Signs You Have A Toddler {And A Few Random Pictures}

Eli is forever doing crazy silly stuff that I want to remember and thought you'd get a chuckle out of. This is not a kid who needs me to create opportunities for him to have fun. He's very creative and can find fun no matter where he is! Here's a list of funny, goofy stuff he does (and yes in case you're wondering I stop him when he's doing some of the gross or unsafe ones.)

1. Whenever someone flushes the toilet he runs over and lifts the lid so he can watch the water go down. Ewww...

2. Trying to stand on the coffee table

3. We have our nice set of silverware in a low kitchen drawer (I know, I need a baby lock on it) and he likes to pull various silverware pieces and tap them on the floor. When we go to use this set we're going to need to wash them really well :)

Riding a mower with daddy

4. At the store, he grabs whatever produce he can find and puts them in the grocery store cart. He started a little pile of limes in his seat the other day.

5. I very nearly saved a book from being thrown into the toilet the other day. I was not as lucky with the whole roll of toilet paper he dunked in there this morning.

6. Sometimes I can't finish making dinner because he is panicked that I'm not holding him right now! But when I pick him up and he lays that head on my shoulder and wraps his arms around me, I'm probably gonna sit down and rock him and put down whatever I'm doing. I can't say no to that :)

Pointing at something, as usual

7. He loves helping mommy with chores. The other day he helped me vacuum. Then he saw me folding clothes so he graciously brought me a bunch of ties David had sitting in a box on the floor and was adding them to my pile of folded clothes. So helpful :)

8. This morning Eli realized he could reach the ice and water dispensers on our fridge door. He's just tall enough to press the levers. He got a big surprise this morning when he pushed the water lever and got a shot of water right to the face!

Checking out Mommy's flowers

9. A box of toys can go untouched for hours or even days because other "toys" are all over. Such as: daddy's XBOX controller, a camera bag, a shoe, the dog's bowl, a sifter (for powdered sugar, etc.), a remote control (that doubles as a phone in toddler world!) etc.

Last, here's a funny toddler story to end on. I shared this on my personal Facebook page, but it's too funny not to share with you. I was driving with Eli the other day. We get down the road a few hundred feet and Eli starts bawling. Not just a frustrated or whiney cry, but his hurt/scared cry (the one that tears your heart up). So I pull over to check on him thinking he has got his finger stuck or hurt himself somehow. He's fine but he is reaching for me and had big, pitiful tears on his cheeks. We really needed to hurry to where we were going so I gave him a hug and got back in to keep driving. He calms down, but then starts the pitiful crying again. And I realize, the loud GPS voice coming through the speakers is scaring him. Poor thing! I cracked up. I guess if you are a baby and hear a strange, mechanical voice booming through the speakers it would freak you out too!

Don't you love that face?

And last, here are some pretty pictures of the herb garden we have in our backyard. The previous owner planted it, and I'm not exactly sure of everything that's in there. But here's what we have:

Something that looks like "pet grass" on the left, some sage or oregano in the front, a huge mum(?) bush thing in the middle, a lemon-y smelling herb in the back left and right. And the purple flowers are some kind of onion/chives. 

Sliced some of these up and put them in my potato soup tonight. Yum!

Menu Plan Monday

I haven't done a menu plan post in awhile and since I'm headed to the grocery store in an hour or two, I'll join all the ladies over at OrgJunkie share what's on our menu this week!

Dinner 1: Tequila Lime Chicken with potatoes and salad. The chicken is an Ina Garten recipe and will utilize our grill--yay summer! A nice marinated, grilled chicken is so easy and great for summer (i.e. husband cooks it, not me :)  I also accidentally bought two 5 lb bags of potatoes (one was hiding in a corner of the pantry--I didn't see it so I bought another bag) so I need to use up some potatoes this week. I even dreamed about potatoes last night!

Dinner 2: Pineapple Chicken in the crock pot with quinoa and Cheesy Mexican Spoonbread. I have made the pineapple chicken before and wasn't all that blown away by it. But this time I'm going to use fresh pineapple instead of canned and I bet that will taste divine. There's just no comparison between the two. And the spoonbread is a favorite, a nice balance to the healthy chicken and quinoa :)

Dinner 3: Creamy Potato Soup with Roasted Green Beans. Granted this is sort of a "wintery" meal, but I have a lot of potatoes to use up and this will be a pretty low maintenance meal which is great since it's going to be HOT this week and I don't want to stand over the stove.

