34 week update

You may remember my last post where I asked for prayer for a few things concerning my placenta and baby’s position. Today I went for an ultrasound where they were going to check (again) for the position of my placenta and position of the baby. 

I’m happy to report that we got good news on both fronts today! Baby boy is head down and well below my placenta. 🙂 This is great news and takes away the anxiety of even looking at a c-section as an option. If all goes well I won’t be back to see the OB for another ultrasound and the next news I should be posting is when my son arrives!! 

Thanks to all who said a prayer.  I can’t wait to meet this little fella… about 6 weeks to go!

the latest.

First of all, I PROMISE to have some exciting posts soon about some crafty projects that are in the works. For the first part of this pregnancy, I had absolutely no energy. Therefore, I really didn’t make or create anything! Most recently, I’ve just been so darn busy that I’ve had no time to devote to fun projects outside of my photography business. Plus we moved (see below) and that process isn’t even finished!

Anyway, back to the post…

Today I am officially in my third trimester (YAY!) and I feel great. I’ve really had a great pregnancy, other than the morning sickness in the beginning, and all is progressing very well. This past week I had a follow up ultrasound from my 20 week scan where they had found my placenta was lying a little low, so they wanted to recheck it. At this most recent scan, they found the baby is doing great! He’s in the 50th percentile for size, which my midwife told me is exactly where they want him, and his heartbeat is nice and strong. However, my placenta is still low, 2.5cm from my cervix to be exact AND they found a fibrous tumor in my uterus. Now, don’t be alarmed! These tumors are very common and never become cancerous, they are literally just fibrous growths. Well, this little (5cm) tumor is right across the street from my low placenta, thus making it hard for baby to put his little head down and get it nice and nestled and ready for birth. Both the doctor who handles my ultrasounds and my midwife are not alarmed, they just wanted me to know that it is possible he may remain breech.

So, if you read my blog and you pray, please pray that 1) my placenta grows upwards in the next several weeks, 2) that baby boy will find his way into the correct birthing postion, and 3) that I not freak out if neither of these things happen. 🙂

I will go for another ultrasound in January, around my 34th week, and I’ll be sure to update you all then. Hopefully before that I’ll have some awesome projects to share with you!

Thanks in advance for your prayers!

downsizing.

Ugh. We all hate to hear that word, don’t we?

Whether it’s our companies giving people the old heave-ho and calling it “corporate downsizing” or it’s referring to our personal lives and finances, it’s rarely a great thing that we’re talking about. Unless it’s about our clothes/waistline, then, and only then, it’s a good thing!

Well, this week we’re going to be going through a personal downsizing of sorts. Somewhere i’ve heard that babies cost a little bit of money, and after my trip to Babies R Us last night to look at car seats, i understand a bit more what people are talking about. So, naturally, after we found out we were expecting a child the conversation goes to “can we afford this child?” Well, yes we can. But, can we maintain all the things we have right now and still afford this child…. welllll, maybe not.

We’ve known for a while that it’s important to us that I be able to stay home when the time came for us to have a baby. My mom and dad were able to pull it off by clipping coupons, living in a small home and mom made our clothes when we were young.

The biggest place we found wiggle room is in our housing budget. We own a home in Lexington that we rent out, so that situation won’t be changing anytime soon, but we also rent the house we live in. It’s certainly cute and adorable and we love so many things about it, and all the while you look at it and realize we have more space than we need…and we pay for it. Not to mention we pay to heat and cool the unneeded space. So we decided to look for a smaller home where we could save some real money each month, and that’s exactly what we did.

Next week we’ll be moving out of this house and into a house that’s just a little bit bigger than half of the size of our current house. You look at the house we’ll be moving into and realize that it’s more than most people in the world have, so why are there weird emotions of sadness and pride we’re battling? Is it really because we’re going from “having” to “not having”? Are we that prideful that downsizing makes us feel weird? (I say “we” but this may not be what Justin is feeling at all)

when it all boils down, I really think I’d get rid of anything I had to for this baby on the way.

What do YOU think? Would you have weird emotional responses if you had to downsize?

why i’m afraid to become a ‘mom’

I have to be a little honest with you. As I’m going through this experience of expecting and carrying my first child, there are days that I get a little freaked out. Here’s the thing; when I think about Justin and I and our baby all together in our little nest, doing life the way we do life, I feel totally at peace. The part that freaks me out are moms. Not moms that are my mother’s age. No no, I feel like I could hang with them all day. It’s moms my own age that freak me out.

