Halloween!

I didn't do anything overly crafty for the girls Halloween costumes.  It's good that I didn't pan anything elaborate because we had another bad sleep week so I was struggling anyway.  I think I'm learning my limits, maybe?  Months ago I ordered these shirts from Zulily (affiliate link).  R.Soup's is actually a onesie, but close enough.

I had a red tutu for L.Soup from a party and a pair of pants (0-3 months and a little short - but definitely still fit... thank goodness for tiny babies) with a tutu attached for R.Soup.  I ordered these socks from Amazon and made them into baby legs for L.Soup so their bottoms will match (minus the heels).

I put long sleeve under shirts and stockings on each of them for some added warmth.  I asked my grandfather to knit them each a red hat to keep their heads warm and my mom made them bows to attach to the hats.


We didn't go to many houses, but I figured it would be more fun for me them if we went in the wagon instead of a stroller.

I don't know how many times I'll be able to do this matching thing before they start rebelling against me. 

So I'm soaking this all in.

Already?

I have a 6 month old.

I've been thinking about it all day and I'm still having a hard time with it. 

This tiny little nugget is 6 months old.

She's trying desperately to figure out how to crawl. 

She's getting more balance and is now able to sit up on her own for a few minutes.

She's interested in absolutely everything.

She's so serious, but so completely silly sometimes.

She LOVES her sister and laughs at everything she does.


She's starting to make more than just "ahh" sounds.

She's chewing on everything.

She's tried three foods - avocado, banana, and pumpkin.

SHE'S SIX MONTHS OLD.

I don't get it.

Happy Half Birthday baby girl.

Starting from scratch

Things have been at a complete stand still in the Soup household the last few weeks.  We moved R.Soup over to her own room because she kept waking up at 3:30 in the morning to hang out with her mama.  No thank you my dear sweet baby love.

She hasn't been having a hard time going to bed.  Some nights she even sleeps all the way through to morning.  But then there are other nights where she wakes up multiple times throughout the night and I'm the only one that she wants to see.

I've spent the last few weeks trying to recoup from the the previous weeks when I was being allotted approximately 3 hours of sleep during the night.  

We've been making a point to go to sleep as soon as the girls are asleep, so that I'm not dying the next day.  Mess has been piling and piling and piling, and I haven't even thought about the projects going on in the basement.  On nights that we don't go to bed, we sit on the couch and watch some TV and hold our breath (well at least I do) waiting to hear crying coming through the monitor.

I finally broke down last week and invited people over to the house for a Sunday get together.  Which forced us to frantically clean the main level of the house in prep for them coming over.  I wouldn't care if it was a normal level of mess.  But this was hoarder style disgusting mess and was starting to affect my daily outlook.

So now the main level of the house looks... better.  Like 1000 times better but still not what I think it should look like.  But as long as we can keep up with this level of clean, we can work towards my dream clean.  Minus toys.  Nothing ever looks clean when its covered in a rainbow of baby toys.  Honestly I'm not (always) bothered by them.  Its the inch fine coating of sand under them that bothers me.

Upstairs on the other hand.  Disaster area.  Our old mattress is still standing up in the hallway outside our bedroom.  The cats have claimed it as their new climbing tree since its the highest place they can be.  I'm afraid at this point they might revolt when we move it out.  There's boxes of hand-me-down baby related things (mostly clothes... MORE clothes) that need to be washed and sorted.  I have a ton of things lying around currently that I want to put into the bathroom, but haven't had any time to actually WORK on the bathroom.

In addition to THAT - because that's not enough and I want you to truly understand the state I've allowed our house to get to - there's four... FOUR loads of clean baby laundry.  We also have one or two loads of our laundry.  We only have 4 laundry baskets. That means one of the "baskets" is dumped on the floor somewhere.  And the dirty clothes hampers are starting to fill up again.  It never ends.

Okay.  But enough about clothes mess.

Sometime in the last month, the light in our ceiling fan stopped working.  So the majority of the time that we spend in our bedroom we have to use our phones as flashlights and have the hall and bathroom lights on so we can actually see things.

D.Soup bought a kit to fix it the other day, but accidentally bought the ceiling fan kit instead of the light kit.  So now we are back at square one.

