Getting by

I know it's the Holiday's and I'm so excited to celebrate them with my growing family, but I can't help thinking about money.  It's such an awful thing that we have to worry about money.  How nice would it be to just enjoy everything in life and not have to worry about bills and payments.

I've been EXTREMELY lucky that I can work from home and take care of Olivia.  I can make money and spend time with my beautiful daughter.  In that sense I am spoiled.  My job is great and I really do like it.  I work part-time about 10-15 hours a week and make about as much if not more than I would teaching Theology full-time at a Catholic high school.  (Sad I know)  My schedule is super flexible and as long as I get my work in by Saturday at 11:59 pm it doesn't matter what days I work or for how long. I also have the ability to increase the amount of pages I do to make more money.  The only downside is I get "graded" and depending on how many errors I make my pay scale goes down.

Lately Luke and I have been, not struggling, but trying to be conscience of our spending habits.  With the new found glory of a mortgage and home repairs, it's been tough and a little bit of a shock.  I wish we were able to save more every month and I know it has a lot to do with how we spend money.  We've been trying to not go out to eat as much, which we love to do and just watching where our money goes.  I've been thinking about taking on more work, 500 more pages, I already do 1000 a week.  This would increase my time to about 15-20 hours a week and I would make about 350 dollars extra every week.  That's one way we're going to try and make more.  I also was thinking about doing more wholesale food shopping and trying to plan out meals for the whole month and sticking to that schedule. I don't know if that's really feasible but I think I might try.

My question is what do you do, if anything, to save a little each month?  What makes it easier?

Oh Darling Don't You Ever Grow Up

One year ago today the most precious little thing came into my world.  Right around this time I had just delivered our first baby and Luke and I were sitting in the labor and delivery room in awe of the beautiful miracle we had brought into the world.  I can't even express the emotions that go through you the day you have a baby.  If you've had one you know and if you haven't yet, I hope you get to experience the greatest thing any woman can do.  Even though it's a tough process, I mean they do call it labor, it's such a rewarding and exhilarating moment that leaves you with such a high.  I delivered Olivia on my own with the help of an epidural.  I am so in awe of women who can do it without one.  I for one have a major weakness for pain, I take a tylenol at the sign of a headache to prevent it from coming on.  That being said I do not feel weak for having the epidural.  For me it was what I needed to help get me through my labor and deliver my baby.  That moment when you finally see you're little bundle of joy (please excuse the sappy cliches) is unlike anything I've ever experienced.  The joy and happiness you see on your husbands face is priceless and makes you feel like you've just given him the most amazing gift in the world.  I felt like superwoman.  Don't get me wrong it was painful and tiring but the emotion that comes out of you when you first see her (or him) gets you past all of that extremely quickly.  I was talking to a friend of mine recently, who was due to have her baby and she was asking me if I remember certain things about being pregnant.  I said that I truly believe that God makes you forget the bad things about being pregnant and delivering in hopes that you'll only remember the good things and want to have another one.  I really do think that true.

So as we celebrate the first year in Olivia's life I can't believe that she has been ours for so long.  I know we have many more years and memories to come but this year flew by so quickly that I don't want to blink because I'm scared when I open my eyes she'll be having her own babies.  She is honestly the best thing to ever happen to my husband and I and we are so blessed and happy to have her in our lives.  So here's to you Olivia!  Happy Birthday Peanut Princess, please don't grow up too fast.

Getting There

Let's start from the beginning.  When we bought our house we realized that our boiler was old...very old.  Like so old the inspector said it works but probably shouldn't.  There was a huge hole in the disinegrating tubing that lead from the boiler to the wall.  Can you say carbon monoxide poisoning?!  Needless to say with the news of winter's early arrival we asked my uncle to come check it out.  He changed the tubing and we thought we were ready for the freezing cold weather.  Then, of course, why not, our pilot light wouldn't stay lit.  Fast forward to Saturday.  We trekked through the storm to go have lunch at my parents and to pick up some fire wood to try and heat the place up. When we finally got back home we had no electricity.  How wonderful.  Not only did we not have a heater but now we could no longer use our electric space heaters which were at least keeping us from having limbs freeze off. 

Now for the reason for my post.  We decided that it would be best for Olivia if we stayed at my parents' house with some heat.  I don't know what it is but I've been having a really hard time with moving.  Even though I knew we needed to have our own life and house I was feeling homesick when we first moved in.  I do blame a lot of it on the pregnancy horomones but still feelings are feelings.  I'm doing soooo much better with it and am finally started to feel settled in our house.  As settled as I can feel with the clutter everywhere.  (I feel like we can't get organized) Today while I was showering at my parents I think I finally realized what the problem is.  (I started getting upset and homesick feeling again) I don't think I necessarilly feel homesick for my family, even though I love them to death, I think I actually miss the house.  I don't know if anyone else feels like this but I think it stems from starting our family at my parents.  This is where we brought Olivia home for the first time, where she got her first bath, where she began to grow up.  It's hard sometimes thinking that we have somewhere new.  I know this house will bring so many new memories and we'll probably eventually leave it and move to another new home where I'll feel the same way.  For now though I think I'll be ok.  It's just going to take a little more time to get adjusted.

