Big News!

So you may have noticed my last couple blog post have been a little dull….

This might make up for it

Just a little picture of our kids saying “Hi.”

Baby #3 is on the way!

:)

We are super excited.

We are sharing the news really early.

I’m ok with the risk of that.

We are due beginning of July. (Likely right between the girls’ birthdays.)

I’m almost done being in denial.

Blake’s thrilled.

And the girls are ecstatic!

I have been working on the house a bit since we found out. So I’ll fill you in on the progress soon.

But it’s of course been a bit more challenging as of late to do the work.

Thus far in regards to my three pregnancies, before I’m actually pregnant I always tell myself, “Oh you’ve got this, it will be a piece of cake.”

And then every time I get shocked. Piece of cake is not at all accurate. "Lots of work" is the sentence I should have been feeding myself ahead of time.

I’m feeling decent.

I had one day there right in the middle of week 4 (after I took a test saying Positive) I thought morning sickness was kicking in, and it was HORRIFIC. I had a night of nonstop throwing up. And I was really really scared. I thought “If this is the next three months I will not survive. I will end up in the hospital but even they can’t save me.” Turns out it was all over by morning. Food poisoning? Fast Flu? I don’t know. But I am so, so, so glad it was a short thing and not actually my morning sickness.

I’ve had regular old queazy-morning-sickness without throwing up for about a week now. I’ve been smelling EVERYTHING (like I can smell olives through glass jars) since this baby showed up, long before I could take the test. And I generally feel more tired and wimpy for a couple weeks now. I also feel really bloated. I guess that’s baby number 3 for ya -- pop the belly out right away.

Outside that I feel good.

I’m really excited that I feel emotionally stable in regards to the pregnancy and birth. Last time I was three seconds from checking myself into the looney bin through the whole ordeal because I was so worked up over the birth outcome. This time I feel really calm. I’ve been through an induction-turned-c-section and a VBAC, no meds, at home. I feel like I can walk right up to birth and take it however it comes this time without fears. I’m so so so grateful for that peace of mind. I do need to make sure I find a provider I am comfortable with this time to help me keep that peace of mind. But God provided before, so I’m gonna rest in knowing He’s in control. 

So that’s our big news!!

:)

E-cloth

So I discovered these cool cloths.

(I’m not getting paid to tell you about them. Any links are just helpful links for you.)

These things are pretty amazing.

E-cloths are microfiber cloths, that have microfibers so small they pick up 99% of bacteria with just water.

And then you can just rinse the bacteria back off with warm water and keep cleaning a new spot. 

When the cloth gets dirty enough you throw it in the wash machine. And it’s good for 500 washes.

I’ve had mine for about a month now and I love them.

This entire cleaning concept (just a cloth and water) is so mom friendly! I've so often look at my bathroom grimy sink and think, I do not have time to get everything out and clean this room. 

Part of that for me is that if I try to do it with my kids around they try to help me and I don’t want them messing with chemicals (it’s gross in general for me to breath those fumes, but then my kids have so many allergies and sensitivities and breathing issues, its like NO WAY.) So I put off cleaning till their in bed, but then so often I’m not up for it by that time.

So having a cloth I can just run over the sink and tub real quick is awesome. (Personally I’m kinda scared to use my cloths on the toilet. I plan to buy one more for just toilet use, so I don’t have to worry about if those germs rinsed off or not. I don’t know if it’s a real concern, but I can’t get past the thought.)

And I use it all the time in the kitchen, for counters and tables.

You can use them on fruits and veggies to get them really clean.

I have two green ones. I keep one in the kitchen and one in the upstairs bathroom so I can just grab and wipe when I have a minute.

I also use the purple ones on my face. When I did that for the first time I was sure of it’s grabbing power! My face had never felt like that. It was almost scary how clean it felt. I had to moisturize immediately. I kept using it to see what would happen. For about a week my face peeled like I had a sunburn (it didn’t hurt at all.) And then after that my face cleared up significantly. I mean like, pimples down to very, very few. (I still get those! Sheesh, wrinkles and zits friends to the end? I hope not.)

So these cloths are great for cleaning skin with no soap at all, which is perfect for people with really sensitive skin. But you will lose some skin moisture while your skin gets used to these. Be ready with lotion.

I also have the window and glass cloth. That thing is shockingly good at mirrors. 

