Going Shopping? SALE time!

instead of fighting the insanity on black friday (anyone out there shopping, i feel sorry for you there are NO deals good enough to me to be out in the madness!) sit at home and shop online! there are tons of great deals to be found everywhere on the interwebs.

i created a special coupon code for my etsy shop, bella home and baby, just for YOU, dear reader. from now until the end of the month, use the code "thanksgiving" to save 10% on everything in my store. i have big crafting plans for the weekend and hope to stock more fun things asap.

and p.s. if you like my logo, check out alboo designs. she made it and she's awesome!!!! all kinds of custom graphic art for your walls...

we bought a zoo...

er... a house. although, with an 18 month old, 2 cats, fish that keep reproducing and boxes still to unpack, it feels a little like a zoo sometimes. that's right - our first house. four states, seven years and one kid later, we finally took the plunge.

 we moved in a little over a week ago. while there are still lists miles long of things to fix and change, we are fairly settled. jakey had a little trouble adjusting to sleeping in his new room, but loves having a play room and a yard! jeremy loves having a garage and a shed. one of the first things he did was build himself a workbench and install a work light. my kitchen is bigger and i have an office that opens into jakey's play room.  that makes working from home so much easier!

we are looking forward to many weekends of working on the house - painting, redoing the bathrooms and fencing in the yard are tops on the list.

1.3333333

Jakey turned 16 months yesterday. I can't even believe my baby is that old. He is turning into quite a little ham and has a delightful personality. Here are some of the things he's been up to lately.

Words: Jakey has really started babbling and talking a LOT more lately. he says mama, dada, dat (cat), my my (milo - our friends's dog), nana, papa, guk (book), sh (shoe), ish (fish), ch (cheese), EEE (eat), kah (beka) and eh (ed).

Signs: jakey signs eat, water, milk, more, all finished, sleep, cheese and read.

Favorite Activities: he loves stacking all his mega bloks (giant legos) on the windowsill. he brings books to us constantly and asks us to read to him. Favorites include "baby day," "johnnie tractor," and "peekaboo." he walks backwards, does yoga (down dog and butterfly pose), and is learning how to jump. He loves opening and closing drawers and cabinets.

He weighs about 26 pounds and wears 18 mo or 2T clothes, depending on the style. Part of that is from his fluffy cloth butt though.

first birthday party, animal style

jakey really dug in to his cupcake. he inhaled that thing in nothing flat and politely asked for more. crazy kid! good thing i made them small (and organic with no sugar) so he could have as many as he wanted!

 i had tons of fun letting my crafty side out getting ready for this party. i found tons of pins on pinterest that gave me great ideas for the decorations and food. i set up an area inside the front door with a tree limb that was spraypainted orange and some little note cards. this was jakey's wishing tree - everyone wrote him little notes and wishes for his future. the drink station had mason jars that i painted with chalkboard paint for people to write their names on. the ice was water balloons that i put in the freezer - no wet mess when it melted! brilliant!

i tried to make the cupcakes look like mushrooms but im not sure i 100% succeeded. oh well. they tasted good anyways. the silverware was made to look like carrots and i made little owls out of toilet paper rolls that i put everywhere. i wish i could take credit for dreaming all this up but it was all inspired by things i found online. i do take full credit for execution though! the 40 or so people (inluding 14 kids 3 and under!!!!) had a great time. it was so wonderful to be around so many friends and family for such a great reason - celebrating the life of one of the cutest kids around.

the final craft project was these animal masks. i made a bunch in kid and adult sizes for people to use as photo props. not as many people took pictures as i was hoping, but there were a couple winners:

this grandpa raccoon and grandma cat are my favorites!

my big ole one year old!

jacob turned one a couple of weeks ago. he is growing SO quickly! he now has five teeth, crawls and climbs constantly (including straight up the stairs if i so much as blink my eyes) and still loves to eat. he is getting a little pickier but loves weird things like raw spinach and hummus so i'm not too worried about the kid.

 he thinks people wearing sunglasses or hats are exceptionally funny. when he woke up on his birthday morning, jeremy and i went into his room with birthday party hats and noisemakers. he thought it was so funny! (side note: these are the same jammies cousin caden woke up in on his first birthday! love it!)

he loves being outside and going running with me. he loves his own bed and whenever we are gone overnight and come back he is actually giddy when he sees his crib.

he is developing quite the little personality, too. i can tell we are going to have our hands full with this one as he gets older. strong willed much?

the only time he really cries is when he first wakes up (takes him a couple minutes to adjust to being awake... sounds like someone i know - ME!) or when he hears loud startling noises. let's ust say that he loves playing in my parents yard while we work in the garden, but the start that chainsaw up and the kid freaks out! we have a really good natured baby overall.  he loves snuggling cricket, us and the fringe pillow and giving mommy kisses. the big wet open mouth lots of tongue kind. he is quite the lover! :D

i can't wait for many more years watching my most precious baby grow up!

