Life Begins at Thirty, Right?

Just in Time for the Long Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:42:00 +0000

Some people stopped by for a few hours today. Some really lovely people who are really, really good at their jobs.

Let's let the photos do the talking today...

Crazy, right? In a few short hours (the whole project took about 5.5 hours), we went from this:

to this:

It was a good, good day.

The "faux" grass was installed by Design Turf here in Toronto. I couldn't be happier with the product and the service. These guys were absolute professionals and a pleasure to have on our property. They left our backyard cleaner than when they arrived and the entire installation seemed to run extremely smoothly. If anyone has any questions about it, let me know!!

The turf itself is a mix of green, brown and curly fibres to give it a more realistic look. Luca loves crawling on it already and it is soft on his little knees. And the best part?

The raccoons won't tear it up (or so they say)!!

Sayonara, raccoons. You won't be missed.

Backyard Project #2364

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:27:00 +0000

This is it friends, the beginning of the end. The end of backyard posts. The end of the quest for grass. And most importantly, the end of the....

WAR AGAINST THE RACOON

After many, many attempts at fixing up our backyard, we are hoping this is the last one. For real. I'm not joking - if this doesn't work, we are paving it.

So last I showed you, the backyard was looking like this:

We used to have a great flagstone pathway but it was next to impossible to lay so that it wasn't a seriously awful tripping hazard. Each stone was a different depth and it was a death trap. If you didn't watch where you were walking, you were definitely falling down.

Which is not only embarrassing, but dangerous with a babe-in-arms or (soon enough) one who was learning how to walk.

So we sold the flagstone and bought something that would work a bit better. Last weekend, J got busy and started putting it back together!!

The stone is actually man-made (ahem, concrete). I looked at natural stone and it was really, really expensive ($12-14 per square foot). Since this was not the first time we had spent money on the backyard, we decided to be a little more frugal (this was $2.44 per square foot).

I actually found some very inexpensive natural stone (Indian Sandstone) nearby, but after a quick google search I decided it wasn't for us.**

So we purchased the "Banff" stone from Armtec in "Slate". When it first arrived, I wasn't so sure about it. The colour looked lighter than I remembered and it looked....like concrete. I think it was because you could see that each stone was 4" thick and almost identical. Nothing natural about it. So I did what I always do after making a purchase.

I panicked.

Did I make a mistake? Should I have picked something else?

I reminded myself that the natural stone was not in our budget, so panicking wouldn't help. I couldn't change my mind now!

Each stone was about 50 lbs so J had to take a few breaks:

but I helped a little by smoothing out the sand:

Let's all take a minute and appreciate my outfit. The day we laid the stone had the craziest weather ever. It was decent when I got dressed (hence the capri type pants and a tank top) and it quickly got cold (insert thick pink sweatshirt) and then it started hailing (hello orange Hunter wellies).

Guess this isn't a fashion blog, eh?

Luca chilled in his playpen:

And eventually it looked like this:

(the stones are wet in this pic)

It isn't done yet - we still need to cut the stones for the little bit by the garage where it gets wider and do some adjustments to make some of the stones a bit straighter. Once that is done, J is going to put some special sand on top and then it will be done!

Since I wanted the stones to look a bit darker, we might seal them down the road but the concrete look is kind of growing on me so I think I will wait for a bit. What do you think?

All of this is in preparation for our grass solution which is coming later this week!! Can you believe it? By this time next week, the backyard should be in (almost) final form. A form that will (hopefully) win the battle against the raccoon.

Cross your fingers it works!

Now that you see how the backyard is coming together, what colour would you paint the french doors on the garage? White? Navy? Yellow? Black?

Arizona Trip

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:46:00 +0000

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a nice Mother's Day and spoiled your mom (or the mother of your child(ten) rotten :-)

I thought I would do a little recap of our trip to Arizona!! A few weeks back, hubs and I packed up lil'Luca and flew down to Phoenix to visit my parents who have a place down there. We've been to AZ once before but that was about 6 years ago.

After our trip to Florida, I was kind of nervous about the flight. I figured it would be easier with J there but the flight was 5 hours so I was anxious.

It was a much easier flight than I expected!! It was much better with a second set of hands - Luca is a busy boy and just sitting on my lap was rarely an option. I even got to have a Coke on the plane (which when you are travelling solo is out of the question). I even convinced Luca to sleep for 45 minutes. Which if you have a baby who was sleep trained, you know how hard it is to get him to sleep anywhere other than his crib.

I felt like a super-mom!

And then he was awake.

Arizona is really, really beautiful. I think we saw only a few clouds the entire time we were there (and by clouds, I mean the white, fluffy kind). The rest of the time it was just big, blue sky.

Between mine and Luca's skin, we spent a lot of time putting on sunscreen and worrying about finding shade. haha.

Even the walls next to the highway were beautiful:

We went swimming:

We went to Tuscon (which was nice but weirdly quiet and deserted):

...to the Casa Grande Ruins:

and hung out around the house:

Tried on new headgear:

but he wasn't a fan:

Went to a bbq in 103 degree weather. Luca had the right idea;

Ate ribs:

and watermelon:

And did a little online shopping for the master bedroom:

All in all it was a great trip!! Luckily, we missed some crummy weather in Toronto so that made it even better!

I've had a few questions about how Luca slept on holiday so I wanted to give a little update!!

He was a STAR!! My mom set up a little nursery in her walk in closet with a crib that she found at a garage sale. We brought his sleep sack and his white noise machine and kept everything like it is at home with his routine and he was amazing. No problems going to sleep, slept through the night and napped like it was his job.

While we were flexible with his afternoon nap (i.e. if we were out of the house, we'd hope for a car nap but didn't worry about it too much). However, we were pretty diligent with his bedtime and his morning nap so that he didn't get too cranky on us. Little guy needs his sleep and really relies on his routine so I wanted to respect that. It also meant that we had our evenings to eat dinner, sit outside, etc and we could take our time in the mornings.

With the time change (AZ is 3 hours behind Toronto), he woke up early for about 2 days (5:30 a.m., then 6:30 a.m.) but after that he was back to his regular 7/7:30 am wake up. I couldn't have hoped for better!!

Upon returning home, he didn't even really adjust!! Our flight home had us putting Luca to bed around 9 p.m. (very late for him, but only 6 p.m. AZ time) and he woke up at 8 a.m. From then on he was right back to normal!

Baby Video Monitor Review

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:56:00 +0000

I am not being compensated in any way to do this review. This is all me. Just thought I'd help some other parents out there. If you are not a parent or a soon to be parent, I'd totally ignore this post. For real.