So yeah. I’m a big fan. I can let my kids use them all if I want to. Win. Win.

E-cloths are akin to Norwex stuff (if you’ve heard of that) but are about a 1/4 of the cost.  The Norwex general cleaning cloth is $16.50. You can get two general cleaning e-cloths for $8. And e-cloth has free shipping. It’s a good deal.

And I personally like the way an e-cloth feels better. It doesn’t stick to your fingers at all. I was scared because I HATE how some cheaper mircofiber cloths feel on my hands, I didn’t think I could take it if these felt gross like this. But they feel great. (I’m not saying Norwex feels like cheap microfiber. It doesn’t. But I think e-cloth feels just a little bit better. Which is a surprise since it’s cheaper.)

So that’s my little tip-o-the-day. E-clothes are a GREAT momma/busy person tool to have around!

They have a lot of kinds of cloths, but they clearly tell you that you can easily get away with just the general purpose ones. (But those don’t do windows or mirrors like the glass ones, I’d grab some of those too if I were you.) I have four general purpose cloths. That way I can keep some upstairs and some downstairs. And I keep my purple ones just for skin.

And they might be a really good christmas present for someone you know too!

Guests & Dinner Tracker

As a couple, Blake and I haven’t always been too social. But I’ve been really happy that since we moved here we’ve been having people over for dinner more often. It’s been really fun getting to know people.

With our food allergy issues, I was pretty nervous about hosting.  (Although I find comfort in hosting because I can be in charge of food and keeping it all safe for my girls.) It was just that at first I had no idea what I could make that was “normal” and was safe. (Not to mention, making something my picky eater will touch in front of other people.)

But slowly I’ve been growing more and more confident.

And lately I’ve been feeling pretty good about the stuff I’ve made when we have guests.

It feels like official “having guests over food.” Which I didn’t think I’d be able to pull off.

And I’m getting better at timing out how and when to make food through the day (or days before) to make that day less stressful. I’m not a natural hostess at all. But practice is a very good teacher.

(There have been some epic fails….like the girls bday party where I had no food made at all when our guests showed up hungry, so I had to send Blake out to buy lunch.  And then I was still frosting cupcakes instead of hanging out with anyone. But you live you learn. And to be fair, my house was still a constuction zone then, so just having a house that was free from paint cans and power tools did feel like a victory, in the face of failure. But lets be real, the fail was a hard fall, hurt some pride, and made the day WERID. lol.)

Anyway, while living and learning I’ve been telling myself I should be keeping track of these food adventures. I’ve been thinking I should keep a running tab of foods I’ve figured out for hosting. Just to build up confidence and have a good list of go-tos when I have a brain glitch. I’m also writing down who’s eaten it so I can kinda try and keep a rotation(ish) as I build up my repertoire.

Here’s a little picture of it.

I’m writing down a date (most of these are guesses since I am doing this later) and the guests names (I covered that up with those sticky notes for the internet) as well as any notes about if they have any allergy or food preferences I know of. And then I write down what we ate with them.

I’m keeping it in my home management binder.

Seeing it written out has given me a little kick. I feel kinda of accomplished. (You have no idea how intimidating food has been since learning my kid is allergic to TONS of stuff. AND that celiac disease runs in my husbands family.)

I’m also smelling some gluten free, iced, pumpkin brownies I made for some guests we are having over tonight in the kitchen while I type this -- so that makes me smile quite a bit too! Who knew I could still be fancy in the face of allergies? And those things smell GOOD! (Hope they are!)

If you want to use my Tracker too, you can access it here.

(Or you can easily print up your own too.)

Just A Random Thought on Beauty

I randomly tuned into “grown up” PBS tonight just in time to catch a bit of a show talking about the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health designed by Frank Gehry.

Photo Via

I really didn’t see much of it, but I was just in time to catch the interviewer as a doctor who works there, "How does this space inspire better work?"

He responded something like this, spoken very impassionately,
"If you aren’t cutting edge, if you aren’t innovative, if you aren't the best there is, you feel like you are failing the space. You feel like you need to live up to the space."


That struck me so hard.

So often I want to tell myself to stop caring about the things I care about. I care so deeply about things being lovely. Especially the space I live in. Not because I care what anyone thinks of my home. I actually hate feeling like a show off. I just need the space to feel good for me.
Sometimes that feels so vain.
Sometimes that feels so trivial.