11 month review

 on march 9, jakey started crawling. i havent been able to keep up with him since! he was late to the party, but is more than making up for it. he chases the cats, finds little tiny pieces of nothing to put in his mouth from freshly vaccumed carpet, and loves to go through my purse or the diaper bag whenever i am careless enough to leave it on the floor or within reach.

 he is curious about everything. bubbles are a favorite new toy, as well as anything that he can unstack, take out of a box, or otherwise destroy. sometimes we set up small towers of blocks down the hallway and let him just crawl along and topple them as he goes. he can play this game for a really, really long time.

we are still loving the cloth diapers and amber teething necklace. my hippy ways need a place to come through in my child. he eats everything he can get a hold of, including olives and mushrooms, two things that i avoid like the plague. no allergic reactions to anything so far, so i count myself very lucky.

i cant believe the teeny tiny little guy we brought home to our apartment in connecticut is an almost one year old who lives in kansas now! everyone says how the time flies but it flies faster when its my own kid. wow.

march races in review

i did three races in march. two of them were, sadly,  without my cheering section. on st patricks day i ran a 5k with some girlfriends. jeremy and jakey decided to sleep in. i met beka at her house and we drove with our friend shelly to the race, which started at 8:30. WRONG! it started at 8 and we were walking from the parking lot to the starting line when we heard the gun go off. so we sprinted to join the pack and ran most of the race with everyone we were meeting. a little bit of a stressful way to start a race, but it was a fun run anyways. one of my silly socks kept falling down so i decided it was just making a statement.

the next morning was the final tri that i am participating in in the ymca series i have been doing. i beat my time by over a minute and my original time by almost ten. it was definitely improvement, mostly thanks to the 10k training ive been doing with the start to finish group from gorun wichita. we had our halfway goal race last weekend. this was my first 5k that i actually raced since jakey was born. i ran the whole way and wound up with a personal record of 26:09. it was great! the weather was perfect and it was fun to run with all the people i have been training with for several weeks.

i've got another race this weekend - the easter sun run, with most of the same girls from the st patricks race. its a 10k, which i am not ready to actually race, but it'll be fun anyways. theres always coffee at the roastery or whatever the name of the cute place in college hill is afterwards.

Bathtime Baby

Jakey loves a bath. He doesn't take one very often - usually I take him in the shower with me to save time. And, since he doesn't run around outside, he really doesn't get that dirty. :) but when he gets in the tub, he splashes like no one's business. Seriously nonstop for fifteen minutes. Its hilarious. The entire bathroom gets soaked. And he can be so grumpy and fussy and then gets in that tub and it is like a switch - SO happy. Love this kid!

pinned it. nailed it. february edition

 so i actually saw this on pinterest, but apparently did not pin it. so when i was explaining to jeremy what i wanted to do, he just kinda went on faith that i had a plan. first we went to home depot and i got to pick out 6 drawer pulls (there were so many awesome ones to choose from!), a piece of wood and my shade of stain.

jeremy drilled holes for the pulls, i stained it, then he assembled and hung it.

VOILA!

i figure now that i can see what my ecklace choices are, i will wear more variety. on the days that i get out of my pajamas that is.

since we made my earring holder, i definitely wear more than my usual (fake) diamond studs. on the days that i get out of my pajamas that is.

pinned it, rocked it. january edition.

a few weeks age, i was browsing through my friends pins on pinterest and i saw this fake fireplace. i thought, man that would look awesome under our new tv. jeremy came downstairs right then, so i showed him. he said, "how much would something like that cost?" i looked at some places online, and found the cheapest one for $350 and they went up from there.  the ones i loved were all above $600. in other words, not really in our "spur of the moment i pinned something i want" budget.

then jeremy said, i bet i can make that. so he sent me and jessie off to get our nails done (i know, right?) and he and jakey went to home depot. when we came home, this was in the garage.

after jessie left, we started painting. i had to help with this part.we decided on black for the frame and a yellow for the background. we found some pretty little curlicue things to add some apice.

finally, after what seemed like years of drying time, it was ready to bring downstairs. yes, thats iron chef dismantling some massive piece of meat on the television. and i havent fully accessorized yet. but look what we made!

pretty awesome, right? i LOVE it! and i love the fact that jeremy made it in like ten seconds! and for waaaay less money than buying it.

just another day at the park...

jakey and i ran up to the horsey park this afternoon (aka eastview park). i think it was his first time at a park, but we didnt play - mom was on a mission. my training schedule said 5 miles for today and we made it about 4 1/2 before it was nap time.

