 Good morning everybody, welcome back to another vlog. It is a little Valentine's Day special today because Alex and I are meeting up and we're getting more doctors, so excited. I'm actually running a little late, as per usual. I was actually early and then Drew and I started chatting and then I got caught up. So anyway, it is about just before 10.30 and we're meeting at a coffee shop at 11. It takes me about 30 minutes or a little less to get there, so we should be fine. I'll show you my outfit the day before we go. So here we have it. I have this denim jacket. I got this from a vintage shop, I think on Melrose maybe five years ago, something like that. It's a little more snug than it used to be but I still think it's cute and then I just have my Uniqlo black tank top because I need to have my arms accessible, hint hint. And then I have this thrifted skirt. I think this is actually from New Look but I got it on Thread Up and it's very, very cute. And then we have my thrifted cowboy boots, as per usual. So that is today's look. We were gonna head downtown, actually. We're going to the same tattoo artist that we saw back in August for Alexa's birthday and we're getting more tattoos together so it's very exciting. I think I know what I'm getting. I'm almost 99% sure. I just don't know if I'm getting something else and I don't really know where I'm getting it yet but that's just kind of how I do things. I just pick it and then we go from there. So anyway, let's go get tattooed. It's later now, it is Thursday and I have quite a busy day ahead of me. I just like, I was exhausted when I got home on Tuesday. I just simply run out of energy so easily these days. I don't know what it is. I just like, if I'm social for like a couple of hours or if I do anything, I'm like on the couch the rest of day. Also, I started my period and I just knew that was happening and so I think that had a lot to do with it. But anyways, tattoo is beautiful. I love it. It's looking so cute. I need to get like a proper picture of it. Maybe I can do that today, but it's adorable. It's a little bow. The tattoo artist that Alexa and I went to pretty much only does flash tattoos so we like love her style. So this is so cute. I decided, well, actually it looks kind of like it's like losing a little bit underneath. I can't take this thing off until, I think I can take it off around tomorrow. I think you should wait like three to four days, four to five days, something like that. I usually wait about three because it starts getting a little like gross from the ends because of like clothes and stuff. But it's a little bow and I got it for myself because it reminded me, tattoos don't have to mean anything by the way, I just assign little things to each tattoo and the reason that I wanted to get this is because it just like for me, this year is really about prioritizing myself and doing things for myself and also reconnecting with my younger self. And so like this little bow is just like to me, little me, it's like a little signifier of little me, a reminder to always take care of little me, that kind of thing, so love that. And then that's my second tattoo that I've gotten from that artist. She's the same one who did this tattoo for me back in August. So that one is like another one of her flash tattoos, but that I kind of just decided it was like for me and Layla and then the day after, the day after I got this, yeah, the day after I got this tattoo, Layla passed away. So kind of crazy. So yeah, that was really nice. I was super glad to have that time with Alexa. It's never enough time. We don't live close enough and we have to like kind of plan it like for traffic and stuff and it's just never enough time. Love that girl. So anyway, I just finished my walk for the day. I don't know. I just thought I would prove it by showing my shoes, but I need to get in the shower. I'm only supposed to do like light exercise until this heals up. It's a super fine line tattoo, so it's not that big of a deal. It's definitely not gonna take a super long time to heal, but just, you know, airing on the side of caution. Every tattoo artist is different and stuff, but yesterday was Valentine's Day. It was lovely. Got some work done during the day and I was just like not well yesterday. It was like the worst day of my period. So I was pretty much just couch-ridden all day, but Drew ordered me some like beautiful flowers, some roses and then cooked me dinner and we just like chilled on the couch, watched our shows. Amazing. Lovely. 