But then every once in a while I get a deep reminder that this is how God made us. We are inspired by beauty.
I think it’s because he made beauty.
But being around beauty is renewing and inspiring.

I just loved hearing that doctor say that about his stunning building. It made me stop to value once again what I value, because it means something to people. Not just me. Everyone is inspired by beauty. And beauty calls us to more.

A couple tears may have been shed when he said that. It’s just so deep.

I want a space that makes me feel like I need to live up to it.
That’s what I’m slowly working towards.

It’s just nice to know it’s not all in my head. It’s nice to give myself permission to feel that way.

The Sunroom Roof

I guess I never told you guys about our roof.


Two weekends ago we redid our sunroom roof.
Blake’s parents, my parents, and a friend came over to help.

I don’t have a ton of details for you, I wasn’t in on really any of this work.
But I’ll show you some pics and say what I sort of know.

Blake’s dad tore off the whole roof himself on Friday while Blake was at work!

And then early Saturday Blake and his dad took the shingles to a Garbage place.

Then they could get back at the roof again!

Now to remove the sky lights.

I know, I know…
the sky lights were lovely.

But they leaked. And to fix them wouldn’t be worth it.
They are HUGE.
They are the same size as our biggest window in our first house. We replaced the windows there, so we know just how much one normal, non-skylight window of that size costs. Two skylights this size would be crazy. I don’t think they even actually come in this size -- our contractor brother in law thought they were handmade. (None of the contractors who looked at them thought they’d be able to find ones in this size.)
And these sky lights had lots of issues themselves, so they weren’t salvageable.
I guess we could have installed smaller ones, but sky lights just are prone to leaks in general. Especially when you go to re-roof later on. It can be hard to flash around them correctly.

It was funny because we had three (non-relative) contractors come and give us bids on re-doing the roof. Essentially each one of them conceded that the skylights were a big part of the leak issues (but truth be told the whole roof was a mess of totally crazy wrong stuff) but despite them admitting the skylights would always be problematic, these three guys fell in love with the room on instant and each (separately) tried to talk me into leaving the skylight because of their aesthetic appeal.

You know me, I’m all about aesthetics. But clearly, having a room that doesn’t leak and rot off the house, is a higher priority over looks. I’d be crazy to leave them in, pay a ton of money to fix the issue, knowing full-well I wasn’t really fixing it -- and therefore would be paying a ton again in the near future.

So out they went.

The guys didn’t love this part --- Handing them down!!
Duhn duhn duhn!

Everyone lived!

The wood around the skylights was all rotted out. So that had to be replaced. And some of the joists bolstered up.

Then on went the roofing stuff.

I say roofing stuff because we didn’t do shingles.

The pitch of the roof is not very steep. If a roof is a certain angle or lower you can’t use standard shingles because the water (snow especially) will back up underneath them and cause problems.

So our choices were rolled roof, metal roof, or I guess you can find specially made shingles (but you really can’t use standard ones you’d normally grab at a big box store.)
We went with rolled roof for now because it’s faster and cheaper.
But we think in the long run we will put a metal roof on.

Initially I couldn’t handle how this roof looks. Blake and his dad came home with white roofing stuff. After I asked for black, since all the rest of the house has that black/grey standard shingle look. But they went for white since it’s reflective and will make the room less hot in the summer. (This room is essentially a three season room, it’s not in on the house's heating and cooling network.)

I didn’t fight it.

I was telling a friend about how the roof turned out, and in the middle of our conversation I just broke out into laughing hysterics because the white roof is just so unexpected I don’t even know how to describe it. The material isn’t explainable either. I’ve never seen it before.

But what I can tell you is….when it rains now,

 I don’t have to go out there with buckets and towels every few hours. So the white stuff works for me!

The roof is not really visible. It’s on the back of the house, so you can’t see it at all from the front, and you really can’t see it at all in the back yard since it’s up higher than your eyes.
The one place I can see it from is our bedroom window if I look (the window is behind our bed.)


So from outside the only place you can it from is one sidewalk around the corner from us. I took the girls on a walk and the first time I saw it, I was surprised by the fact that it wasn’t that crazy looking. I was expecting it to be painfully odd looking. But the house is white, so it kind of just blends right in. So I don’t hate it.

