Bad Habits

Well, so much for my goal of being able to share a newly-organized living room this week!

I managed to accomplish three of my goals, though, which is better than nothing:

1. I cleaned out and reorganized the inside of my desk. I kid you not, I had 8 years worth of old check registers piled up in there!  
2. I moved the modem and router to inside the desk.  Now all those awful wires in the corner by the filing cabinet are hidden.  Not only does that area look nicer, it's less of a safety hazard.
3. I cleaned the piles of mail and books off the console table.  Now it's just the candle holder.  In theory I'd love to add a vase, but with a toddler in the house I don't see that ending well.

Since I don't have a finished product to share just yet, I thought I'd talk about some of the bad habits I have when it comes to cleaning and organizing.  Since my mission to streamline my house and my life is clearly a long-term one (seriously, if I finish this whole thing by Christmas, I will consider it a massive victory!), I'm going to have to break some bad habits so that the areas I de-clutter and organize at the beginning of this project remain as such by the time I make it through the whole house.

This article from Apartment Therapy is what got me thinking about the topic. 

I'm definitely guilty of #1.  I have a bad habit of letting junk mail and coupons I'm unlikely to ever use pile up.  They clutter up the console table, my desk, the kitchen table... 

#2 is a struggle for me as well.  I have a terrible time getting rid of things that were gifts or that are connected to a happy memory, even if I don't need or use them anymore.

The other items on Apartment Therapy's list, I'm not too bad about.  But related to #2, I'm often afraid to get rid of things I "might need some day."  It's not quite hoarder-level, but I do veer a bit into packrat territory, and my storage spaces are so messy and full that things are starting to spill into more visible areas of the house.  That crosses a line for me. ;-)

My other, biggest bad habit is a lack of follow-through.  All of Amelia's old clothes are sealed up in space bags, but I haven't transferred those bags to containers and put them in the attic yet, so they're still taking up space downstairs.  Space that would be better-utilized for things we will actually use again in the immediate future.  Likewise, I have clothing I have intended to donate or bring to a consignment store for upwards of a year that is still hanging in the hall closet and/or sitting in a pile next to the hamper in the master bedroom.  Oops?  De-cluttering doesn't count if you're just moving the mess from one place to another, does it?

Hopefully within the next week I'll have some photos of the completed living room to share.  In the meantime, what are your biggest organizational pitfalls?  Do you have any helpful tips for staying organized?

Farmers Market Haul

Well, I haven't made progress on the living room yet, but I had a darn good time at the farmers market this morning!

I really love the huge variety of produce that's available this time of year:

I spent about $30 and got a half pound of crimini mushrooms (in the paper bag on the left), a bag of green beans, a cantaloup, two tomatoes, a bell pepper, 7 plums, a half pint each of peppadews and blueberries, an eggplant, a zucchini, a yellow squash, a bag of potatoes, and a bag of carrots. 

I already used the mushrooms, eggplant, zucchini and yellow squash.  I roasted them and served them over pasta for dinner tonight.  The cantaloupe, pepper, plums, and blueberries (and some of the carrots) will be used as snacks throughout the week.  Tomorrow night I'll be making this vegetarian lentil "meat"loaf for dinner.  It will use some of the carrots, and I'll roast the potatoes and saute the green beans to serve along with it. 

The peppadews... those are getting stuffed with mozzarella and being served over bruschettini at a family reunion tomorrow, and I am so excited.  That's one of my favorite snacks, but I very rarely have it.

I just realized that I have absolutely no solid plans for the tomatoes, but I'm sure I can think of something.  Perhaps CLT sandwiches (like a BLT sandwich, but with fried provolone cheese instead of bacon, since we're a vegetarian household). 

Now that I've wasted nearly 1/2 hour writing this blog post instead of cleaning the living room, I suppose it's time to start working on the messy desk that is currently staring me in the face.  ;-)

The Unstaged Living Room

Last night, I decided to take a couple of quick iPhone photos of the living room, exactly as it was at the end of the day.  No cleaning, no staging, just how it looks in a daily basis:

Considering my husband works from home 3 days a week, and we have a toddler, it's really not too bad, since this room is very much lived-in.  Fortunately, I have a child who, at 18 months, will typically put her toys away without prompting.  I really, really hope that lasts!

