365 Resolutions

No More Chocolate...Sniffle Sniffle :-(

2011-01-05T12:01:00.001-08:00

You know you are being put on a restrictive diet when you are almost 5 months pregnant and your doctor tells you that you can't have chocolate for the rest of your pregnancy! Really?? You are going to tell a pregnant girl she can't have CHOCOLATE??! Well, yes... along with a bunch of other random stuff! Since we found out my kidney stones are made of calcium oxalate (because what everyone wants to do is stroll into the doctor's office with one of their own kidney stones in a sandwich bag... it's about as awesome as sitting in a waiting room full of people carrying an enormous jug full of 24 hours worth of your own pee... did that on Monday... boy have the past few weeks been extra fun!)... but I digress... at least we know what my stones are made of, so I'm now on a low oxalate diet.

Up until a few weeks ago, I had no clue what oxalates were. Turns out they are naturally occurring in lots of fruits and vegetables, so a low oxalate diet is kind of weird. There are a lot of healthy things that I can't eat... like whole grains, legumes, spinach, potatoes and sweet potatoes just to name a few. There are plenty of fruits and vegetables that I can eat, however, so it's just a matter of getting used to some new standards. Oh, ya, and chocolate. It's loaded with oxalates. Of course.

So, the low oxalate thing is a little tricky just trying to come up with meals that don't contain anything on my forbidden list... but it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't also coupled with being told I need to be on a very low sodium diet. Hmmm. Okay. What's low you ask? I need to stay around 1500 mg of sodium per day. The recommended daily allowance is 2000 and I would hazard a guess that the average person eats between 3000 and 4000 mg per day... easily! There is sodium in everything! I had no clue just how many foods contained sodium and how much!!! Good grief! So, that knocked a bunch of foods off my list that are low in oxalates... because I have to really watch my sodium.

And last, but not least, I have to reduce the amount of meat that I eat. I can't have more than one serving of meat per day. Alright, so... in addition to the low oxalate, low sodium, reduced meat diet, I have to also make sure I'm meeting my caloric needs for being pregnant and making sure I'm getting enough protein during the day. This would be easier if all the plant based proteins weren't on the HIGH OXALATE LIST! (yes, I'm yelling now!) It's been like one giant jigsaw puzzle! Slightly maddening, but a good challenge.

I'm slowly working out meals that I can eat. I also ordered a low oxalate cook book that came today and looks awesome! So, I'm slowly getting where I need to be. I think the hardest part about all of this is that I feel like I can't eat out at all. Any meal that I could get at a restaurant will have way more sodium than I can fit into the confines of my 1500 mg allowance. It's weird to think that for the next four and a half months, if I want to eat, I need to cook it myself (or have my husband cook it for me... tee hee) but if we are both tired and want to order a pizza, we can't do that. Sigh.

So, where is the upside you might ask? Well, the number one big thing that BETTER be the upside is that I will hopefully be preventing myself from secreting oxalate in my urine and thus not form any more large stones, or make that 6 mm one that's already there any bigger. But some other nice little bonuses have been losing weight ... which I know is not recommended during pregnancy, but I was overweight to start and my doctor is well aware that this will be a side effect and the baby is growing just fine and will continue to be monitored. Also, my blood pressure has dropped. It was always normal, but now it's fantastic! I couldn't believe how fast that happened after reducing my sodium intake. And it's also going to save us money on eating out. I ate out more than I should have anyway, so this is forcing me to plan ahead a lot more and start developing some better habits.

Oh, ya, and my cookbook says I can have white chocolate!!! :-) That might become my new indulgence!

New Motivation

2011-01-04T20:21:00.001-08:00

Well, let me just say... nothing will motivate you like the threat of a 6 mm kidney stone getting stuck while you are pregnant... and knowing that the only thing the doctor can do for you is put in a stent. Sounds fun, right? Uggh! I'm having a little bit of a hard time knowing that I might have something super painful and uncomfortable happen and that I'd have to deal with it for the duration of my pregnancy. The bright side? I'm super motivated to get the things done that I need to while I'm feeling good, because I know that could change at any second.

I had one kidney stone before this pregnancy. It came a few months after Andy was born. That one got stuck. That was THE WORST pain I've ever been in... EVER! I'd never been so happy to have an IV of morphine flowing into my arm. The worst part was that it happened so fast! I went from thinking something isn't right here... maybe I'm getting a bladder infection to OH MY GOD! I THINK I'M DYING! In about an hour. Yes, an hour. I think that is the only time I've ever called my husband at work and said I need you to come home and take me to the ER... NOW!

So, now I have the threat of that happening again hanging over my head. It's not something I'm constantly worrying about, but I am also trying to be realistic. I have awesome friends here, and my brother and sister-in-law, who I know would pitch in and help out if I need it... but I also don't want my house to be a disaster, or for there to be things that I need to take care of and have them go untouched for months. Paperwork is totally disorganized around here. It would be a nightmare to have my husband sifting through things to find tax paperwork, etc. I really need to sort through everything so that it's easy for him to find what he's looking for if need be.

I know my Mom is going to read this and worry that I'm going to wear myself out and run myself down trying to take care of things... and I'm not going to go to that extreme :-)
But... I do need to make myself a little list of the things I want to get done before the baby comes and then prioritize. I want to tackle one task a week, starting with some of the most important things. I will feel like I'm being smart about preparing myself for the worst, while hoping for the best.

I guess maybe I'll be making a list again after all! But instead of something daily...I'll try and tackle something weekly!

My Break From Blogging

2011-01-03T17:51:00.000-08:00

Well, the end of the year has come and gone. The whole point of this blog was to try and accomplish one thing per day for 365 days. It was a pretty ambitious new year's resolution last January... and I came close, but didn't quite make it. All in all, I was able to cross 271 things off my list, but I kind of fell off the wagon somewhere around September.

In November I took on the Thirty Days of Giving Challenge and loved it... but only got through blogging about half of the giving I did for the month. I suppose it's time to finally fess up to the blog world that I found out in September that I'm PREGNANT!!! Yippee!! Tomorrow I will be 18 weeks along. Since I have PCOS, I needed to take Metformin and 50 mg of Clomid in order to conceive. I was beyond shocked when it worked on the first try!!

The first 10 weeks of my pregnancy were pretty rough with morning sickness. That came on top of a month of feeling sick from the Metformin and having crazy hot flashes from the Clomid. I was super excited when I finally started feeling better, but then was thrown for a little bit of a loop...

While on vacation visiting family over Thanksgiving, I thought I was starting to get a urinary tract infection. My doctor started me on an antibiotic, but I noticed I wasn't feeling any better. The day after we got home, I passed a 3 mm kidney stone. I ended up passing 3 more over the next three weeks. All were between 3 and 4 mm. I was able to pass them all at home, with great discomfort, but without needing to go to the emergency room.

I was referred to a urologist and put on a low oxalate, low sodium diet after finding out my stones were calcium oxalate stones. That in and of itself has been a challenging lifestyle change that I'll reserve for another post. I also found out today after a renal ultrasound that I have a 6mm stone in my right kidney. As of right now, it's not causing any blockage. It's too big for me to pass and I'm terrified of it starting to move and blocking my ureter. I'm terrified of having to have stents put in and being uncomfortable and in pain for the remainder of my pregnancy. I'm just praying that it stays put in there as long as possible!!

It's been incredibly frustrating that there aren't a lot of resources or recipes online for a low oxalate diet. It's hard to only read horror stories online from other people who have experienced kidney stones during pregnancy. I am not feeling bad. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I'm doing everything I need to do diet wise to try and prevent more large stones from forming and I'm viewing this new diet as a challenge to come up with different, but still yummy meals. It's just discouraging to feel like there isn't enough information out there for those who are experiencing kidney stones during pregnancy.

So, that's what has been going on with me over the past three months! I'm starting to feel like I want to blog again, but I'm not really sure what direction to take my blog. Do I make it more of a personal blog and just kind of blog about anything and everything? I know I will have plenty to write about with this pregnancy, but does anyone really want to read about that? I've also thought about blogging about projects you can do to make a cookie cutter home feel a little more individual and personalized, but I don't know how often I could do blog posts because I'm not sure how often we could afford to finish the projects we want to in our cookie cutter house! Hmmmmm.... something to think about! So, I'm not ready to change my blog page yet, but I think I will need a place to post while I'm working it all through, so for now I'm just going to keep things as they are.

I'm so grateful for this journey over the past year. I've accomplished more than I thought possible. I've noticed that my priorities have changed over the past year. I've become more mindful of others. I've realized that I can always be a work in progress, but there are some things I will probably never change about myself and I'm learning to accept myself more for who I am. I'm so excited to be starting a new year by creating and growing this new life. Keeping this baby healthy and safe until I reach my due date will be my big project this year...

And I'm not making any new year's resolutions... I'm going to tackle challenges as they come...one day at a time :-)

30 Day Giving Challenge: Day 11

2010-11-11T12:23:00.000-08:00

Today is day eleven of the 30 Day Giving Challenge and it's also Veteran's Day. I really wanted to do something that would give back to our troops and their families. At first I looked into organizations that I could send a care package through, but honestly, I needed a project that was free, or as close to free as possible! Then I came across this website and learned that US Military bases overseas will accept manufacturer's coupons up to SIX MONTHS past their expiration date at their commissaries!

Since I've been completely slack in the couponing department lately and my coupon binder was in dire need of being cleaned out and I already had stamps and envelopes.... well... this was just the perfect project! After ridding my binder of all my recently expired coupons, I separated all THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY (yes that's right!) of them into seven piles. I wrote a note on an sheet of paper thanking the recipients for their service and sacrifice and then folded the piles of coupons inside. Then I picked seven bases off of the list provided and dropped them in the mail box. I know there is no mail today, but at least they will be ready to go first thing tomorrow morning!

I have to say, that this felt SO much better than putting all those coupons in the recycling bin.. which is what would have happened whenever I finally got around to cleaning out my binder. I will always be slack in this department, and always have expired coupons, so in the future I plan to mail my coupons off to service men and women who can still use them.

Thank you to all of our men and women serving in the armed services. Thank you for your service and your sacrifices and the and never ending support of your families. It is not a sacrifice that my immediate family has ever known, but I am constantly in awe of the strength that military families possess. I'm blessed to call many of them friends and they are friends I look up to with the utmost respect!

30 Day Giving Challenge: Day 10

2010-11-10T14:30:00.000-08:00

I'm really excited about this 30 Day Giving Challenge project! This week, I recruited the girls in my Stitch n' Bitch group to help me make blankets for an organization called Project Linus. It's an organization that provides handmade blankets to children who are seriously ill, traumatized or otherwise in need.

I wanted to do a blanket project that could be started and finished in an evening. A few years ago I had made a simple fleece tie blanket as a baby gift and remembered that it didn't take much time at all to put together. So, each of the girls in my group, along with myself and my Mom who is visiting chipped in $10 a piece. I went over my total by $12 (oops!... this is what happens when you go to the fabric store w/ a toddler in your tiny shopping cart and have to go up to the counter to have fabric cut four different times because you can't fit it all in your cart in one trip! Ha ha... you lose count!) Anyway... I spent $82.19 including tax for 14 yards of fleece... and we were able to make NINE blankets! So, that works out to just under $10 piece. Five are larger size and four are smaller, but there weren't any requirements on size of the blankets to donate... the only requirement is that they be handmade.

It really meant a lot to me that my friends were so willing and eager to chip in their money and their time to help me with this project. It was a lot of fun. It also felt great to accomplish something from start to finish in one evening! That is certainly not the case with our crocheting projects! I really enjoyed working on this so much, I'm hoping to continue to give to this organization in the future. It was such a simple and easy project that will bring warmth and comfort to someone in need.

30 Day Giving Challenge: Days 6 ~ 9

2010-11-09T05:57:00.000-08:00

The past few days were spent doing little things for friends that I hoped would brighten their day. I'm trying to have a good mix of ways to give during this 30 Day Giving Challenge... doing small things for friends and family, taking on some larger projects, donating financially and donating my time. So far it's been challenging, rewarding and also... FUN!

So, on Saturday I stopped at Panera and picked up a bagel pack on my way to work. It was a box full of 13 yummy bagels and 2 tubs of cream cheese and left them on the break room table. I thought that it would be a nice treat for all of my co-workers on a Saturday morning.

On Sunday I mailed a nice card to a long time friend that I don't get to see very often. After going through a difficult patch for a while, I was so happy that things were really looking up for her. I found a card that conveyed the sentiment that I wanted it to and added a little note. I just wanted her to know how much I value our friendship and how happy I am that her life is moving in the direction that she wanted.

On Monday I delivered a vase full of fall flowers to a friend at her office. She was pretty surprised to see me come in! She's been having several rough weeks and I thought that maybe some flowers on a Monday would give a better start to the new week. I also filled out a little card. It was nice because I got to stay and catch up with her for a little bit. Even though she's just getting over being sick and I had to stand on the other side of the conference room and not give her a big hug! ha ha.... but it was still a nice little visit. I value our friendship a lot and I just wanted her to know that I'm always here for her.

And finally, on Saturday at work, I left two boxes of Cheez-it's in my sister-in-law's desk cabinet for her to find today when she got back to work. We work at the same place (she is full time and I am VERY part time). I had to work last Wednesday night. When I was leaving I took a handful of Cheez-its (her favorite snack) out of the box in her desk... but they were really stale! So, I bought her 2 fresh boxes to have on hand and stuck a little sticky note on the box. I think it will be a small gesture that she'll really appreciate.

Tonight I've recruited the girl's in my Stitch n' Bitch group to help me work on a bigger project for my 10th day of giving. I can't wait to blog about it in the morning!!!

30 Day Giving Challenge: Day 5

2010-11-05T14:48:00.000-07:00

I'm really excited today because after seven long weeks, my neighbors are FINALLY coming home!!! When we moved into this neighborhood we got really lucky to live by some wonderful neighbors... but my neighbor across the street and I became fast friends. She's also my only stay at home mom friend that I have here in Charleston.

Well, her hubby is a pilot in the Air Force, and for the past seven weeks they have been half way across the country for some flight training. It's been super lonely for me here on our little cul-d-sac!!! I've missed them terribly! I'm not sure exactly what time they are getting home today, but I figured that after being gone for so long they would probably enjoy a home cooked meal... that they didn't have to cook themselves!

Today I made some easy chicken and cheese enchiladas. This is my go-to dish if I need to make a meal to freeze for someone. They are really easy to make and since the chicken is already cooked, I can completely assemble the dish and all that the recipient has to do is thaw and bake for 15 minutes! Easy peasy!

For this recipe you need:
1 pkg of chicken (I like to use the chicken tenders)
1 six count pkg of flour tortillas
2 cans of Old El Paso enchilada sauce (I use mild)
1 pkg of shredded taco or Mexican blend cheese

Directions:
Boil the chicken until fully cooked. Let cool. Pour a small amount of the enchilada sauce on the bottom of your pan until it's completely coated. Next, lay a tortilla on a dinner plate and spoon some enchilada sauce onto the tortilla and coat one side. Shred some chicken in a line down the middle of the tortilla, sprinkle with cheese and roll. Place seam side down in the pan. Continue for all six tortillas. Pour the remaining enchilada sauce over the tortillas in the pan. Make sure all surfaces of the tortillas are fully coated. Sprinkle cheese over the top of all.

If you are freezing this dish to give to a friend, then cover & freeze! If not, bake for 15 minutes at 375 degrees.

Garnish with sour cream and enjoy!

Ready to freeze!

Include instructions and a note!

Make some extra for yourself for dinner... yummy melted cheesy goodness!

30 Day Giving Challenge: Day 4

2010-11-04T18:49:00.000-07:00

Today was day four of the 30 Day Giving Challenge and this evening I participated in the Light The Night Walk to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Last month when I first decided that I was going participate in this 30 day challenge, I almost immediately received an e-mail from my old co-worker, Tara. She was asking if anyone else wanted to join her team and participate in the Light The Night Walk. I honestly thought it was a sign that I was making the right choice to tackle this challenge. Even though at the time I couldn't come up with 30 ways to give, I realized that I didn't have to know ahead of time all the ways I could make a difference. I knew that opportunities would present themselves... and this was a great one!

I signed up, set up my web site and put a post on my Facebook page asking for ten people to each contribute ten dollars to get me to my fundraising goal of one hundred dollars. I wasn't sure if people would want to sponsor me again after I had just fundraised my little heart out for the half marathon I completed with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training in June. But, honestly, after raising $3,100 for the race, I figured $100 would be no big deal. And I was right. Friends and family opened their hearts right away and I raised $106! It was such a great feeling to be able to donate again to an organization that has made a difference in so many people's lives.

Tonight's event was really neat. Each participant got a balloon that had a little flickering light inside. Dawn and I had red balloons to show support, and Tara had a white balloon because she is a leukemia survivor. I felt very proud to be there supporting her.

It was also great to catch up with my old co-workers as we completed the walk. I was really glad that I took the time during a very busy and over scheduled week to take part in something so important. I felt very content on my drive home. I know it's only the fourth day of this challenge, but already I feel like I'm reaping the benefits of giving more than those on the receiving end.... it just does a soul good!

30 Day Giving Challenge: Day 3

2010-11-03T12:10:00.001-07:00

Today is day three of the 30 Day Giving Challenge. Originally, I had something else planned for today... but after having what I thought was going to be an hour and a half long errand yesterday turned into a FOUR HOUR adventure... I decided I wasn't going to leave the house today until I needed to leave for work at 5:00 p.m.! Ha! That errand by the way was picking up some patio furniture that I found for a steal on Craig's List...FINALLY!!!!! I've been searching for something in our budget since the spring. I'll be doing a before and after post on that later... because of course I want to change mostly everything about the set... except for the shape! ha ha

Anyway... Day Three! I decided to pack my husband's lunch today and include a little note inside. Packing his lunch is not something that I ever do. He rarely packs his lunch either. He has a cafeteria where he works and he'll generally go down there and get a salad for a few dollars for lunch, so I just don't worry about it. But... I'm sure that eating at the work cafeteria gets old.

So, last night, I packed him up a container of the cream of tomato & basil soup from Day Two, a bottle of water, some rosemary bread sticks and a few pieces of Halloween candy. I was shocked to get a call from him at 11:00 a.m.! He NEVER calls me from work! Emails, yes... phone calls, no! But he called to thank me for his lunch and let me know how thoughtful of me it was. It made me want to do this for him more often. We have been on such opposite schedules lately and haven't had much time together, so it felt good to be able to show him how much I care with a small gesture that he appreciated so much.

Of course, he actually had a work lunch out of the office today... figures... ha ha... but he'll have an enjoyable lunch tomorrow now instead!

30 Day Giving Challenge: Day 2

2010-11-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

Today was day 2 of my 30 Day Giving Challenge. Since I get together every Tuesday night with a small group of girlfriends to have dinner, crochet and chat .... otherwise known as "Stitch n' Bitch"... hee hee... I thought today would be the perfect time to do something thoughtful for them! I wanted to do something that could make their lives easier and show them how much their friendships mean to me.

Since they all work full time jobs, I decided to make them something they could bring for lunch tomorrow! Since we are always out late on Tuesday night's at the hostess' house... I figured lunch might be an after thought on Wednesday mornings. This afternoon, I made a really easy crock pot soup to give to the girls. I filled a container for each one and tied on some rosemary bread sticks with a piece of ribbon. It was so easy and inexpensive to make and so fun to give them to the girls tonight! It made me sad that I don't think to do random kind things like this for the people closest to me more often! I think that everyone gets so wrapped up in their own lives, that we only give gifts when we are "supposed" to... like birthdays or holidays. I'm hoping that this 30 day challenge will change my perspective on giving and make it more of a part of my every day life!

Easy Crock Pot Cream of Tomato & Basil Soup

Ingredients:

3 Cans of peeled tomatoes

1 32 oz. container of chicken broth

1 Tablespoon of garlic powder

10 Fresh basil leaves

1 Cup of cream

Directions:

Pour the cans of tomatoes, chicken broth and garlic powder into the crock pot. Cook on High setting for 3 hours or Low setting for 5-6 hours. Add basil leaves to the pot for the last 15 minutes of cooking time.

Use an immersion blender to blend soup thoroughly. If you don't have an immersion blender, you can pour soup in batches into a food processor or blender. Add cream and blend.

Serve with croutons, bread sticks or a grilled cheese sandwich! YUMMMMM!!!!!

Thirty Day Giving Challenge

2010-11-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

As I'm sure you've noticed (or not if you've stopped reading my blog altogether) I've kind of taken a step back from blogging lately. There have been a few reasons for that.... some I will blog about a little later... but the main reason? I just haven't been motivated to write! I've been getting things done on my list, although admittedly, at a snail's pace! But, mostly, nothing has felt that interesting that I've wanted to write about it. Like, why would anyone want to read a post about how I sent out my son's birthday thank you notes (a full month late) or how I had to call the Children's Museum for never sending our membership cards (this happens with EVERY membership we sign up for... no matter where the venue!). Eh... just seems kind of boring.

I know that the very nature of a lot of blogs (and especially this one) is writing about yourself, but after a while it starts to feel kind of self indulgent. Just very me, me, me... if you know what I mean! So, I've been struggling with that aspect of it. I've also just still been struggling with the whole soul searching thing. I've been feeling really blah about things in my life in general.

SOOOOO.... for November I've decided to shake things up. While I still trudge though all my resolutions that I'm painfully behind on (I am convinced I'm just a perpetual procrastinator to my very core!) I'm not going to blog about most things. Instead, while I'm working on them and crossing them off my list, I'm going to participate in the 30 Day Giving Challenge.

I'm hoping to accomplish a few things with this challenge:

1) Inspire others to do the same
2) Find that part of myself that I seem to have lost ... through giving to others
3) Get creative in my giving. Obviously I can't make 30 days worth of monetary donations!

This challenge has me excited about blogging again and is a great way to tackle thirty days of resolutions!!!! I'm excited to share each days way of giving through blog posts.

Once I get my giving calendar completed I will post it. For day one, I sorted through all of Andy's toys this morning. I sorted through everything in the play room and in the cabinets in the living room. First of all... all of it was A MESS and I've realized I need to add "organize toys" to my list of resolutions... and second of all, I realized we have a lot of STUFF!!! I don't even know where a lot of it came from!!! But I sure do know that it doesn't get played with and we don't need it in this house. Andy is pretty much focused on ONE thing these days as far as playing goes.... TRAINS. It's all trains, all the time. So why keep the other stuff around?? Everything was in great condition, so I brought a giant trash bag filled with toys to Goodwill this morning and I'm hoping they will make another child's holiday a little brighter!!!!

A Perfect Wedding

2010-10-07T10:52:00.001-07:00

photo credit Liz Duren Photography Blog

After much anticipation, my brother's wedding came and went... much too quickly! Everything was SO beautiful! The day could not have been any more perfect. Jaime had planned every last little detail, making sure that there were special touches strewn throughout the event. It was so much fun to spend time with friends and family that I don't see often enough. It was amazing to watch my brother marry my best friend... and know how truly happy they are. It was wonderful to spend time with my sister-in-law's family and get to know them all a little bit better. Thinking of that day now still makes me tear up. I feel very lucky to be blessed with such wonderful family and friends. The bride and groom are enjoying the tail end of their TWO WEEK (ummm... yes... I'm jealous!) honeymoon in Hawaii and the rest of us have gotten back to life as usual.

I'm officially crossing the last two wedding related things off my list: 1) I survived the wedding weekend. This was ONLY an item on the list because of our two year old. Since my husband and I were both in the wedding and all of my family and 99% of my friends were AT the wedding, that left a great deal of worry about who was going to take care of our son in the ceremony and what we were going to do with him that night so that Matt and I could stay and enjoy the reception. My wonderful friend Katie had offered to pick him up from the reception and bring him home to our house and spend the night with him so that Matt and I could stay at the hotel downtown. God bless her, because she was a savior. She even showed up with a new Thomas the Train Engine for Andy so he didn't even notice they were driving away without his Mama. The bigger issue came when we quickly realized at the rehearsal that there was no way he could even be in the sanctuary during the ceremony, let alone walk down the isle. So, I was completely panicked the night before trying to find someone to come keep him in the nursery during the ceremony. When my friend Michelle called on Saturday morning about something unrelated and I told her how the rehearsal went, all she said was "just tell me where you need me to be and what time, and I'll be there!". I started crying because it was like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and I could finally just relax.

Although, I have to say, it was really strange not to see Andy AT ALL on Saturday until after the ceremony. It was so hard for me to just trust that my husband had everything under control, that my friend Leslie had gotten to the church early to keep Andy occupied while the groomsmen were having their pictures done, that my friend Beth had found my husband and been introduced to Leslie so she could show her where the church nursery was... so that Leslie could show Michelle where to go when she got there... and finally, that Michelle hadn't gotten stuck in traffic or had trouble finding parking and had made it there in time, gotten Andy from Leslie and gone to the nursery! I thought I was going to start crying again after the ceremony when I went into the nursery and there was Andy in his little dress pants, ivory shirt with cuff links, dress shoes and tie, playing happily with Michelle, her husband Matt and their little boy Owen. In there he also had a gift bag from Leslie with some new matchbox cars and a farm puzzle. I really am just blessed, blessed, blessed to have such awesome and amazing friends!