10 out of 10 Valentine's Day. Honestly, that's all I could ask for. And then I got this package, which is perfect timing. This is from my friend Robin or midsize millennial on Instagram and she created this kind of like Etsy shop, small business called Slow Hands Society. And of course I placed an order. This is not like gifted or sponsored or anything like that. I just wanted to show some support. So this is basically like a DIY embroidery kit, which I thought was so, so cute. So she wrote a note that said to Carrie, thank you so much for supporting Slow Hands. I hope you enjoy lots of mindful moments doing your embroidery. Can't wait to see your creation and hear your thoughts on the kits. Love Robin. That's so nice. So basically it's just this cute little kit that comes with everything you need to create a little embroidery thing. So it comes with your little wheel loom. What is this called? I'm so sorry. So unfamiliar, but it comes with all the little pieces. It has your guide in here. It shows you all the different like stitches you can do. This is just such a clever idea. This is such a clever idea. It comes with your needle, with the thread that you need, with your little design, which of course I got cherries. Like how cute is that? I'm definitely gonna hang it on my wall in here. And it's just like so tiny and adorable. And this is what it's gonna look like. And you guys know I've been really interested in just trying to do more things with my hands. And so this is great. I'm so so excited about this. I'm just gonna like do this while I watch a show or put a movie on or whatever. And I'm very excited. So I wanted to share in case you were interested in that too. She has some really cute ones too. There's like cowboy boots. There's a couple to choose from. So definitely looking forward to that. But yeah, I need to jump in the shower and then I need to get ready because I got a lot of stuff to do. Because as always, I'm burning it at both ends. And I'm very busy, so let's do it. All right, it's a little while later and I'm just getting ready and doing my hair. And so I thought because this was literally like probably a month ago on Instagram, I asked you all to ask me some questions for a little catch up vlog and catch up vlog, catch up vlog. And then I never got around to it. So I figured I've got some time. Why not? Let's try to multitask a little bit. I am so over my bangs. So I'm gonna decide at the very end if I wanna like pin them back or get the dicing out and like do them or whatever. But my hair did air dry last night. So we're gonna try to tame it the best we can. But yeah, I screenshotted a few questions, like commonly asked questions, ones that seemed fun and I thought we could catch up. So let's do it. But first let's get started on my hair. And yes, I am straightening my ends for the people who really get upset about that. Here you go. Here's me straightening my ends just for you. People genuinely get mad that I straighten the ends of my hair. Relax. Okay, starting off, a lot of the questions said, how are you? Which I thought was so kind and sweet to ask. And I'm doing okay, you know? I kind of opened up about grief in a recent video and just sort of what I've been going through with that and maybe experiencing a little bit of like delayed grief or something. I'm not sure. I'm doing okay. I've actually been going through a little bit of a, I don't even know what you would call it. I'm like calling it a metamorphosis. I just feel like a shift is happening in my life for some reason. It sort of has started like after turning 36. But I just feel a lot of things changing in my life. Like I feel like my interests are shifting. I feel like I'm becoming more aware of like what people are contributing to my life and what they aren't type of thing, like in friendships and it's all good things though. Like I've found myself just being weirdly like, I don't know, I've had this like aversion to alcohol and drinking. I've just been very focused on like my sort of goals and like my health and all that kind of stuff. It feels really good. I've just been feeling more authentic than ever. Also just questioning a lot of things in my life. Like I've been taking much more of a sort of lean towards financial responsibility and just like not wasting my money on dumb stuff. And I don't know. It's an ongoing thing for sure. And I think this is all good. I think that like when things shift, it's like, you know, you're going towards your better self. You're going towards bigger things in your life or better things in your life or whatever. But yeah, I feel just like a change happening. I don't know, very strange, but like a welcome to change. There's a lot more stuff. I have like a note on my phone. More than anything, I've just had like a really, really strong desire to like stay in my own lane. Like do my own thing, be my most authentic self, which like I always do, but I do think I get influenced by things from time to time. And yeah, I don't know. It's just kind of a thing that I'm going through. It's hard to explain, but I just feel, feel a change happening. The next most common question that like, I understand where it's coming from, but I get asked this question like multiple, multiple times per Q and A and it's like, will you get another pet? And the answer to that right now is no. It's totally different for everyone and everyone has their own preferences and their own healing and how they deal with things and since losing both of our pets like a month apart, it really just like rocked our world and Loki traumatized us, especially because we don't have, like they were our kids, you know? And for me anyway, I've heard people say that pets give you like a many of the best days of your life and one of the worst. And I mean, the day Layla died was probably one of the