Merry Christmas!

Salish Sea Beach

I totally wish I could take credit for this photo, but it's actually the first in a series of photos over on my husband's new blog - Salish Sea Beach. Check it out!

Living Plastic Free (Or as close to plastic free as possible!)

A woman by the name of Beth Terry has a great blog called Fake Plastic Fish. And she recently posted links to videos taken at the TedX conference that took place in LA recently. If you're interested in the impact plastic has on our environment, or how you can make a difference, check out this link!

Cravings

I haven't had many distinct pregnancy cravings yet, with the exception of salty foods. I think the salty foods were more because they helped with the nausea than because I actually wanted them. But when I was looking through my photos for my post about my adorable pets (posted yesterday - aren't they cute?!), I discovered that I take lots of pictures of yummy foods. And now I want all of the following:

Of course, I have zero of the necessary ingredients to make any of these. But it is a grocery shopping kinda day... hmmm... which one should I make?

Few Things Are Cuter

  
Than pets. Especially when their bellies are full and they've had their daily walk/exercise. So freakin' cute. I have a feeling I'll be one of those moms that knows she should sleep when the baby sleeps, but instead sits awake staring at the cuteness.

Second Trimester, I've Been Waiting For You!

I had to do a second blog post today to rave about how good I'm feeling! It's funny how pregnancy can make you go from nausea and exhaustion to just plain feeling good practically overnight. I'm not going to pretend some things aren't still an issue (back pain, the smell of gas or alcohol) but overall, I'm feeling major improvement!

I've been able to:

• clean the house with smelly cleaners that used to make me sick
• eat foods that I don't like the smell of, and some that I don't really even like the taste of
• drink a lot more water, which used to upset my stomach
• stop snacking on salty foods
• almost completely stop sucking on mints
• go all day today without any nausea medication!

If this is signs of days to come - hooray!! 

I Think We Live in a Bubble

When it's snowing everywhere else but here, I can't help but wonder if we live in some sort of environmental bubble. Especially now, with Christmas approaching, when all I want is to sit by the window with a cup of hot chocolate and watch big chunky snow flakes fall outside. Alas, I'll have to use my imagination... rain is kinda like snow... right?? right???

No-Sew Fleece Blanket

I came across this post ages ago and intended to make a blanket for a friend's baby. Well, many moons later and I finally got around to making it, except now it's for our baby!

Squares have been cut from the corners and the long flaps are folded back on top of the blanket. The strips are cut and the first one is tied!

Basically, you just take two pieces of coordinating fleece fabric, cut it into two squares of whatever size you want. Then cut out 6 inch squares from each corner. So you'll be left with a square of fabric with four long flaps. Put your two pieces of fabric together, wrong sides facing each other. Now, along the flaps, cut 6 inches in, creating strips of fabric about an inch and a half wide.Then tie them in a knot. Fleece doesn't fray, so then you're done - no sewing!

All done!

Confused yet? This link has much better instructions!

For My Non-Facebooking Friends

My nephew - solo breakdancing at his hip hop show! The dancers were given some freestyle time while they were waiting for the show to start and my 4 year old nephew got up on his own and rocked it!

Prepping for Baby

We are trying to do as much prep before the baby comes as possible. Luckily, our baby will have three sets of grandparents to help us out in the time right after the birth. However, should this baby decide to make an early appearance, we still want to be as prepared as possible (if it's even possible to be prepared for such an enormous change in lifestyle).

In an attempt to make plans now for prep we can do later (in April or early May), I am stock piling delicious recipes of dishes that can be made ahead and then frozen. A quick google search turned up plenty of recommendations from other parents of newborns - awesome! The recipe pictured above is from a web site called Parents Connect. It's actually part of an article of about a dozen yummy sounding recipes. But I'm not sure if I can wait 5 months to try this one out. Doesn't it look tasty? It's baked rigatoni with sausage and eggplant! Yum!

Baking Soda Shampoo

If you're interested in saving money or going chemical-free in the shower, check out this post over at the Green Baby Guide about using bakind soda as shampoo!

Finally!

I have literally been waiting almost a year to read this book. I've owned it for probably 4 months and I'm only now getting around to reading it. I'm excited! I'm most likely going to recommend you read it after I'm done with it, but I'll wait to gush about it/Greg Mortenson later!

Cloth Wipes

It occurred to me as I was starting to write this post that these really aren't just baby wipes. You could use the same process and materials for 'family cloth' aka your very own reuseable toilet paper! Somehow I doubt many of my friends are that committed to the environment... but if you are, I would love to hear about it!

