Lightroom

I love Adobe Lightroom!!!!

I really need to keep up this blog a little better! My brother is visiting from Texas and he brought his girlfriend, she is a sweetheart! B and I hung out at my moms house last night with them, we watched the hangover and chatted. It was fun. I took some pictures of them and my brother gave me the greatest compliment, he loves how they turned out. That definitely helped boost my confidence in my photography.

I think they are pretty adorable!!

Wow, I haven't blogged in awhile. It's been busy around here, getting ready for Christmas and whatnot. Patrick got laid off 2 weeks ago so we've been doing a lot of work to the house. Not really a whole lot to blog about. I took Christmas pictures of a friends kids and apparently everyone keeps asking her where she got them done! Thats flattering. I don't have a lot of confidence in my photography so to hear that people actually like it makes me happy :). I think I might start a photography facebook and blog so people have a way to contact me if they want any pictures done. If anyone has any advice I'd greatly appreciate it!

In other news, we had an ultrasound done a couple weeks ago and ITS A BOY. He's gorgeous, of course. And he's a crazy active little guy already. It took us awhile to agree on a name but we finally came upon Emmett Lee and it fits really well. I'll be 21 weeks on Wed. and I can already see him jumping around in my belly.

Sewing

My sewing machine and I have started to get along a little better recently. When I first got it I had a hard time with the tension and whatnot so most of the things I made looked like crap. I stumbled upon http://indietutes.blogspot.com/2007/07/peasant-blouse.html this tutorial, I thought I'd give it a shot. The first shirt I started on made me SO MAD. I couldnt figure out how to put the back piece on and apparently I'm an idiot because I asked Patrick and he figured it out right away. Anyways, I found this stretchy material shoved in the bottom of my fabric box and thought it'd make a cute shirt. I have no clue what its called or even if its suitable for clothing but whatever I used it anyways and it turned out cute! I'm pretty happy with it. I didnt get around to putting elastic in the arms, I'll do that later. And dont mind my wonky lines, I still cant sew straight and making a casing for the elastic was a pain in my ass. Seriously.

I hope everyone has a fantastic Thanksgiving!! I plan on gaining a few more pounds tomorrow ha.

Baby Update

I had my doc. appoint. today and it went good. Nothing exciting. I have only gained 6lbs so far, which I am proud of. The heartbeat was strong at 150bpm and I'm measuring right on track. B had to go with me since I didn't have someone to watch her. She did great! I was kind of shocked. We got there early and she played with a few kids out in the waiting room and she stood next to the exam table patiently as we were listening to the heartbeat. I got the quad screen done also which required blood to be drawn and I was a little worried about how B would react but she did just fine, sitting on my lap until I was done. The soonest they could get me in for my ultrasound is on Dec 15 and I'm not willing to wait that long to find out the sex so I made an appointment for Monday with an ultrasound place close by. I'm so anxious, I can not wait to find out what we're having! Everyone is saying boy. I even catch myself calling it a 'him' already. So we'll see :p.

I'm basically huge.

See? I can't believe how fast my stomach is growing with this one. And this kid is really active. I feel movement every day which is crazy since a lot of woman dont even feel flutters yet. Maybe he/she will be a 10 pounder :/ lol.

Outside Playtime

I love our new backyard and can't wait for it to snow so B can play in it for the first time! So I'm thinking about getting into photography professionally. I want to take pictures for other people so badly but I'm not really sure where to start. I've offered to take pictures for friends but so far none have taken me up on the offer :/ I want to stick with newborn/kid photography so I'll get a lot of practice once the new baby is born. I already have so many ideas, I wish I had a baby to use them on now! B's a little difficult because shes all over the place and she's in love with my camera, so if I sit on the floor to get a shot of her she runs to me as fast as possible just to touch the buttons and look at the pictures that I already took. I think she is a photographer in the making! I bought a really old camera from an antique shop that doesnt work and B has taken it over. She actually holds it up to her eye like she's going to take a picture. Its so funny! I'm trying to teach her to say, "Say Cheese!!!" and one of these days she will and it will be the cutest/funniest/greatest thing ever. I just hope I can catch it on video.

I'm not having much luck uploading pictures..... So the wider pictures are cut off a bit, I have no clue how to fix it!