My entire life I’ve never really had very many close girl-friends. I’ve had a few, but I don’t find common ground with lots of women. I find conversations about shopping and baking to be boring and not worth my time {sorry}. To this day I maintain friendships with even less girl-friends. I think this is normal after marriage, you get so close to your husband, and he becomes your go-to for talking, that there’s not much left for you to call your friends about. Maybe it’s just me, and I suck at keeping friendships, but I think there’s a truth to it for most people. So this brings me to my fear of moms-my-age.

I’ve only gotten a glimpse into today’s mommy world, and I keep myself pretty shielded from it even now… I’m just not ready to jump into the deep end yet, and what I see scares me a little. I’m a pretty laid back person, so all the planning and programs and this and that really freaks me out. I’m afraid I’m going to be catapulted into a world of mommies where I just won’t belong, but I’ll feel pressure to. What’s worse than having few friends, is being surrounded by tons of people you have nothing in common with.

This video pretty much makes me crack up:

– – – – – – – – –

What do you think? Is being a mommy enough common ground for you to form a relationship with a person?

What you don’t know…

is very very exciting news. 🙂

About 7 weeks ago, as I was preparing for my first trip to Africa, I found out that I was pregnant! **cue HUGE SMILE!**

Well, I won’t go into all the details of how I found out and blah blah blah, all you need to know is it’s true! We’re expecting to meet our little alien (this is what we call it because that’s basically what it looked like for the first few weeks we knew of it’s existence) at the end of February.

Surprise!!!

The little alien as of 8 weeks.

speed.

I’m not sure if it’s just my age, or what, but over the past few years I’ve noticed my desire to slow down.

Not figuratively.

Literally.

When we go on road trips, now, I want to take the scenic route.  Yes, it may take a few more minutes/hours, but it’s SO worth it to me. I guess it’s because road trips are not all about the destination to me. When the trip becomes all about the destination, the travel becomes a waste of time… and I don’t like to waste time (If you look closely, there’s a deep life-theme in there).

Last year we slowed our roll waaaaaay down and took a hike. It was nice. Spending time in a landscape, instead of zooming by it, is wonderful. When we got back to “real life” I began to run. I like running in new places to take in new scenes. But in all honesty, running is just a little too slow for me. I get to take in the scenery just a bit too long. I really don’t need to see the same tree for the 2-3 minutes it takes for me to run to it.

Lately, we’ve gotten in to biking a bit. This morning as I was riding home from biking with Justin to work, I was taking in all the scenery, feeling blessed beyond belief to be riding through some of the most gorgeous horse farms ever, and realized that biking may be the perfect speed for me. I get to enjoy the scenery longer than when I’m in the car, but faster than a walk or run.

I absolutely love taking in the details along the side of the road. Lately I’ve been noticing huge dandelions. I didn’t know dandelions got as large as softballs, but they do, and it’s awesome.

The more I’m out there the more I’m convinced the the bike is just the right speed.

i’ve been framed!

Every now and then an idea will take hold in my head that I cannot shake. When we moved into our current house we had nothing. The furniture I’m sitting on as I write this is borrowed, and the few things we had to decorate the house didn’t stretch very far. The fireplace needed something over it, so I harnessed my inner artist and drew up a picture, put a frame around it and it looked pretty good.

It did it’s job for a while, but I never felt it was really “us.” So a few months ago I got inspired to do a frame collage in it’s place. I immediately went to the Internet to find some pictures of successful collages and these caught my eye.

All I needed now was to start collecting frames. Well, you know me and my thrifty self couldn’t go buy frames at Target or WalMart, I had to scour the local Goodwills to find some that would work. Now you must know, I frequent the Goodwill. Like, to the point that I’ve looked into whether or not you can deduct Goodwill purchases on your taxes. AND I fully believe they should have loyalty cards, I’d so rock one. Luckily, there are 5 Goodwill retail stores within 7 miles of my home, and they are all north of me, so I do what I call my “Goodwill Tour” at least once a week, maybe more depending on how obsessed I am with finding a specific item. So for months now i’ve been searching for the right frames and this week I completed my collection.

The first step was to get all my frames together and pull out the outdated artwork, encouraging postcards, backings and glass. Then I started playing with the arrangement…

Next step was to get them all the same color. Although I think the idea of the original wood is cool, it’s just much more visibly appealing to have a monochrome theme.

I played with the arrangement one more time and was ready to hang them.

THEN in a crazy turn of events another thought hit me and we did a little more rearranging and came up with the FINAL arrangement (although, no arrangement is ever very final with me around!).

