money management resolutions

Ok... its New Years Eve and I'm all packed and ready for our trip tomorrow and Nels has Molly at my parents for probably another 1/2 hour:)

So here's my second (and probably not my last) set of resolutions for this year.

First of all I'd like to start out by saying that I think Nels and I have done fairly well this year as far as money goes.  Building a house is EXPENSIVE and its hard not to want to furnish and decorate right away.  To start out I'd like to list the ways we have saved money.  We can pat ourselves on the back for the following:

1. We are not in debt trouble whatsoever and I even managed to finish paying off my student loan this year... Wahoo!!

2. The only new piece of furniture we bought for our house was the kitchen table which we got for a fairly decent deal from Home Furnishings in Olds (same place we got our cabinets which we are SUPER happy with).  

notice the 3 chairs... thats why painting the rest of our chairs is on my DIY resolution list:)

3. Along with building a house, having a baby is NOT CHEAP but we got all of our baby furniture, stroller etc... off of kijiji for a fraction of the price new stuff would cost.  Thanks to great family and friends as well who showered us with gifts (video monitor from Nels' family and the most comfy rocker you ever will sit in from my mom just to name a few) we really didn't have to shell out a load of dough.  

beginning stages of decorating Molly's room

4. Most of the art I have in our house was FREE or super cheap.  Thanks to a bunch of free printables I found on the internet like the one below as well as Costco for their SUPER inexpensive developing for a few family pics I developed.

5. I have even tried my hand at DIYing with this mobile I made for Molly's room (out of paper from Michaels and some sort of twine wire stuff.  Speaking of DIYing, Nels contracted all of the trades out for our house which saved some money b/c we could shop around, he's also currently working on completing the finishing work on the house.  He's done the hardwood floor, tile, kitchen ceiling, railings, hung doors, built the deck, and (mostly) finished the soffits himself.  We also painted the majority of the house ourselves (thanks to Dad and Frank for helping with the tricky parts).   

Ok, now for the things we could do better.  Upon reading this post from Young House Love I would like to keep MUCH closer track of our spending.  I"m talking put cash in envelopes for groceries, spending, household items etc... and when the cash is gone thats it for the month.  

To be more specific I'd like to:

1. Keep closer track of food bills and add of receipts all month to see how much we really spent. 

2.  Make cheap meatless dinners at least once a week.  Plan meals in advance so we know what we need for groceries

3.  Put NOTHING on credit cards... if we don't have cash for it, we don't buy it.  

4.  Finish projects I already have the materials for instead of starting new stuff

5.  Be patient and enjoy the wonderful PROCESS that building our house has been.  Look back at the progress we have made often and pat ourselves on the back

6. Go to Calgary LESS.  

7. Grocery shop locally and stay the heck out of the mall:) (not too hard seeing as how I seem to hate the mall after having a baby anyway!)

8. Enjoy our awesome little family and friends every moment we can by entertaining in our house instead of going out

Is it too early for resolutions?!?

So I tend to get very inspired when I see peoples' houses (like Lori and Tims) or spend hours on pinterest, or just look around our awesome home and dream about things I'd like to do.  The problem is I don't always follow through with my inspirations so I am going to commit to a few things right here and I will also document them on my blog and heck, maybe even start a board and pin them onto pinterest.

1. paint door in kitchen
2. paint door in living room
3. paint outside door (perhaps both sides)
4. spray paint mirror for guest bedroom
5. spray paint magazine rack for office
6. refinish old coffee table
7. hang photo collage
8. sew valances
9. sew curtains for playroom
10. finish painting chairs for kitchen

So there we go, 10 resolutions already.  Can't wait to make the rest of them:)

oh, and here's a pic of my best buddy and I on Christmas day.  he is working very hard to put baseboards and trim up in the house and he lets me dream up all kinds of crazy and awesome things to do to the house.

My latest Addiction

Pinterest....
It is so lovely.  Basically its the best thing to happen to the internet.  I could literally spend all day on there finding cool things to make/buy/bake/paint and since i've been on a bit of a hiatus from anything house or crafty since Molly was born i've had a bit of an itch lately.

so here begins my one of many posts of things i made that were inspired by pinterest.

wreath made from cinnamon sticks.  Very simple and could probably be up year round if i switched out the ribbon.  Currently on our bedroom door but after Christmas i'm moving it to the kitchen

quote sitting in my office

partly pinterest, partly Young House Love.  wrapping up books as presents to Christmas-fy our armoire 

more to come regarding the house as I work on making the office awesome and the trim goes up in the next few weeks (hopefully!)