When I was pregnant, I did a bit of research on what monitor to get. Although we heard a lot of "what do you need to see him for?" and "in my day, we just used our ears", we knew we wanted a video monitor. I'd seen my friend's and I loved the idea of being able to see Luca while he was in his crib so that I could know whether or not I needed to go in the room and check on him. (I would actually go so far as to say it was one of my favourite 'must haves', especially during sleep training).

We decided on the Summer Infant Baby Touch Screen Colour Video Monitor. It was pretty fancy - touch screen interface, night vision and you could make the camera move so you could see all parts of the room. It has a bunch of other features but I'm not going to list them.

Anyways, I'm sad to say but we've had a number of problems with this monitor. So bad that as of yesterday, I am on my 3rd replacement monitor (so 4 total).

#1 - this one made some CRAZY loud noise when the volume was on (even at the lowest setting). Granted, had I known that I would usually just turn the volume off, maybe I would have kept it, but I thought that using the volume at night seemed like a good idea). I called customer service and they couldn't fix it, so they sent me a new one. Great customer service.

#2 - this one had a problem with the 'touch' buttons - I couldn't pan the camera in one direction. This one also went back, but of course their policy on returns had changed so I had to pay to ship it back. Not too bad, but annoying.

#3 - I used this one the longest. I thought it was fine, until I moved the camera 5 feet away from Luca's crib. Then the night vision picture looked like this:

Um ya - that looks bad, right? So I tweeted Summer Infant and they replied really quickly saying that was NOT right and would send me another one. By this time, I explained my frustration over all of the problems with these monitors and they said that if I wasn't 100% happy with the new one, they would refund me for the original and I could send it back. I'd have to pay for shipping again, of course.

#4 - so far this one is fine, but honestly not much better than the above. Maybe my expectations were too high and I thought this one would just work and look good, but it was still pretty fuzzy at night unless it was right next to Luca, which is almost impossible now that he is standing in the crib and grabbing anything he can reach.

So I started leaning towards returning everything and starting over. I think that having to go through 4 monitors to find one that worked is ridiculous, and didn't leave me with a lot of confidence that #4 would continue to work.

Before sending them all back, I figured I'd order a new one to see the difference. On the recommendation of a bunch of people, I ordered the Motorola Digital Video Baby Monitor with 3.5 Inch Color LCD Screen. It has pretty much the same features as the BabyTouch (minus the touch screen) and also includes a temperature gauge so I can see how hot or cold it is in the nursery.

It came really quickly from Amazon.ca which is good because I wanted to get this all figured out quickly as I'd have to send at least 2 back. Plugged it in and tested it out. It worked. That is a good start :-)

Here is a comparison (albeit a crappy iphone picture of the comparison) showing both cameras in the same spot watching lil'Luca sleep.

The Motorola is on top, and the BabyTouch is on the bottom. What do you think?

J and I both thought that the Motorola seemed much clearer and that after all of the problems with the Summer Infant BabyTouch we should just wipe our hands clean and start over. So back they go!

Of course - time will tell whether they actually refund me and don't give me any hassles, but so far their customer service has been fantastic so I hope that continues so that we have an amicable break up. I will let you know.

One last comment - I think it is AWFUL that Summer Infant is now making the customer pay for return shipping in all situations. By the end of this, I will have probably paid 30-45 in shipping fees for a monitor that (until #4) has been clearly defective. That is a problem with the product, not the customer. I'm sure they implemented the new policy because they were spending so much money for the shipping because so many are being returned. If you google Summer Infant you will see LOTS of praise for their customer service, but if what makes the CS great is that a) they get called, A LOT, and b) they are quick to send out new units, then there are a lot of shipping charges being paid by the customer (and a lot of problems with the product!). Sigh.

Anyways - I'm not saying Summer Infant is bad - I just think that one particular policy is bad (and as it ends up, expensive).

Hopefully I have better luck with the Motorola!!

Phew!

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Fri, 10 May 2013 14:06:00 +0000

Just so I don't leave you guys hanging - the tub is CLEAN!

(insert massive sigh of relief)

Thank you to everyone for your suggestions. Clearly you guys have dealt with some pretty insane stains in your time!

Here's what I did to get rid of the aquamarine rings that those nasty "Bath Retreat" salts left in my beautiful tub.

1. Magic Eraser (usually works, not this time)

2. Paste of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide (tip found via the web) - this lightened but didn't remove the rings.

3. Lemon and salt scrub - this didn't do anything but it did make everything smell good!

4. Bar Keeper's Friend - this was one of the most highly recommended items. It definitely lightened the rings a bit, but it wasn't as much of a miracle worker as I had hoped.

5. A tub full of hot water and bleach (I was getting desperate). This also helped lighten but did not remove the stains.
6. A mixture of half vinegar and half blue Dawn.

I would say that #6 was probably the one that made me feel like I didn't have to track down the manufacturer of the Bath Retreat salts and demand a new tub. This stuff smelled (I definitely had to open the windows) but it did a pretty good job. I'm not sure it would have removed the rings right from the start, but it did a good job on the half-tint rings that were left after 1-4 were completed.

So that's that. I think if I squint I can see a little bit of the ring in one spot, but I may just give it another treatment #6 and see if that helps. Either way, I am totally relieved that the tub is 99% fixed.

So ya - don't use Bath Retreat bath salts.

The End. :-)

Update

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Thu, 09 May 2013 14:28:00 +0000

For those of you who are wondering what stained my tub...here are the offending salts:

"Bath Retreat" in aquamarine. I'm not sure where we even got them - we are not bath salt people so I'm guessing they were a gift. From my research, they are sold at Shoppers Drug Mart but I can't even find a way to contact the company to ask them about my problem.

Things I tried yesterday thanks to your awesome recommendations:

- Magic Eraser

- Paste made of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide

- Lemon and baking soda

- Bar Keeper's Friend

So far nothing has worked. The line seems to have lightened so I'm hopeful but I guess I was really hoping for some magic with one of those options.

Right now the tub is filled with hot water and some bleach. I'm getting desperate here, people.

Is (a) Martha Stewart Out There?

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Wed, 08 May 2013 14:49:00 +0000

Friends - I have a problem and am hoping someone out there is handy and has a solution.

Remember this tub?

Well I had a bath in it with some yellow/green coloured bath salts and those little f'ers left a yellow/green ring around the tub!!

I have tried some Method scrub cleanser (which usually works very well) and it didn't do the job.

I also tried my old trusty Magic Eraser. Again. No luck. Sigh.

So now what? The tub is a solid surface material (like Corian) which is generally non-porous. How these salts stained the tub I will never know. Sneaky buggers.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to get rid of them? The manufacturer recommends sanding any stains (since the tub is the same white material all the way through) but I'd like to leave that as our last resort.

So...any Martha Stewart's out there? Any ideas on how to remove stains like this?

