Where I Blog

Most of the blogs I read I have been introduced to by my Mum, or found them through a blog she has shown me. Mum is like my own personal shopper - for blogs. So one way or another she probably introduced Centsational Girl to me. I saw her invitation to a Where Do You Blog? party and figured why not join in? I've actually never participated in any kind of group blog event so this is a first.

At this point I have to say thank you to Shawna for being braver than me and fiddling with my camera settings yesterday. Whatever you did, the pictures are certainly looking better and brighter with colors more true to life!

I wish I had somewhere incredibly gorgeous to show you but it's pretty basic.

I spend probably, and this is no exaggeration, 90% of my time while on the computer with one kid or the other climbing all over me. Freya is still at the age where she is nursing quite frequently, so more often than not I'm snuggled in to my corner of the couch, babe in one arm and blogging or browsing with the other. I am literally doing that right now.

Back before I had a toddler who figured out how to climb over the back of the couch or pull down baby gates, the desk in the background was mine. Now it's basically storage only. I keep handy the things I need most often, the external hard drive for my laptop is hooked up most of the time, usually the camera sits next to it when unused and the pile of stuff I'm working on or need to look at is behind that. Right now there is the magazine I'm currently going through and cutting stuff out of for my illustrated discovery journal, a blank but beautifully illustrated notebook, a cookbook filled with lots of Australian recipes that I haven't had in over 6 years now, a hand written recipe and household advice book by my great grandmother, and a little box of old jewelry that I am going to get my Mum to tell me the story of each piece. Several of those items will end up being the subject of blog posts.

The reason this place works best for me is that it is comfortable, where the kids play most of the time, where the tv is so I can monitor what Desana watches or watch something with Matt. It just helps me to not feel isolated or stuck while nursing.

Someday I hope to have this kind of table that you can find the plans for over at Ana-White.com

A few weeks ago I saw this advertised on kijiji for over $400 used. The seller said they bought it for over $800.

Image source: Pottery barn - Bedford project table set

On Ana's site she has it listed under the $20-$50 price range and said she based it on a table that was priced at almost $1200. Someone commented saying they spent about $130 making theirs. Either way, that is no where near retail price!

So why don't you wander over to Centsational Girl's blog party and check out some of the literally hundreds of different blogger's places. If you've wandered over here from there, say hi and I hope you stick around awhile!

Another use for jars

We had a pretty busy day today that I might blog about tomorrow, but in the meantime here's a tiny little post for you.

Desana can both climb over babygates now and pull them down, so when she wants to get to the back of the house there is no stopping her! So I've had to come up with a more creative way of storing my rings and other jewelry. She loves getting in to all my stuff!

This little jar was in the bag of baby food jars that my mother-in-law gave me. I thought it was cute so I kept it and pretty quickly figured out a great use for it.

Safe and sound...

I screw the lid on really tight and Desana has no chance of getting it open.

...pretty too

Neat huh?

Paint Color Conumdrum

I have been debating my choice of paint color for the as yet unpainted girls room ever since I saw this picture a few days ago.

Image Source: Pottery Barn Kids

I love how the pink accessories (curtain, bedding) look against the green. So bright and fresh!

Before that I was 99.99% sure I would go with this color, or something close to it:

Source: http://tranquiltownhouse.blogspot.com/

As for the purple, well, if you didn't already know I guess I'll tell you. Yes, it's my favorite color.
What do you all think? If you have any picture suggestions, link me to them!

A Day In The Sun

Shawna has been an extra good friend to me lately, putting up with HOURS of my company over the past two days since I've been battling a bit of depression rearing it's oh-so-lovely head. Today it was so hot out we decided to take advantage of the dwindling summer (I suppose technically it's autumn out now, but our trees and temperature haven't really clued in yet... SHH!) and Shawna set up the kids pool in her backyard. It was fun! I am fairly certain Desana could have stayed in there all darn afternoon if we let her. Splashing away, perpetually drinking the pool water (just like she does with the bath water, dirt and bubbles and all - eeeyuk!).

