🛶 this was my weeknight game-changer

carolyn leasure looking up with the words "designing your true north

“What’s for dinner?” I ask my husband.

“What’s for dinner?” he asks me back.

It’s 5:27pm on a Tuesday.

I stare into the abyss of my refrigerator.

It mocks me.

IYKYK. Dinnertime is the wooooorst.

How is it possible that we are expected to come up with something to eat EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT?

It's a spiral of doom:

Scrambling last-minute to cobble something together from pantry items.

Setting off on an archeological dig through the freezer for something that isn’t completely freezer-burned.

Finally, defeated, as you order takeout. Knowing that what started prob pretty good will arrive as room-temperature blehhhh.

The irony isn’t lost on me - my husband and I both LOVE to cook.

We both spent our first careers in the restaurant world! Him as an accomplished chef and me with my cheese shop & wine bar.

We’re food people! We love good food!

But we’re also not running a diner. There’s no way we’re making three different meals just because one kid won’t eat spicy food and the other suddenly decided pasta is gross.

Something has to change.

So I design a system.

Any recipe that meets three criteria gets a trial run at our dinner table:

Takes less than 30 minutes to make
Uses primarily ingredients we keep in our (well-stocked) pantry
Doesn’t create a sink full of dishes to clean up afterward

If the recipe earns at least three 5-star ratings from family members, it gets printed, slipped into a plastic sleeve, and added with flourish to the almighty “Leasure Eats Book”:

red 3-ring binder titled "Leasure Eats", with tabbed sections for each type of recipe

Then, once a week (usually Sunday morning with coffee), we flip through this perfectly curated cookbook – with only dishes we like PLUS are easy to make – and select dinners for the next seven nights.

I unclip them from the binder, post them on the fridge for whoever's cooking each night, and add any ingredients we need to our shared grocery app.

😩 No more 6pm panic.

😩 No more "what should we eat" decision fatigue.

😩 No more waited-too-long-to-eat meltdowns (from the kids OR me).

💅 Just delicious, reliable meals that we know work for us.

Reader: what would it feel like to have that same system-driven ease with your website?

Not staring at your site wondering how to start a needed update...but having a clean, organized system where everything has its place and you know exactly where to find it.

Not panicking that the site will get screwed up when you need to change something...but confidently making updates because everything was built with YOU in mind.

Not wasting hours on tech tutorials...but having custom video walkthroughs that show you exactly how to maintain your beautiful site.

Here's the thing: your website should save you time, not steal it.

Ever think, 'oh I can figure this out in an hour' – and it turns into a 3-day project?

TBH, I design differently than most website folks because I've been you.

As a former brick & mortar business owner, I know that feeling of opening your laptop to update the back-end of your site... and just staring into that abyss, with no idea where to even start.

That gut-punch moment when you think, "Holy shit, I just lost hundreds of dollars trying to fix that on my own."

Your website is a living system – which means it needs to be as nimble as your business is.

That's exactly why I created the Northstar Site Solution – a website that works FOR you, not the other way around.

It's the Leasure Eats recipe book – for your site:

>> A custom "sandbox" page where you can test changes without breaking anything – because you don't need that pit-in-your-stomach fear of accidentally messing up your live site.

>> Pre-built "saved sections" you can easily reuse for new pages or offers – so you can quickly add that new service or thank-you page without starting from scratch.

>> Testimonial and FAQ sections that let you update content without touching design – just swap in the new content while the structure stays in place.

>> Custom tutorial videos showing exactly how to use YOUR specific site – because you shouldn't need to wade through generic platform tutorials just to update an image.

The Northstar Site Solution isn't just about making your site pretty (though it will be stunning).

It's about creating a strategic foundation you can actually rely on.

😩 No more going down the rabbit hole of trying to figure it out yourself.

😩 No more constantly trying to fix the cracks in your website foundation.

😩 No more feeling like you're reinventing the wheel every time you need to make an update.

💅 Just a beautiful, strategic website that lets you run a "life-first" business.

Want to stop losing hours to website panic and join the 'it just works' club?

Check out the Northstar Site Solution

Keep on doing you,

PS Got questions?
Book a no-strings-attached quick chat about the Northstar Site Solution. I only want to work with those that are the right fit, so if your gut and brain are battling, let's work it out together.

PPS. What part of your website gives you the biggest headache right now? Just hit reply and give me the scoop. I might have a quick tip that could save you hours 💃🏻

PPPS Want any Leasure-approved recipes? Lemme know and I'll shoot them over to you.

Take a quick peek into the studio:

🔎 Wellness Find:

Summertime is a clusterfuck.

With less predictability and the sweltering Virginia heat, my nervous system is basically on fire.

Thank goodness my client Allyn, of Child Connection, just shared The Resilience Booster – a customizable guide for those moments when you're TOTALLY EFFING OVER IT.

It helps you define your personal sensory and experiential activities to try when your brain's in full flight-or-fight mode, so you can get back into it.

And it's free until 5/31!

🌱 Launched:

Just opened the waitlist for my first-ever group program – Brand Roots Basecamp! The beta round is exclusive to Matrikas members. So why the hell am I telling you?

The plan is to make it open to all in January 🥳 I'll keep you posted Reader.