Sniff Sniff

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:08:00 +0000

(Eta- no, we didn't leave the house unattended and tell everyone we are goings away. Luca is watching the house for us with some helpers :-)

Although we just returned from a trip to Arizona on Monday, J and I are headed out tonight for a (long) weekend getaway....sans Luca.

(sniff sniff)

Yes, I'm looking forward to it. I also know that once I'm there, I'll really enjoy myself. Sleeping in, eating at a leisurely pace and spending time with J and friends (it is a big group thing). It will be great.

But I'll miss this little guy.

I'm sure he'll enjoy his weekend with his Nanny and Poppa :-)

Any tips for my first weekend away from Luca?

Master Bedroom Moodboard by Nutmeg and Company Home

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:44:00 +0000

Luca and I just got back from our holiday to Arizona last night, so while we are recovering from the time difference and doing laundry, I have a special treat! Meg from Nutmeg and Company Home has put together a special post all about my master bedroom!! Sweet! Her ideas incorporate a few things that I've already purchased (like the sconces) and installed (like the closet doors). It is so cool to see how it all can be pulled together using accessories, colour and a few new items!

Welcome, Meg!

Hey there, I'm Meg from Nutmeg and Company Home, an interior design and lifestyle blog. When Janice was struggling to figure out her Master bedroom, I offered to do a little inspiration board for her.

If you remember, Janice's bedroom layout is something like this:

The tricky part is that the only wall where the bed is going to work has a couple of bump-outs, which make it hard to place nightstands. Also, there's a closet along the left wall that doesn't have doors because they wouldn't open with the bed there.

In order to make the bed the focal point in the room, I'd suggest installing moulding along the headboard wall and painting it all out in a rich blue colour. Also, installing bi-fold doors on the closet (that open like french doors) and painting them out to match the walls would blend that area in, making it a little less awkward.

The headboard wall would look something like this:

Although using petite tables for nightstands doesn't give you much storage, they allow access to the closet and still fit a book, phone or alarm clock.

The curtain fabric is lovely and Janice wanted to keep them, so I used the black and white as a neutral and added the rich blue in the throw pillows and accessories in the room. I would also have curtains or a roman shade of the same fabric made for the other window in the room.

And here's the other side of the room:

It's a mix of things Janice already has and some affordable new purchases. I would hack that Ikea Malm dresser with those fab Bedford pulls from the Martha Stewart Collection at Home Depot. And the rug and chair would be a great place to cuddle up with Luca and read a story.

Sources

Sadie Side Table (12" diameter)

Essex Bench

Barclay Sconce

Betwixt Throw Pillows

Bedford Awning Brass Bin Pulls

Katana Overdyed Rug

Ikea Strandmon Chair

Sunburst Mirror

Thanks for having me Janice! You can go here to see the design board I created for my own master, and here to check out my blog.

Meg

*****

Thanks, Meg! Love the moodboards!! I am awful at pulling things together which is probably why I haven't done the master yet. However, with some of these ideas and a few things I've purchased, I HAVE to get moving on this now!

I Want to Bulk....(it) Up!

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:25:00 +0000

First up, can we just ignore the lame title? K thanks :-)

So after picking up that sweet vintage fireplace insert from a Craigslist seller, I started planning out our fireplace makeover. You see, I've always thought the fireplace was super puny and needed to be bulked up. The task never hit the top of our list because we rarely sit in that room and so it was very easy to just ignore it. Luckily (for me, not Jay) getting the insert gave me some motivation to get moving!!

The idea was to build out the mantle using mdf and trim (similar to what John and Sherry did on Young House Love). They made it seem quite simple and inexpensive, two qualities that I can get on board with! I started planning it out by searching online for pictures of mantles and funny enough, came across another Craigslist posting for wooden mantle that had been removed from a house in an area of Toronto called the Annex.

The measurements looked good, and if it worked I thought the project would actually move along quicker than our usual pace so I decided to go for it! I paid 60 dollars for it (less than the materials to build ourselves) and even though there it needs a little work to retrofit it, I think it will work!!

So I just pulled the existing mantel off (it wasn't even screwed or nailed in) and laid the new one on top to get the idea. Once we remove the existing tile and probably one layer of brick, it will be a perfect fit!! We would like to get rid of the raised hearth but we aren't sure what is under there. I'm guessing layers of tile on tile.

Originally, I was thinking of tiling the surround using a great marble mosaic like Emma at the Marion House Book did (I'm not at home and will add source links later):

How gorgeous is that?! This has been my fireplace-spiration for ages! I would be lucky if mine turned out half this nicely!

We have has a bit of a change of heart recently though and are thinking of switching it up and taking a break from mosaic. Crazy, right? We are thinking of covering the surround in calacatta marble slabs:

I'm not sure about the hearth - either another slab or maybe something different? J seems to think a herringbone mosaic would be nice but he also can't picture it with one solid piece. I'm guessing price will dictate out decision. I have no clue what all of this will cost!! I'm hoping that since the space isnt big, we might be able to get the trimmings from someone's custom counter or something. Here's hoping!!

So do you think the marble slab will look good? Or should we stick with the mosaic? Something completely different? Spill it!

Master Bedroom Options...Continued.

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Thanks for all of your suggestions yesterday on how to deal with all of the weird issues our master bedroom has.

One of the suggestions that came up a few times was using a wall of drapes behind the bed, which would essentially create the flat wall I was hoping for such that the bed could be centred, leaving room for side tables and a nice rug.

Here are a few pics of what that would look like:

Source

While I think it would solve some of our problems, for some reason I don't *love* it. It feels heavy for some reason - maybe because of all of the fabric? Or am I missing the boat here?

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been trying out ways to "work with the nook". Here is what I'm thinking:

That is where the future picture moulding would go. The circle in the right box represents where a wall sconce would go. There would obviously be one on each side, but I was too tired to make the extra circle out of tape.

** Sconces could also go on the side walls of the nook, but I'm thinking we should keep that wall open for a potential side table/shelf**

The moulding would be painted the same colour as the wall (not sure what that would be) and the panels could either be filled with wallpaper OR left with just paint. Just some ideas.

After looking at that, I started wondering if we should put moulding on the other walls as well.

(I didn't have a ladder nearby so I didn't finish taping it out)

I didn't put the tape up on all walls, but I'm sure you could get the idea.

What do you think? Here were some of my inspiration pictures that might help...

Source

The last photo is from last season's Sarah 101 and it is probably the closest to what I think I could turn the room into with moulding. It has a chair rail and panelling below, but I thought that it makes it look quite formal, and maybe the single boxes would be better for our house?

Anyhoo....this is what I'm thinking as how we can "work with the nook". What do you think?

Back to the Drawing Board

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 14:45:00 +0000

I know I'm all over the place these days. It might be the promise of spring weather, or maybe it is the coffee. I can't be too certain.