worst days of my life, if not the worst. And yeah, I just don't wanna go through that again. Also the other aspect of it, there's the pain, you know, grief part, but there's also the part of it, I just kicked my squatty pie. There's also the part of it that is like, I'm really enjoying not having that big responsibility at the moment. Just like being able to go out of the house and leave all day long and not plan it around like when I have to let the dog out or when I travel like, oh, I have to have someone to feed my cat and give him the correct medicine and all that kind of stuff. Like I just want to enjoy not having that responsibility because I've had Layla since I was 23 and she died when I was 35. So like literally every single day of my entire life from when I was 23 to 35 was revolved around her and I don't, I don't know, I'm just now getting a taste of like what that looks like to not have that responsibility. And although I would obviously much rather her still be here, now that we're in this situation, we're just trying to see where it takes us. So for now, we have zero desire to get more pets for both grief reasons and just like the fact that we don't want them right now. How do you motivate yourself to go on hikes, workout at home, et cetera? Honestly, I don't motivate myself, I just do it. Like it's not really about motivation and I've seen people talk about this before and I thought that I talked about it in one of my joyful movement videos but I don't think I did, I don't remember. But basically the thing that has been my driving force this year has been discipline over motivation. If you wait for motivation to come, you're never gonna work out honestly. Most days I don't really have the motivation but then after I have the discipline to do it and I just force myself to do it, I feel incredible. So it's sort of just about finding the discipline over the motivation. I think that's what's made such a difference for me this year and like why I'm really stuck with it is because I just do it. It's just a part of my routine. I do it whether I want to or not. Some days I really want to. Some days I'm like, oh yes, I'm looking forward to this. This morning I was like, yes, I can't wait to go on my walk, things like that. That's been the biggest game changer for me is just relying on discipline because motivation is gonna come and go but you have to be able to rely on your discipline to be able to get it done. Will you be trying the curly girl method? After the story you posted, I'd be intrigued to see. I think I also talked about it in vlogs. I feel like I might have a slight like wavy texture to my hair but I don't, like I don't know. When I tried the curly girl method, I tried the whole like conditioning it in the shower, using the soul fate free shampoo, like combing it while you're in the shower, getting out of the shower while it's still like soaking wet, not brushing it, doing the curl cream, doing the blah, blah, blah, like I did the method. It took my hair 10 hours to dry, 10 hours. I don't have that time. I don't know who does. And that was like no towel, no t-shirt, literally just my hair air drying. And it looked like, it looked terrible afterwards and I just had so much product in it and like, mm, it just didn't look good. So I don't know, it may be something that I continue to like work on over the years because the underneath layer looked great. Like I had like actual little ringlets but on top it was like still kind of straight and like ugly. Why won't this piece of hair curl? I wish I had taken a picture so I could show just like how tragic it was because it really was not cute like at all. So I ended up just washing it the next day but it takes my hair like an insanely long time to dry. Like I'm talking, my hair was wet for literally 10 hours. Like I don't know who has time for that. I think that's for the girlies whose hair dries really quickly, but it's not for me. And I could do like diffuser thing but even like blow drying my hair with cold air would take like two hours. It's just simply not worth it. So I don't know. We'll see what happens in the future but for now that's not gonna be a thing for me. I don't think. As per usual I got quite a few questions based around like are you moving? When are you moving? Where are you moving? Have you decided if you're gonna buy a house? Have you decided if you're gonna stay in your apartment? Have you decided if you're gonna go somewhere else? We have not decided. I feel like I'm back in the same boat that I was two years ago or a little over two years ago. We actually almost bought a different house in Arizona like two years ago almost exactly. We almost bought Drew's childhood house but it wasn't the right situation. It ended up just not working out so we didn't. It just wasn't like the perfect situation for us but then it's just kind of been in the back of my mind ever since there are so many, so many factors that like make me really, really wanna buy a house. Like I'm definitely in my head in like a very I wanna buy a house type of phase at the moment but there's also that other side that's just so much responsibility. Things can go wrong, things