Dinner 4: Ginger Veggie Stiry Fry with chicken and basmati rice. I used fresh ginger for the first time last week and I need to use up the rest of it. This looks tasty.

For the other three nights of the week we do leftovers one or two nights, cereal one night, and usually end up eating out for the last night.

What's on your menu for the week?

image source

House Updates

Hey there! Life's been a little nutty here lately but it's about to calm down, at least for a few weeks and I'm looking forward to resting! Thought I'd give you a little life/house update so you can see how things are progressing around here. This post is long. Grab a snack!

House Updates:

We are having a really nice lady paint a bunch of rooms in our house. Right now she's doing the foyer, hallway, half bath, upstairs landing, kitchen/eating area, master bathroom, and Eli's room. In the picture below you can see the difference between the very mustard yellow that the foyer/hallway was before, and the more tan color we picked.

The tan color we're using is called Fresh Bread by Valspar. It has very yellow undertones, which made for easy coverage over the surface of the sun yellow it was before. When the light hits the foyer it really looks more yellow than tan, but a much more muted yellow than it was before. Very pretty.

This really shows the difference between the paint colors in the foyer better. Upstairs is still yellow brick road yellow but the downstairs and the left wall have been painted. 

Half bath wallpaper is stripped and it's ready to get some pretty Fresh Bread paint on its walls. Poor toilet ain't got no head.

Think I might want to change this fabulous light fixture? Yes! I think a pretty light fixture and a pretty mirror will go a long way toward making over this half bath. The mirror before was just one of those sheets of glass-type mirrors you get for 10 bucks at Lowe's. A pretty framed mirror will look so nice. 

Master bathroom is all primed and ready for painting. We are using the color Bread Basket by Valspar in here. I so wish I had a before picture of this bathroom but I don't! The previous color was metallic gold. I don't know the paint name but it was something similar to the color of this random toilet seat lid but all over the walls:

(I don't know who's buying this toilet lid, but it exists)

So yeah it was very dark, especially since there is no natural light in this bathroom at all. So we are going much lighter with the paint color to brighten the place up and hopefully it will be light enough so I can see to put on my makeup in the bathroom. I also had to make three trips to Lowe's in one day to pick paint colors for Eli's room. 

I think I was on trip number 2 in this picture.

The first time I went on got the three colors on the top right. Yuck. Yuck yuck. They were so cool and pastel I just hated them. So I went back and bought six MORE samples to try. We settled on Sparkling Lake, the one on the bottom second from the right. 

I LOVE IT! It's a beautiful, dreamy blue but it has warmer undertones which goes better with the brown woodwork and it makes the white shelf along the upper part of the walls really pop. I just love love love it. Oh and Eli is pointing to the fan by the way. He's very into fans right now. 

This picture didn't show the blue very well but I thought it was cute of Eli anyways. 

And finally the outside of the house. I added some flowers and ferns that I thought made everything seem more welcoming. Maybe sometime this summer I want to paint the shutters and the front door. This picture doesn't show just how green the shutters are but they are like billiard green. I thought a pretty dark gray to pick up the colors in the brick would be pretty. What do you think?

What this picture doesn't show is that there are some foundational issues with the porch/garage that will require seven huge posts to be drilled into the ground to level everything out. Work is supposed to start the end of this month. We had an inspection before we bought the house and knew of the issues. The homeowner agreed to pay for the repairs but they weren't able to start on them until after we closed. So this pretty little porch's foundation will be all fixed up soon!

Lastly, at some point I think I'd like the paint the dining room. It is RED right now as you can see (and messy because all the junk is moved off the kitchen counters and into here so our painter has room to paint). I want to go with some kind of color in here so the whole downstairs isn't just tan all the way through. Any advice on a color that will add some interest and contrast without being quite so loud?

Life Updates:

Took Scooter to the vet which was much cheaper than our old vet but had a longer waiting period. Scooter's not a very good vet visitor because everyone he meets is his best friend so we had to hang out in the lobby for awhile to ease his excited nerves. 

Cute baby on the stairs in flip flops. How adorable is that?

I love this French manicure I got the other day. So beautiful.

Little upside-down reader. When we read this book (Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?) every animal with four legs is a "daw!" (dog). This little guy is going to be 17 months old in a few days (tear). His vocabulary is growing steadily and it's been so fun to see him figure out how to make sounds and form them into (his version of) words.