You might think that I'm here to talk about the master bedroom again, but I'm not. Today, I wanted to bring you up to speed on what has been the LONGEST RUNNING PROJECT in the history of LB@30.

THE BACKYARD.

That's right kids. This is the topic that has garnered the most comments. The most emails. The most nail biting. The most water-hose wielding husbands. I don't have more than one husband but it seemed weird using the singular.

Because of this:

and this:

then this:

and finally this:

So last summer was dubbed "The Last Chance for Grass". We had been through a lot already and I was convinced grass was not possible. Between the raccoons, the almost complete shade and the crazy root system from all of the huge trees nearby, I felt like there were too many hurdles to overcome. J wasn't convinced and wanted one last chance.

We tried some fancy shmancy highly drought resistant/shade resistant seed that was gifted to us called Scotts Turf Builder Coated Grass Seed. It didn't work. It came in a little patchy (okay, a lot patchy) and never filled in or anything. Eventually it just died off like all the grasses that came before it.

Sniff sniff.

So ya. Here we are today:

It's like 2010 all over again!!! GEESH!!

You will also note that the flagstone on the pathway is gone. It was laid like a jigsaw puzzle by J and his brother in 2010 and we always intended to spend some time levelling everything out. Because the stones were natural, they were all different thicknesses so getting a level walkway was challenging. So the project kind of stopped there. From afar, it looked pretty great (I love the look of a flagstone path, to be honest), but it was a HUGE tripping hazard.

Sure, J never tripped. He is like a mountain goat. It was just lil' ol me in my heels. Or in my flats. Or carrying Luca.

I've been complaining about it since 2010. Seriously. I'm such a princess.

Realizing that we'd never get it perfectly level, and knowing we'd have little legs learning how to walk out there soon enough, we went all drastic-like and sold it.

I'm off to find a replacement today - wish me luck!!

And the grass? We have a plan :-) And a completion goal of Luca's first birthday in June. AHH!!

** P.S. Notice the trucks in our neighbour's yard? Ya - they are digging out their crawlspace. Which is connected to our crawlspace. So right now I'm getting a butt-massage thanks to the jackhammering over there. Thanks? Good thing Luca is such a super sleeper.

*** P.P.S Couldn't they have decided to dig out the crawlspace before we finished our basement? I would have loved to DOUBLE our basement size!

Mastering Layout Options

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

For some reason, it seems like for the past 9 months I've had NO interest in doing ANY house projects, and in the past few weeks I've had a billion plans formulating in my head. Always the way, right?

One of the projects that is (slowly) moving forward is our master bedroom. And of course, by "moving forward", I mean "think more about it".

It is hard to settle on the plan because our room has a lot of special little issues that make finding a perfect layout difficult.

Here are a few of my thoughts, organized by number but not by importance:

1. Nooks and Niches:

The biggest problem with our room is the random nooks and niches that are going to be challenging to deal with. Here is my uber-professional, to scale drawing of the room:

Here is a photo to give you an idea (this is with the old owners' furniture/paint etc):

Now, the nooks would be workable if we didn't have a massive, UH-MAZING King sized bed. If we had a smaller bed, we could put the bed on one of the other walls and forgetaboutit. But we can't. We have mapped out all of the other options and they just don't work (or if they work, they don't solve any of the other problems).

Just in case you were wondering, I'm not willing to get rid of the bed. I love having lots of space. And I don't like sharing.

Here is a photo of our bed in the nook:

The downside of this spot is that there is no room for a bedside table on each side and it makes finding a rug difficult because it sticks out more on one side than another. Which is marginally annoying.

2. The Chimney:

The biggest bump-out in the room is from the chimney. It is the only place to put a normal-sized side table, but putting a sidetable there pretty much makes it impossible to put a door on the tiny closet. See the first photo above (i.e. the only reason someone would sell their house without a door on the closet!)

I'd like a door on the closet. Is that so much to ask?

3. Options:

a) Put the bed on another wall.

The bed could fit in the window nook, which could be cool, but it wouldn't solve any of my problems with sidetables, rugs, etc.

I also thought about putting it on this wall:

If we changed the door swing to open into the hallway, the bed would fit with two side tables, but it would be tight AND you'd pretty much walk into the bed as soon as you entered the room. Which I don't think is great.

b) Fill in the nook with drywall, making one flat wall.

I like to call this the "Rambling Renovators Fix". If you haven't seen Jennifer's fix for her nook problem, you have to check it out. Basically, they framed and drywalled their nook and created a nice, long flat wall to centre their bed on (and to add some really killer moulding).

Source

I think in an ideal world, we would do the same. Unfortunately, I think the project is a little out of our league and if we held out on fixing the room up until we were ready/comfortable/capable of filling in the nook, we'd never get the room done.

c) Work with the nook.

Keep the bed in the nook. Nuff said.

*****

So after thinking and discussing and drawing random layouts, we have decided to work with the nook. It is the easiest version of the project and I actually like the idea of working with what we have (because even if it is challenging, it isn't all that bad!).

So tell me, do you have any annoying structural features in your home that you have had to deal with? Did you work with it or did you rip it out?

It's Been a While...

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

...but I made a Craigslist purchase after oh, 1.5 years of not showing up at a stranger's house and handing them money for some random thing I decided that we needed.

I've been searching on and off for an antique fireplace insert for about 3 years. I'm not sure if you noticed, but we have a really crappy/ugly/puny fireplace in the living room. This is what it looked like when we bought it:

We knew that a fireplace project was on the long-term list, but in the meantime I wanted a bit of a quick fix so we painted the tile and the inside of the fireplace.

Ya...not perfect. But it worked better with our colours (the previous owners had a lot of green and beige in the house so the tile worked).

Anyhoo, after seeing our neighbour's fireplace (they have the identical house to ours, except that ours was already renovated), I knew I wanted to find an antique insert for ours (WHY someone got rid of ours is beyond me. Seriously.)

I'm guessing this is what ours looked like originally:

After searching on and off for 3 years, we finally found one that would fit! Supposedly it was pulled out of a house built in 1915 or 1920 in the Baby Point area of Toronto. It isn't super authentic for our house (ours would have had a coal fireplace), but it will do the trick and was the right price (you wouldn't believe how expensive some of these are!)

Here is the photo from the listing:

And in the fireplace...

So it definitely needs some work! We are going to have someone look at the wiring before we hook it up, and I am planning on cleaning it up to see what it looks like under the rust!

I guess this means it is time to start our fireplace project! As you can see, our fireplace is P-U-N-Y. It definitely needs to have more presence so it will be taken wider and higher! Luckily, the handy kids over at Young House Love just completed their fireplace reno so we have an idea of how to start (and it convinced Jay that it is do-able!). Let the planning begin!!

