#procrastination

Do you ever have days where you reeeeealllly want to get something done? Like, not something specific, just SOMETHING. But the longer you think about what you want to do, the more you actually have no idea what to do? Maybe you have too many things to do and you don't know where to start? I think that's where I'm at. Eaten up by a sense of restlessness that is going in every direction and no direction, all at the same time. My list of options is long:

Pack for our trip back home - 1 month in Illinois....we leave in six days, what?!

Make Emma's Minnie Mouse costume.

Clean my house. I would break it down, but ain't nobody got time for that.

Give my baby a bath.

Laundry.

Be a super cool mom and do a craft with my kids.

Do some more homeschooling research. 

Finish making squares for the quilt I started....oh about a year ago.

Sleep. ha. ha.

Go through the kids' clothes and pack the ones that are too small. Joseph (6 mo.) is wearing 18-24 mo. clothes. Giant baby!! Point being - hand-me-downs have gotten a little confusing. 

Bible study.

Return about five phone calls that I have neglected to make. 

Cut out the coupons that have been sitting on my counter for three weeks.

I'm gonna stop there because I just got tired rereading all that. 

But the list goes on and on.

And now you see my dilemma. Or maybe you don't. So much to do, and such a strong desire to get it done. And yet, here I sit, typing, deleting, retyping. Thinking about how much I want to get something done, talking about how much I want to get something done, but not ACTUALLY getting anything done. It's exhausting. 

I know, I know, prioritize. Make a plan. yada yada yada. I'm sure it will finally come to that. For now, though, I will continue to ponder the unexplained feeling of restlessness that has been hovering over me the last several days. At least until the babies wake up from their nap. Then I will probably do something. 

The waiting game

We now officially have 3 days until Emma Rose DeLuca's due date.

It would be an understatement to say that I'm getting a little antsy.

It's a wee bit easier to keep my mind off of the looming day this time around, mainly because I have a teething one-year-old who recently decided to start asserting his own will via high-pitched screams....super fun. :)

But it really hasn't been bad. Rowan's been keeping me busy, we have family in town keeping us company, and I recently picked up sewing. That's right, another step toward unlocking my inner suzy. I'm currently in the middle of making seat cushions for our dining room chairs. We'll see. I'm totally enjoying it and I'm in love with the fabric that we picked out - yes, WE....apparently John has quite an eye for fabric. I've been trying to take pictures as we go so I can share the process - the good, the bad and the ugly (hopefully not too ugly...I'd actually like to use them). So that's coming soon....along with my baby girl. Eee!

I'm just ready. Ready to get the show on the road; ready to see what she looks like; ready to introduce Rowan to his little sister. I hope he likes her. I hope he doesn't try to tackle her, or eat her, or lay on her like one of his stuffed animals. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad. He really likes stuffed animals.

Anywho, here we are, playing the waiting game. I'm pretty determined to win.

T-Minus 5 weeks!

We are getting so close to baby #2 making her big debut that I can almost smell the baby powder and Boudreaux's Butt Paste. Or I forgot to wash my hands after changing Rowan. Let's be real, that's probably likely. Whose idea was it to have back to back babies??

I drift in and out of the nesting phase (yes that is a real thing), which pretty much means I go back and forth between preemptively cleaning our house, and just trying to keep up with the mess of the four people currently living here. Tiring? Some days yes, some days not so much. Today is a not so much day. You know, one of those very rare days in which I'm motivated by the thought of organizing the baking shelf in our cabinet. That's right, baking shelf. Bet you never thought I'd have one of those, huh? Anyway, it's one of those days where it feels good to get stuff done.

So I've been thinking a lot about our babies' rooms. We'll be able to start setting up and decorating this weekend which I'm super excited about! I feel like we have some fun ideas, it will just be a matter of making them happen....and finding a cost effective way of doing that. Thrift store anyone? Here are some thoughts we've had so far:

1. We love yellow.

Which means it will probably end up on a wall or two.

2. We love this tree.

Bought the shelves awhile back, now we just need to figure out how to get it from this picture to our wall.

3. I have some of these laying (lying?) around...why not put them to good use?

But yellow (obviously). :)

When we had Rowan we were living in a tiny one bedroom apartment. Needless to say, he didn't get any kind of fanfare when it came to getting his room ready. Mainly because "his room" consisted of a pack 'n play set up next to our bed. Ahhh the good ole days. :) Anywho, my point is, it seems incredibly unfair for baby girl to have her own decorating scheme and Rowan to have no such thing. Therefore we are currently on the look out for baby boy inspiration. I can feel my little interior designer bones tingling (all two them). Best laid plans, people, best laid plans.

In the Mood!

I wish I had one of the those really cool blogs that gave away free stuff. If I did, I would give everyone a copy of this magazine

It has seriously been just about the best thing ever when it comes to schooling me in color...which I desperately need. I know I want the rooms in our house to be more interesting than they are and (more importantly) more homey and inviting, but since I tend to walk into a blank-canvas room and freeze like a deer in headlights, the actual "transforming" part of the room transformation seems to allude me.