You know that feeling...

...when you haven't slept in about 2 1/2 weeks and there's puke all over every single piece of clothing and bedding that you own? 
Well I'm experiencing that feeling right now but i wouldn't trade it for anything

1 Week

Molly is 1 week old today.... so crazy

In honour of her first week being alive she gave us the greatest gift... she slept like a champ the whole night.  I practically had to wake her up to feed her.  Loving it...

then she gave daddy some great snuggles this morning...

 and then we made pancakes to celebrate the great day!

Happy 1 week birthday Molly.  We love you:)

It happened!

Been forever since a post!

Molly Grace Bieber was born August 25th 2011 and I could cry over how much I love this little girl.  

Giving birth was the most amazing thing I will ever do in life and coming from me that actually says a lot because it had been my biggest fear ever since I learned about the birds and the bees.

So instead of boring everyone I talk to with the details I figure it would be better for everyone to just write them out and get on with life:)

My water broke at 2:00 pm after I had a nap.  I had just been to the clinic earlier that day for a check up and everything just looked normal for being 38 weeks pregnant.

I panicked a bit when my water broke because of my fear of giving birth and Nelson started running around the house like a crazy person trying to get ready for the hospital

We headed to the hospital where they checked to see if my water actually had broken (i thought it was pretty self explanatory by the steady stream of fluid leaking out of me).  So it had definitely broken and I started having some minor contractions.  There was a bit of confusion from everyone as to whether I should stay at the hospital or go home until the contractions got stronger.  To make a long story short, we went home for a bit and started having some fairly strong contractions.  

By about 8:00 we were back at the hospital hooked up to a machine tracking our contractions again.  At this point we were told that we were indeed in labour but the contractions were almost nil and it would be a good 8 hours before anything substantial happened.

I freaked out.

This is because although the stupid machine was saying my contractions were almost nothing, I was seriously struggling.  They hurt so bad I wanted to go throw myself into traffic but there isn't even enough traffic in Threehills to do anything so that was out of the question.  I wasn't remembering anything I learned about breathing either.  I was just panicking and puking.  I'm sure Nelson was quite scared at this point and he kept telling me i could do it and kept saying I sure as heck can not do this.  

Finally, we paged the nurse and told her we thought something was up.  My back hurt like crazy and so she gave Nels a few tips to help out which were "push like crazy against her spine to counteract the baby pushing the other way" This helped.  She also told me to imagine floating on a cloud and surprisingly things actually got better.

This lovely nurse decided check my downstairs area just to see what was going on.  This is where I heard "Holy shit, I feel the head... we need to call the Doctor!" and I thought, "Thank the Dear Lord that I am actually in labour here."  I found out later that I was actually 9 1/2 cm dilated at that point.  Everything moved so fast from there on in its like an awesome dream.  I had a few more hard contractions and I felt like pushing so I did.  

Dr. Calhoun (sp?) was awesome awesome awesome.  She was so calm and supportive I wish I could just give her a giant hug right now.  She offered me some laughing gas once I started doing some serious pushing and i took that sweet sweet gas and it changed my life forever.

Laughing gas was the coolest thing ever.  I could concentrate so well it was crazy.  I remember holding my Moms hand when she got there and admiring her for doing this exact same thing.  I remember looking into the Dr's eyes and listening to her tell me to push.  I remember that nice nurse who kept on telling me how awesome I was doing and when to push and not to let the air out of my mouth when I was pushing.  I remember talking to God about what an amazing experience this was.  I remember thinking how I couldn't wait to tell Krista that this isn't that bad and she can for sure do it.  I remembered Crystal telling me that she just sucked the crap out of that laughing gas mask so I just did that exact same thing 

We also had music which was something that made the experience that much more special.  We had made a baby mix a few weeks earlier of songs I thought would calm me down or had special meaning to us.  I remember the first dance song from our wedding being played ("Oh heavenly day" by Patty Griffin) and being locked on Nels.  I remember "The Greatness of our God" playing and thinking this could not be more true.

And then I felt the pressure from the babe and pushed as hard as I could and there was no pain just determination to get this thing out.  

And then she was out... and Nels got to look over and tell me that we had a beautiful baby girl and we both cried because secretly all along we wanted a Molly.  