And number 2) I wrote my Matron of Honor speech. I had been composing this in my head for a few weeks before the wedding, but I finally sat down and wrote it all out a few hours before we had to head to the church. I felt very emotional honoring both my brother and a friend I have known for almost 12 years. I promised my brother I wouldn't embarrass him. I figured I'd leave that up to the best man, so I took the sappy route. The last time I had to give a Maid of Honor speech was nine years ago. I definitely didn't have the poise to carry that out without having something written, so I cried and spoke awkwardly through the whole thing. I was determined NOT to do that this time! It was really hard not to cry, so I just focused on reading the words on the paper and not actually feeling the words on the paper at that particular time.... otherwise I never would have made it through.

So now that it's all over... it's time to get back to real life. I finally and officially feel like I'm out of my slump. I've been more productive at home and feel ready to tackle lots of projects. I have something fun and different planned for my November resolutions, so I'm going to have to work my behind off to finish up my list by the end of October!

When It's Not All About You

2010-09-19T19:33:00.000-07:00

Weddings are a funny thing. They can bring out the very best and the very worst in people. Lately I have seen both. I am reminded in each situation, that weddings are the one time it's not all about you, and this time, I couldn't be happier! On Saturday, my brother will marry my best friend. I am filled with emotion just thinking about it. I feel lucky and privileged to have the honor of being Jaime's Matron of Honor. Jaime is one of those hyper organized, super crafty, non-procrastinating people with an enviously clean house. In short, she is the complete opposite of me on all of those levels! Ha ha! But, on the other hand, I know that she can finish my sentences, she is almost always thinking the same things I am, she is the first person I want to hang out with for "girl time," she will drop everything to help a friend and she always puts her family first. We have been friends for over 11 years and I am thrilled to finally be able to call her my sister-in-law on Saturday.

So, being the hyper organized person that she is, Jaime has made it hard to be a bridesmaid. She has thought of everything, taken care of everything, every single little detail ... even the typical "last minute" things were done MONTHS ago! So, there isn't a whole lot left to help with! Me on the other hand??? Well, I waited until the final few weeks to take care of everything I need to before Saturday.... why? Because, no matter how hard I try... I just can't seem to change that side of me!

This past week I have ordered Jaime's wedding gift (which I had a last minute change of plans on), I have purchased undergarments for my bridesmaid dress and a back up (still looking for something better) pair of shoes and I have made my appointments for my brow wax and my hair. Yes, I'm getting my hair trimmed and blown out on Friday so that it can be straight for the rehearsal dinner. The future me will thank the present me when I see pictures!

And then there was the rehearsal dinner DRESS! After a particularly rough couple of days around here, Jaime and I headed out last Friday night in search of a rehearsal dinner dress for me. (She, of course, has had her dress for MONTHS) We started at Marshalls. I tried on 4 dresses. Liked 2 of them. Loved 1 of them. And so, I bought it! Done! Couldn't believe we didn't have to go to 800 stores. Went to the mall. Tried on undergarments at the department stores. (Ended up finding what I needed on clearance at the Maidenform outlet for $5! Whoop!) Had to exit the mall at closing time on the OPPOSITE end as our car. Hoofed it at least 5 miles around the mall. Went home. Hung dress up in my closet and about fell over laughing.

Why? Because I had the almost as close to identical dress possible hanging in my closet already... in navy blue instead of green. That's right. Me... who barely has any clothes, let alone DRESSES... forgot that I even had this dress! In a current size that fits me. With navy blue pumps to match. I have never felt so dumb! (well, okay, so that might not be true)

Bu-ut.... happy ending, right?! I could return my $40 Marshalls dress!! (would like it if that credit would hit my bank account sometime soon, but whatever...)

Okay, so on to clothing/shoe hunt #2! Black dress pants and dress shoes for my 2 year old son who is supposed to walk down the isle. We'll see how that goes! I think there's just as much of a chance of that happening as there is of him sitting quietly through the entire 45 minute service. But, we'll see....

Okay, so I went to the outlet mall... went to all the standard kid stores... no dress pants. Went to Goodwill... no dress pants or shoes. Went to Once Upon A Child... BINGO!!! Dress pants $3.50 and dress shoes $3.00!!!! I couldn't beat that unless they were free! We are renting his ivory shirt and lapis tie from Men's Warehouse. This should all be very interesting! I've already asked Jaime if it is okay to let him eat lollipops in the church during the whole service. As of right now, that is literally my only game plan. Failproof! Right? I have a friend on stand by to take him out of the sanctuary if needed. I'll be standing up with the bride and groom and my husband is a groomsman, so he can't just walk out.... could get tricky!

I also went and purchased a bridal shower gift for our friend Liz who is getting married in two months. Jaime, Liz and I used to all be roomies back in the day! She had a beautiful bridal shower on Saturday and I was so happy to be a part of it.

Tis the season around here!... For weddings that is! I think I'll wear my rehearsal dinner dress to Liz's wedding... so no need for last minute shopping there! So, this post turned out to mostly be all about me, but this weekend most assuredly will not! I am so excited to be there for Jeff and Jaime on their wedding weekend. I am excited to take care of Jaime as much as she will let us! But mostly I'm excited to spend much needed time with all my family and friends. (If I could do that little heart emoticon like on Facebook here, I would)

How To Make Custom Beverage Bins

2010-09-16T17:27:00.000-07:00

For a wedding shower gift, I made my friend Jaime and my brother Jeff some personalized beverage bins to use at their rehearsal dinner. I had so much fun making them, that I think I'm going to make one for myself! They really were very easy, and the possibilities are endless as far as design and personalization! Here is the step by step for how I made them.

First I purchased two 15 gallon galvanized metal tubs from Lowes for $15 a piece.

Next, I used painters tape to tape off any parts of the bin that I wanted to keep the original galvanized finish. I chose to do that for the handles and the insides of the bin, including the upper lip. I wrapped tape around the handles, and then I cut two trash bags open and used painters tape over the top lip of the bins to secure the plastic.

Then, I sprayed each bin with two coats of a metal primer. I used the Rustoleum Professional Primer that specified it was for use on bare metal.

After the primer dried, I used a brush to paint each bin with two coats of my base color. I chose to use a white semi-gloss interior latex paint. After letting it dry for 24 hours, I used painter's tape to tape along the ridges on the bins where I wanted my stripes to be. I brushed on my stripes using turquoise and coral colored interior latex semi-gloss. After after two coats of paint, I removed the painters tape and used an artist's brush to touch up any areas of imperfection where the paint leaked behind the tape.

After letting the paint dry for 24 hours, I sprayed both bins with two good coats of a crystal clear varnish.

After letting the clear coat dry thoroughly overnight, I again used the painters tape to mask off a rectangle on each bin. I then applied two coats of chalkboard paint... and voila!

Each bin can be labeled however they want! I think it makes for a fun way to customize their beverage bins. All in all, this was a relatively inexpensive way to customize large beverage tubs for the bride and groom.

Soul Searching

2010-09-06T16:09:00.001-07:00

I'm sure that many of you reading this had begun to think I had given up on my blog and finishing my resolutions.... I don't blame you... I did too. I have been procrastinating writing this post because I wasn't really sure what I was going to say. I've just been doing some soul searching for a little while. You know when you know you have something simmering just under the surface, but you're not really sure what it is? Well, this was going on for me ... for weeks. I couldn't put my finger on it and I had my suspicions that maybe it wasn't just one thing. I felt like I couldn't focus on anything. I didn't log on to my blog for quite a while. I didn't want to look at my list until I could decide why I was feeling the way I was feeling. My husband and I seemed to be on COMPLETELY opposite schedules for several weeks in a row and our relationship was suffering from the lack of time spent together. When everything finally came to a head in basically one big explosion of emotions, I realized that I needed to do what I could do to clear my schedule and make time to spend with my husband. If it wasn't necessary (like work) I wasn't doing it. Including my blog.

I deleted my blog's Facebook page (so, sorry if you were a Facebook fan) ... and then went to delete my blog... and found that I wasn't ready to do that yet. My husband pointed out that my blog was a positive and effective tool for me when I was actually doing what I set out to do.... which was one thing every day. What I had gotten in the bad habit of doing was leaving several things to the end of the month and then cramming them all in. I was also seriously neglecting my daily chores in favor of one time projects around the house. Our house was constantly cluttered... to the point where it was starting to have a negative effect on Matt and on me. Matt felt like I was creating an illusion on here that I was very productive and on the ball because I was neglecting to point out that while I was accomplishing all of these things every month, I wasn't keeping up with anything around the house. So, I'm sorry if that is the impression I was giving, because that is not the case around here... IN THE LEAST!

I have a hard time balancing because we literally have 5+ years of un-started or un-finished projects.... bins of stuff that need to be sorted through and dealt with.... a house that we want to paint walls in, and add character to, and furnish .... with second hand furniture that I am usually re-finishing.... so, I feel like sometimes I use all of my energy trying to take care of those projects and I always think I'll clean later... or I'll do laundry later... or I don't have time to put this stuff away now.... I'll do it later... and of course, you can guess what happens next... I'm too TIRED later to take care of all the other stuff.

So, I've taken some down time while I've been re-evaluating. Here is what I have decided:

1) I am going to keep up with my blog again. I'm also going to be ambitious and combine my unfinished list from August and add it to my September list and get back on track. BUT...

2) My monthly resolution for September is to do 30 minutes of cleaning per day. Here's the thing... when my house was a completely cluttered mess, I didn't feel like I had time to clean because it would take FOREVER to get things cleaned, so I just kept putting it off. I should have realized that if I just tackled a little bit at a time it would get done. So, now, the downstairs of our house is clean (thanks to major help from Matt) and the upstairs is mostly clean. I'm intending to keep it that way with 30 minutes of cleaning a day. It doesn't even have to be continuous. I think just 15 minutes after lunch and 15 minutes in the evening would do wonders!

3) I'm going to be more aware of my schedule. I'm going to try to be hyper aware of not letting too many things get scheduled for several days in a row. Matt and I need that time together throughout the week to stay connected. I don't want any members of my family to feel that I'm not putting my family first. I am truly working on NOT feeling like I need to meet other people's expectations. I need to do what is best for my family and myself.

Deep breath...

So, there it is. I'm so glad I didn't delete my blog. I think I'm going to need a place to get my thoughts out in the coming months! I'm going to get my September list together tonight and get it posted tomorrow. Thanks for sticking around through my lapse in posting. I'm glad I took a step back though, and worked through all the things that were bothering me. I felt paralyzed from doing any blog posts when I couldn't get my head straight.

Instant Streaming Netflix is Evil

2010-08-15T18:32:00.000-07:00

I don't really have any good excuse for why I haven't been blogging. I have gotten things done off my list and I did start my new job and I have been really busy. But, truth be told... I've been spending all of my free time and a good chunk of time that should have been spent taking care of things around the house... watching all three seasons of Veronica Mars on instant streaming Netflix. That's right... the UPN channel's hit show about a teenage detective. I'd say I'm ashamed to admit it, but really, I'm not. I thought it was a great show! The problem? I have ZERO willpower when it comes to turning off the television if the next episode is readily available for me to watch! I mean, if every single show ends in a cliff hanger, and all I have to do is select to 'watch next episode' to see how it turns out, then how can I NOT watch just one more? (and then one more... and then one more) It's a vicious cycle! I have the same exact problem with books... which is why I hardly ever read. I LOVE reading, but if it's a really good book (or God forbid... a SERIES...) then I can't do anything BUT finish reading. I forget that anything else exists in my life. It's bad. I'm pretty sure I get this personality trait from my Mom. Actually, I know I do.

Ah... so... thankfully I've made it through all three seasons and can finally take my life back! No joke! My house is cleaner since I wrapped up that series, I've stayed more on task and I've spent more time with my husband. I've also instructed him NOT to get me hooked on any more series of shows on Netflix. I am a person who NEEDS to stay within the confines of normal television ... where I can watch a show one week, and (gasp!) have to wait a whole week to watch the next episode! ha ha!

Moving on.... I decided not to have a daily resolution for the month of August. Why set myself up to fail? There was just no way I could take on anything daily this month. So instead, this month is going to focus on my future sister-in laws' wedding shower tasks, yard work, and debt. I'm moving right along on the shower projects. I have to... considering the shower is next weekend! I'm going to do a post when it's over about all the little projects on my list (including making the favors, which I did tonight... check!)

The other day I weeded the yard... so that is one yard work item down! Yaye! Tomorrow I'm going to work on cleaning up the back yard. We have had some CRAZY thunderstorms this summer! Like... almost every other day! Our yard is a mess with small tree limbs down everywhere, camping chairs blown over and half way across the yard, etc. Not to mention the whole yard is like a swamp with all the rain we've been getting! But, we have family and friends coming in to town several weekends in a row and we're hosting a little cook out here at the house for Andy's second birthday. I definitely want the yard cleaned up before all that, so I figure I'd better start soon.

And last, but certainly not least.... I called Shark about my stick vacuum battery. Let me start by saying that I have hardwood floors throughout the whole downstairs of my house and I am in love with my Shark steam mop. I used to use a Swiffer Wet Jet, but it always left a film on the floors, not to mention the EXPENSE of buying the pads and the solution. I eventually bought a steam mop and never looked back. Then I bought a Shark cordless stick vacuum. It had enough power to get through the whole downstairs and I didn't have to mess with a cord. I really truly did heart Shark. Then my re-chargeable battery started to last shorter and shorter and shorter amounts of time, until most recently I only get about 30 seconds of good power out of it. I've only had my stick vac for about six months, so I called Shark. Guess what? It turns out that the battery is the only part NOT under warranty! Huh! Imagine that! But, wait, what's that you say?! I can BUY a replacement battery?! Awesome! How much? Oh, FORTY DOLLARS???!!! Really? FORTY DOLLARS???!!! Hmmmm.... let me think that over... the whole vacuum costs $60 and if I buy it at Bed, Bath & Beyond with a 20% off coupon, it's only $52... but you want me to pay FORTY DOLLARS for a battery???!!! That's okay, I'll look around and find the battery from somewhere else. Oh, wait, what's that?? YOU are the only ones that sell it? FANTASTIC! Then, instead of buying a FORTY DOLLAR battery, I will now be buying a $30 Dirt Devil stick vac that plugs in ... because, honestly, is moving the plug THAT big of a deal??!! It just so happens that it's NOT! This new stick vac also has a gazillion times more suction and guess what... I don't have to charge it. So, thanks, Shark for making such a quality product. I still heart my steam mop, but I'm super disappointed in the $52 I wasted for 6 months of use from your vacuum.

July Wrap Up... Five Days Late

2010-08-05T19:20:00.001-07:00

Well, this is officially the most behind I've been at the start of a month. I feel like I'm going to do much better keeping up with things in August than I did in July. I think I'm over my half way through the year hump. I'm getting back on track. Although, I have to say, I can waste time like nobody's business! I have to get better about that. Here's the thing... and I know you are going to read this and think...uhhh DUH!!!!... but the more disorganized I am, the more time I waste. That seems SOOOOO simple, right? So, if I was actually let's say... more organized then it would take me less time to get things done and then I would ACTUALLY HAVE more time to "waste" online or watching TV or reading a magazine... big sigh... if I could only get my act together...

Seriously though, I'm going to put more of an effort into the organizational thing this month. (my husband is totally reading this and thinking ya RIGHT! right about now... aren't you honey!) But really, I am. I need to be. In addition to taking care of Andy all day (which becomes increasingly more FUN and FRUSTRATING everyday as we approach the big TWO YEARS OLD), my Thirty~One business is starting to take off... AND... I got a job! Yeah! BIG YEAH!! Remember at the beginning of July when it was on my list to apply to five jobs? Well, it paid off... and the best part??!!! I didn't have to settle for something I didn't want to do. I got the exact job I wanted... the job I was waiting to open... and on Saturday I start work back at the same place I landed my very first job out of college... ten years ago! Yes... my life is already coming full circle and I'm only 32. Ha ha! Seriously though, it's the perfect schedule for me, it's the perfect mix of job duties, and since several of my old co-workers still work there, and many new friends, I already know I'll fit right in. It's the place I met my husband ten years ago... so it will always be special. And now I'll have one to two shifts per week... only nights and weekends, so I can still stay home with Andy, but not have EVERY night or weekend away from Matt. I'm really excited to start. Tonight I finished filling out the 10 pages of pre-employment paperwork to take to my orientation tomorrow.... so that is getting crossed off the list.... although what I should have put on the list was keeping Andy entertained for 45 minutes in the waiting room while waiting for my drug test a few days ago... THAT was an accomplishment! Ha!

Okay, what else did I do? I set up an appointment for a tree removal company to go give me a quote on removing some branches that are overhanging the roof of our rental house in North Carolina. I actually already did do this about a month ago. I called three companies... no one ever called back with a quote. So, this time I got a recommendation from a friend of a friend and I think these guys will actually show up... let's hope... in the mean time I'm knocking on wood that branches don't crash down on our roof in a storm... because that would totally be something that would happen to that house!

I also returned two Netflix movies that we have had out for almost two months. The only problem? I forgot to update our cue, so two new movies we didn't really want are headed our way. I'll have to get a quick turn around on those so that we can get the ones we really want in.

I also finally framed a 12x12 picture of Andy and me from his six month photo shoot.... yes... as in a YEAR AND A HALF ago. It turns out that 12x12 frames (or frames matted to 12x12) are hard to come by. Couldn't find any at the big box retailers... not going to pay for custom framing... looked at ordering online but didn't want to pay the high price plus shipping... Enter a very ill advised stop at Ikea on our way back from camping last weekend... You know when you know a decision is a really bad idea, but you do it anyway? Like when your kid hasn't napped in three days, has spent some part of three days in a row strapped in the car seat of his car and is SUPER over tired and has TONS of pent up energy... and it's a rainy Saturday... and it's IKEA... but you think, Sure! Let's stop! He'll be FINE for like 45 minutes in a cart! Ummmmm.... try ZERO minutes! So, we tried opening a package of $2 stacking cups for him to play with, he wanted no part of it. After 10 minutes, we realized that yes, we were those parents, and cut our losses. Matt took Andy to the back of the building to run around in the empty parking lot in the rain while I walked approximately 2 miles through the ENTIRE store to get to the check out line to pay for the stupid $2 stacking cups... when something stopped me in my tracks!

Ah ha!!!!!!!!!!! All is not lost after all!!!!! A frame. Matted to 12x12. For only $19!!!!! Whoo hoo! Who cares that it's black/brown and not black! Not me! Yaye!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But seriously, with the black and white photo, the frame really looked brown... so, no biggie, I spray painted it black... and... viola!

Now my biggest issue with this picture is deciding where to hang it! Hmmmmm..... And LAST... but not LEAST... uggghhhh this month felt like it would never ever end... I made a chore chart. I think we'll eventually upgrade to a bigger dry erase board, but we already had this one... who knows for what... but we did. So, I used it.

Chores are on the left separated by day and by "C" and "M" (for Colleen and Matt) and then basic stuff is plugged in on the calendar to the right. We'll see if we can make any sort of effort to stick to it. If we do it 70% of the time, that would still be an improvement over how often things get done now, so I like our odds.

Goodbye July! Welcome August! Month of my future sister in-law's shower AND bachelorette party weekend... my FIVE YEAR wedding anniversary... and my not-a-baby-anymore's TWO year birthday! It will be a good month... I can feel it. If I could only get organized!

Planning Sessions

2010-08-03T13:09:00.000-07:00

This past month I tried out something new. Every week, on either Sunday or Monday, I spent some time planning my week. I clipped coupons, planned grocery lists and meals and thought about errands that needed to be run. I felt a little more centered and a little more organized doing this. I think that I'm going to try and make it a habit.

I had felt pretty scatter brained by not planning out my weeks. I felt like I was running errands almost every day (I still do feel this way... although I'm improving). Errands that could definitely be combined with just the smallest amount of planning. I know I'm wasting gas, and wasting time. The other issue that this causes is that I'm dragging Andy with me to run errands. He usually does fine, but what two year old wants to spend 3-4 mornings a week running errands? It was just so easy when he was a baby to take him with me while he napped in his infant car seat. I guess that two years later I just haven't gotten out of that habit.

Well, I'm working on it now. Better late than never I guess... right? One of the other problems I seem to have is thinking of things to do with him during the day. It was a little easier in the spring, because we just played outside a lot, but now... it's SOOOOOOOOOOO SO SO SO hot and humid out. He doesn't even want to be outside! So, a lot of the time, when I can't think of something to do, it's easier to think of an errand I need to run. Sigh. I know that's not really good, but I suspect I'm not the only person out there like this. So, I spent some time finding fun activities to do with a two year old online and I printed them all out. I'm going to put them in a binder and flip through it when I have my weekly planning sessions. As long as I am better planning my shopping and running errands, I need to start planning activities to do with Andy in the mornings.

I know it will get a little easier in the fall when the weather cools down, but since we aren't ready to send him to any kind of pre-school yet, I want to make sure I'm providing a good environment for learning AND having fun! :-)

How To Organize Earrings

2010-08-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but I have a really hard time keeping my earrings organized. I have little square compartments in my jewelry box for earrings, but they are all taken up with the studs. Any long earrings seem to be ALL over the place! So, the other day, I worked on a little solution to this problem. Actually putting this together took all of 10 minutes... if that! It took me more time to collect the things I would need for this project!

First, I purchased this old picture at Goodwill for $1.80. I picked it because I liked the look of the frame and didn't feel like I had to alter it in any way.

Then I stopped at Lowe's and picked up a roll of window screen for around $4. When I got home, I took the glass and the picture and mat out of the frame. Then I cut a piece of screen to fit the back of the frame and I used a staple gun to secure it to the back. I hung it up in my closet above my jewelry box, and hung all of my earrings on it!

I love the way it turned out!!!! The rest of my jewelry was also a mess....

So, I straightened everything up and now it looks much nicer. I use two velor covered neck tie hangers that I found at Walmart to hang my necklaces from. It works out well for me.

Now, all that I have left to add is a small mirror on the adjacent wall so that I don't have to carry various necklaces and earrings into the bathroom to try on with an outfit. They usually get left in the bathroom and not put away, so it would be nice to be able to try things on right in my closet!

Getting Out Of A Slump

2010-08-02T18:52:00.000-07:00

So, it's probably been pretty obvious by my lack of blogging lately that I've been in a little bit of a slump. I know I blogged a little bit about it during July, but honestly, I feel like I'm just now starting to come out of it. Going on a little one night camping trip to the mountains with Matt and Andy definitely helped. I'm hoping we can do that more often! I still can't really pin point what has been causing me to feel this way, so that makes me think that maybe it's just a whole bunch of different things. I kind of just took a mental break for most of the month of July. I stopped letting things stress me out and I stopped keeping up with things I normally take care of. I had absolutely no motivation. For anything. Well, now, the not keeping up with things is starting to stress me out. I'm feeling ready to get back to my normal pace. I probably won't get my August list up until Wednesday, but that's okay.

I've realized over the past month that I actually feel worse when I don't hold myself accountable for getting things done, and then that makes me feel less motivated, and then I feel worse... and it's just a vicious cycle. I've been starting to remember why I started this list in the first place. It's to make me feel LESS stressed by actually getting things done. Although it's been nice to lay on the couch with my husband at night watching back to back episodes of old shows on Netflix... I'm realizing that I can't do that every night! I think I'm starting to find a balance between getting things done on my list, and keeping up with the day to day... or at least I hope so!

Okay... SOOOOO... what have I accomplished during my little blogging hiatus? Well, let's see... (and PLEASE ignore the really terrible photos... I left my camera on vacation and had to take all of these with my cell phone!!! Uggggghhhhh!)

First of all, I got the hall closet finished up. Back in April, my husband created a little storage area under the stairs in our house. It's where I am keeping all of our Christmas containers. We haven't done anything to the closet since. It's a pretty deep closet, and the coat rack used to be at the back of the closet. We had to take it down when we put in the door to the storage area, but also, it just wasn't that practical. We decided to install a coat rod closer to the front of the closet instead. This puts our coats within reach, and still leaves storage space behind them. I'm using that space to store our vacuum and carpet cleaner.

I also put an old hanging shoe holder that I had previously thought was destined to go to Goodwill, on the inside of the closet door. This way we can keep our "everyday" shoes neatly organized instead of piled in a heap on the closet floor.

All in all, I'm much happier with this closet now!!!! Okay, project number 2... touch up painting Andy's room. Andy decided to nap one day with two painted wooden blocks from this shape sorting box that was my husband's when he was a toddler. I didn't think anything of it until I went to get him up from his nap and saw that he'd used the red and green blocks to "color" his wall!!!! And of course his room is still the flat paint that our whole house was painted, so.... I couldn't wipe it off.

It stayed like this for a few months.

Finally, yesterday I bought a mini roller and paint tray and took some of the wall paint and got the whole thing touched up... then I spent a good 30 minutes going around the rest of the house and touching up the walls that still have that beige flat paint. I am beginning to think that I should really do that every couple of months!

I also refinished two bedside table lamps that I have had for five years. They were perfectly nice looking brushed nickle lamps.... but I wanted them to be more of an oil rubbed bronze finish so that I could use them in our master bedroom.