Wordless Wednesday

Crafty

I am so crafty lately! I want to make things and I have ideas running through my head 24/7. It's so fun. My mom gave me 2 old end tables that are a little beaten up, the smaller one I decided to use in B's room so I sanded it down and put a primer on it. Now I'm waiting for it to dry so I can add another coat then it's going to be painted a light pink to match her bedding. I also plan on making her curtains as soon as I can get to Joanns to buy some material. I think I'm just going to make them plain pink like her table. Her room is green and her bedding is pink/green/white/yellow so a lot of colors match. Since we are moving everything upstairs before any new flooring/carpet is put in we'll just have to deal with the old nasty stuff for now and put a small rug in her room. It's turning out so nice, we get so many compliments on what we've done to the house so far. But our landlord wasn't very happy that we changed the wood trim to white. I'm not really sure why, the old wood stuff was gross! Whoever painted this house before didn't tape off the windows or trim so there was paint splatters everywhere and it looked horrible after we got the living room painted so we decided to change it. I think it looks great and it really brightened up the room.

I made 2 baby blankets for a friend of mine who is having a little girl in March. They turned out so cute! I was so proud of myself. One side is made of minky and the other is cotton so its nice and soft. I heard minky is really hard to work with but I didn't have to much trouble other then it is slippery and messy! I got fuzz everywhere. I'll post pictures of them as soon as I get them off my camera.

Oh my gosh, I can't believe I didn't mention this before. Did anyone hear about the shootings at Fort Hood yesterday?! I got a text from my mom saying "shooting in fort hood ,7 dead, jeremy is ok" I was like WHAT?!?! Jeremy is my brother and he is stationed there. We are really close, I hate that he joined the army because I can't imagine losing him. I freaked out and rushed to my moms work where we watched Obama give a speech on the whole thing, which I didn't like, he didn't seem sympathetic at all he was just reading off a piece of paper. It's nice to know that my brother was safe and out of harms way but how tragic, 12 dead and over 30 injured. I just can't imagine what those families are going through, they are in our thoughts and prayers.

All Moved In

Living room






half of the backyard




Bellas play room and soon to be office/sewing room

she's a good helper!

Finally, we are done moving!! I'm a little irritated with our landlord right now because they asked me to clean up our old duplex and I said yes. I got my mom to help and we packed all the cleaning supplies up and headed to the old place, when we got there a cleaning lady had already been there for a few hours and was half way done with the house. I figure maybe our landlord just wanted it done a certain way so she hired someone. I get a call about 3 hours later from my landlord saying "I'm going to charge you what I charge her." Uh what? I told them I was willing to clean the place and I would'nt have done it half ass, it would've been done GOOD. The cleaning lady charges $10/hr. The duplex was already clean, I wiped down the cabinets, vaccumed 3 of the rooms and cleaned the bathrooms. So I thought she would be just there a few hours, I drove by at 430 and she was still there!!! Almost 10 hours later. I was like wtf I am not paying this lady 100 dollars to clean a house that didn't need that much cleaning!!!! We went to scope out the house after she left to see exactly what took her so long. Nothing. It looked the freaking same! The cieling fan was cleaned off, everything was vaccumed and wiped down (which I had already done). It should've taken her a couple hours at the most, 10 hours is just ridiculous. If I was charging by the hour, I would take my time and I think thats exactly what she did. I was expecting the carpets to be shampooed, every window to be sparkling clean, the bathrooms shining. None of that was done, it was just a basic cleaning. That I was completely capable of doing. Ridiculous.

The weather has been gorgeous the past few days and I've been going without heat as long as I can but over night we need something. We also arent using the upstairs yet. So since they are on seperate thermostats we have just left it turned off up there. We are moving everything upstairs this weekend so even though heat rises and it feels nice up there during the day, the nights are going to be to cold. Have I mentioned how much I love this house? And I wish it was OURS. Everyone that walks in says "This house is huge!" Heck yes it is! And I love it! I open all the curtains during the day and its so bright.

For some reason I'm having a hard time uploading pictures from flikr so I have to use the uploader on here that squishes the pictures and makes them look terrible.

So busy!