So we are just super happy to have it done and ready for winter.

Having our awesome family and friend come and help us saved us thousands of dollars! That is amazing! We are so grateful to them.


Now we'll need to fix up the inside of the room. With the skylights gone it is gonna change it up a lot. 

There is no way to make the wood work on the ceiling. No way to patch those blank spaces without it looking super obvious. So we plan to dry wall the ceiling. And time will tell how the walls fare. This room may not get to stay super woodsy.

Initially I didn’t like the wood walls. So you’d think I’d be glad to see it go. But I’ve actually grown fond of it. So it is a bummer. But like I said, I’d rather prefer to keep the room from rotting off the house. So aesthetics will be done in regards to what works structurally.

But don’t expect an up date on this room for a while. We think we will put the breaks on for now, to save some cash up and figure out what we are doing with the space. Blake and I are talking about waiting till spring or so before we really do much in there.

We want to take out the two old electric heaters 

and replace it with one more efficient heater/AC unit in the middle. It will still be electric, so we don’t plan to use it a ton. But it will be a better overall to have that there.
The fact we are removing the old heaters may prove to show tons of staining on the wood behind it. You can see lots of stain water drip lines above and below them from rain running down the walls. So that will effect if we can leave the wood there or not.

We also want to take out the one ceiling fan in the middle. And instead wire in two lighted-ceiling-fans to each side of the room (basically right where the sky lights were.) Which will be better for lighting and air circulation.

And other than that, we are at a stand still on how to make the room look as a whole. How to find it’s vibe. How to make it a room we each can love.

So we’ll take our time.

And that’s the story of the roof.

My Clothes

A friend of mine sent me a link to a new-to-me blog last week. Since we were re-doing our roof, it took me a while to find time to look at it. But once I gave it a peak, I was hooked.

Un-Fancy | A Minimalist Fashion Blog

You may have noticed from my last post, I am on a purging role.

So this blog hit me right at the right time.

I’ve been trying to figure out just the right way to pare down my wardrobe for months and months. I just hadn’t really felt sure-enough on how to go through with it hard and fast -- just taking out bits here and there. And I’ve looked at a few different minimalist blogs which address their wardrobe, but I guess just the way Un-Fancy is laid out finally gave me the breakthrough I needed to really grasp it.

Her blog seems easy to take in. For one thing the blog isn’t even a full year old yet -- and it’s only about the clothes, nothing else --- so it makes it a faster learning experience than some blogs can be. And she breaks it down in really manageable bits of info. After looking at her blog for all of five mins, I was on board.

Her technique is to buy her capsule wardrobes to work for 3 months (with hopes of saving them for the upcoming years to keep from shopping later on) and her budget is (for me) very sizable.
I knew I wouldn’t be doing that.
I knew I already had enough clothes I could pick from to not need to shop.
I needed to remove clothes.
And I don’t necessarily expect my capsules to last from year to year. (We may have more children -- that means lots of clothing sizes-shifting. And my kids will likely get ketchup on my stuff and I’ll kiss those items goodbye after oxiclean gives up on them. You know, that kind of thing. My mom clothes aren’t gonna be going the long haul. Which is one reason why me and the thrift store are such good friends.)

So I downloaded her wardrobe planner and filled it out.
It’s slightly hilarious for me to fill out the pie chart (which is there to help you figure out lifestyle -- aka where you wear clothes, so you know which type you need) As a stay at home mom, it essentially read “HOME!!” (With a sliver that said “Church, grocery store, library.”) But I knew that already. :)

And there is section where she has you write out your fav Brands. Since I wasn’t shopping anything besides what I already own, I used that space differently.
I looked up all the style tips/rules for my body type from a bunch of websites and complied the most useful to me ones and wrote them on that page. That way I could be more objective when trying on my stuff. It helped me have less guilt when ruling items out. I could tell myself “This is just not flattering for you, it’s not going to be helpful having it around.”

Then I took EVERYTHING out of my closet and brought it downstairs.

(Because that way I could still let the girls play and stuff during my purge.) I pulled a full length mirror out of our garage (still haven’t made use of them inside the house, so they are just leaning in there) and got to work.

Basically I started by pulling the favs out first -- stuff I wear as definite go-tos.
Then I set aside everything too summery -- to store.
Then I set aside stuff I felt like would be better for deep winter to store. (This capsule is for 3 months, so in January I can do this again.)
Then I just really had to edit down what was left.
Around this point is where I had some initial hardship.