Nothing that a can of spray paint won't fix!

I haven't decided yet what to do for lamp shades because I haven't found any bedding for our bedroom that 1) I like and 2) can afford... sigh... so that is on hold!

Also in our master bedroom we FINALLY installed a ceiling fan!!!!! This is also our overhead light... our ONLY light. Yes, we lived in our house for THIRTEEN MONTHS with no light in our master bedroom. So, finally, yesterday I splurged and bought the ceiling fan that I had my eye on at Lowe's. After some mild frustration, Matt got it installed! Hooray! And the best part??!! Tonight when I was back at Lowe's for some black spray paint, I noticed the SAME FAN was on clearance for $30 less! So I brought my receipt to customer service, and now have $38.30 (with tax) back in my wallet! Whoo hoo!

Over the course of the month I've been stock piling things to get rid of. Yesterday I removed thirty items from our house. Taking a cue from 365 Days of Decluttering Challenge, I decided that it would be pretty easy to get rid of thirty things. The following have left (or are leaving) my house:

Pair of curtains

Thermal lunch box

Package of underwear (the wrong size)

One pair of men's dress pants

Eleven men's t-shirts

Tea pot

Bathroom light fixture

Four glass canisters

Outdoor baby swing

Baby gate

Cardboard guitar box

One men's dress shirt

Five tools

Other than the tools (which are going to my brother) and the cardboard box (which is going in the trash), and one of the glass canisters (which I dropped and smashed on the front porch) everything went to Goodwill.

Okay, I'm almost done... on Tuesday night I started crocheting a baby blanket for my friend Heather. She's due with her second child, a little girl, in September. I'm DETERMINED to a) finish this and b) not screw it up. Even though I go to our weekly Stitch n' Bitch group, I'm not what you would call, good at crocheting! I tried to make a baby blanket once before, but it ended up looking like a trapezoid... no kidding. Then another time, we were making "friendship scarfs"... each person adds a section to everyones scarf in their own yarn and pattern.... well, I added my section in the wrong direction to my friend Amy's scarf. We decided it could be made into a pocket.... because seriously... how practical is a pocket on a scarf?? Right??!!

The only thing I've made successfully is a dish cloth. I've actually made three. So, my friend Megan, who is an uhhhhh-mazing knitter and crocheter is teaching me a pattern for a blanket that she swears I can do... we shall seeeeeee-eeeeee.....

And last, but not least (for this post anyway), I mailed the bridal shower invitations for my future sister-in-law's shower in (yikes!) THREE weeks!!! This was a challenge in and of itself because for the past three times that I've gone to the post office, my wonderful, sweet, loving, adorable child has pitched some kind of fit... for no apparent reason. THIS TIME, I was prepared! I'm totally not above bribing. I went to Walmart and bought a package of Goldfish (his favorite... but he hasn't had them in about a month) and I let him eat right out of the package (gasp!) while he was in the stroller. THEN... I gave him a juice box. Forget the sippy cup! Straight juice ... not watered down... out of a REAL straw!!!! That kept him quiet long enough for me to buy 3 books of stamps and stamp all the envelopes... and get the heck out of there!

Whew! Are you still reading? Probably not! This was ridiculously long! I promise to get better about posting! I am, after all, coming out of my slump!

"Easy" Project

2010-07-28T11:15:00.000-07:00

Two months ago, I added a shelf over our back door. I spent some time trying to figure out what to put on it, and eventually settled on getting some letters to spell out GIVE THANKS. The shelf is right over our kitchen table, so it seemed appropriate. Last month I saw the cutest metal stars at Target! I thought that one would be perfect to put on the shelf in between the two words. The only reason I didn't buy one right then, was because I couldn't decide between navy blue or red. So, yesterday, I went back to Target to buy one... couldn't find them anywhere. So, I also looked at Michael's and Ross. Today I looked at A.C. Moore, Hancock Fabrics, Bed Bath & Beyond, another Ross and Pier One (the stores are all right near each other). Couldn't find anything. I also finally picked up the letters and a can of spray paint.

I ended up having a hard time getting letters because they were all out of some of the letters I needed in the size and style I wanted at Michael's and A.C. Moore, so I ended up having to get larger letters than I originally planned. Oh well. So, when I got home, I lined them up on the shelf... the larger letters did look better than the smaller ones would have, but there was definitely NO room for that metal star, had I been able to find one. Ugggghhhh! What a waste of time looking for one!!!

So, I lined all the letters up on a tarp outside and started spray painting them navy blue...then... it started to rain. Seriously?????? So I dragged the tarp inside, some of the letters were already messed up with rain spots, and others were messed up from bumping into each other when I dragged them in. Sigh. Oh well! I just spray painted over them all and you can't even notice now that it's up on the shelf. I also grabbed a starfish from the head board in our guest bedroom and put it between the two words. I think I need a little bit bigger starfish, but I know they have those at the craft store.

I love the way it turned out!!!

Our curtains are navy blue and cream, so they look really nice next to the navy blue letters. It's bothering me a little that I can't center the starfish above the center of the two doors, but I can't space the phrase right to get it like that. Overall, I think it looks really cute. It took more time and frustration than I anticipated, but I love the final look. It adds a little character to our kitchen!

When Procrastination Pays Off

2010-07-27T05:56:00.000-07:00

Sometimes procrastination works in my favor. This tends to be a rare occasion, but it does happen every so often. Last night I finally ordered my bridesmaid dress for my brother's wedding. Jaime decided that we could all pick our own style of dress from David's Bridal as long as it was long and the color Lapis, which is a really pretty shade of dark purple. Most of the other bridesmaids were able to pick a dress that they liked right away and ordered their dresses back in January and February. Me, on the other hand, took until the end of April and going to a David's Bridal out of state before I found the dress I liked best...

It was really pretty, and I did really like it, but it still took me almost three more months to call and order it. So, yesterday I logged on to David's Bridal's website to look up the style number of the dress before I called to order it... and I saw THIS dress pop up on the first page as a new style....

Swoon! I LOVED it!!!! I had no idea if I would love it on me, but it was worth trying on first for sure! They had one in my size in stock, so Jaime and I went to David's last night to try both dresses on. The first one was pretty, but I totally fell in love with this one! Plus, it was soooo comfortable and I loved the detailing on the one strap! So, I ordered it last night and I can't wait for it to arrive! Had I ordered my dress a month ago, this one wouldn't have been available. Last night, I was glad I am a procrastinator.

Creating The Look For Less

2010-07-26T18:38:00.000-07:00

For the first time in our home owning lives, we have an office. In the past, our guest bedroom doubled as an office. Although it's really nice to have a separate room to set up... the downside is that it's a separate room to set up! In May, I painted the office this really pretty navy blue color. I love the way it turned out, but it's just been sitting there painted for two months now waiting to be put together.

So, it turns out that office furniture can be expensive! It further complicates things when you have Pottery Barn tastes on a Craig's List budget! I love the look of this corner desk from Pottery Barn...

And I love the look of this desk with hutch... also from Pottery Barn.

And if I were to order all of the pieces of both to fit the wall and corner of my office, I would be spending $3,750 ... not including tax & shipping! Okay, so I don't like it that much! Geesh! I'm running through the list of things I would rather spend $3,750 on (if I had it) other than office furniture... I think the front runner is some kind of RV... but moving on...

Like I said before... Craig's List budget! About three months ago I bought this desk and hutch combo from someone on Craig's List for $60. This is the picture from the Craig's List listing...

It has a cabinet (cleverly disguised as drawers), drawers, a sliding keyboard tray and a few other customizations. It was in REALLY good condition! I couldn't believe they were selling it for $60. Even though it looks like knobs were missing, they had just been taken off and were in a drawer. But, alas... this was not the look I was going for. So, I have spent the better part of this past week PAINTING this entire thing. My husband and I also removed the back panel of the hutch and installed a bead board panel instead. I also removed the cabinet doors on the hutch in favor of a more open look.

Now, since I want to have a corner section similar to the desk from Pottery Barn that I like so much, I removed the desk top, and removed the molding on the bottom side of the desk base. My husband is building me some modular base sections to "add on" to the existing desk and we'll put a new desk top across the whole thing. So, I'm not going to show you what the desk looks like just yet...because I want to put it all together before I reveal my "after" picture. So, sorry to keep you waiting, but I'm so excited to finally cross painting this sucker off my list that it deserved its own post! We are thinking that between the $60 for the desk, the $20 for the bead board, another $100 in wood for the additional pieces and the hardware, we are going to come in right around $200 total. Not bad for a totally customized piece of furniture that will fit our office and craft storage and work space needs!

How to Organize a Lazy Susan Cabinet

2010-07-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

I really dislike my lazy susan corner cabinet. I can't figure out what its best use is. It's hard to keep organized. Until today, it has looked like this...

It was just kind of a wasted space, junk cabinet. I finally decided to put things in perspective and learn to love my not-so-functional corner cabinet. I was thinking about five years ago when Matt and I bought our first house. It was a 2,800 square foot TOTAL fixer upper that was built in 1920. It had the worst kitchen... EVER... and we lived with the kitchen like that for a LONG time while we worked on other parts of the house. Unfortunately we moved out of state and ended up renovating the house to be a rental and never got to live in there with a nice kitchen. This is what it looked like the day we closed....

Pretty, huh?

Uh... ya... so, those windows above the stove used to be exterior windows that looked out onto a porch. The porch was eventually enclosed. What you see on the other side of those windows is tile board. That's right, folks... cheap, ugly tile board. Why, you ask? WELL... apparently the previous owners moved out of the country and then sent a check up to someone to install a full bath in that space. Probably not the smartest move... you know... no quality control or anything like that. I don't think you'd ever expect someone to install something this bad though! I know you are just dying to see what it looked like...

This picture doesn't even do it justice!!!! But I'm sure you can see the additional piece of tile board placed, oh, so craftily on the end of that tub. Not to mention the kitchen sink faucet they installed on the tub! The far end of the picture shows the accordion door they installed... that led to this...

I mean, seriously! I have no clue why we didn't end up in a bidding war over this house! OR, why all our friends and family thought we were crazy!!! So, why this trip down memory lane? To remind myself how blessed we are to live in a year old house, with a beautiful kitchen... lazy susan cabinet and all! I have to admit, I love that first house more than seems reasonably possible, and I'm glad we still have it. I think I love it because I'm so PROUD of what it looks like now, compared to what it looked like when we bought it. There is a lot of satisfaction to be gained by doing a lot of the work yourself. It was a big project to take on three months into our marriage, but I think it just made us work better together as a couple.

But... I digress. So... organizing a lazy susan cabinet.... here is what I decided would work best:

1) Keep it simple. The more stuff you try to cram in, the messier it will become and the more frustrated you will get.

2) Containerize. Everything.

3) Pick a theme. Don't shove every miscellaneous item you own in a container and stick it in there. Pick a group of items - for me it was baking supplies - and go with it.

My first task was to find a solution for all the plastic sippy cups, snack and travel mugs and toddler bowls. We use these constantly. They barely have time to sit on a shelf between coming out of the dishwasher clean and getting used again. So, I decided not to shove them all in a cabinet. There was just no way to do it neatly. I got a cute basket, put it on the counter, and dumped everything in. Plus, as my Husband said if we don't want people looking at it on the counter when we have guests, we can shove it in the closet. Excellent point!

I actually really like that basket there. I might by another matching one to collect other stuff that migrates around our kitchen! Alrighty... so... I moved my baking supplies out of the pantry (which freed up some much needed space) and into the lazy susan. The other cabinets in that corner of my kitchen have my baking dishes, pans, measuring cups, whisks, spatulas, etc. It's also the area of counter top I do most food prep and baking. I figured it would be nice to have all my baking ingredients handy.

I picked up some cheap plastic containers at Target (using a gift card I had rediscovered... thanks Svenja!) and used them to corral extra bags of flour and other baking ingredients. I also moved my flour and sugar containers out of the pantry and into the cabinet.

I used an extra container I had lying around from going strawberry picking to store my canning utensils on the bottom shelf.

All in all, I'm much happier with this new set up! I also think it will be pretty easy to keep organized. I'm sure it helps that I don't bake much :-)

All Things Wedding

2010-07-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

This week I've been working a lot on fun things for my brother's wedding. He just happens to be marrying one of my very best friends, so it's a win-win for me! The wedding is at the end of September... which seems to be coming up very quickly! I can't wait to blog about the fun projects I've started working on. I'll have to do a post AFTER the wedding with pictures of the projects and crafts. I know that both my brother and Jaime read this blog, so I can't give anything away.

Aside from my personal projects for the wedding that I've gotten started on (and crossing off my list... yaye!), I've been working a lot this week on planning Jaime's bridal shower. I know that sometimes this can be a stressful process for bridesmaids to all plan together, but so far I'm having a really fun time! I'm glad that all of her bridesmaids are good friends with each other. I think that all of these wedding related events are going to make for some great memories.

It has been nice to have wedding stuff to work on this week, because at least I feel like I'm still accomplishing something. I've been having SERIOUS motivation issues lately. I don't know what my problem is. It's like I have to force myself to do anything around the house. I'm just in some kind of a slump. I had to change one of the things on my list from do 30 minutes of exercise everyday to take my Metformin everyday because I've been feeling sick and sluggish on my Metformin and it's a struggle to force myself to take the pills, let alone work out. I can tell that my body is adjusting though, so next month I'd like to add in the exercising.

I have had a lot of days lately where I just feel kind of bored. I'm struggling to find things to do with Andy (it doesn't help that it's always over 100 degrees out with the heat index) and I'm struggling with wanting to take care of anything around the house. I can find endless ways to procrastinate in the afternoons while Andy is napping and then before I know it, nap time is over, I haven't gotten anything done, and then Matt's home from work and I am left feeling guilty for not accomplishing the most basic of tasks! Sigh.

So, today I set a goal of just catching up with laundry (which I'm painfully behind on). If I get that done, I'll feel like I accomplished something. And if I happen to vacuum my floors too... well... that will just be a bonus!

Birthday Gifts

2010-07-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

I have a problem with sending birthday gifts or cards on time. It's repeatedly a problem... year after year. I'm not really sure how to fix it! I mean, I know how to fix it, but I can't seem to fix it... ever. Sigh. This month I finally took care of the past due birthday gifts that I've been accumulating since the end of February... yes, February.

So, I had a birthday gift to buy my Dad, who is the most difficult person for me to shop for. Originally, I was going to get him a webcam so that we could Skype. However, I procrastinated long enough that I found out he was shopping around for a new laptop and it would have a built-in camera. Okay, scratch that idea. It took me another two months to finally decide to get him a gift certificate to Barnes & Noble after I found out that my Dad has become an avid reader! Good to know! I gave it to him at the beginning of the month and he's already used it to buy two books!

Next up were my two best friends' little boys. Both turned one. We don't usually buy birthday gifts for each other's kids, except for their first birthday. Anyway, I finally got around tonight to ordering their birthday gifts. My friend Kevin wrote this great book called A Day In The Salt Marsh. It's a SUPER cute book that follows the changes in the salt marsh as the tide changes throughout the day... and it rhymes. Andy absolutely loves it. He loves naming all the animals. He even recognizes and tells me Salt Marsh! whenever we pass the marsh around here! Anyway, it's really cute and I know my friends will love that it was written by someone we know!

And last but not least, my Grandmother's birthday was at the beginning of July. I actually wasn't too late on her gift (only a few days... is that even really considered late?) but only because they were here to visit. I highly doubt I would have gotten it in the mail yet otherwise! Anyway, she's another tough one to shop for... but my Mom gave me a good suggestion this year, and I picked her up some stationary.

I have a few more family birthdays left this year, and I honestly am going to try my hardest to get gifts in the mail ahead of time. I hate being that person who is always late on giving gifts. I also hate how it hangs over my head all the time as something I need to take care of. We'll see how I do the second half of the year!

Maintaining Routines

2010-07-13T18:11:00.000-07:00

So, I've been having some major motivation issues lately. I'm not really sure what my problem is. I have just felt kind of blah every day for the past two weeks. It might be the Metformin or it might be the oppressive heat and humidity that has set in around here or it might be the aftermath of a waaaay too over scheduled June. I don't know what it is, but I know that I don't like it and I know that I am having trouble snapping out of it.

My grandparents were here the past two days and I didn't even have the motivation to clean my house. They were staying at my brother's house this visit, but still, I normally would have cleaned at least the downstairs... knowing they would be over here a good chunk of the time. I picked up (kind of) and vacuumed the dog hair off the floor downstairs and things looked mostly presentable... but my Grandfather still asked me You did know we were coming, right? when I half heartedly said Sorry it's a little messy in here. He said it jokingly, but I'm sure he wasn't really thinking it jokingly. It's just that normally when they come to visit, I've spent the previous day cleaning and staying up until midnight getting everything done... you know, trying to pretend that our house is this clean ALL the time... this time... my house just looked like it normally does when I'm not trying to impress anyone else! (well, except that the floors were vacuumed)

So, here is my issue... I have a problem sticking to things for more than a few weeks. I can make cleaning routines, or plan meals and grocery shop according to my meal plan for the week, etc. but I only seem to stick to it for a week or two and then something will come up that will throw me off course... or sometimes nothing will come up and I'll be generally lazy. The problem with this is that for one, when I don't plan meals and grocery shop, we end up spending waaaay too much money on food and two, when I don't do ANYTHING around the house for a few days, it requires a major cleaning effort to get things under control. The backlash of NOT doing things in a methodical way is a little depressing. Sigh.

In an effort to find my way out of this slump I did spend a few hours today clipping my coupons (from the past two weeks) and cleaning out my coupon book and getting rid of expired coupons. I hadn't done anything with my coupons in over a month. I felt like I was throwing money away when I was tossing expired coupons for things I KNOW I purchased in the past month... and paid full price for. Uggggh! But I'm back on track now. I actually have had a weekly planning session the past two Sundays (well, actually Mondays) so I think I need to add clipping my coupons and finding my deals for the week to that time.

I also washed the car seat covers. This was somewhat of a chore. They weren't the easiest things to get off and on, and it's always a pain taking those things out of the cars and putting them back in. But... it had to be done. Since we had so many car trips last month, there were more than a few times that Andy had leaked through his diaper before I realized it and changed him, and the car seat covers were starting to have a distinct odor. Plus, we've had them for about a year now and have never washed the covers. Vacuumed? Yes. Washed? No.

And last but not least, I finally broke down and bought a canister for our compostable food scraps. In April, we started a compost bin. For the past three months we have been putting our food scraps in bowls on the counter. Sometimes if I didn't want to dirty a bowl, they would just go down the garbage disposal. For three months I have put off spending the $7 at Walmart for one of these canisters because I KNOW I can find one much much cheaper at Goodwill. Well, every time I go, they either only have the small ones, or have a whole set that they won't break up (for more than $7). It was getting a little comical. So, today, I broke down and got a canister. I'm sure if I go to Goodwill tomorrow, they will have exactly what I was looking for... for $1.

Tomorrow I really am going to put effort into following my cleaning schedule and getting back on track. I might not really feel like doing anything productive, but I'm hoping that small successes will breed larger successes and if I can just force myself to do a few productive things tomorrow, I'll find that I'll just keep going and get a few more things done!

Giving Blood

2010-07-08T17:43:00.000-07:00

Today I had my appointment to donate blood with the Red Cross. After I finished and was reminded of how easy and painless it is to give blood, I felt ashamed that I haven't donated since my senior year of high school when we had a blood drive at our school. That was 14 years ago!!! Even back then, I remember how easy actually donating was... the rest of my experience could have gone just a little smoother!

Our blood drive took place in the high school gym. I was a senior and my brother was a freshman. He happened to be having gym class while I was giving blood. They were outside playing street hockey or something like that... anyway, my friend Lauren had already donated and was standing next to me and chatting while I donated. All of a sudden she told me I think I'm going to faint! And the very next second... she did! Somehow I caught her in the arm that didn't have a needle in it and lowered her to the floor while the nurses ran over to take care of her. Literally, a few seconds later, my brother was getting escorted through the gym to the nurses office with blood gushing out of his forehead. A few minutes after that, someone came to let me know that they wanted me to go to the nurses office as soon as I was done. Apparently he fell or something... I can't even remember now. Anyway, they were concerned he might need stitches (he didn't) and I spent my recovery time in the nurses' office hanging out with him.

So, needless to say, actually giving blood wasn't really the part I remembered from that day!

When I went to the donation center today, everyone was extremely nice! I answered all the questions I needed to. I got my finger pricked to check my iron level (which has to be 12.5 or higher... mine was EXACTLY 12.5! Phew!) I had my blood pressure taken... and then I was good to go! Actually donating only took about 10-15 minutes. It didn't hurt at all when the needle went in, and I just chatted with the nurse the whole time. When I finished I got to have a snack and a drink. Most of the snacks they had available had too much sugar for me right now, so I opted for Cheese-itz. Since I'm back taking my Metformin, I can't eat anything with too much (or really, any) sugar or it makes me feel really sick. I totally take back what I said in my post yesterday about not being too nauseous on the Metformin this time... because I've really struggled with bouts of it last night and this afternoon. I hate, hate, hate this adjustment period on it. I know it will help regulate my hormones and help me ovulate (maybe even without Clomid?! we'll see!) and blah blah blah... but the first 3-4 weeks on it are horrible. But I digress...

So, here I am giving blood! Don't you love how they put me in the chair with the INSPIRE sign behind my head? I think it makes for a good back drop!

Don't I look happy to be donating? That's because...I AM! I was reminded today how this one easy and selfless act can have a major impact on someone else's life. I intend to start giving blood as often as I can. I would especially like to start donating with my husband. He's a little squeemish about needles and such (me?... not in the least!) but I talked to him about it tonight and I think he's willing to give it a try with me next time.

So, if you are like me, and it's been FOURTEEN YEARS or longer since you last gave blood, you should make an appointment at your local donation office. It's a good feeling knowing you could be helping to save some one's life!

Adjusting To Metformin

2010-07-07T11:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm officially and for good (well, through my first tri-mester if I'm lucky enough to get pregnant again) back on my Metformin. I had started taking it again in January, and then stopped taking it when I got hit with a nasty stomach bug, then procrastinated going back on it, then decided NOT to go back on it while I was training for my race ... and well ... now my race is done and I'm out of excuses!

This time I'm starting off on the extended release tablets. So far, this is proving easier for my body to adjust to than when I first started taking it when I was trying to get pregnant with Andy. I'm considerably less nauseous, but am definitely still having, eh, hem... digestive issues. Ugggh. I'm up to my full 1500 mg per day though, so I'm hoping I'm almost done with the adjustment period. I'm trying to be careful and watch what I'm eating and drinking. I remember very clearly from last time that I get particularly sick if I eat or drink anything sugary or have a meal loaded with white, starchy carbs. Now, my husband will be the first to tell you that a low carb diet and I are NOT friends! I am a miserable, irritable and just not so pleasant to be around person if I try and go low carb!! BUT... I'm making an effort not to eat any refined carbs and if I do have bread, I'm making sure it's whole grain.

I've adjusted my weight loss number on the side of my blog, because I weighed myself this morning and I have gained back two of the sixteen pounds I had lost a few months ago. I'm hoping now that being back on the Metformin and watching what I'm eating and working out (which I'm getting back to doing tonight!) that I'll be able to start seeing results again.

Today has been hard to get things done because I am feeling a little bad from the Metformin, but I did manage to accomplish two things! First, I finally bought a little rack to hold the lids to our pots. Our pots & pans cabinet drives me crazy. Mostly because we had a pot rack at our rental house and I LOVED having everything hanging in it's place... we don't have a place to put a pot rack now, so everything is kind of dumped in the cabinet.... like so:

So, I picked up the lid rack this morning at Target. The label on it actually says Eliminates Clutter. I'm wondering if this means throughout my whole house? Or only if I actually put the lids on the rack in this cabinet?? My whole house would be nice, thanks!

This took all of 2 minutes and I'm much happier now! Top view:

Front view:

Clutter eliminated! Check!

Then I replaced a light that had burned out in the kitchen. It's been like that for about a month, but I've been too lazy to replace it because A) I didn't have the kind of light bulb I needed since it's a recessed can light and B) our ceilings are tall and I didn't feel like carrying the step ladder in from the garage (all of 5 feet away). But... now, it's done!

I also replaced two lights on the ceiling of our front porch. Those lights have been out since December. Yes... lazy... I know. Hornets even started nesting in one. I guess they figured if it was vacant for seven months, what were the odds anyone would bother with it now???

I couldn't see any hornets in there at the time, so I just climbed up on the ladder and knocked it down with a stick. So, now all the lights are good to go! And I think that was my full 15 minutes of productivity today. My stomach is feeling a little unsettled and I think that is a good excuse to go nap for the rest of Andy's nap!

