birthday shopping haul

Last Friday was my birthday  and since my visitation with monkey butts dad was just finalized through the courts it states each of us get her on our birthdays.  I had 2 options.  I could keep her home and drive 3 hours Saturday and 3 hours Sunday or we could meet in mandatory which is 20 minutes further each way for us but we could eat a nice dinner and do some shopping (a.k.a. ulta and scrounge for some maternity-ish clothing).  So I opted for the later.  First place we hit was the mall.  We tried penny's for a baby blanket like our girls baby blankets but had no luck.  Then the girls rode the carousel while I hit ulta.  Here is what I got there.

Most stuff I grabbed there I grabbed two things from the brands because its bogo.  So I got a new eye palette from nyx in love in paris/madeleines and macaroons, then their lip gloss in beige (which I had heard such great things about and I can see why it is not sticky smells amazing and is a great color)  The eye palette is not the most pigmented thing in the world not sure I like it.  Then I grabbed the revlon photo ready color stay foundation.  I had heard bad things about this one but melmphs swears by it and I have the same skin type as her and we like a lot of the same foundations so I figured I would give it a shot and I like it quiet a bit (not as much as my maybelline 24 hour but more then my Revlon naked or Revlon color stay) and a revlon lip butter in strawberry shortcake which I LOVE great every day light springy pink/nude color.  I got two baby lips in the melon flavor and plum flavor.  I love them both the melon is in my purse and plum is in my desk.  I also got L'Oreal infallible super slim felt tip liner.  It rocks best so far. and the power volume 24 hour black smoke mascara.  It is great not clumpy great volume but a tiny bit dry.  But all in all the only thing that may be a dud is the nyx eye shadow palette. 

Then we went out to dinner at the olive garden.  After we hit target.  It was a bust they had a maternity swim suit I liked but not in my size.  Then we went to t.j.max.  I found this cute non maternity dress.  It is a polyester empire waist with a high low hem line.  It is black with white hearts all over it. I love it super cute and will be great after the baby too.

I like it and think it will be great for summer.  Then we hit cherry berry for some awesome frozen yogurt and headed home.  :)  All in all a pretty good little birthday :)

17w 1d

Today I am 17w 1d.  The baby is now about 5'' the size of a onion.  This week has been farely uneventful.  I am still getting over the awful sinus infection I had last week.  I think its taking soo long to kick because I couldn't take anything but nose spray and that only for a few days then it was neti pot or plain saline.  But beyond that things have been fine.  We went to mankato on friday for my birthday.  We did some shopping (I have a haul from ulta I keep meaning to share but I haven't gotten around to) 

Other then that not much has gone on it was my friend Amanda's baby shower and I made some little things for that.  I also have been working on some stuff for my baby.  I got a pair of socks knit for fire monster that I just finished.  My quad screen came back clear which of coarse is good to hear.  I finished the book the cinnamon roll murders. I had read all the others quiet a while ago. I have been feeling lots of baby movements especially at night when I am relaxing after dinner.  The hubby has even felt a few from the outside. 

Everyone in this house has tomorrow off  and my hubby will be home through Monday.  So I am looking forward to a nice long weekend relaxing and celebrating with the family.  I have everything bought for Easter and I do need to take a trip to the grocery store for all the cooking I am planing on doing.  But right now I am fixing to curl up with the hubby and watch a movie.  :)  Hope you guys are getting ready to enjoy a great long relaxing weekend too.

sewing baby projects

Spent some time working on baby gifts this week/weekend.  I had a baby shower for my gf amanda so I wanted to get a few things made for that and while I was at it I got a few things done for my baby :)

I made these burp cloths for my baby...

I just loved this tandem bike pattern and I got sort of a green sherpa material for the back :)

I made amanda this set for her baby girl that has cute flannel patterns and a bright pink terrycloth on the back.  ( I made a few more of these to save for baby gifts down the road)

After her shower she still needed some burp cloths and I had some left over chenille so she picked this butterfly flannel while we were out earlier and I whipped these up for her. 

 Ignore the thread showing in this lol I will have to remember to snip that.

