Giveaway

Aveeno products at this site: My Highest Self. Check it out! A real post from/about me/my business soon.. maybe... sometime. ;) Been busy being pregnant & chasing toddler(s) & whatnot. ;)

It's a...

Boy! We had a blue cake on the night of the blue moon! :) His name's Kevin.

Turning 29 again & Sonogram!

I'm feeling good today!
Working backwards: I just finished a project! It's a gift, so I won't post much about it yet, but I should see the recipient & give it to her on Friday.

Before that, I made plans with a friend from college to take our kids to the zoo together to see the new baby tigers & go to a paint your own ceramics store sometime before my half-price voucher expires (Sept 22). :) I haven't seen her in a long time or met her twins, so I'm excited... plus, tigers are my favorite animals, so yay for baby tigers! :D

Earlier today, I took my car in for it's 30,000 mile tune-up & got the whole thing done for half-price! My hubby recently bought another Lancer from the same dealership we got mine from & there was an issue with them repeatedly cashing his post-dated check prematurely along with some other issue(s) I think, so they said they'd comp our next service visit. My car was overdue for this & we'd been putting it off because of how much it would cost, so we asked if we could use it on my car & they said we could! Granted, they only covered half, but that was a significant amount, so we're happy! :D

Yesterday, We went & got the sonogram to find out what the baby is! We don't know yet, but we will find out on Friday! We had the sonographer write it down & put it in two envelopes & mailed one to my best friend, who'll make either a pink or blue cake so we can find out when we cut into it at our baby "sprinkle" party. :D The other one we held onto as back-up because we know USPS is not infallible. ;)
BABY! :D

Monday, Amber started gymnastics again. We switched to Thursdays & I hope it's not as crazy then! It was pure mayhem & hot as a sauna in there & this pregnant mama had a hard time keeping up with nearly a dozen 2yos running around! Amber had a lot of fun, though & did very well, considering.

I also babysat (my usual charge) in the morning. We had a pretty good day. He took a nearly 2hr long nap for me!

Monday was my birthday. I turned thirty. I've been half-jokingly saying that I was turning 29 again. Through most of my twenties I had a hard time feeling very grown-up. I was in college much of that time & continued to work in academia until the summer after Amber was born. I felt like I did a lot of growing up, fast, when my dad died & I had to manage his estate & settle his divorce & all that. Plus, that was the same time Paul & I got married & then, a little over a year later, bought our house. All that & now having kids has made me feel more like an adult, but I was just coming to terms with being a twenty-something when that time was over & suddenly I'm in a whole new decade! Maybe by the time I'm 40 I'll be used to the idea of being in my thirties. ;) Oh well, it's not like I've thought of thirty as "old" or anything (at least, not since I was a kid)just a milestone I don't feel like I should have reached already. I guess part of it is that I'm not where I thought I'd be academically & career-wise. I always expected I'd get a doctorate or at least a master's degree & work in some suitably professional field related to my area of study... and here I'm a stay-at-home mom with a virtually unused bachelor's degree. *Shrug* I doubt I'd change anything significant if I got a do-over, but I am definitely not where I expected to be.
The big thing is, I am well aware that I could go back to school later & pursue those higher degrees, but I have no idea what direction I'd want to go in! I have too many interests & some of them would require moving away from where I am now, which I don't like the idea of being further away from family, or uprooting my kids. Or they're require specific education or experience I don't have. I could end up starting practically from scratch. That's not ideal either. The one thing that's the closest, most feasible in those things is pursuing a master's in art at the local state college. That would require getting more focused & organized with my art, so that I actually have a portfolio & deciding what I would DO with a master's in art. There's also the option of just getting more focused & organized with my art & making a name for myself as an artist, but I have barely begun to do that as a jewelry-maker & the business side of things is just NOT my forte! I wish I could just afford right off the bat to hire someone to do the marketing & book-keeping for me! I hate choosing prices (it's hard enough choosing to part with my creations, let alone trying to put a monetary value on them!) and I am not naturally organized. I don't keep track of time or costs very well when creating (whether it falls in the realm of "craft" or "art") and I hate talking myself up or coming up with things like artist's statements. A bio I can handle, but trying to make myself sound grand & inspiring... well... Yeah, not so much.