I think I'm finally finding a groove (and the energy) where - if R.Soup stays asleep - I can get things done.  I did what felt like a million things on Wednesday night when I got back downstairs.  I'm hoping I can keep that pace up.

Also, I need to be starting back over on an exercise regimen. Once I stopped sleeping, I stopped caring about my 30 day challenge.  Which is unfortunate because I had made it to day 14.  I'm going to start that back up here soon, and hopefully stick it out for the entire 30 days.  I'd also like to pick up with some "running" sometime in the near future.

Here's hoping I can get back on some kind of schedule soon.

Some paper crafting!

I've had a few Silhouette paper cutting projects recently.  That I've used a few of my "free nights" to work on.  It's taken forever to get some of them done but I'm glad I can finally make time for some sort of crafting again.

Two of my good friends are getting married (to each other) in 15 days!  A few months ago she asked me if I could help with some paper things for the wedding.  First up was a sticker to attach to the welcome bags that she had for hotel guests and the bridal party.  She gave me a general idea of what she liked, along with some examples for inspiration.  I came up with a few samples, but finally ended up with this:

(font is Janda Elegant Handwriting)

I printed them onto some full sheets of sticker paper that she had purchased and brought to me, and she said it almost looks like they were printed directly onto the bags! 

Next up, my mom asked for some help with developing a new business card for her Etsy shop.  She wants to completely remodel and streamline the look of her page, including the paper that she sends associated with her orders.  She wanted something on Kraft paper, so I came up with this:

(Fonts: Young & Beautiful, GeosansLight)

She loved that they looked like bows.

In looking for new ways to decorate my house for Halloween, I kept coming across this picture.

source

I desperately wanted to do this on our garage, so I searched through the image options for the Silhouette and found a group of bats that I thought would work well.  I set them up (all 60 of them) and cut them out on some black vinyl.

Here's what my version looks like:

I feel pretty good about the very little bit of crafting I've been able to accomplish lately.  Hopefully soon I will be able to increase my level of production.

Cross your fingers.

But don't hold your breath.

Now... what, exactly?

It's been an interesting few weeks at the Soup house....

D.Soup now has a red meat allergy.

My self proclaimed "meatatarian" husband can no longer eat beef, pork, or lamb.  His hands and feet start to swell, rashes form up his arms, and he has terrible stomach pains.

Also, pork being "the other white meat" is a lie.  Rude.

All because of a tick bite.

The Lone Star Tick has been spreading across the country, and if it bites you there is a chance that you will develop an allergy to red meat.  The tick carries a sugar called Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose(alpha-gal) in its belly.  It transfers the alpha-gal to you and your body starts to fight it like it would a disease.  Alpha-gal is also found in the fatty parts of all non-primate mammals.  So when your body processes the fat cells of any red meat that you have eaten, you have an allergic reaction.

...That's my very dumbed down explanation of this whole shenanigans.

What does this mean for us?

We will now be a fish and fowl loving family.  We are only in the first week of transferring over to our new lifestyle and we honestly don't know how much he will be affected by different scenarios.  A lot of people with this allergy have issues eating out because of cross contamination.  We will have to take it day by day.  He has been prescribed an Epi pen, and we now have Benadryl stored in every vehicle and multiple areas in our house.


The good news.

He doesn't (so far) seem to have any feelings of his throat closing up during a reaction.

We already eat a decent amount of chicken.  So transitioning isn't going to be TOO hard for a majority of our meals. 

The other good thing is that turkey is much healthier than beef, so it will help us in our weight loss endeavors.

There is a chance that the allergy will go away on its own (3 weeks to 5 years is the "average"), he has to be careful not to get another Lone Star tick bite, because that will bring the allergy back, or make it worse if he is still allergic at the time of the bite.   

The bad news.

D.Soup hunts.  Deer meat is included in the list of no-nos.  We haven't tested it, and some people say they can still eat it so we are feeling hopeful at the moment.  We shall see.

We also have bags and bags of beef - hamburgers, steaks, ground beef, cubes - in our freezers.  I'm going to have to package everything up and give it away.  At least we know people around us that will take it, so we don't have to throw everything away.