Wasting Money

2010-07-06T19:44:00.000-07:00

I'm crossing two more things off my list... two things that I've been wasting money on for months. First, I closed our bank account. I've been banking with the same bank for fourteen years. Basically because they were the bank I opened an account at when I moved away for college, and then it just seemed like a hassle after a while to change everything over to any other bank. So, we have a checking account and savings account at the same bank. We wanted to link the savings account TO the checking account for overdraft protection... but... since the checking account was opened in South Carolina and the savings account was opened in North Carolina, they couldn't link them. Seriously???!!! WHAT is the difference? This is a huge national bank!!! uggghh! Okay, so we opened a new savings account and got it linked to our checking. This was 3 months ago. I still hadn't closed the old savings account... AND... to make matters worse, because we weren't making deposits, we were getting charged an $8 fee every month. Nice. So, because I procrastinated for three months on something that took me THREE minutes to take care of today, it cost us $24. Awesome. I totally could have gotten a much needed pedicure for $24!

Second, I got a subscription to Better Homes & Gardens Magazine. It's the only magazine I buy EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH. And I pay $3.49 + tax EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH. And every time I buy it I think to myself Man! I sure need to get a subscription! .... sigh.... I just signed up for a year's subscription for $5.99 AND am getting a free cookbook as well. Much better deal?? I think so!!!

I'm glad I finally took care of two nagging little things on my list, so that I can stop feeling the money sucking right out of our bank account every time I even think about either of those two things!!!

Job Hunting

2010-07-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I have spent the past few days applying for part time jobs. I'm crossing it off of my list because I have applied to five different positions, although I still plan to go tomorrow night to some of the larger retail establishments and fill out applications at their kiosks.

When I was laid off from my job in November, I thought that we could make it work financially on my husband's salary alone... and we did for a while because I was receiving unemployment compensation. Since my unemployment ran out, things have been pretty tight. We are realizing that on paper we have enough money, but practically speaking... not so much! We can pay our bills and for food and for gas and any essentials, but we don't have money for anything extra every month...and inevitably, some unexpected expense comes up every... single... month!

So, I'm applying for part time jobs! I'm not opposed to working. I'm not kicking and screaming and dragging my feet. I'm really, truly okay with this, but it is hard finding jobs to apply for that:

A) fit my schedule parameters (evenings or weekends when Matt is NOT working so we are not paying childcare that will cancel out any money I earn!)
B) I'm interested in doing (I'm not looking for something I think I'll love... but still want to have an interest!)
C) Pays enough

But... I have found some, and I'm going to apply for more, and keep checking for new postings everyday. I'm also doing pretty well with my Thirty~One business! BUT... it's not quite steady enough (yet) for me to feel comfortable relying on that income every month.

When I was working, I was constantly stressed because I felt like I couldn't get anything done at home, I was always exhausted and I didn't really enjoy what I was doing. Even though I was home most of the day with Andy and only working part time, I still craved being home with him ALL the time. I know that when I stopped working I just traded one set of stresses for another. Financial stress is now an issue, where it really wasn't too much before. I guess this is a common problem for a lot of families.

I'm hoping I can find a flexible part time job and be able to help put our family on the right course financially, but in the mean time, I'm going to work on little ways that I can SAVE money for our family. I think the key to saving money for me will be PLANNING. The more I PLAN the less I spend... but why is that SOOOOO hard??!! Oh, right! Because I'd rather nap in the afternoon or sit on the internet for an hour instead of planning and getting things done... sigh...

Hooray For Long Weekends!

2010-07-03T20:43:00.001-07:00

I'm so excited that it's a long weekend! Even though I'm not currently working a "real" job (like staying home and taking care of everything here isn't "real" enough work)... I still get excited for long weekends because it means that Matt is home with Andy and me for an extra day!

I'm also excited because it's finally July. June was a ridiculously busy month for me. I'm not even sure when or how it became so busy, but I was out of town for some part of EVERY SINGLE WEEK! I felt like I never had time to recover and get back on track at home before I was heading out again. I felt like I hardly saw my husband and we definitely didn't get any much needed alone time together. So, although HE is heading out of town for a camping trip with friends next weekend, I'M not heading anywhere!

We have family in town this weekend, so Matt and I got to get out out of the house for a little bit tonight after Andy went to bed. We headed to Barne's & Noble and got iced chai tea's from Starbucks and read magazines for free. Then we came home and sat out on our back patio and listened to the gazillion frogs and other marsh critters chirping away in the marsh behind our house and just chatted and enjoyed each other's company. We are having some AWESOME weather here in Charleston (if only for a few days) where it is NOT super duper, over the top, start dripping sweat as soon as you step outside the door, car thermometer reading 98+ degrees HOT & HUMID out! I actually had to put on a sweatshirt while sitting outside tonight! WHAT???!!! Man I wish it was like this ALL the time in the summer!

So, a few days ago I wrapped up the rest of my list.... I made my Thirty~One binder, I called my friend Carly (although we are playing phone tag) who I haven't talked to in almost five years!!! (seriously? where does the time go??!) and I started the first book in the Jan Karon series called The Mitford Years. My Mom gave us the set of books as an engagement gift (eh, hem... almost SIX years ago - our engagement story is kind of funny, so I'm thinking I should do a post about that on July 17th to mark the anniversary of our engagement! tee hee) and I just unwrapped the cellophane on them last week! There really is something wrong with me!!!!! Sigh.

I also passed off nailing down the quarter round on my husband. He took care of that while Andy and I were in Georgia. Now, this is not to say that we have actually finished putting down the quarter round yet on the floors we started installing 13 months ago... but at least the pieces of quarter round that were cut and put in place, but floating around our floors are now nailed in place. I told Matt he was going to have to do a post about why HE thinks we, as a couple, procrastinate things so much! I'm still going to make him do that post at some point, but he told me he would do it on Monday, and well, I'm just ready to move on to July already! Matt and I have a good relationship, but although we support each other's good habits, we also share a lot of the same bad habits and then we TOTALLY enable each other to continue to fail in the same areas of our lives. It's something we are recognizing and working on, but it sure is hard when two people are similar in the same ways ... both good and bad!

Okay, so here goes! July's list is posted! I'm totally psyched to get that desk painted and get our office set up!!!! I hated that I had to move it from June to July, but there was just NO WAY it was going to happen last month. I'm also going to try and be better about posting once a day as I actually accomplish things! I think that with a less busy month I can totally do it!

Happy 4th of July everyone!!!

June

2010-06-30T12:18:00.000-07:00

Today is June 30th and let me just say... it has been ridiculously hard to finish my list this month!!! And I'm still not completely done! I have three last things that I'll finish up this evening, and one that I delegated to my husband. I have been out of town waaaaay too much this month!!! It's just thrown me completely off. It's been hard to stay focused, hard to be organized, hard to plan meals, hard to stick to a budget, and hard not to be cranky at times!

I'm out of town again now, but it's been very relaxing and enjoyable. My Mom and Step Dad are staying in St. Simons Island for the week, so Andy and I drove down to Georgia yesterday. We are having a very nice time. This afternoon it's rainy and overcast though, so I've taken this time while Andy is napping to catch up on some of the remaining items on my list.

Before I left town, I returned a company polo shirt that I had never worn to my old place of employment. I can't even remember why they gave it to me... I think it was for a company photo, (okay, so maybe I wore it once). I found it when I cleaned out the dresser in the spare room last month. I didn't need to keep it, someone else can get some use out of it! I also returned my 3 year old neighbor's neck tie! His Mom had lent it to Andy for his baptism (8 months ago) and even though Andy didn't end up wearing it, it has been hanging on the door knob to his closet for the entire 8 months. I see this neighbor pretty much everyday, so I really don't have excuse for my slackness!

I have spent the entire afternoon today on the computer. I brought a flash drive with me on this trip so that I could back up all of our important files that I've just been saving on our desktop. I don't trust that ~~Andy won't crash~~ this computer won't crash one day and I will feel a total sense of despair. I had an issue with it last month and thought we were going to have to replace the operating system and I totally panicked! That's when it went on the list to back up files! It didn't take too long to do, so I need to just get in the habit of doing it more regularly.

I also copied all of the home videos I've taken with my camera since Andy was born and put them in one folder. They were scattered in folders all over my desktop from different downloads. I want to have them all in one place so that I can eventually burn them to a disk in order by date (not this month! That's for sure!)

And the last thing I did today was set up a business expense and mileage log for my
Thirty~One business. I've been an independent consultant for a little over a month now. I want to make sure I'm getting started off on the right foot as far as tracking business expenses goes. I just made a pretty simple spreadsheet with the following categories:

Date
Vendor
Amount
Cost Code
Memo

The second tab in my spreadsheet tracks mileage. The future me will appreciate getting this all set up now when tax time rolls around again. This afternoon I'm going to work on putting together a binder with a deconstructed catalog, helpful printouts, etc. to take with me for parties.
I'm glad June is almost over! And believe it or not, I already have my July list made. I keep thinking it's going to get harder to come up with a list each month... but it hasn't yet!

How to Set Up an Electronic Filing System

2010-06-30T11:52:00.000-07:00

Since we are so close to getting our office put together and set up (finally... a year after we moved in), I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to best organize our files. Since we have our primary residence, two rental properties, two vehicles, one child and four pets, we have a lot of paperwork that passes through our house. With the three properties, we have a lot of bills and documents that need to be filed.

After much thought, I have decided to go with an electronic filing system. I will still keep two hanging file boxes for all of the originals of our important home documents, taxes and personal documents. I came to realize that most of what I file (or lately, keep to file at a later date! ha ha) could be scanned and stored electronically and then shredded. Since I pay most of our bills online through our bank's bill pay system, I can scan and file a copy of the bill while I'm sitting down at the computer to pay it.

I found that the most helpful thing for me to do in order to organize this system electronically, was to sit down with a copy of our monthly budget and make a flow chart of how I would want the files organized on the computer. My plan is to keep my files on my hard drive and back up monthly on an external drive.

My flow chart of files looks something like this:

Electronic Filing System
Credit Cards
Medical Expenses
Other Monthly Expenses
Personal Records
Pets
Primary Residence
Receipts
Rental Property #1
Rental Property #2
Vehicles

Under each category, I have more sub-folders. For example, under Vehicles I have two folders, one for each car. Under each individual vehicle file, I have the following folders:

Insurance
Loan
Maintenance
Registration & Taxes

Under the Receipts folder, I will have a folder for each vendor and then under each vendor a folder for each month of the year. Receipts will be scanned and stored in order by date. If it's a major purchase, I'll also file the original receipt, just in case.

I'm sure that I will need to add other categories as I go along, or just tweak things a bit, but for now, it's nice to have the infrastructure in place to start filing electronically!

"Spring" Cleaning

2010-06-29T19:14:00.000-07:00

Okay... so... I've never actually done any sort of whole house or "spring" cleaning before. That's probably because for a long time the running joke among our friends was to never write our address in INK in an address book! Now that we are, eh hem, settling into a house with no plans to leave (for now!), I felt like maybe it was time to start with a whole house cleaning plan. We have been living in our house for a year now, although it feels like it's been much shorter than that, and the dirt and grime was starting to show. So, although I missed the boat on a true SPRING cleaning, I know my house benefited from the process that took place over the past week.

However... it was a pretty major effort to tackle so much cleaning in a week's worth of time. There were also several areas of the house that I was cleaning and thinking I'm SURE this could use cleaning MORE than once a year! So, now that I've tackled all of this, I think I'm going to re-vamp my list and break it down monthly so that some tasks are in the rotation once per year and others more frequently. The thing that I liked about the check list was that it made me much more methodical in my cleaning. Here is everything that I tackled:

Whole House
 wipe down all baseboards and molding
 vacuum all curtains and blinds
 clean inside & out of all windows
 vacuum all rugs – including under furniture
 clear all cobwebs
 dust all light fixtures and ceiling fans
 change smoke detector batteries
 dust & clean glass on all wall photos
 steam clean all carpets
 steam mop all hardwood and linoleum floors
 wipe down and disinfect all electronic items
 change HVAC filters

Kitchen
 wipe down cabinets
 clean fridge coils
 clean out and wipe down inside of fridge
 clean drawer organizers
 clean oven
 wipe down walls
 wipe chairs
 clean & polish table
 clean trash can
 clean inside of dishwasher
 wipe down exterior doors
 clean inside & out of microwave
 clean out and wipe down inside of lazy susan cabinet
 wipe down spice rack
 dust upper cabinet tops
 organize pantry
 clean out under sink cabinet
 wipe down counter tops, sink & stove top
 clean dish rack & pan
 new dish sponge

Dining Room
 clean & polish table
 wipe down all chairs
 dust inside and out of china cabinets

Bathrooms
 clean toilets, mirrors, counter tops, tubs and showers
 organize linen closets and cabinets
 wash bath mats & towels
 empty trash
 stock trash bags in cans

Living room
 wash all furniture covers
 dust built-ins
 organize cabinets
 clean out dresser drawers
 clean & polish coffee table & end table

Bedrooms
 wash bed linens
 vacuum & flip mattresses
 wipe down & polish headboards and dressers
 organize closets
 wash dog bed cover

Nursery
 wipe down crib
 clean leather on rocking chair
 clean & polish stand & Dresser
 move any out of season or too small clothes to storage
 wash bedding
 wipe down crib mattress

Play room
 dust tv
 clean & organize TV stand
 clean leather sofa
 disinfect all toys
 move un-used toys to storage
 wipe down kids table & chairs
 wipe down play mats

Laundry room
 wipe down washer & dryer
 organize laundry shelves
 empty, clean & refill litter box
 wipe down dog food container

Whew! And now I'm tired of cleaning!! To give my husband props, he did get up on the ladder to change the HVAC filters, smoke detector batteries and clear the cobwebs. The biggest thing that he did to help, was to take over parenting duties on Sunday afternoon while I got a big chunk of things finished. I'm glad this is done, but now know that I want to break this up into smaller chunks throughout the year. It was too much to tackle in a week and still try to take care of normal life stuff!

Rocking Horse Re-do

2010-06-28T20:59:00.001-07:00

Last month I found this very sad looking hand made rocking horse at Goodwill. It was just begging me with those creepy looking little eyes to take it home and spruce it up! Unfortunately I had already cut all of the weird, frayed, rope/yarn that was tied on for a mane before I took this "before" picture.... otherwise, you could have seen it in all it's glory!

I decided that this would make a cute 2nd birthday present for Andy. His birthday is just two months away! So, this afternoon I gave this little guy a good coat of semi-gloss spray paint in brown. After it dried, I took some craft paint and gave it some eyes and a harness and then stenciled an 'A' on the bottom of each side (for Andy, of course!)

Next I cut and tied several pieces of yarn through the little holes to give it a mane. This part was rather tedious, but I think it turned out cute. The best part was giving it a little hair cut at the end to even up the yarn! I'm not sure why this part was so fun, but I really enjoyed giving it a hair cut! ha ha

The hardest part was painting the eyes and harness and stars, etc. the same on both sides of the horse... but it all turned out great! Here is the finished product...

LOVE those Goodwill finds!

How To Easily Stuff A Dog Bed

2010-06-27T20:12:00.001-07:00

We bought this dog bed at a pet store a few years ago. It was cheap and it served it's purpose, but about a year ago, the inside stuffing all came apart and I had to throw it away. I've held onto the outer cover of the bed since then with the intention of re-using it.

In the past, my husband and I have actually sewn dog beds for our dogs and instead of using stuffing to fill them, we just used some old pillows! This worked great! The pillows seem to hold up better than the stuffing. This time, I didn't have any old or unused pillows lying around, so I went to Walmart and bought two pillows for $2.50 a piece.

I stuffed the pillows inside the liner and now we have a perfectly usable dog bed again! It's not quite as full as it was when we bought it, but I suppose it could be if I had splurged on the bigger pillows...

...but Kinley doesn't mind... it serves its purpose just the same!

I think knows it's an actual pillow in there by the way she is sleeping! Ha ha! Although yesterday I seriously found her curled up in Andy's car seat on the floor in the entry way!!!! We needed to take the seat out of one of the cars, and I came home and found her sitting/laying in it asleep! She's a sweet, but funny little dog :-)

Creating an Art Box

2010-06-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

So, Andy has been very into coloring lately... which I love! Do you want to know the other thing I love?... Washable crayons! Yup! They are the BEST! I don't have to panic when he runs right off the paper and onto the kitchen table with his drawing. Although, I must say, he does try to stay on the paper, and he knows his is only allowed to color on paper. He loves to ask us to draw things for him. His usual request is a turtle, but it can run the gamut from a sun, moon and stars, to penguins or fish, or even a worm. One time he asked for a wolf... I think I redirected him back to a turtle!

Anyway, his little crayons are migrating all over the place. Sometimes they are hard to keep up with, plus, he usually colors at the kitchen table and I'm always running into the office to get more printer paper for him to draw on, SOOOO...today I made him an art box to contain everything!

I got this great plastic suitcase-like box for $5 at the craft store... slapped some letter stickers on it... and viola! I also got him a smaller plastic case to keep all of his crayons in. So, now we have a package of construction paper, his crayons, some washable markers and his container of sidewalk chalk all stored in one easy carrying case!

Oh, ya, and I also finally took the gazillion plastic grocery bags back to the store today to recycle them! They were completely filling up the cabinet under my kitchen sink. I've been doing pretty well lately remembering to use my cloth grocery bags, but I still had quite a few plastic ones from a while ago, and from more recent times when I forgot to bring my cloth ones in. I do like having a few around to use in bathroom trash cans, but the amount we had was just out of control. I feel much better having recycled them!

Bed Stand Transformation

2010-06-27T19:14:00.000-07:00

Today I refinished an old end table/cabinet from my grandparents. I'm re-purposing it as a bed stand in our master bedroom. It is a VERY solid cabinet, and still in fantastic shape, but just not the style I am trying to create in our bedroom. Since we are pretty short on furniture and funds, I'm trying to do as much re-purposing as possible! I'm currently on the hunt for a similar looking cabinet that I can refinish to match and put on the other side of the bed.

Here is what it looked like before...

I had already taken one of the drawer pulls off in this picture to take with me to Home Depot... just to make sure I got the same size replacement pulls. I was happy with the dark finish that was already on the cabinet because I wanted some of it to show through once I distressed it. I used some sand paper to scuff up the finish a bit so that the paint would adhere, and then I gave it two good coats of Behr Paint & Primer in one (LOVE that stuff!) in Beach White semi-gloss. After it dried, I used some 220 grit sand paper to hand distress it along the edges and then I put on some new hardware.

I'm TOTALLY in love with the finished product!

This is exactly what I pictured for the cottage and coastal feel I'm trying to achieve in our bedroom. Our head board and foot board are metal in an oil rubbed bronze finish, so this new hardware will coordinate perfectly! It always amazes me how you can totally change the look of a piece of furniture with just some paint and some sandpaper!

I'm linking up to...

Almost Giving Blood

2010-06-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

So, one of the things on my list for June was to donate blood. About two weeks ago I started thinking hmmmm... do I just go to a Red Cross center? Do I find a blood drive? How do I find out where blood drives are being held? ... and then, an e-mail magically (not really) appeared in my inbox from Team In Training letting me know about a blood drive in my area that was being held yesterday. Perfect! So, I signed up for an appointment at 6:30 p.m. That would give Matt enough time to get home from work and stay with Andy while I went. Matt and I also decided to do a "date night in." So, I planned to pick up some take out on my way home and we would have a little date night right here (more on that later). I figured I'd be home no later than 8:00. I even made an effort to dress presentable and I brought my camera along to have the nurse take my picture for the blog! Well...

The Red Cross must just take appointments so that they can have some idea of how many people they will have at different times of the day, because when I got there, they were also accepting walk-ins, which I think is awesome, but just because you had an appointment didn't mean that you went ahead of walk-ins. So, I waited for about 40 minutes, but I didn't mind. It really was great that they had so many people to donate blood.

Then, I got called back and sat in a little cubicle with a nurse. She asked me a bunch of questions. She took my temperature, checked my blood pressure and pricked my finger to check my iron levels and make sure I was not anemic (I was not). I also watched a guy pass out (kinda scary!) and then wake up (sigh of relief). Then she left me to answer 50 questions on the computer. They were mostly questions about risky behavior and if I had lived in certain countries during certain dates and if I'd ever had any diseases. One of the questions was Are you pregnant or have you been pregnant in the past 6 weeks? So, I answered No. Because to my knowledge I'm not pregnant, and I know for sure I haven't been pregnant in the past 6 weeks! BUT... truth be told... this was the first month we started trying for baby #2. Since my brother is getting married in September and I'm in the wedding, I'm not exactly wanting to be pregnant by then, but given what it took to get pregnant with Andy, my doctor said to try for 3 months and if nothing, uh, happens, then try a round of Clomid. SOOOO.... I am of course assuming nothing will happen, so we can get 4 rounds of trying in before the wedding and then do whatever we have to do after that.

But, of course, there is always that chance... so I asked the nurse What are the repercussions to giving blood if you are pregnant? She asked me if there was even a chance I was pregnant and I told her, well, I guess there could be a chance, but it would be nothing short of a miracle if after trying to conceive for two years and needing a round of fertility drugs we just got PREGNANT on the first try! (I mean, I can't even fathom that!!). So, she called over the head nurse and they said Absolutely not! She said that since your body starts increasing it's blood volume to support the baby, the last thing you want to do is take blood away. I pointed out that I hadn't even missed my period yet... I was still a few days away... and she told me to get my period and then come back... So...

I'm moving Donate Blood to the July list (unless of course I know ahead of time that I won't be eligible to give blood (wink wink nod nod) I guess time will tell) and replacing it with returning an un-used work shirt to my old place of employment.

So, this post is already super long, but I just wanted to say that I loved having "date night in!" It was really nice! Matt and I were able to talk about things we probably wouldn't have talked about in a restaurant. We didn't pay for drinks or pay tip, so it was cheaper. We didn't have to worry about who would watch Andy... mostly, it was just nice to set aside time for ourselves instead of being busy working on different things around the house at night, or one of us on the computer and the other watching TV, etc. After dinner we watched a movie. It was nice and relaxing and something I want to start incorporating into every week! I highly recommend it!

Blog Withdrawal!

2010-06-23T21:29:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I'm seriously going through withdrawal from not blogging! I can't believe I haven't posted anything in almost A WEEK! Geesh!!! So, since the last time that I posted, I turned another year older and I went out of town for four days. I had very limited access to the internet while I was in North Carolina and I feel like all I've done since I got back has been GO GO GO! I'm starting to realize that our summer has filled up with plans faster than I ever imagined! I'm afraid it's going to go by too fast! I can already tell that I am going to have to put in some extra effort to keep up with my resolutions this summer.

But... just because I've been out of town doesn't mean I've been slacking (too much!) on my list. I have been able to cross a few things off... now I just have to catch up on posts! Anyway, last week, I spent two nights doing nothing but watching the last 5 episodes of Grey's Anatomy online. My husband and I decided in March to cancel our cable. We were hardly watching TV and didn't feel like we were getting our money's worth out of it every month. We also haven't gotten any rabbit ears for our TV either. At the time I thought I would just keep watching the shows I had been watching on TV... online. It was funny how I thought I'd miss those shows, and then I guess never did because I hadn't watched anything online until last week.

I felt like I had to put it on my list to watch Grey's Anatomy because every time all my girlfriends would start talking about the season finale I would have to shoosh them! I knew if it didn't make it on my list, I would keep putting it off until it wasn't available online anymore. So, now I've watched all the episodes I had missed... and HOLY COW! Was NOT expecting all of that in the season finale! I think I'll probably keep up with the shows online next season.

I'm also crossing a small thing off my list tonight as well. I finally put a nail file, a pair of tweezers and some nail clippers in my purse. Those are the three items I find myself wishing I had in my purse over and over and over again and I'm always so annoyed with myself that I never keep a set in there! So, now they are in my purse in their own little pouch so that I can always find them with ease.

There are some other things on my list that are in progress. Currently it is "spring" cleaning my house. I'll post about this when I'm completely done and can cross it off. Today/tonight I tackled everything on my kitchen list (I broke everything down by "whole house" items and then by room). It's 12:42 a.m. and I'm still up because I have the oven on "self cleaning" mode and it still has thirty minutes left.... shoot me now! I have all the downstairs windows open, the range hood fan on and the ceiling fan on and I still feel a little loopy from the fumes! Suffice it to say I have never, ever cleaned an oven (by hand or otherwise) in my life, so I wasn't really sure what this would entail!

Okay, but just so that I can feel a sense of accomplishment before I collapse in my bed in twenty nine minutes, here is the list of things I did in the kitchen (by far the most involved of all the rooms!)

Wipe down cabinets
Clean fridge coils & vacuum behind fridge
Clean out and wipe down the inside of the fridge
Clean drawer organizers and silverware holder
Wipe down walls
Wipe down chairs
Clean & polish table
Clean trash can
Clean inside of dishwasher
Wipe down inside of exterior doors
Clean inside & out of microwave
Clean out & wipe down inside of lazy susan cabinet
Wipe down spice rack
Dust upper cabinet tops
Organize pantry
Clean under sink
Wipe down counter tops, sink & stove top
Clean dish rack & pan
Put out new sponge

I've never done a whole house type spring cleaning before. I have thoughts to share on this, but not tonight. It's time for me to go pass out now.

Tantrums

2010-06-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I just changed one of my resolutions from check "How to Stop Worrying And Start Living" out of the library to Get a library card. I had to do it. Getting the library card was an event in and of itself and since they didn't have the book at that library, it's seeming a little unlikely that I will be able to check that book out this month... but we'll see.