So, here goes my make-shift tutorial for basic cloth wipes:

 Using a rotary cutter and a mat (or scissors and a ruler) cut fabric into 6 inch squares.

 I decided to use two different fabrics for double sided wipes. So, one side will be flannel and the other terry cloth (I reused an old bathrobe for the terry cloth!).

 Place the squares with right sides facing each other (the right side of the terry cloth is totally a matter of preference!).

 Sew a straight stitch around the edges, leaving a gap of a few inches.

Trim around the edges, close, but not so close that your stitching will come undone. Trim the corners on an angle.

 Turn the wipe inside out through the gap and push out the corners (I used chopsticks to push my corners out).

 

Folding in the part of the wipe where the gap is, do a straight stitch around the edge.

Now repeat a billion times and you've got a stash of reuseable cloth wipes!

Things To Be Grateful For

Today was our monthly check in with the doctor. As a result, I have two new things that I am so very, very grateful for!

1. Nausea medication that is less than a quarter the price of the one I was on before. (Hallelujah!)

2. Our baby's beautiful, magnificent, whooshing heartbeat! I know we had already seen the heartbeat on the ultrasound a month ago, but hearing it is such a cool reassuring feeling!

♥

Dear Baby...

Dear Baby,

     I'm sorry I've been feeding you chips, pop, skittles and mints for the last few days. But in my defense, the money I save from not buying the nausea medication is money I can spend on you. Also, it's kind of your fault I feel so sick and can only eat junk food. Can we please work this out soon? I promise you'll love avocados, broccoli, fish, and all the other goodies I will feed you when we're back on track.

                               Sincerely,
                                      Your Pukey Mommy

Long Awaited Belly & Baby Pics

For those of you who aren't on facebook, you probably haven't seen these photos yet. I thought it was about time I share a few mementos of our slowly growing baby thus far.

This is from our first ultrasound at 10 weeks and 4 days. The quality is a bit poor because we had to scan and then reformat the pictures. But that's our baby, chilling at the bottom of my womb. S/he is lying on his/her back, with the legs up in the air. You can see one foot (the white blob in the middle) and the whole other leg. You can't see it very clearly in this photo, but his/her arms are up by the head, similar to how one would lie down in a hammock on vacation. Chill baby :)

And this is our baby belly at 13 weeks. We're about 14 and a half weeks now, but you get the general idea. It's slow growing for now, but pretty soon I'm sure I'll wish for the days I could still button my jeans!

Christmas Crafting

Oh how I love some good ol' christmas crafts! My parents are now foster parenting 3 amazing children, and I decided that these kids need to have the kind of homemade goodies that I got from my mom growing up. So, I made stockings!

I was also pretty thrilled that the stockings themselves were less than $2 a piece from walmart, and the decorations only a few dollars from dollar stores. Even better - no sewing needed! All you need is scissors, glue and creativity!

Pregnancy Ads

My husband had a genius moment of hilarity I just had to share. We were talking about all the weird and random things pregnancy does to you (the no one tells you about until after you get pregnant) and he concluded that there should be ads for pregnancy similar to ads for medications. You know the ones - where they talk about the wonderful things the drug does for about 2 seconds and then spend the rest of the commercial listing side effects.

We think the pregnancy commercial would go something like this:
Pregnancy is a beautiful journey that ends with the birth of a child you will love for eternity. Side effects may include constipation, swelling of the face, hands, feet and stomach, discolouring of the face, sensitivity of the gums, round ligament pain, cramps, back aches, nausea, vomiting, headaches, exhaustion, dry skin, weight gain, increased appetite, decreased appetite, light headedness, heartburn, imbalance, nipple and breast soreness or sensitivity. Pregnant women should avoid dangerous activities, heavy lifting, eating soft cheeses, drinking alcohol and should limit their intake of caffeine. Should you experience bleeding, contact your doctor immediately.

Of course, if this ad existed, pregnancy probably wouldn't be such a popular route to starting a family!

Assembling Ikea Furniture Without Instructions

Remember how I mentioned that my christmas baking spree brought on a 24 hour migraine? Well, for some reason I decided that would be a good day to assemble the crib. I needed somewhere to put all the baby items we inherited from a very generous family member (thanks Jaime!). Naturally, I decided the best plan would be to set up the crib and put everything in it until we actually need to set it all up for real.

What was I thinking? Setting up Ikea furniture without instructions (because we bought it second hand) while suffering a migraine may have contributed to why the migraine lasted 24 hours. Oops! 

Christmas Baking

The other day I decided to pick up some crushed pecans and some red and green m&m type candies for my all time favourite cookie recipe (courtesy of Tia!). While I was waiting for the butter to soften, something came over me and I proceeded to make delicious chocolate coconut drop cookies (Karin's recipe!).