Love Child Organics

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 02:05:00 +0000

A few weeks ago Luca was sent a little gifty in the mail from the kind folks at Love Child Organics (a Canadian company!!). Lucky boy, that Luca.

Free food? Sign me up!

Here is the info:

Love Child Organics is a brand of organic baby food that was created by a couple in Whistler, British Columbia after they had their first child. Unable to find tasty, nutritious and convenient baby food for their daughter, they began making their own food with organic, natural ingredients and it eventually evolved into Love Child Organics.

The company has a range of fruit and vegetable purees that are available in those cool squeeze-packs. Of course, Luca can't figure out how to use them, but I think he will figure it out when he is older. I also liked them because they weren't in glass jars so they were lighter to lug around.

What makes Love Child Organics special is that in addition to the pure organic fruits and veggies inside, they all include quinoa, the gluten-free supergrain and acerola fruit, a natural source of vitamin C, which are both gentle on little tummies while packing a "powerful nutritional punch".

Luca was sent three packages - 1. Apple, Bananas and Blueberries, 2. Apple, Sweet Potatoes, Carrots and Blueberries, and 3. Apples and Mangoes.

Since he had already had spaghetti for dinner, we started off with Apples and Mangoes (seemed more dessert-y).

Luca was pumped to try it out.

You can't see it because of his pasta-goatee, but little man LOVED him some Apples and Mangoes.

More please!

He pretty much thought this stuff was the cat's meow. The bees knees. The bomb.com.

To be fair, Luca likes most food. He isn't the pickiest eater so I wasn't worried about him not liking it. The better test was whether or not his mom and dad liked it! I'm a fussy eater and am generally cautious with what Luca ingests. On paper, this stuff was great. The ingredient list was short and understandable. Even better, I thought it tasted great! (yes, I tried it!)

Luca also gobbled up the other two flavours. I'd say his favourite was Apples, Sweet Potatoes, Carrots and Blueberries. He was kicking his feet and aggressively looking at me asking for more. MORE.

It was pretty cute!

Now, you guys know that we have generally followed the Baby Led Weaning method of introducing solids to Luca (i.e. he was never really fed purees, rice cereal etc. He started with solid finger foods from 6 months) and we have been really happy with it. So while we won't give him purees as his main source of food, we are happy to give him products like these for snacks and/or dessert when we are on the go or are running out of time. Tasty, nutritious and convenient. Works for me!

If you are interested in Love Child Organics baby food, it is available at Walmart across Canada (about $4 for 3 packs).

If it wasn't clear, Love Child Organics sent Luca three packs of the baby food for free. I wasn't required to write a review (positive or negative). I just really liked what they sent and thought you might be interested!

You've Got the Stripe Stuff, Baby....

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

As a continuation of my re-do of the former-purple dressing room, I wanted to show you what came next! I thought that maybe I should just wait for the big reveal, but that is seriously not my style so I thought I'd bring back the reno play-by-play.

So after one weekend of work, I had a white dressing room. The walls and trim had received multiple coats of paint (silly me - didn't prime first!) and it was ready for the next step.

STRIPES**!!

I've talked about striping a room before. Way back in the day, before the nursery was a nursery, I had plans to stripe the back wall of that room. Of course, I never got around to it which is fine, since it ended up getting a makeover by Sarah Richardson :-)

Anyhoo, my 'goal' for the dressing room was to have it look like this (and I mean, just. like. this):

Source

This is from the condo of the lovely Lindsay Mens Craig (who actually worked on Luca's nursery!) as it was photographed for Style at Home. Dreamy, right?

With that in mind, I got to work figuring out how I wanted to stripes to look. I (of course), drew them to scale:

I didn't think those looked quite right, so I tried one more:

Bingo! The only real 'requirement' was that the top stripe had to be white so that we weren't dealing with the uneven-ness of the ceiling. It didn't bother me that the bottom stripe wasn't going to be exactly 10 inches, since most people wouldn't be able to see it, and it was going to meld in with the white baseboard anyways.

I'm not going to go through all of the steps we took to to paint the stripes, since it has been done by almost everyone in blog-land, but know that we did the whole "paint the base colour over the tape" technique and it generally worked well. I was surprised to find that it was actually a pretty easy update. I thought it would be much more difficult than it ended up being.

I used the leftover Scotch Blue tape with Edgelock protection from our stair project since we were so happy with it (and we had it on hand).

(I know this makes it look like I just eyeballed the lines (wearing the aforementioned saggy skinny jeans), but we really did use a huge level and drew the lines on with pencil)

(You can see the base colour painted over the tape here)

I used Benjamin Moore's "Witching Hour" in a matte finish for the stripes. It was a nice charcoal (although it looks black in these photos) with a slight dark navy feel to it. I'm very very happy with how that colour turned out. Plus I thought the name was hilarious.

(This is a more true-to-life photo of the colour)

So there you have it - we finally striped a wall in our house!! I mean, it is not quite the wallpaper I originally imagined but I absolutely love it! The room feels much brighter but still has a little something special that makes me smile when I walk in. As if a whole room dedicated to my clothes wasn't enough to make me smile, right? :-)

** Anyone else think the word STRIPES looks SO WEIRD when you type it out?

Fixing My Mistakes

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 20:18:00 +0000

So a few weeks ago I blogged about the things/projects in my house that aren't my favourite. Ones that seemed like a good idea at the time but that I now kind of regret.

# 2 on that list was my dressing room (specifically, the walls). After a tear-inducing problem with my dream wallpaper (I know, so NOT worth crying over), I ended up painting the walls a soft purple, mostly because I had waited SO long to get the room done and I couldn't wait any longer. After that weekend, the room pretty much looked like this:

Not too bad, but over the few years since it was completed, the purple started to annoy me. It started looking more purple and less grey-ish purple. It started looking less like a beautiful dressing room for a lucky girl like me, and more like a nursery with some clothing hanging around.

So with a long lost wave of motivation, I did this:

That's right. On a Friday night, I went up and emptied the room (okay, I left the closet filled with stuff but that is a whole other story!). As we don't have an inch of spare space in the house anymore, I had to lay all of my clothes on the floor in the master. I was hoping it would be a fast project but I should have known better :-)

The next day, I got to work while J was on Luca duty.

I used leftover paint from our hallway project (Para Paints "Chrysler Hall White") and got painting! This is where the job ended up being longer than I expected. I was ~~lazy~~ silly and should have primed first. Once I realized that (after doing 2 coats on 2 walls), I pulled out some old primer and primed the rest of the walls. Those walls needed only one coat of the white while the unprimed walls ended up with three coats!

You might be wondering whether I took down the Stolmen system prior to painting.