Most of the major clutter is hidden.  Such as all the random dog stuff, half of which is probably garbage, in the console table behind the loveseat:

 

Also, that nice pile of books and junk mail sitting on top of the table.  This should be fairly quick and easy to weed through and organize.  Things like the nail clipper, the Thundershirt, and the nice green sweater are keepers.  Empty box of poopy bags and stinky old bandanas he never wears?  Not so much.  I'm also thinking I'd like to get some sort of wall-mounted mail organizer/key holder to hang next to the front door, to cut down on the piles of mail on the console table. 

Figuring out the book situation is going to be a bit trickier:

The top four shelves of the living room bookcase (there are many, many bookcases in our house) is home to my collection of classic fiction.  Also, some CDs that aren't where they belong for no good reason, some misplaced contemporary fiction, and... a roll of packing tape?  Those things will be easy enough to put back in their proper homes.  We can get rid of that Wii balance board, and either toss or store that plastic critter cage on the floor.  But now that Amelia's books and puzzles have taken over the bottom shelf, I'm not sure that the classic fiction overflow (the stack of books on the right side of the second-to-bottom shelf) will have a home.  I'll either have to weed that collection or get creative with how I arrange it. 

This corner is a total mess:

The bouncy seat and folded up play mat (between the wall and desk) need to go into storage.  The folded up swing needs to go back to the cousin who loaned it to me.  My desk has... issues.  I need to go through the big pile of paperwork under my laptop and on the top right shelf.  I need to get rid of the years-old check registers.  I need to consolidate the boxes greeting cards and note cards.  I need to find a better home for our camera bag on top of the desk.  Glen's pile o' stuff on the fireplace needs to start living in his office, where it belongs.  I have absolutely no explanation for the Adipose plus next to the vase, except that one of its eyes came out and it was a choking hazard, so we had to keep it out of Amelia's reach.  There's got to be a better place for it, though.

Finally, there's this corner:

I need to get rid of the pile of papers on top of the filing cabinet.  Ditch the fake flowers.  Do SOMETHING about those exposed wires.  I'd like to move the router and modem to the inside of my desk, so that the wires run behind the fireplace, out of reach of tiny hands.  And I'd like swap Elvis's bed and the filing cabinet, and put a lamp on it, so it can be a cozy little reading corner. 

Also, not visible in this photo, but I have YEARS worth of bills that need to be shredded.  It's bad.  Really bad.  I refuse to go paperless, because I clip my bills together in the order they're due, and without them I'd never pay anything on time.  It's a good strategy for not destroying my credit score.  Not so much for avoiding clutter.

Now that I've put this out there, my goal for next week is to be able to share a newly de-cluttered and organized living room!

I'm Ba-aaaack!!

Nothing like an accidental year-long blogging hiatus... Life got overwhelming for awhile after I returned to work full-time last July.  Forty hours a week at my day job, plus another four to twelve at the library, plus a house, a baby, and a dog to take care of left little time for anything else.

And speaking of the baby... She's a toddler now!

It's hard to believe it's been a year and a half since she was born!

Anyway, a huge motivation for me to start blogging again is my mission to de-clutter and organize my house.  We've been pretty good about not accumulating too much unnecessary baby stuff, and by most standards our house isn't too bad.  But our storage spaces are a mess, because I have a tendency to just stuff things into closets and drawers when I can't deal with the visual clutter.  But hiding clutter isn't the same as getting rid of clutter, and our storage spaces are a mess.  Now it's starting to overflow into actual living areas and I want to nip this in the bud!

So much like my "Before and After" series for the room remodels/redesigns, I'm going to do a before and after series for my de-clutter and organize mission.  I don't know that I'll have that many readers after such a long break, but documenting the process here seems like a good way to motivate myself and stay accountable.  My plan is to attack one area per week and post the results here. 

Conveniently enough, mere days after I decided to do this, I saw a post on Apartment Therapy announcing that August is Back to Basics month, so I plan to incorporate some ideas from there.  Wish me luck!!

Locavore

As I mentioned in my previous post, my husband has gone totally vegetarian.  I'm not quite there yet, but I'm darn close, usually only eating meat once a week, and at this point it's only at a restaurant or at my parents' house. 

One area where I have pretty much committed is eating local as much as possible.  Yup, I'm a locavore.

Here's this past weekend's farmer's market haul:

I wound up roasting a lot of those veggies for dinner on Tuesday and served them with some gnocchi.  There were basically no leftovers.  I think I need to make more time for those kinds of meals, because they are easy to prepare (I was able to quickly clean and chop up the veggies while Amelia amused herself in her high chair), and they are actually quite inexpensive. 

That's the neat thing about shopping at the farmer's market:  When you're buying produce, it's often both fresher and cheaper than the grocery store stuff, and quite frequently it's organically grown as well. 

