{photos 1,3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 16 taken by myself and photos 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18 taken by Adrienn Suri of Tastecode}

It's just after 7am. I groggily peel open first one eye, then the other. With a big inhale and an even bigger stretch, I awaken to face the day ahead. After a few minutes, I roll out of bed, throw on my slippers and robe and pad on out of the bedroom. I light a candle (pine scented for the winter season), push play on my favorite classical piano playlist and make my way into the kitchen, where I begin boiling water for coffee. I shuffle around the kitchen, pulling out this ingredient and that, pausing only for a quick dance with my husband. The sound of the water boiling pulls me away. I finish brewing the coffee, pour myself a big ol' cup and then I begin...

It wasn't all that long ago that a morning like this would never have materialized. You see, I've never been a good sleeper and I've never been a morning person. I've battled insomnia for longer than I care to remember (read: my whole life) and I've struggled to go to bed before midnight for just as long. As you can imagine, putting these two together has only ever equaled a recipe (pun intended) for a rough morning and/or a disastrous day. Once I started my own business, however, I quickly realized this was no longer something I could ignore, something I could just make due with. Something had to change.

It's no secret that many successful people have rigid evening and morning routines, rising early after getting a good night's sleep of at least 8 hours. So I began implanting changes to set myself up for this kind of success. I started having a morning and evening routine, I shut my phone off earlier in the evening (or at least attempted to) and stopped looking at it first thing in the morning (or, again, attempted to). I added in quiet time, reading time and journaling time. I spent more time drinking tea and less time drinking coffee. I took bathes more than once a week. All these changes were great, but they still weren't enough.

And then it hit me. Our bed. Duh. When my husband and I first moved in together years ago, his parents had generously gifted us with a brand new mattress. But after 7+ years and almost as many moves, the mattress had lost its ability to give us a good nights sleep. Finding a new mattress, however, was no easy feat. With so many options on the market, I felt almost princess and the pea like....minus the pea....and being a princess....and piling all the mattresses in a stack. So basically, just a girl with a whole lot of mattress options. At the end of the day, it came down to quality of sleep. After all, that is a mattress's job, no?

As fate would have it, my darling friend, Adrienn of Tastecode, reached out with an opportunity that was almost too perfect to be true. Thankfully, it wasn't. Along with airweave, we worked together to set up a dreamy little winter bedroom scene, starting and ending with the most important parts, the mattress and the baked goods.

airweave has created their mattress with one goal in mind-to provide good sleep tonight for a better, more productive and efficient tomorrow. Whether your tomorrow involves running a board meeting or running after your kids, running a marathon or running a bakery, it all starts with a good night's sleep, which consequently starts with a good mattress.

...I snap back from the daydreaming induced by my own good night's sleep and continue mixing, measuring, adding and stirring. What was once just simple ingredients, has now magically become a cranberry crepe cake. And soon it will be the treat we indulge in. How easily that cake could have been toast if not for the sleep I got the night before. How easily it would be to add salt instead of sugar if I wasn't fully awake enough to read the recipe. How easily it would be to dislike even being in the kitchen at all. Those thoughts drift away on the scents of orange zest blending with cranberries, and the sleepless nights that once felt like bad dreams fade into the distance. It's time to cut the cake and then take on the rest of the day....