Quick, before I get Sidetrack'd

This post is quite laden with pictures.  I apologize if it takes a while to load. 

Wow, we got quite a bit done this week (especially over the weekend)! I think I actually accomplished everything I intended to plus a few extras.

The big tackles for this week were Boo’s room, getting baby things from the attic, and finishing the burp cloth sewing project I started.

Let’s start with Boo’s room…

This is what the room looked like when we moved in two years ago:

During the two years we’ve lived here it has been used primarily for storage. When we found out we were expecting there were boxes piled everywhere, the closet was filled with miscellaneous stuff, and it was generally a pretty scary place (especially if you were looking for something specific). Over the last couple of months we’ve been hard at work cleaning out, decluttering (although we still have some to do), painting, and making it a bedroom again.

This weekend, Matt hung new closet doors, we moved the rest of the nursery furniture out of Little’s room and into Boo’s, and we put his shelf with his name letters on the wall. Over the last week I also got his clothes, the bedding, and all of the covers for carseat, swing, etc washed and dried.

Today it looks like this:

The burp cloth project…

Please do not look too closely at the pictures. I am a beginner teaching myself to sew, and this is my first start-to-finish completed project. I’m proud of the fact that I actually finished a project for once even though it is certainly far from perfect, and I’m pleased with the way the fabric/ribbon combinations turned out. When I got frustrated Matt kept reminding me that this was something that Boo was going to throw up on; he certainly won’t care if all the seams are perfect and the stitching straight.

I also finished my Spring cleaning and the cleaning I needed to do before company, wrote all of my Thank You’s (for birthday and baby gifts), and got my birth plan into my chart at the doctor’s office.

Up next – packing the hospital bag and installing the carseat. Nothing too strenuous this week, but definitely things that are important.

Good luck with your tackles!

Well, the tackles for this week didn’t go down exactly as planned; I forgot that Matt would have a nice long weekend (he was off a 1/2 day Thursday and all day Friday) due to my birthday and Good Friday.  I also didn’t think about Thursday being my birthday which meant I took the day off from household chores.  But we enjoyed Matt’s extra “stay-home” days and even managed to get a few things accomplished.

First tackle – a written birth plan.  I was storing a lot of information in my head regarding what I want and don’t want for Boo’s birth.  On Thursday I put those thoughts on paper and will take a draft copy to my doctor’s appointment to discuss.  There isn’t anything wild or crazy, but it is nice to know that my goals are written down so that others will be aware of them.

Around the house – On Friday, Matt washed both of our cars, vacuumed the interiors, and cleaned the windows.  This was a tackle that really needed to be done; our cars were pretty yucky as we emerge from winter.  It’s been wonderful to get into a clean car the last few days.

And on the baby Boo front – We bought some of the wall decor we will use in the nursery, a set of 3-D letters in brown paperboard that spell his name and a ledge shelf to display them.  Hopefully, we will get some work done in his room this week/weekend and I’ll have some pictures to post next week.

I also began a sewing project for the boy, a set of cute burp cloths from this tutorial.  Not really a difficult project, but quite time intensive for a novice, teaching-myself seamstress.  I am down to stitching everything together, so it shouldn’t take me too long to finish.

Up next – 36 week doctor’s appointment (today), dust house, do regular cleaning (bathrooms, kitchen, vacuum, etc) before company this weekend, finish Boo’s burp cloths, bake bread, get baby things from attic (Matt’s job), write Thank You notes, get to work putting Boo’s room together.  Sounds like a pretty busy week for me.

Happy tackling!

And as an aside – I’m hosting a book giveaway this week.  If you’re interested, check it out here.

Today is a good day because it is:

a) the first official day of Spring
b) my birthday
c) the beginning of the Spring Reading Thing
d) time for a Sidetrack’d giveaway (check it out here)
e) all of the above

If you picked “e”, congratulations and happy March 20th!

