Living Room Inspiration

Our move is fast approaching.  I can't believe our closing date is just over a week away!  We have been working away packing for the move and purchasing some necessities (and some fun things too!).  As Josh likes to say, this house is my pinterest dream house, so I want to make sure we are very intentional about what we have inside of it. I have been obsessing over cream couches for a while now.  I switched over to grey for awhile, thinking that cream wasn't practical.  However, I read an article once that said you should have a cream couch while you still can before you have kids.  Well... now is that time for us! Combined with the great warranty JC Penney offers, we pulled the trigger to purchase this sofa and a matching chairs in time to take advantage of the President's Day sales.

Our sofa in a slightly darker color

I am really trying to focus on purchasing high quality products that will last us a long time, knowing that it will take us longer to finish the space.  Here is some inspiration for our main level living room.

I love some farmhouse/cottage style, which is part of the reason I love our new house so much.  I love the cream and natural wood combination in this.

I found the plans to build this table and a matching coffee table and console table and I love them!  I think they will really go with the look we are going for.  Now just to decide to keep it more natural color or to give it a whitewash finish.

I love the blue and white in this, and the wicker basket in the corner, and the flowers in a pitcher.

I think this photo is my ultimate inspiration.  I am hoping to eventually create a look similar to this.

So here's to hoping our sofa is a good start.  And that I can stand to be patient with all of this.  We all know how I do with patience...

p.s. Avery got her hair cut a few weeks ago.  Looking good, and already needing another bath from this slushy weather we have been having!

Focus on the Now

Doesn't it seem like we are always looking ahead?  While I think it is great to have things to  look forward to, we shouldn't forget to appreciate today and everything it holds.  I have so much coming up in my life, it is easy to forget this.  I can't wait to move at the end of the month and get in our dream home.  I can't wait for my birthday in March.  I can't wait for summer (especially with the frigid temps we have had lately).

Snow Dog

All of these are fabulous things to look forward to, but it's important to live in today.  Take a day (or two) off from frantically packing.  Spend the time playing with your puppy (or baby).  Play a game with a friend.  Stop putting things off until that big moment happens.  Right now, I am trying to continue to see my friends instead of following my instinct to do nothing but pack until we move.  We are doing our taxes (super fun!) and getting Avery groomed this weekend.  Hopefully her haircut is awesome!

Obsessions

Is anyone else an obsessor?  I don't think that's a real thing, but as a great co-worker once told me, you get to make up words once acquiring your Master's degree. So ha, obsessor is a word ;)

I think Josh and Avery can vouch for the fact that I really get into things. FAST.  Latest obsessions: DIY/Money saving ideas, apartment searching, car searching, dog searching, house searching, house remodeling idea searching.

If you followed my last blog, you were witness to my DIY/$ saving phase.  Don't get me wrong, plenty of good comes from my obsessing.  I learned so much in my money saving phase.  Much of it we still practice (although not quite as stringently).  We also found a pretty awesome place to live, got to take Avery home, got a good deal on the Jetta, and have had a successful house search.  Not bad overall.

I think I have an obsessing gene.  My mom, bless her heart, is kind of the same way.  Maybe obsessing is a way to deal with the anxious gene we both VERY MUCH inherited.

However, I realized something the other day.  After having a breakdown (typical) mid-house search, I realized that sometimes you just need to take a step back.  After almost giving up after my breakdown, I took a night off.  I let my parents help search a little, and we found an amazing house!  We are all set to close on February 28th. I will post some more soon.

Homemade Body Wash

Another project I had been putting off for a while was homemade body wash.  A while back, we made homemade laundry soap.  I loved the soap and it worked really well, but grating the soap was a bit of work.  Around the same time, I found a six pack of Olay bar soap on super clearance at Target.  Well, I also found this post.  Problem solved.  Grate-free body wash!

I only used 2 bars of soap and 4 cups of water, and it was  beyond easy to make! All you have to do is boil 2 cups of water per bar of soap.  Once the water has come to a boil, turn the heat down to medium.  In a microwave safe container, heat the bar of soap for about 90 seconds.  Add the hot, melted soap to the hot water.  Only microwave one bar of soap at a time.  Stir the soap and water mixture to make sure that all of the soap is dissolved in the water.  Let the soap mixture cool, and pour it into containers.  I used a few old bodywash containers.