I think that's all for now. My hands are tired! But it feels great to be back blogging. Hopefully I will be able to post a little more regularly this summer now that some of the crazy-ness of my schedule has died down. Looking forward to it. Any posts you'd like to see? Let me know in the comments. Or check our my facebook page where I share all my new posts.

Thanks for reading!

PS-If you subscribe to this blog through Google Reader, you probably know that Google is shutting down Google Reader in July. I recently imported all my blogs to Blog Lovin' so I won't miss a thing. Just an idea for you! 

Happy Mother's Day (And A Few Pictures)

Happy Mother's Day to all those who are, will be, or want to be mothers! I hope this day brings a smile to your face! Here's a few pictures and a few nuggets about what's been going on around these parts:

Sometimes little boy sleeps like this in his car seat. Crossed ankles...so sweet!

My brother graduated from college!

Eli was a little tired I guess

Daily Tidbits:

• We are having someone paint our house right now and I am in looove with the colors! Eli's room is a beautiful, dreamy blue called Sparkling Lake and our kitchen/foyer is changing from a bright yellow (previous homeowner's color) to a beautiful tan color called Fresh Bread
• I took my Praxis II for my master's in library media and I passed!!! It was not an easy test but I am so relieved I don't have to take (and pay for) it again!
• I ran for an hour the other day, which is the longest I have run since Eli was born. It's wonderful! I have found that Insanity has really helped me with my cardiovascular endurance. I have continued to do Insanity work outs once or twice a week and it's given a big boost to my running.
• Had lunch with a long, long time friend yesterday. The company was lovely and P.F. Chang's lettuce wraps are so delicious. Egg drop soup...not so much

Thanks for reading!

House Pics, Wallpaper Removal, And More!

I have A LOT to share with you guys! Here's what's been going on with us lately. We'll start with a mini house tour and some of my commentary:

Our living room was looking pretty neat so I snapped a picture while Eli played. You can see the front door to the left. I will probably change the window treatment in the future, but for now it'll stay because it matches even though it's not my style. (Previous homeowner must have loved window treatments because that shade (curtain?) is custom made and I'm sure was not cheap)

Here's the view of the living room from the front entry. This view wasn't looking as neat, but whatever :) It's real life. The living room in this house is much smaller than our previous home, but that's okay because it works. And we have a lot more space in other areas of the house that are a little more useful to me on a day-to-day basis (laundry room, kitchen, bedrooms, etc.)

This is my beautiful kitchen! I am so loving it. The layout is absolutely perfect for cooking and I don't feel totally crammed if someone is in there with me. Just today we installed a microwave above the stove. 

To the right of the stove is our WALK IN PANTRY (yeah, see why the smaller living room doesn't bother me so much?). This picture was taken before I organized it. It looks better now, but we're still experimenting. The light was out in the pantry at the time I took the picture, so I couldn't walk in and get enough light for a picture. Sorry!

In the eat-in-kitchen area there was this big mantle/shelf thing. I wasn't sure about it at first, but I decorated it and I like how it looks a lot. I think it'll stay.

I'm way pumped about this closet. It's in our basement and I put all our Christmas decor (except ornaments) on the top shelf. The bottom shelf is for games, fall decor, printed photos, etc. The floor has a basket of winter items (gloves, hats, etc.) and some wreaths. There's no light in this closet so this is the best I could do.

Next, we'll talk about what we've been doing lately:

The dryer wasn't working for awhile so the dining room became the line drying room. 

I'd like to change the white countertops with something a little more forgiving. These are a few samples I grabbed at Lowe's. They pretty much look the same--so much for an easy decision!

I've also been thinking about paint colors because the bright yellow is a bit much :) Which one is your favorite? I think I'm going to go with the bottom right (Fresh Bread by Valspar).

We have some wallpaper to scrape before we can paint so I've been using this mixture a friend told me about. Mix several cups of water with a few tablespoons of Downy fabric softener. Then peel off the top layer of wallpaper. Spray down the wall really well and let sit for about a minute. Apply a second "coat" if needed. Then scrape away. Works great! The little tool I bought at Lowe's and it helps avoid gauging the walls. Works pretty well.

Here's step 1: Peel off the top layer of wallpaper

Spray the remaining paper until it's thoroughly wet

Scrape away

Here I am scraping off the Dorothy's dress-esque wall paper

Little buddy is enjoying his new home, too!

