In 2017, I was documenting our life during my husband’s second hardship tour. He was in Honduras for 15 months, and I was working my way through a deployment bucket list, sending care package, and decorating a house on a shoestring budget.
mama. army wife. homebody. displaced floridian. maker. amateur traveler. lover of lists, books, beaches, plants, hikes, + Jesus. just trying to find my way through this chaos we call life.
After posting my Deployment Bucket List and care packages on Instagram, a friend sent me a message and told me that I should start a blog. At the time, I didn’t even know ‘regular people’ could do that! On the couch one night, I googled ‘how to start a blog’. I went down the rabbit hole and now we’re here.
It’s a boring answer: from an online domain name generator. When I started the blog, I really wanted the name ‘Life Interrupted’ (I would have settled for ‘Wife, Interrupted’), since it was perfect for military life, but both of those were copyrighted. And since I started the blog on a whim, I typed my name into a ‘Domain Name Generator’ and clicked on Finding Mandee instead.
It started out of means of necessity. I had a house, but nothing to put in it. And the only thing I could afford was thrift stores, flea markets, and hand-me-downs. So, through a LOT of trial and error, YouTube university, and my dad, who is a contractor and jack-of-all-trades, I figured out how to make my old things nice again.
Everyone always wants to know this! Yes, I work on an as-needed basis, doing home inspections after natural disasters. I am also a licensed realtor, certified paralegal, and have a bachelor’s degree in psychology. I sometimes take part-time jobs at different duty stations, as long as I can still be available for my kids. As a military family, there is no ‘village’ and many times I’m the only one in the house with a driver’s license!
The short answer: Florida (specifically the Panhandle). The long answer: the woods north of DeFuniak Springs, but not quite in the communities of Paxton, Gaskin, Darlington, or Glendale. Although, depending on who’s asking, I’ve claimed all of those as ‘home’.
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