I'm sitting here on my couch in my sleepy little house staring at the Christmas tree that is longing to be decorated. The sun is beaming in through the slits of the bamboo blinds, illuminating the boxes in the corner that need to be sorted and put away.

It's a big deal for me to be on the couch. In the last year and a half I have primarily resided in my bed. When we were living with Dustin's grandmother and caring for her my only place to get away was our room and even though we had a desk, I didn't like to sit in it. Rather I would recline in bed for hours on end working and watching shows. I truly think it added to my depression. Living with her was a blessing for all of us but being secluded in that room, although my choice, only added to the demise of my mental state.

Already in the time that I have spent in our new home I've decorated, done laundry and household chores daily, cooked for the first time in months and you know? I feel good.

Chores have always been the bane of my existence but now that I'm in my own space and it's mine to care for, I want to care for it well. I am motivated to dance around the house and listen to my music as loud as I want to. I have no inhibitions because I'm finally allowed to focus on myself and let loose.

I've been asked several times by several different people how I managed this last year and a half. We were only originally going to stay with her for a few months but that quickly turned into longer. In a way we sacrificed a lot- our first year of marriage. The year when you're supposed to be getting to know each other on a deeper level and working out the kinks and quirks of your relationship. That first year where intimacy is supposed to be your top priority and dancing naked in the kitchen shouldn't be an issue.

Now obviously we made it work, I mean, we're having a baby any day now. But I often wonder what moments we missed out on because of our choice. On the flip side, I can positively say that we gained so many beautiful moments that we wouldn't have had otherwise. We learned to cherish the nights when it was just us up at the house. We got to learn about what it means to have a strong marriage through a grieving widow. We became more grounded because we couldn't just storm off and sleep on the couch, we had to work through our issues and handle things much more cordially than we would have if we were on our own. We got to have a relationship with his grandmother that we wouldn't have had if we hadn't been living with her, one I will cherish forever.

It's easy to think that we missed our first year of marriage but I think in a lot of ways we gained much more than we lost. In fact I think what we learned through that time period is only making having our own space and treasuring these last few weeks, just the two of us, even sweeter.

I believe that God truly blessed us by leading us through the rocky moments and allowing us to be in a situation that was uncomfortable. We learned things this last year that I know some married couples in their 40's still haven't learned. That's a blessing to me.

It's my desire for my marriage that I make it to the end, when death bids us a temporary goodbye, feeling like we made the best of it. I don't want to look back and regret the way that we spoke to each other, the way that we acted towards one another and all of the moments we didn't take advantage of. Even in the worst and the hardest moments I want us to remain a team and learn how to problem solve. I want us to end our spats closer than we were before, laughing and clinging to one another.

I get choked up writing this because I realize how truly happy we are right now. Even in the stressful moments we've managed to get there. The things I want for our marriage aren't actually all that far off. We're living them now and it keeps getting better and better everyday. The hard moments don't equal out the good ones, they're few and far between. Even when we're frustrated with one another we have this mindset that if it's not going to matter in six months or a year or even five minutes, we need to let it go. We never know when our last moment together will be and so we want to make the most out of each one we have.

I struggle with that sometimes and it's easy for me to get grumpy and moody. Especially with my crazy hormones right now it's easy for me to loose my cool and want to flip out. But Dustin is right there to ground me and pull me back to earth. He has his moments and I do the same for him, but at least we're self aware and genuinely work on it to better ourselves and our marriage.

It's easy to focus on “what we ain't got” (Jake Owens song) but it's more fulfilling when you focus on what you do have. Sure, there's areas in our marriage that we want to be stronger and more fluid. There's moments that we feel like we missed out on or that we didn't make the best out of. But if we spend more time focusing on our regrets than what we do accomplish, we're going to have more regrets. It's inevitable. Where we put our energy matters and I don't want to get to the end and realize that our marriage reaped more negative fruits than positive.

We may be just now stepping out on our own, with only a few weeks left until we add our little one, but we are deeply blessed. We are blessed because we have God leading us and because we have each other.

