Life as we go it

Friday, February 6, 2015

How the heck is it the year 2015 already?

Posting my goals for 2015 at the beginning of February (instead of the beginning of January) is totally me. I've thought about my annual goals and have been slowly adding them to my Notes on the iPad. I just haven't sat down and really thought about them. Life is busy.

And so here I am a month into the year already.

January 1st is just another ol' day on the calendar anyways, right?

I didn't forsee posting my 2015 goals for all of the world to see (okay, not the world, but the 50 or so people that actually read my blog). But I figured if I post them on here then maybe I'll feel more accountable and be more likely to complete some of them? If my mom sees my goals/Matt sees them/friends see them, then maybe they'll help keep me pointing in the right direction if I start to swerve?

In my mind I have hundreds of goals I'd like to accomplish. But in reality I'm only going to write down the big/important/possibly attainable ones that I actually would like to accomplish over the next months. So here they are:

Personal

1) Get more consecutive hours of sleep. I can count on one hand how many times in the last ten months I have slept for 5-6 consecutive hours. I know that once I'm done nursing Chloe in the middle of the night that my sleep schedule will become more normal again, but in the meantime I'll try to get to bed a little earlier each night. And continue to persuade Matt to take turns "sleeping in" with me (sleeping in for us is often 7:00am).

Shirt via Zazzle.com

2) Get out of the house at least once a week without the kids, completely by myself. When I go to Zumba that does not count (I'm with other people). When I go to Crafty Club it doesn't count (I'm with other people). I mean STRAIGHT UP BY MYSELF. Either wandering the aisles of the library or wandering the aisles of Hobby Lobby. Or sitting in my car with an ice cream cone. So be it.

3) Keep incorporating exercise into my life. I'm not the gal that works out at a gym. I never have been and I'm pretty sure I never will be. But if I can golf on a golf course ~~with a beer in my hand~~ or walk with the kids to the lake, or play softball on a team, or garden in the yard -- that's the kind of exercise I'm talking about. I feel like it's attainable to me. So I will continue to do my Zumba (I've been doing it for a month and it feels like I'm dancing instead of exercising) and maybe sign up for once-a-week-yoga as well. And once it warms up outside I hope to walk a LOT with the kiddos all over the place.

4) Delete emails after I read them/delete junk emails right away. This is how many emails I have in my inbox right now:

This is not a joke. I organized my inbox right before Chloe was born last April. So this is ten months of deletion procrastination

Family

1) Be way, way nicer to Matt. I've been so flipping crabby lately. I complain all of the time. I shouldn't complain. But guess who gets to hear me complain? Matt. And because he works from home he EVEN gets to listen to me complain during lunch. Lucky him! I need to adjust my attitude somehow. I'm hoping that if I can accomplish Personal Goal #1 (more sleep) then maybe it will help in the crabby department? I hope so. Because I know I'm driving him nuts.

2) Reinstate 'No TV Tuesdays' in our house. We tried this a while back and it was nice. Matt and I would work on a project in the basement or outside instead of watching the boob tube at night. We got away from it. And we decided we'd like to try it again.

3) Kiss and hug everyone in my family every day. I kiss and hug the kids countless times a day, but Matt and the cats get the shaft. How's that for honesty?

4) Start going to church regularly. I'm not saying that we can commit to going every single Sunday at this point in time (it's been so hard to get up and going with the kiddos on Sunday mornings), but we will try to make it twice a month. We recently found a church that we're really into too (great pastors, friendly people, a nursery/childcare for the kids during church, a feeling of community) so we really want to put some effort into this.

Kids

1) Stop freaking out and yelling at the kids for no reason. I also think this is caused by lack of sleep. So this is another area where accomplishing Personal Goal #1 will help! I just lose it sometimes. I'll be fine. And then Liam will poop in his pants and then roll around/play on the floor (those do not mix well) and will not let me take him to the bathroom. He'll start screaming and kicking. Then Chloe joins in on the screaming. And I lose it. I need to not lose it so much. But it just happens! I absolutely hate yelling in front of the kids. I wonder if more sleep and getting out of the house will help with this too?

2) Get Liam completely toilet trained. We have been laxly working on this since he turned 2. He will be 3 in a couple of weeks. It's about time we get this thing done. But it's hard. I really don't think he's completely ready yet. But we will keep trying. We're almost there. I think I see ~~Liam sitting on the big boy toilet~~ the light!

3) Love them, love them, love them. I already do this like crazy. But I want to remember to continue to just love them insanely every single day, because I know that time passes by oh too fast.