And then I went a little bit crazy and just decided to do pretty much all my christmas baking in one afternoon. Clearly the first trimester exhaustion is wearing off (although this afternoon was then followed by a 24 hour migraine... so maybe not!).

I followed up the chocolate coconut drop cookies with some butter tarts (Bev's recipe) and some shortbread (also Karin's recipe). My freezer is overflowing!

We'll be rationing these goodies to last until christmas... or, at least until baked goodies arrive in the mail... which tends to happen this time of year when you're blessed with moms that bake!

Ashan Children's Home

Given that this is the time of year for giving, I think it's important for everyone to remember that the ipods, laptops, iphones, new clothes and other goodies we wish for are such luxuries and there are so many people in the world with such greater needs. Ashan Children's Home is an example of this need. For christmas, these 60 orphaned children need new homes. Lauren, a friend I met in Ghana, recently returned from volunteering at this orphanage, and here is an excerpt of why these children are suddenly in dire need of a home:

"There are four babies and 56 children living in three overcrowded rooms. The children are currently sharing bunk beds or sleeping on the floor. In order to attempt to improve conditions, the department of social welfare has mandated that by the end of 2010, all orphanages must begin construction to convert all dormitory style housing to family style housing units, otherwise they will be shut down. The fact of the matter is that the government is mandating this change but providing no financial support, and if this orphanage gets shut down, the 60 children who are living, eating and getting an education through Ashan will be out on the streets."

If you want to read more, or might be interested in donating (even $5 can help make a difference!), click here to go to Lauren's fundraising site.

First Snow Fall

We got our first snow fall of the season last week. It was only a couple centimeters, but it sure made for some pretty scenery for the day.

It has pretty much melted now, except for a few spots that are nearly always in the shade. I can't wait until the yard is covered in a foot or more of snow so we can run around and have snowball fights with the dog!

The snow clouds ended just across the water where the mountains begin, which made for some pretty cool clear photos of the mountain peaks. So beautiful! On cloudy, rainy days it's easy to forget that the mountains are even there because you can't see anything but water and clouds. So this was a nice reminder of the view from our back yard. How lucky are we?!

Making A Difference: One Toilet Paper Roll At A Time!

Awesome! Scott brand toilet paper has come up with toilet paper rolls that have no inner cardboard tube and use no glue! That's definitely progress! It would be a bit better if they also used recycled paper for the rest of the product, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

*Side note... if you're as brave as I am, you may also venture into using cloth wipes as reusable, washable toilet paper! I don't use it for everything, but I have some super soft bamboo fleece wipes that I can wash and reuse - further reducing the amount of toilet paper I use. I'm also pretty excited that once we start cloth diapering, these wipes can be washed with the cloth diapers to reduce laundry loads and water usage!

Honeymoon Fun!

Just some photos from a very relaxing few days in Seattle!

 

Lunch!

The Little Things

I whole heartedly believe that there are lots of easy changes we can make to lessen our impact on the environment. It is incredibly sad to hear of people who think recycling is 'doing their part.' It is the bare minimum. No, it is far below the bare minimum. There are lots of things we can easily do - big and small!

Here are some ideas to get you started!

• When baking or cooking a dish that takes a long time (30 minutes or more), turn the oven off 5 minutes before it's done. As long as you don't open the door, the oven will retain the heat and keep cooking your food! (Be careful with things like chicken and fish, it's important not to eat undercooked meat!)
• In the winter, after using your oven, leave it open a crack to cool down. The heat will warm your house and you can turn the thermostat down for a little while!
• Turn your heat off at night! You most likely sleep under a blanket, and possibly with another warm body beside you, so the thermostat is just plain overkill.
• "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." Enough said.
• Before discarding anything (whether it be to the trash or the recycling) try to figure out if you could use it again as something else (tupperware container, storage divider, etc.)
• Make conscious decisions when you're shopping. Compare packaging amounts and choose the one with the least packaging, or the least plastic packaging. Compare where foods are from - choose apples grown in your home province/state instead of shipped in from New Zealand. Skip the plastic bags - you don't really need a plastic produce bag for 3 oranges do you? Better yet, buy cloth produce bags that you can reuse!
• Cloth grocery bags. Seriously. I am still in shock when I see people walking out of the store with all plastic. For the love of God, WHY?!
• If you have kids, resist the urge to purchase a million snack packs of pre-packaged tiny portions of real food. It's 99% junk anyhow. Instead, designate some time once a week to creating these 'snack packs' yourself. Divide foods into several small tupperware containers and group them so that each day you just grab one group of snacks and toss them into the lunch bag. Better for your budget, the environment AND your kid's health!
• Coffee. Now, we all know I'm a HUGE coffee fan. Organic coffee is great... but fair trade is even better. Fair trade means the coffee growers are paid a fair price for their beans instead of getting ripped off by big corporations. Best yet - organic, shade grown, fair trade coffee! 
• Hang your clothes to dry. Seriously, even in the winter. Just hang them inside. They will still dry and be perfectly wearable. They'll even last longer since they're not being beaten to death by the dryer once a week. 
• Take short showers. Seriously. Set a timer if you have to. 5 minutes should be plenty. Unless you do other things in the shower... in which case I don't want to know!
• Grow some of your own food! Tomatoes can be grown out of a bucket that you hang upside down on your balcony - how easy is that?! Herbs can even be grown inside on a window sill! You don't necessarily need a garden to garden.

