Category: things to do

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craft nest things to do

project nursery

well, baby kate is here! we welcomed her into the world on saturday and we are thrilled! she is so cute and parenthood is just as amazing and exhausting as everyone says. i’m so glad it finally happened for us and we pray for our friends who want the same thing to be blessed with their very own babies.

we had a really fun time working on her nursery over the months before she came. i really didn’t want to spend a whole lot of money on the nursery and wanted to make it as personal as possible. we also didn’t want to make it too girly since we were sure she’d get plenty of girly clothes!!

so we started with my old furniture from growing up! this antique dresser, the bureau that matches my old crib and a toy box my dad made me!

ditched the old knobs

used gray and white chalk paint since  we didn’t know the gender before we started and figured these were great colors to go with either!

yep, painted indoors…

then my friend dez and i worked on putting everything together! she is so good at design, check out their personal blog to see their fun projects!!

we used a bunch of scrap fabric i had lying around

and here’s the final product!!

items for decoration from here and there. found the bunny bookends at a flea market but they were too expensive for my taste, but jared surprised me for mother’s day with them 🙂 good husband!

lamp from ikea

new knobs from world market

found the rocker/glider for $40 and then had someone recover it for me. much better than buying a brand new one with an ugly cover! and i sewed the pillows…something i can do with sewing!

mobile made by my talented dad

dad also made the valence and then we covered it

the blanket was from ikea which gave us the idea for the woodland animal theme.

dez and i spent some time on this wall and she finished the kate sign for me!

found this cute greeting card at trader joe’s and put it to good use since it worked with the theme!

my dad drew this tree and people put their prints and signed it at my showers. we have it hanging over the changing table and i get to be reminded of all the people who love little kate every time i change her.

rug made by my talented friend timmery.

these cute knobs also from world market

the whole thing!

and now all my old things are hers for a new generation 🙂

Categories
celebrate reminisce things to do

patience

patience is a funny thing…

it’s all about perspective really

here i am, starting to get impatient that i’m a week overdue today, i’d really love to meet our daughter…but then i remind myself that it took us how long to get here? what’s a few more days?? i mean…seriously what’s wrong with me? i’ve said the whole pregnancy that i refused to complain because i wanted to enjoy every little bit of being pregnant, and i really do. i love all the little kicks reminding me that life has been created, but i also just want to meet that little person and find out who she’s going to be.

perspective… it only took us three years to get pregnant. i am well aware that there are people who have spent so much longer than that in their heartache, and my heart aches for those around me who are going through the same thing. when you’re in it, it feels like forever and then suddenly you’re about to have a child any day now and you wonder if all that pain was real.

so i’m trying to take advantage of this last minute free time. the baby room is done (blog post coming soon), the hospital bag is packed, the car seat is installed and i even made treats for the nurses. i’m getting lots of wedding films done and i’ve even been able to cross a bunch of things off my to do list that have been on there forever (you know all the annoying little things you just never get to). so i’m taking perspective and looking at this like a wonderful opportunity to finish some things i’ve started before i’m completely exhausted the rest of my life 😉 perspective…

and here are some photos from our 20’s themed maternity shoot with zelo photography! see their super sweet blog post on us here 🙂 shoot inspired by this movie, and hair and makeup done by this lovely lady! we wanted to do something a little different and i think the photos turned out great!

well i will have my baby in three days or less (since they will induce me if i’m too late) so literally any day now…woop!!!

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craft nest things to do

project crib repurpose

 so with decorating our baby room, i’ve been obsessed with doing as much DIY as possible, and decorating with random finds. it’s been really fun putting it all together and i’ll have a post dedicated to the room soon! but for now, just a post on my old crib 🙂

my parents saved my old crib all these years thinking it would be fun for me to use it for my kids someday. of course they never knew that there would be laws about drop-side cribs and all that so they took it out of the rafters and asked me what we should do with it. i quickly ‘pinterested’ and saw some fun ideas of what you can do with old cribs.

here are my brother and i looking super weird in the crib, crazy kis!

and hopefully my mom doesn’t kill me for putting a belly pic up but that’s me in there, so fun!!

this brings me to my dad. his love language towards others is acts of service. all you have to do is talk about a fun project and before you know it, he’s out in the garage helping you bring your idea reality. it helps that he is super creative and talented. all i did was show him a picture and he went right to work on taking apart the old crib.

my mom took some behind the scenes pics for me 🙂

so he made a cool bench out of the crib, and the other color wood was a piece of wood leftover from when we got some new shelves, he’s so resourceful!!

then it came to me and i painted it to match the other furniture in the nursery. i did chalk paint, sanded it after, and waxed it.

and to finish it off, sewed a pillow and pad (well dez mostly did the pad) to match some other things in the room. can’t wait to show you the whole room!

voila!! what do you think of my repurposed crib? great for a little reading seat?