can break. It's very, very expensive so I don't know. If we were to buy a house that obviously would not be something that we would be doing in California or at least anywhere in Southern California that we want to live and we don't wanna just move somewhere in the middle of nowhere just to buy a house. Like we would just move back to Arizona and buy a house but then it's like are we ready to move back to Arizona type of thing? We don't really know. We always said moving back to LA that we would just kind of be like an open ended thing. We would just sort of see what happens and go with the flow and if we're here for a year or two and go back then that's fine. But we can't keep doing this like back and forth thing obviously and we love living in LA. Like we truly love living here. It's beautiful weather. It's so much, there's so much to do. There's so many people that I love that live here. There's so much culture, there's so much food. There's amazing coffee shops, things to do on weekends, beautiful hikes, like so many amazing things that exist a little bit in Arizona but it makes it harder with the weather. Like with it being so hot for like five, six months out of the year. It's like you can't do those things and yeah, we're just kind of, we're trying to figure that out. I wish I could give you an answer. We truly have no idea what we want to do. I will say we're much, much, much more leaning towards like staying here and either finding an apartment that has like better rent or moving to an area like Orange County or something like that where we can get a little bit more for our money because currently we're living in an apartment surrounded by like a bajillion other apartments and it's really loud, it's really expensive. Obviously you're living in a city and we don't feel like we necessarily need to live in like the heart of the city but we also love this area, it's super walkable and there's just like so much to do but this current apartment is no longer in our budget. Like it's, I know I keep saying that but it is like, it is shocking how high the rent is for this place and how much they're going to raise it and so I don't know, sometimes I'm just having a brain dump here. Sometimes when I think, when Drew and I talk and we think about what we could afford in Arizona for this much, it's like, it's a massive like five bedroom, two story house with a two or three car garage and a huge backyard and a pool and we're like paying that to live in an apartment but also you pay a lot to live in a big city because it's a big city, there's so much to do, it's beautiful, et cetera. So this is nothing against LA, I freaking love LA, I just don't know how sustainable it is to live here long term just because of how expensive it is and we could down size, we could move into like a one bedroom apartment with like no washer and dryer, no dishwasher, no parking, no central air, things like that but those are just like amenities that are kind of non-negotiables because we've like had them for so long that if we didn't have them anymore it would just be kind of like annoying. So yeah, I'll probably talk about it more in a future vlog, I'm sure I've forgotten to say a bunch of things but those are kind of the highlights of like where that's where our thought process has been but ultimately it's gonna be a decision that we just have to make and stick with and I'm kind of cool living wherever like I've moved so, so much in my life. That's another thing is people really get like opinionated and very like mad that I've moved so much in the last several years and that's just normal for me. I think throughout most of my 20s I moved a lot and I personally love it. I moved a lot in my childhood as well just like with my parents getting divorced or like moving into a new house or whatever. That's just what I'm used to and Drew's just like along for the ride, he does not mind at all. So it's just kind of like what we've chosen to do and it's really fun and we've experienced a lot of different places but yeah there is that sort of like voice in my head where it's like is it time to go somewhere, buy a house, put some roots down. My freaking Roman empire is like where I'm gonna live, where I'm gonna end up and also if I'm gonna have kids or not. It's likely no but I do still think about it and it's something that Drew and I talk about and yeah it's just, there's just a lot to think about but yeah for now we're here, we're in this apartment until like around June and we're just gonna figure it out. So we'll see what happens, that was a very long answer. Hope you don't mind the chattiness but we'll see what happens. We'll see where we end up. Feel free to leave your thoughts and comments down below. I've got a lot of questions about SIBO. Someone said I'm newly diagnosed with SIBO, do you have any tips? I'm struggling to live balanced with a cry face emoji. Honestly I wish I could give you some tips like I'm really struggling to, I'm trying to do sort of like an elimination thing at the moment where like I'm seeing if it's gluten, I'm seeing if it's vegetables, I'm seeing all the different things. So right now I'm just kind of trying to figure