Hannah Morrison

Levi’s Warehouse Sale

It doesn’t take long on my Liketoknow.it to see I have a go-to denim brand… hehe. Levi’s are my favorite affordable denim and what make up the majority of my pants rack in my closet. Now through Feb. 7th is their WAREHOUSE SALE. Y’all, we are talking my favorite jeans for as low as $21… SAY WHAAAAT. The Ribcage jeans are hands down my favorite pair of denim I own, and happen to also be the jeans my team calls The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Literally, two years ago at the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale, we all tried on the same pair of jeans *all different body types and heights!!* and they looked FREAKING KILLER on each of us. The Mile High Skinnies are my favorite dark skinny jeans I own, and they make me feel at least 5’7 … I am 5’2 😉

Shop my favorite picks below! 

Yogurt Cup Treat

Raise your hand if your post-holiday appetite is the worst… *raises all hands and feet* I find myself craving heavy foods (pizza, please), ice cream, chocolate… just, all of it. The way to combat the post-holiday cravings is to trick your brain! Sure, it’s no slice of pie, but these Berry Yogurt Cups do the trick and look/feel like a treat! They’re really fun for Knox, too, and will be great for Rory as we start doing more solids (we just started this week!).

Berry Yogurt Cups

1 cup Greek Yogurt

1 cup raspberries

2 tsp maple syrup

Sprinkles of choice

 

Blend all the ingredients together and pour into cups. Place in freezer until solid.

The end.

Difficult, huh? 😉 What healthy treats are you making right now? Bonus trick: Frosted grapes! Promise – they’re so good. Recipe here.

5 Favorite Things (that actually add value!)

Happy Thursday, y’all! Today is your day… I just know it. I am cheering you on. I know the last few days… months… year for all of us has been incredibly heavy. I hope you find hope in reminding yourself today that this world IS NOT OUR HOME. We have temporary angst here and will replace it with eternal life in a home that is free of … all the mess. Keep the faith. Keep loving others. Keep praying for peace in such unsettling times. You can’t control what’s happening in the world, but you can control what happens in your home, your heart, and your sphere of influence.

I am sharing 5 things I am loving right now that have brought something of significance to my life or routine lately. It’s fun to share my favorite new pair of shoes or jeans or whatever, but today I want to give you things that have truly helped a sista out lately hehe.

  1. Eat to Evolve Meals: WHOA, lunch just got easier. I gave them a shot and really love having some healthy lunches and breakfast in my fridge. Right now, Cadence is doing 21 days of fasting. Every year we kick off the new year with 21 days of prayer and fasting. We pray for vision, direction, and revelation. Paul is doing a Daniel Fast, which means no meats or sweets or … well, a lot of things. I am doing a fast from social media until 10 am everyday *for reference, I am usually up working around 6:30 AM every day and my job IS social media* and no alcohol/clean eating. These meals are categorized as Paleo/Keto/Whole30, and I just pop in the microwave for 90 seconds.
    **Join us in the fast! You can at any time. It can be a food fast or a soul fast. We really believe that in our weakness, God is made strong. When we step aside and remove distractions or vices, we are more in tune with the Lord. Fasting is key to prioritizing and hearing from God.**
  2. Make Life Beautiful: You guys, if you have an entrepreneur bone in your body… read this. I got the book hoping it’d be a design book for our home/I just like them so I figured maybe I would enjoy their book… Oh my gosh. I had to actually stop reading it before bed, because it fired up my creativity too much to sleep. I was waking up in the night with new ideas. I now enjoy reading it in the morning after my devotional to spark my creative juices for the day.
  3. Pumping Bra: Okay, listen, we all know I had a word or two to say about Elvie. I was thoroughly disappointed in my product and even more so by the customer service. BUT, before it broke on me… it was really nice to work hands free while pumping. This bra has helped significantly. I can work again while pumping (which is every 3-5 hours depending on let down still) as I exclusively pump.
  4. Vital Proteins Collagen: I shared about this on my stories last week and I am definitely including it on this list today. I use it every morning and my hair literally went from falling out by the clumps to … not. Literally within 24 hours I went from coming to terms wiht the fact I might need to wear a wig for a bit to hopeful my hair would grow back since it quit falling out.
  5. The Ordinary: This stuff is the real deal and only $10. I wash my face and apply a small dollop to my face for the day. I have also learned to SERIOUSLY stay far away from your eyes… haha. I think I accidentally got it on my lids by not washing my hands before applying moisturizer? Anyways, regardless of how it got there… it did. And my lids swelled up. But that’s on me lol. This stuff has brightened my skin and even my skin tone out significantly. And did I mention it’s ONLY $10!!! Do not spend $100 on a Vitamin C Serum. This one is fantastic.