I got a few pictures, but I'm going to admit that at this point I am mostly a point and click kind of picture taker. I have a fabulous camera that I bought secondhand from one of my lovely online friends - Zaira (check out her blog too!), I just need to dedicate myself to learning how to use it to it's full potential. Trust me, the longer I blog the pictures I include are going to improve. Ummm... you can remind me of that when they don't. ;)

Ok Mum, I'll give you a little smirk...

We got all packed up and waited outside, car seats and all for Shawna to come and pick us up. Desana was all ready to go in her swimsuit, hat and flip-flops. Man she is a cutie and a terror that one.

The reason why I apologised in advance for my picture taking lack of abilities is that the brightness factor on these pictures is INSANE. I'm going to fiddle with them in photoshop a tiny bit before I stick them in here, but aarrrrggghhh.

BFFs Bryna and Desana

I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but these little girls wouldn't look up when we asked them to, or if they did it wasn't co-ordinated! But you can see they are having lovely fun splashing in the pool with all the toys.

Freya with Auntie Shawna <3

Freya was being a bit of a grump and wouldn't smile for the camera.

Yours truly with the littlest grumpy munchkin

Not a fan of having my picture taken, but whatever. Here I am.

Bryna ended up needing her nap so I snapped some pictures of Desana and around the yard while Shawna was inside putting her down.

Delicious pool water

I know all parents think their kids are beautiful, but boy oh boy...

Isn't she just?

Unlike yours truly, Shawna actually had a genuine flower growing in her garden!

THREE genuine flowers!

I'm not sure what exactly they are, roses maybe? Beautiful no matter what they are called.

Though in one dark corner I did see a familiar face...

The much debated - but are they weeds or flowers?! Hah! I'm not the only one who has them. But it's ok Shawna, I won't tell anyone... except for all my blog readers...

We had a lovely day chatting away, and thanks to a suggestion Shawna gave me about perhaps just putting Freya down to sleep on the couch next to me instead of attempting to put her in the crib all the time, I've actually been able to write this post in one sitting. With two typing hands. Yikes! I could get used to this.

P.S. I also should add that Shawna gave me a gorgeous white wooden ikea coat hanger, so I've moved all my necklaces over to that and will be subjecting you to one or more photos of my necklaces, YET AGAIN, sooner or later. Thank you dear friend!

Wakeful in Winnipeg

Image source: twob

Time is a funny thing. When you're waiting for a special date it passes oh so slowly, and when you want the time to last it goes by way too fast. I remember the first week I went on maternity leave, I was amazed at how long the day was. I was used to being out of the house until 6pm, so being at home all day with Desana it felt like the days were four days long. In a good way. Now that I'm at home with two kids the day passes pretty quickly and is over before I've accomplished half of what I set out to do.

My littlest munchkin is going through a really clingy stage and starts crying anytime she sees me even attempting to walk away from her. Putting her down for naps now is pretty much impossible as she wakes up as soon as I put her down. I try picking her up and putting her down again, but she just wakes up over and over. It's incredibly frustrating. She's too young for me to feel comfortable just letting her cry for awhile yet. She completely loses it. For example, she just woke up after being down for 5 minutes. Great nap time. ;)

Basically for now I'm in a perpetual state of sleep deprivation. No baby free time during the day, and at night we are co-sleeping so I don't have to get up constantly as she wakes up. I'm very much over it, but despite the fact that she hogs the bed and kicks me all night long, I'm getting more sleep this way than I would the other.

Now I just wonder if I'll ever get used to waking up with what I imagine a hangover must feel like.

I bought a sleep cd that is a recording of noises in the womb and apparently helps babies sleep, and some 6+ month pacifiers. Both are on their way in the mail. I'm hoping to find something that works. I'm still hunting kijiji for a reasonably priced and decent looking rocker recliner. In the meantime...

YAWN!