It's also possible that we could deal with cross contamination in our own kitchen.  We use cast iron pans to cook a majority of our meals.  Those could very easily have remnants of meat that might affect him.



There's so much more.  I start thinking about it and I end up in a rabbit hole of stress and panic.  We just don't know everything that he will react to so its a strange and slightly scary time for us me.  He is less panicked than I am, at least externally.  I think if I wasn't so stressed about it he would be more stressed, but for now he has to deal with all my craziness so he's taken on his job as the confident one.

I can't believe that a tick bite can do this to people.  Hardly anyone knows about it either. Almost everyone that we've talked to has been completely dumbfounded that this is even a thing.

The allergist that D.Soup saw to get tested for alpha-gal was actually excited (for herself, not for him) that he was there.  She told him "I've studied this but have never actually seen a case of it before!  I'm going to have to do some more research!"

I will continue to post any changes.

Milestones

R.Soup has hit a few milestones in the last few weeks.  She's scooting backwards all over the floor.  She's so close to sitting up on her own.  She had her first taste of real food a few days ago.

And then, just Monday night... This:

That's my baby.  All alone.  In the CRIB!  Gah.

I almost couldn't lay her down because I was so sad.  It couldn't be time for this already!  But then I remembered the night before.  Her waking up quite a few times just to hang out.  With me.  Her father wasn't cutting it.

So I plunked her down in the crib and ran.  And then stared at the monitor for the rest of the night.

She did great!  Slept from 9ish until 3:30.  It took until about 5 to get her back to sleep.  And again she only wanted me (...yay).  But when she went back to sleep again she stayed asleep until 8.

Last night was not as great, but I think it was more my fault than hers.  I honestly am not completely sure, but it took 2 hours to get her to sleep finally.  Then she woke up around 3 and again around 5:30.  That second time I had D.Soup go get her because I just couldn't convince myself to get out of the bed.

We have been soooo late to work this week.

Growing

I've watched over the last few months as the bigger of my little baby girls has grown and changed and turned into a not so little-little girl.  Hair that refused to grow for the first 18 months of her life has sprouted and stretched and is now consistently in her eyes if its down.  The back, with its beautiful ringlet curls, pulls down to the middle of her back if straightened out.  It makes her look so much more grown up then I'm personally okay with.

Her face looks less and less like a baby every day.  Her attitude screams teenager.  Sometimes I forget she's only 2, because she already seems so much older than that.

 I watched her one night this week take off running through a field full of other children.  Instead of just watching them, she joined in.  They taught her how to do a cartwheel, and I watched her try to maneuver her tiny arms and legs in the same way these bigger girls were.  She followed them around the rest of the evening, and they played with her.  Last month girls the same size ran around her as she tried to figure out how to include herself in their games.

A part of me wanted to follow her around, keep close to her.  But instead I watched her from a distance.  She would come running back to us to tell us what she had done, and with a smile take off again to find her new friends.

My beautiful big girl.

Mattress in a box

We moved out of our old house right when RoomStore was going out of business.  It was perfect timing for us because we were in desperate need of a new bed, since we had trashed ours when we moved out of our old house and had spent the first few months sleeping on a deflated air mattress on the floor.  It was almost like camping.  Sort of.  Not really.

We ended up with a king size pillow top mattress that at the beginning felt like magic.  It was so soft, and comfortable.  And then a few months went by, and you could only sleep in two places on the bed because any time you moved anywhere else you rolled right back into the hole.  It was annoying, but we dealt with it because its ridiculous to buy a new bed after less than 2 years.

Like I said before, D.Soup was gone for work all last week.  While he was gone someone recommended the Sleep Innovations 10 inch mattress from Amazon.  They personally had purchased multiple forms of this bed and were very pleased with it.  That was enough to get D.Soup debating on making the purchase.  Once he got home and slept on our bed again - waking up in the morning with a sore back and knees after a week pain free - the deal was done.  That night he placed an order and Monday afternoon our bed was waiting for us when we got home.

What is that, you say?  That doesn't look like a bed?  Well don't be fooled....

That right there is a genuine king size foam mattress.

I wish I would have gotten video of this sucker opening up when we cut the vacuum seal open.  It was hilarious.  It reminded me of those little shapes you would get as a child and when you put them under water they turned into wash clothes. 

