Adulting Win

I once watched a little video on Facebook that followed a young man while he posted updates on his Facebook. The gist of the video was that if he posted the truth no one liked it and if he posted something positive everyone payed attention. For example he posted that he was sad about his girlfriend breaking up with him and no one really said much and then he posted something like "Yay, I'm single" and everyone noticed. I REALLY liked this video and while I am in a totally different stage in life (marriage, house, kids) the point was clear. We share the positive and we edit the negative, in our posts, pictures and blogs. Even if we are going through a difficult time in our lives, which is unfortunate because that is when we should be sharing the most so we can receive support. 

So in order to NOT edit out the negative in my life and only share the positive, here is my rather long time coming adulting win I was finally able to experience mid February.

I feel like ever since I got pregnant I have been behind on house chores (and life but this post can't be that long). I didn't get sick per-say this time (more on that later.... maybe) but the fatigue was crippling. I was so tired! I have never been that tired before and it was not fun. I started babysitting at the beginning of September about a month after we moved in and then a month after that I got pregnant. In between all of that we had some visitors, holidays, game nights and just life. For the longest time we were just trying to clean up, organize/ unpack. I also was also not exercising, at all which of course made me feel even more crappy. Then December hit. We put up our tree, we got a TV, we set up our living room and cleaned for a game night. I was finally starting to feel like "yes! Our house is doing so great and we can do this!"

That was a Friday night. Macy got sick the next morning, thankfully it was only once, and all we had to do was clean all of her bedding and a small spot on the floor. Then on Sunday evening Davie got sick, for a full 24 hours. BUT Davie didn't just get sick. He got sick all over the carpet (as in we had to go out THAT night and buy a wet/dry shop vac to clean it up) and all over our NEW couch AND some of the couch pillows..... uuuuughhh. It was awful. We had to clean it immediately. Our couch was out of commission for several weeks until we got it cleaned professionally (totally worth the money we paid when we bought it) thank you upholstery protection plan! The carpet took forever to dry and basically we were up to our ears in laundry. To add to that later that night I got sick too. The kind of sick where you CANNOT eat anything for several hours or it just comes right up. Shakey, clammy awful. ALL NIGHT. I haven't been sick like that in YEARS. Probably about 15 years to be exact. AND The next day I had to babysit (sad face). 

So between getting sick, being fatigued, life and all our other projects I was feeling constantly behind. UNTIL the week of about February 15th. That's right. It was February and I was just barely feeling like we have hit the same level of cleanliness and organization that we had finally accomplished in December. Our computer/office room is still a disaster, but it's full of papers and things that are impossible to sort through with a small child even vaguely present (ESPECIALLY Macy), our bedroom because we don't have dressers means the clothing is out of control and our garage a LITTLE. Our garage isn't too bad though because we can park the Sequoia in there which is a HUGE car so I'm calling it an almost win. 

Anyways I guess where I am going with this is that sometimes in life I get feeling just soooo overwhelmed, like to the point of anxiety, and I feel like I will never get ahead, or even catch up, on my chores and life "things" in general. And way too often I don't think about times like the week of February before we visited Idaho. That last week at home before our trip was great. It's sooooo great to see and feel like we are making progress! I just hope we can all take a moment to enjoy our progress when it does FINALLY happen. I'm still working on getting my daily steps up (thank you Fitbit), but I'm feeling quite positive! There is a light at the end of the tunnel and to prove it I am finally posting some pictures of our house.

 Our Entrance area, to the left of our entrance is the office.

A small glimpse of the office

My super crafty office filing cabinet make over. What you can't see is how un-even the sprays turned out. Most are a matte finish (regardless of what the can said) and the top silver is nice and smooth. Oh well I still love it and the metallic sprays are useful for everything! 

 The downstairs bathroom/guest bathroom is to the right of the entrance area you can see the door. After the stairs is what they call the Drop Zone. It's basically an open coat closet that they built shelves in (not as an upgrade I might add!). It's a life saver. Of course ours only seems to looks this nice and clean about once or twice a week or when company comes :)

 The 4th bedroom is also down there, and even though it is actually pretty clean I didn't take pictures, it's really just an empty-ish room with storage items and my sewing machine.

