Getting ready for a Minnesota winter

I have received information and materials from Johnson & Johnson Consumer, Inc., McNeil Consumer Healthcare Division. The opinions stated are my own. This is a sponsored post. This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. #WinOverWinter #CollectiveBias

So I moved, again. Which means, yes, we are doing long distance once again, and this time as a married couple. This really sucks, but I will get to the details of the move in a later post. For now I want to talk about the new life I have! I took a job at Target Headquarters as a creative and I could not be more excited! The job required me to move to Minneapolis, MN. So a whole lot of preparation is happening and a Target run had to happen.

Sweater: Forever 21
Pants: Zaful
Sneakers: Gap

I know what you are all thinking: “OMG but it’s so cold there!” Going from Miami to Minneapolis is a huge change, and it’s not just the weather—it’s pretty much everything. I have been here for about a week and a half and the weather hasn’t been that bad. I’ve actually really enjoyed the nice change from the heat and humidity in Miami. It has been around 40 to 60 degrees and as sunny as it can be. While it has taken me a bit to get used to, I am pretty excited to have seasons again, to see the snow and to have a change overall.

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Why I don't regret my long distance relationship and would do it all over again

I’m not going to lie, the past three years have been HARD (to say the least),  but now that it’s almost over and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel I have been reflecting on all the things we gained as a couple and as individuals during this time.

1. You find yourselves. Prior to the distance, we had been together for so long and had just lived together for a year, the lines between where he ended and I began, became blurred.  . While the process was painful, this forced time apart gave us a chance of a lifetime. We discovered what we truly like, what we missed doing together, and what we enjoyed doing separately.

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How Favor saved our Valentines

Have you ever heard of Favor? Well, if not, let me tell you that you are missing out on something huge. Imagine a world where ANYTHING you want to have delivered, you can. Food? Done. Toilet paper? Done. I  knew when I first discovered Favor my whole world would change.

As I mentioned on my previous post for Valentine’s Day, my fiancé and I will not be able to spend it together. It has been hard for me to come to terms with it because, well, it is the year we are getting married so technically this is our last Valentine’s before we become husband and wife! But Favor is here to save the day! Their latest update is absolutely made for long distance couples (not officially, but in my eyes, yes). You now have the capability to order from one of the Favor cities and get it delivered to a different Favor city. It is sooooo perfect!

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Valentine's Week of Love Challenge

Photo by: And the Sea

Recently, I stumbled upon this amazing Etsy stores while reading a Buzzfeed article and I really fell in love with their work. So, I partnered up with them for a “Week of Love Challenge”.

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, many of us won’t have the privilege of being with our significant other – my fiancé and I included (bummer).  Since we’ll be apart, I decided to create the "Week of Love Challenge" so instead of sending him a little something the day of, I decided to send him one card a day leading up to Valentine’s – hence the Week of Love Challenge.

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How to pick a venue and a dress?

Photography by: K and K Photography

It's 2016, we’re getting married! My fiancé proposed to me almost two years ago and it still feels like it was yesterday. There are now only seven months to go and we’ve just begun to REALLY get down to planning the details.

I want to share step-by-step where we are in the planning process, give you some tips and, (hopefully) get some tips in return! As of now, we have the venue which is a gorgeous Spanish villa in Coconut Grove in Miami called Villa Woodbine. When we stepped foot there for the first time, we thought it was going to be WAY out of our budget. Thankfully, it actually ended up being perfect and they do the catering so… BOOM! Venue and catering are done.

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New city, new traditions

I have been in Austin for 3 years now (crazy to think it's been that long!) and I am not going to lie, it was a bit of a culture shock at first. In Miami I was surrounded by my Colombian traditions, friends and food, so coming to Texas was like going to a completely different world. At my job, most of the people, at the time, were Mexicans. There are not a whole lot of Mexicans in Miami and honestly my relationship with the Mexican culture was very limited, to pretty much the awesome tacos you can find in Calle Ocho in Miami.

Having my new coworkers opened up a whole new world for me, I was not only getting to meet Texas and it's traditions but also Mexico, it's people and it's traditions. I have always been a fan of trying new things and experiencing new cultures so I embraced the change.