I don't know these people, and this is not my video.  But this is the mattress we ended up with, and they took the step that I didn't think of and recorded opening the mattress.  This is exactly how ours went too.

We a few nights in to sleeping on the bed.  More like "sleeping" for me, but D.Soup seems happy with it so far.  I got a better nights sleep the last few nights and I'm feeling pretty good today, so I'm happy with his purchase.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with the king size mattress in my hallway.

Where Mz.Soup gets to make (most of) Dinner

I don't get to make dinner often anymore.  A baby with hunger cries you could set a watch to and a toddler that wants to "help" me do everything puts a damper on that whole leisurely making dinner thing.  Even if I start making dinner I usually have to pass the torch over to D.Soup in the middle so I can give my attention somewhere else.  

We had some chicken in the refrigerator, and I had some fresh tomatoes and green beans from Pappy's garden.  So I headed to Skinnytaste for some recommendations and ended up landing on these two recipes:

Roasted Parmesan Green Beans

Grilled Chicken Bruschetta

Both recipes only took about 15 minutes each once the vegetables were prepped.  It was a perfect quick meal that allowed D.Soup to grill the chicken and me to deal with the vegetable portion while passing R.Soup back and forth.  Luckily, L.Soup didn't take a nap yesterday so she had passed out in the car on the way home.  She slept on the couch through the entire dinner making process.

Not so luckily, she was not very friendly for the rest of the evening.  

On fancy dinnerware.

L.Soup attitude issues aside.  This was by far one of the best dinners we have had in a long time.  Definitely both options will be added into our dinner menu mix frequently from here on out.

Why do kids fight napping so much?

I would nap every day if someone let me.

And I wouldn't get fired.

Not quite sleeping

The last few nights, R.Soup has not exactly been sleeping.  I'm pretty sure she's in the middle of a growth spurt because the only way to comfort her when she wakes up is to feed her.  I know this is a fact, because I had D.Soup take her for a little while at 3 am on Monday night, and she just stared in my direction and screamed the entire 15 minutes until I gave in and took her back.  The little angel.

The last two nights were poorly placed (for me) since I'm still trying to recover from last weeks 5:30 every day wake up call culminating with Friday's no-sleepathon.

Let me start over.

D.Soup went away for work last week.  So while he was gone, instead of trying to get the girls and the dog into the car every morning on my own and still make it to work before 10 am, I stayed on my parents couch.  Each day I got up at 5:30 and snuck out before anyone was awake. 

(Side note, is snuck not a word?  I'm getting yelled at by spell check)

The problem with this is that I would still stay up until 11 or later each night, so I wasn't getting much sleep to begin with.  Then the last day we were there, L.Soup decided she didn't want to go to bed, and laid in her bed singing the ABCs until about 11:15.  I waited a little while, and went to bed around 11:45.

At midnight I heard R.Soup.  Of course.  And OF COURSE, every time I tried to put her back down, she would wake up and cry again.  So she and I ended up snuggling the rest of the night morning.  When I went to tell my mom I was leaving, I noticed L.Soup wasn't in her bed.  I had a moment of panic, before I found her snuggled down in between my parents in THEIR bed.

So it wasn't a good sleeping night for anyone.  

I got a little reprieve Friday and Saturday nights, and some extra time in bed both mornings while D.Soup handled the girls downstairs and made breakfast.  But I was finally coming back out of my haze when Sunday night hit and she woke up every 2 hours on the dot.  And then Monday night was basically the same.  I was in the middle of staining a crate in the basement when I heard her.  I had D.Soup go try to rock her back to sleep, and it worked for a while.  Just long enough in fact for me to get the stain off my hands (more on that later).

I pretty much spent the whole night sitting up in our brand new bed.  Until that 3 am situation, and I just couldn't muster the energy to sit up anymore.  So then I woke up to this:

I sleep great when I'm right next to mom.

And when its time to get up for the day.

Last night I didn't have the energy to even think about anything but sleeping by the time the girls were in bed.  I managed to make my way back downstairs, only to trudge right back upstairs and pass out.

At least she's cute.