I encourage you today to focus not on what is lacking in your relationship but on what is good. It's easy to get off focus and think that everything is going down the drain, but I'm sure if you look closely and pull back the complaint curtain you'll see what you saw in the beginning when you were first falling in love.

Love and be loved,

xoxo – Ry

Hey ya'll! Today is a very special day. It is our beloved Gord & Lee's wedding anniversary!

Gord reached out to me a few weeks ago and requested that I sing their wedding song, “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri. I couldn't turn that down as I just adore this couple and wanted them to feel extra loved today.

https://cinnamon.video/watch?v=434108138308765545

I hope ya'll enjoy it, the set up is a bit rough since we were in the process of moving when I recorded it, but I really wanted to get it done.

Be sure to wish this sweet couple a happy anniversary on Twitter, they deserve it!

@xrpgord

@MommaLeeLee

xoxo – Ry

No, I'm not talking about Only Fans, calm down. I'm not talking about putting hours and hours into ad collaborations on Instagram with companies I don't really love either. I'm talking I simply showed up, posted a raw selfie with a message that was on my heart that day and clicked “post”. That's it.

What is this sorcery I speak of?

gFam.live

Also known as Global Family, which I've talked about in depth before...

A Guide For Posting On gFam

My Top Content Strategy For Coil, gFam & Beyond

For those of you who haven't heard of gFam it is a new social media platform that is Blockchain powered with Coil and Xumm.

The basic premise is that you should be able to make money off of YOUR content without selling out to every company that wants to throw you some product and a few dollars. In addition to that they believe that you, not the platforms, should be making money off of YOUR content. See that pattern? It's your content.

I think a lot of us underestimate our worth when it comes to the content we put out. For some reason we think that our words, our ideas, our thoughts- they're not worth anything. When in all reality, they're worth so much more than we could imagine. They are worth someone else's inspiration stemming from your perspective, your time (Gord's post is great!) and your life experience- that's invaluable. Although you can't put a real price tag on it, we still should commend one another for our efforts and in the same way you couldn't put a price on a musician but you can tip them, you should be able to tip all sorts of creators regardless of their proximity to you. This is where gFam comes in. A global family that is united by the great thing called the internet paired with the innovation of blockchain technology.

gFam desires to empower us to take back ownership of our content and to not only acknowledge that but OWN it by posting it in a place that encourages users to tip for that content.

It's a little odd, yes, because why would you “tip” content that you could get similarly for free on other platforms? I guess that depends on your definition of free.

Free, or at least “internet free”, is a facade. It's not free. That content is coming at the price of your information which is being sold to ad companies for a fairly high price. Your identity, time, and information is in a way, being trafficked to make a lot of money for a lot of people that aren't you. Sure we give our consent when we click “Agree” on that terms and conditions box but really, is it informed consent when it's in micro print and 18 pages long? I would argue that there is a better way.

With that being known, if you care about your information and your privacy I encourage you to consider the innovation of this new platform. You are back in control and the reigns are in your hands. You choose who you tip to show them your appreciation for the value they brought to your life, but you're never forced. You have the ability to enjoy content without being bombarded by ads and having your information collected and sold right under nose. You have the ability to make a little bit of money simply by showing up and sharing your thoughts. Isn't that amazing?

Maybe you're not sold yet, and that's okay, it's a new concept that you have to get used to since you may still be sitting in shock realizing that the free internet that you've grown to know and love isn't actually free.

So let's talk about how much I've made since that's obviously why you're here.

On gFam, as of now, you get paid via Xumm using XRP. You quickly choose how much you want to tip on the gFam platform, confirm the transaction with Xumm and then it's sent instantly to the recipient. That money then stays in their Xumm account until they decide what to do with it.

Dustin and I choose to save most of our XRP, depending on where we get it from, we have a whole system set up. When it comes to gFam I wanted to track how much I could make so I haven't touched any of it since I started other than to tip others. I do love that I can easily take what I've earned and pour it back into the ecosystem without having to transfer a bunch of money every which way, blockchain for the win once again. This number isn't an exact precise number because I have tipped out people on the platform from my earnings and obviously the price of XRP fluctuates but as of Sunday, October 18th at 4:33 pm CST I have made $159.21.