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eat things to do

you are what you eat part 6

you are what you eat part 6 – after a year and a half, what we’ve learned

this is part 6 (and the last installment) of a healthy eating series, to read the rest go here: Read part one here, read part two here, read part three here,read part four here and read part five here.

if you are reading this post for the first time, be sure to check out our whole journey above.

now that we’ve been a year all natural, here are a few things we’ve learned:

i get WAY less headaches. i’ve tried and tried to create food journals over the years to figure out why i get random headaches (i.e. i’m not tired, dehydrated, pmsing, stress or had one too many glasses of wine) and i could never put my finger on it. over this past year and a half, i pretty much only get one headache a month (you know, that time…), and sometimes i don’t even get that one! what’s nice is that going all natural has just fixed that problem for me. now i don’t even have to bother with figuring it out and avoiding that one thing because i just avoid all those things that were bad for me anyway!

we both lost weight. this may sound obvious, but that wasn’t our purpose for doing this. we lost weight as a side effect of eating healthy and it wasn’t because of doing a ‘diet’ for a short period of time, counting calories, or working out more. all we did was create new habits!

habits are easier to keep up when you meal plan. meal planning has always been a huge struggle for me. you would think that a two person family would be easy, but when my husband says he’s fine with oatmeal for dinner most nights, it’s hard to be motivated to cook ever. but i know that we need to get in good habits before children or else we’ll never get into good habits. another problem with meal planning for us is that i’ll have it all set up and then one of us will just not be hungry for a full meal or we’ll go out with friends and i have to push everything back and since i’m still learning to cook, it’s tough to rearrange things. but i’m learning to be flexible and just make sure to use everything i buy. so the meal planning is still a work in progress but we’re definitely getting there!

this leads me to the pantry challenge. i saw one of my friends was doing this on facebook and thought it was a great idea. you take inventory of everything in your cupboards (which was a shocking amount since i feel like we never have food!) and then you make sure to only buy fresh items to go with those things you already have. you have to get creative and it really forces you to pay attention to what you have. my favorite part about it is that it prevents food waste! i hate wasting food when there are so many people who don’t have any, it seriously kills me to throw away a bunch of expired food that i paid good money for. so i did this for a few weeks, and it was fun!

balance…one of the hardest things about changing your diet so dramatically (sad that going all natural kind of feels like a dramatic change, it’s not like i went vegan!) is finding a balance with others. what i mean is that you can completely control what you cook and buy for daily things, but if you go over to a friend’s house for dinner or go out to eat at a place that is likely to have ‘no’ list items, it makes it tough. on the one hand you really don’t want to go back to eating certain things or getting symptoms from troublesome foods, but you also don’t want to be rude. we’ve decided that we will do everything in our power to eat an all natural and organic diet, but at the same time, we don’t want anyone to bend over backwards to try to figure out meals they can make for us. we’re also not going to be ‘those people’ at a restaurant asking a million questions about ingredients (but that’s mostly because i’m afraid i’ll get an extra special ingredient if they don’t like me…)

this wraps up my series on healthy eating! i’m sure i’ll post some about my garden which has helped a lot this summer, and other projects related, but i’ll leave you with a very cool video from chipotle’s ad campaign. i haven’t researched anything about what they really use in their food, but i just love the commercial and the story they tell, enjoy!

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eat things to do

you are what you eat part 5

you are what you eat part 5 – sweets
this is part 5 of a healthy eating series, to read the rest go here: Read part one here, read part two here, read part three here, read part four here
another common thing that people say to us when we say we went all natural is ‘wow, you guys are so good’, ‘how can you function without any bad food?’ well, honest answer? we don’t. just because we eat all naturally doesn’t mean that we avoid sweets. when we made this decision, it was spring. we forgot we’d have to deal with saying no to a lot during holidays, especially halloween. for me, it’s almost easier to just say to myself, ‘well, it has high fructose corn syrup or dye so i just can’t have it’. but sometimes, we just really need a piece of candy or chocolate. so here’s what we’ve found…WARNING: don’t read this post if you are hungry, tired or at ‘that time of the month’ because you will probably go out and buy everything…
red and black licorice – trader joe’s has an all natural one, colored with beets. it does have corn syrup but supposedly trader joe’s doesn’t make anything with gmo’s…take it for what you will. vons also carries a brand of red licorice that is all natural.
fruit chewy candy and salt water taffy! – trader joe’s has this as well, colored with vegetables, also with corn syrup
chocolate – this has been the most tricky thing for us because as much as i’ve researched it, i just can’t figure out if soy lecithin is bad for you. we’ve cut out all soy, but they say that soy lecithin is from fermented soy which isn’t bad. other places say, well it’s probably gmo so it’s still bad, and others say that because it’s such a small amount, it doesn’t matter. so it’s up to you on the soy lecithin issue, but trader joe’s has a mighty plethora of delicious all natural chocolate products, YUM!
another thing i do to get around the sweets issue is just bake things myself. this is actually a great way to talk yourself out of junk food because you have to decide if you REALLY want it since you have to make it yourself. i do love baking but i don’t always have time, so i can usually talk myself out of the sweets this way. but, if i NEED chocolate (you know what i’m talking about ladies…) i bake with chocolate chips or chunks from jimbo’s. they are all natural, NO soy lecithin ANDDDDDD they are fair trade, yippee! they also have baking m&ms at jimbo’s with all natural coloring. i also found all naturally colored sprinkles at sprouts so cupcakes can have some color once in a while 🙂
there are a lot of cookies at trader joe’s but again, much of it has soy lecithin or enriched flour, so i just bake these myself to be safe. plus, i can buy the flour non gmo at jimbo’s.
sweet breads like pumpkin bread or any kind of muffin i also bake myself. this is mainly because most of the muffins out there are full of all the things we cut out and so full of calories. i sometimes steam my own pumpkins, puree and freeze them in baggies until i need it for recipes, that way i don’t have to worry about pesky aluminum (see, everything is bad for us!!!)
so enjoy some goodies! hopefully i’ll post some fun recipes soon 🙂
read part six here
Categories
celebrate nest things to do