I’m having a bit of a tough time with my reading list this Spring.  In fact, I wasn’t sure I was going to participate in SRT at all, but since I know I’ll be reading anyway, I might as well set a few goals.  My reading will be complicated by a few things: first, Boo’s arrival in a few weeks will definitely impact the time and energy I have to devote to reading; second, my local library is changing locations and is closed for the next couple of weeks (this could make it a bit more difficult to get some of my books); and third, I’m having trouble deciding what I want to read.  As always, I reserve the right to add to, subtract from, or alter this list as I see fit.

And with all my excuses out of the way, here is my list…

Non-fiction:
John Adams by David McCullough
Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss
A Midwife’s Story by Penny Armstrong
The Thinking Woman’s Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer
The Complete Book of Sewing by DK Publishing (won’t finish this one by June)

Fiction:
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Austenland by Shannon Hale
The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory
Mater Biscuit by Julie Cannon

Bible Study:
Until the baby arrives, I’ll be continuing my study of the gospel of Matthew through Bible Study Fellowship International; after that, I haven’t yet decided what I will do.

The books listed here will be added to my bookshelf in the sidebar and will remain there until the challenge is completed (or I get them read if I don’t finish by June).

For more information on the Spring Reading Thing or to view the other participants lists, click on the button at the top of this post.

Happy Reading!

This week it was back to Spring cleaning.  I finished up a couple of things that still needed to be done in the living room and moved on to the hallway. I wiped the fingerprints off the walls, cleaned the baseboards and door frames, cleared out the cobwebs, and scrubbed the air intake for our central heating/cooling system. And I got in trouble for standing on the step stool to reach the areas above my head (Matt doesn’t like me to stand on things while I’m this pregnant).Spring is in the air and Little is outgrowing her 12-18 month size clothes.  So, I tackled her closet on Friday.  I removed all of the outgrown (there were smaller sizes piled in the bottom of the closet and some of her winter stuff that is too little) and too wintery clothes, bagged them (I store all of her clothes in zipper baggies to help prevent storage yuckies), labeled the bags, and boxed them up.  Now they are ready to go in the attic when Matt goes up there to get the baby stuff.  I also pulled all of her Spring/Summer clothes out of her “to-grow-into” bag, washed them, and found homes for them in the closet.  It’s nice to have this taken care of since the temps are warming up and Boo’s arrival will make projects like this difficult for a while.Up next on the tackling agenda – a couple of projects for Boo and his room, some deep cleaning in the master bedroom, and writing up a birth plan.Happy Tuesday and happy tackling! 

At the moment I should be tackling sleep, but, alas, pregnancy insomnia strikes again and here I sit typing a blog post instead. It seems there is no rest for the pregnant and weary.

My big tackle for this week has been cleaning the inside of my refrigerator. It is truly amazing (and pretty gross) the amount of gunk and funk that can accumulate on fridge shelves and walls over a period of time. So Thursday I set to work washing shelves and those little door compartment thingies, wiping down the walls and door, and scrubbing underneath the bottom drawers. Not a fun job, but definitely one that needed to be done. And now my fridge is nice and clean; we’ll see how long it stays that way.

I also dusted (there’s that word again) the inside of our TV cabinet. Because we have a low-sitting cabinet the doors have child-safety locks on them and I just don’t think about cleaning in there. Needless to say, it had become quite dusty over the last several months.

And, I’m still at work on the magazine pile; it is slowly dwindling. I think I’m down to 5 or 6 issues, but I’ve focused most of my reading time this week on The Birth Book in preparation for Boo’s arrival.

What is to come this week? I’m not sure. Matt has been on me the last few weeks about doing too much, so I’ll probably try to take it a little easier on the “extra” housework. We have company (my SIL and her family) coming this weekend, so I will definitely get the cleaning basics done. Other than that, there are a few projects that I’d like to (or need to) get done before baby comes. And today, I must finish my Bible Study before I go to class tomorrow morning.

Good luck with your tackles!