Artful necklace display

I can't believe that I let all these beautiful necklaces sit hidden away in a cupboard for so many years! It's always been a disaster trying to pull out a specific necklace from my jewelry box, everything was so tangled. I googled some variation of necklace organisation and found this:

 Image Source: countryliving.com

Isn't that amazing? It's an old rake head that has been repurposed to a necklace holder. I thought about putting something similar on the back of my bedroom door but realised that opening and closing the door would make too much noise, and with Freya still in bed with us most of the time, and being a super light sleeper that just would not work!

That is when I lifted my eyes and thought, hey! What about the window? Since I'm doing my best to work with what I have, I just grabbed one of my extra plastic hangers (a wooden hanger would be beautiful) and got to work stringing up all my necklaces. I seriously had forgotten that I even owned some of them. Now it's a beautiful little kind of art piece that I see when I walk into the room, it's an easy way to see what I have and to choose what necklace I might like to wear on any given day.

It's almost like having a picture on the wall, since every necklace has a memory. Gifts from friends and family, the necklace I wore on my wedding day, the necklace I bought when I started coming out of my depression.

Pretty. :)

Uppercase Living: Master Bedroom

I didn't make it to the uppercase living party, so I wasn't able to see an actual in-person demonstration of installation. Let's just say that made things interesting, but at least I have some in-type suggestions for you!

When I made my purchase there was a buy one get one free promotion going on, so I picked up a couple of extras that I didn't have a specific place in mind for. Then of course this big old empty space above our bed came to mind.

My biggest issue was that our bed isn't centered on the wall because of a dresser we have off to the right. This presented quite the conundrum to me until Matt made the obvious suggestion of just centering the quote on the wall, and we can always move the bed later. Why didn't I think of that?!

I gathered all the tools I was going to need, the instructions, a pencil, tape measure, scissors and tape, a level and the application tool (which can be substituted with a credit card or something similar). The only thing that isn't shown here, that I could have used, is an extra set of hands! Something to keep in mind if you're applying a larger sized expression.

Next came the centering. I measured the entire length of the wall, minused the length of the expression and halved the final number. That gave me the amount of inches that needed to be on either side of the expression. After that I measured from one wall to that halfway point and marked it with pencil, so I knew that was where the edge of the expression should go to be centered on the wall.

Then I lay the expression out on a flat surface and put the level on top of it, drawing a line from one tip of the guide triangle to the other, so there was a straight line across the expression to help me level it later on.

Now I needed to figure out at what height to place the expression. I was leaning towards only a little bit above our pillows, about the level of the top of the lamps but leaving enough room that if we decided to add a headboard somewhere down the line it wouldn't cover it.

I taped it to the wall on the two sides. Then I moved it up and down and stared at it for roughly 24 hours. That wasn't exactly my intention, but while I was dealing with all of the above I was stopping every two minutes, trying to keep Desana from grabbing the tape measure or scissors. Life with kids! Makes it hard to get anything done.

I consulted with Matt over the height, he wanted it much higher on the wall than I did. I figured some of that probably had to do with our height difference (he has at least 6 inches on me). So I took to facebook. Both Shawna and my midwife (yep, she delivers babies AND gives home decorating advice ;)) sided with me on putting it at eye-height. So I measured from the floor to roughly the height of my eyes, which ended up being surprisingly higher than I expected, as you will see.

Outline the corners with pencil, then do it another three times as you change your mind and move it around!!!

Once I decided on the height I got out the level and held it even with the line I had drawn down the center of the expression, then made little adjustments in height until it showed as level. Finally it was time to get to sticking it on the wall. I had followed the instructions and firmly run the application tool thingy over it a whole bunch of times, and did it again once it was in position on the wall. I decided to go with the hinge method which was taping it to the wall at the top of the expression and then folding it upwards, and slowly peeling away the backing.

This was pretty tricky. Because of the style of the expression there were certain letters that were sticking so it was slow going. I have to say yet again, if you're planning on putting up a lengthy expression, save yourself some stress and get a friend or someone to help you out with it.

