Decisions, decisions…

Wow, I’m actually getting a post in before Favorite Kitty Pic Friday this week!  I scheduled that post for tomorrow very early in the week in order to make sure it got posted this week since I didn’t get to do it the last 2 weeks.  But I thought about something I wanted to post, and I figured I better do it now or it will fall to the wayside.

I have made some decisions lately, and there are still a few decisions I have to make.

1. I have decided not to peek at my baby registries.  This is very hard for me because I’m so curious and would love to know what kinds of things we are getting and what necessities might be left for us to purchase.  I did end up seeing a couple items that were purchased because it was early on after shower invitations were sent out and I was still adding/removing things from the registries.  Also, my mom can’t really keep a secret, so I even know who the one item is coming from.  Which is one of the reasons I know about my shower as well.  It was never planned as a surprise, because we had to coordinate scheduling with the out of town in-laws, but she would never have been able to keep it that way anyway.  She says she would have been able to, but she blurts out everything at some point, and I’m absolutely sure I would have figured it out somehow either way. So – no more looking at the registry.  We’re done adding things to it at this point anyway, and I need some surprises from this shower!

2. I have decided that the “joys of pregnancy” are not always so joyous.  Sleeping is becoming more difficult since I have to sleep on my sides and apparently want to sleep on my back more than I ever thought I would want to or ever did in the past.  My hips hurt so much throughout the night and it feels like I’m a beached whale when I try to get up for middle of the night bathroom trips or even (especially!) just to roll over to the other side.  I have reflux issues.  I’m somewhat of an emotional person, but lately, “somewhat” emotional doesn’t even begin to describe it.  I notice I get irritated sometimes at stupid things, and so much more that I watch on TV makes me cry.  The show “One Born Every Minute”?  I bawl during every episode.  I used to be able to watch those shows in peace, but now I just cry all the time.  What am I going to be like when I finally have Bean??  One emotional mess coming up!

3. We have decided to have a 3D/4D ultrasound done.  This was up in the air for us at the beginning, mostly due to cost and the fact that it wasn’t a necessity, but furniture and such is.  Well, since we are well furnished now and it was all gifts, we decided to go for it and get a peek at Bean in there.  I have to schedule it yet, but I’m hoping to do that tomorrow and will hopefully have it done in about 2 weeks – depending on appointment availability.

4.  We have decided to take on the biggest paint job of our whole house in about 2 weeks.  Due to the layout of the house, we kind of have to use one color for the front living room, entry, entry hallway, staircase, and upstairs hallway.  It’s such a huge undertaking that we have recruited my dad’s help for a weekend, and Hubby will even take the week off work to continue and finish the job.  We decided we wanted to get at least this paint job completed before Bean arrived, because after that who is going to feel like taking on that huge job, and it will be done for when he starts crawling around and can touch walls with messy hands and such.  Right now those areas are still painted with contractor grade paint, which is not scrub-able at all.  If we get it painted, it will be easier to clean, and our house will finally start to look more finished.  We will still have some more rooms to paint yet, but those are smaller easier rooms and can be done anytime then.

5. We decided to go on a trip in August.  The baton group that I teach for is going to one of the Jersey shores for almost a week to perform on a stage right at the boardwalk.  I’ve taken this trip many many many times, but this will be our first with a newborn, and depending on when Bean decides to arrive and how he ends up entering the world, we’re not sure if this is going to be ok, or not such a great idea.  Guess we’ll have to wait and see!

6. We decided Hubby should have his wisdom teeth removed last week.  He had it done last Friday and is still in some pain from the one extraction site.  That particular tooth hadn’t really come up through the gum much and was actually sideways in his jaw.  I feel really bad when he’s hurting because I told him he should have it done after hearing all the reasons from the oral surgeon why it would be a good thing to do now, even though they weren’t bothering him now.  He goes back tomorrow to have things checked out, so hopefully his pain is all normal and there are no infection issues or anything.  I can’t remember how long I had pain when I had mine done, but I seemed to luck out with my surgery – no swelling or bruising, and I don’t remember the pain being that bad or lasting longer than a couple days.  So, hopefully everything is ok with his mouth. 

And for the decisions yet to be made:

1. We have a first name picked out.  Everyone seems to like it.  We’re still not 100% committed to a middle name though.  At least, we have not both said we are 100% committed to it, though I have a feeling we will end up going with it.

2. To circumcise or not to?  That’s the big question…

So, that is all for now.  Look for my Favorite Kitty Pic Friday post tomorrow, and next week I might have a video for it instead of a photo, if I can figure out how to add in a video that has to come from Hubby’s phone.  It’ll be a funny one though!

