Things are fast and furious in our world.  I’m now 34.5 weeks pregnant, have a full calendar of deadlines until July 25 trying to wrap everything up before baby boy arrives, we are moving along with building the new house, I’m so close to naming the big $5,000 PowHer.fit Winner of the 2020 Transformation Challenge (announced on July 15), new PowHer.fit influencer applications become available on July 12, I am getting ready to launch a new fitness challenge (another opportunity to win big money coming soon!), as well as wrapping up the final touches on my new Mindset & Confidence Course called “She Just Shines” that I hope to launch next week.  Plus trying to continue to work out everyday amongst the 3rd trimester tiredness, get our life and current home ready to welcome a new baby boy soon, and trying to keep sane amongst the virus and all the other craziness happening in our world!

I’m still consistent with my own personal PowHer.fit workouts and am proud to still be doing barbell work at over 34 weeks pregnant!  Starting next week we start going to the doctor every single week until baby makes his grand entrance into the world.  I’m embracing this new body (have already gained a little over 20 pounds) and am learning to love this season of life.  I enjoy all the movements in my belly, but I do have a little harder time falling asleep sometimes just trying to get comfortable and I have to take restroom breaks ALL THE TIME!  I also recently started experiencing heart burn for the first time in my life, and it is no joke when it hits! But all in all I’ve had a truly incredible pregnancy, have never been sick, am still confident to rock this growing belly, and my husband loves and embraces all my body changes, too!

I wanted to share some beautiful home renderings that we had made by Envision Home Designs.  This is about 1/3 of what I have received from them, but I don’t want to share too much of the inside to give away the floor plan from a security standpoint.  I will just say that my jaw absolutely hit the ground when I received these.  They look so REAL and truly brought all of our plans and details I emailed to them to life.  I will also be receiving a rendering video, too.

A few main things that are different from the renderings is the size of the exterior stone is a lot bigger and bolder than the smaller shaped stone seen in the renderings.  We also changed up the layout of the big window wall in the grand living room a bit, too.  From a structural standpoint we went with more of a commercial look.

You can follow along our home building process on our home building instagram page – @carrabbacastle.  We have been choosing all the final design selections in the past week or two, and I’m so excited to bring it all to life.  Once the project is done I will be sharing all the companies and vendors we worked with to complete this project.  As many of you already know, part of my husband’s job includes building homes.  He’s actually a real estate developer, but in the neighborhoods that he develops he does build homes on the more challenged lots that other builders do not purchase right away.  When we decided to build another home, we decided to share more of the process to help share some of my husband’s work as well as to feature many of the companies who played a part in bringing this home to real life.  Stay tuned for that information in the future, as we currently plan to be in sometime before Christmas.  Baby boy will definitely win the baby/house race, even though it was never really a race to begin with.  You can learn more about why we decided to build again in this video on my YouTube channel.

New Home Building Q&A Video

You can see some interior framing pics in this recent home building blog post I did a few weeks ago.

Once we are in, I plan to do blog posts covering all our paint selections and a few room reveals, too!

Hope you all enjoy seeing some sneak peeks into the beautiful home renderings created by Envision Home Designs.  They were so easy to work with (I literally just emailed them the plans, paint colors, roof choice, interior design selections, etc.) and their turn around time was only a few days wait!!!  I cannot recommend them enough if you’re looking for someone to create some interior, exterior and/or backyard renderings for your own project.  Thank you Envision Home Designs for sponsoring this post!

The stucco and paint started yesterday, so here is a reality picture to show you how it’s shaping up.  We are using Heath Summerlin Stucco and chose Sherwin Williams paint color Snowbound.

And here’s a sneak peek of one of my favorite countertops from Centex Countertops in Bryan.  It’s a Coconut Marble!

In case you missed it last week, I finally made my Amazon Pantry Favorites List live so you can shop yourself!  Linking that Shop Page from my website HERE so you can give it a look!

Thank you all for continuing to follow along with my blog and social media outlets.  I appreciate it more than you know!

In closing, I want everyone to know I’ve dealt with some more social media attacks that I plan to keep private.  Obviously my husband knows, my business coach knows, our attorney, and a few of my closest people know, but it’s really just made it so much more important to know that happiness from within and self confidence matters so much more!  Not everyone is going to like you, what you do, what you share, what you say, or even understand your WHY or your heart behind the things that you do.  So I wanted to wrap this blog post up with this reminder, “One of the STRONGEST factors for success is self-esteem. Believing you can do it, believing you are deserving of it, and believing you WILL get it! Be stubborn about your standards and your goals, they aren’t worth just settling for Block out any negative opinions (in my case, also block out the negative words and actions) of others because they truly do not matter in terms of YOUR journey!!”

If you’ve been a long time follower, you’ll know I love and believe in the prayer of Jabez.  God WANTS to Bless us and he WANTS us to BE BLESSED and to BLESS OTHERS.  So do not think that you are not worthy of great things!

xo,