Another project I whipped up for her was a little travel size taggy.  I had never made one of these before but my sister has and she gave me a tip on the easiest way to do the tags and it was a cinch from there. :)

I was happy with how it turned out being my first try and I had enough left that I made a spare one of these to put up for a future baby gift too :)  I am going to quit making things for mine until after the 16th when I know the sex :)  (22 days left) :)  Have a good day guys.

mani monday.

I did my nails for mani monday yesterday.  I wanted a great spring color and I did my sally hanson mint  sorbet and the accent nails are fergie going platinum.  I loved them they went great with the new dress I bought friday at t.j. max.  It is a cute high waist black press with a high low hem line and little cream hearts all over it.  The only thing was it got black dye all over my nails!  So they will need redone. 

So there is a great spring mani monday.

16w 1d update

Today I am 16w and 1d.  The last week has been very busy and not very productive.  We went to the cities to celebrate birthdays with my family (mine and my brothers) which was mostly a hot mess where nothing went smooth lol.  Then I came home and have been sick as a dog ever since.  I haven't been able to breath through my nose since Saturday.  It has been miserable and I can only take nose spray which hasn't helped at all.  I have been doing neti pots(half the time it doesn't even come out at all because my sinuses are so swollen), cool gel eye masks, hot rice bags all kids of things to no avail.   I had my doctors appt today anyway and she said I have a sinus infection.  So back on antibiotics.  Other then that things are going good I weighed the same as a month ago (prolly lighter clothes), I measured right on, and the babies heart beat was 157 bpm.  Things are good my tsh was like.52 which is good.  Still waiting to hear on my quad ( a test for issues)

Other then me being sick as a dog and down all week with this we also had mr whiskers in to the vet for neutering, declawing, and shots. (yes I know it cruel and all that and if he wouldn't have been shredding our house down to nothing no matter what scratching things I bought him he could have kept the suckers!)  The vet we use does it all by lazer so its less painful and faster recovery.  He is doing great and soo happy to be home with his family.  He was in the bathroom all day yesterday but today he has got to come snuggle on the couch a bit.  Here he is soo happy to be home snuggling his family.

He is currently napping beside monkey butt on the couch.  The only other thing we accomplished this week was getting a few cute spring nail polish colors.  I love love love the colors.  We haven't tried the minty green one but I love the cover girl formula.  

Monkey but chose coral silk..

 I chose lav-endure.

Here is all three.  

Well it is time for Monkey butts piano lessons so I am off to run kiddos and figure out dinner.  Keep your fingers crossed that I can breath through my nose for my birthday.

whiskers is home

Whiskers is home after surgery.  We got the bathroom on the main level all set up and ready for him to hunker down for a few days.  I was thinking he would be drowsy and sleep the day away...nope.  He is all over the place and wants to be held and climb all over us and he is having a great time with his new litter.  I think he is pretty sure it is a bed.  I can hear him tossing it every where lol.  Naughty is very concerned.  I thought he might sniff him and go crazy (that is what happened with our old cats)  Nope he was fine and sat outside the bathroom the whole time just worried.  Here is a video of the big guy enjoying his new litter.

f.o. baby blanket/ banana bread

I am finished with the baby blanket!!  It turned out beautiful and is bigger then I thought it would be.  I love it and am so glad I chose this pattern and color for my little pumpkin.

I worked on it on the road trip to the twin cities this weekend.  Then I knit the last few rows and bound off today.

I know I was going to blog about my trip to celebrate my birthday with the family but as it often happens with my family chaos took over and nothing went smooth lol.  We went to dinner at old spaghetti factory and even though they said if we did a call ahead we would be moving up the list we still waited a hour for a table and the parking pay thing at the ramp didn't work!  The next day was mall of America to try to find a maternity swim suit and maternity underwear.  That was completely not as planned for one thing my brother tagged along!  Soooo that was awkward and made me cranky!  Def.  Kicked my pregnancy rage in over drive.  (didn't find a swim suit btw)

 Then we went for pedicures... that was a disaster lol.  The water our feet was soaking in was freezing cold, my massage chair didn't work, and the guy didn't scrub my feet which I am a dry heal girl and that is what this pregnant mama needed, but will now be doing that my self. My poor sister had the trainee.  I don't think she was licensed!  They had to keep telling her what to do in Chinese and she burned my sister when she was rinsing her legs (to get the scrub off that we all agreed had to have been made of broken glass lol) My guy screamed at her and reached over and shut off her water.  Then when she went to do the rock massage it was soo hot she literally got burned on the leg.  There was still marks the next day on her leg! Even the driers at the end to dry your nails were cold.  It was pretty much a cold miserable experience and didn't get at all what we hoped for! 