Once I had the backing away, all the sticky stuff was exposed, so I slowly lowered it and smoothed it against the wall. I used the application tool thingy (thingy is a handy word for when you really don't know what something is called) to make sure it went on smooth without any air bubbles. Then it was time to pull away the top layer, leaving the words on the wall.

That was much more difficult than anticipated. My biggest advice at this point is to go r.
..e...a...l...l...y... s...l...o...w...l...y... and keep the application tool thingy handy as you will more than likely have to use it again. I had to many many times.

Finally, stand back and question your irreversible height choice. Oh wait! That should have said admire. ;)

Live simply - Speak kindly - Love generously

Nice and simple. As you can see, there did end up being plenty of room for a maybe someday headboard.

Obviously the final step is to erase any of the pencil guidelines you might have made on your wall. Yep, you guessed right, it's on my to-do list. One of those anti-procrastination days I'll get around to it!

The Bee

Image source: wwarby

This morning I was going about my usual little routine of making the bed then folding and putting away the clothes in my bedroom, while Freya played in the playpen at the end of the bed, and Desana ran around making her usual chaos. Then I heard a buzzing noise. I looked at the window figuring it was a fly, saw a big bee which then, of course, flew towards me and landed on the bed. Commence me going 'umm, errrr, arrgghhh' (and a few questionable words that thankfully Desana has yet to repeat) trying to figure out something to catch it with. I grabbed one of Matt's socks, decided that wouldn't work. The bee crawled all the way across the bed and up a shirt that was draped over the edge of the laundry basket. Then it took off!

Desana and I both squealed and docked and dodged, then I did the unthinkable and abandoned my child, crawled across the bed at the other side of the room and ran to the kitchen to grab a paper towel. I peeked around the corner and saw the bee come flying out of the bedroom and land on the hallway floor. I grabbed a glass from the cupboard, crept up to the bee and put the glass over it. I spent the next minute trying to find something to cover the glass, rummaging through the recycling bin until I found an appropriately correct sized piece of cardboard. I opened the backdoor in preparation to take the bee outside. Then I wiggled the cardboard slowly under the glass, the bee looked like it was on it's last legs, barely moving. I initially thought it was dead. Once I lifted the covered glass Desana took a close look 'Hi Bee' and waved at it. The bee waved back (no, seriously, it lifted a leg!). As soon as I got outside the house the bee started flying inside the glass. I removed the cardboard and the bee flew away.

Image source: seelenstrurm

What I found remarkable was that this bee went from looking like it was at death's door to full recovery once it saw the great outdoors. Basically, being in the right environment for it, helped it flourished.

Something to think about, are your surroundings helping you flourish? If not, what little steps can you take today to improve that? Move a picture from one room to another, give yourself an extra 15 minutes of time to unwind before bed, step outside and look up at the sky for 2 minutes. My mama always says... A change is as good as a holiday.

Hi Mum. :)

Kimmi Dolls

I've been busy with the weekend, my tantruming toddler, my baby who only naps when I'm holding her and my fiddling with blog stuff that for the most part you probably won't even notice! So for a quick update tonight I thought I'd show you these adorable Kimmi Dolls that my Mum sent Desana.

Just a note to any one who has a two and a half year old, if you get a package of similar relatively small sized items, you might want to count them before handing them over to your kid. I have literally no idea of how many of these dolls we actually received, and my Mum can't remember how many she sent!

They are very small but surprisingly heavy. Each doll has it's name on the bottom and has a special meaning. These mini-dolls are only $10 each so make a very affordable gift, and with the attached meanings, very touching too.

After I took the group picture of the dolls above, this little one appeared out of no where. She is my favorite (I love the flowers in her hair!)

Her name is Sachi and her meaning is Joy. When I read her description I was surprised at how apt it is for my life right now!

My spirit enriches and uplifts.

By embracing my spirit and approaching everything in life with passion and enthusiasm, you can make even the simple and ordinary, memorable and enjoyable.