657.93 XRP x 0.242 (10/18/2020 4:33pm CST price) = $159.219

From the tips I added up I've tipped an additional $10+ which brings my total to around $170, give or take a little.

I will say that I haven't spent as much time on the platform as I would have liked to these past few months which is why I haven't tipped a whole ton, but I've still engaged through comments and sharing the platform when I can. (Give this pregnant, moving, busy woman a little bit of grace. 😘)

So, let's break this down with a little comparison..

I've spent years on Instagram and have posted 706 posts. I've gotten a bunch of “free” but seriously crappy product from my wannabe influencer days a few years back but other than that I've made $0. In fact, I've probably lost money on outfits, coffee, my time and other props for my content. This is hours of content creation for zilch.

gFam on the other hand, I've been on since it launched and I've posted 28 times and made $170. That's roughly $6 a post which each take a max of 10 minutes of my time. With that rate I am making $0.60 a minute, which is roughly $36 an hour. That's pretty good considering that if I'd be posting that same content, taking the same time on Instagram I'd be making $0 and they'd be making no telling how much.

To some of you, that may not feel like much, but that's a pretty good deal considering the latter. Still, I understand your hesitation in wanting to actually participate, so let's take that even another step further.

Right now there aren't a ton of users on gFam, last month it was around 200. Obviously this isn't even taking into consideration other months, but think if we got double, triple or even quadruple that number of users on the platform, we still wouldn't even be touching the possibility. Let's say we got 1,000 users on the platform and 1 out of 5 users tipped me just a half an XRP, for 10 minutes of work on one post I'd make right around $25 a post (at current XRP price).

Now that's a generous example given that not even 1/5 of users tip me on a post now, but as popularity on a platform increases, more people are likely to use it. It's also a rough example because some people like to tip 1, 2, or even 5-10 XRP per post, it fluctuates. That being said, don't expect half-assed content to be overly rewarded, if it's rewarded at all.

Now that my head is spinning from all this math (please don't hesitate to correct me as math is not my strongest subject) I'd like to propose a question to you.

Do you like the way the internet works right now or do you think the system needs to change?

Let me follow that up with an additional question..

Do you feel comfortable knowing that your data, your information and your life is being profited on by multi-billion dollar companies who then turn around and do things with that money that you have no say in?

I'm not going to tell you how I feel because if you've made it this far, you probably know how I feel or at least have a good idea.

It may feel uncomfortable to start using other platforms, telling your friends about a new platform, and paying for content (shoutout to Coil for that $5 all-inclusive subscription 😉) but if we want things to change, we need to start somewhere.

Right now things are a little slow going and some days are better than others on gFam, but honestly, what platform isn't that way? At least with gFam I'm not competing for algorithm space and ads every other post. At least with gFam I know I'm supporting a platform that has integrity and isn't selling me off to the highest bidder. At least with gFam I know I'm supporting hard working individuals and reminding them that their voice matters and when I really love their content I tip them to empower them to continue creating. It's been a really beautiful and empowering experience for me, to say the least.

At the end of my life money isn't the most important thing, but it does matter. For me, gFam embodies the best of community while also ensuring that I can keep showing up by compensating me for my time and efforts, it's a great balance.

I truly encourage you to try out gFam. Try posting, try engaging and try out the tipping feature! It's really fun to send off money and to see it come in. As of right now there isn't an app but you can bookmark it on your phone or computer and access it just as easily as you would an app- no excuses.

Let me know if you have any questions about my experience on Twitter and seriously, if you need anything, reach out to the gFam Twitter account, they're the best!

Here's to getting social and creating while also maintaining our privacy!

xoxo – Ry

If you missed the news, this last weekend we moved into our first official home!! Dustin and I are beyond excited, especially given the fact that I'm due in just a few weeks, we feel so much more prepared now.