And by *you* I mean, people who clearly don't know me at all. Because of COURSE I didn't take down that stuff. First up, I'm lazy. I am the kind of girl who gets changed at night, sees pennies and dimes fly out of the pockets of her saggy skinny jeans onto the floor and it takes EVERYTHING I have to bend down and pick up the change on the floor. Yes. I'm that lazy.

Second, I value my marriage and putting the system up, again, after making it through the first time unscathed, would be just tempting fate. Seriously. When Ikea gives the directions on how to install the Stolmen system it should look less like this:

and more like this...

So I just painted behind it all. There may be one spot that didn't get great coverage because of the tight quarters (um, behind the drawers), but I'm okay with that.

(See how I just piled all the junk that I didn't want to move into the middle of the room. I don't recommend this technique but...um...where was I going to put it all!?)

Doesn't it look so much brighter?! This is what it looked like before (with a different pole layout)...

So ya! I shimmed and I craned my neck and I painted behind all of the poles and shelves and drawers and ended up with a white dressing room.

Success!

I also painted out the trim in the semi-gloss version of the same colour. I had it on hand so it worked. And didn't cost me anything. :-)

Wondering if I now have a simple, bright, white dressing room? And where is the vanity? Oh come on...you know I had bigger plans....

Favourite Updates

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Hi friends! Sorry for the (even worse) radio silence these days. I will say that it is mostly because (drum roll please)...

I've been working on a project!! No joke! I spent the weekend (and a few extra days) working on it and come Sunday night I had that telltale sore back and aching hands that looked like this:

Honestly - it was a GREAT feeling. I actually started feeling all motivated again about house projects!!

I should have a real update on that project in about one or two weeks. Stay tuned...

In other news, I've been thinking about a previous post about decor regrets - one where I listed out the things I regretted doing to the house. Didn't read it? Check it out here. In an effort to be fair to my house :-), I thought I should make a list of some of my favourite updates/renos/redos that we've undertaken over the years.

1. Red Bentwood Chairs

This was probably one of our most inexpensive and easiest projects. It involved buying some super cheap bentwood chairs off of Craigslist and turning them from this:

into this:

It was a small project but I still look at them and smile.

2. Painting Doors Blue

I was really into the whole black door trend when it popped up a while back. I actually contemplated painting every door in our house black. The first door I painted ended up being our front door, and after a great suggestion from Jen at Rambling Renovators (she probably won't even remember), we ended up painting it blue!

I loved it so much that I painted the main floor french doors in the same colour.

And the doors to the dining room:

Although I wouldn't say painting anything with navy blue paint is 'easy' - it was another inexpensive project that has a lot of impact in our house. I mean heck - the old doors looked like this:

Just meh, right?

3. Finishing our Basement

I know - this is a pretty big one but it has really changed how we live in our house. It is a small area, but it is a whole extra floor of living space! Cozy, warm living space. Not that the rest of our house isn't cozy, but there is something so nice about a warm (the mid-efficiency furnace is down there so it is HOT), carpeted space that makes you want to just ~~curl up with a movie~~ watch your son play with toys.

So for those of you who don't remember - we took it from this:

to this:

and added this:

There have been many occasions where J and I mention how glad we are that we finished the basement. So ya, it made the list :-)

4. The Stair Project

I'm sure you'll remember the stair project. The "let's just pull up a corner of this disgusting carpet and see what is underneath" project that took us from this;

to this (avert your eyes):

to this:

The worst part about this project was that it really was a solo mission taken on by my husband. I got out of all of the back breaking work because I was working on this:

So I guess you can say that we were both busy working on difficult, back breaking projects that were our own personal labours of love ;-)

5. The Master Bathroom/Laundry Room.

I know it seems crazy to even have to put this on the list! The huge reno of our upstairs washroom and laundry room seems like it was so long ago, but I still look around and think "MAN I'm glad we did this reno!". Not just because I think it is beautiful, but because if we were going to spend that kind of money and have our house in shambles for weeks, I'm so glad we did it pre-Luca so we could really enjoy it.

As a reminder - it went from this:

to this (sorry about the weird colouring - taking pics at night and adjusting using photoshop as usual):

And since I don't have the right equipment to get a good picture of the laundry room, here is a little video:

6. The Garage

Another biggie - but another on the list where we often say how happy we are that we have one. To most people, you probably think it is crazy that we bought a house without a garage but in our neighbourhood, finding a place with parking is amazing, nonetheless with a garage.

The best part about the garage (other than having some storage and the fact we never have to clean the snow off the car) is that J built it almost entirely himself. He had some help with the framing, but he pretty much did the rest solo (or with the help of a friend or two).

So that, my friends, is that. For a house that was 'move in ready', we sure did a lot! So tell me - do you have a favourite project in your home? Is it a big one (a kitchen or a bathroom) or something a little smaller that makes you smile?

Travelling Solo with an Eight Month Old

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:09:00 +0000

Luca and I went on a little trip last week. We went to Florida to hang out with my best friend Jen and her two beautiful daughters, Ella and Avery (and her husband, but he was out of town for most of the trip!). Although it was a little chilly there, it was a fantastic trip and Luca was awesome!

From the day we booked the trip, I started stressing about it (surprise, surprise). I was worried about the airport. The flight. Whether Luca would adjust to a new place. Would he sleep. Would he scream. Etc etc etc.

So here is what I learned from my first solo trip with Luca...

1. Travel Light: I was lucky that Jen had a stroller and a car seat that Luca could use, so we didn't NEED to bring those things. I also worried about navigating the airport alone with all of that gear. I didn't know how I would get through security because once you take your kid out of the stroller, where do you put him while you fold it up? So I left that stuff at home and just used a baby carrier (we have the Beco Gemini). It was perfect. I had my hands free for dealing with all of the paperwork etc and Luca stayed happy.

Tired boy.

Other than the carrier, I checked my luggage and only brought a diaper bag. Well, since my diaper bag was stolen, it was just a bag with my baby gear in it, but you know what I mean. I was tempted to fit my stuff in a carry on, but then I'd have to deal with getting it through the airport, putting it up in the overhead bin, etc. Didn't seem worth it. So ya. Baby in carrier. Diaper bag on shoulder. Done.

Here's Luca once we reached the gate. I put down a blanket and we chilled out, picnic style on the ground until it was time to board.

Lil guy was tired - so I brought his lovey hoping he'd have a nap. Ha.

2. Luca Likes Food, Not Toys: Everything I read said to bring toys for the plane, and to even buy some new toys so that they will be excited/interested/whatever. I followed that rule. I brought two of his favourites and a new toy. He could have cared less. The only thing he cared about was FOOD. Seriously. He was decent on the way there but on the way back, the only thing that pacified him was food. Half a container of puffs. A whole banana. 5 ounces of explosive milk (see below). Once he finished all of that, he yelled and climbed and cried and fussed. I would have done anything for some baby yogurt or a box of Cheerios. My kingdom for some Cheerios.

