Mom Hair: New House Addition

Ok to break up the monotony of house working blog posts, I thought I’d throw this in.

Actually I was inspired by a reader who sent me a nice little message. ;)
We were talking mom hair and I realized I have one more new trick up my sleeve.

Talk about mom hair…add in house remodeling to the equation = MESSY me. So I started doing this a bit after we moved in here. It helps me feel a little bit better when I walk by the mirror.

Just a simple sheer silky scarf, tied around my classic bun-blob as a headband. But it’s a really nice pop of color that hides any unwashed fizzy mess. This is also perfect for post-partum regrowth shorties. (Mine have since grown out…so yes, ladies, there is hope! It does keep growing, it will fade into the rest of your hair.)

*For me the trick is to let it cover the tops of my ears, and some of my forehead -- it makes it more boho.

It would look good over hair left down too. I just really like mine up during the day. (Less to pull on, or ask to be brushed by a three year old.) And I don’t feel like I can pull the look off with my hair down.

Let’s be real, this actually is my indoors-don’t-plan-to-go-anywhere, just-want-to-feel-a-little-like-I-try trick, so the mirror doesn’t laugh at me. I don’t really hope to wow the world with this.
BUT….
I wore it out to Target the other day with my girls in tow, and I actually got the women-passing-by-love-hate glare from a 20 something sharing the isle with us. You know the one I’m talking about, “I like that look so much I’m mad at you for wearing it. How dare you assume you are so cool? I wish I was workin it that hard.”
It gave me a laugh -- I was just trying not to look like a hot mess (you should have seen the rats’ nest the scarf was hiding), but apparently it went over better than expected. I got girl envy status out of it. (Just FYI, I actually don’t enjoy girl envy…makes me uncomfortable...but I thought I’d share because it kinda proves the look is worth while.)

Another just FYI:  I put on make up for the photos -- because it’s the internet. (I actually had some haters on Pintrest on one of my pin-photos -- telling me to fix my eyebrows. Actually on a pin of the post where I made this scarf. Not gonna lie, it hurt my feelings. But also not gonna lie….I know it couldn’t have been moms who wrote that -- mom’s know just making the scarf and taking a photo of it when you have a 10 month old and a two year old is an pretty great accomplishment -- we don’t ask for eyebrows too. I also was very aware of my eyebrow situation, and they were right -- they needed help, but it wasn’t on my to do list at the time. And well, I’m not blogging to impress people, I like to try and help people with my ideas. Oh well. All that to say…. I put make up on for the picture, but real life often lacks makeup. I DO NOT look this pulled together, often.)

Like I said, I made this scarf -- its easy, if you can sew you can make one too. {See here for info.} But it’s long, so I tie it around twice. I start it at the base of my head, and go around twice and tie it to the side.

I also occasionally use this little short scarf (thrifted) , when I need a little leopard in my life. This one is the kind that is a square when unfolded

Forgive the bathroom, and the I-tried-to-blur-them-out-so-hard-with-photo-color-editing SEASHELL wallpaper of my bathroom. We are in the middle of remodeling our 1960’s colonial, that got a little too much love in approximately 1981. (If you are a DIY-lover, stick around to watch us toil! :) )

Also, forgive the selfies -- I hate taking them for the blog -- I never know what kind of faces to make or anything. I feel like a poser. Hopefully the internet will be kinder to me this go around. If not -- oh well. I’m just a momma tryin to make it through the days of young ones. If you’ve been there, you know.

Maybe a scarf will cheer you up?

If you aren’t feelin the scarf,  never doubt the power of a well executed headband. (I got this one on clearance at Target.)

Also, I have a pinterest board where I’ve been tucking away hair ideas for myself. They are mostly up-dos (surprise!) that look cute and appear to be something I could do really quickly. Maybe you’d be inspired by some of those. Here’s the board.

I also have a few old posts on mom hair:

First post (here) just covers the basics of how I deal with my hair with babies around.

