And We Are Back!!!

It has been a crazy few months since I have last posted on here. Between the move, setting up our house, and exploring San Diego, I have been busy on other projects. I had started a second blog but realized that I hate having two blogs especially since I think a lot of y’all would enjoy the posts that I have been sharing over there. They aren’t exactly paranormal related but they are our lives, experiences, and housewife related stuff. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting those blogs on this website and shutting down that blog. I will also be having the paranormal posts as well. I hope y’all like the new posts and more of an insight into our lives. 

The post below is the initial post that I had posted I had posted on the new blog. The rest of the posts will be posted up on their own over the next few days. After everything is posted, I will work out a new posting schedule. Please bear with me while I figure everything out. Oh by the way, this isn’t the only change happening but that change will be announced in one of the new posts I am bringing over from the other blog. See you’ll need to keep your eye out for that. 

Welcome To Our Southern Ohana

Hi and welcome to my new blog! Some of y’all may know me from my other blog, Paranormal Housewife, where I talk about living with spirits, how to ethically ghost hunt, and the history behind haunted locations and urban legends. So why new blog since I already have the paranormal one? Because there is more to my life and my family than just paranormal stuff and I miss sharing those aspects of my life with the world. I also missed sharing recipes, special occasions, and my random thoughts about stuff going on. My husband, Jeremy, and I just moved to San Diego, and it seemed like the right time to start up a lifestyle blog again. 

I guess I should introduce the main characters you’ll be reading about in this blog. As the author of this blog, I guess I will start with myself. 

My name is Kelly Butler. I am a 38 years old North Carolina native. I love to write (as evident with my two blogs plus countless books I have started to write but have yet to finish), read, bake, practice photography and archery, and craft stuff. Most of the books I read for fun are thrillers, true crime, historical fiction, and the occasional chick flick type book. Baking wise I love making breads and cookies mostly. I am trying to branch out more and learn more techniques but that will have to wait until after the house is unpacked. Back in Illinois, I used to go to the shooting range with Jeremy and our friends often to practice archery. I absolutely love it. I’m not that good at it but I’m not god awful either. I can usually hit the target. I usually shoot with my dad’s old long bow from the 60’s. As long as I can remember, I have been in love with photography. It wasn’t until we were in Iwakuni, Japan that I really tried to get into it. I guess that is a normal path for a lot of military spouses. I have a couple of cameras now but I haven’t really used them much in the past 3 years. Illinois did a lot to my mental health and because of that, I didn’t feel inspired as much to pick up a camera to take pictures. I have a feeling things in San Diego will be different. I already feel better being here than I did in Illinois. Don’t get me wrong. I loved most of the experiences and the friends we made in Illinois, I just don’t do well with total isolation, snow, the politics out there, or the daily gloom. Here in San Diego, its sunny and warm basically every day. I have already started to make friends. And already my creative side is coming alive. Which is one of the reasons I wanted to start this blog. I don’t think posts about my daily life or baking cookies will go over well on my paranormal blog. Lastly, one of the things that I enjoy doing is crafting. Whether that is making jewelry, painting, embroidery, or doing puzzles, I love keeping my hands busy. 

My husband is Jeremy. He is a Marine and the reason we move around so much. He is 30 years old and from Pennsylvania originally. He is a nerd but a very cute nerd. He is into card games like Magic The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon. He is also into video gaming. He just started a twitch channel where he will start streaming from soon. He plays a lot of wrestling, Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, and other similar games. He is very artistic. He loves to paint when he has the time. Like me, he is really into archery. He shoots with a compound bow and is much more accurate than me. He is hoping to be able to start going hunting soon. Jeremy also loves to go fishing. He loves to cook. He actually cooks most of the meals here because he is definitely the better chef. When it comes to what he wants to do after the Marine Corps, he goes back and forth. Some days, he wants to get into criminal investigations and other days, he was to open his own restaurant or food truck. Whatever he choses, I will support because he supports me being a blogger and a housewife. Plus I just want to see him happy. 

