You guys have been asking us to do an updated “Day in the Life” post for quite some time now, and it’s finally time to dish on our everyday routines. Not that they’re glamorous or exciting (far from it!), but both of our days are veeeery different from the last time we each wrote a day in the life post…

• A Day in the Life of Casey – 2017
• A Day in the Life of Bridget – 2017

Even though those posts were only about 1.5 years ago, A LOT has changed since then. I left my corporate job to blog full-time, and Bridget had a baby and is now balancing time as a working mom. So things are very different for us both!

A Day in the Life of Casey

Today I’ll show you a day in my life and next Wednesday Bridget will share her day in the life post. While our days are constantly changing, this is how a random weekday looks for me…

Rise & Shine

7:30 am: My alarm goes off and I instantly hop out of bed. I’m not one to ever hit the snooze button. Instead, my feet hit the floor and I’m ready for action.  Back when I had to go into an office in the morning, I’d wake up much earlier to get ready and out the door. Now sleeping until 7:30 am is a luxury! I head to the bathroom and brush my teeth and wash my face (but I keep my pajamas on for now!).

7:35 am: I walk out to our main room and turn on the TODAY show. I put our window blinds up, fluff our couch pillows, fold blankets, and just do a general sweep of our main room to make sure everything is clean and in order. I’ll usually empty the dishwasher at this time too.

7:45 am: I sit down and have breakfast in front of my laptop. These days that means I eat a protein bar (I’ve been trying out all kinds of flavors, but my recent obsession are Builder Bars for lots of protein!), drink a cup of coffee, and have a green drink with my huge concoction of IVF meds/vitamins. My green drink is a strange seaweed, wheat grass, and chia seed mixture. I read that it has fertility benefits about a year ago and now have it every single morning. It tastes like grass, but I’m surprisingly addicted to it. Plus, it helps my 15+ pills go down more smoothly.

At this time, I clear out my personal and playbook email inbox, make sure our daily post is up, post to the playbook facebook page, and pin our daily post to Pinterest. I also respond to any comments from last night’s Instagram post and respond to direct messages. Bridget has been up for hours by now, so I often have a few texts from her too!

8:15 am: Once Finn is up, I’ll head to our master bedroom and make the bed. I check the weather to figure out what to wear and throw on something pretty casual. I put a little dry shampoo in my hair, curl the ends, and swipe on a bit of makeup. These days I usually just throw on concealer, bronzer, and mascara. Nothing crazy, but it’s nice to be presentable! I then head out to our patio and give our flowers a good water. We don’t have a hose out there, so I have to bring the watering can in and out a few times (such a pain!).

8:45 am: I give Finn a kiss goodbye and we both head out the door. I have a doctor’s appointment at 9 am, so I walk towards my doctor’s office while he heads to the blue line train. My fertility office is only about a 10-minute walk from our place, and I casually stroll through our neighborhood to get there. I often listen to podcasts while I’m walking or driving, and lately, I’ve been really into “How I Built This” and “Second Life.” Both amazing.

I also always wear my “lucky” items when I have big doctor’s appointments. I have bracelets (pictured above) and necklaces given to me by family and friends, and even a few trinkets that readers have sent (thank you!!). I feel like I’m turning into a gypsy, but if it brings me any extra luck or blessings…you better believe I’ll be wearing it!

A Visit to the Doctor

9:00 am: We’re currently in the midst of an IVF cycle and during that time you’re monitored constantly (about every other day). I check in at the front desk and wait about 10 minutes until my name is called. The nurse takes my blood, but we aren’t able to hit my vein on my right arm. She says it’s getting a bit scarred up, so we’ll have to use my left arm for the next few weeks. After a bit more poking and prodding, success…we have blood!

After blood work, I head in for a vaginal ultrasound. This is when they take a look at your uterus and ovaries to see what’s happening on there. She measures the follicles on each ovary and takes note of my lining. I’m in and out in about 20 minutes and they tell me to expect my blood work results and a call from the nurse later that day.

Work Time

9:30 am: I’m finally home and able to get to work! I take a look at my white board and make a plan for the remainder of my day. If you read this post, then you know how obsessed I am with my white board to stay on task. No day is the same, and I need to have everything laid out in front of me to make sure I accomplish everything I need to for the blog that week.

For the next 30 minutes, I do a few of the smaller tasks on my to-do list and eat a snack (usually a banana). I send invoice details to Finn (who sends them out using Quick Books), respond to comments on our daily post, and scan a contract for a brand project that we’ll be tackling soon.

10:00 am: I try to batch task my days, and this morning is all about taking pictures for the blog. I like to pick 1 or 2 days a week for this and get a bunch done. My house usually gets super messy as I move things around to be in and out of shots, so it’s nice to do it all at once. Today, I’m taking photos for upcoming fall posts.