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Pillow Talk

Doing my research (because that never stops with me) I stumbled upon this amazing kickstarter called Pillow Talk. Pillow Talk is a wristband that picks up your heartbeat and sends it via an app to your loved one. HOW GENIUS IS THIS?!

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The importance of spending time together

As we approach the holidays, I thought it would be a good time to talk about getaways and the importance of having them in a long distance relationship. As you all know, my fiancé and I have been doing this for three years, and we have found out that getaways truly bring us together and give us the special moments that we miss simply because we are not together every day.

We took on a nice tradition once we became long distance: to have our getaways on our birthdays (our birthdays are back-to-back  the same week in May) so we have a birthday week. If you can find a time in the year that is meaningful for you both to do this, I encourage you to do so. In my experience, it’s so much more meaningful (not that it’s not already). Also, go somewhere you both have never been. This will create new memories for both of you and own little space in time.

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Sesame Gifts

As I mentioned before, I will also do long-distance relationships apps reviews from time to time. We all have been targeted, whether is thru Facebook or Pinterest to use this apps but I’ve always wondered if it is even worth it. We have SMS/text and Facetime, so why download even more apps into our phones. Some of them costs some of them are free. I stumbled on Sesame Gifts thru a Buzzfeed post and really wanted to give it a try so I partner up with them to take the app and website out for a spin.

The app is designed to make gifting easier. For us, couples in long distance relationships, it can come in handy since they already have gift packages designed for different occasions or simply just because. They could also be considered care packages, and you can either choose from a pre-made themed gift box or create your own.

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A special gift to my Bridesmaids

As you all already know, I am engaged. We have been engaged for about a year and a half now. A lot of people have questioned why we have been engaged for so long; well for starters, we are not in the same state, so it is probably a good idea for us to close the distance before getting hitched, right? I cannot imagine myself leaving for a weekend to get married and then come back, I refuse! So yeah, it’s taking us a while but we are very much ok with it. It truly baffles me how everyone has to have an opinion and how you have to explain every single action you do if it is not done the “traditional” way.

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Finding Real Friends

Photo Credit: BlueSpark Photography 

The one thing that I’ve struggled to find since my late teens – probably  since I am a socially active person – are real friends. My fiancé has always been one of my best friends; he has known everything about me for the past 12 years we have been together. However,  as I mentioned in the previous post, I do firmly believe that each person in the relationship should have their own lives, their own friends and their own hobbies.

Truth be told, I have not always been this independent. I left my parents’ house when I was 18 to go to school in Miami, but I had a phase in my life where my life depended on my fiancé. Now I look back and I’m not sure what was I thinking. Yeah, I do love him down to my core, but why did I all of a sudden decided that his life and his friends were more important than mine? Eventually I snapped out of it around my mid-20s when I decided to put myself first and the rest would just fall into place. And it did!

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Let's talk about fights

While I’m absolutely no relationship expert, something  my fiancé and I have struggled with is learning how to fight. I can confidently say that the way we fight has improved, but we definitely have ways to go. If you are wondering, yes we recently had a fight --  what couple doesn’t?  The difference is that it’s just SO much harder to fight while being long distance, so, how should LDR couples manage this?

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A Broke Girls’ Guide to Cheap Flights

This week I have been scrambling between a very tough time at work, moving offices, wedding planning  and finding time to book my next flight to Miami, but here we are.  I finally found an inexpensive flight and in the process, I realized that I have a few tips to share!

When I started this long-distance-relationship journey a couple of years back I never really thought that I would spend SO MUCH money on travel, but voilà! Fast forward to present time and a couple thousand dollars later, I have learned a bit – or a lot. My credit coming out of Miami was awful, to say the least, so getting a rewards credit card was not an option.  Expensive flights weren’t an option either, so I sought out to find the best website to look for cheap flights.

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Our Story

So this is the part where you all will get to know us...

My fiancé, and I have been together for about 12 years – a lifetime, basically. The first seven were on and off. We were both growing up and as much as we wanted to be involved, a serious relationship so young just didn’t work. A lot of people ask me why I stayed, or why I’m still with him.

I come from a family of VERY loyal women. My grandma was married to my grandpa for 50+ years until she died a couple of years back. My mom is still with my dad after 32 years of marriage. We are women wired to be loyal and to stick to our man until the end. We don’t give up easily and we truly believe that when something is broken you fix it; you don’t just throw it away.

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