Scrapbook (Saturday) Sunday

I was very busy lazy today (well, Saturday, seeing as it’s officially Sunday now), and just didn’t feel like creating this sooner.  Luckily, Sunday starts with an “S” too, so Scrapbook Sunday it is this week!  :)

This may be the last of my OCMD vacation pictures I post.  I have more, and I like them, but I haven’t decided if they are really blogworthy and entertaining enough to really post on here.  Maybe, we’ll see.  If you’d like to see them, let me know!

Just a very simple page this week.  It’s late, my eyes are a little tired, and I unfortunately didn’t have a birthday kit in my digital scrapbook program I’m currently using.  It has been a tradition for us to go to a hibachi place for my hubby’s birthday every year since we moved to NJ and discovered this place there called “Nagasaki”.  We usually just went there, ordered the hibachi food, but only ever sat at regular tables because we didn’t know how the whole hibachi experience went.  Since we no longer live in NJ near Nagasaki, and we decided to take this sort of last minute trip to OCMD for the week of my hubby’s 30th birthday, he still wanted to go to a hibachi place for dinner on his birthday, so we found this place called “Sakura” in the outlets on the Coastal Gateway.  We had the true hibachi experience this time, no regular tables in this place (at least none that we saw)!  We sat at a table with a family who was there for the dance competition taking place that same week (we watched some of it the first full day there) and a mom and her son who lived very close to where I went to college.  The chef was very fun and entertaining – sadly I didn’t catch any scallops in my mouth, but hubby did!  He even got a special ice cream dessert for his birthday, which I didn’t manage to get a picture of, and I even got one too!  (coupon for a freebie was an excellent find amongst my many coupon booklets)

We would definitely go there again to eat whenever we end up taking a vacation in OCMD.  I highly recommend it for anyone who likes that kind of food and is going there or lives in the area.

…It was a little weird, though, to have a waitress dressed in a kimono who had an Irish (?) accent…talk about a culture clash!

Scrapbook Saturday

I hope you all are enjoying your Saturday and are having just as beautiful weather as we’ve been having here.  I am at a yard sale until 2ish today, dealing with crazies and thieves (we actually had someone steal something once, right out from under our noses!). 

Back to the beach with this post.  I wanted to share more photos from our vacation to OCMD.

The top picture is one my hubby took with his cell phone camera.  We took a boat ride called the Assateague Adventure, and it took us over to the shoreline of Assateague, where it let us off for a short while to walk the shoreline and collect shells and such.  All I kept getting were rocks, and the shells I managed to find contained snails, so they had to get thrown back.  In retrospect, I should have left all my junk back on the boat instead of trying to carry it. 

The second picture is of the Ocean City beach from where we were sitting the first day we went to relax on the beach.  We went a little late that day, but it was nice because it was cooler and a lot less crowded.

The third picture is a tiny baby clam I managed to get a hold of down at the water’s edge.  Hubby saw something that looked like a shell when the wave pulled back to the ocean, but when he reached to grab it, it buried itself into the sand!  I managed to snag one before it could bury again, and it turned out to be the tiniest clam I’ve ever seen!  I did put it back in it’s home, but just had to snap that photo first.

I miss that vacation – it was so nice.  I especially want my daytrip to Ocean City, NJ now!  We go every year after Labor Day, so I’m hoping to get there soon!

Scrapbook Saturday

  I created my very first digital scrapbook page!   :)   I got this free program (Sarif Digital Scrapbook Artist) from Amazon yesterday, thanks to Fab Steals and Deals (link is to post that contained the link for the free program download – I do not know if this free download is still available today), so I thought I would give it a try, since I said a long time ago that I would try to do a Scrapbook Saturday post.  So now I at least have a program to create a page digitally if I have not been able to create a paper page, and hopefully I will be able to start to make this a regular post!  This post also gives you another photo viewing of some of our vacation for hubby’s birthday.  The big picture was taken on the beach of the bay behind our hotel, and from left to right:  hubby and I on the speedboat ride, a heart hubby drew in the sand for me (awww), and hubby relaxing on the beach. 

I can’t wait to try out this program some more and really figure it out.  Hopefully I’ll be able to start creating more elaborate pages, and maybe even make myself a new blog design!   :)

We are attending our first block party today!  Hopefully you all have something fun planned too!   :)

Catching Up

Wow, I am finally all caught up on my Google Reader for the blogs I follow!  My vacation at the end of July put me severely behind on my reading, and posting – I have finally gone from 300+ unread posts to 0! 

