Summer Giveaway: All About Cute

We have another giveaway folks! And it's a good one... Especially if you are an Orla Kiely fan like me. The stylish online boutique All About Cute is offering up an Orla Kiely handbag to one lucky winner! (pictured above) If you are in the mood for a girly treat, All About Cute is the place to shop. The owner, Juli, has the most exquisite taste and her love of of color and pattern always inspires me.

More good news:
All About Cute has offered a secret coupon code to all superhero readers:
Just enter the code "summer" to get 40% off any item in the store!

A big thank you to Juli from All About Cute for being so generous!

Giveaway Guidelines:
-You have until 9pm PST on Friday, June 26th to enter this giveaway.
-Just make a comment ON THIS POST to enter.
-One entry per person, please. (Just push "post" ONCE and wait a few seconds. The comment should appear)

down with to-do*

My delicious Ben, not sleeping, Canon Digital Rebel XSi

I am a bit of a mess today. One of those mornings when you wake up with a start at 5am with your list of everything UNDONE in your life flashing before your eyes. This is rare for me, so I decided to get up and just get to work, hoping that getting some things under my belt would help relieve that feeling, but it didn't. As the coffee started to kick in and the emails began to mount, my to-do list kept growing.

And then I remembered. This was the precise feeling I had yesterday afternoon as I rocked Ben. It was one of those nap times where you are desperate for that child to sleep, and as you rock them you are thinking about all of the things you will accomplish while they nap. You count on those precious two hours to yourself, right? And then of course, after nearly an hour of trying to get them down, they are up officially, not sleeping, and now crabby because they are still tired.

In that moment of pure exhaustion and despair I realized the very bad news--I was never going to get enough done. There would always be more to do, I could always have done it better, and the idea that after x, y, and z was done I would feel satisfied, well that was never going to happen either. Because after that, I would notice what a disaster zone our house was, or that my site could really use a facelift, etc.

It is a neverending cycle.

I cried when I took that in. The gravity of that feeling of not enoughness hit me hard. If this is how I am going to live my life, I thought, then what's the point? There is no joy in this.

As I shared these thoughts with Matt this morning, he echoed my feelings. It seems we are all in need of a paradigm shift. He said something I really appreciate, "If we're not loving the process then what are we doing? It's not going to get better at the end of this list, because there is always another list. There is always going to be more so the trick is to love the tasks as much as possible." Which is another way of saying, let's love each moment as much as possible. I can see how simply doing what's in front of you, with as much mindfulness and joy as you can is a piece of the puzzle. Maybe we should trash our to-do lists and create some to-be lists instead.

I would love to hear your words of wisdom people.

.....
And the winner of the photo session from Thea Coughlin's is Shawn who said, "I must have vaulted from your blog to hers at some point and loved her pictures-images. so count me in...i'd love to get some great shots of family!!" Congratulations! Thea will email you soon.