I don’t know the actual figures, but I think this entire project cost me around $25 including the spray paint. Not too shabby!

diy: herb/flower planter

anyone who knows me knows I wasn’t born with a green thumb.

well… that’s sort of an understatement. I’ve actually killed every plant I’ve ever had to take care of. I just can’t seem to remember to water them, or give them sun, or put them in the right place in the house and they, undoubtedly, die.

let’s hope i’m a better mom (when the time comes).

so the natural next step for someone who has killed every green thing bestowed upon them would be to want to start a garden. right?

no?
just me?  
oh.

anyway, this year i REALLY wanted to start a garden, but as the spring marched forward and i realized how much work a real garden would take, and how i’ve vowed to do as little work as possible this year (just kidding), i decided to start with just herbs… because i love them and they are awesome and i figured they would be a little easier to grow.

so a few weeks ago i marched my not-so-little hiney to Lowe’s, then to Southern States and then back to Lowe’s again to get all my fixin’s for a real herb garden. I picked up basil, cilantro, dill, and chives seeds, seed starting soil (probably something Scott’s made up for novice planters like me to spend more $$) and some terra-cotta pots for starting those precious seeds inside while they were still fragile.

Off to a good start! There they were all organized, labeled, and cozy in their fancy seed starting soil. I felt pretty good about myself.  I watched those things like a hawk. Everyday checking for signs of life. On sunny days I would take them outside so they could feel all warm soaking up the sun’s rays and bring them in at night so they wouldn’t freeze, and I actually remembered to water them. Finally, I was feeling like I had some hope of becoming a good mom one day.

Then one AMAZING day (7 days later) I saw this when I came home…

Ahhhh!!  I have created life!!  I literally screamed for Justin to run and come see. It was really cute how much I felt (and behaved) like a kid in kindergarten!

In no time I had this on my hands…

and I knew that soon I would need to find a more permanent home for those seedlings that would go on to become full fledged adult plants.

Well, wouldn’t you know that I did some research and planters were a little over my budget??  Shocking! –I know. So I decided to get thrifty and with a little help and encouragement from Justin we decided we could make planters for way cheaper than they sell them. We checked out some stores for some inspiration and decided to go with some long thin planters.

We stopped by Lowe’s and purchased a 1x8x6′ and a 1x10x4′ piece of whiteboard pine and a pack of lattice strips (6′ long and 10 to a pack). With some quick brainstorming in the aisles of Lowe’s we figured with that amount of wood we could make 2 planters that were each 3 feet long and 10 inches tall.

I knew I wanted a planter with slanted sides, a trapezoid if you will, so I made a super fancy template out of a Papa John’s coupon sheet. You may be on an even tighter budget than me and may need to improvise on a cheaper way to make templates!  I kid, I kid!

Then, trace that template four times on to your 1x10x4′ board by alternating the template. I also left about 1/16″ between the tracings to account for the blade width of the saw.

Then cut that with a table saw or a circular saw or anything that will cut a straight line. These become the ends of the planter.

Then, take that 1x8x6′ board (becomes bottoms) and those lattice strips (becomes sides) and saw those babies right in half. We used two clamps on the lattice strips so we could saw them in one pass. Make sure they are good and lined up before you clamp them so you have strips that are all the same length!!

… check out our high-scale sawhorses… yep, we’re not scared to used coolers as sawhorses!

Next step, nail the bottom board to the bottom (smallest side) of the trapezoidal end  piece.

If you do that with both end pieces and think “hey, I’ve made a breakfast-in-bed tray holder thing!” then you’re on the right track!!

Next step is the last step… YAY!

Take your lattice strips and nail those suckers in to the sides of the trapezoidal end pieces; five strips per side. You can choose to space these out, or stack them close together. Hey, it’s your prerogative!

When you’re done you should have something resembling this:

You can choose to stain, weather protect, paint, seal or cover it with a mod-podged tribute to N*SYNC, whatever you wish to make your planter fit with your decor. We chose to leave it natural (for now) just to avoid chemicals seeping in to our dirt. I don’t want to quote Bobby Brown too many times in this blog, but once again, it’s your prerogative!

Then fill it with your plants! These are my cute basil and cilantro babies…

We produced these planters for a mere $21.00 for both! That’s $10.50 each, which you can compare to a this planter we found at Lowe’s for $63.38, that’s over a $50.00 savings for EACH PLANTER!