We have been working non-stop on this new house, getting it ready to move in. We sign our lease on Sunday and all our utilities are going to be switched over today so moving our stuff in needs to happen soon. We painted the living room a really pretty red and the baseboards were all splattered with old paint from the previous tenants and they looked gross so they are now white and it looks awesome! I can't wait to get stuff moved in. I'm going in a little bit to mop the whole house because the cleaning lady that was there for 2 days did NO cleaning. There is dog hair everywhere and it smells terrible and there is dust all over the beautiful hardwood floors so I'm getting it cleaned up. We also got a pretty like brown/tan color for the other room downstairs, that will be B's playroom for now. And eventually we are going to take the double doors out, sand them and re-stain them because on one side they are painted a dark purple and on the other one is white and one is brown. Weird right? These people had an obsession with bright ass colors. The ceiling in the kitchen is neon green.

Upstairs needs lot of repairs but that will be a project for later. The room B is going in is painted a light green, that I actually like and it matches her bedding so we're just going to leave it. And the baby will be in our room with us. Since our house used to be duplexes, one upstairs and one downstairs, the upstairs has 2 large rooms in the middle, one is going to be ours and the other we are going to put the baby in, so he/she is close. I also have to figure out how to safely clean the tub upstairs, its an OLD claw tub. And I mean OLD! About as old as the house. Its got stains at the bottom but I think they can be brought out with a cleaning solution, but I'm not sure what I can breathe in being pregnant. I'll probably just buy a good pair of gloves and a ventilated mask, there's also a window I could open.

Things are finally getting done! I saw my midwife on tuesday and she's just awesome. She heard the heartbeat right away and my uterus is pretty high. I've been feeling baby move for a little while now. It's the coolest thing ever, yesterday when I was driving I felt him/her roll across my stomach. We keep calling this baby a her and I'm not sure if that means we are having a girl or if its just because we are so used to saying her for everything since we have B. I can't say one was or the other what sex I want this baby to be. I keep going back and forth. I love the idea of another girl but a boy would be really fun. We find out in the beginning of December :)! It seems like so far away but its going by so quick that it'll be here before we know it. Not to mention there is so much going on in between now and then, moving, next doc appt, thanksgiving. So it should fly by since we will be pretty busy. And, great news, I've only gained 1lb since becoming pregnant. That is a HUGE deal to me because with B I gained 55lbs, and at 14 weeks I was already up about 10. This time around I've been watching what I eat and trying to stay active. Having a 13 month old to chase after 24/7 has really helped I think. Plus, I don't have much of an appetite this time. These pregnancies are SO much alike but at the same time SO much different.

In other news, Patrick has the flu. He's been sick since about tuesday. He is on tamiflu and it seems to be helping a lot but he's still sore. So it looks like I'll be finishing the house myself which is ok, I can do it. I'm just hoping B and I don't get it! It's hard to take care of myself with a child to watch and its hard to take care of her little sick butt all by myself, when I'm pregnant and exhausted! We are praying to stay healthy. Washing our hands like crazy and taking extra vitamin D. So far it seems to be helping.

Ads

I took the ads that were on my page, off. They weren't doing a bit of good and I got tired of seeing them! So, they're gone.

Milestones

I like to look back and see when B hit her milestones and sometimes I have a hard time remembering so I'm going to put them here to have forever!

She was able to hold her head up at just a couple days old, although it was a bit wobbly at first.
Rolled from belly to back - 2 weeks old
Smiled - 5 weeks old
Laughed - 3 months
Rolled from back to belly - 4 months
Said "dada" - around 5 months
Sat up with support - 5 months
Sat up unsupported - 5 1/2 months
Danced - 6 months
Crawled - 6 1/2 months
Pulled up to a stand - 7 months
Cruised furniture - 7 months
Said "mama" - 7 or 8 months but it wasn't until about 11 months that she said it often
Took first steps - 9 months
Walked well - 9 1/2 months
Ran - around 11 months, now shes a pro
Walk backwards - 10 months
Clapped - she started early but then stopped and didn't do it again until 10 months
Waving - same as clapping
First words - I'm not sure when she said her first word...isn't that horrible?? I think it was "ball" around 10 months
Pointed - 9 months
Played peek-a-boo - around 10 months, maybe earlier but I'm not sure.

Words she says now - ball, juice, this, that, no, yes, mommy, daddy, puppy, kitty cat, push, nana, sit..... pretty sure she says "shit" too and at first I thought she was just saying sit but it definitely sounds like shit these days.. yeah, we're working on that.

