After The Storm & The Tempest In A Teapot

As Sandy was blowing closer to the Mid-Atlantic this weekend there was change brewing throughout our house. 

I'm going to step up now and apologize; to all the mothers out there I snuffed my nose at and thought, "NOT ME!" or "WHAT HAPPENED?" I'm sorry, OK?!! It happened to me and I get it now. Unless you have a personal trainer, the will of steel or some non-human genes your body enlarges & changes from pregnancy. Then you have no time for yourself or sleep/energy to do much about it. My days of deliberate exercise have come to a complete halt.

There were warning signs. I knew my wardrobe & body were in jeopardy when I had to purchase clogs. My feet were so swollen during my first pregnancy that none of my cute shoes fit. 

Finally after two years of stillness I went through my forgotten fashionista wardrobe with a gale-like force. It had been sitting untouched and I basically got rid of it all.  As I said good-bye to my old smaller sized stuff I believed we would meet again in a more updated version so I was o.k. This is just a passing storm that too will blow over. Besides, in it's wake it has left something breathtakingly beautiful.

Milestones Blah!

I am apparently a delayed adult according to the charts.

In the last 20 months the word milestones has been rearing itself. I suppose I understand the need for them but being from the Midwest it feels like a lot of East Coast pressure.
I do not enjoy the notion that my child needs to pick up x amount of blocks by x age in order to get into Harvard. And anyway I commend people who listen to their own drummer. Milestones feel like using the same measuring stick for things that are too different.

I suppose getting a full time job, married, kids, retiring with money are typical adult milestones. Aren't those goals too?

Possible considerations for new adult milestones; When...

• You find your first therapist (in spite of insurance obstacles)
• You don't get divorced - is that more of a goal?
• You are addiction & addict free
• You accept and love yourself
• You realize you can't control others

• You figure out love is never lost because you created it in the first place
• You can lose 20 lbs in a week (post baby)

Most of those are a lot more difficult than setting up a 401k plan and are music to my ears.

Going Interior To Decorate

Yep Baby, it's getting cold outside. Which is a fine time to pull out the blankets and buy a new rug for the chilly cement floor. I am finally getting to decorate the new (transitional) master bedroom. Mountain Man is a carpenter/contractor so we have been converting garage space into living space. For a WHILE now. All of the logistics of heat, electricity, drywall, doors and that boring stuff has been put in place. I...we are now picking the decor. I have looked at enough magazines, blogs, Pinterest boards, TV & websites to have a degree in decorating.

Garage in early stages. We added that wall on the right.

We are (working on) not buying a lot of new stuff and trying to use things in a storage unit of furniture or build it. The coolest thing in the room aside from the view of the woods and sunrise are the beams made from re-purposed pallet wood.

There are 3 of these pallet beams in the room.

We looked and looked at barn doors but the hardware just made them crazy expensive since we wanted two sets. So he made those too from plain Home Depot doors and MDF. He did one wall in wood for a custom look.

There are 2 barn door sets. They go on the new wood wall.

To see my potential finishing touches you can check out my Pinterest Master and Master Final boards. http://pinterest.com/bellebyrd/master-final/   Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll reveal how things evolved.

Mostly finished...

Halloween, I've Got This!

Halloween has stumped me for as long as I can remember. I feel a crazy pressure to come up with something cool or original and fail miserably. Of course never wanting to just buy a darn ready-made costume I try to piece something together from the thrift store or closet. I have acquired some fun wigs at least. And I'll be darned, I'm not copping out to be something "sexy" for Halloween, that's not for me.

Some past "costumes" I created to go out in were a waitress, Axl Rose, an evil doctor, a model w/ bad teeth, someone in a dress trying to look dead and many more lame forgettable characters.


One year I wore a flannel shirt & headband like Axl.

Last year was my daughter's first Halloween and her dad got her a skeleton onesie. So I thought I would do an elaborate Day Of The Dead face to go with it. Major Fail. The lameness of my DOTD attempt sent me into a hysterical laughing fit it was so far from cute. We went to my dad's busy neighborhood to trick-or-treat because we live in the woods and she rubbed it all off anyway by the time we got there.

Make-up reapplication was simplified.

This year we have a son and a daughter! Pinterest and Google give me support & images for ideas. Sam will be a skeleton (last year's outfit hey, where is it?) or a bee (gifted) and Stella will be a mermaid (thrift store) or superhero (closet). We've planned earlier. Rich already got makeup and props. What could go wrong? If we can get this down one day I may even dress up again & have decorations beyond pumpkins.


Photo taken from Pinterest.