We went to dinner for my brothers birthday after that at one of our family favorite restaurants and even that took 2 and half hours!  It just wasn't out weekend lol  To top it all off fire monster got a heck of a cold and was miserable there and now I have the cold.   Blah so there is our crazy weekend.  It was great spending time with my sister and her family though even if there was some stress and let downs its always great to be with them.

I figured I would whip up a snack for monkey butt after school (since I think she is getting the cold too)  So since I had some bananas in the freezer and some yellow cake mix I threw this together.  

 It was enough to make a large loaf and two small loafs.  It is soo yummy I threw chocolate chips and some walnuts in it.

It is two bananas, a yellow cake mix, and two eggs.  You bake it at 350 for 35 to 40 min.   I found this recipe here and haven't made banana bread any other way since.  Well I am off to have a piece of this and something to drink for my sore throat :)

mani monday/ mermaids tail nails

I finally got my bootie moving and did a mani monday!  I found some polishes over the weekend so I couldn't wait to try them out.  The first one was mermaids tail by sally hansen.  It is a translucent blue base with big chunky green and blue glitter and smaller chunks of blue glitter. 

I put it over a coat of this polish by wet and wild (it didn't have a color when I bought it but I think it might be bayou blue)

here is the finished product

It is glittery and fun but will have to use the glitter removal technique for sure!

here is a video on that

I pretty much use it that way but I take a cotton round cut it in 4 and peel it in half so I can get 8 fingers out of one round)  I leave it for 5 min.

I hope you guys are having a good day.

haircut time :)

 Today was a good day I would say the good things out weighed the bad.  The only bad thing was for the 4th day in a row I got woke up at 3:00 a.m. by fire monster and didn't get to go back to sleep until 8:00 and slept until 11:00 which is a total of 6 hours broken up.  Not enough on a good day for this mama to be and these days have not been good days she has been argumentative and nasty!! Today had some great points to make up for it.  For one the weather was soo much nicer we had a high of 42 which compared to below 0 just a few days ago feel like heaven!!    So I didn't have to squeeze my big bump into my peacoat putting even more strain on the one poor button I can still use lol.  I wore my cute little strapless dress I got after my breast reduction,  my motherhood leggins, and a cashmere sweater my sister had thrifted to make mittens out and I just couldn't bring myself to ruin (its way too cute right?)

 I also got to get my haircut.  It was great because I haven't had it cut in like 9 months.  You might not be able to tell much of a difference because I wore it curly but here is the before...

 and here is the after..

I decided to keep the length but get it trimmed up then have my layers brought up, get some shape back in it and my bangs trimmed.  :)   I am just happy to have got a little pampering and some warm weather.  I picked up unisom which is on my pregnancy approved list and I plan on getting some dang sleep tonight before I get to go celebrate my birthday with my family. :)  I suppose my family would like fed so I will write more over the weekend :)

15 w

I tried to take my 15w picture in the same thing as my 5 w photo just so you can see the difference here that one is.

This week seemed to fly by.  I had my nephew Calvin wed night through sun afternoon.  It was a bit of chaos around here.  I started getting dressed and putting on make up again after being soo sick it was pjs and nothing for about half a week (although until today I still didn't repaint my nails.)

I keep trying to think of what made this week fly so much, but I just think its been one of those weeks where it has always been something, if you know what I mean.  I started to get better then had a extra kid most of the week, then he went home and I have not slept for crap all week so far.  All of my other pregnancy's I have slept like a log.  This one I have been having huge trouble with insomnia in the middle of the night.  The past two nights I can't fall asleep until about 12 then I was up from 3a.m. until about 7 or later.  Then go back to bed for a bit.  Thank god fire monster is going through a growth spurt of something and didn't wake up until 10 today so I could get some more sleep!!