Home

Oh my, this list could be so much longer. I will never be done with house decorating/repairing/yard work/etc. That's part of the joy of owning a home, right? But here are my top 4 goals at the moment:

1) Finish the stairway/entry. Now that our stairway is freshly painted I want to try hard to actually finish something in a timely manner! I'd really like to get it decorated and get our artwork and photos back on the walls. Also, I'd like to make new curtains and recover the window seat. And figure out what cool thing to do with the large landing at the top of the stairs (reading nook? storage shelving?)

2) Paint exterior brick and window trim. This has been on our list for the last 2 years. But then kids happened and it just didn't get done. Our house has siding, but there's three feet of 125-year-old brick foundation showing at the base of the house. The paint that's covering it is peeling and there's some tuck pointing work to be done. So in Spring we're hoping to pressure wash/scrape it all and then get it painted. All of the exterior window trim could use a fresh coat of white paint as well.

3) Put grip on our basement stairs. They're wood and they are way too shiny & slippery. I've fallen down them twice. And now with the kiddos being so mobile, I will not let that happen to them. WE hope to paint them (probably a funky color) and put some sort of grip on them. Our current 'scary stairs':

4) Have a garden again. We have a fabulous farmers' market here in town that we love to go to, so we won't go overboard on our garden. But some tomatoes would be nice again, as well as some peas and beans for Liam to pick. And maybe some pumpkins, so the kids can watch them grow and then decorate them come Fall.

Fun

1) Spend a week straight at our cabin this summer + squeeze in one extra annual trip there. The cabin is heaven on Earth - it's relaxing, fun, rustic and just plain awesome. So we need to spend more time there :)

2) Get away with Matt for a weekend in the Fall or next Winter (if I'm done nursing Chloe by then), hopefully to visit Matt's sister in San Fran.

3) Get a new raft for the cabin. We budgeted for this, so I just need to make the phone calls and get it done. I can't wait to see Liam jumping off of it and into the lake some day. We're hoping to get one that's similar to this:

______________________________

Sorry if this was a super boring post. I wrote it more for myself & Matt so that we can look back at this throughout the year and ~~check every thing off of the list~~ check to see if we accomplished anything. I added a reminder to my calendar at 6 months from now, to check in and see how we're doing:

Wish me luck!

Happy weekend...

Monday, February 2, 2015

Snowman numero dos

Just a few quick things that have created smiles lately....

Matt's homemade bread.

Liam's 2nd snowman of the year, decorated with things from our yard.

The sun peeking through the clouds. Is it Spring yet?

The beautiful lake I feel so fortunate to live by.

Liam and Matt laughing during swim lessons.

Liam making Valentines with his Nana (Matt's mom).

These two getting along and loving each other.

Hearts around the house.

Chloe is apparently going to be our little gymnast.

Doing the splits at 9 months old!

My Earth flag blowing in the wind.

Enough snow that Matt had to get the snow-blower out.

Many library books read.

I hope you have a great week :)

Monday, January 26, 2015

A brand new coat (of paint)

We moved into our current house a little over 5 years ago. Time sure has flown by! The house was built sometime between 1889 and 1895 (I haven't been able to pinpoint the exact year yet). Basically, it's a really old house! Luckily all of the previous owners (or at least the ones in the last four or five decades) took really good care of it. It's bones are still sturdy and it has a lot of unique features.

One of the things I fell in love with when we first looked at the home was the front entry & stairway. It's tall, airy and has a cool arch over part of it. I had never seen an arch like this in a home before:

I also fell in love with staircase (three sets of stairs w/two landings) and the old windows & window seat. Here are some photos I took of the stairway the very first time we looked at the house:

The wallpaper was beige with cream stripes running vertically. It was 'fine' but was getting kind of grungy & starting to peel in lots of places. When we bought the house we knew that someday we'd want to remove it.

The wallpaper also carried into the upstairs hallway:

So.....five years later we had the wallpaper removed! Although we like to attempt doing home-y things ourselves, we decided to hire a painting contractor to do it for us. It cost a bit more money to hire it out BUT it saved us our sanity, which made it worth it :) With the kids keeping me 100% occupied during the week and with us wanting to enjoy our weekends as a family, it would have taken us forever just to remove the wallpaper! Plus, with the paper being 2 1/2 stories high, I'm pretty sure Matt or I would have ended up in the hospital at some point it time...