Excuse me, sir. I believe you're too big for that. 

And finally, something weird. My mom was driving down the road and we saw this headless child mannequin thing chilling by the road. How weird!

Thanks for reading! Have a great day!

Make Your Move Stress Free

I've never heard anyone, hot and sweaty from carrying boxes, stop and say, "Man, I love moving!"

Moving is long, hard work. Moving requires asking favors of friends while knowing the last thing they probably want to do is help you move (but being really grateful they said yes anyways). It requires a few too many trips to Lowe's because you forgot packing tape/packing paper/a mattress bag, etc. But once it's all done and you're set up in your new home, you forget all about the hard work and can relax.

So, the next time you move, here are a few ideas for making the process at stress-free as possible.

1. Keep a bag or a box with essentials

In this bag (or box) keep all of the things that you will want immediate access to. This includes toothbrushes, toothpaste, contacts case and solution, glasses, a pair of pajamas and a few changes of clothes, phone and chargers, computer or iPad, soap, shampoo, washcloths, towels, medicines, insurance cards, and some snacks. The other day I turned on the shower ready to hop in only to realize that I didn't know where any of my soap or shampoo was. Thankfully I found a few travel sized bottles in a box to tide me over. But one central bag with all the immediately necessary items would have helped.

We couldn't find Eli's sippy cup in all the mess, so we took a plastic water bottle 

and poked a hole in the top for his milk. Not ideal...

2. Find a central location in your new home for items you use a lot.

Pick one spot on the counter or maybe the kitchen table and designate it as "the spot" to put things like car keys, phones, new house keys (!), paperwork you need to keep track of, etc. It might be a good idea to keep these items near an outlet so you can charge devices as needed. Earlier this week, I couldn't find my keys anywhere and I needed to leave the house to meet my husband somewhere. I finally retraced my steps from the moment I arrived at the house (which had thankfully only been about 30 minutes prior!) and found them in the BACKYARD laying in the grass. They had fallen out of my pocket when I walked back there. (Can you tell I'm getting a lot of these ideas from mistakes I've made? :)

3. Unpack main living areas first

The first room I unpacked was the kitchen (mostly because those were the first boxes I found) but this proved to be a really good decision. Even with the rest of the house a mess, I felt somewhat "together" knowing I could find plates and glasses for dinner (even if that dinner is take out). Next, unpack the living room and get it semi-functioning (aka have a place to sit) and then move on to bedrooms/bathrooms. Basements, spare rooms, etc. can wait until last.

4. Have an emergency moving fund

If you keep a tight budget without much wiggle room, it's important to know you will incur unexpected expenses when moving. It's hard to cook when you haven't been to grocery to stock up your pantry yet, so you will probably end up ordering pizza or eating out several times during the move. You might want to buy a gift card for a friend for helping you move, or the gas for your U-Haul could end up being more than you expected. Moving has a way of putting you in a tight spot with unexpected events. So be prepared and keep some extra cash in your bank account.

5. Arrange help before you move

It's a good idea to ask people a week or two in advance to block off the day if they are helping you move. Also, you may want to arrange childcare so you aren't chasing babies around while men are lifting heavy furniture up your stairs. Coordinate with the people who have graciously agreed to help you so that you know help will be available when you need it instead of asking last minute.

EST

Today's been a little nutty. My iPhone sort of imploded last night and I've spent the better part of my afternoon trying to figure it out. Then I figured it out, and messed it up again. So, currently I have been able to restore just 30 of the 600+ pictures I had on my phone. (Back up to iCloud people!). And then, we found out we are going to most likely be closing TOMORROW on the house we are trying to buy and I have several things I need to get accomplished before that can happen. So, my brain has been bouncing around inside my skull a bit today and I came across a blog post that really spoke to me (and darn it I wish I had come up with the idea because I love it!).

Andrea Dekker over at andreadekker.com encourages us to strive to improve ourselves, not perfect ourselves. Small change of words, but a big change of meaning!

Here's a link to the full post, where she encourages us by saying:

"Progress is attainable. Perfection is not."

Which means I can't manage to deliver miscellaneous paperwork for our home purchase to my lender, while making sure Eli has a perfectly clean face and full belly, and have on lip gloss. Nope.

So, my challenge to you today is find something to LET GO and find something to IMPROVE. Not perfect, improve.

Then, go back up your smart phone so you don't lose months of cute pictures of your baby. Just an idea :)

Thanks for reading!