My weeks have either been really busy or really lazy since returning too.  The busy weeks didn’t allow me much or any time to post, and the lazy weeks were just that – LAZY!  I didn’t feel like doing anything at all, and in most instances, I didn’t.  I’m hoping to finally get back on track with things now.

I started a private dance lesson with a new student the week after coming back from vacation.  If I refer to her by “name”, it will only be “K” since this is a public blog and I do not have her parents permission to use her real name or anything else personal on here.  K lives in a not-so-great area of the city, which makes me nervous, and parking has been a real pain, but I’ve had 3 lessons with her now, and it’s been going great!  She says she has fun, she’s outgoing, and a good listener for the most part.  :)  This month I stuck to summer and Hawaiian music, and we’ve even begun a real hula dance!  It has been fun for me so far, and I look forward to hopefully continuing lessons for a long while.

My cousin also contacted me to ask if he could have a family get together here at our house (which happened on the 15th), since we all live all over the place and he was coming up from Florida that week to visit.  I agreed, as long as our backyard wasn’t under construction for our patio, since I planned to keep everyone outdoors for the entire time, or at least as many people outside for as long as possible.  My patio hasn’t been started yet, and unfortunately it rained – and poured – that day, so everyone was stuck inside.  I had spent the entire week before that cleaning my house from top to bottom.  It was time to do all the cleaning anyway, but I also care about how my house looks to other people, and I knew there would be family wanting to see it all for the first time, so I wanted it looking perfect.  I expected people in and out for the bathroom, a tour of the house, etc., but I didn’t expect to end up with 19 people crammed into 3 rooms, tracking mud, grass, and food all over my floors.  I was very stressed about the whole thing, and the only person from my cousin’s bunch that said a sincere thank you and related to how stressed I was was my other cousin’s wife.  The cousin that asked me to have it here, and his parents, brother and SIL (other cousin and wife mentioned above) showed up 2 hours late and stressed me out even more.  The cousin that asked to have it here decided it would be fun to joke around that he spilled red wine on my white carpet (he really did not, but thought it was hilarious to joke about it).  I also did not provide the wine, as I didn’t really want any alcohol here with the mix of family that came, but one of my aunt’s brought it because my cousin told people to bring whatever they wanted, never got a list of what people were bringing, and didn’t tell me that he told the rest of the family to bring stuff.  Long story shortened, I was kind of mad at that part of the family, happy to see other parts of the family, and have learned my lesson to never offer my house as the gathering location for something like that ever again!

My friend had her second baby last week and I’m excited to meet him and visit with her.  She teaches baton in the group I’m involved in too, but with having the baby and the week before having the baby, she hasn’t been at practice.  I’ve seen pictures, but I’m hoping to get to meet him in person this week and deliver her baby gifts!   :)

We haven’t gotten our patio started yet, but they have now marked the whole property where utilities are located under ground.  We are set to begin work anytime after tomorrow, so now it’s just up to the landscaper to get started – I’m very anxious for that!  I can’t wait to have that done and hopefully enjoy it as much as possible before the fall turns too cold.

So, that’s my catch up for now.  I finally took pictures of my new jewelry set I made before vacation, so I would like to do a post with those, and I definitely have more vacation fun to share.  :)

Vacation (Preview)

Well, I did say I would try to at least get one post in before the regular Kitty Pic Friday post, so here it is. A photo preview of my vacation in Ocean City, MD:

Sailboats in the inlet.

Very expensive houses and condos along the inlet’s “Stinky Beach”.

View of the beach from the speed boat ride (see those impending gray clouds of doom on the right? We had to turn back and go a different time…)

Not the speed boat we took, but one I managed to snap a picture of on one of beach afternoon outings.

A hummingbird moth we caught zipping around outside in the tropical area close to the beach when we visited the Carousel Hotel. See it at the bottom next to the orange flower? Best picture I managed to get of it. I originally thought it was some sort of moth, hubby thought it was a hummingbird – then I asked what hummingbirds had yellow spots on their sides, and it turns out to have really been a hummingbird moth! Hubby looked it up.

Assateague Island from the shoreline. We did see a group of wild ponies from the boat at a distance, but my camera unfortunately died right after getting on the boat, and I forgot the extra batteries at the hotel. This is from hubby’s phone camera.