So, anyway. I didn't think I'd go into that whole rant, but I'm still in a good mood today... even though I promised myself I'd pick up all kiddo's toys so hubby could vacuum & I have done no such thing... There's time yet. ;)

Feeling Green

We've been trying our hand at actual gardening this year & I'm happy to say it's been pretty successful! I always used to think I had total "black thumbs" as I went through quite a few houseplants as a kid. I didn't try any more until my dad passed away & I got some from the funeral & a couple he had been growing. I managed to keep all those going until we got cats.
Last winter, I found some seeds on clearance at Walgreens & figured, at this price - why not?
So, we got carrots, cherry & heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini & morning glories. My best friend had some strawberry plants that had some established runners she gave to me. They almost didn't make it & they didn't bloom at all, but hopefully next year They did send out runners of their own, though! We planted two gardens. Both turned out to be way too small for the plants we planted! We already have plans for next year's garden to be in a new location (at least partially) & much longer.
We have a 4x4 kit we put together & in half we planted the carrots & in the other half we planted the tomatoes & strawberries. This one is in the back yard where it gets some shade. For the rest, my hubby built a little 2x1 garden & put it on the south side of the house with a trellis. We planted the zucchini, cucumbers & morning glories in here! we even encouraged a wild, flowering vine of some sort that's technically a weed. It's flowers look like little white morning glories.
one zucchini plant alone would have been too much for this space! The zucchini plants overshadowed the cucumber plants & killed them all. The morning glories just barely made it & have only just this week begun to make blooms. I haven't even seen them open yet. The zucchinis did pretty well, though some sort of brown beetles got in there & laid eggs. I think that crop, sadly, is done.
The carrots have done alright, but they've been stunted because of the landscaping fabric we used under the garden. The strawberries, as I mentioned, never bloomed. All they've produced is runners. The cherry tomatoes have done awesome & we've been really thankful for that because our daughter eats them like candy! Before they started ripening we were buying little boxes of grape or cherry tomatoes at least once every other week I think! Now, we have more than enough for her appetite, cooking & gifting. The heirlooms have been slower & we're still waiting for them to really ripen & hopefully get bigger than they have been! There are only a few so far.
Yesterday, I started a new project & Paul helped me finish it today which will help us with a lot of things, if all goes well... We made a compost bin! I found this site, which details how to make a compost bin out of a plastic container and I followed the directions to do so. I even lucked out & had an extra lid to keep underneath it! :)
Here's our new compost bin! I'll try to post some pics of the gardens later. :)

Blogger rotated it. I have no idea how to fix it. Grr.

We also, by some miracle, had one carrot plant that bloomed & produced seeds!

We'll just have to wait & see next year if they're viable or not. I plan to mix them in with some store-bought ones, since the site I read about saving them warns against in-breeding, so we may never actually know. :)

A chance to win cloth diapers

Paul & I (mostly I) are considering cloth diapers for #2 (due Jan 25th) so I'm entering for my chance to win some here LINK! :D

Hopefully, I'll have a real blog entry for you soon. ;)

Just a little something...