She can sign 'More' and does it for everything! I am attempting to teach her 'milk' and 'eat' but instead of doing those signs she just does 'more'. If I ask her "do you want some milk?" she'll say yes and then sign more lol. She also points at whatever she wants and signs 'more'.

I went to the new house yesterday in the daylight and woah does it need work! The downstairs is fine, just needs some cleaning and paint. But the upstairs looks just terrible. There are a few things we can do right away to fix it up like paint and some of the walls have holes that need to be filled. The floors are terrible. I don't know how someone could do that to hardwood floors! They're scratched up like no other and there was carpet in one room that had to be ripped out and the floors under it aren't the best. So carpet needs to be put in again very very soon. Right now my landlady is more concerned with ripping out a stair case that goes to the back of the house, which is a big priority for us too. That freaks me out, it is sealed off but I still don't like the idea of it. We were thinking of getting laminate flooring for B's and our room upstairs, because those are the only rooms we'll be using until the next baby comes along. And laminate flooring is fairly cheap but I don't think I could lay it myself, I'd definitely need Patricks help. I'm hoping we can do this in December since Pat gets a vacation check and quite a few days off, I don't want those floors to stay the way they are for long! They are hideous.

I did pick out some paint colors and I'm excited! We are going to do the kitchen and dining room in a dark/hunter green and I'm going to attempt to make some new cushions for our chairs. Then the living room is going to be a darker tan color, its called oatmeal. It matches out brown couches perfectly, then the extra room (that will be B's play room for now) is going to be a dark red. I was thinking about doing my sewing room/office in a pretty light yellow since I'll have all white furniture in there I thought it'd look good. Each room has the french double doors and someone decided to paint the ones to the office a really bright purple, so that'll be changed! The rooms upstairs and all going to be white other then the bathroom, it'll be light blue. Such a pretty color! I saw it in a little paint booklet being used in a bathroom that's similar to ours and it looks good. It needs to floors too but that's not a concern for me right now, they're salvageable. It does need a new mirror though, the one in there is sitting on top of the sink and its all nasty. I found an oval shape medicine cabinet at lowes for $108 that I love love love! So hopefully we can get it.

Moving

I'm so excited! Our landlord owns quite a few houses in town and she is just awesome. She bought our duplex a couple months ago and we really like her, but we hate the duplex. So we've been looking for a house and so far have come up short, the only rental properties here are trashed and overly priced. My landlord owns a big yellow house that she mentioned to me once before, the people living in it weren't thrilled that their rent got raised and she thought they'd be out anytime. They packed up and left, without even telling her. We stopped as soon as we realized no one was there and peaked in the windows, we knew instantly we wanted it, even though the previous tenants trashed it. There were beer cans covering the front and back yard, not to mention trash thrown everywhere. They had a couple dogs and were not the cleanest of people, you could smell the house from the outside, gross right? Totally did not change our decision about wanting to move in. The landlord put a new roof on recently, completely resided the house, leveled it and put all brand new energy efficient windows in (hence the reason for the raised rent), and she has plans to tear out 1 of the stair cases to make a large walk in closet upstairs and she's going to put new cabinets in the kitchen. So for us it is worth the work. It needs a good cleaning and some new carpet upstairs but that will all be done by the time we move in. This place is amazing, its pushing 3000sqft with 4 HUGE bdrms upstairs and one downstairs (that will be my sewing room/office), the bathroom upstairs has a claw footed tub, my dream, and the bathroom itself is huge. One of the carpeted rooms upstairs is were the previous tenants kept their dogs................uh, yeah. You can imagine how nasty that was, but the carpet and padding was tore up and there are plans of putting new stuff in. So the house just needs a good airing out. Open all the windows for awhile and it'll smell fine. Oh, windows. Let me tell you about the windows! I LOVE WINDOWS. This house has a million! I'm thinking about sewing my own curtains because not only are the windows huge but there are literally a ton in each room so it would cost a fortune to actually buy nice curtains. The ceilings are higher then normal, I'd guess about 10-12ft maybe? And the windows are almost the whole length of the wall, so like I said, curtains=expensive. Right now they have these nasty sheer ones that they let their kids draw on with marker. So those will be the first thing I take down and throw in the trash! And my landlord is going to replace all of the curtain rods because almost all of them are bent really badly. Have I mentioned how much we love our landlord?? She is so nice and very understanding. She knows Patrick could be laid off at anytime and shes willing to work with us on that. She said if we ever have a problem with paying rent on time to just tell her and she'll understand. I think she likes us because we've lived in this duplex for 2yrs now and haven't trashed the place. Which is VERY uncommon here, all the rental properties around here have to be remodeled after every tenant, no joke. We've gone through 3 different neighbors in just 2yrs, 1 of which was cooking meth and selling pot out of the house, we know this because our old landlady has Patrick clean everything for her. The stainless steel sink was rusted! But that's a whole other story.

