I have started and stopped when it comes to writing a any blog post over the last month. I don't know what it going on with me right now, but I can start a million projects, but I can't seem to finish them.

I just wrote down three things I want to accomplish before the end of the year, and REGARDLESS of whether I do it or not, the 12/31/2024 blog post will be on that list. I won't stop at anything and make sure that I accomplish that.

That said, instead of jumping balls to the wall when writing, I will take an idea running through my mind (no pun intended) while watching a recent YouTube vlog from Levi Bent-Lee. I'm paraphrasing, but he mentioned that when you get into running, you have to pace yourself slowly to get your footing before really going all out.

This was something that had been on my mind for a while.

I didn't know how or where I want this blog to go… or even what I wanted to share, but I think I'm just going to pace myself and do "easy" posts for the next few weeks, and as this becomes more of a habit that, then will have more regular blog post.

I also want to use Lemon8 as a form of blogging. Lemon8 will be my blog light, and this will be more detailed.

I was also worried about the photos for this blog. While I am a photographer, sometimes I don't think my photojournalism work is as good as it used to be. I bring that up because I would love those, just, aesthically beautiful photos, but I just feel like the work isn't up to par. I bring this up because I want them to be the featured photos for the blog post that engage and draw people in, but currently, I don't think I'm there yet. In 2025, I will focus on returning to being an amazing shooter and then see if I want to use real photos for my features going into 2026. However, now I will use AI mocking Studio Ghibli art style as the cover photos. However, when I feel like I look good, I will also use actual photos (especially of myself).

So today, I want to showcase my beautiful plants in my apartment.

It's not too wild or exciting, but I just love my apartment. It's the first and only place I have lived since moving to LA. While there are things that I wish I had this apartment there are soooooo many positives. One is that there are no buildings around our building casting a shadow, so I get light ALL DAY. The plants in my apartment are LITERALLY thriving here.

While it may not look like it, I have more than 50 plants in my tiny 650 sqft studio apartment in DTLA. Perhaps in a different post I may do an apartment tour. Even though the apartment is so tiny, I spend considerable time here working on various ways to make sure the condo feels large.

The big one is lighting. The natural light cascaded in all day, every day. While it makes sleeping hard, the trade-off is amazing light. Second is that my furniture is on the white side. Because this apartment is so cozy, having too much color would have made the apartment smaller and overstimulated me. So, it was important for the apartment to look light and airy. Another thing I did was limit the amount of furniture in the apartment, which included not having a coffee table. The coffee table would have occupied valuable real estate in an already small apartment. I am also feng shuied the apartment; while I could go on and on, the last important thing was the plants helped add a warm aspect to an otherwise boring modern apartment.

The plants helped add texture, dimension, and depth. All the plants sit on either warm wood or marble. The stools and shelves are all at different heights, creating some interest.

I'm going to go through each of my photos and explain what's going on in the pictures.

Currently, I am LIVING for disco balls. For some reason, mushrooms are in this season (they are all over Ross, Marshalls, and TJ Maxx), so whenever I go into the stores, I always pick one up. This mushroom was on clearance for only $2, so it would have been a mistake not to get one. I have two more disco balls in the house. I love how disco balls have that light radiate and bounce off of them when the sun hits them just right. For me, that's super early in the morning. Catching that light this morning inspired me to pick up my camera and blog this morning. However, I got these shots later in the day, so we won't see that beautiful light bouncing all over the apartment in this post. Perhaps in another blog post.

More about this, the book is called Astrology and it's from the Taschen collection. It's one of 5 in their Esoterica collection. I have two out of the 5 books. It looks like the newest one is called Sacrad site. I need to check that book out in person and see if I like it. The other book I have is Tarot. I wasn't interested in the other two books in the collection.

The little plant in the box was a birthday gift from one of my favorite people. I am not a "gift person." it's not a love language for me, but my look language is words of affirmation and the thought you were really considering me when getting the gift. It's one of my favorite parts of my apartment and takes center stage. The stool is from Goodies. Goodies is one of my favorite places in LA for low-priced home goods that's not Ikea.

Here, you can see the other two disco balls I just discussed. Next to it sits one of my OG plants from Dallas. This hoya is this tiny 4-inch plant from the Grow Plant shop. This was when Grow was still in the cute little mobile spot before they got their brick-and-mortar. Now, the plants truly flourished and cascaded into its own masterpiece.

I have NO IDEA where I got the neon pothos from, but I have prograted this bad boy so many times. It grows SO fast. In fact, I'm prograting some of its leave from his guy. However, I think I will program this one again this year because the bald spot you can see is bothering me to no end. The dog is a piggy bank I found at Ross about 5 years ago. The painting in the back is from Pier 1 Important from about 6 years ago. There were three paintings in this series, but I only picked up this one because it was the best.

A shot of my Manjula pothos. I love how each one of the leaves has found its perfect spot to get its photosynthesis on!

The Budda and the rose quartz frame to the left of it are from Pier 1 imporants. I actually have several Buddas around the house. The glass beads are from Ghana, made from recycled glass found off the country's coast. The frames above and to the left were found at Marshall's. I am a super fan of stone frames. One is marble, and the other one is Alabaster.

The plants' features are my nJoy pothos and the Scandapsis Exotica. I actually cut this one all the ways back, that's why you only see two leaves... I have the cutting currently propagating on my counter. For some reason, this plant wasn't producing new leaves, but its stems kept growing and growing. It had large bald spots anyway, so I just trimmed it back. I was scared, but I had faith, and now we see new leaves just popping up. In the back is a thrifted lamp I picked up. One of my biggest thrifting mistakes was not buying the pair and only one lamp. You should only buy and style things in odd numbers anyway. The pink vessel to the right is from the target. That buy has to be nearly 5 years old as well. The floating shelves are all from Hobby Lobby.

Now I have to hurry this up because it's almost midnight, and I want to post this tonight.

Is is my fernwood sanseveria. An older neighbor of mine back in Dallas gifted me this plant right before I moved. In turn, I gifted him a Masionia Sanseveria. He was also a HUGE plant lover. He had lost his wife years ago. He cared so much about his plants, and every time I looked at this plant, it made me smile, and I always thought about him.

I'm going to just do a photo dump of the rest of my plants, and maybe in a future post, I can talk bout my plants in more detail. Thanks for reading and joining me today and on this journey.

I will hurry and post this and try to sneak in ONE more episode of Season 8 of Selling Sunset before bed. Are y'all watching this season????