First floor bathroom/guest bathroom.

This is my super cheap shower curtain from Kohl's, I think I ended up spending like $8 on it. I was excited haha. Mom life no? Trust me it was exciting. I had a very small budget for this room so it took me a while to get the towels and shower curtain. The flowers, mason jar and bird were nice because they were maybe $3.

Isn't that little birdie so cute? Davie found him for me at Habitat for Humanity for like .39 cents and then I painted him gold. I just love him!

 Living room if you go into the house from the entrance area.

Our amazing electronics cabinet that keeps little hands out of everything. I'm basically in love with it.

 Kitchen

Breakfast in the kitchen

Our cabinets

Looking at our front door from the kitchen area

Back to the entrance area and up the stairs.

I finally cut all the little plastic strings hanging out of our carpet and trimmed off the little paint spots left by the painters (don't even get me started).

TOYS! Of course they all leak downstairs and into the kids rooms, but I do try to round them up once a night and get kids to "clean up" completely once a week.

Kids rooms

Macy's pretty pink room

Lamp I re-did. I love gold spray paint

Craigslist dresser for $50. I wish it was a little more sturdy, but for $50 its great.

Davie's green room. I'm not in love with it. I actually kind of hate the green. I can't decide if I went to dark, or too yellow based or if I'm pregnant... etc. Either way I don't like it.

We had initially bought a red book shelf, but I exchanged it because it was just too much red and green with the red chair next to it. Again I can't decide what to do with his room now, it just seems so loud. I have always loved his decor before this and now I finally got to paint his room the color I always wanted to and I don't like it. I'm sure I'll figure something out eventually. I just don't want to/ can't afford to again paint for a while.

Resolute

Last year I didn't really sit down and give myself resolutions. Two reasons #1- I was about to have a baby in less than a month and #2- I was in the middle of studying for the 20 credits I could only receive through what is called CLEP testing. All you need to know about CLEP is that it is like testing out of 10 classes and each class has 9 completely unrelated and random questions. 

Needless to say I was a little busy. This year upon reflection of my biggest problems and anxiety I realized that I the number one thing that could have saved me a LOT of stress (like basically all of it) was time management. So this year my one and only goal is to use my time wisely and get more done. I do better if I have one goal that can be considered more all inclusive that way I can add or subtract from the smaller goals within it without feel in guilty or like I am abandoning my original goal. Basically my goal works like this, at the end of the day if I can sit down and ask myself "did I used my time wisely?". If the answer is yes, great, if not then I can look at what I want to improve on for the next day. 

This last year I have really began to notice how much anxiety I give myself by not planning very well. Typically everything ends well but I know I can relieve my life of a lot of unpleasantness by managing my time better. And there you have it, my new New Year's resolution. Oh and part of than plan involves not blogging as much. Part of not blogging as much means getting posts that are completely disjointed like this-

The other day David gave Davie a banana, he just peeled it a little and handed it over to the little guy. I was so proud because Davie just chowed it down! He is really starting to learn how to eat things by taking bites (still no teeth so he is a bit of a slow learner). 

This is my new phone background, seriously he could NOT get ANY more adorable. Every time I look at this picture my heart just melts, he is soooo beautiful and I love him so much!!!!!

Moby Wrap

So I really wanted a Moby, I registered for one but never got it. Then David looked them up on the internet a little only to find out that they are super easy to make on your own. I can't say I was super surprised after all it's just one huge piece of material but I was happy because this way I was able to pick a print I wanted and it was half as expensive.

Check it out! I love the little frogs

There's a Davie in there

It's great unless the little guy spits up on ya, then you are stuck. Luckily it's only happened once.

Look at him... I am obviously just as sleepy in these pictures.

Different day but still super useful!