Yesterday I decided to take Andy to the library. Since we moved into a different county last year, I needed to get a library card for the library near us, as my old one wasn't good in this county. So, we got to the library right when they opened at 10:00 a.m. I stopped at the desk on my way in and asked about getting a card. I took the paperwork and clip board with me to fill out while sitting in the children's area. Andy LOVED the library. He was looking at books. He was pointing out all of the fish and jungle animals on the walls. He was excited. We stayed in the kids area for almost an hour! At one point we did bring my paperwork up the desk along with my driver's license.

Then, things started to go down hill. Andy noticed the computers and ALL he wanted to do was play on the computer! Since I couldn't let him crash every computer he touched in the library, he was NOT HAPPY that I wasn't letting him do what he wanted to do. So, I took him to the computer to look up the book I wanted to check out. For some reason he DID NOT want to use THAT particular computer. So, I gave him one of the little pencils and scrap pieces of paper near the computer and let him draw.

They didn't even carry the book I wanted in this library.

When we went back up to the desk to get my library card and license Andy threw a complete fit. I couldn't just take him and leave the library because the lady had my license! So after several embarrassing minutes I got my card and my license and carried my child kicking and screaming out to the car.

We've been having issues with this all of a sudden. If he can't do what he wants to do when he wants to do it, he throws a tantrum. When we are at home, time outs work GREAT! No issues. It's when we are in public that I have a problem. And most of the time, he is completely fine out in public!!! But then there are days when I think I'm going to lose my mind.

The only errand I had to run yesterday was to go to the post office. This was after the library. Andy was fine in line, but for whatever reason did not want to go up to the counter. He waited until after the guy started processing my package and getting my stamps to throw a fit. So, I was holding him kicking and screaming while I tried to get my check card out of my wallet and pay. Then I carried him for the second time that day out of a public place while pitching a fit.

Sigh.

Today... he was his normal, happy, cute, sweet, well behaved self! I had a GREAT day with him today. As I do on most days... but I'm getting a glimpse of the "terrible two's" and it's making me really nervous!!!!! Oh, well. I guess every Mom goes through this. I'm just trying really hard to be consistent with him. I suppose that's all I can do.

Otherwise, I've started a list of everything I need to tackle for my "spring cleaning." I'll be working on that all next week, and I've delegated one of my items for the month to my husband to take care of this weekend.... he's going to finish nailing down the quarter round on our downstairs floors. We started putting in the hardwood floors A YEAR AGO. Like most other projects we tackle, they have been 99.9% finished for a while now, but for some reason we have some quarter round that is nailed in place, some that is cut and just layed in place and other that still needs to be cut and put down. It's driving me crazy. I put it on my list to either get Matt to do it or do it myself, it didn't matter. I just want it DONE.

So, while I'm in North Carolina this weekend pressure washing the front porch of our rental house and hauling a load of stuff to the landfill... Matt will be here nailing down quarter round. I feel like it's a fair trade. I'm also doing a Thirty~One party for a friend and visiting my Dad, so it's not like I'm driving 4 hours just to pressure wash a porch.... that's just a "bonus."

Otherwise, I'm trying to figure out how to simplify my life a little more. I feel over-scheduled. I think that I commit to too many things. Lately I've just been craving more family time and more time at home in general. It's something I'm going to have to be very conscious about working on. I want to feel a little more centered as a person. I guess that is a work in progress too.

Working With Super Glue

2010-06-16T11:59:00.001-07:00

(Disclaimer: If you are planning to try and fix anything with super glue, you probably want to do the exact opposite of what I just did in order to avoid super gluing your fingers together.)

So, about a month ago, when I started trying to pick out a paint color for the office and figure out what we were going to do for a desk, etc.... my husband told me that he would like to have (and I quote) a "wall of awesome" for himself. No, I'm not kidding. This wall of awesome would include many of the various plaques and certificates that my in-laws saved for my husband over the years and recently returned to him. You would think that would include his college diploma, but since that was left in an unsealed box in the detached garage at the rental house we were living in... it's covered in mold. (We'll be ordering a new one) ... However... the plaque that my husband received for winning first place in a WATERMELON SEED SPITTING contest in the Cub Scouts remains in pristine condition. If only I had KNOWN he was an award winning watermelon seed spitter, I may have gone out with him for the first time sooner than I did! I don't know why he held that information back!

Okay, so I agreed to give him a small strip of wall in the office for his "wall of awesome" because I'm a nice person... and because all other design decisions in our house have been up to me... Soooooo as long as I'm doing this, I figured I should fix this cute hand print plaque that he made when he was five years old.

The top corner was completely broken off, and the side was partially broken, but still hanging on.

So, I rummaged around on the workbench in the garage for some super glue. I found an opened box with 6 tubes.

Mistake #1: Assuming none of the tubes were opened

I was smart enough not to use the glue on our counter tops, so I put a pile of paper underneath. I didn't consider using gloves because a) we don't have any and b) I saw NO REASON that I would have to touch the glue. After a few seconds of holding the tube (and NOT squeezing it yet) my fingers felt funny... then I noticed THAT particular tube had been opened and the glue was oozing out around the cap. I dropped the tube on the paper and ...

Mistake #2: Rubbed my fingers together

...rubbed my middle finger and my thumb together... why did I do that? WHO KNOWS!!! How dumb could I be! They briefly stuck TOGETHER... but I was able to get them apart. However, the top of two of my fingernails were glued to my skin and the tips of my fingers and thumbs were shriveled, hard and white.... coated in the glue.

So, with my left hand I did the next rational thing... I Googled "How to get super glue off your skin." Everything I read told me to soak my fingers in nail polish remover. Which I did. This released my nails from my skin... but my fingertips... not so much. Still shriveled, hard and white.

So, then I realized that the plaque was now secured to the paper... as was tube of glue. When I tried to remove the paper, it ripped the cracked part of the plaque completely off.

So, I got myself a new, UN-OPENED tube of super glue, took the plaque and broken pieces outside, glued it together without setting it down on anything.... and then set it in the sun on its non-glued side on our grill to dry.

And now it's fixed. I'm crossing it off my list. Who knows how long this stuff is going to stay on my fingers!!!!!!!!

Putting In The Time

2010-06-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

I've really been struggling lately with making the time for the things that are really important to me. I'm not really sure why. I think that sometimes I get overwhelmed with my life (especially if I am over scheduled) and I either just kind of shut down mentally, or I work on small things while I let the big things pile up and stress me out. Sometimes I think that my coping mechanism when I am stressed is to do as many random and insignificant tasks as possible, while avoiding the big things I should be working on. I suppose that way I still feel productive, but can still avoid dealing with things I don't want to deal with. Of course, this method never works and I just end up feeling more stressed and anxious, but man, is it hard to look at yourself and your habits objectively and try to make changes. Sigh.

So, what it comes down to is that I just need to start holding myself more accountable and just PUT IN THE TIME to work on the bigger things. I know that I'll be less stressed out and then actually have time for the little things. When I was working, it was easier to have someone else holding me accountable for things. Now that I'm staying at home, I'm finding that it's hard to be so self disciplined!

Now that my race is over and I don't have to just train for endurance, I would really like to focus on eating better and getting in shape. I have a hard time focusing on both. I know they should go hand in hand, but I have never been able to tackle making both a priority. I didn't lose any weight when I was training for the Myrtle Beach half marathon, but once the race was cancelled and I took a month off from training, I lost 15 lbs! It was just because I felt like I could focus on my eating. I am someone who can workout all I want, but if I'm not eating well, I won't lose weight.

I really want to keep running right now, but seriously, it's been over 100 degrees in Charleston lately and I would probably pass out if I tried to go out and run. So, last night I started the P90X workout with my husband in our garage. He's been doing it for three months now, and we've already had to go buy him new (smaller) pants! I just kind of put him in charge of my workouts. He made up the spreadsheets to track my reps and weight used for different exercises, he has us following the workout plan, all I have to do is show up. This means that I don't have to feel overwhelmed about planning workouts, AND, I don't have to hold myself accountable for actually working out. I'm not going to let Matt work out in the garage while I'm home doing something else, just because I don't feel like it. The buddy system works for me.

My biggest issue with eating healthy is lack of planning. If I actually plan meals and grocery shop accordingly, I'll eat relatively healthy. If not, well, then I tend to eat pretty poorly. I usually blame my lack of planning on being over scheduled, but really, I find the time to be lazy, or surf the internet or watch a show on Netflix, so I definitely have the time to meal plan.

I think that I'm going to start setting aside a "planning period" for myself on Sunday afternoons while Andy is napping. I might even leave the house so that I'm not distracted by other things, but it will give me some time to plan my week, plan our meals and feel less stressed with the start of each new week.

Oh, ya, and I'm crossing two things off my list...

#1 I submitted our railing application to our HOA. We would like to add some railings to our front porch. Of course, this has to get approved by the HOA, and because they want as much of our money as possible, you have to pay a $75 fee for architectural reviews... this is good for 1 calendar year. We had to pay this last year when we got our fence approved, so while we are covered for another week, I figured I'd better get our application in! We may decide not to do the railings, but at least the request is in. I know it sounds like we must live in some fancy gated community since they are so ridiculous about approving anything we plant in the yard and charging the review fees etc... but WE DON'T!!!! It drives me crazy! The HOA says it's because the builder still has control of the neighborhood and since they are still building and selling houses they want to make sure the neighborhood has a certain "feel"... blah blah blah. It does not use $75 worth of anyone's time to decide if we can plant an azalea!!!

and...

#2 I re-programmed our thermostats. This was easy since I organized all my manuals! The old Colleen would have spent an hour searching for the manual to be able to do this! Anyway, somehow our downstairs thermostat was set for 71 degrees at night!!! Craziness! We don't even need the air on downstairs at night. So, even though I try to remember to turn it off at night, if I don't then we are wasting a WHOLE bunch of electricity! Anyway... it's done.

Geesh! This was a long post! I'll be surprised if anyone is still reading it!

Blah Day

2010-06-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

So, I'm having a really hard time jumping back into the swing of things since I got back from California. Maybe I only have so much motivation reserved for a week and I used all of it up for the week running that race. Who knows!

Yesterday, I did absolutely nothing! Well, except parent my child... but I feel like I even did the least amount of parenting possible. This morning I did go visit two friends who live in the same neighborhood. One just had a baby 2 weeks ago and so we brought little Rory a gift (along with a Frappachino for Mama!) and the other is leaving tomorrow to go to New York for THE WHOLE SUMMER! Because she is awesome and is working on getting her certification to teach Montessori school. But, boy will she be missed!!!

Then we went and picked up my friend Megan's farm share for the week since she is out of town. That was fun! And I loved how my car smelled like basil for the whole ride home. So, like I said... still feeling unmotivated, so I picked things off my list that required me to do the least amount of moving around possible. I literally sat at the computer or on the phone ALL afternoon. BUT... I crossed some things off...

#1 I called to take care of some health insurance issues. Recently (as in 2 months ago) I got two bills in the mail from two different doctors appointments where it appeared as though my health insurance didn't pay a cent toward my care. So, the procrastinator that I am, I just now called to get that straightened out. My husband's work had switched providers for our health insurance and although I KNOW with 100% certainty that I gave them my NEW insurance card at my appointments, they still filed the claims to the old provider. So, now they are resubmitting and blah blah blah... hopefully this gets worked out. I HATE dealing with medical billing stuff!!!!

#2 I called GE to have them come and fix our dishwasher. Okay, so we closed on our house a YEAR ago. It was a brand new house. However the top rack of the dishwasher only slid part way out and then you had to PULL really hard to get it out the rest of the way. Either the wheels are too big for the track or the track is too small for the wheels. My point... it's been like this for a year, and I just now called to get it fixed. They will be here anytime during a 6 hour window in the afternoon on Tuesday. Six hours?? Honestly? Why not just say that you'll be here sometime on Tuesday??? Moving on...

#3 I set up direct deposit for my Thirty-One checks. Yaye! I'm loving being a consultant already! I think it's going to be a fun part time job for me.

#4 I downloaded the pictures off my camera memory card... all 431 of them. That's correct. Hadn't downloaded a darn thing off that card since December. Now I need to organize all the pictures into folders on my computer... eh! Another resolution for another month! Was NOT happening today! And finally...

#5 I ordered my thank you cards to send to everyone who made a donation to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for my Team In Training! This was a fun one! I picked out a cute pattern from Shutterfly and uploaded the picture of me at the finish of the race and then added a nice note. It was obviously a little more expensive than just buying thank you cards and hand writing them, but I purposely waited until after I had run the race to send the cards so that I could do a picture of me at the finish line. I'm excited for them to come in the mail! Not quite so excited to address them all! Ha ha! That should have been a separate resolution on my list!

Otherwise, I've just been feeling kind of blah. I'm not really sure what it is, but I need to snap out of it and get back into the swing of things! I'm going to a girl's weekend trip tomorrow, so I'm sure that will help. When I get home I'm going to start working on refinishing the desk for the office. Projects always help keep the blahs away!

My Proudest Moment

2010-06-08T12:15:00.000-07:00

This was my proudest moment of the year thus far!

That was me on Sunday right after I crossed the finish line at the San Diego Rock n' Roll Half Marathon. I don't feel like I can put into words the affect this experience had on me. Besides being incredibly proud of raising $3,100 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and being incredibly proud of finishing a half marathon, I feel like I left this past weekend a changed person. I have never been a part of something that was so inspiring and so full of energy. Every time I ran past someone (I know, I was surprised that I ran past anyone! ha ha) that had pictures all over the back of their shirts of their honored patients, or mothers or fathers or sisters or brothers that they were running in memory of or in support of, I felt inspired. When I thought of the OVER $155 million dollars that has been raised over the past 13 years from this race to support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, I felt humbled to be a part of it. But mostly, I felt proud to be a part of something so important. Proud that I didn't quit. Proud that I ran the whole first SEVEN miles, walk/ran the next five and then somehow RAN that last mile. Proud that I was very conscious to take everything in from start to finish that day.

I thought a lot about my cousin Lisa during the race. She was the inspiration for me to sign up for this journey in the first place. I thought about her husband and her kids and her sister and her father and her nieces and nephew. I thought about how unfair it is that she isn't here anymore. I wanted to cry every time I saw someone running with a picture of a child on their shirt that said in memory of. I couldn't help thinking what if that was me? What if that was my husband? Or even worse for me... what if that was my child? And then I ran harder. I looked around at all of the amazing scenery around me. I soaked in the beauty of San Diego. I thought about how all of these people around me were running or walking this race because their lives had been touched by cancer in some way. It seemed so unfair that there were SO many people to run in support of or in memory of. And then I stopped feeling so sad and just felt blessed that all of these thirty nine THOUSAND people in this race felt moved enough to contribute to this fight against cancer. I cried during that last mile as I started to realize all that I had just accomplished. All that everyone there had accomplished. I missed my husband and I missed my son. I wished so badly that they could have been there in that moment... not so that they could be proud of me, but so that I could hug them and tell them I love them and tell them how blessed I feel to have them in my life... because never have I been so aware of that feeling. Never have I realized how careful I need to be not to take my family, my friends and the comforts of my life for granted.

When I crossed the finish line, all I could hear was my friend Lauren yelling my name! She had flown across the country from Massachusetts to meet me in San Diego. She got up at 6:30 a.m., took trolleys, shuttle buses and probably walked about four miles that day so that she could be at two places along the race course and at the finish line! She totally ignored the barrier and jumped right into the finishers lane so that she could take my picture and give me a hug and whip a bottle of water out of her bag and tell me how great I looked for just finishing 13.1 miles! Lauren is one of my very best and oldest friends. We don't see each other often enough and our friendship needed this weekend. I love her for many reasons, but on Sunday morning, I loved her for decorating the mirror in our bathroom like this...

It was 3:30 a.m. and I was already starting to cry reading all of the little inspirational sayings she had written on the little stars! I picked one out of the bunch to stick to the back of my race number. I looked down at it several times during the race to remind myself of the person I am trying to become and all of the changes I've been working on in my life this year. There were several times where just looking at that little star made all the difference in my race.

She also gave me a card and a little silver wish token with a star cut out. I made a wish much bigger than myself and then tied it to my sneaker and gave that day my all.

Now I'm back home, realizing that my body hates me every time I try and stand up and walk, and just trying to figure out how to keep this experience with me. How to remember how I felt on Sunday and how to build on the emotions that I'm still experiencing from the weekend. I know that I want to run another half marathon. That is FOR SURE something I never thought I'd say! I want to be able to run the whole 13.1 miles next time. I know that I want to donate more of my time to causes that keep me humbled and remind me of my place in this world. But most of all, I don't want to take anything in my life for granted... ever.

June

2010-06-03T20:33:00.000-07:00

I can not believe that I'm already on the 6th month of my resolutions! I'm getting a slow start to the month because I'm busy getting ready to leave tomorrow for SAN DIEGO! Yippee!!! I'm so excited! I'm going to be doing the Rock n' Roll half marathon with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training. My goal is to complete the race. I am going to be doing run/walk intervals for the whole 13.1 miles. I'm okay with this. At first I felt like I needed to be able to run the whole thing in order to feel like I truly succeeded at it, but I've come to terms with the fact that my body wasn't ready for that, and I've come a long way endurance wise since I started training!

I was supposed to do the half marathon in Myrtle Beach back in February, but it was cancelled due to snow. Since then, I've lost 15 lbs, so I think that has really helped me feel better while running and put less stress on my shins. I had a lot of problems with shin splints when I was training for Myrtle Beach.

I think that the thing I'm most proud of is that thanks to the generosity of my friends and family, I raised over $3,000!!!!! I am still just amazed at that amount!

So, tomorrow I'm going to take care of a few small things on my list before I leave (i.e. the things that only involve phone calls) and then I will be heading out to sunny California at noon! I'm feeling a little anxious about the race, sad to be leaving my family, but VERY excited to meet one of my best friend's from High School in San Diego! She's flying out tomorrow from Massachusetts to be my cheering squad. I am so grateful she is coming. However, this will be the longest that I've ever been away from Andy, and that's going to be really hard. BUT... we will have a laptop and a webcam so I can Skype with my little guy!

I'm going to try really hard to just soak this whole experience in and just give it my all on Sunday! So, if you are reading this and could say a little prayer or word of encouragement, I'd really appreciate it! The weather is supposed to be perfect ... no fluke snow storms! I'm ready to put my hard work to the test!

My Introduction to Bible Study

2010-06-01T13:07:00.001-07:00

I have never participated in a Bible study group. I guess I wasn't exactly sure what it entailed. I didn't realize that there are all kinds of curriculum and books covering various topics that you read and discuss life circumstances and how you can apply the teachings of the Bible to your life. I think that I literally thought you got together and studied passages from the Bible. I don't know if I should be embarrassed to admit that or not.

I have friends who regularly participate in Bible study groups, but I was never really all that interested because whenever I have tried to read my Bible, it's been short lived. I have tried really hard on a few occasions, but the terminology and the small writing just kind of wears me out. I really want to have a better understanding of the Bible passages, but I felt like there was something wrong with me since I didn't feel like I could sit and read through things with a good understanding. It wasn't until a conversation with my neighbor last week that I even realized there were different versions of the Bible and that I could get one that is written in more simple to comprehend language, with the actual verses written to the side.

Anyway, this neighbor was telling me how she wasn't that into the current book they were reading in Bible study. I asked her if there was a Bible study she had done that she really liked and she handed me the book Becoming More Than A Good Bible Study Girl. After flipping through it, I asked her if I could borrow it and I added it to my list. It was a pretty quick read. The author is Lysa TerKeurst. She is the President of Proverbs 31 Ministries. I really enjoyed her style of writing. I could relate to pretty much everything she wrote about in the book.

There were two parts of the book, in particular, that I felt I could relate to. The first talked about how not to let yourself fall into a downward spiral of self doubt and inadequacy if you fail at any particular task in your day. This is definitely something that I struggle with. I have a hard time when I fail at something (which of course, happens quite frequently, as I'm sure it does for everyone) not letting my mind wander to ALL the other things I feel I have failed at. Before I know it my mood changes, my self esteem plummets and I feel like I'm a failure at my life. I appreciated reading ways to look at situations for what they are and not to treat them as a catalyst for a bad and frustrating day. I have mentioned it on here before, but this whole topic was really the main reason that I started this blog. I wanted to be able to stop judging my self worth by the things I DIDN'T accomplish during a day and start focusing on the things I DID accomplish, and the things I did do right, and the nice way I treated my husband, and the fun things I did with my son and the things I taught my son. I have to say that most days this is working! I still have times when I feel overwhelmed and I still have days where I feel like I can't do anything right and can't get anything done, but I'm learning different ways to cope with those feelings of inadequacy and move on and have a more positive outlook.

There is also a chapter in the book titled "But I Want What She Has." I try very hard to NOT have the grass must be greener attitude in my life, but to be truthful, I have to work very hard at it. I have those kinds of thoughts a lot and I need to have a discussion with myself about why I would rather have my life than anyone else's or my personality traits compared to anyone else's. I feel like I have gotten a lot better in this arena over the past several years, but this is something that I still struggle with at times. I loved the way that Lysa wrote this chapter. It was very relatable and gave me a good message to repeat to myself when needed. Here is a quote from the book: "Whenever I get an overly idyllic view of someone else's circumstances, I often remind myself out loud 'I am not equipped to handle what they have - both good and bad.'"
I feel like this message is soooo true. I am definitely one of those people who believes that everything happens for a reason, even though you aren't going to know what that reason is right away. Sometimes it takes years to look back on an incident and realize that it put you on the path to where you are today, and suddenly you are grateful for the experience because even though it was terrible at the time, you wouldn't be where you are, or with the people that you are today without it having happened.

I need to be better about realizing that the things that occur in MY life are preparing me to handle the good and bad things that are yet to come in MY life. My life experiences do not prepare me to handle anyone else's life, but my own. Good and bad. There are still things that have happened in my life that I don't feel like I can look back on and say "Wow! Looking back, I'm really glad that happened!" and to be honest, even though I believe that everything happens for a reason, I'm not sure I'll ever get to a point where I can look back and find the good in some things, but I guess all I can do is try.

Until I read this book, I had not figured out what my daily resolution for June was going to be. Each month so far, I've had one resolution that needed to be carried out each day for the month. In January I gave up Coke, February I gave up baked goods and bread with dinner, March I gave up fast food, April I gave up Starbucks and May I walked the dogs every day. But for June... I hadn't decided what I was going to do until I read this book. Now I know that I would like to try and do a daily devotional every day of the month. I think that the quiet reflective time will help keep me centered during my day.

May Wrap Up

2010-05-31T20:04:00.000-07:00

Geesh! I can't believe it's already the last day of the month!!!! This year is seriously flying by! Today I wrapped up all of the little nagging things on my list. I took care of transferring a Netflix gift certificate that my husband got for his birthday to our Netflix account, so that we won't get charged for the next three months (nice!) and I finally sent out an Evite for my future sister-in-law's bachelorette party and bridal shower weekend. There are a lot of out of town friends on the guest list and several people are trying to plan vacation time, etc. Jaime sent me the e-mails for everyone on the guest list two weeks ago and I just hadn't sat down to get that Evite out! I'm glad I finally tackled that today! I also finally (a month late) scanned our tenant's renewed lease and e-mailed it to him so he would have a copy. Last year I am pretty sure that I never scanned and sent it to him, so I guess a month late is better than nothing! (right???)

I also worked on two fun little projects. The first was fixing a broken picture frame that Jaime had given me two years ago. I love the frame, but somehow the glass in the left picture frame broke. If she gave it to me two years ago, then that glass has been broken for 1 year and 11 months.

So, I went to Goodwill, armed with my 10% off coupon that I received a few days earlier for making (another) donation... and I found this picture frame that I paid a whopping 91 cents for!

I switched out the good glass from my new Goodwill frame for the old broken glass... and... viola! All fixed! Now the fun part... figuring out where to hang it and what pictures to put in it!!

The second project I worked on was a box to keep my baby book and Andy's baby book and some keepsakes. I looked for a suitable box at Walmart, but couldn't find anything cheap enough to fit my budget, so I just took an old box we had here at the house and covered it with some cute baby wrapping paper that I had. Everything fits in it perfectly! Eventually I'd like to find something with a lid, but this will certainly do for now!

There is one more thing left on my list and that was to read the bible study book that I borrowed from my neighbor. I've finished the book, but I'm going to write that post tomorrow when I'm not so tired! And then I suppose I'll need to get June's list up! Eeeek!

Our Home Improvement Weekend

2010-05-31T18:32:00.000-07:00

Well, my husband and I definitely had a nice, but productive long weekend! We tackled a bunch of projects around the house. My grandparents were also here visiting until Sunday. We spent a lot of time relaxing and spending time with family, but last night and today we got to work!

I worked on cleaning out a dresser that I had put in the room that will eventually be Andy's "big boy" room. Up until last month, I had actually totally & completely forgot that I had anything in that dresser! Ha! It was FULL (all 4 drawers) of my stuff. Clothes, socks, maternity clothes, etc. I sorted through it and weeded out things for Goodwill and things to keep and move to my closet. The dresser is now empty. As it should be since it will eventually need to hold Andy's clothes!