It took two weeks for two guys to removed the wallpaper, remove the layer of paste (which turned out to be an old clay-type paste), fix the plaster wherever it needed fixing, prime the ceilings and walls, and then add two layers of paint.

It was a bit frustrating at times whenever I wanted to go upstairs with the kiddos during the day (with drop cloths & paints & stuff everywhere). And we had to skip naps for a few days because I didn't want the kids in their bedrooms along with paint fumes. But we made do.

Also -- picking out the paint colors was so hard! I wanted to do some funky colors (that's my artist brain talking) but I promised Matt I wouldn't go too crazy. Also, since the carpeting is a dark navy blue (not our style, but we're keeping it for a while yet) we had to pick some colors that 'go' with the carpeting.

Why are we keeping the dark navy carpeting you ask? a) Liam is up and down the stairs all day long, and Chloe is attempting to crawl up them now, so we feel the carpeting is much safer. If we remove the carpet and the wood's exposed, we're afraid the kids will be slipping and sliding all over the place. b) Our ~~crazy annoying and spoiled~~ cats are not declawed and pretty much destroy anything soft in our house. I cannot imagine putting new carpeting in and having the cats decimate the carpets the first day we have it. So....the carpet stays for now. It's not our style, but it's fine for now :)

Or maybe we should get rid of the cats instead...

Oops, did I say that out loud?

Here are some before and after photos of the project. The "befores" are actually during the wallpaper/paste removal process and the "afters" are the finished product:

Landing at the top of the stairs

On the left side -- this is the original wall color. If it had not been patched over the years we would have seriously
considered keeping it the raw color. But there was just too much patchwork over the years.

Part of our front entry.

Tons of wall space.

Arch BEFORE

Arch AFTER

FYI-

The local painting contractor we used was Schoen's Painting and Decorating. We would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a painter. They were friendly, professional, tidy and reasonable. Thanks Phil, Jake and Chris for helping us restore part of our home for years to come!

And here are the paint colors we used:

Bottom half of chair rail and front entry: Sherwin-Williams Balanced Beige
Upper walls and hallway walls: Sherwin-Williams Pewter Tray (at 75%)
Ceiling: Sherwin-Williams Extra White in Matte
Crown, base and trim: Sherwin-Williams Extra White in Semi Gloss

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Take a look, it's in a book

At Christmastime we received a sweet assortment of books as gifts. Each of the four of us were gifted at least a couple of books. Chloe got some picture books, Liam some good interactive ones, and Matt and I got some that were/and were not on our wish lists. I thought I'd share them with you since most of us do like books, right?

Chloe

We used to lend this one from the library when Liam was little. But it's way nicer having a copy of our own (without all of the germs, random teeth marks and dried snot blobs from other kids).

I had never seen this one before Chloe got it. It's a bunch

of little peas doing random stuff. It's a cutie.

I am in love with this book. And so is Liam. It's just so cool.

One of these days I want to break out our tubes of real paint and let Liam "follow along" with

everything that happens in the book. Fun!

Liam and Chloe

Every year (this is the third year) Matt's mom gets one of these recordable books for the kid(dos).

It's fun to get them out each year at Christmastime & let the kids 'listen to Nana' read a book.

Liam

This is the giant version of this book. Liam loves it.

Did anyone else get this one this year? It's on the best seller list.

In case you didn't know -- the guy from The Office (B.J.Novak) created it.

Liam digs these paint with water books. I dig them too. They are SO easy to whip out

as an activity + they're not too messy to clean up.

Matt

Matt's cousin custom-made a family cookbook for Matt and other family members.

The recipes are all from his grandma/grandpa that are no longer with us, so this

is a pretty sweet sentimental gift that Matt will have forever.

This was on Matt's wish list.

I'm so glad that my hubby likes to cook...

I got him this one. We're hoping to expand our canning skills this coming summer/fall.

This book should be helpful with that.

No need to explain this one.

I had this book on my list. I can't wait to read it! Have your heard of this one?

A lady goes an entire year without looking in a mirror! I think it'll be an

interesting read.

This one was also on my wish list :) I've lent this one from the library four times already,

so I thought it'd be nice to just have a copy of my own. It's a great book to have if you have

an old home. It can tell you a lot about the history of your home & also teaches

you how to expand your research.

Well...that's that! We've already read the kids books about a hundred times, and Matt has glanced at his cook books. Someday I'll get to reading my books. I'll add them to my stack of 'books to read.'

Maybe I should get off this darn computer and read instead. Oh wait....I hear Chloe crying and Liam just woke up....never mind!