A New Chapter with Amazon.ca

An artist that I love once described her work as "created by intuition" which is a phrase I now mentally borrow whenever I create - from writing to photography to cooking dinner (we are not a recipe-following family). Rarely a plan - simply a need to make something, and see what's borne of it.

I started this blog out of that need to create. I was a newlywed in my early twenties, working as a preschool teacher, with a desire to write and hone some photography skills. I had just graduated college where I was motivated and had a reason to write every day due to essays and papers, but my new role as wife and teacher didn't seem to call for much of the creativity I craved. So I found an outlet through sharing pieces of our days, our travels, vegan recipes, and funny little budget dates with my husband. Over the years, the content shifted, as my role changed to mother and homemaker, to family outings with a toddler, ordinary days at home with a toddler, what it's like traveling with a toddler (did I mention that I live with a toddler?), but I like to think that it's driven by the same intuition to create and document fragments of our story.

Over the past six years, I've tended to this space sporadically, at best, without any real goals for the content I share, or how often. There are so many topics that I've wanted to share in the past couple years - about motherhood, children's books, educational philosophies, marriage after kids, minimalism, and sustainability. But it all gets sort of lost in the jumble of other things that seem more pressing than conjuring up a post for the old blog - and while there are more important things than blogging, surely, I know that I'm a happier wife, mother, human when I'm making and sharing.

A New Chapter:
In the past few months, I've found some extra motivation to blog while collaborating with some small brands, and a recent partnership with Amazon.ca. And I'm happy, and a little shocked still, to announce that for the rest of this year, I'll be continuing to partner with Amazon Canada as a part of the Amazon Associates Program (!!!).



This is another shift in direction of this blog (like, is that an ad I see up above?!), but my intentions remain the same. I am a big advocate for doing what "feels right," following that intuition, and this feels right at this junction in my life - you know, where I'm mainly a stay-at-home mom who could use a little work that still allows for her to be a stay-at-home mom. This will also have me creating and sharing on a more regular basis.

Now, one of the biggest questions that I asked myself was: Does it make sense for a minimalist to partner with the world's largest online retailer? And, well, the simple answer is: yes. Because I am a human being who sometimes needs things, or to buy things for others. I am actually quite excited to share items that relate to waste-free living, open-ended play, education, sustainability - all items I have bought or would buy myself that I've found valuable for our lifestyle (like this Ecolunchbox I'll be sharing in a waste-free living post later this month).

Sure, in a perfect world, I would be able to find everything that I need in a thrift store exactly when I need it - or better yet, the thrift store would conveniently deliver directly to my front door - but since that isn't the case, there's the convenience of websites like Amazon, which offers a wide variety of products for every lifestyle - even for a minimalist, vegan, educator, slow living, sustainability geek like myself. So, naturally, over the next few months, I'll be sharing products that suit our lifestyle, always with the disclaimer that you should only buy these products if they can add value to your life.

As always, I'm so thankful for all of you who have followed along all these years, watched our family grow and stuck with me during every season of our lives. Here's to a new venture with Amazon.ca.

(Writing this post I got all nostalgic of how we've grown over the years, and here are a few images from the archives.)








*This post is in partnership with the Amazon Associates Program. As part of this program, I receive compensation. However, as always, all thoughts, opinions and run-on-sentences expressed here are my own.

*Copyright: Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.