Blessed

Today is one of those days where I just feel truly and utterly blessed to have such a wonderful life.  It's not that I don't feel happy about this everday it's just some days are better than others.  Today is one of the first days that I feel like my pregnancy is real.  I'm not sure why because nothing is different or has changed but I'm beginning to get excited.  Luke and I knew we wanted another baby and we were no longer using NFP to avoid a pregnancy but with just moving into a new house and my world feeling like it had been tossed upside down I was kind of an emotional wreck about being pregnant.  All I could think about was Olivia and how this would affect her.  Would she feel slighted and left out? Would she feel neglected, like she wasn't the center of my world anymore?  I felt so bad for her.  Then I started thinking.  I knew we wanted another baby close in age for her to grow up with and we knew we wanted them closer than 3 years apart.  This meant that even if we had waited until she was 2 or 3 to have another one she really wouldn't remember being an only child anyway.  It also made me feel better knowing that since my brothers aren't super close to having babies of their own that she would have a playmate that she could spend time with.  So today I'm excited and anxious and can't wait to have this pregnancy move along.  I'm waiting in anticipation for the 23rd of November when we can find out what we're having and it can make it even more real to me that we are having another beautiful baby.  My daughter is amazing, my husband is the greatest guy I have ever met and he is my best friend, and even though my dog can be a crazy pants, he's perfect to me.  Life is amazing and today I feel blessed.

(An old picture but I still love it.)

Olivia's Room

Olivia's room is really the only room in the house that is finished (besides curtains and some picture hanging).  Her bedding when she was born was bumblebees and was a neutral pattern.  Even though we knew we were having a girl we decided that we could use it again when we had another baby no matter if it was a boy or girl.  That being said when we moved into this house I wanted her room to be girly regardless of the bedding.  It really doesn't affect the decor too much since we got rid of the bumpers, you can't even really tell what the bedding was.

 

These are the before and afters.  The wallpaper was a MESS to take off and there was wallpaper in almost every room in the house.  This room was especially difficult for some reason and the whole wall needed to be spackled because there were chunks missing.  Her furniture is from Target and my parents purchased it for us as our gift.  I really like it and hopefully it can grow with her.

  

Even though that's a lovely lamp we decided to get rid or it and put the crib on this wall next to the door.  Originally we had it caddy corner against the other wall but decided we liked it better closer to us.  I bought the letters already painted white and the ribbon at Michael's and just attached it with a hot glue gun then used nails to hang the ribbon on.  It was really inexpensive and I wanted to have her name over her bed because I think it looks so cute!

 

Her changing table is on the other side of the door.  We don't really use it too much now that she's bigger and I'm thinking that it may have been unnecessary but we'll keep it for the next baby.  And for right now it's nice for storage.  I got that sign at a store on the Ocean City boardwalk and thought it was ADORABLE.  So girly and it matched the colors we were going for (pink and green).  The rug was picked out by Luke.  I just wanted to get a shag type carpet, all one color, but he insisted it had to be fun so we settled on the alphabet.  We got that at Target also.

I'm pretty happy with how her room turned out.  Like I said we just need to put up some more decoration and curtains and it will be all set.  I also want to eventually paint all the doors, closets included,white but we'll see when that happens.

Finally.

So after a LONG period of waiting...and waiting, we finally purchased our first house.  After 2 years of marriage, a dog, and a baby we were finally approved for a mortgage and started looking for a home the second the approval went  through.  Needless to say we had been checking out prospective places (online) for awhile so when it came to time to look we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted.  At least 3 bedrooms (for room to grow our family, which didn't take long.), a big yard for Rudy to run around and get some of his crazy energy out, and just a place we could call our own.  Well after looking at 2 houses we had found it.  There are times I feel we should have looked more but we're happy with our choice and finally able to say we have our own home!

 It's a fixer upper and it's STILL a work in progress but I wanted to post some pictures of the before and let them sink in awhile and then post some before and afters together, once things fall into place.  So here it goes.  Don't be alarmed you haven't been transported in time to the 70's.

 These are of the main living area when you first walk in the door.  Notice the LOVELY mural on the wall.  It really adds character don't you think?

The dining room that leads into the kitchen.

 The glorious dream kitchen.  I know you're all jealous and want yours to look exactly the same.  Sorry, I don't know if they make stuff like this anymore. There were also 5 different kinds of wallpaper hiding in various places throughout  this kitchen.

The garage and the hallway that leads from the kitchen to the garage and basement.

Bathroom in the basement.

This is the basement.  When the hurricane came through we had to rip everything out.  What a shame.

These are of the main bathroom in the hallway.  There is a tub on the opposite side of the toilet and sink.

The backyard that is still a work in progress.  The previous owner let everything get SO overgrown.

Master bedroom and beautifully wallpapered half-bath in our room.  That wallpaper was even on the ceiling.

Olivia's room.

Spare bedroom, which will be made into the new nursery soon enough! And a picture of the hallway with a fan in it.  Absurd.



Well those are just a few of the time warp into which we got ourselves into.  Thanks to the MANY people who have been gracious enough to help us fix it up (even though I think it's just because they would never want to hang out in that place) we have been able to some major improvements already which I will be posting shortly!