I need a system

The biggest thing I forgot about having an infant is how much time you have to dedicate to just being with them.  Between feedings, diaper changes, playing, and just holding them in between activities, there's no time for me to get anything done until she's in bed.  I love playing and spending time with her so I'm not really complaining, there's just a ton of things that I need to get done around the house. 

The few times I'm not holding her during the day, I don't really want to work on cleaning up the house.  I either want to relax for a few minutes, or more often, play with L.Soup. 

Needless to say, any amount of housework either gets done by D.Soup, by me one-handedly (always entertaining) or in minimal amounts after the girls are asleep. 

I've tried to make a daily to do list of things to accomplish on the cleaning front each day, but I always end up behind.  Or distracted.

I did a little googling, and I found Todoist.  This site allows me to build to do lists, set due dates and even recurring due dates so I can set up a cleaning schedule for myself each week.  There's even an app so I can look at and check off action items on my phone as I'm doing them. 

I've transferred my regular document full of things to do over, and I'm going to test it out for the next few weeks to see if it actually helps me stay on track.  Its nice to be able to assign specific dates to everything, so I only have to focus on what's up that day when I look at the list in "calendar" format.

I've also scheduled in those "once in a while" tasks, like adding a cleaning tab into the water tank of the toilets and running a cleaning cycle in the washing machine once a month.  Those are things that I always think about doing at the absolute inopportune time.  So hopefully this will help me to be better about actually keeping up with them.

D.Soup is coming home today from a work trip.  So I'm going to really start keeping up with it tomorrow.  I've been trying to do some stuff here and there this week, but we'll see how it actually works out starting tomorrow.

In addition to a cleaning list, I've created a "Projects" list.  I've listed out all the steps I need to complete for all the different crafting projects I've got planned out currently.  I'm hoping this will force me to actually finish (or start) the projects I currently have going before I decided to start working on something else.

For example, I currently have 31 steps listed out in the Projects list.  

 Reel yourself in MzSoup, just stop.

6 month recap

It's been so long since I've written here, everything is blending together.  So I'm just going to make a list of the things (that I can remember) that have happened over the last few months and quickly recap them.

1.  We finished getting L.Soup's room together

2.  We had a baby!

3.  D.Soup took L.Soup and his mom on a road trip in May.  My mother in law's best friend had a daughter graduating from high school.  They live in North Carolina.  She really wanted to go be a part of the celebrations, but didn't want to go alone.  D.Soup decided it would be fun to take L.Soup and spend some time with his mom.  He also thought it would be nice for me to spend some quality alone time with R.Soup.  It was definitely nice to have just one baby for a few days, but I was so happy when they got home.

4.  While they were gone my mom and I attacked the girls rooms, and the computer room.  We took advantage of having only one baby, and spent a majority of the 5 days they were gone frantically cleaning and organizing the upstairs in my house.  It had turned into a complete disaster area - all the girls clothes were in laundry baskets or on the floor, boxes were piled everywhere, things got carried upstairs and just left in the hallway.  A. mess.  And the worst part of everything was the computer room.  There was a single path of walking space in that room.  It took most of the time to clean, but we got it 95% accomplished.  I have big plans for that room in the near future.

5.  I went back to work.  I got an awesome 3 months at home with my girls after R.Soup was born.  I'm happy to be back at work, if only because I have adults to talk to again.

6.  I started making time to work on crafting/house stuff again.  It may only be an hour after the girls have gone to bed, but I'm sure soon I'll be able to devote more time to working on my crafting projects.  Currently I'm working on four crates - two for the girls bathroom and two for the bottom of the pantry in the kitchen.  More on that later.

7.  I decided to decorate my bathroom.  When we moved in, all the rooms in our house were the same color.  For the most part I'm okay with that on the main level.  Most of that level is one large open space so the consist wall color isn't terrible.  Upstairs though, every wall in every room is (other than the girls rooms) the same and it was starting to wear on me.  Additionally, I had put no effort into decorating the bathroom other than a few (black - what was I thinking) rugs on the floor and a pretty shower curtain.  I'm over it.

Hopefully this will be a good kick-off point for me to start writing here again.