I’ve pared my closet down A LOT  two different times since moving. (And honestly I’ve been paring down for years -- I used to have a absurd amount. I don’t spend a lot on my clothes, so sometimes it feels like I can have a lot of them.)
One of those times, I went ahead and tried things on, then I used my phone to take a picture of myself from the back.
Ladies, if you’ve never done this -- you might want to consider it. I was shocked at how bad some of my dresses (that looked great from the front) looked -- I mean, super un-flattering from the back. I had to get over some “Woah, how horrible I’ve been wearing this in public” emotions that day!

Example:The black dress makes me look all sorts of good. The red dress, all shorts of squatty and chubby.

It’s just not for my figure at all.

(Thankfully, in the red dress’ case, I had been given this dress (the person got it for free) and I had never worn it, so this one was not hard to see or get rid of. But is a great example of how lines can be your friend or enemy.)

To avoid this back-side fumble in the future, I plan to do these back-side phone photos in the dressing rooms from now on! That over the shoulder glance has been failing me!




Anyway, after doing this paring down process a lot already, I felt kind of crazy taking more out of my closet.
But I knew I wanted to because, I’m just in the mood to have less. Think less, but get more out of it.

And I got some comfort knowing I could just store away off season stuff -- so I’m not going to get rid of those. And I could store away “maybe” items incase I need them later.

I did get rid of some more stuff.
I used my body-type tips to be more honest about what I had in my closet. A lot of those items I never wore because they are cute, but don’t look cute on me. So it was always hard to get rid of them since they were cute, but they just took up space. And they would complicate getting dressed because I would try to think of ways to make them work, but they really are never going to work for me.

Look at ALL those empty hangers -- they used to be FULL!

For me the concept of getting the clothes to mix-and-match color-wise was easy because I’ve been veering more and more towards neutrals for a couple years now. Its just what I’ve been drawn towards. So my color palette is black, white, grey and blue.

It took me all day yesterday to do this project.
I felt kinda lost trying to get the right number of the right items -- but I think it would have all ended up about the same no matter how I mentally processed it -- it kinda just is the way of clothes. Fewer bottoms, more tops, you know?

Doesn’t look like a lot -- but I think it’s gonna feel really vast since I can layer and mix it all up a lot.

But then this morning I got dressed in about 1 minute.

I desperately need to get to the grocery store today, and thus I am out of coffee! So before Blake left for work I ran to a nearby coffee place for sustenance.
So before I left I pondered shoes for a moment.
Going on the “rule” that for short girls you want to elongate legs by not breaking up color for shoes (AND heels are a very good friend!) I threw on my black wedge boots. This process seriously took 30 seconds. But once I put the shoes on I was shocked by how chic I looked. I could have thrown on my chucks and looked college/weekend/cozy/casual. But put on these boots and I felt like I just nailed a Pinterest-street-style-outfit.
And all that happened in 1min and 30 seconds of time because my wardrobe is pared down to good stuff.
And when I got to the coffee shop, I was feeling really confident and happy with my look. I got a lot of “ooo” looks.

So I’m hoping for lots of good and easy dressing to come in these next 3 months of this capsule wardrobe.

I’m personally fine with the idea of still changing the wardrobe up, as long as I’m willing to switch one for one (one in = one out) so I don’t grow the closet again.

I still haven’t really pared down my shoes (but I know my favs) -- I ran out of time before we had a church thing last night.
And I plan on going through my accessories kinda of similarly soon.

I’m just really enjoying less-is-more lately.

So we will see what happens.

I plan on getting the stylebook app (something I learned about from Un-Fancy) to help with my mix-and-match process. (Just because it sounds fun -- not because I’m putting pressure on myself or anything crazy.)

If I feel brave, and find time, maybe I’ll blog more of my outfits and pieces. But you know, I might just not find time. I still have the house to work on too. So…time will tell what I’ll blog for ya.

Thanks for reading when you do! :)
It’s always fun to hang out for a bit.

P.S. If anyone else is in a major purge/minimalism kick zone right now, I’ve signed up for this 31 day clutter free challenge which starts today! (Not sure, if it will work for me, but it sounds fun and it’s free.)