I’m An HP Convert...

   I think I might get flamed when I admit this but until recently I had never watched or read an entire Harry Potter movie or book. Yep, apparently I have been living under a rock. I guess I was just never really interested in the whole wizard thing. Then last week B suggested we take a break from my Thirty Before 30 goal of watching AFI’s Top 100 Movies (let’s be serious, some of the movies on that list are just downright boring) and check out what all the Hogwarts chatter was about.

 

So cute when they were little babies.. image via Google.

 

   I am officially a fan. We have now seen all but the two most recent movie (the only ones my brother doesn’t own) and it only took us a little under a week to get through the first six. We were that hooked. I have dreams about butterbeer, I wish the stairs in my house moved, and I am ashamed to say I had no idea that Edward Cullen was a wizard before he was a vampire. Please tell me I am not the only one who jumped on the HP bandwagon late? Do you love (or hate) these kids and their magic powers? 

Nursery Glider {Wish List Wednesday}

   I’ve been a little obsessed with planning the nursery for our little guy recently. Many hours have been dedicated to cleaning out what used to be the “junk room” (yep, we still have unpacked boxed almost a year after moving in..) as well as researching decor and furniture. And I have decided that in case our budget has a random thousand dollars left over I want this bad boy...

 

 

   The Pottery Barn Kids Comfort Grand Swivel Glider, and if we are getting specific here I would like it in white. Unfortunately, the entire nursery budget is LESS than the price of this lovely glider, but a girl sure can dream! Oh, and both B and I have tested the chair out in the store for good measure, and it really is the most comfortable thing I have ever put my pregnant behind into.

 

 

 

{As with all products featured on Wish List Wednesday, I have received no compensation

to feature this item on the blog. My heart just went pitter-patter when I saw it.}

Barbie & Ken Get Hitched

   It’s no secret that I love weddings, and when I was little I more than once made Barbie and Ken get married (sometimes Barbie married G.I. Joe too, but that’s besides the point). So when I saw this recent post on Rock n Roll Bride, I had to share.

 

 

   A French photographer not only put on the best Barbie wedding ever, but took some fantastic pictures that had me giggling for quite a while. My Barbie weddings were certainly never this chic! Click over to check out the entire fabulous little wedding.

Let’s Call This The “Before” {First Floor}

   I know I kind of left you hanging after my last post about our house (this little one about our master bedroom). I have wanted to write about our house since I started this blog, but I have been having trouble figuring out how to “kick things off”. I feel like it is hard to show you where we are going if you don’t really understand where we came from. So I’m backing up a bit and we are going to start with a tour of the first floor and move our way around, the way we first saw it. All the pictures are from either the website listing or our first walkthrough. Well, with the exception of this, which I made on FloorPlanner.com. You would think I have extra time on my hands or something.. 

 

   It is hard to tell what a house looks like from a floor plan, so we can start at the front room, or what we refer to as our front porch. Its actually a three season room and not a porch, but it is mostly just a hot mess and needs a LOT of work. We have big plans for this room... eventually. What you can’t see is the paint that is chipping off the walls, or the windowsills that are rotting. It’s not a cute situation. This view is as if you walked in and looked to your right, and would go straight to go through the front door and down the hall.

 

   When you walk through the front door you can either go straight down the hall back to the kitchen or office, up the stairs (which I loved the first moment I saw them) or right into the living room. Yep, that is one PEACH hallway. Peach halls + one million holes from one million pictures = repainting/spackling nightmare.

 

   If you go right into the living room, this is your view. It reads a gold color in the picture but it was really more of a brown/orange that made me cringe a little. The door you see is just like the rest on the main level (and there are a lot), beautiful glass doors. Since you can’t get an open floor plan in a hundred and forty year old house, at least you get pretty doors.

 

   What is now our dining room was what the previous owners were using as an office/den. It is a pretty narrow room, but actually fits a table nicely.

 

   The door you can see in the picture goes back to the living room, and directly across from that is the door to our one and only bathroom. Yep, right off the dining room, what a fantastic location. Again I apologize for the awesome picture quality, but in case you can’t tell the bathroom was pink. Very pink. B was not a fan of the color, but we were both pretty excited about the size. Old houses normally mean small bathrooms.

