I'm really into this song right now. It's different than anything I've heard in a while, and the video is super interesting. (Also, if any of you are fans of the show "Parenthood" you may notice that Gotye looks just like a grown-up Max Braverman!) Check it out if you'd like!
That's all! G'night!
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Ceramics? Yes, please!
As many of you know, I decided not to register for classes this semester. I made this choice for a few reasons:
1-School can get VERY stressful for me, and everything I've read suggests that stress is really hard on a developing fetus. There's research to support the idea that excessive stress in utero causes-at the least-anxiety and depression, and at the worst, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Since anxiety runs in my family, I feel like I have to work extra hard to keep my son from being completely anxiety-ridden, or possibly depressed. I believe that there's a lot that I can do while pregnant to keep a lot of anxiety from being passed on to Henry. There may still be a genetic predisposition written into his DNA, but I'm convinced that it would affect him much less if he didn't begin his life stressed out in the womb. So not being in school right now is something that I chose to do to greatly reduce the amount of stress in my life.
2- "Pregnancy Brain" is a very real thing. I usually enjoy a quick memory, nearly effortless information recall, and can count on pretty legit critical thinking skills, but the pregnancy hormones seem to have taken that all away from me. I can't keep very many things in mind at once, I forget things that have just happened, and I don't even have basic math skills! It's incredibly frustrating to feel like my mind has taken a vacation and that I'm just not myself. I can imagine how much worse it would be if I was trying to memorize or analyze information (and then recall it later during a test) with the added pressure of a letter grade being assigned and having a good GPA to protect. Basically, I would ruin my GPA and probably end up retaking classes after Henry is born.
So! For these reasons, I decided to take the semester off. The only question after that was what I would do with all of the time on my hands. I decided to sign up for a 6-month membership with a yoga studio, and to get a pass to the community center where I have access to a ceramics studio.
Today was my first day in the studio, and it went much better than I thought it would. It has been almost a year since I took Ceramics 1 at UVU, and I anticipated being really rusty. I thought that it would take me quite a while to wedge the clay properly, center the clay, and practice making the clay take shape. I was surprised that it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would to get things going. I was still a bit rusty, but not as rusty as I thought I would be! I didn't make any pieces worth keeping today, but I anticipated today just being a practice day. I also realized while I was throwing that I didn't even know what I wanted to make. I made a bunch of stuff last summer (I'll show you pictures shortly, don't worry), but didn't realize until afterward that I didn't really have a place for all of my beautiful creations. I put my mugs away in a box because I knew that they were going to be Christmas presents, but the other things needed a home, and didn't really have one. So now I'm brainstorming things I could make that I could use, find a home for, or give away (if anyone out there has something in mind that you would like me to try and make for you just let me know). The only thing I've come up with so far is bigger mugs to drink out of, but that's it. I'm sure I'll let you know what I come up with though.
Alright, here are some pictures:
My favorite things to make are the jars, since I love the way they look, and I love fitting the lids on top of them, and there are so many awesome things that you can do with jars! I just put the short, orange-ish one in the last picture to use holding my necklaces on top of our dresser. The rest remain unemployed (except the black one in the 2nd picture that I had to throw away because the lid bonded completely with the jar when it was being fired).
There are a couple more things that I've been filling my time with, but more on that another time.
1-School can get VERY stressful for me, and everything I've read suggests that stress is really hard on a developing fetus. There's research to support the idea that excessive stress in utero causes-at the least-anxiety and depression, and at the worst, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Since anxiety runs in my family, I feel like I have to work extra hard to keep my son from being completely anxiety-ridden, or possibly depressed. I believe that there's a lot that I can do while pregnant to keep a lot of anxiety from being passed on to Henry. There may still be a genetic predisposition written into his DNA, but I'm convinced that it would affect him much less if he didn't begin his life stressed out in the womb. So not being in school right now is something that I chose to do to greatly reduce the amount of stress in my life.
