Hey you! Thanks for taking the time to visit my very new blog – bear with me 🙂
I’m here to answer any questions, give advice, share relatable life experiences and hopefully be a motivation to you!

 

Please connect with me on Instagram
LifewithEmilyElizabeth
I try to post daily and am constantly talking my followers ears off in my stories 🙂

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I’ll start from the beginning…
I was born and raised in Porterville, California. It’s a small town in the San Joaquin Valley known for…well I don’t think anyone knows anything about Porterville, HA!

I am the baby of 5 – I have 3 older half siblings (1 brother & 2 sisters) and 1 full-blooded, nothing she can do about it, sister 🙂 That’s Megan. She and I are the closest in age (26 months apart) and if you ever hear me reference ‘my sister’, that’s who I’m talking about. My dad was a Police Officer and we were so lucky to have our mom be a stay at home mom. I’ll talk more about my parents in another post…cause they’re pretty awesome.

My mom had my sister and I in church at least once a week growing up and for that I am so thankful. I continue to walk by faith and without knowing Jesus, I don’t know where I’d be today. We did it all; AWANAs, VBS, children’s choir, my sister even led worship on Sunday nights where I’d make the occasional cameo for one of our infamous Garay sister duets
( <–those come in song or dance form). If we weren’t at church we were at dance class. Shoutout to Dance Horizons!

Elementary school was okay. Yeah, just okay. I joke about how I used to be fat but I really was a little chubster. a non-bra wearing, gap-toothed, frizzy-haired chubster. I’ll never forget this big bad 6th grader yelling “Shut up, four eyes!” to me during a kickball game. (By the way, be nice to people. it might stick with them for 20 years). The summer between 6th & 7th grade saved me. I lost 20lbs, got contacts and learned how to use a straightener. Ever since then things have been looking up. I like to say I have ‘ugly duckling syndrome’ because sometimes…most of the time…I still see myself as that 6th grader in dire need of a makeover. But if you ask my mom, she would say i was adorable. AKA: a mother’s love.

Going in to high school, my best friend and I knew a lot the seniors through her older brother so that made the transition much easier. It also meant we started partying a lot sooner too 😛 -My party days is going to have to be a separate blog post as well, haha!-
My sister was a junior when I was a freshman so she paved the way. She was a cheerleader so I became a cheerleader, she was in drama so I was in drama, she was in AP classes I was…not in AP classes. Drama and Cheer took up most of my free time but I was happy to do it. I’ve always been super outgoing and cheer filled the void once I stopped dancing. I was immature, loud, forgetful, unorganized, you name it. But I really think everything changed when the squad voted me their varsity captain. Something clicked and I grew up overnight. Those were my girls and I had to be on the ball. Ever since then I’ve been…better. Still immature, loud, forgetful and unorganized yet somehow everything gets done. My sister has even labeled me a “go-getter”. All in all, i had a great high school experience!

Moving on to college: my most memorable years that are also that hardest to remember. I was an Interior Design major at California State University, Fresno. I moved into a house with my sister, her boyfriend and our friend Michael. We were really the only ones in our group of friends who had a house instead of an apartment so we threw most of the parties. Not just any ol’ party. We had themes and costumes and disco lights and our beloved beer bong. What more could you ask for? Partied so hard one night I pooped my pants at work the next day. Yup, that happened. Between said parties I had full class loads and 3-4 jobs. Oh to be young again 😉 I met my boyfriend, Mike during my last semester of college and also got an internship at my current company. I guess you could say this is when things really started falling in to place. Once I graduated that following May, the company offered me a full-time position in their LA office. I was officially an interior designer!

I packed up my car and moved down South – away from everything and everyone I knew. I stayed in the LA office for about a year then transferred to their Newport beach office for about 3 years. Mike would come and live with me during his off seasons (approximately October – January) and during the rest of the year I would try to go visit him one weekend a month. Last year we started building our first home together in Texas so once the home was complete (March 2018) I moved to Texas and have been working from home ever since!

Here I am: designer, girlfriend, new home owner and blogger extraordinaire!
Well, getting there 😉