This post is my fav super easy and cheap (basically free cause I bet you already have some) DYI Dry Shampoo --- See Here for details.

And here is something else I do to help with the postpartum baby hair regrowth.

Here’s to Happy Hair Days!

Outdoor Spring Cleaning

Or…It has to get worse before it can get better.

We’ve been playing outside as much as we can lately. It’s SO nice to be outdoors.
(Don’t let that death grip looking photo fool you. lol. We like the dirt. I was just trying to keep her still long enough to send Daddy a text of outdoor fun evidence.)

 



But our outdoors is kinda majorly in need of love.
(Like everything about our house.)

Yesterday I showed you our indoor spring cleaning….today I’ll show you the outdoors.

Our house the day we bought it.

Those bushes are covering so much of the house. I knew right away I’d want to take them out. Besides the bottom half of them was all bare with no greenery.

So I thought the house was looking rough,when we bought it….

but then I looked our house up on google map street view 

(they took the last photo before I’d ever seen the house)…

 it used to be OUT OF CONTROL!

I mean, where is our house?

And where is the grass? 

Oh, there is none. (Still none -- just dandelions.)

This photo solved a mystery for me, I guess they just chopped those huge bushes on the left off at some point. (Likely when they listed the house.) We have the steams of those bushes in our front yard still. I didn’t really know why anyone would chop a bush up like that and just leave the messy sticks there.  But once I saw that photo I saw that the sticks are actually an improvement. (Not that I condone doing half jobs. Still should have gotten rid of the bases.)

I also makes more sense to me about our Pine Tree. You really can’t see it in these photos unless you know where to look. (In the top photo, on the left in the middle of a bunch of green leaves, you can just barely see it’s more blue needles.) Anyway, the base of the tree is all limbed up, I just now realized it was because those bushes were overtaking it. (In person, that is CRAZY they aren’t very close together.)

I think back at some point this yard was very nicely thought out and very pretty. But given way too much time of neglect, and our own personal hopes for the space, tons of our landscaping needs to go.

Blake’s been hard at work chopping down more stuff. 

There he is out the window, working away.

Here’s a halfway photo of our bush removal.

And now they are gone. Check out all those leaf bags! (That’s our second round! The city already took about that many from us the first time around.)

I got used to the bushes, so it looks a little naked to me. But we will be landscaping it. (Eventually.) I think it’s an improvement. But our yard is COVERED in brush and landscaping edging that we need to take to the landscaping recycling place.

If you ever miss the good old days of door to door salesmen, just leave your yard full of leaves, and/or chopped up landscaping, right in the middle of a well kept neighborhood. You will get a flyer at least twice a week, and visitors just about as often, offering their services to help you with your yard. Clearly our yard cries for help. We’ve had these flyers and visitors since the snow melted (before we littered our yard with branches.) But we are doing it ourselves, we really don’t want to pay for it to be done by all these people offereing. But Blake has a full time job, and I have a preschooler and a toddler…we are doing it on our time schedule. Sorry neighborhood. We’re getting there. I promise, someday you’ll like the view.

Same story in the back yard. Landscaping gone wild.

These bushes, I’m not sure I’ll ever get why they were placed here. They are at the end of our deck and separate a space that doesn’t seem to need separating.

We took them down. 

Another view -- bush remains on the right of the deck.

There’s Blake, back there chopping away more shrubs that surround a tree.
We want more yard, less shrubs.


See, there is just really nothing to be gained by those bushes back there.


Both trees in  the corners seemed to be wearing skirts made of bushes. I’ve never really since the look before. (I mean even imagining it before it grew too big.) It’s crowded.

Those very tall ones on the left, I actually like those, I think it makes our yard more private. They need care, but I hope to keep them and make them work better. 

Anyway, so for now we play around these piles, until we can haul them off.

But you can definitely still hunt for Easter Eggs a mist the chaos!

