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

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

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!

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)

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

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

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)

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!