Expanding our Family

 after two years of marriage, we thought it would be about time to start expanding our little family of 2. we were very excited and anxious about the unknown, but month after month, nothing happened. we watched as all of our friends had their first, second or third children while we still waited and longed for just one of our own. we had a lot people asking questions and making comments all along the way that were really tough to answer or respond to because we didn’t share this part of our life with many people. i was so shocked at what people were willing to say and ask and it was usually too sensitive in the moment for me to tell the truth. so i just always defaulted to ‘we hope to’ or ‘soon’. it can be a very long road full of sorrow…

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick…”

but when it takes three years to finally be blessed with the one thing that seemed so easy for everyone else you learn a few things and are blessed by things.

we learned to be patient even when we don’t, and probably never will, undersand why we went through what we did. we learned how to approach talking about children with others, not realizing how hard comments and questions can be to handle in the midst of grief.

we learned to really live this verse: Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:4-7

even through the toughest times, I was still able to live my life, rejoice with friends who were having babies, and get through it.

though i have always had strong feelings about everyone having the human right to life, going through this experience has only deepened my feelings and beliefs about the issue. see below images for more.

i’ve always believed, but this has only reminded me that god really does provide. i deepened a friendship with someone going through the exact same thing, i’ve had a wonderful group of women there for me through the tears and praying for us all along the way, and i’ve gained new friendships. but god especially provided by giving me such a wonderful husband, i can’t imagine anyone else to live both good and bad times with than him.

we were blessed by growing together during the last 3 years, making our marriage stronger, crying together, traveling together and just learning to love each other more. as much as i would have given everything to have children when we first wanted them, i now wouldn’t trade anything for all this wonderful time we’ve invested in our marriage. this will make us better to handle our marriage in future trials and make us better parents.

“…but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12

we finally had our prayers answered and the answer was yes. we are so thankful for this wonderful blessing of life. because we had some help to get where we are, we got to have a few more ultrasounds than the average person. it was incredible!!

the above is at 6 weeks. it’s basically a ‘diamond ring’ as the doctor said, and the ‘diamond’ is the heartbeat. yes, at 6 weeks, before most people even know they are pregnant, their miracles have a beating heart, drumming life through their bodies and capable of love.

the above is at 7 and a half weeks. just a week and a half later and there are visible arms and legs!

and again at 10 weeks, almost fully formed. we could see both hemispheres of the brain and when she moved the wand around we could see the shape of a little human 🙂

the above three images are from 19 1/2 weeks. these just amaze me and bring tears to my eyes. i was barely starting to show and there is a fully formed human in my womb! we found out that she’s a girl at this appointment and she even started sucking her thumb during the ultrasound (3rd image). look at her little hand in the second image! at this point she was only about 10 inches long but she has all her parts including finger prints which she had developed weeks ago. she has an identity and yet in california i would legally have until week 24 to terminate if i had wanted. it breaks my heart that little fully formed humans who can suck their little thumbs can be dumped into the garbage. she’s perfect and we’re already in love with her.

this is how we told our parents her gender on mother’s day (there’s a little slip of paper inside the eggs that says ‘it’s a granddaughter!’) our parents were so excited!

four generations of women!

our friends made us these when they found out we were pregnant…

…and they inspired this video which is how we shared the news with everyone else:

 thanks to everyone who was with us from the beginning. and don’t feel bad if you didn’t know what we were going through, we just emotionally couldn’t handle sharing with everyone. we appreciate everyone’s continued support, love and prayers until our little one is safe at home in our arms. we’re so incredibly happy and thankful! and we wish everyone we know going through the same thing will be able to share in their own joy soon 🙂