We have our work cut out for us. But we’re excited.

We are settling in here, we have time to do it.

I’ve been thinking of it as urban homesteading.

Spring Cleaning

It’s not like I’ve been trying to hide this from you, I’ve been taking pictures of it….I just never got around to posting them.

1/3 of our downstairs has been a war zone since Day 1.

The house was rented out before it sold to us.

The renters had pets (that they weren’t allowed to have) and apparently they didn’t mind living in the smell of horrible filth. We had to tear out ALL the carpet (except one room that was so bad they replaced it after the renter’s left --- to be honest I can’t comprehend how horrible that could have been since all the room’s were so gross.)

The upstairs had hardwood under the carpet. (SO glad it was in such good shape…well I mean after refinishing ourselves. But for all the horrors it was still in very nice shape for refinishing.)

But downstairs under the carpet is just subfloor.

No time, and saving money, has put remedying that on the back burner.

Having been living in a 700 sq ft duplex before moving into this house (2,700 sq ft) I didn’t care a lick if 1/3 of downstairs was non-functional. I still have TONS of space. (Every day I say Thank You Prayers….this house is such a blesssing.)

But it’s getting close to time to get this space in working order.

The mess started by just laying out our tools as we worked before officially moving in.

And since the room isn’t being used, before we knew it, it was bursting with junk.

 

We changed out all our doors from flat to six panel, so the old doors were piled up in here.

Tools and Trash.

My morning view when coming down stairs for the day.

Cheery, wouldn’t you say?

And then around the corner here is the old dining room 

(we plan on calling it “the reading room” -- not dining in it.)

FULL of junk.

It started out as my paint stash spot, and like the other room quickly turned into a junk heap. I’d set stuff in there haphazardly and quickly to keep it out of the girl’s reach. And this is what we got! A thing of beauty.

Well this weekend Blake took the girls out for the morning and I hurried my booty off trying to get this room clean… 

And I did it!


See... this room’s subfloor still smells like animals, despite being sprayed down with a special pet-stink-remover. I don’t want to risk the smell seeping back up. So I plan to use Zinner’s B-I-N Shellac paint on the floor to seal out the smells. (I used it in our bedroom and was really pleased with it.) So of course I needed to FIND the floor to do that.

And if you’re curious: We need to add a second subfloor on top of this, before we add hardwood, so I think we’ll be good and safe from smells by that point.
(Second subfloor because the kitchen floor is not the same height after someone titled it up heigher than the rest of the floor. Also for added strength.)

So I moved on to the family room.

While Blake was out still I got tons of garbage cleaned up. I unpacked the last of our decorations that I had left in boxes (since I didn’t have anything ready for decorations.) And I put the tools in some what of an order.

Then through the rest of the weekend Blake worked on getting the garage cleaned out so he could put the tools away in there.

The garage was full of the old washer and dyer, an old half broken stove (from our rental house), a HUGE pile of moving boxes and some assorted things we wanted to sell on craigslist. (old light fixtures, etc.) Blake got rid of all that stuff! And the tools are tucked away in there.
(The garage is still non functional -- it’s still full of unpacked things and more…but at least it’s not crammed with broken appliances.)

And now we can walk into the living room! Check it out!



(The guitar stuff, doesn’t have a good home yet -- so for right now -- this works still.)

I keep coming down the stairs in amazement. I keep feeling shocked to realize I actually have a room over there.


Remember it used to look like this!

I even temporary styled the mantle. 1) Because I can’t help myself. 2) because I actually don’t have spaces for this stuff now.
I don’t think this is the end look for the mantel.
But it makes me really happy for now…its like a real room!



Next up paint.
(After that subfloor layer. Then to pick some kinda hardwood out.)

So the baseboards are coming off in preparation.




It probably will be the end of the summer(ish) before this room is “real.” But I’m excited. Actually right now I’m just so happy it’s cleared out!