I also spackled the holes in the wall from the baby gates we had at the top and bottom of the stairs. Andy ripped the downstairs one off the wall a while ago and finally ripped the one off the top of the stairs last month. Sigh. So, I spackled, sanded and painted over those areas. Looks much better now!

Okay...so... the door frame to our bedroom... ummm... I bought this chair for a steal on Craigslist last month, but it wouldn't fit through our bedroom door...

So, we took the door off it's hinges, and the chair still wouldn't fit... so we pried a piece of the door frame off...

Not very evenly I might add! Last night I had to chisel away at some of the wood to even it up. Andy had just gone to bed when I started hammering (I knew I had at least 15-20 minutes before he'd fall asleep anyway)... and my heart just melted when I heard him start hammering in his crib (he had taken his plastic hammer to bed with him) every time that I would hammer! It was just sooooooo darn cute!

Today I nailed a new trim piece on, caulked the sides and brushed on two coats of paint. Good as new!

Next I worked on the handrail in our bedroom. Since our room is over the garage, we actually have 3 steps down from the hallway to our room. I took the handrail off the wall when I painted, but never put it back up.

Matt (and Andy) held it in place for me so I could screw it back into the wall. It's nice to have it back on the wall and OFF of our bedroom floor!

The next thing I tackled was actually a new project! I have been wanting to put a shelf above our back door in our kitchen pretty much since we moved in. I bought two wooden brackets and a board. I primed and painted them and then hung them up. I LOVE how it looks! I stuck some vases and pitchers up there that I had around the house, but I'm not going to keep that arranged the same way. I'm thinking I'd like to put some letters up there spelling out a word or two (not sure what yet) with a few pottery pieces... but we'll see.

The last two things I tackled today were cleaning our the junk cabinet in our kitchen (you know it's bad when you clean out and organize your junk drawer, and then start a junk cabinet!)

AND... I pressure washed our driveway!!!! Matt pressure washed the front of the house and the front porch and since I was dying to use the pressure washer (there might be something wrong with me) and I've been so sick of sweeping the driveway...I pressure washed it! It was SOOOO gratifying to blast all that dirt off! It looks like a totally new driveway! We've owned our house for almost a year so, it was definitely time!

I feel like there are so many more things I want to do around the house, but when I look back at all we've accomplished in a year, I'm pretty proud of us!

Painting The Office

2010-05-27T20:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I know it seems like I'm a little behind on my list this month, but really, I'm not too bad! I have a lot of things in progress. Some of my resolutions this month just can't be finished in a day. (well, they could if I wasn't also trying to keep up with a million and a half other things!)

Today was a little hectic. I had some errands to run this morning, I finished painting the office (YAYE!!!), put together a recipe book for my friend Heather who is due with her second little girl ANY day now (we all made her frozen meals for after the baby comes and I put together a recipe book for her with all the meals we made! Fun! I love projects like that), got together with friends to give Heather her meals and book and take her out to her favorite tex-mex place for dinner, came home and cleaned the heck out of my house in preparation for my grandparents coming into town tomorrow afternoon, cleaned my floors in preparation for babysitting for my friend's two year old and six month old tomorrow morning and finally I went for a run. Let's just say, sitting on the couch right now feels REALLY good!

Okay, so remember when I posted about getting the office cleared out? Yes, well... that didn't exactly last very long. I will say, that the rooms that I have finished and decorated have stayed clutter free (for the most part), but since the office wasn't done yet, it became my collection room. A lot of the stuff that's in there is office stuff... but still! No excuse! This is what it looked like the other day before I tackled the painting...

Ummm... ya... I can see a Medela hand breast pump in that picture! That doesn't qualify as "office stuff" so clearly I was just throwing anything in there!

Okay, so I moved some stuff out, pushed the rest of the stuff to the middle and started painting! This is what the walls look like now...

I am completely in love with the color! I've never painted a room this dark a shade of blue before.

I think it looks GREAT against the hardwood floors!

So, next month I will be tackling the actual furnishing of the office. Now, our budget for this room is practically nothing. I have already bought a desk with hutch off of Craig's List for $60. I'll be refinishing that in June. I'll also need some lumber or MDF to build my "addition" onto the desk. We need some sort of seating as well. That will definitely need to come from Craig's List or a consignment or thrift store. I would like to do a chandelier instead of the flush mount light fixture, so I plan to scour the Habitat for Humanities Home Stores that we have in our area until I find something cheap that I can refinish. My biggest splurge that I will have to save up for will be the area rug I saw at Target that I would like in here. I can't WAIT to get started on this room!

Our New Flag

2010-05-24T17:23:00.000-07:00

Today we hung up a flag on our front pillar! I've been wanting to do this for a while, so I am excited to finally have it up! We didn't have much money to spend, so I couldn't get any kind of fancy flag pole. I had looked at flags at Walmart once before and knew the price, so I was excited the other day when I found them on sale! The flag and pole set was $19. So, I bought it!

Well... last night I went to Home Depot to buy paint for the office (soooooooooo in love with the paint color I picked, so hopefully I'll still be in love with it when it's on the wall! ha ha Hopefully I can start on that tomorrow). Anyway... we had some kind of crazy thunderstorm, serious rain, wind and hail storm here yesterday that started about 2 minutes after I walked in the door at the H.D. Needless to say, I was trapped inside wandering around for about an hour (oh, darn!...another excuse to stand and read every home improvement magazine available!) So, while I was wandering, I found the same exact flag and pole set that I had bought at Walmart... but it was $6 cheaper! So, I bought the one at Home Depot and returned the one to Walmart. Really, when does that ever happen? I never find things cheaper at Home Depot than Walmart.

Anyway, the pole was a light color wood and our house is red with a dark brown door and shutters. I picked up some spray paint and got to work!

This was the pole before...

And here it is drying on my clothesline! It has a clip at the top to hold the flag up, so I just clipped it to the line so it could dangle and dry!

Then I started to drill the pilot holes in the pillar... got about half way through... and called my husband in to finish the job because I don't know WHAT those pillars are made of, but I was not strong enough to drill far enough in.

I love it!!!

We've never had a flag out in front of our house before. I'm really glad we do now! I've started on several other projects on my list, but haven't finished any to blog about yet. I'm planning to get the office paint cut in tomorrow and then hopefully get it rollered on the walls on Wednesday.

I also started reading a book that my neighbor lent to me that she read in her bible study. So far it has been really good and very thought provoking. I'm excited to post about it when I'm finished.

I've also been really bad about watching what I've been eating lately....as in, I haven't been. I haven't weighed myself at all, so that's why that number hasn't changed on the side of my blog. I'm operating under the assumption that if I don't actually weigh myself, then as far as I know I've lost 15 lbs and haven't gained any back. That's probably accurate, right? Well, I'll be getting on the scale tomorrow. My husband has been doing the P90X workouts and is following the eating plan. On Sunday we planned all of our meals for the week and I'm going to follow the plan with him. Basically it just means no eating or drinking anything bad for me. Sigh. However... I know it will help me shed a lot of these extra pounds, and that is worth it if it helps me get pregnant again, and look good in my bridesmaid dress in September!

Starting Potty Training

2010-05-20T20:42:00.000-07:00

Today we started potty training....dun, dun, dun! I think it went pretty well for the first day. Andy will be 21 months old at the end of May and he has started showing a few signs of being ready to potty train. We'll see. People keep telling me that there is a small window of time now, or I can wait until after he turns 2. I don't really understand why there is a window now... that I guess goes away?? But that is what I keep hearing.

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of reading lately about different methods of potty training. I have no idea what is ultimately going to work for us, or if Andy is indeed ready, or if he is in this mysterious window of time... but here is what I have done so far...

A few weeks ago I bought a potty chair from Target to put in his bathroom upstairs. The seat is covered in frogs and turtles, so at least that part is a big hit! I also got the potty chair from my husband's childhood out of the garage and set it up in the bathroom downstairs. We started talking about the potty, bought a potty book to read and started sitting on it a few times a day. One time he told me he had to poop so we went and sat on the chair and he did #1 instead, but I made a big deal about it, he got an M&M, etc.

Well, this morning we started our first round of more intense training. We stayed home this morning and spent a few hours downstairs (on the hard floors and AWAY from the carpet!) without any diaper on. I also moved his potty chair into the kitchen for the morning. He got to drink as much watered down apple juice as his little heart desired. This kid LOVES. TO. DRINK! He will suck down two large sippy cups full of milk in about 2 minutes... only stopping to ask for more in between!

When he would start to go to the bathroom I would take him immediately to the potty chair. If he went in the chair, I made a big deal and he got an M&M. We got to the point where he would stop what he was doing if he had to go to the bathroom and yell "POOP!" and then start peeing on the floor (so there might be some confusion as to which is which! ha ha) but immediately stop and go to the chair... once on his own, the other times with my help... and finish going IN the potty!

I'm considering that a success for today. I think that for the next two days I'll just have him sit on the potty several times during the day and then we'll do another session like this morning on Monday. My neighbor lent me a book tonight to read as well, so I'll go through that this weekend and see what else I should add that I think might work for Andy.

I definitely DON'T want to force this, especially since it's early, so I'm just going to see how he does. If he resists, then we will stop and revisit it later. He's a pretty smart kid, so I think he is going to get the concept pretty quickly, but I'm not sure he'll really care. He would stay in a dirty diaper all day if I didn't change him. It just doesn't bother him. So, that part of it makes me wonder if he even cares to be clean and dry!

We'll see! I'm glad we have started the process and I'll take his lead from here on what he is ready for.

Baby Pictures

2010-05-19T19:42:00.001-07:00

Over the past few days I have been working at putting all of the pictures from Andy's first year onto a disk. I thought this was going to be pretty easy. Of course, I was wrong.

When I sat down to do this on Saturday night, I realized that I couldn't find 90% of his one year pictures on my desk top! I thought that maybe they were actually on Matt's lap top since mine stopped working last year and it took me a good three months to take it to get fixed. However, when I checked his computer, they weren't there either.

Then, it all started coming back to me.... I actually started this project sometime in the fall. I remember putting the pictures on a disk, but not finishing it. The disk never got labeled and Lord only knows what has happened to it since! The kicker?... I was doing it to help clean up my desktop, so I deleted all of those pictures after I put them on the disk! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

My solution? I remembered that I have e-mailed pretty much every picture worth putting in an album to my Mom. So, I went into my sent mail box in gmail and searched for everything I had sent to my Mom from August 2008 - August 2009 (which was... ummm...hundreds!) Then I looked for every e-mail with an attachment and re-copied all of the pictures I had sent her back to my desk top. This took a little over two hours.

Tonight I copied them all onto a disk labeled in HUGE letters with a INDUSTRIAL Super Permanent Ink Sharpie from my husband's work bench. Now, I just need to figure out what to do with them all! I'm going to be realistic here and say that there is NO WAY I am going to get a one year scrapbook done. That is not a precedent I want to set! I just got our wedding album put together for goodness sake!... Four and a half years late!... Plus, my future siste-in-law (boy it will sure be nice when I can just start saying SISTER-IN-LAW! Although I guess this is better than what I used to say when I would talk about her which was "my friend Jaime who is also dating my brother." We were friends for seven or eight years before she started dating Jeff, so I didn't want to short change our friendship by just calling her "my brother's girlfriend")... anyway... I digress... Jaime made me a scrapbook that is already put together and just waiting for pictures, so I do have that! Yaye! And I'll pick some pictures out and put that together next month. But what to do with all the other pictures? I think that since I have so many photo pages left over from the wedding album, I'll just buy an album to start putting all of Andy's photos in and maybe divide it by year. I do like the look of those bound books that you can order with the pictures printed right on the pages, but they are too pricey for our budget right now. If I could find a good deal on them (which I do see from time to time) then maybe I'll do one of those instead.

Maybe I need to Google photo archiving and see what kind of systems people use! Sigh... that's a task for another month! For now, I'm just glad to have year one stored in one place!

Oh, and I am also crossing another thing off my list... I called Verizon and had them take the Internet access off of my cell phone. Andy had signed me up for a $5 a month plan. Fantastic. I have to watch him like a hawk with anything electronic!!!

Trip to The Post Office = Three Thing Off My List!

2010-05-18T12:41:00.000-07:00

Last night I worked on several of the small things on this month's resolution list. As usual, I'm leaving all of the bigger projects until the end of the month (well, except for the landscaping). The first thing I did was take care of sending back a baby sling I had that had been recalled. This wasn't a huge deal... I just had to follow the directions and cut part of the sling off to send back and fill out a form and print the shipping label. It's just such a pain right now any time I need to print anything since we don't have a desk set up. Getting the printer out and hooking it up at the kitchen table always seems like a nuisance, so I tend to put that stuff off.

The reason I am annoyed with myself is because I waited so long to send this in. When the recall originally came out and I looked at the replacement products, they had a wrap and tie type carrier available. They must be all out of those because it wasn't an option last night when I filled out my form. Instead I'm getting the Infantino equivalent of the Baby Bjorn carrier. Which is fine, but we already have something similar. Anyway, I cut off the section I was supposed to (NOT that easy, since I had to cut through a zipper. Even with my Cutco scissors, it was hard!) and I packaged it up to mail.

Next, I printed and filled out the form from the city to register the alarm system we put in our rental house in North Carolina. We were supposed to register it when it was installed in September (oops!). You get fined if you have a false alarm and your system isn't registered, and then even once your system is registered, you still get fined (just more money) every time you have a false alarm. Thankfully this hasn't happened... yet... although the other night my cell phone rang at 10:45 p.m. and it was one of our tenants. My stomach completely jumped into my chest and every imaginable catastrophe was running through my head. This happens pretty much every time a tenant calls, no matter what time of day, ever since I got the phone call at work, the week I was due with Andy, from our frantic tenants because a pipe had burst in the attic and half (NO KIDDING!) of the house (upstairs and down) was flooded with ankle deep water. Oh. My. God. It was a nightmare. Luckily our homeowners insurance was awesome, and our tenants were awesome, but, seriously, I gave my future sister-in-law my cell phone and a detailed list of all the contractors, insurance agents, tenants etc. involved in the fiasco so that she could handle anything necessary WHILE I was actually giving birth. Oh, the joys of being a landlord!

So, why did our tenant call the other night? Because she set the alarm off and couldn't remember the code. Crisis averted! That was an easy question that I knew the answer to... AND... did not require me spending any money to fix something! YESSSSS!

And last, but not least, Matt and I finally signed the tax form that our CPA had sent to us with our taxes and asked us to sign and mail back ... at the beginning of March. Our tax appointment didn't exactly go smoothly at the start, so the accountant had to mail everything to us. Anyway, this took all of 2 seconds, so I don't know what took me so long to get it done. Oh, wait... our office has yet to be set up... there is no filing system... and everything just gets sucked into the abyss of that room and put in a pile of things to sort through later... that I seem to promptly forget about as soon as they get put there. Right. Just like everything else on my to-do list! Ahhhhhh!

But, I am feeling a sense of accomplishment today because I just cleaned out my car, vacuumed, wiped down the seats, sprayed the windows with glass cleaner... the works. Now I can stop apologizing to my husband for the messiness level of the car every time we get in it to go somewhere as a family. Now if I could only keep it clean....

Curb Appeal

2010-05-16T18:21:00.000-07:00

Let me start off by saying that my back and hamstrings are KILLING me!!!! I could barely move when I got out of bed this morning and I'm fairly certain that I'm doomed for the same fate tomorrow morning. This project has been a work in progress. We started on it last weekend and finished up today.

Our front yard was really really Blah... with a capital B! We hadn't done anything to our front yard since we moved into our house almost a year ago. The builder had planted some shrubs out front and put some small juniper plants and TWELVE (yes, TWELVE) of those little palm plants all over the place and around the giant oak tree in our front yard. I know that they are very popular plants down South, but, I'm just not really a fan. I've been wanting to take those suckers out since the day we closed on our house! The builder also pine straw-ed the heck out of our front yard. Personally, I feel like the landscapers were either really lazy, or ran out of sod because they didn't even sod all the way around the tree trunk... they just put pine straw all the way up to the corner of our driveway.

Over the past year, a lot of the pine straw had worn away (and I had already raked a bunch of it up before I remembered to take "before" pictures!) That was fine with us... we are more mulch people. Not really fans of the pine straw. I have been having a hard time with all of this landscaping because I've never really done it before, so I wasn't sure what plants to pick and what would look the best, etc. The one thing that we had decided on was putting white azaleas across the front planter. Other than that, it took me multiple trips to look at plants to decide what I would go with.

Here is the finished product! (for now...)

We took all of the shrubs out of front planter and re-planted them along the left side of the house. Then we put in our new azaleas and some perennials.

This is what the front planter looks like now... much better! We also added some sod along the front edge. The previous area that was covered in pine straw was much larger. We thought it would look much nicer if the sod extended straight across from the walk way. I'm really happy with how it turned out! (especially since I put all the sod down myself!)

Here is how the right planter looked before... you can see that there was pine straw (although mostly worn away) on both sides of the walkway... not anymore!

I don't have a before picture of the right side of the house along the driveway edge, but there weren't any plants. Just pine straw. I planted some hostra today and filled in with mulch. It looks a lot better now!

This is what the front planter looked like around the tree... UGLY! I was so happy when Matt dug up all of those palm plants! We also found someone who wanted them all, so they are going to a new home tomorrow.

This is the view from the front of the tree before...

And here it is after! I can not believe how much better it looks with sod in that corner and in front of the walk way! It made a huge difference. Oh, and by the way... I cut all of the sod in the circular shape around the tree with my Cutco scissors! Those thing are amazing! I use them for absolutely everything!

Here are all the shrubs that we moved from the front of the house and planted along the left side. There weren't any plants here before. Just more pine straw. It's nice to have some green on this side too.

I'm definitely really happy with how the front yard turned out, although there were several times today when I found myself wishing we hadn't started this because it's just one more thing to keep up with now... but when I look back at the "before" pictures and realize how ugly it was... I'm super happy we got it done! Now I just have to do my best not to kill everything!!! I'm not sure how much of a green thumb I have!

Thirty~One

2010-05-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I signed up to be a consultant with Thirty~One. I'm pretty excited about this new venture. I've really been struggling with finding a way to earn a part time income without having to put Andy in child care and also enjoy what I'm doing. In November I became a full-time stay at home Mom when I was laid off from my job. Before that, I did a combination of working from home, bringing Andy to the office with me when he was younger (he was every one's favorite co-worker!), taking him to a sitter's house in the mornings and for the last few months of work, we had a wonderful sitter come to our house in the afternoons and I was home with him in the mornings.

I love this picture of Andy at work with me! I was so incredibly lucky because I worked for a construction company and they had a separate back building that was mostly used for storage and files, but it also had an un-used office and a bathroom. They moved my phone and computer to the back office and I set up shop in there! It was okay if he cried because no one could hear him! I had a pack n' play for Andy to nap, a swing, a play mat, an exersaucer and even my brother's old mini-fridge to keep my pumped breastmilk! It worked well until he got closer to 6 months old... then it was time to send him to the sitter!

(geesh! Looking at that picture now it's hard to even remember him being so little!)

It's working out well for our family to have me stay home with Andy. There seems to be less stress overall (most days!) But, we have definitely taken a significant financial hit. However, I think that a lot of what I've been feeling has been more than just finance driven. I have been wanting to have an outlet for ME that allows me to earn money and get out of the house. I just feel like it's something that I need.

A few weeks ago my neighbor had a Thirty~One party and I totally fell in love with the products. My first thought was I could totally sell this stuff! I also liked how reasonably priced everything is! So, after much thought and discussion with my husband, I decided to take the plunge. My start up kit arrives on Monday and my first party is on Friday! I'm actually hoping to be able to build my own team and help others be successful as well. I think I will feel like I have a little more balance in my life with this new venture!

Our Wedding Album

2010-05-12T12:10:00.000-07:00

I finally put together a wedding album... and it's almost done! Matt and I will have our five year wedding anniversary in August, so I figured now would probably be a good time to put one together! ha! I made small wedding albums for our parents for Christmas the year that we got married, but never made one for us. I really didn't mean to procrastinate this long! It's been one of those things that has been bothering me for a while, so I'm glad to finally have it done.

We had a friend of ours take all of our wedding pictures, so it was my plan all along to put together my own album. I knew I didn't want anything fancy, but I still had a hard time finding an album I liked. We got married at the end of August in 2005. In October 2005 we bought our first house. All of our family and friends thought we were completely nuts because it was built in 1920, is 2,800 square feet, did not have central heat or air and needed TONS of work! But we could see the potential and were totally in love with it... still are... and now since we moved to South Carolina, we have a great group of Duke graduate students who rent it out.

Needless to say, given the condition of the house, pretty much everything we owned stayed in boxes. The house was constantly covered in plaster dust and saw dust and every other kind of dust imaginable. I didn't exactly have a place to sit down and work on something like a wedding album! So, I didn't really look too hard for an album I liked. If I was in a store, I would check them out, but never found anything. Fast forward to a year ago this past March when I took Andy out to visit my friend Kim in Omaha, Nebraska... we were at one of several shopping meccas in the area... and there was a HUGE photo archiving store! I finally found what I was looking for! It's an ivory colored leather (I'm sure fake) box type album with a ribbon tie on the side. I still need to figure out which picture I want to put on the front, so those little baby feet won't be there!

The inside has three rings. I bought a few packets of different photo page inserts for the inside. Most just hold 4x6 photos, but a few hold some that are larger. The page I used for the first page also has a 12x2 vertical strip running along the left side. I'm going to insert a strip of decorative paper there that has our names and wedding date and location on it. The inside is lined with black velvet. It's simple and pretty... and just what I was looking for! It took me about an hour to put all the pictures in order and put them into the album. I'm so happy it's done! (well... almost).

So after taking three and a half years to find an album and then another year of just being lazy before I actually put the album together... I can finally cross this one off my list! It was really fun looking back through all the pictures. I had the best time at our wedding and I wouldn't change a thing! Here are some of my favorites... (all pictures are courtesy of A. Langford Photography)

Our completely adorable flower girls

The guys

Our first dance

The wedding party

Mr. & Mrs!

Our "Cupcake Cake" (made from $38 worth of boxed mix & ingredients)

Our "official" wedding picture

On the back of the trolley

.... can't believe we will be celebrating our FIVE year anniversary this year! Man! Time flies!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2010-05-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, I realize how incredibly ridiculous this sounds considering the fact that I am 31 years old... but with the exception of childhood, I have never made chocolate chip cookies from scratch. How sad is that??!! It's sad because it's due to pure laziness. It's not like I always buy the ready made dough... I mean, I do remember a few occasions where I actually bought the boxed mix that you add water to... sigh... that's still really sad (and lazy), huh?! Especially since, as my future sister-in-law said "But you have a Kitchen-Aid mixer!!!!".... and she's right. My husband won me a Kitchen-Aid mixer at work 2 years ago and I had never used it... until today. My husband has used it multiple times! But me, not so much.

So, today was the day! Our weekly Stitch n' Bitch group was at my house tonight, so I figured it was the perfect time to bake some cookies! Lots of people to help me eat them! And thank goodness, because the recipe made A LOT of cookies! I was all out of vanilla, so I borrowed some from my neighbor... and returned it with several cookies... and I sent the girls home with little sandwich bags of cookies tonight as well.

Andy decided that sleeping was overrated and didn't take a nap today (despite my best efforts) so he was my little helper!

We followed the recipe on the back of the Nestle Toll House chocolate chip bag!

We mixed all the ingredients up really well. Andy even got two things of sprinkles out of the pantry... I guess just in case we needed them (we didn't).

Yummm.... looking good! I even added a little extra flour thanks to some advice from Jaime. She let me know that since the Kitchen-Aid mixer mixes so well... sometimes the cookies can turn out a little flat, but a little extra flour fixes that problem!

We now only own one cookie sheet since we had to throw our other one away two weeks ago after my husband's failed attempt at making cookies from the recipe on the back of the Heath toffee chips bag. After realizing the cookies DID NOT turn out right, he forgot that he left the second sheet of cookies in the oven (after the oven was turned off). They hardened onto the cookie sheet so well that I couldn't even scrape them off. The whole thing had to get tossed.
My point? It took me 4 or 5 rounds of baking cookies on my one cookie sheet today to get through all the dough!

Diligently watching the cookies...

Seriously, Mom! When will they be ready???

And there they are in all their perfection! I was planning to take a cute picture of Andy eating the finished product, but since he just reached up and stole a cookie off the counter top and RAN... that never happened! But they sure were good! And guess what?! They were pretty easy, and much better than the store bought dough! The girl's loved them tonight too! Usually no-nap days end badly... but this afternoon turned out really nice!

Busy, Busy Weekend!

2010-05-10T17:23:00.001-07:00

Well, although I didn't get a blog post up over the weekend... I was very busy! I've started a few of the bigger projects on my list... but since my camera is out of batteries at the moment... those posts will have to wait until tomorrow. (hint hint Matt... a good gift idea for me...rechargeable batteries!... for any gift giving event OTHER than our anniversary!)