To those of you who stopped by and commented last week on Tackle it Tuesday: Welcome and thanks for visiting; I hope to see you again! I apologize for not making the rounds last week, life got in the way and I didn’t get to visit the other participants; I’ll try to do better this week.

And now on to our tackles…

The biggest thing accomplished in our house this week was that Matt finished painting the trim in Boo’s room. Yay! Now we can begin the decorating/furniture placement phase of this operation. Before and after pictures will be posted at some point.

For my part, I’ve made a dent in the tackles I set out to accomplish and conquered a couple of other things. First, the magazines…

This is what my stack looked like when I started. I’m not caught up yet, but I’ve reduced the stack size by approximately half. The remaining half will go on my tackle list for next week.

From my housekeeping/nesting list I dusted the bookshelves and wiped down the baseboards and walls in the living room. Because I’m not a very thorough duster, the shelves were probably a bigger job than they should have been. It does feel good to have these two things accomplished, though.

The plan for next week includes cleaning the fridge (I’ve been procrastinating a bit on this one), the living room wipe down/dusting (still lack upper moldings and tops of doors as well as the inside of the television cabinet), and completing the magazine job.

Good luck with your tackling!

We’ll start with the couple of other things…

I’ve been out of the bloggy loop for a few days due to a change in our web-hosting service. If you notice anything wonky with the site please let me know. (Don’t you just love it when you have reason to use made-up words like “wonky”?)

I’m having a bit of trouble with WordPress and comment e-mails. If you are a first time commenter it may take a while before your comment is posted due to the fact that I’m not receiving e-mail telling me there is a comment in moderation. Also, if you leave a question in the comments I may or may not realize it is there and reply. I am trying to look at WordPress regularly to check comments, so I will get to it eventually (probably). Please bear with me as my web-guru and I attempt to solve the problem.

In other, and less technical, news…

Spring cleaning/nesting has officially begun. Today I’ve cleaned the laundry room from top to bottom (de-cobwebbed, decluttered, wiped down walls & appliances) and cleaned the exterior of all the lower kitchen cabinets and the fronts of the appliances. This is one of those things I’ve been putting off for quite some time, so it feels good to have made a start. We’ll see whether my energy holds up the next few weeks to get the entire house done.

And finally, in regards to my Fifteen on Friday list…

Crib bedding was purchased and a paint colors were decided upon. The big painting project should begin this weekend.

Little has her new mattress and box springs and is sleeping in her “big girl” bed (more on that in another post). The crib has been moved to Boo’s room, but the other furniture is still in Little’s so that she isn’t in an empty room with a mattress on the floor. And so that there is less furniture to maneuver around in the nursery while painting.

So, we’re making progress. It seems slow, but it is coming along. We’re down to approximately 10 weeks, but as I always say…we seem to work best under pressure.

Here is a portion of my pre-Boo to-do list; these are all things that will effect him directly (I’m currently omitting things like clean fridge, dust blinds…you know, the fun stuff). I’m sure there are other things that have and will come to mind, but right now I’ll share “Fifteen on Friday” because it makes for good alliteration in the title.

1. Find and purchase boy crib bedding that I actually like and can afford
2. Choose a paint color for Boo’s walls
3. Find new homes for various items remaining in Boo’s room
4. Prep and paint trim and walls
5. Hang closet doors
6. Buy mattress and box springs for Little’s big-girl bed
7. Move nursery furniture to Boo’s room
8. Find chair that I would like in Boo’s room (and hope it is in the budget)
9. Buy burp cloths that aren’t pink
10. Go through Little’s clothes to see what can be used for a boy
11. Create registries
12. Find a double stroller that I’m willing to push (and can maneuver)
13. Purchase sling(s), nursing pillow, and possibly some other “wants” for myself
14. Wash clothes, bedding, blankets, fabric parts of equipment, etc.
15. Set up tour of maternity floor at hospital since it is a different hospital than where Little was born

And there you have it. Now if I can just quit procrastinating and get some of these things crossed off…eleven weeks to go!