At some point I'm definitely going to do a video or a post talking about the things that we wish we would've known before buying a house, because there's certainly a lot, but today I wanted to share a few tips while they're fresh in mind!

I've moved seven times in my almost 21 years of life, twice with my family, two times on my own and now three times with Dustin. Five of those moves have been in the last two years alone. To say that I'm DONE with moving for a good long while is an absolute understatement.

I've learned quite a bit in these moves and have picked up some really good tricks along the way to make life easier.

Whether you're moving soon or helping someone move, I hope you find these helpful!

Purge and then Splurge

It can be super easy to spend a lot of money in a move on things that you're not sure if you have yet or that you've been looking for a reason to upgrade. It can also be super easy to then take duplicates and move twice the amount of stuff that you really need to. Before you start packing, go through and purge like crazy. Haven't used it in 6 months and it doesn't hold sentimental value? Buh bye. That mug collection you have (guilty as charged), are you really going to use all 30+ mugs? No? Get rid of the ones you don't absolutely love. Does that can opener even really work anymore? No? Toss it and add it to the list of things you need to buy ONCE you've moved in. This tip will help you get rid of a lot and save you from packing unnecessary items and taking up space.

Pack By the Room

This one may seem a bit obvious, but sometimes things just get so hectic that you start throwing things in random boxes and it makes unpacking so much worse than it has to be. When it comes time to pack, grab a stack of boxes, head to ONE room and start putting all of those items in those boxes. Label each box meticulously because you will not remember where the toenail clippers are when you desperately need them if they've just been thrown in randomly. Then do a quick sweep of your entire house and gather up any items from that category that may have made their way into a spare closet or shelf. Add those to that category box and then label it with the room it's going to go into at the new house. This will seriously help when moving, especially if you're 34 weeks pregnant and directing everyone as to where boxes need to go and where the things inside of them need to be put away at.

Donate Your Old Clothes

This one could technically go with the “purge” category, but in my world it's a completely different thing. Obviously this is a great time to throw away old socks and underwear, but what about those jackets you haven't touched in over a year? Or the shirts that you just never pick to wear? Donate them! Create a big ole donation box and fill it up and take it at the end of your move. There's no need to throw away perfectly good items that someone else could use and you'll be doing something great for the environment. Moving helps you see just how much waste you have, a fresh start like this gives you a great excuse to live a little greener and be a bit more of a minimalist.

Clean, Clean, Clean

Cleaning is my least favorite thing in the world, but when it comes to moving it's important. Before you even set a single box inside come in and give your whole house a good wipe down. Even if it was recently cleaned for the showing, you're going to want to go over it yourself. Inspectors, realtors and potential buyers have been walking through and you don't know how well it was cleaned before. For instance we did a good sweeping, mopping and wipe down of all the closets, cabinets and walls and even though it was clean to the naked eye, the rags proved otherwise. Don't start your move out on a dirty foot, clean it beforehand. I recommend putting together a cleaning bucket so that you have everything you need and you're not rummaging through boxes trying to find supplies. Pack it separately in a tote and take it over before the actual move, you won't regret it.

Check On Your Utilities

Our situation couldn't have been completely prevented, but a little phone action and a trip out of the way could have possibly saved us the trouble. When your realtor tells you to call about transferring utilities, do it, don't forget like we did. We closed on Friday morning, forgot to call the companies until it was too late to go and do anything about it and then it was the weekend and guess what? They turn utilities off immediately, they don't wait. That left us with zero electricity or water the entire weekend. Monday rolled around and first thing we were at the office, only to find out it was freaking COLUMBUS DAY. Which really just pissed me off because that day shouldn't even be a thing anymore because he was a horrible human being. I had a meltdown to say the very least. I needed air and I was tired of flushing the toilet with jugs of water and unpacking in the dark with a flashlight in my bra. That being said, Tuesday Dustin took off work and we made our way back to town, ran all over the world to get checks and various things we needed (if only there were ways to verify an identity and send payments quickly without a piece of paper... 🙃) and by the end of the day Tuesday we had power and water. Needless to say, learn from our mistakes and plan on going to the electric or gas and water companies immediately after closing. You're going to regret it if you don't.