L.Soup's New Room

When I disappeared, I was in the middle of clearing out the new space for L.Soup's room.  So I'm going to try to pick up from there.  Months of time have passed and I now have double mommy brain, so bear with me.

What had become a disastrous mess in that room ended up being an even more disastrous mess in the new computer room (a completely different conversation).  I finally got enough maternal nesting into my system that I got myself in gear and motivated.  We moved the rest of the stuff out of L.Soup's future room.  But the only place (other than the trash) for it to go was into the new computer room.  At this point I didn't care, it was time to move.

Before

Months ago, during a trip to the fabric store, I found this cute white curtain fabric with blue, pink and green circles all over it.  It became the center piece for all decisions made about the bedroom.  Interestingly enough, the curtains have not yet made their debut in L.Soups room yet.  I'm working on it.

<picture of fabric>

Once we had pulled every last piece of mess out, we made a trip to Home Depot for paint and supplies.  All the walls in our house were a bone color when we moved in.  Considering I was putting white furniture into the room, I didn't want the walls to look dirty.  So the walls and ceiling in L.Soup's room got a fresh coat of white satin paint (for easy dirty removal, which has come in handy more than once).  I had D.Soup help me with the ceiling, but I did most of the walls.  We left the trim alone because it actually didn't look bad once the white paint was up (its also a bone color).

After

I then took pink, green and blue paint and painted three different size circles onto the wall.

<color names?>

I snagged my old dresser from the basement at my parent's house...

D.Soup doing some sanding

(One of the feet on the dresser had been severely damaged over time, so we took some wood filler and basically created a new leg for it.  I wish I would have taken pictures of it in progress, but I guess I forgot.  Pregnancy brain.)

Gnarly foot from water damage

...and spent some time painting that white with pink, green, and blue dresser drawers.  I also covered the top of the dresser with some wallpaper that matched the color theme as well.  I have the mirror that goes with this dresser as well.  But I figured L.Soup doesn't really need it just yet, so I can hold off on that for a little while.

White drawers before taping and painting the colors

New hardware from Home Depot

Disney Kids Paisley Stripe Wallpaper

We also picked up this ClosetMaid Cubeical from Target, along with some color matching storage bins for books and trinkets. Her shoes go in one bin, bathing suits in another.  At the moment most of the bins are empty, but that's a good thing.

Once all the painting was finished, we headed out and got L.Soup her very own BIG GIRL BED!  Her twin size mattress is currently sitting on the floor, which is probably for the best because she continues to fall out of it on a regular basis.  We made a point to pick out some fun sheets for her, to help convince her that the big girl bed was the place to be.  It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be to transition her to the new room.

Ladybug sheets! (from Target)

There's still a few things that need to be done before I'm calling the room complete, but it's working out well for her right now, so I have time to work on the other things.  First, and most importantly, finish the ceiling fan.  We got it 95% of the way up, and the electrical box started wiggling around, so now D.Soup has to climb up in the attic to fit that back against the beam.  I was also trying to paint the blades to match the room, and I messed them up, so I have to fix them before they can go up.  Secondly, hang some paper lanterns above the bed.  Third, the curtains.  They should be easy, I just have to find some one on one time with the sewing machine.

She loves her room, and that makes me happy.

Migrating

So this post is from 6 months ago. There is too much that has happened between now and then, so I'm just going to post it as is...........

2/5/14

I've spent the last few weeks slowly getting everything situated in my new craft room.  I miraculously "finished" sorting and boxing up all the millions of baby clothes that had littered the floor in that room for months.  Then I promptly found MORE clothes that needed a home. 

Sigh. 

It never ends.  Those clothes are currently stacked on top of the mountain of boxes, because there is no more space for them in said boxes.  Of course.

Once that was done, I had a whole new world of space open to me.  I have a few of these tables hanging out in my garage, for parties and whatnot.  I figured I could just use two of them and make a nice long wall of just table space.  Previously, I had everything in my craft room set up on one of them, and the Silhouette and sewing machine had to share space.  It was not really working for me.  Especially considering I don't clean up ever the other things that have taken up space on the table over the last few months.

I had D.Soup lug one of the extra tables upstairs and we set it up.  Then we decided to measure to see if two would fit.  The wall is just over 11.5 feet long, the tables we had were 6 feet each.  So putting two in that space was not an option.  The next idea we had was to buy one 5 foot table.  But the width of the tables is different, so that would have driven me insane.