2- "Pregnancy Brain" is a very real thing. I usually enjoy a quick memory, nearly effortless information recall, and can count on pretty legit critical thinking skills, but the pregnancy hormones seem to have taken that all away from me. I can't keep very many things in mind at once, I forget things that have just happened, and I don't even have basic math skills! It's incredibly frustrating to feel like my mind has taken a vacation and that I'm just not myself. I can imagine how much worse it would be if I was trying to memorize or analyze information (and then recall it later during a test) with the added pressure of a letter grade being assigned and having a good GPA to protect. Basically, I would ruin my GPA and probably end up retaking classes after Henry is born.
So! For these reasons, I decided to take the semester off. The only question after that was what I would do with all of the time on my hands. I decided to sign up for a 6-month membership with a yoga studio, and to get a pass to the community center where I have access to a ceramics studio.
Today was my first day in the studio, and it went much better than I thought it would. It has been almost a year since I took Ceramics 1 at UVU, and I anticipated being really rusty. I thought that it would take me quite a while to wedge the clay properly, center the clay, and practice making the clay take shape. I was surprised that it didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would to get things going. I was still a bit rusty, but not as rusty as I thought I would be! I didn't make any pieces worth keeping today, but I anticipated today just being a practice day. I also realized while I was throwing that I didn't even know what I wanted to make. I made a bunch of stuff last summer (I'll show you pictures shortly, don't worry), but didn't realize until afterward that I didn't really have a place for all of my beautiful creations. I put my mugs away in a box because I knew that they were going to be Christmas presents, but the other things needed a home, and didn't really have one. So now I'm brainstorming things I could make that I could use, find a home for, or give away (if anyone out there has something in mind that you would like me to try and make for you just let me know). The only thing I've come up with so far is bigger mugs to drink out of, but that's it. I'm sure I'll let you know what I come up with though.
Alright, here are some pictures:
There are a couple more things that I've been filling my time with, but more on that another time.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Living Room Before and After!
I'm very pleased and excited to tell you that.....
The living room is 80% complete!
When I woke up this morning, the other sofa had already been delivered, so the room looked amazing! Here are the before pictures:
Notice that the floor is cheap laminate flooring, there's one sofa, a bookshelf, and 3 media cabinets. Here's another view of the room:
And there's the red chair. All alone in the corner.
And two more views:
So the first thing to go was the laminate flooring, which we replaced with carpet.
And I didn't take pictures of just the carpet by itself, so this is the closest shot that I have:
So there you go with the before pictures. Ready for the after pictures?
I now LOVE this living room! And the only things left to complete are the red chair, which we're going to cover with a white chair cover and stick against the wall underneath the mantle and next to the door frame, a DVD storage cabinet, which will go against the coat closet, and a few accent pillows, which will be purple and green. Once we do those things, I'll be sure to post pictures again!
The new additions to the room besides the carpet are the sofas and pillows, the TV, the gorgeous mantlepiece (given to me by my Mom), the decorative pieces on top of the mantle, and the light purple on the walls. I loved the idea of having a brighter color on the walls, and more muted furniture that I could dress up a bit with accent pillows, and Jeff was willing to go along with it. :)
So far, we've enjoyed being in this room SO MUCH MORE than we previously have. We even got home at around midnight from our night out on Friday, and we hung out in the living room talking for about 30 minutes before Jeff said "What are we doing out here? Let's go to bed!" We were just so comfortable and content that we forgot how late it was. :)
What do you think about the living room?
We still have one room to work on, but it has seemed too overwhelming to even make a run at! Our second bedroom/office/nursery is in a state of uproar at the moment. We sold our desk to our friends the Calderwoods (who did a total makeover on it-I'll post pics when I can get ahold of them), got rid of one of our old bookshelves that was falling apart, acquired a big bag of baby boy clothes (thank you Mary and Bobby!), and had to deal with everything that was contained within the desk and bookshelf (ie: old textbooks, notebooks, sewing projects, odds and ends from a desk drawer, etc.). So the room is a bit of a disaster area right now, and I haven't even wanted to go near it. I feel anxious just looking inside of it-let alone undertaking its organization! So I think that we'll both tackle it-together-tonight after dinner, and maybe after a few hours we'll make some headway. There are still a few things that we need to get rid of before we can put in a new desk and the big chair my parents gave us (I'll post a picture when it's settled in its home). We'll also be painting soon-which is very exciting. I'll take pictures of it all and post them, I promise. :)
Okay. I need to go put dinner in the crockpot so we can eat at a decent time. I'm trying out a new tortilla soup recipe I found on pinterest, so I'll let you know how it goes!