But its one more week down for the count and all in all I am not doing bad..no bed rest..only had the issue with spotting once..no diabetes threat..no other issues I dealt with last pregnancy so far.  So nausea, u.t.i.'s and insomnia be damned I am still counting my blessing, trust you me.   I have high hopes for the next week.  I will be headed up to the cities to celebrate my birthday with my family...go out to dinner..get a pedi..and shop for some pregnancy friendly under garments because nothing I own is working and that makes for many miserable uncomfortable days.  I think part of it is just being sick of winter and having the blahs (its still been below 0 here all week) and I barley can button my coat.  Things just are not comfortable or pretty  and just miserable in general esp clothing wise.  Hence I am looking forward to a few new things to wear, a fresh pedi, and I have a much needed hair cut scheduled for tomorrow!   I will feel a new girl by week 16!   I can't wait!!!  Well off to do my errands for the day :)  Hope you guys are having a great one.

14w 1d update

I apologize I had to skip mani monday and haven't posted in days!!.  I have been sick as a dog.  I was in the e.r. on sunday and had a u.t.i./ kidney infection.  I have been miserable all week and just praying things would start to improve because I know how the deal goes if you don't!  If your lucky its a shot of antibiotics in the butt (which is awful) if your not its being admitted to the hospital!.  Anyway I am on the mend now thank goodness.  Not 100% but at least back to 50%.  We have my nephew Calvin yesterday-Sunday.  So it has been ever the interesting day around the house and now we get to take him grocery shopping lol.  For those of you who haven't heard much about my nephew he is a crazy, fun. sometimes exasperating little boy with autism.  He is either making you laugh, complaining, asking questions, or driving you crazy lol.  Usually all of the above at once.  Well time for me to get the ducks in a row with coats on so we can hit the grocery store and get our butts home for the night.  Wish me luck!

wip umaro/ weekend fun/ bully

 So this weekend was one I look forward to all year.  It is a little thing called The Green Camel Gathering.  It is a knit retreat in a town down the road from mine called Tyler.  It is in a old dormitory and it has knitters spinners weavers a bit of every one.  It is always the first weekend in march.  It is a blast.  A great crew of ladies and it is such fun to knit and chat and learn things from the other ladies (not the mention the amazing ladies who put it on do a great job of feeding us lol)  Me and Pat (my friend/ neighbor) went together this year and we drive back and forth rather then sleeping over.  I worked on my umaro baby blanket.  I thought I would share the progress since I am loving it.

 I am about half way done I just started my 3rd ball of comfort and I have 4 to do this. 

 The pattern has some lace and a bit of cabling.  It is easy enough to follow (although at green camel I found my self losing my place because with 50 ladies speaking and trying to keep up I would just lose track of where I was lol)

 Here is a bit better pic of the pattern although the color got washed out. Some lace, seed stitch, and some cables.

While I was there enjoying that today my amazing hubby took the two monkeys to Papa Johns to work a cookie booth.  They were well behaved and the owner let the girls make their own pizza!!!  How cute is that what a great guy to not only make a special deal to get people in for the cookie booth but to do that for the girls.  Very sweet and very appreciated.

So now I am home and going to curl up with my honey and watch some movies (aka breaking dawn part 2 HELLO!!!)  We also watched the most amazing, heart breaking documentary called Bully.  It follows some kids dealing with being bullied and some parents who children have committed suicide due to being bullied.  It broke my heart and me and my hubby shed so many tears but it is a VERY important issue.  Our children will be watching it today because like one of the parents who suffered this horrible loss said maybe if one person would have stood up for his child or picked him up when he was pushed down it would have saved his life!  I want my kids to see that and be the kids to stand up for them and pick the kids up. 

 If  everyone stands up to a bully then they will be out numbered and won't be able to bully everyone so it will stop.  Another thing SHAME on the adults in the school districts and buses who don't do a damn thing to stop this!  I was shocked!  We would have been tossed off the bus and out of school for pulling this crap.  Please watch this and have your children watch this it is important.  One of the parents (Kirk and Laura) have a organization called stand up for the silent he started in honor of their son who was only 11 (a year and half older then my monkey butt!)  Please like their page and share it on facebook in case someone you know needs support in this circumstance. 
here is the link to join the anti bully movement