Okay, that's enough for today. I'm sure I'll add to this list over time. If you have any ideas, please feel free to leave a comment!

Apple Crumbly Goodness!

This is what happens when you mean to write an entire post about delicious fall desserts (mmm apple crumble!) but then you get all wrapped up in the joy of baking and forget to take a picture until it's in the oven!

* See those organic sugar crystals gleaming in the flash?? Delish!*

Cleaning House

Admittedly, you probably don't want to read about the enormous task of cleaning my house top to bottom. Fair enough - I don't really want to write about it either! What I am trying to work out is how to make house cleaning easier. I figure that if our house is de-cluttered and everything is organized (as in everything has a place to be put back to) then cleaning would take less time and we would be less likely to avoid it.

Much easier said than done. For some reason I started the de-clutter and organize process with our junk drawer. Big mistake. It is mainly tools and loose nails and screws. It took forever to clean out, but now I am left with a bunch of things that clearly don't belong in the same drawer. Worse is that I have nowhere else to put them right now. So, they will sit on the floor beside the drawers until I can get to the store for some much needed items.

Here is my de-clutter and organize shopping list:

• hooks for hanging bags (ie. our dish cloth/towel laundry bag)
• small containers for collections of small things (ie. coin rollers, batteries, etc.)
• medium containers for collections of larger things or larger quantities of things (ie. candles, first aid supplies/medications, etc.)
• large rubbermaid totes for those larger items that never seem to have a place (ie. Adam's fishing gear, my craft supplies, pet supplies that aren't in use, gardening supplies that aren't in use, etc.)
• more 'under the bed' storage bins for seasonal clothing items or camping items
• baskets
• a magnetic container we can attach to the fridge to store spare pens (I remember having something like this for my locker when I was in school)

I think that's it. It sounds like a lot, but it will really help to have all surfaces de-cluttered and organized so things don't get left sitting on the coffee table for months for a lack of somewhere better to put them. 

10 Year Plan

I wish I had the patience to make a 10 Year Plan and then relax knowing I would get everything I want to do accomplished in due time. For me, that doesn't work. I want to do everything and I want to do it all right now.

~ I want to do the Hospital Unit Clerk program and spend a few years working in that field.
~ I want to volunteer for a local health-related non-profit for a few years before doing my Master's.
~ I want to do my Master's of Public Health.
~ I want to do more international volunteer work in a health related setting.
~ I want to accomplish all of this simultaneously and in the next few years. I'm a dreamer.

To some extent, this could work. For example, I have already started the volunteer work and could continue it while finishing my Medical Terminology course. I could then get employment (fingers crossed) in the medical sector while taking my Hospital Unit Clerk program. Once I complete that program, I could potentially move into that career field and then do my Master's via distance education. The tricky thing is, I also want to do the international volunteer work before my Master's.

And where does my husband and family fit in? What if Adam has a career change in this time as well and what if it involves relocating again? What if Adam wants to go back to school? How does 'life' fit into my plans??

I need to learn patience. I want to jump in and do everything all at once, but life doesn't work that way. There's applications to do months in advance, time spent waiting on test results, holidays, and of course, each thing I want to do takes time as well.

And don't get me started on finances...

Honeymoon Prep

As I begin to prep for our honeymoon, I wonder how traditional brides managed trip planning at the same time as wedding planning! I'm thankful for the break in between the two, because preparing for our honeymoon has it's own long to-do list.