The living room is 80% complete!
When I woke up this morning, the other sofa had already been delivered, so the room looked amazing! Here are the before pictures:
 | |||
| Living Room circa Sept. 2011 |
And two more views:
 |
| Here's Jeff pulling up the laminate. It ended up being way easier than we anticipated. |
 |
| Yes, it's early evening and I'm in my pjs. It was a miracle I could even help set up the tree since I was so sick! |
 |
| Living Room as of Feb. 27th, 2012 |
I now LOVE this living room! And the only things left to complete are the red chair, which we're going to cover with a white chair cover and stick against the wall underneath the mantle and next to the door frame, a DVD storage cabinet, which will go against the coat closet, and a few accent pillows, which will be purple and green. Once we do those things, I'll be sure to post pictures again!
The new additions to the room besides the carpet are the sofas and pillows, the TV, the gorgeous mantlepiece (given to me by my Mom), the decorative pieces on top of the mantle, and the light purple on the walls. I loved the idea of having a brighter color on the walls, and more muted furniture that I could dress up a bit with accent pillows, and Jeff was willing to go along with it. :)
So far, we've enjoyed being in this room SO MUCH MORE than we previously have. We even got home at around midnight from our night out on Friday, and we hung out in the living room talking for about 30 minutes before Jeff said "What are we doing out here? Let's go to bed!" We were just so comfortable and content that we forgot how late it was. :)
What do you think about the living room?
We still have one room to work on, but it has seemed too overwhelming to even make a run at! Our second bedroom/office/nursery is in a state of uproar at the moment. We sold our desk to our friends the Calderwoods (who did a total makeover on it-I'll post pics when I can get ahold of them), got rid of one of our old bookshelves that was falling apart, acquired a big bag of baby boy clothes (thank you Mary and Bobby!), and had to deal with everything that was contained within the desk and bookshelf (ie: old textbooks, notebooks, sewing projects, odds and ends from a desk drawer, etc.). So the room is a bit of a disaster area right now, and I haven't even wanted to go near it. I feel anxious just looking inside of it-let alone undertaking its organization! So I think that we'll both tackle it-together-tonight after dinner, and maybe after a few hours we'll make some headway. There are still a few things that we need to get rid of before we can put in a new desk and the big chair my parents gave us (I'll post a picture when it's settled in its home). We'll also be painting soon-which is very exciting. I'll take pictures of it all and post them, I promise. :)
Okay. I need to go put dinner in the crockpot so we can eat at a decent time. I'm trying out a new tortilla soup recipe I found on pinterest, so I'll let you know how it goes!
Friday, February 24, 2012
First Blog Post!
Hey friends!
I'm really nervous and excited to be starting a blog! I'm looking forward to keeping better track of the awesome/challenging things that happen in our lives ("our" = me and Jeff), and having a sounding board for my thoughts, opinions and feelings. I feel a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I haven't documented, or the amount of background info. that my readers might need, but I've decided just to do one post at a time and see how that goes.