Early thoughts on "The 21 Day Fix"

I accidentally came across the program on instagram. And I’m guessing the name appealed to me enough to look it up. I mean, 21 days isn’t too big of a deal. When I looked it up I was pretty in love with the fact “a busy mom” was it’s creator. And I also was super interested in it’s food program -- I felt way too burned out on calories to count them again right now -- this version looked really appealing to me.

So, right now, it’s the middle of the day, on my fourth day, of The 21 Day Fix.

I gotta say, I’m liking it.
The only thing I don’t like about it is: Beachbody (the company who produces it) nonstop tries to up-sell you everything. (Even a little bit during the work outs.) But I’m looking past that and getting results.


I’ve already lost 3 lbs. Blake’s lost 4.
I’ve lost an inch off my natural waist, and almost 2 off my baby-belly-pooch.
Last night, right after our workout, Blake kept telling me how I already look a lot different.
I did not expect such fast results. I’m excited to see what happens by the end.

Food Lessons

* This blog post is too long -- as all of mine always are.     

So a month and a half ago I told you we were removing gluten from our girls diet, on top of their other allergies.

     My girls have a number of allergies. The biggest being dairy. So anything that was ever once cow milk (or goat, or other animals) is out -- like cheese, yogurt and the like. As well as any food that has any amount of milk derivatives in it. Such as gold fish cracker. Down to things with milk listed as the last ingredient. They can’t even touch milk products without getting hives, and potentially worse.

      We also need to avoid peanuts, all tree nuts, shellfish, eggs, peas, navy beans, lima beans (last three are related to peanuts and so some people allergic to peanuts can be allergic to other legumes -- news to me when we found out), kiwi fruit, and we have to go very light on soy. (So no soy milk, or yogurts, etc for us.)

     So I felt very emotional about removing gluten when it first came up,  it seemed like too much food taken away. I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to talk about food on the blog, because it was all so overwhelming. I mean seriously, with all the food controversy their is out there these days, its like nonstop failing in someone’s eyes no matter how you eat. Add in limitations excluding you from eating “the right way” in many instances, and I just didn’t know if I wanted my thought on the internet. But I’m starting to feel pretty stable about it all, so hence this post.

     Anyway a month and a half ago, we had just found out a couple people in Blake’s family have celiac disease and after thinking it through, I felt my best choice is to just take gluten out for us.

     Blake just got his blood test done last week to see if he has it or not, and we are waiting on results. But he’s decided that regardless of the results, he wants to cut out gluten and see how he feels. (Since you may not have celiac disease, but can still be intolerant of gluten.) So, bye-bye wheat, barley and rye. (AKA normal baked goods.)

My oldest is going to be four this June, and I’ve not gotten used to cooking for all these allowances. At the point  of finding out about gluten, I had been trying to just get by and eat what I can, while giving her what she can have. When all this hit the fan, I thought,  “No more struggling this way, I’m gonna get good at this. I’m only going to eat what she can eat, and I am gonna figure this stuff out. I’m gonna make it normal for us."

So, at first I just used up what was left of our cheese and things. Then I gave away a bunch of flour and stuff with wheat to some friends. And eventually I started just working with what was left (and some new things I had to hunt down.)

I have “cheated” on my own diet when we are out, because I know I’m not allergic to the stuff. So my body isn’t dairy or gluten free right now. But my life kinda is. I keep meaning to bite the bullet and actually remove it 100% from my diet and just see if anything changes for me. (It wouldn’t take much more from me -- just some restraint when out of the house.) Maybe now I’ll do it.

Anyway, here are some things I’ve learned in a month and a half of all this stuff.

1) Baking gluten free hasn’t been bad. (But I haven’t done it a lot -- I don’t bake a lot in general)

(No picture but) I baked a cake for my mom’s birthday out of a box of gluten free flour and followed a recipe that I totally tweaked for our allergies. I couldn’t believe it was actually good since I changed so many things about it. But it was. Most of us had seconds.