We have three pets. The eldest is Katniss Everpurr. She is very much my daughter. She was found abandoned in the middle of the road on base in Iwakuni when she was a 3 day old kitten. We offered to foster her until she was old enough to be placed with a family. I clearly failed at the fostering part because its over six years later and we still have her. I say she’s my daughter because we are very bonded. She follows me around, needs to sleep near me, gets upset if I am gone for long periods of time, and comes to me when she isn’t feeling well. Like a typical calico, she has an ego too big for her body. Being raised in Japan didn’t help that. We took her to festivals and the Nationals would praise her marks, call her maneki neko, and give her presents. During Sakura, Katniss would pose in cherry blossom trees while dozens of Japanese people would take her picture. She doesn’t understand why Americans don’t treat her the same here. She also usually doesn’t wear a traditional collar. After moving to the states, Jeremy started spoiling her with buying her bracelets to wear as collars. She has a ruby and diamond one (her favorite), a blue topaz one, and a pearl one. She rotates through them and lets me know when she wants to change it out by taking her necklace off. Right now, though, she is wearing a normal cat collar with a bow tie because it is festive and so we can walk her outside. She loves flowers and being outside even though she is an inside only cat. We only let her out on a leash or in her stroller. Her favorite things are chasing yellow nerf balls, watching gory scary movies, being told she’s pretty, and all things related to Christmas. She loves Santa and goes to see him every year. She is sassy and will hold a grudge against anyone that says or implies that she fat or chonky. But she is very loving with select people. She will scream to listen to Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, or Megan Thee Stallion. Her purrs are my favorite thing.

Our other cat is name Bagheera Bartholomew Higginbotham III (he won’t tell us what happened to the others with that name). He also goes by Baggy and Bagel Bite. Typically he is very calm, quiet, and business man like in his demeanor. He will only wear collars that have either a bowtie or a tie on it. He is very much Jeremy’s cat. Where ever Jeremy sits, Bagheera has to be in his lap. At night, Bagheera curls up around Jeremy’s arm to sleep. But there is also another side of Bagheera where he will try to get face level with me or Jeremy to SCREAM in our face because we aren’t doing what he wants. Bagheera LOVES bats. He has a family of stuff bats that he babies. Especially two black and purple ones that he carries through the house and plays with. Bagheera loves classical music. His favorite is anything that features a traditional violin. He hates the electric violins. We like to joke that he has been to several universities and has degrees in fashion, architecture, medicine, and business. 

Our third pet is John Paul Jones. John Paul is a soft coated wheaten. We named him after a contestant on The Bachelorette who had a golden retriever personality. John Paul lives up to his name. He has girlfriends in different area codes and continues to break hearts whereever he goes. He is truly the best dog. Most of the time he is super lazy. He loves to sleep in and just hang out. I can zone out on writing or whatever and he doesn’t move. But get him with another dog or in the back yard and he gets the zoomies. He loves dog parks, Starbucks, snackies, and car rides. He hates going for walks (half a mile in and he drags his paws wanting to go home). He is the perfect pet to go traveling with. He has driven to and from Illinois to North Carolina and from Illinois to San Diego. The whole time (even as a young puppy) he just curls up on his pillow and sleeps. He will stand up to let me know he needs to potty or stretch his legs. He rarely barks and if he does it’s usually an airy huff. The few times it was a real bark, we realized we were in trouble (aka someone trying to enter our hotel room in the middle of the night). He loves to gnaw on bones and his harder toys. He also has a few stuffies that he likes to baby. He isn’t the best at fetching. He will watch the ball fall and be like “here it is”. He loves scratches but isn’t really a cuddly pup. He hates to be picked up unless it is Jeremy or Jeremy’s friend, French, picking him up. He is sensitive and doesn’t like yelling, even if it is happy yelling. John Paul loves to dance with me when I’m feeling goofy. I love taking out with me as much as possible and if we go to stores that allow dogs (like PetSmart or Lowe’s), he likes to ride in the buggy so he is higher up for people to see him. In general, he is just a big fluff ball of love who gets offended if people don’t love on him. 

So that is us in a nut shell. Through the course of this blog you will get to know us better. While this is a lifestyle blog, don’t expect one of those happy, everything is rainbows and sunshine, and our house looks perfects all the time type of blogs. We aren’t like that. We are nerdy, witchy, and a little chaotic but we are fun, loving, and always down for adventures or food. I hope you enjoy what this blog will grow into and the journey along the way. Let me know if you have any suggestions for topics, questions for any of us, or places we should check out. Please leave those in the comments below or shoot me an email.