I get out my camera, lens, and tripod and make sure everything is clean, charged, and ready to go (this post outlines what equipment we use). My plan was to start on my back patio and work my way to the front of our house…but the sun is a bit too intense out there. So I start in our master bedroom and go from there. I constantly arrange and rearrange things as I go and I bring in items from other rooms to style each shot.

Both Bridget and I have really grown to love photography since starting the blog and I love my blogging days when I get to take pictures. I play music on our Alexa and jump around from room to room as I go.

The last project I need to shoot is an upcoming recipe post. While recipes are few and far between around here, this fall recipe is too good not to share! My kitchen becomes a hot mess and I photograph each ingredient and step of the recipe. For me, cooking is hard enough. But when you have to document every step, it’s instantly 10x harder. Luckily, I do okay and I don’t burn my pumpkin squares! (P.S. Recipe coming to the blog on Friday!).

I take another 20 minutes getting the “after” shots of the pumpkin squares. I scroll through all of the photos on my camera to make sure things are looking good and I didn’t forget anything. I then grab a few more shots on my phone (to Insta story later) and get some video as well. It’s hard to remember to photograph for the blog, get video for the blog, and capture for Instagram too. Too many things at once!

Lunch Time

1:00 pm: Now that I’m done photographing everything on my list, I quickly put everything back in place and get the house back in order. While the photos download on my computer, I heat up some vegetable soup (recipe here) that Finn made over the weekend. I love this soup because it’s so filling and nutritious. A favorite lunch of mine!

As I eat, I send a few quick emails and catch up on some of my favorite blogs.

1:30 pm: Lately, I’ve been working on cleaning up a lot of our old posts. We have over 1,500 blog posts and in the early days we were never filling in the correct fields for SEO or formatting images correctly (we have since learned…thank goodness!). Now that I have more time to devote to the blog, I’ve been slowly going through all of those old posts and improving them so they don’t drag down our site.

I spend about 45 minutes fixing up old content and pinning the updated posts to Pinterest. 

2:15 pm: After all of that sitting, I’m eager to get up and moving. I get out my cleaning checklist and see what still needs to be done for the week. I clean the kitchen countertops, zip around the floors using my Dyson (still obsessed!), and do a light dusting in our family room.

3:00 pm: Bridget is out of school (yay!) and we have a conference call set for 3:30 pm. We usually schedule all conference calls with brands for the late afternoon so we can both be on the line. Bridget gives me a call beforehand so we can catch up and discuss our gameplan for our upcoming call. It’s always so nice to chat with her during the day, usually when she is driving home from school.

3:30 pm: Bridget and I will be speaking on a panel next month at a conference here in Chicago, so we have a quick 30-minute call with the company putting on the conference to discuss logistics.

4:00 pm: After we get off the phone, I sit down and edit all of the pics that I took earlier in the day. I often catch up on a TV show or listen to music while editing photos, because it can be a little mind-numbing. I put HGTV on in the background and get to work going through the 500+ photos. We use Lightroom to edit our pics (tutorial here) and I get them all edited and organized both on my computer, my hard drive, and on WordPress.

5:15 pm: I give my mom a call because I know she is driving home from work. We talk at least every other day and I love catching up with her.

6:00 pm: Finn walks in the door and we catch up on our days and discuss what we want to have for dinner. I’m so lucky that Finn enjoys cooking and he usually makes lots of great dishes on Sundays that we can enjoy throughout the week. Tonight I don’t have a huge appetite (side effect of my meds), so I opt to just eat oatmeal while he makes a heartier dish for himself.

Shot Time

7:00 pm: Because we’re in  the midst of an IVF cycle, we have to do shots every night at 7pm. Finn puts on house music to lighten the mood, washes the countertops, washes his hands, and gets out all of my medicine. Once all of the shots are prepped and ready, he calls me in and we do 2 shots. We’ve gotten to be pros at it, but it still isn’t fun and I leave with an achy stomach.

Relax for the Evening

7:20 pm: After our shots, I take a quick shower (since I haven’t washed my hair in a few days and it’s looking scary). I then do my night time skincare routine and hop into my pajamas.

8:00 pm: Finn and I hang on the couch and watch a couple of TV shows. I try to leave my phone charging in our back bedroom so I can really be present with him. It’s tough, but I’m getting better! I pour myself a kombucha in a wine glass (the sparkly taste reminds me of champagne!) and we lounge on the couch together.

9:30 pm: I head to our master bedroom to brush my teeth and do a little light reading. I’m currently on the 3rd Crazy Rich Asians book and I’m loving it. I saw the movie and I’m so happy they’re going to shoot another one! As I mentioned in this post, I’m trying to read more at night instead of just watching TV and scrolling Instagram. I find that I get a much better sleep that way.

10:15 pm: My eyes are starting to get heavy, so I call Finn over to tuck me in. He tucks me in every single night and it has become our own little ritual. He turns on our sound machine, kisses me goodnight, and I set my alarm for 7:30 am.

Casey