Master Bedroom Plans

Inspo Photo: @caraloren

You know, as we have walked through this whole home building process, it’s been oddly tied to our life. Funny how the Lord lines things up to teach us with such intentionality. We’ve been looking at building for over a year. But God knew exactly what would be happening when we would finally say “yes” to the dream. We have watched our builders take a lumpy lot and flatten it to prepare a way for the home. You can’t have the second part without the first. They had to rearrange things and remove rocks to fit in pipes that were then covered under the surface but offer life to the whole home. Then, the concrete was poured and structure was built. Walls have been put in and soon the pretty fixtures I so carefully chose will be installed. We’ve had a front row seat to watching something that was once just a distant dream become a very tangible space we can walk in, slide down the hallway in, and make ourself right at home within.

Building a home has been a spiritual experience. That home we’ve poured our lives into for the last 9 months is woven so intricately with our life. And the concept is so with yours, too. The Lord is sweet to till the ground, relay the foundation, rebuild the walls, and make us beautiful over and over and over. There is no limit. I don’t know about you, but I can recall many times it felt as though I was back to ground 0 and begging for an architect to come in with a masterplan and make me over. Particularly in 2020. At my worst, my ugliest, and my most broken. And then without hesitation, the greatest architect swoops in for work again, clocking in with his tool belt on. Just in the last year alone, I have watched God realign perspective, adjust my heart, and refocus things.

All this to say, I am sharing our master bedroom ideas today. I am so excited about this space. It’s the pretty part. The stuff that comes in after everything seen *and unseen below the surface* is carefully assembled. I am excited to share my vision for the space and hopefully help you cast vision for your own homes as you look to redo, redesign, or maybe you, too, are building entirely from the ground up right now.

As you start your new year, scrolling on Instagram and seeing people share their goals or intentions circled so often around the “pretty stuff”, remember everybody has work they are carefully assembling and assessing within. All the pretty stuff is fun to look at and be inspired by, but don’t compare yourself or your circumstances to somebody else’s pretty stuff that they’re comfortable sharing. And likewise, stop judging people for not sharing “the junk.” I think social media gets a bad wrap sometimes for being a “highlight reel.” And in some ways, it is. But stop calling people out for being too curated or or not “authentic enough” because they aren’t sharing all the messy details on a platform for the whole world to know about. The truth is, not everybody is called to share their junk online for the world to hear about. Let’s let people be themselves without the pressure to share more or stop sharing so much… let’s just be in this together. Yeah?

The Vision:

The vision for our master bedroom is airy, natural wood, and a neutral space for us to build on seasonally and for the years to come. I hope to add white shiplap to the ceiling to make it feel even higher than it is! The process to making over this room will be slow, simply because if I did everything I wanted to all at once… it’d be a bit much haha. I will likely skip the new bed for a bit because I really do love the one we have right now and it’ll go great with our black iron arch door we are having put in for the master bathroom entry. These side tables below are a far more budget friendly version of the ones I initially found at Anthropologie (these). I couldn’t believe the price difference when I found them!

Goodbye, 2020

A year ago, I sat down and wrote my end of the year blog post reflecting on the past decade as we were entering into 2020 in just a couple of days (here). So many incredible milestones had passed, and as I sat 2 months pregnant with my now 2nd son and knowing that our dream of church planting was a very real conversation unfolding, I knew so many more were yet to come. I sat with expectancy, but also a bit of unease. I could feel God was preparing me for a life-altering year, which I thought would be a, b, and c. The things I had planned on. The things I had discussed. The things I had written out a plan for in my imaginary timeline of events that fit ever so perfectly together.

I have been as open as possible throughout this year and that it’s been, well, difficult. I established this space of the Internet with the intent of teetering the line of “too honest” for the sake of unity and cultivating a space of vulnerability, and yet I have literally found myself in so many scenarios that I literally couldn’t share about. It’s been incredibly hard for me. Whether because it wasn’t honoring to or it was simply not my story to tell, or -like discovering Rory was a boy and not the little girl I had thought God told me I was having- some things have simply taken me a long time to process. Many pieces of our story from the last year will never be told, and I am okay with that. But, I mean, truly, from NYE/New Year’s Day of 2020 when I found out I was so very wrong about what I thought God had spoken to me about the baby in my tummy, all the way to even today as I sit writing… this year has been the year of disappointment. (Or so it has seemed.) Seemingly every detail of our life has been blown up in some way or another. I mean, like, heart wrenching, nauseating, slamming the steering wheel screaming, gasping for breath in between tears disappointment. I have faced grief-filled months of waking up anxious, certain something new would surely pop up that day to cause more disappointment, all within the same months a new baby came to my family who brought me more joy than I could ever imagine. Joy and heartache aren’t separate -they can very much live in the same space- but navigating both at the same time is awfully confusing.