Then for the rest of the March birthdays I found a box of allergy free chocolate cake mix (super easy, just add water and oil) (Found it at Meijer) and made cupcakes. I also made the frosting from soy free vegan margarine. (Earth Balance)

Those turned out awesome. Supremely yummy.

Since we had so many parties to go to, I froze them and saved them to bring for the girls when cake time came.

Toothpick, then saran wrap, and freeze bag. Worked great.
(Once thawed the texture was off from original, but the girls didn’t notice.)

 

2) When removing Dairy from my own diet, the first thing I had to figure out was coffee. I thought I was gonna go black. And I could have. But it tastes better with cream. And It also feels better inside my stomach -- less acidy.

I gave coconut milk a try and I actually really liked it.

Well, the first day I didn’t. I was used to drinking my coffee a certain color from the right amount of half and half. So I tried to get that color with coconut milk -- not a good idea. Coconut milk has coconut oil in it, and with a lot of coconut milk in my coffee there was a swamp of oil floating on top that I’d have to slurp through. That was gross.

But when I decided it could look much darker than I was used to, I found that it tastes great. 

I just use a heaping teaspoon (actual use, not a measuring one) of it and its perfect for me.

This stuff looks more like yogurt than liquid. Initually I thought I’d keep it in a pitcher, but it doesn’t pour at all, it scoops. So now I keep it in this pyrex container and it sits nicely on the top shelf of my fridge door. (Where most people keep butter)

About a week after I did this milk switch, Ruby came into the room holding my almost empty cup of coffee, drinking it. I was ecstatic that I had switched. If it had been cow milk, we would have been Benadryling her and staring at her for like an hour worried and feeling super guilty. The switch is SO worth it for me.

3) Breakfast.

I’ve still been eating eggs myself, but my girls cannot eat them.

(That’s the one allergen I plan on keeping around because they can handle eggs in baked goods.)

They love hashbrowns, but I wanted to figure out another breakfasty option. I tell you what, breakfast with out eggs, dairy, and wheat is crazy hard to come up with.  And I know there are no rules about what you can eat for breakfast -- but seriously, sometimes you want breakfast food for breakfast!

Enter my new fav breakfast:

Oatmeal with some honey and sun butter stirred in.

This is really delicious. Very creamy and comforting. It’s got some sugar going on since the sun butter has some sugar in it, plus the honey -- but its at a level I’m cool with. I don’t think it’s excessive. And it’s real foods.

I love it.  Blake’s never tried it. Jasmine wants nothing to do with it. And Ruby is obsessed with it. And that is nearly always the story of food in our house.

(For those new to my blog, perhaps you know me in person, I use blog names for my girls on here. My oldest I call Jasmine, my youngest, Ruby.)

4) Sardines are yummy.

I mentioned missing frozen pizza saving dinner on Facebook and my Grandma, who grew up in the mountains of Montana, said when they had no time for dinner they had tea and sardines on crackers. I thought, “Why not? At least taste them.” I grabbed a tin of them (boneless and skinless -- gotta start somewhere) and opened them up. 

I was shocked when Jasmine agreed to taste it, and I had to restrain my happy dance when she told me it was good and ate the rest of the tin. (You can't let on you like that she likes it. Poker face all the way.)

Yum! Sardines.

I like mine in a salad. The olive oil on them is enough to make a dressing for me.

5) This lead me to figuring out something I’m almost embarrassed over.

Let me explain:

I’m obsessed with tacos. Obsessed!

The obsession came quickly after having Ruby because I can throw them together in 2 mins and eat them just as fast. (Mom of two littles coping skills at their finest.)

But my tacos consisted of meat, cheese and hot sauce. Now I can’t have cheese and I was missing it so bad! A taco with just meat is lame. I had lots of suggestions on what to put on there. I tried lots of stuff. Found some that were ok.

But I missed something SO obvious! 

And when I had that salad I figured it out.