 

   If you back up and go into the kitchen this is your view. I love the kitchen, and did the moment I saw it. I loved how bright it was (with two huge windows on one wall and another small one above the sink) and immediately saw the potential of what it could become. B loved that it was twice as large as the last apartment kitchen we had, and that we could both be in it at the same time and not bump into each other.

 

   If you walk through the kitchen towards the back of the house (or come in the front door and walk straight back all the way down the hall) you make it to the sunroom. I guess it really isn’t a sunroom, since it is four seasons but it has tons of windows so that’s what we called it originally. Now it is my office, and who knows what the previous owners used it as since it was empty by the time we walked through. These pictures are actually from our house warming party, we didn’t normally keep ten extra chairs in there. You also can’t see the twenty random holes in the back wall from who knows what. We should have bought stock in spackle before moving in.

 

   Well there you have it, an in depth tour of our first floor with the bonus of all the previous owner’s furniture. I can’t wait to start showing you all the progress we have made so far, so many rooms have already come so far! Have you ever moved into a house/apartment that was completely not your style to start with? Where did you start?

Week 22 – Bump Watch 2011

 

Random observances this week...

   1. I’m pretty sure I grew a considerable amount this week. I mostly noticed it when I felt like I was tipping while wearing heals.

   2. I have always kind of wondered what the bottom of my very deep belly button looked like. Turns out it isn’t very exciting, and I am now praying it doesn’t pop all the way out.

   3. Short road trips are much more difficult when you have to stop and pee every few hours. Or when your husband hits a huge pot hole and you feel like you might pee your pants.

   4. We have officially picked a name for our little dude. But we are waiting to share it publicly for now. No real reason for the big secret, just because we decided to be greedy with this one last detail.

 

Wish List Wednesday : Camera Strap

{ Welcome to the first installment of my newest series, Wish List Wednesday! Check back every week for a new item that makes me swoon. }

 

   My camera strap is boring, and as much as I love being a walking Nikon add, I’m thinking this guy would make me take much prettier pictures.

 

   Also available in a gorgeous orange, but the kelly green had me at hello. Both colors available from Union.

 

 

{As with all products featured on Wish List Wednesday, I have received no compensation to feature this item on the blog. My heart just went pitter-patter when I saw it.}

Week 18-21 – Bump Watch 2011

   Oh hey, remember when I was taking pictures of my growing belly and posting them on the blog for all to see? Yeah, I was doing that wasn’t I? Well, sleep has become a priority over taking/editing/posting pictures of my ever expanding mid section, and since it turns out I haven’t gotten that “second trimester burst of energy” everyone talks about, I have missed posting the last few weeks.

 

 

Random pregnancy stuff I have realized in the past few weeks...

   1. My feet swell like I have run a marathon after walking short distances. My left foot also seems to get bigger than the right, and much faster. Strange.

   2. This kid is getting his kicks seeing how hard he can push on my bladder before I have to run to the bathroom to avoid peeing my pants. I had hoped the possible pant-peeing situations would hold off at least until closer to the third trimester.

   3. Decorating this nursery might just become as labor intensive as planning our wedding was. I am officially obsessed, who knew boy stuff could be so fun?? Mood board and inspiration posts coming soon.

   4. Insomnia is the root of all evil. And on the same note, I didn’t know it was possible to be this exhausted all the time, and yet unable to sleep.

   5. He might be pushing on my bladder, keeping me awake, and overall making me more uncomfortable then I have ever been in my life, but I still CAN NOT FREAKIN WAIT to meet him. :)

 

On Being A First Time Preggo (& The Mean Mommies)

   Its funny how when people find out/realize you are going to be a first time mother how much advice (unsolicited or not) you receive. I’ve tried to take it all with a grain of salt. Especially considering I have always been the kind of girl who does what I want regardless of what others think, the many many pearls of wisdom that have been shared don’t really affect me. Well, that is until recently.