As I sat in the NICU with Rory, alone because COVID restrictions wouldn’t allow for both Paul and I with our baby once I was released as a patient, I would sing worship for hours weeping over … everything. Literally, everything ha. God had told me to name Rory, Rory Liam, because it meant “Protector King. And that through my pregnancy I was going to gain trust in God as our Protector King. And then, as I sat in the most uncomfortable rocking chair surely not designed with postpartum moms recovering with a 2nd degree tear in mind, I would ask God, “You are sure you see what is happening… right? Because, I mean, this is starting to feel a bit cruel if you do. If you’re our Protector King why the $%#$^ am I sitting here in the NICU with my son after everything we’ve been through?” I remember leaving the house one day to see Rory, telling my parents how mad I was. “It’s not supposed to be this way!” I wept in the kitchen wanting to throw glass or plates or something that would show how down right angry I was, not only about my child who for some reason wasn’t breathing on his own correctly, but the way everything in our life seemed to be going. It was exhausting. I was exhausted. My spirit was exhausted. My faith was running thin. How can I keep being “a good Christian” when I feel so angry about how seemingly unfair life appears right now?

I literally am weeping all over again writing this, because oh my gosh I see the fruit on the other side of our hurt. But, y’all, I am here to tell you I have felt seemingly betrayed by God before. I know the feeling. I know what it feels like to think “WHY ME? THIS MUST BE A JOKE.” I am also here to tell you, friend, that He is always working. He is always working on your behalf. Ugh, I know. When you’re in the middle of the storm, hearing phrases like that feels so silly. “Oh sure, He’s working for me… How kind of him to do… absolutely nothing I can see for a glimpse of hope today.” Mhmmm, I can write it out in confidence now, because I am healed from that season. Although, hear me when I say that recovery is a longer process than the initial healing. When you get a sport’s injury, the bone may be healed after time in a cast and it may grow easier to share about what happened when people ask without wanting to burst into tears. However, the physical therapy to keep fixing what was damaged takes longer. Often times you get to play back in the game, but see the PT for a good taping before the game. Let’s say I am in the PT phase hehe. But I am no stranger to feeling hopeless and cynical. And I am sure some of you have felt that before, too. Others of you may even feel exactly like that today as you read. Come. Sit a bit longer. Let me pass a virtual cup of coffee across the computer screen to you and encourage you. In some of my darkest days of 2020, I read the story of David and Saul. David was a man after God’s heart who saw confusing, treacherous days in between the word spoken and the promise fulfilled for his life. And yet, in face of adversity, David always chose honor and to trust God. It was like ointment on my wounds every day when I read what David did, and I saw the same fruit David received in our own life so tangibly every time we exchanged curses for blessing . With every ounce possible within us, we’ve fought to bless the spaces the devil has fought so hard to crush. When the pain and confusion of 2020 didn’t stop -with every new lockdown, every new personal trial, every new unknown that knocked on our door holding hands with our unwelcome friend, Heartache- I clung to the story of David.

When slander and lies came our way, God blessed us so abundantly in other areas of our life.

When we ached to have our baby boy home, He worked miracle after miracle inside the NICU for Rory.

When people we loved walked away, He blessed us ten-fold.

When we stepped out in faith over and over and over toward what we knew was for us, He blessed every step more than we could have asked, hoped or imagined.

God is so sweet. It has somehow worked out that in 2020, in the midst of such pain and confusion, I also experienced the nearness of God in ways I have never known in such a way until this year in desperate need. I have never needed to deeply know God the warrior like I did this year. I have never needed to know God the fierce protector like I did this year. And, it made me fall more in love with my God than I ever have before. This year, though I hope for one never again quite like it, I can say I am better for it. I can say my marriage is better for it. I can say my family has clearer vision for it.

If you are still in the thick of asking God if He sees what’s happening… I get it. Allow yourself to feel that. Allow yourself to be angry. BUT, surround yourself with people who see the good with you and for you when you don’t have the eyes for it. And, stay in scripture. If we don’t remind ourselves of truth consistently about God’s character… then it can be really easy to rewrite a narrative about it that is straight from the lips of the Devil. When Rory turned blue in my arms for the third time and had to be resuscitated, I so desperately wanted to throw a fist up to God. Peace out, man. You’ve clearly left us.

Community and scripture didn’t let me.

Renew your mind daily in truth. Water it, even in the middle of a drought. You gotta keep it fresh. And then, as you know I probably was going here… You will see how good it was. YEP. The sucky things of 2020… it’s for your good. God didn’t design crappy things to happen (don’t get that twisted). Sin in a broken world welcomed crappy things into God’s perfect design. But, God is the only thing or person capable of making crappy, good. I know it is true for you, too. I pray you can see it. I pray you can know it.

I am charging into 2021 with excitement. Not only because I want the heck out of 2020 (hehe) but also because I feel equipped. I feel prepared. I see the mountains ahead for us to climb and I can’t WAIT to do it. I truly believe more is to come that I could have ever dreamt, but it wouldn’t be appreciated if I hadn’t tiptoed on the floor of hell and back this year. You know what I mean?

So, friend. I see you. I see you exhausted after the insanity EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US faced this year. Literally, every single one of us. But man, I hope you can see the fruit of the struggle. I know I am grateful for it. Happy New Year, friend. I am believing the best is yet to come for you, too.

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