The budget busters at the farmers market tend to be the pre-made foods.  $6 for jam, $4 for black bean hummus... I could certainly get those things cheaper at the grocery store, but the truth is that the local stuff truly tastes better.  Those are our splurges, which we justify because overall we're still saving money.  And when I get the chance, I make my own hummus, which is even cheaper than buying it at the grocery store.

Have you seen the USDA Food Plan charts?  They're updated monthly.  For June, the "thrifty plan" for 2 adults aged 19-50 is $378.90/month.  I'm pretty sure we did go over that a bit this month, but most of the time our food budget is in the $350-ish range.  That includes non-food groceries and my extra 500 calories a day.  As long as you don't live in a food desert, it's definitely possible to eat well on a budget.  And for the record, we found ourselves relying on convenience foods more than usual this month, in part because I went back to work full-time and was working off-site a bunch.  We went over budget by something like $100.  Time to start menu planning!

So, which plan do you fall under on the USDA charts?  Is it just me or do those numbers seem kind of high?  Or do I just have our farmers market and mostly cooking from scratch to thank for our comparatively low budget? 


And here's some fun stuff that's been going on with Amelia lately:

Not even 6 months old and the kid can already stand while supporting herself on furniture!  Time to start baby-proofing??

Elvis was kind of wary of this new little person at first, but yesterday he jumped up on our bed and laid down next to her.  He was letting her hold his paws and touch his face, and it was adorable.

Here's a picture Glen took of the two of them:

Amelia's face in that picture is pretty much the greatest thing I've ever seen!  

Time Flies

I haven't so much as signed on to Blogger in 2+ months, and now my baby girl is 5 months old! 

I haven't done her 5 month pictures yet, but here she is at 3 months:

And at 4 months:

And here's one of my absolute favorite pictures of her, taken during tummy time:

And here she is during her first time in the pool, last week:

It's been pretty crazy trying to juggle a new baby, two jobs, and still trying to maintain a social life, which is why my blog's been kind of neglected lately. 

While I can't say I regret my decision for my blog to take a bit of a backseat, I found myself missing it, and the the people I've connected with through it.  Especially since I feel like I have soooo much to say lately.

Glen and I have always been a bit on the crunchy side, but I definitely feel like having a baby has enhanced the crunchy factor. 

• We've always gone to our local farmers market, but now I'm also planning to use the produce we buy there to make our own baby food.
• Our decision to cloth diaper is going wonderfully so far!  Good for the environment AND the bank account!
• At 5 month, Amelia is still exclusively breastfed.  This was important to me for a variety of reasons.  There advantages of breastmilk that formula can't replicate, such as antibodies to help boost her immune system.  It's cheap (would be free if I didn't have to pump at work).  I am lazy (for real, I can't imagine having to prepare formula and warm a bottle - I don't envy my mom or Glen the task of preparing a bottle for a hungry baby while I'm at work!).  But also, less waste.  There's the pump and bottles, but no formula containers to throw out and fewer bottles to wash.  
• We switched our regular laundry detergent to a clean-rinsing one.  This was mostly to avoid residue on the cloth diapers, but we use it on everything now.  We also started using dryer balls instead of fabric softener sheets.
• Glen's gone vegetarian.  I'm debating eventually joining him in that since meat isn't a big part of my diet anyway, but I'll never go vegan.  You can pry the cheese and eggs from my cold, dead hands!

I'm sure there are more, but those are the big ones that come to mind.  I'm leaning toward going a bit green with this blog and doing a series of posts about some of our crunchier lifestyle choices.

I'll also be making the rounds, visiting the blogs I technically follow but haven't visited lately.  I hope you're all doing well, and I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone's been up to!

April: Concerts, Anniversaries and Tummy Time

April was my first full month back at work, albeit still part-time.  It was a busy month, nonetheless.

On April 10, we took Amelia on her first road trip, to visit our friend Eric in Philadelphia.  While we were down there, I met up with some friends to see Andrew McMahon:

 

The concert was amazing, a mix of Something Corporate, Jack's Mannequin, and his new solo stuff.  

Oh yeah, and I made out with Eric's chinchilla, Mittens:

 

Amelia turned 2 months old on the 10th, but this picture was taken the following day, since we spent the 10th in Philly:

As of her two-month appointment, she was 23 1/2 inches long, which they told me was 90th percentile for height.  She clearly does not get her height from me!

