complete the look and add more to it, since you saved so much money. The necklace was $5 look familiar? It's a white version of the pink one I had on with the romper. They were two for $10! Bracelet was $4.99 thank you Burlington coat factory. And sparkly shoes $20 on sale at Marshalls!

And last but certainly not least I guess that's outfit #6 - My new bikini! This is one area where I can't just walk into a store and buy any old bikini. I wish I could. But remember that whole top heavy situation. I can't put those puppies in just a $20 triangle top from target and expect to swim without some serious wardrobe malfunctions. I also can't just buy a "large top". I need cup sizes. I need wide bands. Sometimes under wire. Sometimes duct tape. Sweet lord these puppies need a miracle n the form of a breast reduction but that's a story for another day. Anyway I need the real deal for bikinis and Victoria's Secret never lets me down. And unlike these outfits or dresses that I may wear once or a handful of times at best, I LIVE in my bikinis all summer! So I don't mind spending a little more and I need something that will last. Let's put it this way I have this weird obsession with bikinis I keep them forever and like can't let them go. I buy two or three a year and this is so weird but they hold memories. Some certain bikinis for vacation that I can visualize what I did in them. And when I use to compete in fitness I did many a photo shoot in bikinis, so I literally look at them like keepsakes haha. My bikini photo shoot days are OVER but I still have a weird obsession with them. Last summer I gave my daughter one of my old bikinis and she loves it. That bikini was special to me because it was the one I wore for a photo shoot when my twins were 8 months old. See. memories... Weird I know. But again long story long I bought this new bikini at VS. I still got in on clearance because it wasn't a "vacation bikini" or a "victory I got into awesome shape bikini" it was a just because. I like the support the top gives. Love the scrunch on the booty and low rise (because I have long legs and a short torso I need that.) I liked the print and I liked the price. Top normally $39.99 on sale for $27.99 and the bottoms originally $19.99 on sale for $7.99! Yea please and done!

So 5 outfits with accessories and 2 new pair of shoes, a formal gown, AND a bikini for $226!! Ummmmmm I could have EASILY spent that on JUST the gown!

For me the most important part of an outfit is the color or print that makes me glow (the wrong color is horrible) and is it a good fit to compliment my body and make me feel comfortable? Because when you THINK you look good and you feel comfortable in an outfit you sell the outfit! It shows in your posture and how you dress it up! Accessories are key! And shoes (even though some were evil and painful for me this week). Always have a good base of a shoes (good nude, black, white) so that you can grab a new shoe when it's fun and to add some pop and spice! Listen to me talking like I know what the hell I'm taking about. I live in gym clothes. But the truth is I use to love to shop, and I do love feeling good and dressed nice! This was a nice little treat of a trip where I actually looked like an adult who has her shit together daily vs an extra on the walking dead chasing after her toddler who looked like she could be a baby gap model!

So what was your estimate on my outfits? Did I do good?