3. Sit Near the Back: This goes against my usual preference for sitting near the front of an airplane. Not only do you get off faster, but you are farther from the bathrooms (so you don't have a constant stream of people bumping your elbow) and I once heard a statistic about chances of survival in a crash being higher in the front. Morbid, but it stuck with me. Anyhoo. If you have a baby, sit near the back! That is where the other babies are! With babies come parents who won't hate you. They will even give you that look of "I've been there" as they sit semi-smuggly with their well behaved 4 year old who is happily munching on Goldfish, watching Tarzan on the mini tv with those special kid headphones, all while mom sits back with a complimentary non-alcholic beverage and a book. Sure I was jealous of those moms, but at least they didn't stare daggers at me when Luca started climbing the seat in front of me and yelling at everyone who walked by. Like the people in the front. Those people didn't like us. I only ventured up there once, trying to follow the "just walk up an down the aisle if he gets fussy" advice I had been given, and vowed never to return. (shudders thinking about it)

Another upside to sitting near other parents (and people who obviously got discount tickets or booked last minute) is that they are willing to help you! I was lucky and sat next to fabulous seat-mates who were more than happy to make faces at Luca and even hold him once in a while when I probably looked like I was going to offer him for sale over the P.A. Even the passenger behind us helped keep Luca entertained by playing peek-a-boo and letting Luca blow raspberries towards him. Awesome.

4. Bring Sleep-Stuff: I think one of my biggest fears with travelling was whether Luca was going to be able to continue sleeping as well as he does at home. After all of ~~our~~ his hard work, I didn't want to blow it. So I made sure to bring all of his sleep-gear to try to mimic his home sleeping environment as much as possible.

We were lucky and I knew Luca would get to use baby Avery's nursery for the week so I didn't have to schlep a portable crib or anything. So every night I would follow his regular routine and you know what? It worked! He woke up super early after night one (5:30 a.m., little bugger) but after that, he slept 11-12 hours at night and usually had his 3 naps during the day (ranging from 1-2.5 hours each) unless we went out somewhere. He was a total champ.

Luca enjoying a rest in a very sweet pink nursery :-)

5. Be Prepared for Things to Go Wrong (aka My Milk is the Bomb): This one is tough if you are already nervous and stressed out. Things might not go according to plan when you are dealing with air travel. Flights can be delayed. Customs agents can be cranky. It happens. I was ready for some bumps, but I wasn't ready for what happened on the way home from Florida.

As we were going through security in Tampa, I had to pull out my pumped breast milk (like you would other liquids) before going through the metal detector. There are special rules that apply to breast milk (i.e. you can bring more than the usual amount of liquids permitted, etc) and I knew that. I had two bottles - one for the flight (because breastfeeding an 8 month old in those tiny seats is TOUGH) and one for his night feed once home. The bottles were pulled aside for special screening and...

I'm sure you can see where this is going...

One of them tested positive THREE TIMES for explosive material. That's right. My milk is the bomb.

I was pulled aside and told that because it tested positive three times, I would have to be subjected to a secondary search (i.e. a very touchy pat-down and my diaper bag would be ripped apart, tested and then jumbled back together). Oh and the bottle would have to be confiscated.

The pat-down wasn't as bad as the thought of the milk being thrown out. A) Pumping sucks. B) It was the bottle ready for drinking on the plane so I was worried about what I'd do without it. C) Pumping sucks and I needed that milk! Oh, and D) I didn't have any explosives on me so I knew it was a false positive.

I had to put Luca on the ground while they searched me (since they weren't allowed to hold him). The female TSA agent got all up in my business (just doing her job, I know) while Luca crawled on the dirty floor, and they said an exception might be made if they call in an expert.

An explosives expert.

JEEZ.

So we waited for the explosives expert to come. He did another test. Chatted with me for a bit and then let us go on our way with the milk.

Seriously.

Didn't see that one coming.

Luca waiting for the flight home after the milk fiasco. The crying that ensued MIGHT have been related to the fact that we almost lost his milk. Don't let the smile fool you. Crying did follow. Oh did it follow.

* * * * *

So that's that. We survived. We enjoyed the sun and made it through the flights. Most of all we loved spending time with our favourite girls!

Poor Ella!

His first high-chair experience at a restaurant.

First swing!

Next generation of best friends :-)

So tell me - do you have any great tips for travelling with a baby? We are heading out on another trip in April so I'm still trying to perfect it!

Featured!

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:40:00 +0000

In all of the Valentine's hubbub yesterday, I forgot to tell you that our front entrance was featured on the fabulous Brooklyn Limestone!

Check it out:

While you are there, check out some of her other Favo(u)rite Nooks from some pretty fantastic blogs, like Rambling Renovators, Primitive & Proper and Back on Festive Road.

My Valentines

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:23:00 +0000

Hope everyone has a fantastic, love filled Valentine's Day!

I'm a lucky girl - I have TWO Valentines this year!

xoxo

Just Put on Some Pants Already!

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:13:00 +0000

If my lack of interesting blog posts are indicative of anything, it is that I am seriously lacking motivation. Inspiration. Something.

It isn't that I haven't thought of any projects that I want to get moving on. I've thought of a few. I've even searched for some inspiration online and formulated some basic plans. Unfortunately, that is where it ends. Even with a plan, I am having a hard time getting moving. On anything.

I've been thinking about it and I have an idea of what the problem is. I'm going to be honest here (I know, big surprise) but I'd say that most days of the week, I barely get dressed. I never thought I'd be that girl. You know the one. The one you hear about in stories from a friend who knows a girl who knows a girl who heard of a girl who wore jogging pants every day of her maternity leave. I didn't think I'd be super-mom but I thought that I would at least get dressed. Hair done? Probably not. But dressed? I thought that was going to be easy.

I was wrong. I'm totally that girl. On any given day, my unlucky husband gets to come home to his wife who is wearing jogging pants, a tshirt and a sweater/sweatshirt. Sorry J.

The thing is...it is bothering me. I'm feeling kind of sad about my lack of effort when it comes to myself. I will make sure Luca is well taken care of, looking good, well fed and happy, but I barely take the time to make myself a sandwich for lunch. And if I make a sandwich, I don't get dressed. Pathetic. Don't even ask me about getting my hair done so I don't have 2 inches of grey roots. Ugh.

It isn't like I don't have time. Luca sleeps. I have a few hours during the day when I'm not actively parenting that I could shower, get dressed and feel human. But I don't. Why?

Because I'm tired, yo! When Luca wakes up in the morning, I'm exhausted. I'm up late because I have to pump, so I am not getting a good sleep even though Luca is. I bring him into bed for breakfast and try to wake myself up. After he eats, we head downstairs so that I can eat breakfast and we play. For about 50 minutes. I don't want to make it sound like I don't enjoy that time, but usually all I'm thinking about is how AWESOME my nap is going to be.

