A random post on a random Wednesday

First, welcome new readers :) I hope I can keep you all entertained!

My friend/co-worker and I went shopping today. Yes, during work. What? We don't take our two 15 minute breaks and we sit at our desks at lunch, so I think we are entitled to some mid-day shopping :)

Umm, I love Urban Outfitters! I think it is now officially my favorite store ever. How awesome is this?! I have to find someone to give this to for Christmas:

I wish it got super cold here so I could rock this hat everywhere:

I think I will buy one anyways and make a trip to the local mountains with hubby and our dog, and play in the snow with it on. 

Speaking of hubby, he HATES boots. Especially Uggs and super furry ones. So every time I am out and see some especially obnoxious ones, I snap a photo and send it to him.

Like this one...

Or this fabulous one from today...

DH and I are leaving next Wednesday for Florida to catch our cruise to Panama. I have to switch my wardrobe over to shorts, dresses and a bathing suit. Yikes. But I am very excited about getting away on a much needed vacation. The house is almost done. I should have that blog post (minus our new sliding patio door that is on order) up this weekend! I know you are all waiting on the edge of your seats for me to post it. Don't lie.

That's all for now, folks.

xoxo,
Mrs. B

Stuck in a rut

Things are going well in my life right now. I have a wonderful & supportive husband, our house is coming along very nicely, my family is healthy, our fur kids are alive & well and our finances are better than they have ever been. So why am I feeling so down? At lunch with DH & friends yesterday, I had to excuse myself and cry in the bathroom. How pathetic, I know.

It's really two things: the way my body looks and loving who I am. I weigh more than I ever have and cannot stand to look at myself anymore, let alone let my husband see me. I get out of the shower, stand in front of the mirror and cringe. It's not even about a number on the scale, it's about the way I look. I am only around 20 lbs over my normal weight, but it's the way the weight distributes on my body that is so hard. It is 99% in my abdomen. Ugh. And now you can see it in my legs, my arms and definitely in my face. That has hit me the hardest. I want to love my body. I also want to love who I am. My BFF has a great quote on her FB page: "sanity and happiness are an impossible combination" I love this because it's so true. We all have our little bit of crazy :)

As for my body image issues, I really need to have some self-control. Don't pick up the candy at work. Don't drive through a fast food joint for dinner. Remember how much you hate your body before you put anything into your mouth. We are trying to have a baby right now, so extreme dieting and serious exercise aren't the best option, but I am setting short term goals for myself each week. This week my goal is to lower my caloric intake. Regardless of how much exercise I get in, I need to modify my eating habits. They say it's 80% what you eat and 20% exercise. My goals this week:

• Eat only chicken, lean turkey, fish, egg whites, fruits, veggies, nuts, beans, oatmeal. 
• No fatty sauces. 
• Reduce to almost no carbohydrates, sugars, salt and dairy products.
• Drink at least 3 bottles of water each day. 
• Exercise 4 times minimum this week, any kind of exercise for 30 minutes

If I can get through a week of this modified diet, with some exercise, then I will set more goals next week.

"I CAN DO THIS!" Mrs. B

xoxo,
Mrs. B

p.s. Even though I took a break from temping every morning and I am staying busy with the house & eating/exercise goals, I am still counting down the days till Aunt Flow is due. I only take a HPT if AF doesn't show up and she is always here before 17dpo. I am 7dpo (days past ovulation) today. My test date? Thanksgiving. How appropriate.

A little cart before the horse

I started browsing around on Etsy when I was planning our wedding. I came across a cute shop while searching for something else, and I absolutely fell in love with her paintings. I mean really fell in love. I can stare at them for hours. To me, they are PERFECT for a baby room, so I added her to my favorites. Every once in a while I browse her shop to see her latest paintings. I want to buy several of them to hang in the future baby room, but I have promised myself to wait. When I get that Big Fat Positive, her shop is the first place I am stopping :)

I am almost scared to share her shop with anyone, for fear someone else will fall in love and buy all her paintings LOL. I hope you all enjoy them as much as I do: http://www.etsy.com/shop/trafalgarssquare

She also has a blog that I follow: http://lullaloo.blogspot.com

Happy Friday!
xoxo,
Mrs. B

The stressful part (for me, at least) is over!

We have done all we can to get pregnant this cycle, so now it's just a waiting game. I have to toot my our own horns this cycle. We had some pretty awesome timing this month and I am so, so happy about that. Even if this wasn't our cycle, I am thrilled at our efforts ;) We will find out if I am pregnant while we are on our Panama cruise. That can be good or bad. It may even be the day of Thanksgiving that we find out. It would be pretty cool to be thankful for something like that this year. I don't test anymore until Aunt Flow is late. It hurts less than seeing a Big Fat Negative.

