To the couples who haven’t gone on a date in awhile: GO ON A DATE! I know I say this a lot, and I don’t want to come off as annoying, judge-y or insensitive when I write this post. Life can be tough and in those tough times, we tend to put this incredibly important relationship of ours on the back-burner. It also happens when life is busy. For whatever the reason, these situations start to take precedence over something that is so essential to a relationship.

Three years ago I wrote this message to Trevor on the back of a picture quote as encouragement that we could do the long distance thing. (I’m sad we can’t find the original right now but glad I took a picture of the smeared message I wrote him!) The story behind this little message set a precedent for our relationship and it’s one I think every couple needs reminding of :)

MIX IT UP. Some routines are happily comfortable and don’t need changing. But if you start to feel yourself wanting more out of your time together then you know a change would be good. You have to be willing to try something new, though, or you’ll get the same old results! Doesn’t have to be big but enough to continue progressing and being freshly married!

A year ago I talked about some new things I learned about grocery budgeting, especially how my budget was comparing to the national averages. As I remembered that post, I realized my grocery budgeting has changed a bit in the past year, haha. Why? Because LIFE has changed in the past year! Life changes MAKE YOUR BUDGETS FLUCTUATE I was making more meals back in the spring of 2015. Come summer time things got CRAZY again.

To the older couple staring at us kissing in line, stop rolling your eyes about it. To the people sick of listening to proposal stories, stop rolling your eyes about it. To the people who joke about my husband and I being prom dates because we sometimes match his tie and my dress for church, stop rolling your eyes about it. Why am I saying this? Because people tend to get annoyed of young love and it bugs me.

I was married in a Latter-Day Saint temple, where we believe allows your marriage to be eternal. However, simply having my marriage ceremony within my religion doesn’t mean I’m guaranteed to have a happy and healthy marriage! Believing you’ll have a forever marriage is different from actually creating one. Principles to follow I firmly know that the principles taught in my Latter-Day Saint faith and many other faiths directly coincide with principles you should follow for a strong and happy marriage.

I love this. Great advice for life but even better advice for marriage. If your marriage is in a “rut” you don’t have to settle for that stage. You both have the power to make the changes that will put you in a stage you feel happy with. Whether it’s making sacrifices, behavioral changes, or getting more outside help, you can make it happen. Think about that as you answer the #freshfridays question: “What change can you make TODAY to freshen up your marriage?

As you have noticed, we got some new family photos done :) And I’m loving them! I had been watching my friend Nicky post so many amazing pictures she has taken of families and couples, and knew that she could give us the memorable photos we were looking for. Throughout the process I was so impressed with her professionalism, expertise, artistic eye, and even encouragement that we looked cute, haha. I just had a really great experience with her and wanted to mention that as I share a few photos from this shoot.

“…That is good news because no matter how flat your relationship may be at present, if you keep adding pebbles of kindness, compassion, listening, sacrifice, understanding, and selflessness, eventually a mighty pyramid will begin to grow.” This weekend I watched Latter-Day Saint General Conference and heard some great spiritual messages! I also heard great messages about marriage, too! I especially found one particular talk I wanted to share that was so “nailed on the head” and relatable to all marriages, not just religious ones.

The #freshfridays encouraging thought today! It’s easy to wish you could start over, start fresh, but stop wishing because what’s done is done! The only thing you can do is utilize the new day you were given, and make a change!

The past few months I have found out more and more people that I knew or am still friends with have gotten divorced. The shocked part of me thinks: “I swear they all just got married yesterday!” And then the realistic part of me remembers that high school was 7 years ago and a lot can happen whether people got married right out of high school or more recently. Because I’m in this same grouping, it gives me mixed feelings, realizing that divorce truly is a possibility, but that I’m glad I have the strong marriage I have.

I am religious and rely on God and his son, Jesus Christ, in nearly all aspects of my marriage. So I have been wanting to write about how religion influences my marriage. This week as I have been thinking about Easter and Jesus Christ’s Atonement, I have been focused on his actions from his time walking among us on earth: the examples he set of kindness, righteousness, and love. These qualities he displayed have become known as “Christlike attributes” and although there are many attributes that I could apply in my life, there are a few specifically that have been most applicable to my marriage that I wanted to point out.

There’s no time like the present! There are so many things you can do RIGHT NOW as such a small step towards keeping your marriage fresh! My fav is the power of a text message and it’s so easy to do! I encourage you to pause what you are doing for 30 seconds and send a quick loving or encouraging text to your spouse!

I know pictures of food are annoying but there’s a reason I’m documenting it! We have obviously had to overhaul our meals with my food allergies, and it has been a whole bunch of trial and error. I’ve started to notice the affects in my body when I have even a little bit of something dairy here or there. I thought I could get away with cheating even just 2 tablespoons of ranch once a week but NOPE, haha.

In our short three years (almost) being married, Trevor and I have done really well about trying to be financially independent from our families. It’s something that had to be done in stages because tackling health insurance, car insurance, and a phone bill all at once is not wise! Health insurance is a headache on its own, am I right?! But slowly we made goals of what responsibilities we needed to take on and when to do it.

I had a good luck charm apparently for this St. Patricks Day because I “won” some amazing seats to the Jazz game that night! I say “won” because an old friend couldn’t use them so they did a little drawing for people interested and I got them :) What’s better than a fun date night to an NBA game? A FREE ONE, haha. It was double-y awesome because Trevor and I had never been to a game together yet.

This is a great #freshfridays question just before you all head out to date night! Do something special! Serve them in unexpected ways! Maybe anticipate their needs by staying in and giving much needed head massages! There are so many possibilities to doing something to liven up your relationship. SO DO IT!

Last week I re-shared some posts I wrote a year ago about some struggles I had with social media. I felt envious at times. I felt too involved in people’s lives that I hardly talk to anymore. And because I was getting used to a new living situation now knowing anyone, I spent a lot of time seeking comfort from those virtual connections. Unfortunately but understandably, all of this made me depressed so I had to change these thoughts for myself, but also for my marriage because it began to affect that as well.

I’ve hit the quarter-life mark turning 25 last week and I feel the need to write about it. I have to say that I was not looking forward to this birthday just because the things I was wanting to do /to eat (but for reals!) I couldn’t have, or were out of reach. I thought that those things would make me happy. I have to admit that I totally cheated on my birthday and had two slices of cheese pizza that tasted so much like paradise that I didn’t even regret the inflammation and discomfort I had from it the next two days!

Choose to have learning experiences rather than fights, rather than ruts, rather than mistakes. Each of these IS an experience that teaches us something we didn’t know before. Choose to let that new information improve your relationship. For More see the blog post, “The Inevitable Storms in Marriage.”