A year later and all the things!

It's been almost a YEAR since I last updated the blog (what!!). Suffice to say, 2016 was a hell of a busy year for me and let's face it, the blog fell on the back burner.

I have some exciting ideas I look forward to incorporating on here in the coming months, but this post is mainly to just touch base and catch up on what I've been doing!

A little peak of the spa! 

Last June I opened up my own spa studio in my hometown to grow my esthetics practice. Just about seven months later, it's still growing and I couldn't be more pleased. Of course, opening a studio meant finding a skincare line to carry and I was delighted to have discovered Sanitas Skincare. I'm 100% sold on this company (I don't say that about just anything!) as they focus heavily on the nutrition of the skin and offer effective cosmeceutical strength options that truly deliver results. My skin tends to be fairly sensitive and the fact I didn't react to anything was another big bonus for me. But really, the selection process came down to trying a whole bunch of lines and this was the line that had the greatest "Holy crap my face is glowing" effect. 2017 looks like it will be a good year for the spa and I am expanding my service menu to include some more aggressive chemical peels and hopefully get some fun new equipment in!

Harvesting radishes with the pup!

For the rest of the summer I concentrated on my gardening and experimented with different crop varieties but due to a strange growing season, I didn't yield much. But that's okay because it just gave me more experience for this coming year!


In September I began a 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training program at Beloved Yoga. I had my heart set on starting a program in the near future, and ideally wanted to attend one of those month long Bali retreats, but the fact this studio is so well recognized and focuses heavily on alignment, the sutras, and has a strong mentoring program sold me instantly. You know that feeling when you just know something is right? My gut led the way on this one. We are coming up on the graduation date of my 150 hours in March, before the 50 hour mentoring begins, and it's been an intense ride so far. I have been challenged more than I thought I would and have been exposed to so many life changing concepts and ideas that I hope to blog about in the future.

Drum roll please! My biggest accomplishment of the year was finishing grad school! I thought it might never end! Thanks to American University, I've got my Master of Science degree in Nutrition Education and hope to apply that to the spa practice and local community in time by offering some health coaching options (seminars, one on one coaching, etc.).  Again a HUGE thank you to those who supported me throughout the journey!

I did a thing!

Thanks for reading! Be well, friends!
~Andrea