There are so many cute products on the website, I might have to add some to my wishlist! Check out this cute compact mirror.

For the regular traveler you could pick up one of these gorgeous bag tags.

My personal favorite, I have a real weakness for notebooks and this one is just stunning!

Tomorrow I will hopefully be back with a regular blog post. Keep sending your comments my way, it makes me so happy! :)

p.s. This 'quick' post took me two and a half hours to write. Oh motherhood!

Master Bedroom

I finally took a few shots of our master bedroom that I mentioned a few posts back. Of course it'd be nice if it was in 'perfect' condition when I showed you, but flylady says... (yes, I'm going to say 'flylady says' fairly often) that perfect is a bad word. Completely an unrealistic expectation.

Anywhoo, here it is, as is!

We have a king size bed. Forgive me if I've already raved about this stuff before. :) We purchased it the first weekend after I found out I was pregnant with Freya. We were still co-sleeping with Desana at the time and neither of us particularly felt like hugging the edges of the bed for a few more years! It is huge but luckily fits in our bedroom, with room for two night stands.

Here is a close up shot of my beautiful new bedskirt.

No, I do not believe in ironing!

It's an ikea bedskirt that I found on kijiji for $20. It fits queen or king, and I'd only been able to find bedskirts for $60 so I was happy. Matt so does not get why I wanted or like a bedskirt.

Here is a close-up of one of our new lamps, another kijiji find at $40, originally purchased for $160! They are Matt's style, not mine, but the height of the lamps seem to work with the width of the bed and it is amazing how much a difference the matching lamps make in the overall look and feel of the room.

Here's the other side, dancing toddler and all. The playpen is a temporary thing for when it's impossible to put Freya down for naps in the girls shared bedroom for whatever reason. I've also been using it to put her in when I'm doing chores at the back of the house. Particularly those involving the stacked washer/dryer you can see just outside the door.

On the wall next to the door is a canvas painting/quote by Rhonda Kullberg. I will probably eventually frame the frangapani card. We used those cards as thank you notes after we were married in Australia. Frangapani's are my favorite flower. I wanted them in my wedding bouquet but they are very delicate and fade and bruise very easily, so we had frangapani sugar flowers on our cake instead.

My kid does occasionally wear clothes, but in weather like this I can't be bothered fighting her over it.

This is my least favorite part of the room, the bookcase and dresser. I find the bookcase to be visual clutter, and although we are both avid book lovers and readers, I'd rather not have it in our bedroom. But we have a small house and I was sick of having a crowded hallway. The dresser bothers me because of the tight squeeze between the bed, but it is a necessity. Maybe we could get a tall narrow one!

Here is my little improvised necklace holder. I'd like to have a nice wooden coat hanger at some point, but for now it is a lovely visual by the window. I have a whole different blog post about it planned. Stay tuned. . .

Here's my little pumpkin snuggled in to bed with an age-inappropriate Sookie Stackhouse book. My small purple 'Happiness' pillow next to her is a keepsake from my life back home in Australia. Now that I am living my life in the pursuit of happiness, it seems apt.

Sure looks like a nice place to sleep to me! Now if only I ever had it to myself. :)

Shhh... Sana sleeping.

It's been a long time coming, but it is now my favorite room in the house. Matt installed the laminate floor and we both painted, the closet had a decent shelving system in it when we bought it. The matching curtains for the window and closet were purchased with a giftcard from my mother-in-law. The dresser, bookcase and Matt's bedside table were all hand-me-downs. My bedside table was a kijiji find, as were the lamps ($120 off retail price, wow!). The bedding was my birthday present, and the sheets an ebay debacle.

Our room is almost 'done' (to my standards). We need baseboard, a couple of outlet covers, a few little paint touch-ups and I've decided to put an uppercase living saying up above the bed. Problem is that the bed isn't centered on the wall because of the dresser on the window side that would make it impossible to squeeze between if the bed was centered. I don't know how I'm going to figure that one out. But when I do you can bet I'll show you!