So here we go:
This week has been a really fun/crazy week. We've been wanting to get new furniture and redo several of our spaces for months now, but we've lacked the time and means to actually get it done. So on Monday, we finally had the time AND means, so we went for it. We went to RC Willey's President's Day Sale and snatched up a new bed, dresser, couch, loveseat, baby dresser, and TV! Our old bed and dresser have been broken for literally 2+ years, and we've never actually bought ourselves a TV, nor real couches- we've just furnished our apartment with things we've been given by generous family members. Needless to say, I was pretty dang excited. For the living room, I had been planning on painting the walls a light purple and buying gray couches, then finding purple accent pillows to tie it all together. So far, we've accomplished the paint, and one of the couches. When they came to deliver the long couch yesterday, they were unable to fit it through the door, so they just left the loveseat. I was so disappointed! Fortunately, Jeff knows me really well and let me just have a few minutes to be disappointed before he started giving me some options for what we could do next. Turns out, the long couch and the loveseat wouldn't have fit as well as we thought they would anyway, so we decided to just go in to the store and trade the long couch for another loveseat, which will fit quite nicely in our little living room. The only problem now, is that the new loveseat won't be delivered until next Monday, leaving us with what we currently have in our living room for a few more days. But if I've waited this long, I can wait for a few more days, right? ....Right. So when the room is complete (fingers crossed for Monday), I'll be sure to show you the pictures!
We are definitely enjoying the new TV, however, and feeling giddy every time we discover each new awesome feature. We also set up our new bed last night and slept VERY comfortably! Since I'm now 20 weeks along (more on that later), sleeping has become increasingly difficult, and good sleep is very hard to come by (but at least I get it, right Robbins?), so having a new bed that felt extra comfortable made sleeping that much easier. I mean, the bed is beautiful-which is usually enough for me-but the fact that it was also comfortable was just fantastic! It's also super nice to have a dresser whose drawers open! Jeff's way excited that the drawers open quietly. He told me last night that for the past few months he's been putting his clothes in the second bedroom so that when he gets dressed in the morning, he doesn't need to access the dresser and wake me up! I love him. So now he can just get dressed in his own room like a normal person!
Alright, so that's it for the home decor section of my post. As promised, more about being 20 weeks pregnant!
I just barely started taking cute belly pictures last week, mostly because I didn't feel like there was really much to see before that point. So here's the 19 weeks shot:
And here's the 20 weeks shot:
To me, the difference isn't noticeable...actually, I think I look a tiny bit smaller in the 20 weeks shot. Oh well. So in case there are some who weren't aware, it's a boy! Little Henry is due on July 11th, 2012! He may come sooner, however, since he measured at 21 weeks at the 20 week ultrasound on Wednesday. The doctor told us that she doesn't change the due date, though, unless the baby is measuring 2 weeks ahead, so for now the 11th is still the due date.
The ultrasound was long and uncomfortable, but the technician was very kind and thorough. She measured every last bit of our little man and he's very healthy. I was really tired throughout the ultrasound, so when she was doing the more menial things (like measuring the width of his abdomen, chest and head), I could barely keep my eyes open! The most exciting part for me was when she took a close look at his face and lips to be sure that he doesn't have a cleft lip. He doesn't have a cleft lip (yay!), but he did have the most adorable pouty lips! Since that was pretty much the only distinguishing feature that we could see during the ultrasound, it's the one that we've been talking about almost non-stop. We keep wondering who he could have gotten the pouty lips from, or if they'll still look like that in about 20 more weeks, or several other things. We get so excited to learn every little thing we can about Henry since he's kind of a stranger. We don't know very much so far. We know that he's healthy, he's a boy, and he has pouty lips. And from what I can tell, it also seems like he loves to throw dance parties! He moves at seemingly random times, and dances like a fiend without any apparent cause or provocation. I've wondered if it has to do with something I've eaten, laughing a lot, or being around certain people, but so far it hasn't really correlated to any particular thing. I might start taking data. Maybe the data would show me more clearly what's going on...or maybe not. But hey, I have time. Why not take data on my son's womb movements?
Well friends, I think that's all for now. I hope that as you continue to read my blog, you feel caught up with our lives as well as uplifted. I'd love to read your comments (for now, I'm manually approving all of them, but that might change) and hope that some of you will at least say something. :)
I'm really nervous and excited to be starting a blog! I'm looking forward to keeping better track of the awesome/challenging things that happen in our lives ("our" = me and Jeff), and having a sounding board for my thoughts, opinions and feelings. I feel a little bit overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I haven't documented, or the amount of background info. that my readers might need, but I've decided just to do one post at a time and see how that goes.