SO, yesterday my daughter took FOREVER (ok, like 2hrs) to actually go to sleep for her nap. Once she finally did, though, I finally decided what to do with the time. I'm hosting a craft night on Thursday, so I cleared off the dining room table. It had collected all manner of unfinished projects of mine & hers, crayons, coupon clipping stuff, etc.
At the bottom of it all was a project I'd almost forgotten about. I was frustrated that it wasn't working out the way I wanted it to, so I'd set it aside & it had involved using the exacto-knife. I'd let my hubby borrow that & haven't seen it since. Grr. So, I was about ready to scrap the whole thing.
I looked at it again once it was unearthed & thought... I could do this differently. I still needed the knife & I found another that was more of a skinny box-cutter than exacto, but it worked well enough. So, I sat down & with what remained of her roughly two-hour nap & finished the project.
I had found this Gandhi quote & decided I wanted something to hang up in the house to inspire me/us. I'd decided I wanted a nice nature picture to go with it & wanted one I'd taken. I eventually settled on a photo of the sky with some light fluffy clouds I'd taken. I printed letters in a font I liked on transparency paper. I was hoping for a fun layered look. The ink didn't dry on the transparency paper (must have printed on the wrong side)but that allowed me to use it as a stamp on the back of some scrapbook paper & use that as a guide to cut the letters out & then glue them in place on the transparency paper.
Well, that was tedious & frustrating & then some of the letters were coming off, Gandhi's name hadn't printed & that's when I set the whole thing aside.
When I found it again, I noticed that I'd been careful enough cutting the letters out of the scrapbook paper that it was still fairly readable. I figured, I'd cut the rest out & go with the negative space & totally scrap the transparency paper. I did that, stuck the pages together, cut down to size for the frame, used a sharpie to outline the letters & fill in the missing parts & then found this big die-cute flower my friend gave me & glued it on to fill up some of the space & voila!

So, if I do something like this again... not cutting letters out of anything!! I'll use my alphabet stickers, stencils or stamps!! You can't hardly even see my photo at all now, but oh well.

5th anniversary reflections

Saturday was our 5th wedding anniversary (7/7/07!) and May 23rd was the 5th anniversary of Dad's passing. I've been thinking about that time and what I expected to happen in five years at that time... and what has or hasn't happened. While we were planning the wedding, we were also planning to renew our vows at our five-year reunion. That's not happening... maybe at our ten-year, or even seven, given the date. ;)
We had hoped, originally, to have our wedding at Robert Allerton Park near Monticello, IL in the Sunken Garden. It's gorgeous... perfect... popular and EXPENSIVE! So, that didn't work out. We gave some thought to doing it for the vow renewal, but we're not much better off financially than we were to begin with, and we didn't plan for it, so ... yeah. Not happening. Our other thought, to save money & what-not... was to just flash-bomb the place! Maybe we could get everyone to make small donation as a gift & they wouldn't be too mad at us. ;)
Well, we found a deal to get reservations at the fancy Chateau next weekend with dinner & breakfast included. So, that's going to be our celebration.
I had wondered where we would be in five years. What kind of home? Before my dad passed away, we wondered if we'd be able to afford to buy a house after five years or not. We were able to buy just over one year after our wedding with my inheritance. Though, we had to take out a mortgage to pay the taxes on the inheritance!
We wondered if we'd have kids yet, one, two or three? Boy(s), girl(s) or a combination? Now, we're here & have a 2.5yr old daughter & another baby on the way! :)
What jobs would we have? Paul had just started as a temp worker through an agency at State Farm. I was working at Walgreens & Heartland Comm. College library & taking courses at Heartland. Our original plan was for Paul to work full time to support us while I worked part-time & took my courses to get my teaching certificate, then I would get a teaching job & support us while Paul went back to school to get his teaching certificate.
Well, after how long it took to settle my dad's estate, I'd lost my job at Walgreens. As time went on, I was not interested in dealing with all the red tape & parents that come along with teaching. I didn't know what to do. Paul got hired on directly at State Farm & discovered that it really was a good job w/benefits to have. I got a new position at the college working in disability support. I soon was working with their new program from adults with intellectual/developmental disabilities. I really loved it. We got pregnant with Amber.
After she came along, I went back to work, but was all out of sync with what was going on with the program after being gone for so long. With budget cuts all around, my boss decided my hours would be cut... knowing that meant I'd have to go because we already weren't breaking even with the child care. So, I became a stay-at-home mom. I started working very part time (just a few hours a week) for a friend of mine who's disabled & needs helpers. I also started babysitting Jamie this last year. Paul got a new position that was a great promotion, so we decided we could afford number two. Now, we're expecting again. :) My pregnancy symptoms made it too difficult for me to keep up with helping my friend & Jamie didn't need much babysitting over the summer.
So, that's where we are now. Not exactly what we expected, but still good. :)