That's right. When Luca naps in the morning, I crawl right back into bed to catch some more zzzzs.

You can't blame me. The one thing that everyone tells you when you first have a baby is "SLEEP WHEN THE BABY SLEEPS", right? I'm just following directions.

So yeah - it doesn't make sense to get dressed if I'm going right back to bed, right?

After Luca wakes up, I feel like HELL. As much as I want that nap, I always feel WAY WORSE when I get up from it. Whether it is 45 minutes or 2 hours, when I first hear Luca whining and calling "MA MA MA MA MA" from his crib, I lay there, feeling like I want to bury my head in the sand and pretend I can't hear the little cutie.

So then I get up again. I take the little munchkin downstairs and he eats. Then we play. I feel tired and I hope that he'll chill out for 5 minutes so I can make a coffee.

Coffee helps.

We then play in the basement (it is the winter here so we are hibernating in the basement) until it is nap time again. Remember. He only stays awake for about 1.5 hours until he starts complaining. Little guy loves his sleep!

Luca sleeps. I make and eat lunch. I could get dressed now. I could. But I don't. (Gosh, this is SO depressing as I read it). I'd rather stay cozy and comfortable and eat my sandwich and read the newspaper or watch something on Netflix.

When he gets up, we do it all over again. Nurse. Play. Sleep. During his last nap I usually try to start dinner and by this time, the day is practically over so why would I get dressed now, right? :-)

I know that if I left the house more, I would (obviously) be more on top of things like doing my hair and getting dressed in something other than pyjama pants and breastfeeding-friendly tops. However with Luca's sleeping schedule, I'm not keen on messing with it unless it is for something special (i.e lunch with a friend, etc). I'm not going to mess with it (and end up with a screaming child) just to cruise the mall.

I also think that maybe if I felt better in my clothes, I'd feel better getting dressed up for the day. I don't mean "oh I need to lose weight" (which I do). Rather, I need to get some half decent casual clothes that aren't my 2 pairs of saggy jeans (WHY do skinny jeans INSIST on sagging after one wear? Isn't that why you wear skinny jeans?! WTH!) and some crappy tops that for some reason (probably because they were cheap) are either stretched out or have shrunk three sizes.

So here is my plan.

1. Go shopping. I'm going to get some decent casual clothes that fit and I feel okay in. I don't need to dress up (heck, I'm at home all day) but getting out of my sweat pants and saggy jeans would be a pretty huge step up. Even if I want to wear a sweatshirt, it can at least be a cute one, right?

2. I'm going to get dressed. Every day***. After my nap. Until I stop pumping at night, I need some sleep and it seems silly to suffer through the day on principle. Plus naps are awesome.

3. Let the motivation start rolling! I think that getting dressed will kick start my day and maybe then I can start up on some of the projects that have been rolling around in my head. Like the master bedroom. And trying some new recipes.

Do you think it will work? Part of me feels like I can't be the only SAHM who feels this way. Pinterest moms are not the norm, right?

How do you stay motivated?

*** Note to my family who reads this. Please don't call me every day and ask if I got dressed. Please and thank you :-)

Love

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 03:53:00 +0000

Luca's 7 Month Update

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:59:00 +0000

This is late. His 7 month birthday was on the 17th. Today is January 31st. It isn't like I've been too busy to get this post up. Seriously. What do I do all day?!

Really, it is because I haven't taken his official 7 month photo. Which means when I one day have a collage of his first year, you will know that the 7 month picture is a fake. You can judge me then.

So even though my first instinct is to put off this post until I take the photo, I know myself and that will mean that it won't get done. Better to be honest, right?

So here goes!

Mood

No real changes here. Of the time he is awake, he is happy about 70% of the time. That is pretty awesome! The other 30% of the time he is cranky. "Bitching and Moaning" is how I usually put it. Not full out crying (although he is starting to do that a little when he is upset/bored/wants my attention). He is just kind of a complainer.

He has become a little sensitive to unexpected changes and noises this past month. One night we had a visitor who came in the house without him seeing, and when she popped up in front of him, he immediately burst into tears and cried for a long while and wasn't easily settled. He also went to his first birthday party and found all of the kids/guests to be a bit overwhelming and burst into tears when someone laughed.

Sleep

Still great! He sleeps for 12-13 hours at night (no wakings) and still has 3 naps a day ranging from 1-3 hours each. I thought that by this age he'd be able to tolerate longer periods of being awake, but he still gets cranky and upset if I push him much past the 1.5 hour mark. Little guys loves his sleep! It is really cute though - he has started putting his head down on my shoulder as I sing him a song before bed. He knows his nap is coming and is getting in the mood I guess!

This is his "I just woke up" face:

Feeding

Still trucking alone here with baby led weaning. He loves tangerines, mango, yogurt, apple sauce, beef stew, pears and prunes. He isn't super into meat yet and when we gave him pasta and lasagna, he pretty much just sucked the sauce off and spit out the rest. We are just letting him eat at his own pace so I'm not too stressed about it.

Growth

I haven't weighed him recently but he is definitely getting bigger. Some of our friends say that week to week he seems to look older and bigger! Recently, he has also been sleeping more than usual so I think he has been busy growing while he sleeps!

Aside from physical growth, he is really developing these days. He can sit on his own, stands like a champ (holding our hands) and is purposefully using both hands, passing things back and forth. He also has started to appreciate patterns (i.e. singing Pop Goes the Weasel - he knows when the POP is coming and starts smiling in preparation).

Oh - and he has made some serious progress with this:

Likes and Dislikes

Likes: Eating, practicing crawling, his red plastic spoon, FaceTime with nanny (still a fave), watching videos of himself, bath time, moving all around in his crib and my iPhone.

Dislikes: Having his diaper changed, the time between getting out of the bath and when the food starts flowing, being awake too long, when people sneak up on him, loud noises, sleeping anywhere other than his crib.

Getting Your Face Out There

noreply@blogger.com (LifeBegins@Thirty) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 22:24:00 +0000

One of my 2013 goals is to get more of our personal photos up in our house. I always thought it was funny how we spent so much money on our wedding photography but I have always felt too awkward to put them up. Maybe too self-indulgent or something?

I thought we'd start small (and cheap) and use some of the photos we already had printed and I just taped them up on the inside of the door to our basement. That way we can just close it if I get too self-conscious!

Sorry about the colouring. It was night time and I was trying to lighten manually.

Anyways...it's a start. I would like to change up some of the pics (our wedding was over 4 years ago!) but until I print more, this will do!

So your turn - how do you feel about personal photos being displayed in your home?