They put her on me and I saw her blowing little spit bubbles and I have never loved spit more in all my life

She fed like a champ right away and then soon after that we were wheeled back to our room.  The whole night I just looked to my left and saw Nelson lying next to me and looked to the right and saw Molly and I just couldn't get over how I was the luckiest girl in the world

The end

Step #1 Baby Room: Lighting

our carpet came today... wahoo wahoo!!  It looks awesome:)
baby room is coming along (i like to be prepared:))... bought a chandeleir that i love and we set up the crib.  I'm excited to get the rest of our furniture in the house this week!

Spring is In the Air (Thank God!)

Spring break last week =

• the wonderful Harrison Hot Springs... even though my feet got soggy everytime I went outside, still a favourite place:)
• shopping in America with the nice and strong Canadian Dollar. highlight: Maternity jeans for 20$.  lowlight: Target... having absolutely NOTHING we needed
• a much needed hair cut from Lori!
• a stay at the Meraws cabin: relaxing and awesome as per usual

And as if that weren't enough goodness for a person to handle, Naomi and Yvonne came to stay for the week.  Love them and miss them!

That's Right Folks

my pants don't fit anymore.

 
thank goodness for H&M and their stretch 25$ jeans :)

Family Visit

how cute is this little guy?

nick and crystal came for a visit.  great to see them.  fricken cold outside the whole time. 
p.s henry is the happiest little guy I've ever seen in my life

It's been awhile

I feel like I haven't had time to do much of anything lately... haven't felt super great, busy with work and life = no blogging. 
Great news is the hardwood is ALMOST DONE thanks to Nels and friends who have helped along the way.  All of the pics of the kitchen (with applicances!) and flooring are unfortunately on Nels' computer so this post will be pictureless
Even though the house is so close to being done it still feels like we will never get to move in for some reason... like it's too good to be true.  I don't think I'm even going to know what to do with myself when I have that much glorious space to enjoy!
so that is all... pics to come.
p.s we are having a baby and we heard the heartbeat today and it was really fast and amazing and we are so very full of joy :)

Just for a second...

...i'm going to forget for 1 blog that we just celebrated Christmas and New Years and hold off on posting about my most favorite time of the year to instead post about our latest painting endeavors.

The great news is that thanks to Dad and Frank Gibson, our entire entryway and livingroom is painted (including the DIFFICULT to reach bay window) and I'm really happy with the colour... so what did it end up as?!?!?

ROCKPORT GRAY:

looking from the livingroom into the kitchen and up into the bonus room area.

Keep in mind that these pics were taken with my parents 10 year old crappy camera so not the greatest quality. The best wall to judge the colour here is on the big one to the left.

I initially planned to go with a darker gray (copley gray) but i thought it might be too dark. After deciding on Rockport I am happy with the way it turned out BUT I totally think the darker gray would have worked really well for the space. So many people warn you about going too dark but it soooo would have worked and it might have even warmed the place up a bit. Needless to say, I'm happy with the colour. The next challenge will be to warm the living room up because although i love the gray colour, sometimes it can seem a bit cold/indistrial-like.

After today, our kitchen is also completely done... and I am 110% happy with it. We like to call it "our custom kitchen" I had picked out the Hawthorne yellow colour from the very beginning and I was sure it was going to be perfect. I had visited my trusted young house love blog and they had called it the "be all end all of yellow paints" well.... as much as everyone was trying to convince me that it would tone down when the cabinets went in, I just couldn't quite wrap my head around how yellow it looked. So in a pinch, we decided to add some white primer to the paint to lighten it up for the second coat (i'm sure this is a big painting no-no) and now after the second coat is done, it is AWESOME. It's a slightly lighter (not so orangey) yellow that I seriously love.

All the pics I have are actually with the original Hawthorne so you can get the "before" idea and I"ll get an after one later. On camera, the difference might not be that great but Nels and I couldn't believe how much more we loved the kitchen now that it is a tad lighter. This first one is the wall where our cabinets and some appliances will go, hence all the holes and wires:)

Cabinets come on Tuesday (wahoo!!!) and we ordered all or our appliances from Trail Appliances yesturday (AWESOME boxing week sale i might add) so things are looking up and I'm excited!!

Biggest pleasant suprise:

Huntington Beige for all of our bedrooms, bathrooms and now probably even our utility room is my favorite colour yet!! I should have known I'm a beige girl at heart. I've always loved browns and I think this golden brown will tie in with the yellow of the kitchen really well. Here is our Master bedroom and bathroom which are COMPLETELY FINISHED NOW!!! (except of course for the tile around the tub to come later)

Tomorrow we have another full day before I head back to work Monday :( I can honestly say that painting is pretty darn fun because I love seeing the results so fast.