Howdy y’all! I recently shared an update on my YouTube channel about the direction I am taking this blog, my YouTube channel, and my social media accounts. I started Christopher Cupcakes as a way to share my creative passions and eventually (due to advice from others) niched it all down to mostly be about skincare. As you may have seen within the past year the direction has slightly changed and I have been incorporating in more wellness topics.

I consider myself a multi-faceted individual and have many interests, passions, and experiences to share. Bigger bloggers always say “niche everything down” or “keep it super specific” or even “have multiple blogs with each one being a single, super specific, niche topic”. But ain’t nobody got time for that.

The past year, since the end of my 20 year marriage, has been one of self discovery. I have learned a lot, grown a lot, and have changed the direction my life is heading. I recently discovered this idea of Cottagecore and Slow Living, and it really sums up the direction I have been heading in the past year. I think for so long in my marriage, I used material things to try to make myself feel happy. A pair of $300 Ferragamo shoes here and a $2000 Louis Vuitton bag here. But in the end, they never made me happy. One of the biggest decisions I made at the end of my married life, as I began my single life for the first time in 20 years, was that I wanted to focus on collecting memories and not material things.

So I sold the Louis Vuittions, donated the Ferragamos, and have been more conscious about what I buy and only buying things I truly need. Now, I won’t say that I am absolutely perfect, but I’m making more of a conscious effort to not buy “things” that I don’t really need. Instead, I want to enjoy life’s simple pleasures, go on adventures, and experience all that I can. I have this absolute desire right now to make life as simple, effortless, and as enjoyable as I can. Instead of keeping of with the Joneses, I am only chasing after JOY.

This idea of slow living really hit home with me. Even now, I am giving away more things, collecting less, and really thinking before I make any new purchases. Simple living. So that even led me to think about my blog, etc. My purpose was to share my interests and passions, as well as my experience. To inform, educate, and inspire. I think I have done that over the past few years, even though its been on a smaller scale than I had thought.

So thinking about where I’m heading, I still want to share all of that with y’all. But instead of just being skincare, it will be everything I am interested in, everything going on in my life, and everything I am learning along the way. This also had me thinking about my childhood growing up in Florida. I think everyone thinks living in Florida is all Disney, sunshine, and beaches. But that is not always the case. I actually have a different experience than most people think of when they think of growing up in Florida.

While I was born in Ohio and spent 16 years between Washington, DC and Boston, most of my life was here in Florida. But I didn’t go to Disney every weekend and I never learned to surf. Instead, I grew up very poor and mostly on dairy farms. Instead of being at the beach every day, we swam in creeks and lakes. Instead of exploring theme parks, we explored the woods around where we lived. Sundays were not for brunch at a fancy resort restaurant, but instead it was a true home cooked, country breakfast of biscuits with butter and honey, scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, and freshly squeezed orange juice.

We fished, we hunted, we swam in springs not pools, we did activities that were free because we couldn’t afford going to Disney all the time. In fact, the first time I went to Disney was at the age of five when we first moved to Florida. It wasn’t until I was 24 and could afford to buy a ticket for myself that I ever went again.

So as I focus on slow living, revamping my blog to show y’all more of who I am, and spend more time enjoying life’s simple pleasures, I want to share about my home state of Florida. I’ve spent the past year, during the COVID 19 lockdown, exploring little bits of Florida. Taking adventures to one city after another to explore my home state. I plan on sharing more of that here with you, but not the Florida that most tourists see. I want to share the Florida I grew up with: little known spots that tourist never venture to, southern food, southern hospitality, and more.

So you will start to see more adventure reports and some true southern cooking as I focus on those things going into the next chapter of my life. In addition to that, this past year found me reconnecting with God and my faith. While I wont share too much of that here, it might creep in, so expect a little of that. This blog and my other accounts will mostly focus on clean beauty and wellness, but you will start to see more lifestyle (specifically that southern lifestyle) creep in. Hope you will take this journey with me and learn a little bit more about what it takes to be a true southern gentleman.

Y’all come back now, ya hear!