About Me

About the Blog

Uncorking Peonies is a place on genuine Life, where both joys and failings are captured to inspire you to live the best life possible.

Uncorking Peonies began in 2014 as Peonies ‘n Mint and was a meditative tool as I transitioned from being a college student to career professional The blog mainly focused on relationships, life lessons, and the trials of “growing up.” After a short hiatus, my love for writing led me to rebrand the blog and in September 2017 Uncorking Peonies launched.

Uncorking Peonies followed my wedding planning process as I prepared to marry my best friend, Grant. Since our wedding in June 2018, the blog grew from a simple wedblog to a full lifestyle blog focusing on entertaining, transitioning into a newlywed, building a home, and remaining reflective of self-love and care.

I was struggling to remain focused with my blogging though. With a number of personal demands and more and more limitations on my time, I decided to bid farewell to my blog and readers at the beginning of 2020. My time away from blogging did not last long though as COVID-19 allowed my schedule to rapidly clear. Before long I was making lists of blog topics focused on my personal journey and I chose to reopen Uncorking Peonies.

Which brings me to here and now. Moving forward, Uncorking Peonies will continue to be a personal blog on the what’s and where’s and how’s my Life is going. I plan to share more home projects, travel experiences, entertaining ideas, and healthy activities with my readers. In the menu above you will see the four areas of my focus: Life, Health, Experience, and Home. Under each you’ll find:

• Life: daily journal entries of what I’m doing and/or how I’m feeling, open discussions on topics shared with my friends and loved ones, and miscellaneous topics that might cover a little bit of everything and anything.
• Health: a focus on nutrition from a self-care approach rather than control over my body, fitness regimens I am utilizing to develop my most optimum body, recipes that have become staples in my kitchen, and mental and emotion well-being posts to both inspire and encourage
• Experience: a little area to showcase my family’s travels, my part-time gig of event planning, and all things #SlackTieEvent (our 2018 wedding and preparation posts)
• Home: entertaining tips and secrets, fun DIY creations designed from Pinterest finds and tweaked for my needs, and a number of home projects that are elevating our house into a home

I welcome you to join me as I stumble through this crazy, beautiful life, wine in hand, stopping to smell the peonies and savoring the flavors of the world, one day at a time.

Meet Ashley

Hey everyone! I’m Ashley, the wine-drinking dreamer behind Uncorking Peonies. I hail from Southwest Michigan, one of the most beautiful places in the world. (I may be biased, but there’s just something to be said about four seasons, wine country, and living a minute from the beach.)

I am a wine enthusiast, nature-exploring foodie who values conversation and adventures with loved ones above all else. I love Jesus with all my heart, and am an advocate for many organizations and causes in my community. I’m a passionate INFJ working two jobs: full-time in community action and part-time in winery event coordination. I’ve learned hard lessons, gained some insight, and still have mountains of improvement to make to become the best ME.

Currently I am focused on shifting my health to one of passive grazing and couch-surfing to cleaner eating and more movement. I am actively training for a half marathon in August 2020 followed by a 25k in October 2020. I honestly share my struggles with self-criticism, poor body image, and low confidence levels while also striving to find pride in my daily achievements. I’ve lovingly begun to refer to this lifestyle transition as my “reclaiming of badashery.”

Within Uncorking Peonies is where I share the little things that make me content and the big things that cause an impact in my life. All with a bit of positivity, humor, and good-natured realism. So grab a glass of wine and join me!