We'll be going away for about two and a half weeks in total, so there are some things that need to be taken care of. Here's our list:

-book the dog into the kennel
-arrange for someone to take or babysit our cat (her flea allergy means a kennel would be a disaster)
-pay October's rent in advance
-pay September's phone bill in advance
-get travel insurance (oops! I usually do that when I book the vacation... not sure why I didn't this time)
-get traveller's cheques
-plan a food & souvenir budget
-buy Adam some new sandals
-find a bikini top to go with my bottoms
-pack
-get a hair cut (we both need one, although I could pass on this if time/budget don't allow for it)
-book our bus tickets (part of our honeymoon is spent in a city and the rest in a small village that we need the bus to get to)
-pay October's student loan in advance
-get rid of our van & cancel the insurance
-unplug appliances & give away any food that would otherwise spoil
-get a spare tire, jack and tire iron for the car
-leave a copy of our itinerary and passports with one of our parents

As you can maybe tell, our honeymoon plans changed a bit! We discovered that a road trip across this huge country would take a lot more time than we have for this trip. Although we could just do a partial road trip, it seems a shame to get as far as Ontario or Quebec and have to turn around and miss the Maritimes altogether. We still plan to do that trip someday, but not this year. This trip will be a nice, relaxing couple of weeks lounging on the beach or in our pool in Mexico. Much more affordable!

Excitement!

I just had a great meeting with a local non-profit that provides education, counselling and support to people living with HIV and Hep C. I'm going to be volunteering with them and my first gig is next week! I'll be happily handing out free condoms to students at the college's orientation day. Want free condoms? Come visit me!

Picture Perfect Project

We knew we wanted to do something unique with our wedding photos. We had originally planned on having our favourite photo put on to a large stretched canvas but our budget prevented that from happening.* Somehow we had never really considered the mismatched picture frame idea, even though I love it! Today we decided to head out to our local second-hand stores and see what kind of mismatched frames we could find. We were pretty darn successful, and thus, the mismatched picture wall idea prevailed.

Here's what we did:

Step 1: Scour second-hand stores for cheap frames.

Step 2: Purchase a can of spray paint and some picture hanging hardware (a couple must-have frames didn't have this feature built in).

Step 3: Lay down some newspaper, cardboard or other protective surface wherever you plan to paint.

Step 4: Sand and dust off your frames (it helps the paint adhere better).
 

Step 5: Paint, dry, repeat until each frame is evenly covered. (At this point I also painted the matting that came with 2 of the frames, because dusty rose and maroon just didn't 'go' with our bedroom colours).

Step 6: Attach hardware, put your pictures in your frames and hang them however you like!

We're still working on steps 5 and 6. We're no experts on spray painting techniques, so we ran out of paint with only a tiny bit more painting to do (oops). Then, we also need to have a few more pictures printed to fit the unusual frame sizes we bought. Lastly, we will hang them and enjoy our mismatched picture frame wall!

More pictures to come once the project is completed!

* Note that you can often do this fairly cheaply with web sites such as Shutterfly. They almost always have specials or discounts, especially when you first open a (free) account.

Dress Giveaway!

I'm so excited! Today is my wedding dress giveaway! Swing on over to 2000 Dollar Wedding for more info!

Anniversary Loveliness

I love Sara and Matt's anniversary traditions. Mostly, I love that they do something simple and meaningful to them. I definitely want to plan some traditions for us. We've been married less than two months and I'm already thinking about our anniversary... obsessive planner much? Oh well!

Here are some ideas so far:

• picnic dinner
• annual camping adventure
• once we have our own property, we could plant a tree each year 
• carrot cake! I'm definitely a fan of making our wedding cake recipe every year... SO delicious!

We're definitely lucky to have a summer anniversary. So many options! Feel free to add your ideas as comments below!

True-to-Self Weddings on CNN

This article came out a couple weeks ago, but it's definitely worth posting the link so as many people can read it as possible!

The only thing I would say is that the title is a bit disappointing. Having a wedding you can afford doesn't have to be because of the economy or your salary at the time. It can be a choice you make based on your values and what you think you should spend on certain aspects of your life. Anyhow, it's still a good read!

Free Books!

Free books. You can't get much better than that. No, I'm not talking about library books. You can get your very own, new or used, books for free. To read on your own timeline and then lend or give to friends when you're done! How great is that?

I buy almost all my books on Amazon using my Swagbucks (click out the button on the right of my blog) which I redeem for Amazon.ca gift cards. I've also redeemed my Swagbucks for Paypal credit which I used to buy stuff on Etsy for the wedding, but that's another story!

So, I opened the mail yesterday and received my free copy of Stones Into Schools by Greg Mortenson. I read Three Cups of Tea so quickly because I was so enraptured, I literally can't wait to tear into this one. If I didn't work for my husband, I might just call in sick today just so I could read it!