So here we go:
This week has been a really fun/crazy week. We've been wanting to get new furniture and redo several of our spaces for months now, but we've lacked the time and means to actually get it done. So on Monday, we finally had the time AND means, so we went for it. We went to RC Willey's President's Day Sale and snatched up a new bed, dresser, couch, loveseat, baby dresser, and TV! Our old bed and dresser have been broken for literally 2+ years, and we've never actually bought ourselves a TV, nor real couches- we've just furnished our apartment with things we've been given by generous family members. Needless to say, I was pretty dang excited. For the living room, I had been planning on painting the walls a light purple and buying gray couches, then finding purple accent pillows to tie it all together. So far, we've accomplished the paint, and one of the couches. When they came to deliver the long couch yesterday, they were unable to fit it through the door, so they just left the loveseat. I was so disappointed! Fortunately, Jeff knows me really well and let me just have a few minutes to be disappointed before he started giving me some options for what we could do next. Turns out, the long couch and the loveseat wouldn't have fit as well as we thought they would anyway, so we decided to just go in to the store and trade the long couch for another loveseat, which will fit quite nicely in our little living room. The only problem now, is that the new loveseat won't be delivered until next Monday, leaving us with what we currently have in our living room for a few more days. But if I've waited this long, I can wait for a few more days, right? ....Right. So when the room is complete (fingers crossed for Monday), I'll be sure to show you the pictures!
We are definitely enjoying the new TV, however, and feeling giddy every time we discover each new awesome feature. We also set up our new bed last night and slept VERY comfortably! Since I'm now 20 weeks along (more on that later), sleeping has become increasingly difficult, and good sleep is very hard to come by (but at least I get it, right Robbins?), so having a new bed that felt extra comfortable made sleeping that much easier. I mean, the bed is beautiful-which is usually enough for me-but the fact that it was also comfortable was just fantastic! It's also super nice to have a dresser whose drawers open! Jeff's way excited that the drawers open quietly. He told me last night that for the past few months he's been putting his clothes in the second bedroom so that when he gets dressed in the morning, he doesn't need to access the dresser and wake me up! I love him. So now he can just get dressed in his own room like a normal person!
 |
| Here's the dresser... |
 | |||
| and here's the bed! |
I just barely started taking cute belly pictures last week, mostly because I didn't feel like there was really much to see before that point. So here's the 19 weeks shot:
The ultrasound was long and uncomfortable, but the technician was very kind and thorough. She measured every last bit of our little man and he's very healthy. I was really tired throughout the ultrasound, so when she was doing the more menial things (like measuring the width of his abdomen, chest and head), I could barely keep my eyes open! The most exciting part for me was when she took a close look at his face and lips to be sure that he doesn't have a cleft lip. He doesn't have a cleft lip (yay!), but he did have the most adorable pouty lips! Since that was pretty much the only distinguishing feature that we could see during the ultrasound, it's the one that we've been talking about almost non-stop. We keep wondering who he could have gotten the pouty lips from, or if they'll still look like that in about 20 more weeks, or several other things. We get so excited to learn every little thing we can about Henry since he's kind of a stranger. We don't know very much so far. We know that he's healthy, he's a boy, and he has pouty lips. And from what I can tell, it also seems like he loves to throw dance parties! He moves at seemingly random times, and dances like a fiend without any apparent cause or provocation. I've wondered if it has to do with something I've eaten, laughing a lot, or being around certain people, but so far it hasn't really correlated to any particular thing. I might start taking data. Maybe the data would show me more clearly what's going on...or maybe not. But hey, I have time. Why not take data on my son's womb movements?
Well friends, I think that's all for now. I hope that as you continue to read my blog, you feel caught up with our lives as well as uplifted. I'd love to read your comments (for now, I'm manually approving all of them, but that might change) and hope that some of you will at least say something. :)
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