it was a BEAUTIFUL day to be outside. i was surprised that no one else was at the park when we got there.  there was only one other guy doing the exercise route there. i noticed him in the distance doing the sit up station. by the time we ran around to that station, he was finishing up and walking away. when we got close i noticed three incredibly odd things about this guy. first, he was wearing a sports coat. really? to do sit ups at a park? and he was also wearing khakis pants that were rolled up to be man-pris. ugh.  the strangest thing of all though was the fact that as soon as he finished exercising, he lit up a cigar as he walked to his car. bizarre, no?

as ive been doing the gorun training program, my mileage has been increasing although my speed has stayed a lot the same. we had a seminar the other night about the physiology of running and one of the mantras he gave us was "start slow, then taper off." i can totally buy into that philosophy. :) but anyways, ive been running a lot more than before (usually 5 days a week) and my workout playlist has been getting a lot of usage. and boy am i tired of hearing the same songs over and over. i need some new tunes.  suggestions? i usually run to hip hop/r &b or rock, but am open to new ideas!

the exercise related portion of my new years resolutions have been going swimmingly, but we are only 24 days in after all. :D are you keeping up with your resolutions?

New recipe

On sunday night I made spinach, cheese and pesto stuffed chicken. SO good. And kinda fancy! It was fun banging the chicken out to be flatter. :) I didn't use an actual recipe but just made it up, but I'm still counting it as a new recipe since I've never made anything like it before.

january tri wrap up

51:53. i killed it this month. it helped that for the first time i wasnt sick and that jakey decided to wake up only once at 5:30am for sure.

december's time was 56:09 and november's was 57:42. that means this month i was almost 4.5 minutes faster!

swim: 10:14. thats only a few seconds faster than last time but i felt better the whole time and finished first out of the girls in my group and before the guy that was sharing my lane. i was in a faster swim heat this time so beating at least the girls made me feel pretty good.

bike: 20:10 thats a couple minutes faster. i pushed the resistance up and pedaled my heart out, to the point where i can barely stand up today. my thighs did not appreciate the hard biking after almost no training.

run: 19:43 i broke the 20 minute mark! go team me! thse first couple of laps after the bike are challenging so i play a little mental game to keep focused. 1/24 ok thats like 4% done. 2/24 = 1/12. way to go. 3/24 = 1/8 that's 12.5%! 4/24 = 1/6. the fifth lap is stupid because 5 doesnt go into 24. lap 6 - 1/4 done, half mile ran yay! etc. almost every lap is a fraction that can be reduced, and then i can spend the rest of that lap trying to calculate approximate percentages. crazy? maybe. but it seems to be working okay for me.

after all that and a great time, i missed placing int he top three in my age group by about 30 seconds which means no tri cup points for me this month. and next month the tri falls during our los angeles trip so none next month either. march and april i better bring it hard in order to finish in the top three!

baby play dates

 jakey's friend carson came over to play with us.they laid on the turtle blankie and held hands, jakey showed carson how he could sit up by himself, carson ate breakfast and jakey took a nap.  thrilling, huh? its a little bit ridiculous to call it a playdate, but i loved having anna and carson come over and see us anyways!

a few days later, we got together with mark and lanelle at my parents house. carly and ava have grown a TON since we last saw them in june and it was awesome to be able to spend time with them! trying to get three littles to look at the camera when there was a dog and toys and not-toys everywhere wasnt as awesome.

Best part of my day...

Listening to jakey sing during the entirety of our three mile run today. I seriously love this kid.

resolutions, week 1

i've been running (three times this week), going to yoga, and i have gym plans for tomorrow for biking and swimming. thats as good as it gets as far as my exercise goals. next weekend is my first tri of the year so lets see what happens!

we made a new recipe tonight - jeremy made chicken fried steak and it was great. SO not mdf, but i didnt have to cook it so its all good!

also. i made two things this week from pinterest. i havent finished my toilet paper roll wreath yet. if it looks even half way decent after a coat of paint and some sparkles i will post a picture. if not, hey at least i tried, right?

one week in - how are you doing with your resolutions?

book review: radio shangri-la

Radio Shangri-La

by Lisa Napoli

from the back: One woman's story of reaching a crossroads in life - and finding happiness in the last shangri-la. Lisa Napoli was in the grip of a mid-life crisis when a chance encounter lead her to the adventure of a lifetime. Leaving behind her job in public radio and her life in Los Angeles, she moved to the tiny Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan to volunteer at the country's first youth radio station. Along the way, she found the world is a beautiful and complicated place, and learns to appreciate life in a way she never imagined.

my review: i enjoyed this story. it was refreshing to read a nonfiction book in the middle of all the fiction i typically enjoy. the stories of her culture transition and the radio she helps with are funny and endearing. the people she meets chage her life and return the favor. shangri-la is a very interesting culture, once rated the happiest place on earth but since the invasion of the western world and the internet, cable, and the like their happiness quotient has slowly faded. that was the sad part of the story, but it really made me think about what makes me happy and why.

this book was released last year so go find it in a book store near you! :D