The New Dishwasher

Just in case you don't get it, the new dishwasher is ME! Poo! I hate washing dishes it really is my least favorite chore. There's just something about cleaning up cold coagulated and krusty food that I really despise. Just as David and I were nearing the finish line of projects our dishwasher decided to break. Luckily we got through at least one BIG load of dishes before it did. The night Mike and Lauren came and visited we got a lot of stuff dirty, literally twice as many dishes as usual ;)

This is David trying to see if the hoses are clogged, and of course they weren't. Every time the dishwasher ran it wouldn't drain, there would be 2 or 3 inches of water in the bottom and it was not cleaning the dishes properly. Also there was suddenly a rattling noise we had never heard before every time the washer ran. After looking it up on the internet we figured it was most likely a broken impeller (don't worry I didn't know what that was either). About a week later when David had time again he took the dishwasher apart and wah-lah, it was in fact a broken impeller. Here is what we think happened. 

I put my nice metal water bottle through the wash and the lid lost it's metal hinge, darn it. Honestly what are the chances? I was thinking I would have to throw it away because without the lid it was pretty useless, cue David to the rescue, as usual. He crafted a paperclip onto the lid to hold it together and my water bottle was saved!

The new paperclip hinge

I have come to the  conclusion that if this guy ever needs something to fall back on something besides medical school, chemical engineering or just plain being smart he could easily make money as a Jack of all Trades. He seriously figures out how to fix everything! Most of the time I'm glad, haha however, every once in a while though he will save/ fix something that to be honest I would have much rather been able to toss in the garbage. 

The original metal hinge

Back to how the impeller broke. David took apart the dishwasher and opened up the space that had the impeller and guess what we found?? My water bottle's little metal hinge and a broken impeller.

Nasty space the dishwasher goes in. David would like me to let you know that he vacuumed this space up before he put the dishwasher back.

Takin' stuff apart

 Broken impeller, basically all those little marks are supposed to have a half inch little fin on them. Those little fins help pump the water out of the dishwasher and into the drain/ garbage disposal. Like so.

Without those fins a dishwasher is pretty useless.  

This is a picture of the current state in our kitchen. Believe it or not I am actually not ashamed of the dirty dishes and I am about to brag. Between figuring out what was wrong finding the part and waiting for it in the mail all this dishwasher fixing stuff has taken about 2 weeks. Those dirty dishes you see above there are what I have to show for 2 weeks of David or I washing dishes. Also note that the left side of the sink has clean dishes. That is a pretty small pile for 2 weeks. AND to be extra honest I should include this picture as well...

haha our counter is so small we can't hold all of them. Back to why I am still actually quite proud of this pile of dirty dishes. This last week we realized that every time we washed dishes water was leaking out of the hose that is normally supposed to be attached to the dishwasher, creating yet another mess (at least it was under the sink). Anyways with no where for that water to go it was pretty gross so David and I had to resort to paper plates and using as few dishes as possible. And there you have it, I'm just glad the dishwasher was fixed before my Mama, David's Mom and Dad or our baby came. One more project finished!

The Nursery

When we moved here last September this is what our second bedroom looked like.

As time went on it slowly (VERY SLOWLY) got a little better. When we got back from Idaho this summer I began to sell most of the smaller pieces of furniture we had because I knew they were not going to fit in this room or any others. What I was slowly realizing was that if I had something that took up a 2x2 foot space I needed it to go all the way up to the ceiling if possible and I had several shelves that were very short. For example the little white cabinet in this picture was a great little cabinet but it was just too small to keep around and be useful with the amount of space we have.

Then we got new carpet and the room was filled with junk. If I had had just a couple of spare minutes I would have posted this in October when it happened. My plan was to title the post "welcome to our nursery."

There was literally NO room to walk or even lean to get what we needed out of the room.

Hope you don't need anything out of the closet...

This picture is from sometime last week when we were finally able to get a mattress for the daybed and hang up the curtains. I'm really happy with how the window decor turned out. All that worrying about them being too flowery or girly as soon as we hung them up they just look green, whew!

 Thus far this is our final set up. Although I'm absolutely sure it isn't realistic and we will quickly figure that out as soon as baby gets here, but for now I'm not constantly thinking about how we need to organize the second bedroom. What a relief!

 What you see when you walk into the room.

Looking to the left, the green book shelf is from my Great Grandma Hazel, the bed was David's and the bedding was mine. All hand me downs but great nonetheless!

 Turning to the right you have the dresser, crib and the armoire

Standing by the window. The room is a tight fit but we will manage and I am definitely happy with the way it turned out!