Samantha
Samantha is a native of small-town Southern Indiana who loves exploring the Circle City with her husband and their daughters, Kate (October 2011) and Isla (December 2015). After finishing a degree in Professional Writing at Purdue, Sam made her way to the greater Indianapolis area where she learned to embrace the lack of hills and abundance of interstate. After an 8-year career in business development and marketing, she’s taken a step back from the corporate world to focus on her own business – GrayGirl Designs – where she designs invitations, stationary, and business materials and offers marketing services, graphic design, and résumé writing. When she’s not trying to balance family and her business, she enjoys (in no particular order): Jazzercize, yoga, crafting, horseback riding, way too much coffee, and hiking. Sam is also a melanoma survivor and a passionate advocate of skin cancer and sun safety education and awareness.
The Beauty of Letting Myself Go
I’ve always been a bit ‘high-maintenance’, I suppose. I don’t like to admit it, but it’s the truth. I like clothes and fashion. And make-up and shoes. We didn’t grow up with a lot...
Labor, Delivery, and My (Anti) Birth Plan
During my first pregnancy, my husband and I signed up for a generalized childbirth class that our hospital offered. It took place over the course of a few weeks and gave us the ins...
Social Media and Births: Please Don’t Introduce Baby Before I Do
Every once in a while I hear about a post on Facebook where an over-eager friend or family member has made a birth announcement and/or shared photos of a new baby before the parents...
Pregnancy: The Good, The Bad, The Weird (But Mostly the Weird)
At just a few days shy of 30 weeks pregnant, I’m positive that I’ve hit my Don’t Give A @!$# Phase. I remember having a pretty strong one during my first pregnancy around the...
Sweating it Out: Life with Hyperhidrosis
I’ve been trying to hide something from everyone – very literally everyone – for my entire life, but I’m finally ready to just come out with it.
I have hyperhidrosis.
When I confess this to...
Maternity Leave Is Not A Vacation {What It Actually Did For Me}
In the six months that I’ve been pregnant with our second daughter, I’ve been asked approximately 500 times if I’ll be returning back to work after the baby is born. In the same six...
Knowing Better {Prepping For Baby #2}
You know that diaper commercial where the new mom is making guests bathe in hand sanitizer and is using a nursing cover and doing all the ‘right’ new mom things? And then it shows...
Potty Training Hell: Public Restrooms
Admittedly, I’m not a bodily fluids kinda girl. I’m easily grossed out and a sympathetic puker. Public restrooms are my own personal kind of hell. The smells. The water on the floor (or is...
Navigating The Circle City :: An Idiot’s Guide to Driving in Indy
Don't worry dear readers – the idiot I'm referring to in the title of this post is me. I have such a knack for getting lost that it's gained me quite the reputation. In...
Safety First :: Staying Sun Safe All Year
Early in May, I wrote about surviving melanoma and how it affected me. Well, one way in which it changed me probably goes without saying – I am now ‘THAT WOMAN’ with sunscreen always...
Quick and Easy :: 5 Summer Recipes for All Occasions
My husband and I both work outside of the home, so admittedly, dinners at our house can be a little lazy. We leave the house at 7 a.m., and by the time we make...
Outrunning the Sun: Surviving Melanoma
My skin cancer story started in elementary school. Coming out of summer vacation, my under 10-year-old self was suddenly very cognizant of the other girls comparing their tan lines. Tan lines that I did...
Anxiously Alive: Learning to Stay Afloat with Anxiety
I’m naturally a very anxious person – the type of person who replays scenes in my head from ten years ago and re-dies with embarrassment. I imagine the worst possible scenario in everything. I...
The Year of the Threenager
Pre-children, when my husband and I were still in our getting a solid 10+ hours of sleep phase, we wanted four kids, minimum. Preferably five. We even had names picked out. Less than two and...