Lettuce! 

Like real lettuce -- not iceberg. Yummy lettuce.

Meat, lettuce and corn tortilla. It gives a new dimension of fresh and texture. My life is made again. (And its healthier now. Sweet accidental joy.) 

I’ve even tried just cold veggie tacos with a dash of gluten free soy sauce.

6) I had a week there where I became obsessed with a blog I found on accident.
Story:
I’ve been watching Mad Men again. (I love looking at the sets -- and I love that my house could have been it’s set.) Which got me thinking about food now vs food then.  Mainly that now pinterest has everyone looking like they need to have photograph-ably culinary creations from around the world --- ones no one’s ever heard of before but feel like they should have been born knowing how to cook it. But back then everyone ate meatloaf. (I think? I wasn’t there.) Like simple simple stuff.
So I googled up this website which is just fun -- a time line of “normal foods” through American history. (This is cool on lots of thought levels.)

I was wowed by the 1940’s because of WWII and rationing. I was majorly impressed by the stamina that took from the mommas of the day. And somehow in their lack, I found courage for my “lack.” (I say “lack” because we can still clearly over eat on the foods we are allowed -- there is no real lack -- just limitations on variety.)

The idea that they had to think through all the rationing and how to afford their food while doing it, while their whole world was turned upside down by war was just awe-inspiring to me.
While I was looking through what they ate it became clear to me that everything they ate was extremely healthy because the unhealthy items were not even really allowed to be eaten very much -- they were rationed. The recipes were also working out well for me since most the foods we can’t eat were rationed for them.
Example of health and making do, and that intersecting with my life: while margarine isn’t “clean eating” -- it is the only way we can have “butter” -- so the fact that margarine was around for them during WWII, but milk and butter were rationed -- it’s all working out in my head as helpful. Their isn’t tons of margin in in there recipes, but its there -- and that’s kinda how our life is gonna be. And while some people wouldn’t let margin cross their clean lips, I’m gonna play the cards I’m dealt as best as I can.
Anyway -- in the 1940s you pretty much couldn’t over eat because there wasn’t a lot of food -- unless it came from your own garden. Sounds smart to me.

I just got enthralled by it all - just a big confidence booster for me.

I ended up finding this blog where a lady used 1940s rationing and recipes to lose I think 80lbs.
She was posting her foods on her blog. And while the pics aren’t pinterest stunning, I was pinning them like crazy because they might really make dinner for my family.

I saved ones I thought we could make work on pinterest here.


These recipes use TONS of potatoes -- cheap and in supply. But score for me -- everyone in my family loves potatoes and no one is allergic to them!

In their spirit of "waste not want not” I was shown not to just throw out potato skins -- turn them into crispies. Just kinda smear some olive oil and salt (and I threw a bit of garlic powder too) on them and bake at 350 for a long time (took maybe 40 mins?) -- just check on them and stir them every 15-20 mins or so -- check more towards the end.



Ruby and I loved them. Healthy cheap potato chips.

7) One of my favorite thing is just baking a whole chicken and kale chips. 

Both these things seem fancy and are delicious but both are so easy, and healthy.

Put some butter (or Earth Balance) on the chicken, add salt and seasonings of your choice bake at 350 for 2 hours.

You can eat it for dinner and turn the left overs into other meals. I often bake two chickens at once so I can shred one up and freeze it for easy meals.

Kale chips -- my girls LOVE them. (And they even convinced a very suspicious young friend that they are great while playing together the other day. Give them a try, they sell themselves.) And there is nothing that makes me feel more like super mom than watching my girls eat green stuff. (I don’t usually feel like super mom, often the opposite -- especially when it comes to food -- so kale chips are a day maker for me.)