Here they are hanging out of my stove with my new tea kettle!

 I did notice that it started to separate a bit as it cooled, but I just gave it a little shake and it mixed back together.  The two bars of soap and 4 cups of water almost filled both of these containers.

It has been a while now and I have a little feedback.  This was very watery.  I'm not sure if it is from the soap I used or that I used too much water.  If I was making this again with this soap, I would use less water.  It still works and lathers surprisingly well though, and smells delish!  I would recommend trying this project with a small batch first, but it is totally worth it.

Veggie Cleanse Update

We have officially been on the veggie cleanse for 5 days.  As much as I hate to be a quitter, I think we might be done with it.  Honestly, I do not feel good on this diet. I really didn't think it would be that big of a difference since we eat so many vegetables normally, but something is very different.  I will have to do a bit of testing to see what it actually is.

Things that were easy
-Eating veggies
-Not eating as much meat (I thought I would struggle more with only 6 oz. per day)

Things that were challenging
-Giving up carbs (I do not crave sweets, I crave carbs)
-Eating Greek yogurt everyday

It was really hard the first day or to to feel satisfied with our food because we are used to eating food with so much flavor.  Eventually we got a little creative and that made things easier.

Skip ahead  if you don't want WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION...
This diet made me extremely, uncomfortably gassy.  Last night I took the maximum dose of Gas-X and that didn't even alleviate the problem.  And I'm talk visibly noticeable bloated belly gassy.  Very uncomfortable.  I had been struggling with more minor occurrences of this all week, but nothing as bad as last night.  This was my breaking point.  I think that this is either from the protein powder or the flaxseed, because that is really the only major difference from my normal diet. However, the "situation" never kicks in until evening and I have the smoothie in the morning. Hmmm...

Josh and I talked about it last night, and I think we are going to move on.  But we also did decide that we will be taking some of these lessons forward.  Most specifically the meat portions.

Lesson learned: I am a much better "everything in moderation" person than restrictive diet person.

Our supplies for the week

Sharing Some Good News

My latest obsession is all the "good news" stories on the internet lately.  There are so many bad things happening in the world that we forget about all the kindness and good surrounding us.  Did you hear about the young Dairy Queen manager who was "caught" taking money out of his own pocket to replace the money lost by a blind customer?  It's not the original story, but you can read about it here.  There are many, many good people in the world, we just don't hear quite as much about them.  Luckily, I feel like after this story went viral, news providers made more of an effort to tell stories like this one.  I am loving it! Let's keep showing our support for stories like this so we get to keep hearing them.

After all, with so much in life to be positive about, why focus on the negative?

We are currently on day 1of the veggie cleanse.   So far, so good!

Experimental 2 Week "Cleanse"

This is what happens when I am at home during the day.  As I am lounging around with Avery in tow, I see a commercial.

Dr. Oz's 2 WEEK VEGETABLE CLEANSE DIET!

Oh, side note, General Mills is trying something in Josh's division.  If they eat 5 servings of vegetables for something like 5 weeks straight, they get a credit to their health care account and a free fitbit.  If they have success, they will expand to the whole company and possibly to other companies as well.

Back to the cleanse.  I know that we eat quite a few vegetables, but I was looking for a way to really challenge ourselves with this GM challenge.  So naturally, the vegetable cleanse caught my eye.

Basically, you cut out caffeine, grains, and dairy.  You can drink green tea, eat Greek yogurt, and 1/2 cup of brown rice every day.  Other than that, you can eat as many Low GI veggies as you want.  Read more about it here. So here goes nothing, we are trying it starting Monday (because we only grocery shop on the weekends and already have meals planned for the rest of the week).

Happy New Year

p.s. The whole audience on his show that day had been using this diet for 2 weeks and had lost an average of 9 pounds!  Maybe I should take starting weight and measurements?

p.p.s. This is exactly why I will never be allowed to stay at home, I am one of those people.