that out but it's tough. It's really, really tough and I feel like it's just getting worse as time goes on honestly. So I would really love to also figure it out and a lot of the sort of methods for curing SIBO are like these really intense antibiotics which I've done, they don't really do anything. So we're trying to figure it out. I love this question. I can't remember if I've answered this before or not but this is something like Alexa and I talk about all the time and the question says if you made another genre of content other than what you currently make, what would it be? I think I would make ASMR videos. Like not the like mouth sound but like the just sort of, I don't know, like chill, tapping and like bag crinkling and all that. I love that kind of stuff. I totally, I'm like an iPad kid when I watch ASMR content. Like I just love it. I think it's so fascinating. I first discovered ASMR probably in like 2011 or 12 or something like that. Like I've been watching it forever and I freaking love watching it but I'm so picky about like, I don't know, I can't do the whispering or the mouth sounds. Like I will actually lose my mind. So maybe someday we'll see but right now I'm currently, I'm pretty busy. Okay, I'm real quick going to wet my bangs and wet them a little bit. We'll try to dry them all. You know what? That'll do, that'll be just fine. I just need to fix like a couple little pieces but there we have it. I mean, definitely not bad. It's super cute once it's styled. It's just like kind of a pain in the ass. I knew that going into this but I was determined. Okay, we'll answer a couple more and then I've gotta head off the door. Did you ever have a designer items slash goods phase? I'm so curious. No, I actually never did. I have, well, I guess in high school I was really into the idea. I was like super into Laguna Beach and all of the girlies on Laguna Beach had talked about their like Christian Dior shoes and bags and I bought like a fake one on Etsy or on eBay I mean. Actually, I think my high school boyfriend bought it for me for Christmas and like I was obsessed with that thing. I think I even thought it was real at first and then I realized it wasn't or something like that. And then I think I wanted like a pair of Chanel sunglasses I wanna say like right around that same time, like 2007-ish but I never ended up getting them. And yeah, I'm not a designer girl. It's just not what interests me. I'm like, I like shopping at Target. I don't know, that's like my ideal situation or like the thrift store. I would totally thrift something designer, have no problem with that. I found like one time at a state sale I found a pair of designer sunglasses but they were really scratched up and they were asking like a ton of money for them. So I kind of just was like, yeah, just not really my thing. No hate, no judgment. Just I would never spend my money on that. If thrifting wasn't an option, where would you buy most of your clothes? Interesting. Probably like Target, Old Navy, H&M, places like that. Like places that I do shop at sparingly cause I just try to shop secondhand whenever I can. But I mean, yeah, I still love those places. I feel like Old Navy is like my go-to these days just because of how size inclusive it is and I feel comfortable like recommending it to anyone. So those are probably like my top three, Target, Old Navy and H&M. And the last question I will answer is what would your dream home look like? My dream home would probably look like a cottage in the English countryside, but like in the US. Old like grandma's cottage type of vibes is really what I'd be into. Drew said he wants his home to look like it's haunted by like a Victorian ghost and I could not agree more, I love it. We're very into like dark academia stuff, kind of cottagey, kitschy stuff, very sort of like vintage aesthetic, et cetera. So that's kind of what we're into, but it would just be like tons of gallery walls and like ornate like frames and really, really cool vintage pieces like Tiffany lamps and dark walls and like wallpaper. And I mean, I will have it someday. It's just a matter of when type of thing. But yeah, I mean, I just like love old things. I love nostalgic things. I like the coziness of it. And I just am not a like super modern type of girly. I love like this type of aesthetic, but like a lot more of it, kind of maximalist, but like vintage maximalist, the antique maximalist. I guess that's what you could call it. So anyways, here is how I'm kind of like styling my hair at the moment. I did it way longer than I normally would have because I was just like hanging out with you guys, but I appreciate you being here for this vlog. Thanks for coming along with me to get this cute little tattoo. I freaking love it. And I hope you guys had a good Valentine's Day, whether you celebrate it with a partner, a family member, yourself, your pet, whoever. I hope you showed yourself some love because you freaking deserve it. I was just talking for so long that my camera cut me off. My camera was like, you're done. Like taking the mic away from you, goodbye. So anyway, this is long enough. I will see you very soon in the next vlog. Bye.