Unpack Immediately

It can be easy to let boxes sit when you're exhausted and just want to crash. But then when the next day rolls around it can be easy to just pick and choose things out of boxes whenever you need them. Suddenly days and weeks have passed and you're still living out of boxes and you have no clue where anything is anymore or just how to fit everything you do have into the space you're working with. One of the reasons you need to label your boxes is so everything goes directly into the room that is going to be its home. Once those boxes are in there you know how much stuff you have to fit in your space and then you can get to work. Even if you only do a room at a time, or one room a day and then take a break, unpack immediately. Don't wait until the house is in shambles. Get unpacked, get settled and then you can relax and enjoy your clean, curated space. P.S. – The same goes for decor, within two weeks try to get all of your decor up and your pictures hung. There's no point in them wasting space and collecting dust sitting in a box in the corner. You want them to be seen and you will feel so much more at home if you just get them up!

Don't Forget...

There's always something you're going to forget so make sure to keep a running list of things you need for the move or for when you actually move in. You're not going to want to do dishes so make sure you have paper products and stock up on toilet paper and paper towels. Don't forget batteries from smoke detectors and random appliances. Lightbulbs, a shower curtain rod, clips to hang up curtains, cabinet paper, carbon monoxide alarms, a fire extinguisher and a tool kit are all helpful, but easily forgettable items that you'll want to make sure you bring or buy and have easily accessible.

One bonus tip.. avoid moving in your third trimester. It's exhausting, even when you aren't doing much to help. I had quite a few Braxton Hicks contractions this week and he dropped significantly. I'm only 34 weeks, which is when that can start to happen more often, but it was definitely exacerbated by all of the squatting, bending, dragging and putting away that I did. That being said, baby boy is hanging out low today and he's dropped a little more everyday this week. Most in my life who see my on a regular basis doubt that I will even make it to my due date, so we'll see. We just have another vehicle to purchase in the coming weeks and then we'll be set to go, so if he could hold off until at least 37/38 weeks that'd be great!

I hope you found this helpful and enjoyed learning from my mistakes. Keep your eye out for a house tour soon!

xoxo – Ry

I've been holding this in for a hot second but I am so excited to tell ya'll that at almost 21 and 23... we bought a house!

I can't believe I get to announce this, it honestly feels so surreal.

Friday we signed the closing papers on our adorable starter home in middle Tennessee, not too far from our family and where we were living before. It seriously feels like a dream, even though we totally stretched ourselves thin with the baby due in six weeks!

I am so thankful for how hard Dustin has been working to make this happen and I am honestly just really proud of us. We came together as a team and we made it happen. Actually, God made it happen, but we buckled down and did everything we were supposed to and we trusted the process even when it felt like everything was falling apart- aka- every other day.

I will definitely be sharing a post soon on the couple of things I wish I had known/I wish my time in school had taken the time to teach me about buying a house. There are so many unexpected things that can happen and the process is generally unclear and there's a lot of extra communicating you have to take upon yourself. A lot of praying too. Anyways, I'll drop that post soon enough but for now I hope you enjoy this little vlog I threw together this past weekend when we got the keys and started the moving process. I completely forgot to vlog the empty house and due to some technical difficulties (we didn't have power from Friday-Tuesday) I wasn't able to film a lot, but you can get an idea of what things look like. That being said, I'll definitely be filming a house tour or something of that sort soon!

Thank you to all who have been praying for us and cheering us along, it truly means the world.

xoxo – Ry

https://cinnamon.video/watch?v=430196318435018018

I almost forgot to mention we got the cutest gifts from our title agency and our realtor, we truly got to work with some very loving people who helped us immensely in this process. Our realtor is also a dear friend and she totally rocked this.

Such a cute Dad and HOMEOWNER.

“Welcome Home Basket” from our amazing realtor Sarah!