On the 22nd, Glen and I celebrated 7 years of marriage with our traditional trip to Minado, which has an amazing sushi buffet.

I love that picture above.  Three of my favorite things: My husband, my daughter, and all-you-can-eat sushi!

And even though Amelia's been holding up her head pretty consistently since she was a few weeks old, we finally figured out the trick to tear-free tummy time:

It seems that propped up on the Boppy, in the crib is the way to go.  This past Sunday, we tried it without the Boppy, and she rolled from her stomach to her back twice! 

In other news, I've been debating downgrading my jewelry business to a hobby, because clearly once I go back to work 10 weeks from now, I will have even less than the currently-almost-nonexistent free time I have now.  For the past 3 years, I ran it as a business, complete with sales tax returns each quarter and a Schedule C each year.  

At this point, based on this IRS publication, I don't think it really qualifies as a business, since I'm not really able to put much time and effort into it and I don't depend on the income to make a living since I already have two other jobs!  The hassle of filing quarterly sales tax returns and filling out a Schedule C doesn't seem worth it as this point, but I still want to continue to make and sell jewelry as a creative outlet.  If I report it as hobby income, I could still deduct certain expenses, I just couldn't claim a loss.  Potentially having to pay slightly more taxes feels worth it to me since I'd have more free time, and right now time is more important to me than saving a few bucks!  

A Tour of Amelia's Nursery

Finally, I'm taking time to post the long-awaited tour of Amelia's nursery!  

But first, here's a semi-recent picture of Amelia:

Ok, it's actually from three weeks ago, and since she's only eight weeks old, I guess it's not really that recent.  But I think it's pretty darn cute!

But on to the tour:

Here's a birth sampler my mom made and had framed for the nursery.  It's currently hanging on the door:

Here the "before" shot of the corner of the room that functioned as my office space:

And here are a couple of shots of it now:

My mom made the pillows and crib skirt, since I couldn't find any sets I liked.  The wall decal is from the Etsy shop Quirkee Walls.  All those thin, wispy sections of the branch made it pretty difficult to get up, but I think it was totally worth it!

Here's a close-up:

 

And Amelia's bookcase:

She's already got quite the library!  Yes, that is a current picture, and yes, Go the F**k to Sleep is still prominently displayed.  I promise I will put it somewhere else before she learns to read. ;-)

Here's a before shot of the other side of the room, which functioned more or less as a guess room, what with the futon and all:

And here it is, looking slightly to the right:

You can see the curtains my mom made, which match the crib skirt and pillows.  The glider is from my mother-in-law, and that little black table from the "before" picture found a home next to it.  That's where I keep water, snacks, and burp clothes for all those late-night nursing sessions.

The changing table is now fully stocked with cloth diapers, covers, and wet bags.  

The lamp in the "before" picture also found a home in Amelia's nursery, I put it on the dresser:

And no, the picture in the frame is not Amelia, it's the one that came with the frame... although since I took this picture, I DID put a picture of her in it!

Amelia seems to love all the birds in her nursery.  She'll lie on the changing table, babbling and smiling at the curtains, and she does the same with the decal when she's in her crib.  It's absurdly cute.  We tend to leave her on her changing table for awhile after diaper changes are done, just because it's so entertaining!

One Month!

That's how long it's been since my last post. 

It's also how old Amelia is now!  Crazy!

Anyway, as promised, here are the 39-week belly pictures:

Posing in the nursery.  I was totally using the crib to hang maternity clothes.

Belly close-up!  Hard to believe that's Amelia in there!

Amelia is a super easy baby most of the time, we just need to work on getting longer stretches of sleep at night.  Part of the problem is that she seems to like to sleep on her stomach (during the day she will often take naps on her stomach, lying on my chest), but she is not a fan of sleeping on her back.  Once she can roll to her stomach on her own, I think we'll be golden.

And of course, she's super adorable all the time.  Here's one of my favorite pictures of her, at 10 days old:

There are a TON of pictures of her on Glen's website, but first you have to get through the many, many pictures he took of Amelia's stuffed robot, Mr. Toyboto - Glen took him on a comedy tour in Nebraska this past week, and it seems Mr. Toyboto may have a drinking problem. ;-)

Amelia, Elvis and I have been spending a good chunk of that time at my parents' house, since I'm not quite ready to deal with caring for a new baby and a dog (the functional equivalent of a toddler) on my own.  Right now Amelia and Elvis are napping together on my mom, and I can't end this post without sharing:

Seriously, I have the cutest kids, furry and otherwise. ;-)

Meet Amelia Grace!