I hope that everyone had a great Mother's Day! Mine was very nice. Anytime I get to spend the day with Matt and Andy I have a nice time. (Plus... I got a Kitchen Aid Immersion Blender! Yippee! Remember when I hinted about it here?? I honestly had NO CLUE what they had gotten for me! Especially since Matt told me not to go in the garage (because that was where he had put it) I thought it had to be something too big to put in the house! ha ha Oh, and it's RED!!! swoon!

Some major accomplishments this weekend... I finished an eight mile run/walk on Saturday morning! I'm getting really nervous about my race! Eek! I can't believe it's less than a month away!!!! I also started to tackle the landscaping in the front yard... more on that in another post... AND... we started potty training! (I'll post more on that later as well!)

The thing I'm crossing off my list tonight has been nagging me for almost five years. That's right... FIVE!

I finally updated my e-mail address with USAA. Okay, I am really REALLY slack on some things. We have our auto and home owner's insurance with USAA. We have always had our insurance with them, like, before we got married. So, I changed my e-mail address when I got married. Yes, that was OVER four and a half years ago. I NEVER UPDATED MY E-MAIL WITH THEM! I'm sure you are thinking who cares?! Well, they honestly send me a letter every three months telling me that they have correspondence waiting for me online and could I please update my e-mail address because their e-mails to me keep getting returned. So, they have wasted at least EIGHTEEN pieces of paper, envelopes and postage on asking me to PUH-LEEZE update my e-mail address. So, what do I do instead? I log on... to my account... you know, where I would have to go to UPDATE MY E-MAIL ADDRESS... and I read the correspondence and then go on my merry little way. So, finally, on Friday night, I updated my e-mail address. This took all of ... ohhhhh... 5 seconds. Literally. After I signed in, it took 5 seconds. I felt a little stupid. But...at least it's done. Four and a half years late.

Not Sure I'm a "Cookie Cutter" Neighborhood Kind of Girl

2010-05-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

Actually... I know I'm not a cookie cutter neighborhood kind of girl! BUT... that is where we live now and although I love our house, and our neighbors (most of them), I know in my heart that I would rather live in a big old house complete with lots of character, that sits on lots of land, where I don't have to ask permission to plant certain flowers in my front yard! Oh, and while I'm being choosy, I'd also like for it NOT to be 90 degrees and humid THE FIRST WEEK OF MAY!!!! Sigh. Humidity and I are not friends. I dream of the day where I pack up kids and dogs and go stay in a farmhouse in Maine for the summer... and then eventually live there all the time...with a big old barn...

Okay, where was I??? Oh, ya... the dreaded Home Owner's Association. I know why we have one. I'm happy it keeps the neighborhood looking nice... blah blah blah. Our neighborhood is new, so the builder still has control over our H.O.A. and we have to get approval for everything. So, tonight I e-mailed in my request for approval to make some landscaping changes. I drew a map of our front lawn showing all the existing plants...

And then I drew another map showing the changes. I also spelled everything out in the body of the e-mail AND included pictures of the plants I would like to put in our front yard. The one thing I am dying to do is get rid of all the stinkin' pine straw! Ahhhhhhh! I can't stand it! I am very excited to get some good dark brown mulch and spread it around. Of course, I'll be regretting that decision as I'm actually out there spreading mulch in the 90 degree hot and HUMID weather that has descended upon Charleston for the next 4+ months... but I digress.

Phase I of my front yard makeover plan also includes edging the planter beds with some kind of nice stone or something. Not sure yet. I need to go browsing at Lowe's and Home Depot. It also includes putting a flag out front on one of our porch posts. I have bigger plans for Phase II that include putting railings up on our porch, putting in a porch swing and some lattice with Confederate Jasmine crawling up it as well as two comfy chairs with ottomans or rocking chairs. Alas... Phase II will not be taking place for a while because all of those changes cost a lot more money than buying plants!

How to Make Strawberry Preserves

2010-05-05T18:27:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I took Andy strawberry picking! We had a lot of fun... although he probably ate one strawberry for every two that I picked! His whole face was covered in red strawberry juice when we left! But, I couldn't really blame him... the strawberries were sooooooo yummy! They were perfectly ripe! They were nice and sweet and just delicious! We went strawberry picking with the goal of making some strawberry preserves. I had never done that before, and probably wouldn't have even thought of attempting it if my friends hadn't mentioned it. It was SOOO much fun! It was definitely better canning with friends! My friend Megan was nice enough to let Jaime (my future sister-in-law) and me come over and make the preserves at her house. She had everything we needed "equipment" wise.

Jaime and I brought our strawberries, mason jars with seals and lids, sugar and pectin (we used the Sure-gel brand that calls for less sugar... the pink box). Megan lent her kitchen, canning supplies and LOTS of advice!

We started out washing all the berries and cutting off the stems and slicing the berries in half. We also hand washed all of the mason jars really well and set them on a towel to dry. Megan said that normally she would run them through the dishwasher ahead of time, but we didn't have time for that. You just want to make sure they are good and clean.

We put all of strawberry stems in a container so that they could go into Megan's compost bin.

Next we measured out the sugar... the instructions called for 4 cups of sugar to 6 cups of strawberries... remember, this was the less sugar needed option! It sure looked like a lot of sugar!

We used a Kitchen Aid immersion mixer with the chopper attachment (ummm.... AWESOME!... so jealous that Megan has one... Jaime registered for one for the wedding... I'll be asking for gift certificates for my birthday to put towards getting one!) This was the perfect small appliance to chop the strawberries. You want them chopped really fine, but not pureed. This did the perfect job.

Then we poured the 6 cups of strawberries into the pan and began heating. We mixed 1/4 cup of the sugar with the pectin and added it to the fruit. Here is Jaime stirring the mixture until it came to a rolling boil. Then we quickly poured in the rest of the sugar and added a 1/4 teaspoon of butter to prevent foaming.

Mmmmmm..... almost boiling!

After we poured in the sugar and let it boil for one minute, we used the wide mouth funnel and poured the fruit into the jars leaving a 1/8th of an inch space at the top.

Next, we wiped the rims of all of the jars with a damp cloth and made sure they were clean. Then we used the magnet wand thing and pulled the seals out of the pot of hot water. Oh, ya, I forgot to mention that while we were doing all this, we boiled a pot of water, turned the heat off and put the seals in to sterilize them... okay, so, moving on...

We screwed the lids onto all of the jars...

...then we set the jars into the canning rack that was sitting on the bottom of this giant pot of water.

We covered the pot, brought the water to a full boil and set the timer for ten minutes. Then we turned off the heat and let the cans sit for another 5 minutes before removing them using the special tongs made just for picking up mason jars.

(this was the last batch... out of three... so I'd already taken off the cute aprons Megan had given us to put on. It was fun! It felt like we were in cooking class!)

And our finished product... THREE batches of homemade strawberry preserves!

I tried some on my toast this morning for breakfast and it sure was good! I can't wait to do it again! The next one I would like to try is making some raspberry & rhubarb preserves. There used to be the best breakfast place in downtown Charleston that sold homemade raspberry & rhubarb jam. It was sooooo yummy! I used to give it as gifts. Sadly, they are no longer in business, but I'd like to see if I could make some myself!

The other thing I'm excited about trying to can is tomatoes. Megan was telling me that you can go to one of the nearby farms and pick your own tomatoes for really cheap! I definitely want to go and do that when they are available. I think I'll be investing the $15 in my own canning supplies. Although I think I'll always try and can with friends. It made the night even more fun!

Volunteer Training

2010-05-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

So, last month, I signed up to be a nursery volunteer at church. I have been wanting to start volunteering more, but I picked working in the church nursery first because I want to be able to stay in the nursery with Andy to help him get used to being in there. His separation anxiety is really bad right now, and I would like to get to the point where Matt and I can sit through church service and know that Andy isn't screaming his head off in the nursery. (As long as I don't leave him anywhere with people he doesn't know... he is a GREAT kid! No complaints!)

So, a few weeks ago, I went and shadowed (without Andy) during the 9:00 a.m. service. I actually had a lot of fun! I'm looking forward to working in there. Apparently I will be the only volunteer right now. The Church actually has paid staff in the nursery during the Sunday services. I have volunteered to work if they need me to fill in for any of the paid staff, or if they have the nursery open on a week night for a special service. Otherwise, I'll just be in there during the 9:00 a.m. service on Sundays... for now... until Andy decides that having Mom around is overrated and I can go sit with Matt inside the church!

Anyway, in order to work in the nursery, I had to take some online training classes on abuse prevention. This took waaaaaaay longer than I thought! It took me two hours this afternoon to get through all 4 classes (complete with quizzes). And I have to say... although necessary... they weren't very enjoyable. They were actually pretty disturbing. Listening to a convicted child molester tell his story is uncomfortable. Listening to children who were abused tell their stories was heart breaking. But maybe the most disturbing thing I learned was that only 3% of child abusers are ever caught and convicted. THREE PERCENT??!!! That statistic was just insane to me. So, although a lot of the training seemed like common sense stuff, there was a lot of good (although scary) information to learn.

The last time I had to go through any kind of volunteer training was ten years ago when I was still a senior in college. Before I got my first post grad job at the South Carolina Aquarium, I was an animal husbandry volunteer. THAT volunteer training (although super long) was a lot of fun! Especially since I was doing it with a bunch of my friends from my marine biology classes! Good times. Today, my training took place on my couch while fighting to keep from drifting off into a nice little nap. Sigh.... my life sure has changed in ten years!

Team In Training

2010-05-04T11:19:00.001-07:00

At the beginning of September, I signed up with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training program to run a half marathon. Having not run in years I was pretty much starting from scratch. I trained and raised over $2,500 and was super excited for my race in February...
and then was super let down when it randomly SNOWED in Myrtle Beach the night before the race.

However, I wasn't feeling let down for long! Once I found out what my other options were for Team in Training events, I realized I could go to San Diego!!! I've never been there! I'm really super duper excited to run the Rock n' Roll Half Marathon in June! And, as luck would have it, one of my best friends from high school is able to come with me! It was perfect timing because she has a conference out there for work just two days after my race. I was a little nervous about signing on for San Diego because it's an additional financial commitment, but I feel confident I can raise the rest of the money needed.

I've been getting up at 5:00 a.m. most mornings and going to the gym to do my runs. I've lost 15 lbs since the weekend that I would have run in Myrtle Beach. I'm eating better. I'm feeling better running. BUT... I haven't been fundraising. I hadn't even updated my Team in Training donation page since Myrtle Beach. I don't know why I have been so slack on that!

I knew I couldn't leave it to the end of May, so I wanted to make sure it was one of the first things I crossed off my list for this month. I also added a widget to my Facebook page and to this blog. I was blown away by the generosity of friends and family before the Myrtle Beach race date. I raised more money than I ever thought I would. I'm hoping that I can raise the remaining money needed by finding a local business or corporate sponsor to make a donation. Any support (financial or prayers!) is greatly appreciated!

Team in Training is an AWESOME organization and I highly recommend joining for an event near you if you are interested. You won't regret it! I only have 1 month (eek!) until I go to San Diego and I can't wait!!!

Month FIVE!

2010-05-03T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I was pretty slack with blogging over the weekend...as in... I just didn't do any! After being gone for the week, it was nice to hang out with my husband and work on projects around the yard and enjoy some family time. BUT... while I was doing that... a new month started! Eeek! Time to get my May resolutions up!

On Friday I wrapped up my April list. I bought some sheets for our bed, mailed two presents we have had laying around the house for a while (one since August... yes, as in nine months ago) and I started using Twitter. I still have a ways to go on figuring out the Twitter thing. I mean, I know how to do it, but just need to really read up on it! So, back to the sheets... we only have one set of king size sheets. This is a royal pain when I need to wash our bedding. We have gone a LONG time with only one set of sheets. On Friday, I went to Target and used some gift cards I had gotten for free when I bought paper towels and toilet paper a few weeks ago, and purchased the cheapest set of king size sheets they had! They are that soft jersey material though, so they will be comfy! I've even washed them already and am ready to put them on the bed this afternoon!

Okay, I'm going to go get my May list posted. I'm still waiting for a month where I struggle to come up with a month's worth of stuff! Hasn't happened yet! I guess that is what happens after YEARS of not taking care of things in any sort of a timely manner!

How To Make a Car Maintenance Binder

2010-04-30T20:38:00.000-07:00

Tonight I finally put together a car maintenance binder. I feel like I never know what to do with receipts from tires we replace or any maintenance work that gets done on our cars. I never know if I should file it or keep it in the glove compartment, or what! Usually it just hangs around in some random pile of papers in our house until it's just so old that I throw it away and figure we'll never need it.

However, I know that it is good practice to keep maintenance records for cars for several reasons. So, since binder systems seem to be working out well for me, I started one for the cars. Mine is pretty simple. We have two cars, so I put two page dividers in the binder. Each has the car's model written on the tab. At the top of each page divider, I wrote "Oil Change Log." This way I can just write the date and mileage of each oil change right on the page divider for each car.

I added clear page protectors to the binder so that I can slip any maintenance receipts in right when we get them. I'm also going to keep a photo copy of our registrations and auto insurance in the binder.

That's about it. You could definitely add more, but for us, I think simple is best. I just think it will be helpful to have an easy place to store everything. Plus, whenever we sell our cars (which hopefully won't be for a long time) we will have the maintenance records to give to the new owners!

How To Make Homemade Peanut Butter Dog Treats

2010-04-30T19:35:00.001-07:00

I used to be a better Mom to our pets. I used to make our dogs homemade dog treats (all different kinds!) I used to walk them a whole lot more and take them to the dog park. Lately, not so much. This lack of effort on my part has translated into the dogs being more hyper, barking more and me getting super frustrated with them. So, instead of being annoyed with them, I am going to start putting forth more of an effort to be a better Mom and not let them feel so neglected. Instead of giving up something every day for the month of May, I'm going to resolve to walk the dogs every day!

Tonight, I baked them a batch of yummy all natural peanut butter treats! A friend e-mailed me a great recipe when she saw it on my list for the month. The dogs TOTALLY knew I was baking for them. They didn't leave the kitchen the whole time! That is unusual for this time of night... usually they are upstairs sleeping.

I used a little dog bone shaped cookie cutter that I've had for YEARS (since I used to bake them treats!) but you can use any cookie cutter, or just cut them into little squares. The recipe said that it makes two and a half dozen, but I got four dozen out of it!

These were super easy and quick to make! Not to mention, much cheaper than buying processed dog biscuits!

Peanut Butter Goodness Dog Biscuits

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups white flour (* I used un-bleached)
1/2 cup peanut butter (all-natural or organic)
1 cup water
2 tablespoons oil

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Combine oil, peanut butter and water. Add flour, one cup at a time, forming a dough. Knead dough into firm ball and roll to 1/4 inch thickness.
Cut into 3 to 4 inch pieces or cut shapes with a cookie cutter. Place on an un-greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 F for 20 minutes. Makes 3-4 dozen.

Secret Storage Area

2010-04-30T19:06:00.000-07:00

We have a coat closet in the downstairs hallway of our house. It backs up to the under side of our stairs. A couple of months ago, my husband cut a hole in the back of our coat closet and put in a door. I now have this GREAT storage space that I didn't have before! I'm using it to store all of my Christmas stuff. It's perfect! Since it is at the back of the closet, I couldn't store anything that we would need to access frequently. I also didn't want to have to lug all the Christmas bins up and down the attic stairs. Plus, it gets super hot in the attic in the summer, so I didn't think that would be the best place to store the decorations.

So, the door to our secret storage area has looked like this for the past two months

Before we put the closet back together again, and actually hang coats in it, I wanted to get the trim spackled and the door and trim painted.

The closet itself is pretty deep. Previously, there was a shelf/coat rack all the way at the back of the closet. This was kind of annoying because if we hung coats on it, we couldn't really keep anything in front of the coats or we couldn't easily access them, but then we just had all of this wasted storage space up front. Our solution was to remove the existing shelf/rack (which we had to do anyway in order to put the door in) and we are going to hang a coat rod across, closer to the front of the closet. Then we will have room to store infrequently used items back behind the coats. You can see how deep the closet is here:

So, finishing out this closet will be on May's list. For right now, I'm just happy to have the door painted and have a home for all of my Christmas bins!

Crossing Stuff Off!

2010-04-30T11:50:00.000-07:00

Alright! I FINALLY just sat down to take care of some long overdue items. The first... sending in my form to our electric and gas company to get our rates lowered. When we bought our house (ummm....ELEVEN months ago) we were given this form and told that if we filled it out and had the builder fill out their portion, we would qualify for a lower rate on our utilities. The builder was offering a free "green" upgrade package on our house at the time we purchased, and that included a more efficient HVAC system, blown in insulation, radiant barrier on the roof, etc. I have absolutely no excuse for WHY it has taken me almost a year to request a lower rate on our largest monthly utility bill... but, there you have it! I'm excited now to see how much of a difference it makes on our bills!

Next, I contacted Time Warner Cable (my favorite people to call... note that is dripping with sarcasm) to get a price quote on having an additional phone and cable jack installed in the house. Apparently, in order to hook up our modem for the cable and the phone, they needed to have both jacks next to each other. This information might have been something helpful for the people working in the design center for our builder to know AND pass along when we were picking out locations for these things...but... I digress. So, the only room that had both jacks is our bedroom, but they aren't next to each other. So, our modem is sitting on the floor, and we have a super long phone cord running across the floor from the other side of the room. Very well thought out and planned on our part. Today I found out it will cost $85 to have the new jacks installed next to each other in our office. That actually isn't as expensive as I thought it would be. I'll be calling them back next month to get that taken care of so that we can get our office set up!

And finally, I submitted my first claim to the warranty office. We have one small issue and one possibly larger issue with the house. The first is that the veneer on the front of one of our kitchen cabinet doors is bubbling, so they need to replace that. The second is that we have MAJOR floor squeaks under the shower in our master bathroom and on the floor right in front of the shower. The project manager told me to have warranty look at it, but they might have to rip out all of the bathroom tile to fix it. This is most likely not an option I'm in favor of, BUT... I want to make sure that there isn't water getting down in there somehow and it's causing the floors to start to squeak. That's been going on for a while, but I guess I've just been putting off calling because in comparison to the myriad of issues we have at our rental house (which was built in 1920), this doesn't seem like as big of a deal!

I'm also really happy to be back home from North Carolina. I had a wonderful time, but am happy to be home and glad it's Friday so Matt doesn't have to go to work tomorrow! I'm going to spend my weekend picking out plants for the front of our house because according to our home owners association, I have to get them all APPROVED first! Sigh. I'm all for H.O.A.'s because I know they help keep the neighborhood nice and maintain home values, blah, blah, blah, but give me a break! They planted the crappiest plants EVER in front of our house, but I have to submit two copies of plans for what I want to plant where along with the size and color and have it approved?! Whatever. I will play by the rules. I guess the upside to this is that it will make me have a well thought out landscaping plan!

Guest Room Closet # 2

2010-04-28T11:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, first let me start out by saying that in order to get this post done I am sitting in a Starbucks using the free Wi-fi... BUT... I only ordered a bottled water. I did NOT cheat on my goal of giving up Starbucks for the month (although it was very hard!)

I'm in North Carolina visiting my Dad and working on a few projects over at our rental house. I couldn't get the Internet to work at my Dad's house last night, despite spending an hour and a half sitting on the floor and hiding behind the side of the bed with the laptop and trying not to wake up Andy, who was asleep in the same room. My Dad doesn't have a wireless router, so I could only sit where I could plug my computer into the cable. It was very frustrating, so finally I gave up and went to bed! I'm here until Friday, so I've brought things with me to finish up from my list, but before I left, I tackled the closet in the second spare room (that will eventually become Andy's "big boy" room).

This project was way more than just the closet. This is what the whole room looked like when I started

Ugggh! It was terrible. This room had become the dumping ground for EVERYTHING while I was cleaning out our bedroom and the other spare room. It took me a few hours, but now it looks like this

The photo albums on the bed stand will eventually be moved to the office (whenever we tackle that!) and the bin on the floor in the closet is FILLED with unorganized craft supplies. Organizing that will be on May's list.

Mostly I'm just glad I don't feel a sense of shame when opening that door! Everything now has a home, and that makes me VERY happy!

Bench Cushion

2010-04-24T18:20:00.000-07:00

Today I took the easy way out and made the lazy person's version of a cushion. I bought a piece of foam and then wrapped fabric around it. We have this built-in bench on the landing of our stairs...

It's just kind of a boring and random space that tends to collect clutter. I haven't done any kind of decorating on the walls of our stairs... no pictures... nothing. Everything just looks very bare. I really like having the bench there, but it's purely decorative. It doesn't open for storage or anything like that (although I guess we could make it open and use the space for storage if we were ever so inclined).

I thought that if I made a cushion for it, that it would spruce things up a bit. So, I bought a piece of foam today at Hancock Fabrics while it was on sale for 50% off (because it turns out that foam is expensive!) and found two and a half yards of this blue striped fabric in the clearance section. Tonight I cut the foam to fit with a serrated knife and wrapped the fabric around it. Here is the final result...

It looks cute... but desperately needs some pillows! Eventually, it will be on my list to turn this into a proper cushion cover, but not this month! I'd like to sew some piping around the top and bottom edges and make the cushion removable in case it ever needs to be washed. Maybe with the pillows and a few pictures on the walls the space will look a little more finished. I've never had a space like this to decorate before, so I'm not quite sure what to do with it. We also have two small windows, one above the other, above the bench. They are too small to put blinds up, but also just look very bare right now. I am at a loss for what to do on those. I can't even reach the top one without a ladder. Guess it's time to go to Barnes & Noble and start flipping through some decorating books and magazines for some ideas!

Metformin Study In The News

2010-04-23T03:44:00.001-07:00

One of the benefits of this new habit of getting up at 5:00 a.m. every morning to go to the gym is that I catch up on my news. There is literally nothing else on that early other than infomercials! I NEVER used to get up and watch the news in the morning at home, but now it passes the time on the treadmill pretty quickly!

This morning, I saw a story on MSNBC about a Metformin study that shows a correlation between type II diabetics who have used the drug for five years and an OVER 50% less chance of developing breast cancer. It does not talk about women with PCOS who take the drug, and more studies are being conducted, but it was still encouraging news!

I have read that women with PCOS have in increased risk of developing breast cancer because they typically have higher insulin levels (even if not diabetic) and since high insulin levels promote abnormal cell growth, PCOS patients are at an increased risk for several types of cancer.

The thing I found most interesting about this article is that in addition to the reduced cancer rates, most likely attributed to lower insulin levels, some studies are suggesting that the Metformin actually inhibits tumor growth in patients already diagnosed with breast cancer. A study is being conducted now to see if Metformin helps lower the rate of recurrance of breast cancer after standard treatment in early breast cancer patients.

Personally, knowing all of this information is going to make my Metformin pills a little easier to swallow every day!

The Powder Room

2010-04-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

Today I touched up the paint in the powder room and hung two prints that I had previously hanging in the bathroom at our rental house. When we moved in, this bathroom was pretty much your standard builder half bath. It had a so-so white pedestal sink, an oval mirror with no frame and a cheap looking silver light fixture. And OF COURSE it was painted with the same beige flat paint as the rest of the house.

Since we had to pull out the pedestal sink to install the hardwood floors, we decided to do a little upgrade. We figured we lived in a neighborhood where everyone's half bath looked exactly the same, so why not do something a little different.

Of course, I painted. The kitchen and the powder room are both this grayish green color called Dusty Miller from Home Depot.

I fell in love with this mirror from Lowes. I know it's more of the type of mirror you would put in an entry way, and not a typical bathroom mirror, but I LOVE it in here!

We found this cute vanity at Home Depot. We loved it because it has two drawers (so we can store toilet paper!) but it's still open. We didn't want something with a cabinet, but then a pedestal sink doesn't give any storage options. This was the perfect solution!

These two prints came from Target. I got them almost two years ago (although I still see them in stock when I'm there) to hang in the bathroom at the house we were renting. They look really cute in here and give the bathroom a touch of the coast. Other than the family room, I've been trying to give our house a coastal feel without being overly beachy. The only thing left to do in this room is to find a bath mat to give the floor a little more warmth, and then I'm all done!

Web Cam

2010-04-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

I know this probably doesn't deserve it's own post, but today I got the web cam set up on our computer. We've probably had the web cam for a full year now. My Mom keeps asking when we are going to get it set up so that she can "talk" to Andy... so, okay, Mom! Mine is set up... now you have to set yours up! We got my Mom a web cam for her birthday last April and she's been waiting to set hers up until after we got ours set up. ANYWAY... today I also created a Skype account so now, I am ready to go!

The reason I took care of this today is because my (almost) 81 year old grandfather called me on Tuesday and asked "when are you going to get your camera set up so that we can Skype?" Apparently he got a web cam and has been Skyping with other family members. When I gave him my excuse he told me "Well, it only takes 5 minutes to set up, you know!" So, I figured if my grandfather is Skyping, that I'd better get on the ball! Now, I know that my high school age cousin is visiting right now and I'm sure he set up the web cam for my grandfather, but STILL! Sometimes it just cracks me up how technologically "savvy" my grandfather is, and other times it drives me crazy when I'm trying to explain over the phone how to do something in Excel and I have to specify whether to left click or right click... but mostly it just amazes me. When I was visiting for a week in January he was instant messaging with my cousins in Vermont. It was cracking me up how they would use all kinds of "chat" shorthand and lingo and he, of course, would have no clue what things stood for. Overall, though, it just made me happy that he will try any new technology so that he can stay in touch with his grandchildren and I know it will make him and my grandmother happy to talk to and see Andy on the web cam!