 

   It’s pretty obvious these days that I am expecting. Up until the past two or three weeks I’m pretty sure a lot of people were probably just wondering if maybe I needed to lay off the cupcakes. But now that it’s obvious, the opinions are  free flowing. And with those opinions come the many, many, people who want to tell me that my own opinion is wrong. Sure, we have all done it at one time or another, shared our own two cents with someone who didn’t ask for it. But I am currently a hormonal, emotional, ball of mess, so I can sometimes take it a little personally. I have had more than one episode of tears over a few people telling me how “HUGE” I look (for the record, you would never say that to a woman in any other circumstance, so why do people think its an ok thing when a woman is expecting? Let’s all make a stand to stop that, like now). And while I do appreciate the wisdom of women who have gone through this before me, sometimes it is a little much.

 

   Like I said before, I’ve never been scared to do what I feel is right, and on the same token I’ve never been shy about sharing my opinions, or my thoughts when I make those decisions. But from now on I’m keeping my mouth shut. I had the nerve to share my thoughts on a possible birthing plan with a few women I know recently and you would have thought I told them I was going to let a random man on the street cut my baby out of me tomorrow and hope for the best. All of the sudden I was bombarded with reasons why that would never work. For the record, I have no definite plan at the moment, and I may blog about it later when I do, but the option that I was talking about was a pretty normal way to go, maybe not the most “traditional”, but still a medically accepted and encouraged option. Instead of support, I was instead given horrified looks and head shakes that said “you only think that would work because you have never done this before”. I pretty much got a similar reaction to both cloth diapering and a stroller option from completely different women.

 

   What ever happened to women supporting each other? What happened to us standing together and trying to help one another? I read blogs and websites every day that talk about “Mean Mommies”, and always thought they were a little exaggerated, could women really be that ridiculous, and dare I say competitive, when it came to kiddos? Never in a million years did I expect it would begin before the kid was even out of the womb! A few blog friends of mine have written about this subject before (Marisa at Parenthetical Me wrote about her experience with people always expecting her to be wrong about the plans she is making here, and more recently Stephanie at This Casita wrote a post about the judgmental mamas here) so I know I’m not alone in this. And I know its just going to get worse. I can’t imagine having to continue to deal with the Mean Mommies for the next 18 years. There has to be a secret to blocking them out, or making them go away. Right? Anyone care to share? I don’t want to end up being the mommy who ends up punching a Mean Mommy either, you know?

Books On The Beach

   I’ve always been a big reader. I remember being a very little girl and my mom would read to me and teach me to be “nice” to my books. Don’t throw them on the floor, don’t bend the spine backwards, that kind of thing. I thought of books as my friends and every summer I would devour as many as I could. Do you remember Pizza Hut and their “Book It” program? I always got a lot of free pizza.

 

   Things haven’t changed too much, I still love to read but time gets in the way and I don’t ever seem to have nearly enough of it. Books get pushed to the backburner, which is one of the reasons I made it a point to make time for reading on my Thirty Before 30 list (15 new books to be exact). Since I got the chance to spend a few days at the beach last week I downloaded a bunch of new books to my Kindle and got a nice little sunburn while I became engrossed in my latest read.

 

   Here we go with book number one, Jodi Picoult’s Sing You Home.

 

Purchase HERE on Amazon, or HERE to download on a Kindle.

 

   I am a big Jodi Picoult fan, and her most recent novel is no exception to my love. Sing You Home has everything from gay rights, to pregnancy and loss, and even a few crazy church folks. I highly recommend it if you enjoy a story with characters you can really fall in love with, flaws and all.

 

   For my next pick I started The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

 

Purchase HERE on Amazon, or HERE to download on a Kindle.

 

   I have a history of loving books that are turned into movies (and then of course absolutely hating the movies) so I figured this would be a good pick. So far I am loving it, but am only a few chapters in.

 

   Only 13 more books to go until I can check number 17 off that pesky little list. Any suggestions of what you consider a must-read? Do you have a favorite author you can’t get enough of?

Radio Silence?

   I owe you an apology, here I go and start a new blog and then ditch out after a few weeks. BUT, I have a really, really good excuse. See, when one gets the opportunity to head to the beach, hide from the real world, and enjoy this view for a few days, they take it without stopping to think about scheduling any blog posts. Whoops.

 

 

   One might also forget to pack a camera of any sort and had to steal their husband’s cell phone pictures to have any evidence whatsoever that a vacation actually happened. Whoops again.

 

   Regular posting will resume next week, once I pull myself together and finish battling the post-trip laundry.