I found a bag of pre-chopped Kale that was essentially the same price as the regular ones (chopping is often what keeps me from making these -- feels like I don’t have time with the kids pulling on my legs -- therefore this discovery is awesome) -- so all I have to do is wash, throw some olive oil on and salt and bake at 350 till crunchy -- like 30 - 40 mins. (Stir at least once) 

I used to worry about overcrowding them in the pan -- but I don’t anymore -- I throw a ton in and stir -- works out every time.

8) My new food planner:

I saw this on pinterest a long time ago -- but didn’t have time with moving and the renovating to try it.

It works awesome.

Basically you just write down all the foods you normally eat, and ones you plan to try, one per small post it. Save it on your ideas page.

When you go to meal plan, take the note and stick it on the day you want to eat it.
Plan made.



What made this FANTASTIC for me is, even thought in this post I sound like I have this all figured out. I DO NOT. And I may sound emotionally sound -- sometimes I am. But food planning pulls up every bad emotion I have about food (for myself and for my family’s food allergies) so I have a terrible time meal planning anymore.

So what did I do last week? I handed Blake the book said “Pick seven meals and seven sides out of these and put them on the day you want to eat them.” BAM. 5 mins later meal planning done. Now I just make a grocery list (which is non emotional for me.) And life is figured out for a week.

I actaully stuck to cooking them. (For the win.) But I shouldn’t have said pick 7 because there was too much left overs so I only cooked like every other day (the meals that would have gone bad first.) So its a work in progress. I was just THRILLED to have a menuplan made so fast, without heartache. FANTASTIC.

If you wanna try this awesome thing out, you can find the full explanation of the planner and the printables on the original creator’s blog here.

     So that’s what I’ve been learning.

     Gluten free hasn’t been hard since we’d already been used to removing most packaged things because of milk. To be honest, I think I’ve liked almost every gluten free version of something better than the “normal” version -- GF stuff usually has a denser, richer texture.

     I still can’t really feel normal hosting food guests. But I think that’s right around the corner. (Corner being a month or two out -- guessing.)

     I am seriously really glad I did this. The peace that comes from knowing there isn’t anything they can get into while I’m not looking is something amazing. I didn’t even know how good it would be -- because I had never experienced it. It’s like feeling normal, instead of fight or flight all day every day.

Plus, someday I’m gonna be good at this…my kids will feel normal. SO worth it.

     

     The next three weeks are about to be a new adventure in food, because I wanted to try the 21 Day Fix workout/ food plan. To kinda make up for almost 2 years (WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT 2 YEARS!?) (Since Ruby was born) of food sins. (After my VBAC I choose to live off sugar -- now its time to cut it out.) I’m still always floating about 5 pounds over my pre-Ruby-pregnancy-weight -- but I think I’ve lost all my muscle and turned into mush. So today is day 1 of this plan -- work out to come tonight (little nervous) and Day 21 is mother’s day  (total accident -- guess I won’t be having mother’s day cake?) but at least I’ll be feeling like a hot momma on mother’s day. (lol. True? No idea. Hoping so.)

    I honestly suspect this to both help and hinder my regular food planning stuff -- but I think it will be more helpful than hurtful. Hurtful only in the way of it being kinda intense on the planning side -- not really real life- like. Especially for the girls -- whom I will kinda be falling back on my old ways of “eat these super basic non-meal-foods -- but that’s what they love anyway -- the are tiny kids! They aren’t gonna notice. But helpful because I can totally tailor it to our food issues no problem -- and last night while I was prepping food I felt like I already picked up some potential life savers in the kitchen for us. So I’m excited.

     So that’s my {food} story as of today. :)

Hope somehow reading this wasn’t a waste of time for you. ;) I have no idea who this might apply to at all. But I write it anyway, just because it’s my life and this my my blog. (I have to remind myself that often -- its just a blog, just stuff that happens to me.)

Let me introduce some orgnization

Meet my new outgoing mail and key holder.

(And in a minute you can meet my new bill system too!)

Last week I showed you what I got from the thrift store.

They are these vintage basket/wicker looking mirror and wall basket, made of plastic.