Stay tuned for when I will blog about my first cooking experience with my home grown herbs!!

for you, mom.

so, over the past 3 years i’ve started countless blogs.  i have ideas flowing through my head constantly, it’s part of the curse of the creative brain… lots of ideas, less follow through.  it makes people like me perfect for brainstorming sessions and concocting grand ideas and problem solving. but less great about finishing the tasks or seeing projects through to completion.

of course, that entire dynamic changes when you have projects that are extremely personal.  then, the resolve of a creative type is unparalleled!

i get extremely passionate about things and i want to share them.  i believe i have a voice to share and that there are people who want to hear it.  also, i live far away from my family.  625 highway miles to be exact.  and even though distance doesn’t change how much we love each other, it does change how much we know about each other.  so this blog will also help my family keep up with my life and that eventually will boil down to my most loyal reader being my mom. so bottom line, this blog is for you, mom.

this is my mom and me over 5 years ago! (mom, we need new pictures!)

so, my plan here, in this blog, is to harness all my many facets of life and bring them together.  instead of having a blog over here about 1 thing and a blog over there about another, all of which will flounder and eventually fail, i’m condensing to one blog about my life.  including projects, struggles, thoughts and just what is happening in life.  maybe y’all could help keep me on track and email me weekly about updating my blog.

Lessons from a yard sale.

This morning I was all excited.  Fall has fully set in here in Central Kentucky and I’m really excited that we’ll be moving into our new rental home next week.

What excites me about this combination of new house and autumn weather is that I get to be all nest-y in the fall; my favorite time to nest!  Yesterday I was driving around knowing that I would want to wake up today and hit up some yard sales.  I just had to clear it with Justin to be sure we were on the same page.  (A good deal is NEVER good if your significant other doesn’t agree with the purchase!) <— that’s lesson #1.

So, yesterday I cleared it with Justin and this morning I awoke with a special spring in my step!  First things first, check craigslist and see what’s out there.  I found an intriguing ad and decided that would be my first stop.  I got dressed, headed out the door, stopped by the atm to withdraw a certain amount of cash (mine was $40, yours can be whatever you know you can afford), knowing any purchase that cash couldn’t cover would be one I’d need to check with Justin about, and thus, creating boundaries for myself.  <—- and that is lesson #2.

I headed to yard sale number 1 with a clear idea of the things we need to set up home.  (Lesson #3: prepare a mental list, or write one down if you’re ambitioius, of the things you really would like to get). I’ll be trying to run a business out of the house, which means I’ll need a fully functioning office with a place to entertain clients, plus a photography studio.  We’re also in need of some seating to go with the table we made a few months back.  So my list was:

• seating for clients
• office furniture/accessories
• kitchen chairs

Right now, these are the items most important to me.  Decorations and such can come later, but having a place to meet with clients is imperative!

So I got to the first yard sale and started chatting up with the hosts.  I told them what I was looking for and why and they told me that down in their basement they had a couch and a futon as well.  ALWAYS talk to the hosts, be friendly, they may have something inside they haven’t had a chance to move, or they just didn’t WANT to move that is perfect for YOU!  <—- Lesson #4.

The host showed me to the basement where I was greeted by a couch that looked PERFECT for our office.  The office in the house is painted a dark gray, so only light/bright furniture will do.  My business color palette happens to be gray, yellow and white.  Just guess what color that couch was?!  You got it… YELLOW!!  I showed interest in it and asked for a price, she happily told me she’d sell it for $90.  When you compare this to what a new couch costs, it’s a bargain.  The couch looked good, matched my vision of the room and was in the price range I was looking for, it looked like we were about to do business.

Before I handed over the cash, I did an important step, I made sure it fit in the room.  (Lesson #5) Yes, I’ll admit, it was a hassle.  But nothing is worse than getting a good buy, being all excited and getting it home to realize you can’t use it.  Now YOU’LL have to find a buyer!  But I measured that couch, then jumped in the car, headed to our house and measured the room.  When I knew it would be a fit, I headed back and put my money where my mouth was!

We got the couch to the house and realized the bottom frame needed some help, but to fix it we just need a hammer and maybe one piece of 1″x3″ wood.  When a repair costs little to no money to make, it’s worth it.  <— and that is Lesson #6

So let’s review:

1. Talk with your significant other/spouse before you head out and agree on purchases you may want to make.  If you’re single, just consult your checking account and be realistic.
2. Create boundaries. Carry only as much money as you’re willing to spend.
3. Go with a clear idea of what you need. That way you’re not buying every cute lamp you find even though you already have a closet full of lamps you’re not using.
4. Chat with the hosts of the yard sale. Be friendly.  Tell them what you’re looking for.
5. Measure the item, measure your room. This is obviously for larger items.  Don’t buy something you can’t use… that’s NOT a good deal!
6. Assess the damage and don’t be afraid of a little elbow grease. If there is any damage, make sure you know how to fix it.  Getting something home just to realize you’ll have to spend ANOTHER $50 repairing it doesn’t make for a good deal.  But, don’t be afraid to break out the hammer or screwdriver and put something back in it’s place!

PS… Wanna know the BEST part of a purchase like this?  Google-ing the company to realize you just got a $800 couch for $90!  Now THAT is refusing to pay retail!!