Hi y’all!
I published one of these “Day In The Life” posts last summer, and it was such a fun, chill way to show you a little completely #unfiltered look at the typical day-to-day stuff that I do, so I’m sharing another one today, winter edition!
To see my Day In The Life Post from August 2018, click here.
My summer/winter schedules are very different. In the summer, I teach in the first half of the day, I don’t have symphony rehearsals, and I have a bit more flexibility with blogging. In the winter, I teach all of my violin students after school hours, I have late-night rehearsals, and I use the mornings to do any personal stuff, appointments, cooking, workouts, and rest.
Here’s a day in the life, winter edition:
^ Up at 5:38 for a Barre Code class. I figured out that 5:38 is the absolute latest I can wake up to make it to the 6:00 class on time. I set my alarm for 5:38 so I don’t have the option of hitting snooze.
^ It was 42 degrees on this Wednesday morning… Cooooold for Austin! I’m all bundled up in my favorite Patagonia sweater.
^ Barre time! This class was soooo hard! My arms were ridiculously sore the next day. I love how The Barre Code packs so much into a 50 minute class.
^ At 7:00 a.m. I’m back home, and this little critter greets me at the door. She acts like she’s all snuggly in the morning, but really she just wants me to feed her. I know your tricks, Storm…
^ Happy because she’s eating two pellets of raw turkey meat. #delicious.
^ Meanwhile, Nate is up and getting ready to head out the door to work. Both of us have our pre-coffee sleepy eyes in this pic, ha!
^ I make a pour over, grab my journal and spend about 10 minutes writing a few notes of gratitude. I try to do an act of mindfulness every morning, even if it’s quick! Sometimes it’s meditation, or a gratitude journal, or I write down affirmations.
^ While I’m showering and putting on my makeup, I listen to the Goal Digger podcast with Jenna Kutcher. I just discovered this one, and I’ve been loving it! If you’re an entrepreneur, check it out!
^ A couple weeks ago, our washing machine broke and we had to wait about 2 weeks for our repair person ordered a part to fix it. So I’ve been taking our laundry to the laundromat, and let me tell ya: after a few weeks of that, it feels SO nice to be able to do laundry in my own home again, haha! Oh, the simple pleasures of life.
So I started a load of laundry, and then…
^ At about 8:30 am I went downstairs to put dinner in the crockpot. I was making a Slow-Cooker Weeknight Chili from Cooks Illustrated, but I realized I didn’t have any diced tomatoes, so I ran to HEB to pick those up.
(And I also picked up some gelato, because gelato should always be in everyone’s freezer.)
And then I was able to finish making it, put it in the crockpot on low for 6 hours, and got on with my morning.
(Quick note: for the month of February, my goal is to cook out of just one cookbook: Plenty. But on this particular day, I had zero free minutes between 3:30 – 10 pm, so I just had to do a slow cooker recipe. I opted to break my goal rather than not have anything to eat for dinner.)
^ I had my AirPods in while I was cooking and at the grocery store. Currently listening to The Heart’s Invisible Furies as an audiobook!
^ The chili recipe called for bacon, so I cooked a little bit extra and made it into a breakfast taco! Yum. Love me a breakfast taco.
^ I made a cup of black tea and sat down to do an hour of computer work. I answered emails, worked on upcoming blog posts, and scheduled some social media posts.
^ On this day I published The Ultimate Bachelorette Guide to Austin!
^ At about 10:30 am I left to go to a dental cleaning…yay!
Unless you personally know my whole family, you might not know this weird fact: my side of the family is obsessed with dental hygiene. We are daily flossers, big time. My dad has put floss in our Christmas stockings for years and years, and this year he gave all of his children (and my husband!) electric toothbrushes for Christmas. My parents prioritized braces for all 8 of their children. We all looooove a healthy mouth, haha.
So I feel like a freaking rockstar when I go to the dentist because they’re always so impressed with my teeth. Like, I’m telling you: it is compliment after compliment.
I don’t do well at everything in this life….but when it comes to flossing, I get a gold star.
^ After the dentist, I head downtown to met Monique for a lunch date at Darna for some delicious Moroccan food!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BuHk0lIAuYp/
^ Monique took this picture of me that I posted to instagram. Wednesday was a particularly bad hair day, so I opted to showcase the food + hands pic instead of putting my face in there. Ha!
^ At around 1:30, after lunch, I made a really quick stop to a bakery I’ve been meaning to try: Paper Route Bakery! I always have a running list of food to try in Austin, and I squeeze in quick stops whenever I can.
I met the owner, Aaron, who is running a one-man show at this little 500 square foot bakery. He told me that when he started, he would get to the bakery at midnight to do all the baking, and then stay up to sell pastries from 8 am – 3 pm. Crazy!
^ From about 2-3 I did another hour of work on my laptop. Then at 3:00 I closed the laptop, threw on a baseball cap and sunglasses, and went outside for a 30 minute walk with a podcast. The cold morning weather had lifted and it was sunny and 65 degrees and SO GORGEOUS! I had to enjoy a little bit of the weather before diving into the next batch of work hours for the day.
^ Spring is almost here, Austin Texas!
^ At 3:30 pm I made a big batch of iced green tea, poured it over ice in my Yeti, and headed upstairs to my violin studio.
^ And from 3:30-7 I had back-to-back violin students coming in and out of my house.
^ Right at 7 pm, when my last student left, I rushed out the door and drove to the Long Center for an Austin Symphony rehearsal. The view of Downtown Austin from the Long Center is a good one, and I took this horrible picture of it because I was speed-walking to the backstage entrance to make it to rehearsal on time.
^ I made it with just enough time to heat up my dinner in the Long Center basement kitchen, gobble it down in five minutes flat, and head upstairs to the stage to warm up for rehearsal.
^ Austin Symphony rehearsal from 7:30-10 pm. Y’all know that I am NOT a night owl, so these rehearsals feel sooo late to me! We were rehearsing the Brahms Requiem for the weekend concert series.
^ At 10:15 pm I’m back home, and done with my day! Nate picked up a crowler of helles from ABGB to enjoy with his evening, and he had a glass of it poured and ready for me when I got home. He’s so good at those little acts of kindness. 🙂
^ 10:48 is a late bedtime for me, but on symphony weeks I tend to go to bed a bit later than usual.
And that’s a day in the life!
I didn’t know you played in the symphony. Thant’s really cool. I played all through school, and started playing for fun again after not touching my instrument for decades.
[…] but I noticed I needed more sleep than usual (I slept in until 9:00 am the morning after I wrote this day in the life post, and I normally wake up between 5:30 and 7 am.) Actually, at one point in […]
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