Last week I learned from my friend Diane that Wednesday is anti-procrastination day at FlyLady. Now FlyLady is not a site that I’ve frequented in the past; although, I have visited several times in the last few years with good intentions. But I digress; today is anti-procrastination day, so I thought I would not put off (again) until tomorrow what could be done today. I think you could all guess that I have not accomplished all of the things that I’ve been putting off (that would take more than one Wednesday and probably many of the days in between those Wednesdays), but I did make a start on the pre-Boo to-do list.

Today started with getting up a bit early to get a shower, dressed, etc before Little woke up. This is something that I’m finding makes the day flow a bit more smoothly; especially if we have somewhere to be (which we usually do). After eating breakfast and getting Little ready for the day we had about 20 minutes before we needed to leave for Bible Study Fellowship. But, because we’re not procrastinating today, we left early and stopped by Kroger to pick up the items that I didn’t get at the store on Monday. BSF ends around 11:15 and we headed straight to Target to pick up a few things, like laundry detergent, that weren’t urgent but would be soon. While Little ate lunch I mixed and kneaded this week’s batch of bread (we also sang and talked about the birds in the backyard while she ate her applesauce).

And then during the first rise on the bread I conquered the task that gets marked off the to-do list: cleaned and organized the pantry. I still have some work to do in there, such as getting spice racks to go on the back of the door (so that I can actually find my spices when I need them instead of digging through the entire shelf only to find that I’m out of something), but the biggest part of the work is completed.

Now the bread is finishing it’s second rise, I’m finishing up this blog post, Little is still napping, and I think I’ll rest a bit. It feels good to have one thing off my list. Happy anti-procrastination day!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but we are still here and doing well. The last week or so has been filled with Holiday festivities, a long vacation for Matt, and a trip to Nashville to visit family. We haven’t been super busy like some, but it was a good opportunity for a bit of a bloggy break so I could enter 2008 refreshed and ready to go (or something like that).

Matt and I are not the big New Year’s Eve type. We tend to keep things low-key and prefer to be at home or with a small group of friends to welcome the New Year; this year we had the added excuse reason of a 17 month old who likes to be in bed by 7:30 and had been away from home for almost a week.

Our friends David and Diane were hosting a party for a bunch of our friends and fellow church members, but they were kind enough to invite our little family over for dinner prior to the celebration kick-off. It was nice to sit back with good company and good pizza as we chatted and just enjoyed spending some time together. It was also much less overwhelming for my easily-over-stimulated husband and daughter.

We were home by 8:00. Matt and I were in bed and asleep by 10:00. Yeah, we’re party animals!

At midnight we were awakened by fireworks. Now let me say that I’m not opposed to fireworks; I’m not opposed to shooting off fireworks at midnight on New Year’s; I’m not one to be upset by being awakened by fireworks when I can reasonably expect that they will occur. What I am opposed to, I now realize, is the kind of fireworks that make a high-pitched, squealing kind of noise (similar to the sound of bottle rockets but lasting much, much longer). That was the most annoying sound I’ve ever heard.

Anyway, we made it into the New Year and enjoyed one last day of holiday-time-off for Matt.

I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions, although I do try to set some goals for myself throughout the year. This year won’t see me losing 20 pounds in January – although, hopefully, I will lose my baby weight after Boo is born; it won’t see me training for a marathon – although this continues to be one of my life goals; it won’t see me joining a gym – why bother when I know I won’t go regularly.

A few things that I do hope for 2008 are:

~to complete a healthy pregnancy and birth a happy and healthy baby boy
~to have a better grasp on our finances and savings (I’ve kind of neglected this the last few months)
~to conquer a few clutter-collecting areas in our home, including the room that has to be transformed from storage space to bedroom prior to welcoming Boo
~to become a more patient and loving wife, mother, daughter, friend
~to spend more focused time in prayer and study and delighting in the glory of the Lord, in both good times and not as good times
~to stay focused on what is good, noble, true, praise-worthy

Happy New Year!