More vacation posting to come! I feel bad for neglecting my blog so much over the last couple weeks month, but it has been a busy and tiring month, and I haven’t had much time for blogging (my Google Reader currently says 207 unread items! I had it down to 75 just 2 days ago – what happened??). There’s quite a lot I haven’t had much time for recently, and I’m not even exactly sure where my time and energy have been going! I hope after Sunday’s shindig I’ll feel a little more free and clear and be able to catch up and get back into everything.

Check out Favorite Kitty Pic Friday tomorrow, and have a great weekend! :)

Sorry for my absence…

If you read my blog, thank you for sticking around in my absence! I just realized (literally 30 seconds ago) that I have only done my Favorite Kitty Pic Friday Post for the last 2 weeks. I have been extremely busy distracted by a week long vacation to Ocean City, MD, a day trip to Bethany Beach, DE for a baton performance, and starting my first private lesson student for dance. I got the call for these lessons a few days before we went on the vacation, so as soon as we got back I had to get to form creating, lesson planning, and music. I felt very frazzled last week because I had a lot to do and not enough time to do it, plus I was nervous about the lesson. The lesson turned out pretty well – the little girl said she had fun and she was enjoyable to teach. I’m not fond of the area they live in, as the city of Reading makes me very nervous, but overall it went well with no problems.

Since we got back from vacation, I have been very tired too. I haven’t felt like doing much. And if I was tired before, this week is really going to kick my butt. I created a cleaning to-do chart for myself, that I have decided to do the first week of every month in order to keep a clean, orderly house and make the cleaning less miserable of a chore, since it will be done more often. Since I didn’t accomplish that last week due the the day trip, lesson planning and jewelry making I had to get done, I will be tackling it starting tomorrow. I have a shorter to-do list for every single day of the week in order to break up the chores and make it a little less daunting. It works out that this is the cleaning week now anyway, because I will be hosting a family gathering this Sunday. My cousin called and asked if he could have a gathering here of everyone that would come from my dad’s side of the family…I said OK…what have I gotten myself into? He managed to pull off a miracle and get all the aunts and uncles to come, and already we are looking at a total of 22 people! That’s only including a couple of the cousins, so imagine if they all came with their spouses and kids, we’d probably end up having to rent a location! So, I’m feeling stressed about that. My cousin keeps telling me not to worry about things, but it’s my house, I feel like the hostess (even though he is supposed to be handling most of it), and I care about how my house and my hosting skills are presented to whoever is here. I also was asked by hubby today if it’s ok if his parents come for a visit the weekend after that, so I said ok. Normally that frazzles me and gets me in a cleaning frenzy, but luckily all of that will be done already, and I’m feeling like that will be a breeze of a visit compared to one afternoon with my dad’s side of the family.

So, I apologize again for my absence and thank you for sticking around. I do have more to share with you, such as vacation posts, my new jewelry set, and I’m sure after next Sunday there will be more, but I have been busy, distracted, tired, and stressed out, and the next week might be more of the same. I will try my best to get at least one other post in this week, if not more, but I felt the need to explain my absence a little more and ask you continue to bear with me and continue following.

Have a great week – hopefully I make it through the week and next weekend with my sanity!

Tuesday and Wednesday Accomplishments

I have definitely been more motivated this week, in the crafting department anyway. I haven’t finished a whole lot of anything yet, but I’ve at least been working on things a little, which is certainly a lot more than other weeks recently! So, here are some of my accomplishments this week so far:

I booked our vacation to Ocean City, MD last night. We are going to get away and relax for my hubby's 30th birthday! We’ve never been there before, and I’m extremely excited to go. We have been on a couple overnight stays or weekend getaways (2 actually – NYC overnight for our 1 year wedding anniversary, and Baltimore for a weekend in Nov. 2007) since our honeymoon, but no real extended vacation since then. We’re not big ocean swimmers or anything, but it will be nice to just relax on the beach with books, take walks along the ocean, and just have nothing real to worry about for a whole 5 days.

I bought metallic silver spray paint. I had started to decorate a wedding themed photo frame over a year ago. The idea was to paint it silver, then use white ribbons, stencil some white words, and throw in some of the double heart charms I bought for a few projects from my own wedding somewhere on there too. I bought a better frame than my Snowflake Photo Frame, sanded it all down, and began painting it with silver acrylic paint. I can’t even remember how many coats I was up to with the acrylic paint, and it still isn’t smooth or consistent enough for my likings. I thought the spray paint would work better, but I was a little nervous about the silver part – the acrylic looked nice, and I was afraid the spray paint would look tacky. So, this week, I sprayed over the frame with the new paint. I like the silver look, but it’s still not quite smooth enough for me in some areas, so I’m going to have to re-sand and re-paint. I was going to do that today, but I prefer to do it in my garage with the door open, and it was extremely rainy, then extremely humid today, so I didn’t think the paint would dry very well. Hoping to get to that tomorrow.