I promise a longer post soon, but I just wanted to pop in here really quick to say that Amelia Grace was born at 4:05pm on February 10, weighing in at 7lbs 5oz, 21 3/4" long.

I can't believe all that hair!  I was completely bald when I was born, so I don't know where that came from.

When I get a chance I'll post the final belly pictures, as well as a final reveal of the nursery.

In the meantime, here's a picture of her from today, wearing her "Daddy's Little Lady" outfit, waiting for her daddy to get home from work:

Get it? Because there are ladybugs on it!

Also, you can read Glen's story about Amelia's birth here, and read his article on Geekosystem about how we chose her name here.

Nursery Sneak Peek

This isn't the official office-to-nursery before and after post - partly because the nursery isn't *quite* done yet and partly because the battery for my actual camera died, so I had to take these pictures on my phone.  I really do need to do something about that first issue though, because today marks 38 weeks!!  Seriously, this baby could show up any day now.  Eek!

Since we're going to be cloth diapering, we needed a spot for wet bags.  I decided the best thing would be to hang them from a hook on the wall rather than using a diaper pail.  The room is small, and Elvis likes to root through garbage, so a solution that takes up less floor space while keeping those tempting dirty diapers out of our dog's reach was called for:

And of course, the hook has birds on it - have to keep with the theme we accidentally stumbled upon!  You can't really tell in the picture above, but the green wet bag has birds on it as well.  And of course we had to work paw prints in somewhere!  We also have a diaper cover in the same paw print material.

Here's a little glimpse of the changing table and dresser:

Yes, I left the picture of the baby that came with the picture frame.  I wanted to put an ultrasound picture in there, but they didn't fit since the ultrasounds are all landscape and the picture frame is portrait and I'm apparently too lazy to come up with a solution.  The baskets below the changing pad are full of cloth diapering supplies: pocket diapers on the left, prefolds in the middle, and prefold covers on the right. 

And of course, this kid already has a bunch of books:

Not pictured above: The piles of maternity clothes and (to Glen's amusement) a prominently displayed copy of Go the F**k to Sleep, both of which will find new homes after baby arrives. ;-)

Right now the crib is serving as storage space, but there's some pretty neat stuff in there, so I thought I'd share:

• No story behind the activity gym, the crib was just a convenient place to put it for now.  Although if you look closely, the dog on the left makes me think of a blue version of Elvis.  
• My mom made the bird pillows from extra curtain/crib skirt fabric.  Initially they'll be used to create a cozy little reading area next to the bookcase, and later as decorative pillows when we convert the crib to a toddler bed.  
• The baby doll is about to get passed down to a third generation.  She belonged to my mom when she was a little girl, then she belonged to me, and now she'll be passed along to our firstborn. 
• The pillow in the middle and the blanket on the right - this is really neat.  The pillow was embroidered by my mom when I was born, the blanket was embroidered by Glen's aunt.  They have the exact same animal characters on them.  I'm telling you, it was fate!!

Today I was out picking up some last-minute clothes to fill in the minimal gaps in Stormageddon's wardrobe, and came across this onesie:

I was so, SO tempted to get it, because it's amazing the amount of unsolicited advice expecting parents receive, and I imagine it only gets worse once the baby arrives.  I resisted the urge to buy the snarky onesie and went with the more practical options of newborn and 0-3 month sized leggings (one of two aforementioned wardrobe gaps) to be worn with onesies. 

And because no post would be complete at this point without a picture of Elvis snuggling with Stormageddon:

With any luck, I'll have a proper before-and-after post because Stormageddon's arrival, but I won't make promises, especially since that arrival could occur tomorrow or 3 weeks from now... There's a real possibility that in the before-and-after post, the baby doll pictured above will be replaced by a real baby.  Madness!

Behind on Belly Pictures

It seems I've switched from doing belly pictures on even weeks to doing them every other odd week. Hopefully I'll do a better job these last 5 (!!) weeks.

Week 31

Pineapple baby!

I think this was the week I officially started looking like I was smuggling a basketball under my shirt.

Elvis wants in on this pineapple action.

Week 35

This is what 24 pounds of belly looks like. ;-)

Yes, the nursery is still a mess.  Hopefully it will be finished this weekend!

And in case you were wondering, Elvis still totally loves snuggling with his little sister:

Stolen from the husband.

The amazing part is that she likes snuggling with him, too!  He'll put his face on my belly, and all the sudden my entire belly will shift toward him.  So excited that both my "babies" are such good friends already!