I'm just ready to have room again, we are so cramped in this duplex and we are being over taken by spiders! Huge, nasty, hairy spiders. There were 3, yes 3, giant (about the size of a golden dollar) spiders underneath B's little recliner last night. I saw a black one run under there and I yelled for Pat to come get it and he picked up the chair and noticed all 3 spiders just hanging out. He managed to kill 2 but the black one is still running around somewhere. I'm not sure what kind they are but I think they might be wood spiders, I think that's what they're called. They're relatively harmless and I don't think they bite. But that black one was NOT a wood spider because if I remember correctly wood spiders are brown. And this black one was freaking hopping nuts. I saw it before it ran under her chair, hopping. Seriously, hopping! I stared at it for a minute kind of shocked. I have never seen a spider do that. Very bizarre. It eventually ran into our hall closet and I sprayed around the bottom of the door with some bug spray so hopefully it dies. I hate spiders so much. In the new house we wont have to worry about this because an exterminator just came and sprayed the entire thing, wonderful! No bugs yay!

Pumpkin Patch

We went to a pumpkin patch and there wasn't even any pumpkins. It was actually a waste of time but I got some good pictures out of it. We got lost in the corn maze, played in the corn box, went down a slide and then went home. At least it was a beautiful day! Sunny and a little warmer then it has been the past couple weeks. I dont have much to write about, things have been pretty boring around here. We are just trying to relax as much as possible. I've been using my new sewing machine a lot and playing on my new laptop. I made B a trick or treat bag, nothing fancy, just some fabric and I plan on using black ribbon for the straps, as soon as I can figure out a good way to sew them on lol.

Textures

I've been messing around with textures and actions in photoshop. It's so much fun! I went on flikr and searched for textures, there are a bunch of wonderful people on there sharing the textures they made and I totally took advantage of it. I'm no pro at photoshop, that's for sure. I just mess around with layers and whatnot until I get a look that I like. I've been using photoshop since I was about 12, so roughly 9 years, and I used to be a-mazing. Not to toot my own horn or anything but seriously I could design a whole layout for a website in just a few hours and then I could write up the whole HTML code for you. Its ridiculous that I didn't make that my career. But oh well. I like being a stay at home mommy.





I have more pictures of her precious feet then I do of anything else. I cant help it, they're so darn cute!









This is an older picture of B that I took back in July. I was skimming through my folder of pictures and thought it'd be easy to play around with.


Like I said, definitely not a pro. I'm sure a great photoshop-er will see these and laugh but I'm new(ish) so gimme a break.

Gone

So, I've been MIA recently mainly because I am exhausted! I could sleep all freaking day if I got the chance. Another reason being that my laptop broke in the summer and all I have is an old desktop thats sitting in my spare bedroom. I can't use it because B gets into everything thats in the room, it's just a pain in the ass. I check my facebook occasionally on my ipod touch but its pretty slow, and now I'm updating from my moms laptop.

I'll update again this weekend, a longer post with pictures too!

Fireworks

I'd like to thank whoever in my neighborhood decided it would be a good idea to shoot off fireworks last night. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Can you imagine how that wonderful idea came about? A bunch of idiots sitting around, bored. One says HEY LETS SHOOT OFF FIREWORKS, ITS NOT LIKE ITS 730 AT NIGHT IN OCTOBER. I mean who goes to bed that early anyways?! I'll tell you who, MY DAUGHTER. So again, I thank you for waking my baby up with your obnoxious BOOMS AND WHISTLES AND WHATEVER ELSE YOU FUCKERS DECIDED WOULD BE "FUN", and setting off her night terrors. I was up for 2 hours dealing with her horrific shrieks and screams. I have never gotten so close to shooting someone as I did last night, seriously. Someone almost died.