I made myself a new earring/necklace set! I had some beads I bought a while back that I hadn’t done anything with yet, and I was finally motivated to create something with them today. It’s my favorite set so far! :) I’m calling it “Blue Beach”. It’s made from 2 different sized white shell beads and round light sapphire shell beads. My birthday on Saturday motivated me to create it, because I want to wear it that day and feel pretty. :) The upcoming beachy vacation was also a good kick in the butt too – I like to take all my pretty clothes and jewelry with me on vacation, it makes me feel even better. Here it is:

I found this new way of photographing my jewelry from looking at other people’s online shops and blogs, and I am so much happier with the result of my pictures this time. I even had the perfect dishes for this particular set! (Sandbar from Pfaltzgraf) This specific set is mine for keeping, but as long as the beads are still available, I will definitely be adding it to my Artfire site! So, guess what that means? Craft store, here I come!

I’m hoping to be able to at least finish all the silver painting on the frame tomorrow now, and work on some sachets for a friend who requested I help her make them for Christmas gifts. I haven’t tackled them yet because my very old and decrepit free sewing machine that I got from my parents started to give me trouble last time I used it. I almost broke the needle a couple times because the tension has decided to turn on me and not loosen up, so I may now need to take my grandmother up on her offer of giving me her old sewing machine, which is certainly in better condition than the one sitting here collecting dust now. Hopefully I will at least be able to start on them this week yet – I also have to make some jewelry that my other grandmother requested for a birthday gift for her friend (yet another excuse for a craft store trip!).

It might not seem like much to some of you crafters out there, but the rate I’ve been going lately, these are huge accomplishments for me!

Vacation and Motivation

So, hubby has a lot of vacation time, not including the days he can carry over into next year, and has been told he better start figuring out when to take it. His birthday is coming up in about 2.5 weeks, and he has been saying he needs a vacation. The problem with this is in order for it to be a real, relaxing, fun vacation, we actually should go somewhere – hubby works from home now, so just taking a week off and sitting around the house isn’t much of a true vacation. We’re missing out on a beach vacation this year that we would have taken in August, since the twirling group I teach with isn’t doing their annual performance trip to Wildwood this year, and even though neither of us are much of a beach-goer, I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t get to take that trip this year. So, I thought about trying to find a beach destination that would have enough other stuff for us to be occupied with, that was affordable, and that we could book for the week of his birthday, which is very fast approaching now. We’ve pretty much settled on Ocean City, MD, since there is also Assateague nearby and the town has free activities almost nightly. I have never been there before though, since I missed my senior week trip in high school for my dance recital, so I don’t know anything about the area, the hotels, the boardwalk, the dining, etc. I think I might have found a good hotel deal, but looking at all the different available hotels and packages offered, I feel overwhelmed! So, I’m hoping to get this all booked within the next two days – have any of you been there, have any recommendations, tips, info about parking, dining, etc.? Feel free to comment and let me know!

I also went to a craft show on Saturday to see my friend who was set up selling her handmade bags, purses, pillows, and other sewing crafts (she doesn’t have a website yet, but is looking into it now with some suggestions from me (: ). I did buy a purse from her (very cute little hand tote that’s blue and white striped with some silver sequin accents – sorry no picture at this time), and after walking around, got a few other ideas for some new crafts to add to my craft menagerie (don’t know if I used an appropriate term there, but it sounds great to me!). I also realized that I’ve been in a craft slump lately, and haven’t started or finished any projects in weeks! This prompted some motivation to get things done and accomplished this week. I have a very puny collection for sale on my Artfire site, and even though I have yet to sell an item, I have a few projects already started, a few that need starting, a few projects that I was asked to make as gifts for people (no income though – just materials reimbursed or given for free) and lots of new ideas that I’d love to buy supplies for and get started, and I’d love to add to my shop on there. I wanted to start a “Scrapbook Saturday” post to motivate myself to work on my personal scrapbooks that have to be finished, and haven’t done that yet either. Overall, last week was pretty blah I guess – I didn’t do much of anything, and I didn’t even post much of anything on here. Now I’m motivated to get things done this week – here’s hoping for some productivity! I’ll try to update on my progress this week!