Enter Color Made Easy. Not only has it been full of great visual ideas, but it's given me a check list of to-do's on how to go about decorating our spaces! And boy do I love check lists AND to-dos. :)

So we decided to start with our bedroom and the master bath. "Start how?" you ask. Well, last week I would have asked the same question....and probably never would have bothered to find the answer; I would have been too busy with my deer-in-headlights pose. But not anymore!

According to my new best friend, I apparently can get over my "don't know where to start" issues by simply creating a mood board. Which, to everyone's surprise (including my own) I did!

The mood board, as you know if you've ever watched anything on HGTV, is a collection of photos, prints, fabrics, colors, or really anything that inspires you. This all gets put together in a scrapbook, binder, or in my case, Rowan's bulletin board.  Here's the one that I'm making right now

I'm not the most artistic person in the world, but you get the gist. These are the colors and some ideas that I want to use to create this "mood" in our room.

This is my favorite section of the board, mainly because of the flower and the colors in that picture. Most of the pictures I got out of the Color Made Easy magazine, and then I pulled some things out of my craft bag that I thought would go too. Oh, and I added a sweater that I can't wear anymore (apparently you're not supposed to put some materials in the dryer?). Eventually I'd like to make something out of it for our room, but that's another story for another day.

Anywho, that's where we're at so far. My favorite part about this has been John's response. He got up at 4 am for work the morning after I made this and, although usually I'm incoherent at that hour, I popped my head off my pillow, rolled over and said, "Did you see what I made?" And do you know what he said at 4 in the morning??

"Yeah, I really like it. I think I have some ideas of how we can make it happen."

What?! No joke. And then he started talking about shopping at TJ Maxx. I love him. :)

Also, I snapped some pictures of Rowan while I had my camera out. Enjoy Mom!

Phase I Complete

Ok, so I've taken my declaration one step farther. I have bought things, I have done things, I have taken quizzes, and I'm still interested. This is a big deal for a non-planner, slightly flaky, over-committer (ahem, me). Following a sleepless night full of Rowan's tears, and a morning at the doctor's that had me in tears (you know you're sleep-deprived when a long line at the reception desk makes you cry), I decided to treat myself to an hour of things I like. Namely, Barnes & Noble and Starbucks. Convenient since they're all in one location. Here's what I ended up with.

An edition of Better Homes and Gardens solely dedicated to Holiday Crafts (I figured this was a must-have Suzy item).

Now, I'm not looking to have the ULTIMATE Halloween open house or for 232 ways to wow a crowd (I don't even know where I would get a crowd, let alone one patient enough to wait around to be wowed 232 times), but it did have some pretty deliciously simple looking recipes. Anything with beef in the name is considered a five-star meal in my home (John).

See my previous confession concerning my eye for color and design. :)

And finally, a frilly magazine full of pretty things to make my house frilly and pretty as well. We'll see. I'm actually excited about this one. Although, the fact that I'm reading something with the phrase "high tea" and "teacup lamp" on the cover makes me slightly uneasy....

Also, I scoured the shelves and finally found this book

which I'm in love with. I was equally in love with Book One, which is all about your baby from birth to four months. This one follows that up with info and advice for 5-12 monthers. Love, love, love.

As to my magazines, I haven't had a chance to dig into them yet but I have a plan - paper portfolio and pinterest (thank you to every single person who recommended this - literally every single person who I've talked to in the last 24 hrs. recommended this). So we'll see how it goes. I'm cheerfully optimistic.

And no worries Mom, Rowan slept like an angel last night. :)

A Declaration

I'm having serious DIY cravings. Let me be clear about this. If you read the post about why I'm excited to be having a girl you will recall that, while enthusiastic about others' craftiness, I'm somewhat lacking in that area myself. Well, I spent a significant amount of time today pouring over this site (it's really cool if you get a chance) and, call it the nesting instinct, I find myself want to make something....or at least clean something. Now, there's plenty of opportunity for cleaning around here (at least one person in our house has been sick almost every day for the past month...we have a lot of catching up to do). BUT I'm at a loss as to where to start MAKING. From what I can glean from the afore mentioned site and others, this is what it seems to take to be crafty or DIY savvy...

• Get in touch with the thrift shopper in you. Apparently I need to be significantly more familiar with our local Goodwill and TJ Maxx.
• Have an eye for design and color (not my thing...I have a hard time matching my clothes in the morning).
• Own and know how to use the following: a staple gun, a glue gun, a sewing machine, primer, and the right side of your brain.

These are just a few thing that I have learned so far. Unfortunately, this has all lead me to realize, once again, that I was not blessed with Suzy Home Maker gene. I enjoy eating, but I don't LOVE to cook. I appreciate a beautifully decorated house, but my heart doesn't skip a beat when I enter a fabric store. Apple pies and DIY projects have just never been my thing. 

So am I destined for a life of colorless walls and store-bought Halloween costumes? I think not! Hear this John DeLuca and all of cyberworld. I WILL channel my inner Suzy if it's the last thing I do! It may take months or even years, it may take blood sweat and tears, and it may just take me running to Goodwill or Target every once in awhile (did I mention that I'm not much of a shopper -- how am I having a girl?!), but I WILL make something! And I will like it!

ps...if anyone has craft or DIY sites that they love, feel free to share. I'm gonna need all the help I can get!