The Family Room

2010-04-21T17:41:00.000-07:00

Well, the family room is PAINTED! and the blinds are hung! Hooray! I have actually had the blinds for several months now. I bought them from JC Penny on clearance for $15 a piece! I didn't want to hang them up, though, until after I had painted. Less of a hassle. So, I'm glad I painted the bedroom before this room, because it made this one feel like a piece of cake! I started it on Saturday night and finished on Sunday afternoon. Our family room is also the play room. It's upstairs, and it's the only room in the house with a TV. We decided to make it kind of fun and make it half New England Patriots (for me) and half Tampa Bay Bucs (for Matt). So, I picked gray for the color, because it was the only overlapping color for both teams (yes, I know the Bucs colors are red, black and pewter... but that was just too dark!) Anyway, I'm really happy with how the color turned out. I also think it looks great with the red roman blinds. I'm going to buy some Bucs fabric and some Patriot's fabric and make curtains... two windows on one wall will be one team, and the two windows on the other wall will be the other team!

Okay, so here is the "Before" (Oh,and I finally figured out how to put pictures in the middle of my post! Ya, I know I'm slow. Those of you who use blogger are going to think I'm an idiot!)

And, here are the "After!"

I moved the toy box against the back wall under the window to make more room for Andy's car mat. Also, since the toy box used to be to the side immediately after you walked through the door, it seemed to collect a lot of clutter. I'm hoping to avoid that by putting it a little more out of the way.

I made some space on the other side of the room for Andy's little table and chair. This is where he colors. I had those additional block mats stored in a closet, so now they are being put to good use!

Eventually I would like to do some kind of toy storage on this wall on either side and paint a big chalkboard square in the middle. Right now, it's just kind of blank. We don't really need any kind of organized toy system yet, but I can see the need for that in the future if we have more than one child!

This is Matt's vintage Bucs lamp. Personally, I think it's really cool and I'm excited to buy a shade for it and have it functional in the room. The only issue I have with it, is that I can NOT find a matching Patriots one! Right now, this sits to the left of the TV. The poor little empty spot on the right side is just screaming for a matching lamp! I found ONE website that sells these. They didn't have any Patriot's ones and the ones they did have were well OVER $200. Sigh. I suppose if I could just find a vintage helmet, I could make my own lamp. That is a definite possibility!

Otherwise, as far as decorations go, Matt had a vintage Bucs pennant, so I bought a "matching" vintage Patriot's pennant off of Ebay for $5 and we are going to frame those and hang them on our respective team's walls. I'll probably also make some pillows for the sofa. I can't even tell you how relieved I am to finally have this done! I told Matt that I honestly feel like I've been painting for 4 years straight. He told me that is because I pretty much have been! Between renovating the two NC houses (including the whole exterior of one of them!), repainting our entire rental house because I was "nesting" when I was pregnant with Andy, and tackling this house one room at a time... I will be soooooooo glad when I'm done here. It is fun though, trying to turn this house into a home, one room at a time!

Learn Your A,B,C,D & E's

2010-04-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

May is National Melanoma & Skin Cancer Detection and Prevention Month. I felt like I should do a post about knowing your A,B,C,D & E's... that is Asymmetry, Border, Color, Diameter and Evolving. These are the things everyone should be checking when looking for changes in their skin. If you notice any moles or spots on your skin that have any of these characteristics, you need to make an appointment with your dermatologist. You can read more information here as well as see pictures.

Last month, one of my resolutions was to make a dermatologist appointment. I had several spots and a few asymmetrical freckles that I wanted to get checked out. I had my appointment on Monday. I was actually expecting everything to be fine. I thought maybe the doctor would tell me to keep an eye on a few spots. What I wasn't expecting, was to have any spots that concerned him so much that they had to be removed. But there were.

I had two spots on my back removed and sent to pathology. I know that the odds are in my favor that these will be benign, but every so often the thought creeps into my head... what if they are not? I'll know in 10 days. Of course I wish the nurse hadn't specifically told me that I'll get a letter in the mail if they are benign, but they will call if not. So, basically, if the phone rings and I can see that it's the doctor's office, I'll completely panic and think I have skin cancer. I would have rather just been pleasantly surprised with a letter in the mail!

I'm definitely more aware now of my sun exposure, and making sure I'm always wearing sunscreen when I'm outside. Of course, I'd like to be nice and tan for my brother's wedding in September, but I might just be getting my first spray tan instead!

Refills & Returns

2010-04-20T13:40:00.000-07:00

I'm crossing a few things off my list today... I've called in prescription refills that I've been putting off and finally made some long overdue returns. Let's start with the returns.

Yesterday morning I hauled our one un-opened box of hardwood floors down to Lumber Liquidators. Per my memory, I was pretty sure that we could return any unopened items for a 20% re-stocking fee. So, I put Andy in the stroller (he did NOT want to be confined in his stroller, at ALL), brought my receipt (where the return policy is clearly written ... right in front of where I had to initial it... did I read it? Nope!) into the store and expected to just get a refund! Ha ha ha. The guy took one look at the receipt and said "Ummmm.... you bought these almost a YEAR ago! (June, to be exact!) Our return policy is THIRTY DAYS." Are you kidding?! Thirty days? It took us at least 210 days to finish them! Not working continuously obviously... but you get the point! Uggghhhh! He said he's not even supposed to exchange anything after that long, but I think he felt bad for me. After discussing it with his co-worker for at least 15 minutes... while Andy was saying "Down! Down! Down!" over and over and over and OVER again the WHOLE time... he decided we could do an exchange. And then he handed Andy a Lumber Liquidator's NASCAR truck to play with and said "Now, you can't keep that, Buddy." Uh, huh. So, now I'll be leaving with a screaming child when I take it away, thanks.... Buddy. So, if I was going to exchange, it had to be equal to my refund value. We needed thresholds, but that still left us $75 short. Okay, so, it's a store that literally ONLY sells FLOORS. We already have really nice floors that took us 210 days to put in.... WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO BUY? So, we are now the proud owners of some ridiculously deluxe hardwood floor maintenance kit... that is most likely going STRAIGHT onto Craig's List... because I'll probably never use it! All, in all... success! Because 1) the box of hardwoods is out of the study and 2) We now have our thresholds to install. Yeah. Maybe we will have finished the floor trim before we've lived here a year!

Okay, next up... returned some curtain rings to Target that I bought in DECEMBER... but, diligently kept with the receipt. Yup... had to exchange for store credit since it's been over 90 days. But, honestly, isn't store credit to target and cash the same thing? So, success!

Then on to Publix where I returned a strainer that was 60 days old. Matt had bought it knowing he needed it for a recipe that night, but NOT knowing we already had one. They actually gave me cash for that! Whoo hoo! Definite SUCCESS!

Alright, so... refills... I'll get the easy one out of the way first... I called in the refill for one of our dog's pain medication. In August, she tore her ACL. She is 9 years old, and we opted not to do the ($2,200) surgery. We let her heal on her own, and she did great! She slowly worked up to being able to run again and not need her pain medications. We felt good about our decision because since we knew we weren't going to do the $5,500 surgery, the outcome with and without the $2,200 surgery really weren't very different, so we opted not to put her through the procedure. Well, either way, she had a much higher chance of blowing out her other knee. That's exactly what happened a few weeks ago. So, we started her back on her pain medications and are trying to let her rest more. It's different this time around though, since her "good" knee isn't as strong. I'm a little worried about her, but we're going to give her a few more weeks to see how she does healing. All three of our dogs and our cat are all the same age. I've been dreading them all getting older at the same time because I know it will be very difficult. We've had them all for almost 10 years.

And last, but not least... the dreaded METFORMIN. I posted about re-starting my Metformin last week. Today, I increased to two 500 mg pills per day. I have felt nauseous and tired and had gastrointestinal issues. I have cried (a few times) and been generally annoyed that I'm going to feel sick for a month, but overall, so far, it hasn't been as bad as when I first started on it. Honestly, it hasn't. Yesterday I called my OB/GYN and asked them to call in a prescription for the 750 mg extended release pills. That way, when I am ready next week to step up to 1,500 mg per day, I can take two of those instead of three . I remember feeling much better on the extended release pills last time. I just keep telling myself that this is good practice for what it will feel like during my first trimester while I'm also running after a toddler all day. Keeping the goal in mind helps make it easier!

Compost!

2010-04-19T17:47:00.001-07:00

Hooray! We have started a compost bin! I'm super excited about this. I really wanted to get one started this spring so that next spring when we plant a garden we will have our own compost to use. I also have been feeling really guilty putting fruit and vegetable scraps down the garbage disposal when I know I could be composting them.

Because we have so many other projects we are trying to tackle, we opted to just buy a compost bin from Home Depot instead of making one ourselves. It was $50 and, I think, worth the investment. I need to get a canister to keep on our kitchen counter for food scraps to take out to the compost pile every 1-2 days.

I still need to do some reading up on how to get the most out of our compost. I also want to start reading up on planting a vegetable garden so that next year I can have a well planned garden. Well, that's the goal anyway!

This year we are going to focus on sprucing up the front of our house. We kind of feel like the builder just threw in whatever plants were on clearance when they built our house and we would really like to do something with a little more curb appeal. Some of our neighbors have really nice front yards and porches with hanging plants, etc. We have not put one cent into the front of our house. I'm looking forward to tackling that project sometime soon. The problem is that I don't feel like I have much knowledge of what types of plants to put in. I'm a little overwhelmed by the thought of trying to figure out what will look the best and grow the best in this climate, sun/shade, etc. and how much to water or fertilize... hmmmm... I am going to recruit the help of my future sister-in-law. She's much better at that stuff than I am. I just need to do it while the weather is still nice out here! Pretty soon it will be transitioning to hot, humid and gross! I love the South... most of the year... but summer... I'd rather be at a lake house in Maine!

And p.s. can I just say how much I LOVE my clothes line!! I completely love hanging clothes out to dry and love NOT hearing the dryer running constantly. It's definitely one of my favorite new things off my resolution list... that and my recipe book... I use that ALL the time!

My First Guest Post! (Part Two)

2010-04-19T17:32:00.001-07:00

You can check out part two of my guest post about saving money for Rachel's Preparing For Motherhood series over at Frugal & Simple Living. Congratulations to Rachel and her husband John David who welcomed their first baby, Paxton Graham, on Friday!

Rachel blogs about frugal living, cooking, family life and crafting. I'm sure now that Paxton has arrived there will be a lot of blogging about being a first time Mom!

The Cutest Room In The House

2010-04-16T18:33:00.001-07:00

Okay, so... I love our guest room! It's totally and completely my favorite room in the house. I think that one of the reasons I'm struggling with what to do in the master bedroom is because I feel like the master bedroom should be the room I want to relax in the most... not the guest room! (although this set up is good for our guests)

This room was the first room in the house to actually get finished. Part of the reason was that I already had the dressing table, bedside table and mirror. I have also been saving the two closet doors for four and a half years, hoping to one day use them for a head board. They came out of our first house. The one built in 1920. The closets in the bedrooms were rather small... ummm... actually... just short. Kind of strange. Since we turned the house into a rental when we moved a little further South, we made the closets a little bigger and took the mini-doors off. They are still pretty heavy though since they are solid wood.

I rescued the dressing table from a "junk" store and painted it to match the bedside table that we rescued from my in-laws' garage. It's still missing a knob. Someday I will get around to finding a replacement. We think that my husband's grandfather made that table. I bought the candelabra SEVEN years ago at a shop in downtown Charleston... just because I loved it and I just KNEW one day I would have the perfect spot for it. I think it drove my husband nuts to keep moving it from place to place, but now it finally has a home.

The serving tray and luggage rack were hand me downs from my grandparents. My great grandmother needle pointed the straps on the rack. And last, but not least, I had given the framed handkerchief to my other grandmother as a gift, since the embroidered handkerchief had come from her, and I got it back when she passed away.

I think that having so many pieces from different family members just gives the room a sense of nostalgia. That's probably why I like being in there the most. I even have an old sepia tone photo of my grandmother and great grandfather on my grandparents wedding day on the dressing table. I just love everything in there!

So, tonight, I cleaned out the closet! It's TOTALLY cleaned out and empty. My goal with this house is to not store anything for the sake of storing it. (my husband is going to laugh his rear end off when he reads that... but I'm totally serious!) Aside of craft things, or tools, or sports equipment, etc. if it is something that I don't know that we'll ever use, I'm trying to get rid of it. This means there is no reason to keep anything in the guest room closet! I need to put some clothes hangers in there, and I'd like to find a small, distressed dresser that I can fix up and put in there for guests to put folded clothes.

I dispersed the things from the closet and found new homes for everything. Well, for some of the things a "new home" meant getting moved to the other bedroom (ya, there is totally a reason why I started with this closet! ... it's because I'm completely procrastinating starting on the other bedroom. It's not just the closet. It's the whole room. It looks like it exploded.)

Now the guest room is not something I have to think about anymore. It's just sitting there waiting for friends and family to come and visit!

Organizing The Linen Closet

2010-04-15T17:09:00.001-07:00

When we moved into our house last July, I spent almost NO time putting things away in the second bathroom. We call it Andy's Bathroom because that is where he takes his bath every night, but it also doubles as our guest bath. I really want it to be a fun, kids bathroom. All that I have done so far to move in that direction is to put up a cute monkey shower curtain and monkey floor mat. My goal is to get it painted a fun green color next month and add a brown bath mat and some pictures on the wall.

Anyway, I've been using the closet in the bathroom as our linen closet. Sheets, towels and wash cloths were just kind of shoved in there haphazardly as well as Andy's bath seat and infant tub. I was able to move the seat and the tub to the empty cabinet under the sink. That freed up some space on the closet floor to store the package of toilet paper that had been sitting in the hall outside of the bathroom for, oh, about a week!

I folded all of the hand towels and wash cloths (we don't have very many) and then rolled the bath towels and beach towels (all two of them ... we might need to get a few more this summer) and stacked them on the shelves.

Now, the sheets. Ummmm.... I'm not sure exactly how we ended up with so many misfit sheets and pillow cases, but that picture above of the pile on the floor is all misfits. Hmmmm.... what to do?! I don't want to donate incomplete sets of sheets to Goodwill, but I'm not quite sure what to do with them. I'm thinking about cutting them into squares and using them to make one (or two!) simple quilt/blankets. I realized the other day that we don't really have a good big blanket to take to the park or sit outside on the grass on, so, that might be a good project. Anyway, the few actual complete sheet sets that we have got folded (not nearly as nicely as my Mom would have done it... I should have tackled this project while she was still here!) and stacked on the shelves.

This was a pretty easy project. I don't know why I put it off for so long because it feels SOOO much better to have that closet all cleared out!

My First Guest Post! (Part One)

2010-04-15T10:06:00.000-07:00

You can check out my very first guest post today over at Frugal & Simple Living. Rachel is a really sweet blogger who is due with her first baby tomorrow! She has put together a great series for first time Moms called Preparing For Motherhood. I wrote a guest post for her about ways that new Moms can save money. Since I tend to be a little long winded, she split the post into two parts. Ha ha! You can read part one on her blog today.

Rachel posts about frugal living, cooking, crafting and every day life. I've found lots of yummy recipes on her site as well as some good money saving tips! Enjoy!

Back To It!

2010-04-14T04:28:00.000-07:00

Well, my Mom is leaving today to head back up North (sniffle, sniffle... actually I know I'll be full on crying as I'm driving away from the airport). I'm sad she's leaving. I wish we lived in the same place. I feel very fortunate that I'll be going up to visit for a whole month in July, so hopefully the time between now and then will just FLY by!

I have been super duper slack at working on my list for the past week while she's been here, with good reason! BUT... I need to get back to it today. I just got home from the gym (at least I was keeping up with that while she was here) and am just sitting down to plan out my day. I am for sure going to get the linen closet cleaned out today, and hopefully at least one other thing on the list.

I'm feeling less anxious and overwhelmed today. My Mom helped me get caught up on laundry yesterday, which was fantastic, and I think that helped a lot. It's just hard trying to form new habits. I'm trying to improve in a lot of different areas, so I know that I'm going to have days where I feel like I'm just not succeeding at anything. I also know that the important thing is that I keep on going. I need to keep working out in the mornings, try to eat healthy, try not to waste too much time on the Internet and get things done, etc.

The other thing that I will be getting back to tonight is my Metformin. I stopped taking it when I had the stomach flu and then I was out of town for a week and a half, and well, since then it's just been REALLY hard to re-start it! It just NEVER seems like a good time to feel sick for four weeks! Ugggghhh! But, I'm going to start it again today. As I'm losing more weight I'm feeling more and more ready to try and get pregnant again. I know that I want to be on the Metformin when I get pregnant so that I can stay on it through the first trimester, but really I'm hoping that I'll somehow be able to get pregnant on the Metformin alone this time and not need the Clomid. We'll see. My doctor told me to try for only three months the second time around before using the Clomid again, but we might stretch that a little if we aren't in any hurry. I do have friends who have PCOS that have gotten pregnant on just the Metformin and on nothing at all the second time around!!! So, I'm hopeful!

I'm also almost done with all these doctor's appointments I've been scheduling! So far I have been to the eye doctor (and got my glasses, much happier!), had my follow up appointment with the breast specialist (everything looks good! Don't need another mammogram for a year! Yeah! You can read my previous post about this here), went to the dentist (have to go back for 2 sealants and go to a periodontist for some recession... bleck!), and I go to the dermatologist on Monday. It has been a lot to knock out in a short period of time, but it feels so much better to be on the path to a healthier me!

Back To "Real Life"... (sigh)

2010-04-12T18:52:00.001-07:00

For the past two days I have been relaxing in the cutest little beach cottage on Sullivan's Island (just outside of Charleston) with my Mom and Andy, and just generally taking a break from "real life." It was sooooo nice! My old boss and his wife let us use their cottage for free for a night and it was so great to just unwind! We had dinner with family, walked on the beach, read, clipped coupons (yes, this was fun for me!) and just relaxed. I didn't have a computer and it was really nice to just "unplug." So, yes, now I am a few days behind on tackling things on my list for April, but that just means I'll have to try and be a little extra productive this week. It also means that my house is now a mess (again) and I am seriously behind on laundry (again... not that I was ever caught up!) But, really, who cares, because now I have some nice memories from the weekend.

Okay, so this week I really need to focus on trying to find balance between getting things accomplished AND trying to keep my house in some sort of ordered state. I'm failing at that repetitively. It's just hard! I'm getting up really early (as in 5:00 a.m. to be exact) to go to the gym with my neighbor and get my workout in before Matt leaves for work. I always feel GREAT in the morning after doing this, but then I'm exhausted by mid-day and sometimes nap while Andy is napping and then I get nothing done and fall further behind. I'm also not doing a very good job with meal planning. I seem to do well in spurts. I will have one good week where I plan meals, shop strategically and eat healthy and then 2-3 weeks where I am totally the complete OPPOSITE of that. There is no happy medium!

Honestly, sometimes (okay, most of the time) it's easier to just tackle projects from my list than to work on the big areas that I'm trying to focus on (eating, exercising, finances and housekeeping). The problem with doing that is that I keep having the constant nagging feeling like I'm failing at everything and that was the exact reason that I started this blog... to NOT feel like that. (insert deep, cleansing breath) I'm striving to find balance. I'm not failing miserably (like I was) but still failing - at least mildly!

BUT... I am crossing something off the list! On Saturday we hung up a clothesline in the back yard! It was a family project. Andy was very helpful! I'm super excited because I've been wanting one for a little while now. I haven't actually hung anything other than a quilt and a blanket out to dry because we went to the beach the next day, but tomorrow... tomorrow I'll be hanging EVERYTHING out to dry!

Organizing The Counter Tops

2010-04-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm crossing Organize Cook Books off of my list. Just organizing my cook books has led to completely re-arranging my counter tops and making an effort to de-clutter. It's not that the few cook books that I have were in disarray so much as that whole area of the counter was just a mess... constantly! Okay, so, I previously had my cutting boards stored in the silver file holder. This worked great when I also had the trays from Andy's high chair stored there, but now that he sits in a booster seat and eats at the table, the file holder was just a little too big for three cutting boards. So, I took them out and just leaned them up against the wall and used the file holder to hold my cook books! Much better! This definitely made that counter top space a little more tidy.

The other issue I had in that area was that things like fruit, veggies, coffee disks, etc. were just kind of floating around. Nothing had a home. Since the pile of things I decided to keep out of the garage is still sitting in the entryway to our house (sigh) I went "shopping" in there for something to hold fruits and veggies that I want to keep on the counter. I found a cute sea grass basket that was holding a "Spa Kit" that was given to me for my wedding... four and a half YEARS ago. Well, it looks cute on my counter now! Then I moved the coffee maker to the other counter and found a pretty crystal bowl in my hutch (thanks Gramma!) and put it out on the counter top filled with the coffee disks. It looks SO much better not having all of those disk boxes stacked on the counter!

This has freed up a considerable amount of counter top space for food prep. I have been doing a LOT more cooking lately and it's been making me anxious to get my counter tops cleared off! It definitely looks a lot better and a lot neater. The biggest issue I am having now is the top bar part of our counters. It's constantly cluttered. It's like the landing zone for EVERYTHING that enters our house. I can NOT seem to keep it clean, no matter what I do. My husband told me last week that if there is a flat surface in our house it will immediately be covered with stuff! And he's totally right. What I need to do is figure out specific places to put mail, keys, purse, phones, wallet, etc. I don't have anything like that right now. There is no entry table in the hall, or hooks to hang anything on. Part of the reason is not being completely sure what I want to do, and the other is money. Maybe I should start hunting around on Craig's List and at yard sales for some kind of inexpensive entry table or dresser or cabinet that I could fix up and use. Maybe I should try not putting anything on the counter top for a week (or maybe even just a DAY!) and see if I can try to change that habit.

I really, really don't want to be a cluttery person, so I need to figure some kind of system out here!

The Living Room

2010-04-07T06:25:00.001-07:00

So, my Mom is coming today (she'll be here in about an hour and a half) and staying for a week. This means that I have been cleaning, continuously for the past two hours... with no hope of actually getting EVERYTHING put away, de-cluttered, etc. This happens every single time that we have visitors. I would really love to get to the point where everything in this house has it's place, and stays there! It would be nice not to have to do a major picking up and cleaning right before people come to visit. Yes, I realize I could always start this process a few days ahead of time, but really, what is the fun in that??!! Why not create as much stress as possible? Besides, everything will just get cluttered and messy again in a few days!

So, I am sitting down to post a few pictures because I needed a little break before we head to the airport. I'm letting Andy completely empty the contents of my wallet so that I can have 5 minutes to do this post. That counts as being a good Mom, right? Plus, I think he is putting one of my credit cards in the dresser drawer, so that will help me not buy things I can't afford! ha ha

Okay, SO... back to the living room. It seriously hasn't been clean (or clutter free) enough to post "after" pictures since I got my "new" camera after finishing our built-ins (which you can read about here and here ). Well, I figured today was as good a day as any to post the "after" pictures! It might only stay clean for a day! (if that!)

I'm really happy with how everything turned out and we didn't have to spend much money decorating, because we used a lot of things that we already had. I was also really happy to finally have a place to display some of my milk glass. I have pieces handed down from both of my grandmothers, from my husband's grandmother and from my step father's mother. The clock is from 1860 (no, that is not a typo!) and was in the jail where my great grandfather was sheriff in East Machias, Maine. It was one of the many things my grandmother gave me when her and my grandfather downsized and moved into their retirement community.

Now, all I have to do is figure out what in the world to do on those two big BLANK walls and the top of the matle! Not feeling so inspired on those yet, but happy to have an almost finished living room!

Rewards Cards

2010-04-05T11:54:00.000-07:00

One of my resolutions this month was to sign up for the movie rewards card at our local theater. If you live near a Regal Cinema, United Artist Theatre or Edwards Theatre then you can sign up here. I don't get to the movies very often, maybe once every other month... IF that! But, every time I go, it seems to be with my future sister-in-law. She has one of the rewards cards and she is always getting coupons for free popcorn, drinks, candy or even free movie tickets! Every time we go, I take one of the pamphlets as she's telling me I don't know why more people don't sign up for this! I mean, it's FREE! And then that pamphlet sits in my purse until the next time I go to the movies... and then I put another pamphlet in my purse, forgetting that I already have one in there... and the cycle continues!

So today, I finally signed up online for my rewards card! I'll be going to the movies all the time now trying to earn points! Ha ha! In general, I've been trying to sign up for more free rewards cards for things. I guess since I've started couponing I've become more aware of different rebate programs and reward clubs. I guess I had just been blissfully unaware of all these different ways I could be saving money!

Since I pretty much took Easter weekend off, today I filled out all of my April birthday cards and got the three I needed to send into the mail. I also scheduled Andy's two year pediatrician appointment for August. Now I'm off to get some cleaning done! My Mom is coming on Wednesday to visit and staying for a week! I can't wait for her to get here and I want to have the house all ready for her visit!