Yesterday was a bad day, all around. B is really testing her limits with me. Is it possible for her to be going through the terrible 2's at 12 months? I've dealt with 2 year olds that don't have as much attitude as her. I love this age because she's learning new things every day and she's just flat out hilarious but the attitude is just ridiculous. I'm hoping it gets better from here but that's definitely wishful thinking. I imagine it'll only get worse.

Baking

Baking is something I should never ever ever attempt again I wish I could, so bad but every time I try I prove to myself once again that I suck. I thought it would be fun to make some cute Halloween pumpkin shaped cookies and then blog about them, that was until I actually decorated them and decided they suck way to bad for me to show the world. No more baking for me! It's weird though because I think I'm a pretty good cook. I love to try new recipes and attempt new foods but for some reason I cant bake for the life of me. It is a little disappointing but I guess I'll live.

I'm excited for this weekend, I'm going to take B to a pumpkin patch and I can't wait to get some good pictures in the corn maze!

Pictures

How freaking fast do they grow up?? I'm sure I've said this many times before but holy crap! I can't believe how big she has gotten. I was reading some of my old posts and looking at the pictures from just 5 months ago and she has changed so much. She is almost 13 months old. Can you believe it? I can't (but you already know that). She has gone from a 7lb 7oz 19in baby to a 23lb 31in toddler! What the heck is up with that?

She is definitley starting to test the waters when it comes to our parenting. She grabs things that she knows she isnt supposed to have and hides. I cant leave ANYTHING on the couch anymore because she manages to get it, she can also climb up onto the couch which makes keeping things out of her reach really difficult (I usually put my cell on the back of the couch so she doesnt snatch it). And I tell ya she is one smart cookie. She called daddy on my cell phone yesterday, proceeded to talk for a few minutes then when I heard Patrick saying "Hello?" I said "Izabella, did you call daddy?" and she hung up!! How great is that, she knows how to make and end calls on my phone!

It still kills me every time she signs "more", she's been doing it for about a month and a half, I still get excited everytime. She basically taught herself, which I think is amazing. I was working with her on a few words when she was younger but stopped at about 7 months, for unknown reasons. She must've remembered because she randomly started signing 'more' around 11 months. She also points at what she wants and then signs, which to me is equivalent to a 2 word phrase. I think I could go on and on about her, seriously. I could brag about this child ALL day long! I freaking love her.

Teeth

B has a new tooth on the bottom left next to her other 2 beauitful teeth! That brings her to a total of 7. I honestly didn't think she was teething. She's been her normal happy-self. This morning I was tickling her and I noticed it when she laughed. I never thought I'd ever get so excited over simple little things.

My weekend was rather boring, not a whole lot happened other then we bought a wii and have been playing on it when we can. Today we went to lunch with my mom, I've been craving chinese for like a month but since Patrick doesn't like it the only way I can go is by myself and that's no fun. So, I took my mom and yum yum it was freaking good!! I'm thinking today would be a good day for a mini-photoshoot at the park, since it's really really nice out and I haven't taken pictures like that in awhile. So, I'll probably be back later with pictures!

House Cleaning

I just want to show everyone how my living room looks BEFORE I clean it. I read lots of mommy blogs (which are all fantastic, don't get me wrong) that have perfect, sparkly clean houses and I wonder how they do it? I felt crappy at first because I thought, well why isn't MY house clean 24/7? Am I a horrible mom for not keeping it clean 24/7? Then I remember no one is perfect and even though my house is a mess 98% of the day that doesn't effect my mommy skills at all. It is very unrealistic to want your house clean all the time with children and the only way that would happen here is if I hired a maid and frankly I just don't have the money for that. So I make do with my messy house. I just wanted to post this so other moms know its OK for your house to be messy at times, it doesn't make you any less of a person or mother.

Anyways, good news! B hasnt had a night terror since monday morning!! She has been sleeping so well this week and it makes me happy. I'm really hoping they were just a one time thing and wont happen again but I am prepared for if they do! I dont have much else to post so..... picture time!















I really need to think of some interesting things to post!