So I bought two 5 foot tables at Sam's Club (because they had them for the cheapest price).  Now I have separate areas for my sewing machine, and my Silhouette.  And I have a the perfect size gap between the tables and the wall for a tall storage cabinet!  I'm so excited!  We've got the plans all set out for how it's going to get built, just need to find the time.  Considering we still haven't finished the other nightstand, we'll see when it actually happens.

The plan is to build the cabinet with enough storage spaces for each color family of paper to have its own space.  I'll also have a bunch of extra space underneath for anything else I want to put down there!  Compared to where my paper has been stored in the past (all over the floor), it's going to be AMAZING!

I also cleared out the closet in that room in preparation for all my fabric.  The goal is to put a shelf in there and have the fabric stored neatly on the shelf.  Again, compared to where it was before (all over the floor... are we seeing a pattern here?) its going to be like heaven.

But, more importantly.  The goal here is to get everything cleared out of what is to be L.Soup's new room.  Progress is slow, but its happening!  All of my big craft stuff has been transferred, next up is the actual office supplies.  During this migration, we are downsizing.  We hardly used the computers that we had set up in the old craft/computer room.  One of the two has been moved to the new craft room, because I use it for my crafting.  The other one is most likely headed for the basement.  D. Soup sometimes does crazy workout video things, and could use it for those.

This also means that the actual computer desk is no longer necessary.  We're probably never going to need it again, so we'll pack it up and save it for whenever we decide to yard sale.  Or something.  After that is gone, its really just finding new homes for all the small stuff in my new craft room.  Simple.  Yeah.  Right?

Well, we're going to take our time, and slowly shuffle through the mess.  But I feel like we're on the right track for moving L.Soup.  I have the plan for her bedroom in my head, and I can't wait to start working on it.  I have so many things that I need to get together for her space.

I feel a little in between a rock and a hard place in this moment.  I want to get L.Soup's room finished before the baby gets here.  But I need to get the craft room organized in order to get things ready for L.Soup's room. Not that my old craft room was organized in any way.  I think it's just that now I know what I want, but I have to choose one room over the other.

Of course I'm going to choose L.Soup's room.

But the picture of my craft room in my head is soooo beautiful.

30 Day Little Black Dress Challenge from 30 Day Fitness Challenges

Yesterday, Pinterest kindly sent me an email full of 30 day challenge workouts.  I guess it noticed I had been pinning things to my "If I ever get motivated to work out" board and decided to help me out a little.

Well, it worked, and today I decided I'm going to start a 30 day challenge, mainly this one:

source

The 30 Day Fitness website is pretty cool.  They have a bunch of these challenges.   They even include videos of all of the workouts included in the challenges so you know exactly what you're supposed to be doing.  They even have an app!  Which I think is awesome.  Hopefully it helps keep me motivated.
I'm going to track my changes, so I'll try to be good about posting when I'm done.  I may even take pictures.

But that's a scary thought so we'll see. 

She's here!

Yeesh, I've been gone for months.  In that time span I got my house spectacularly cleaned in preparation for the baby.  Then I had the baby (more on that momentarily).  Then I watched as my house quickly degraded back to and then worse than its former self.  We're slowly getting back on our feet, but it is a painful process.

Anywho, on to the important things.  BABY!

Little Ms. R.Soup entered the world at 1:47 pm on April 9th.

8 lbs. 7.5 oz
19.5 inches long

Exactly one week before her sister's 2nd birthday.  L.Soup is an AWESOME big sister.  She's super sweet and so good with the baby.  I'm actually really impressed.

She is 4 months old, and I still haven't gotten birth announcements out yet.  The saddest part is I have all the pieces, just no time to put them together.  Who has time to do anything when there's teeny babies around??

...not us.


Everyone is adjusting to being a family of four.  I forgot how difficult it is to do anything when you are attached to a small person for a large majority of the day, so there was a bit of a learning curve there for me.  Especially when dealing with L.Soups needs while I was home on maternity leave.  We got it figured out though.

She is perfect and beautiful and we love her.