Because of this great timing, I just know I am getting my hopes up. Even when I tell myself over & over again in my head to not get too excited, I do. Pretty much every day, at least once, I think about it and wonder if this might be it. Yeah, I am obsessed at this point. I will admit it. But it's just a reflection of how excited I am to be a Mom. Oh, and Mr. B? He is just as excited as I am. On Sunday night we were laying in bed and he started talking about how excited he is to have a daughter or son, to play with their little fingers and teach him/her everything. Then he started throwing out boy names (since we have already agreed on a girl name) and we both lay there in the dark, discussing the ones we liked or hated. It was a sweet moment that made my heart swell. It's different for Dad's. They don't carry the baby for 9 months. So hearing him say all of those things made me smile and think about how lucky I am and how great of a Dad he is going to be.

On the house front, we are getting close to being finished with all of the exterior work! I am super excited to share the start to finish photos with all of you, but I am waiting until everything is done. Trust me, it's hard. I want to post about it every day because the transformation is so cool. And then we are surprising our families on the 20th with a smoked turkey dinner and a look at the finished house.

"Any man can be a father.  It takes someone special to be a dad." Author Unknown

xoxo,

Mrs. B

My Sister

I have an amazing younger sister. She completely surprised me with my bridal shower, she was my Maid of Honor at my wedding and, most notably, she tolerated me as the mean older sister while we were growing up. My sister and I actually work together. When she graduated college, she went on a month-long trip to Europe and then began her search for a job when she returned home. Like so many other college grads, there wasn't a lot of opportunities out there. We needed some help at my office, so I called and asked her if she wanted to help out. And now a year later, she is still here :)

This morning I walked into work and noticed a cute purple bucket with tissue and a jewelry box inside. I was confused at first. I opened the jewelry box and saw a bracelet, so I walked back to my sister and asked her where this came from. She said it's from her and it's a fertility bracelet. I was this close to crying!

Isn't it beautiful?! I am wearing it everywhere!

My sister knows we are trying to get pregnant. She is one of very few who I talk to about it. She knows I have been worried and frustrated lately and she thought this might help. And it did! It made me smile and it made me feel loved, and it was such a good feeling to know that she is rooting for us too. I can't wait for her to be an Auntie :)

I looked up the meaning of the stones & charms:

Rose Quartz: Said to be beads of love and fertility. Helps promote pregnancy and to protect the mother and unborn fetus.

Moonstone: Said to have powers that aid in nurturing receptivity and balancing of emotions. Promotes love, hope, and fertility.

Amethyst: Said to be an extremely powerful and protective stone. It balances out highs and lows dispelling anger, fear and anxiety. It boosts production of hormones and peace of mind.

Turtle: Potent symbol of both protection and fertility.

Butterfly: In some cultures, butterflies are believed to be the symbol for fertility and rebirth.

 
"The family.  We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together." Erma Bombeck

xoxo,

Mrs. B

A quick update. Ok, this post is longer than I expected.

Nothing too exciting going on over here. The hubster has been out of town all week for work, so I have been handling all the landscaping coordination by myself. Paying people, checking their work, moving stuff everywhere. I am creating a pretty extensive blog post on all of the landscaping projects, from start to finish. I am going to post it once everything is done, which should hopefully be no later than November 20th. These are the first projects that we have not done ourselves. It's been much more fun to watch everything transform without all the back-breaking work! We are having our two immediate families over for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner on the 20th (since DH and I will be on a cruise for Thanksgiving), so we are surprising our families with our landscaping projects at the same time. We can't wait :)

As for the baby-making business, not much to report. I am in the wait to ovulate. Heh, I made a rhyme. This wait is the most stressful for me because this wait is all about timing things right. In some ways, I am more relaxed than previous cycles because I know what we are doing and in some ways I am freaking the eff out. I just want to get pregnant and stop worrying every.single.day that this is never going to happen for us. You know, my usual "I have never felt like I can get pregnant" nonsense bullshit crap. Geez Mrs. B, can you be more of a pessimist?! Enough of that. Let's get pregnant.

"Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."  Winston Churchill

xoxo,
Mrs. B

Happy Halloween Weekend!

My handsome Apollo, dressed up as a lion. He is so tolerant :)

Cycle 7 was a really tough one for me, as made obvious in my previous post. It took me longer to move past that yuck feeling and stop myself from obsessing that I just can't ever get pregnant. I am feeling better now though and I'm trying to stay positive. Lucky number seven, right?! If we were to get pregnant this cycle, we would likely find out on our Panama cruise. That could be a good or bad thing, depending on the result.

I am very proud of myself this week. After my BFF and I made our pact, I was on a roll. Monday we cycled for 15 miles, Tuesday we ran at the track, Wednesday we did P90X, and yesterday I did Couch to 5K on our treadmill for 30 minutes. Woot! Nothing tonight, but P90X and/or treadmill both days this weekend. I am hoping for some change in my weight on Sunday. And by change, I mean I hope that it has gone down. Even if it hasn't, it feels good to be working out so much.

Our landscaper starts removing all of the dead sod/weeds tomorrow morning and said he hopes to be completely done with the sprinklers & new sod by Wednesday, depending on the weather. EEEE! I am so excited to see it all done!

Our neighbors must be wondering about our front yard! It is certainly dead, and that was the goal.

Backyard

"When witches go riding,
and black cats are seen,
the moon laughs and whispers,
‘tis near Halloween."
Author Unknown

 

Happy Halloween everyone! xoxo, Mrs. B