I figured that before July was over, I might as well blog about the fact that I turned 30 two weeks ago! LOL. I am obviously really behind in blogging.

Seeing as the baby was just about three weeks old, we had a relaxing day at home.

Zachary made me a cake out of play-doh:

My parents stopped by and gave me a gorgeous sterling silver necklace representing my two boys (from the Spanish designer Tous). I love it and have been wearing it every day!

And no photo, but later that evening, Adrian and Zachary made me an AMAZING dinner with grilled slider hamburgers, baked beans, and other goodies.

The next day, my best friend Amy came over and brought me a yummy cookie cake and and a beautiful watch from Fossil for my birthday!

I had a pretty great birthday this year with so many thoughtful gifts. A few weeks ago when my mother-in-law and sister-in-law were here to visit, they also got me a sewing machine, which is something I’ve wanted for a while, so that was also exciting! My other best friend, Tamara, also sent me a fabulous care package with some amazing nail polishes among other things (more on that below)!

All in all, my 30th birthday ended up being a wonderful day spent with my boys and was a great start to the next decade in my life!

I also wanted to mention my 30 before 30 list, the list of all the things I’d hoped to accomplish before turning 30. Did I do everything? Nope! Am I okay with it? Yes. There were a lot of big-ticket items on there, like reducing my business debt by half and making my house seem organized in the eyes of my mother, who is probably the most organized person alive. While I honestly didn’t expect either of those to be completed by my 30th birthday (I’m sure my mom is reading this and laughing, lol!!), I do feel like I made some progress and am headed in the right direction, which is a good thing.

I also did a few things which were important to me, but NOT on my 30 before 30 list because I didn’t feel like locking myself into them and wanted to see how they went on their own.

The first thing was losing nearly all of my pregnancy weight, something I didn’t expect to do so quickly. After I had Zachary, I strictly followed the “9 months on, 9 months off” saying when it came to losing the baby weight. It just didn’t happen fast for me then. This time, though, all of my weight fell off instantly! William is six weeks old and I’m just 4lb away from my pre-pregnancy weight, and already fitting into my pre-pregnancy jeans. I’m pretty amazed by the progress that I have made and I’m so excited to be back on track with dieting and losing weight. I needed to lose weight before I got pregnant anyway, so I really feel like I’m ahead of the game now. Of course, losing the next big chunk of weight probably won’t happen fast…. but at least I’m back to my starting point.

Second, I’ve stopped biting my nails. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I’ve been a nail biter as long as I can remember. It’s a horrible, nasty habit and I’ve struggled for years to quit. I remember periods in high school where I would stop and start, stop and start. I never thought that I would have nice nails unless I paid to have acrylics put on every week at the salon. The silly thing is that every time I had acrylics and my nails grew out, they’d always be so ruined from the acrylic that I would end up biting them again.

Some time in May I happened to come across a nail polish blog. Not sure how or which one, but I saw the photos of the nails and the fun designs and realized it was time to take back control and end the habit for good. I went to the store and picked out some fun new nail polish colors and decided to keep my nails polished constantly. It worked! As long as my nails were constantly polished, I was not biting them. As soon as there was any tip wear or chipping (usually the same time that I’d begin to have the urge to bite again), I had to switch polish, which meant every 3 days or so. I am at the point now where I do not need my nails to be polished 100% of the time anymore to keep myself from biting them, but I prefer to have nicely polished nails.

I’m really proud of this photo – it’s the progression from May to June to July. You can see my teeny little nails the first day I painted them, to the pink polish I put on the week that William was born, to the turquoise manicure I did the week of my birthday (thanks Tamara for the awesome Deborah Lippmann blue glitter polish!)

So, overall I am pretty thrilled with my birthday, happy I got to spend the weekend with my family and my best friend, and happy that I accomplished some things that were really meaningful to me. I hope the next 10 years of my life are as fun and exciting as the past ten years have been, and I look forward to the ride!