Blog Return, House Reno, Yard Work, Whole 30, Trash To Treasure, and Blog Help {7 Quick Takes}

1.) Thanks to Addie and June for "acting up" during nap times lately to get me back in the blogosphere.  

June, at almost 3, still needs a nap, but Addie at 4 could take or leave it most days (she probably could use a nap every day but it just doesn't always happen).  There has been way too much giggling and chatting going on and me going in and out to quiet them for my liking; so since last week, I've been splitting them up for naps - one with me in our room, the other in her bed in their shared bedroom.  

Now instead of sneaking downstairs to paint something or clean something, I end up staying in my room while one of them falls asleep... sometimes taking 30min-1hr.  The great news is it's forced me to start going through and organizing pictures on my computer - which I've wanted to do for a long time!  Errr, I guess thanks for being stinkers, girls?  

At least the baby still naps most days... but I don't want to jinx myself so pretend I didn't say that...

Where have the last 11 months gone?

2.)  I've gotten some of our early house pictures together enough to post what this place looked like when we bought it this time last year.  

Bill says, WOAH, what were we thinking?!  

Check out the before pics if you have a minute!  

And this is what it looked like during the demo.  

I know I'm plugging these posts but the changes are huge!  And of course I'll start posting some after pics of our renovation too, so you can compare now to then.

The kitchen wasn't terrible, actually, but the sellers didn't even include a picture of it in their listing. We had no idea what it looked like when we went in to look at it.   I'm thinking it could have been that the two doorways on the other side of the fridge were so narrow that you had to turn sideways to pass through next to the fridge.  The 2 layers of linoleum floor and orange and green tile backsplash didn't help much either.  But for a 60s kitchen, it could have been worse.  Oh wait, the cabinets were painted white from orange right before we looked at it.  Ok, there's the worse.

3.) Spring came early this year and we've spent the last 5 weekends weeks getting the outside of the house looking like someone actually lives here.  

We made a major change to the front porch and switched out the metal posts for big rough cedar ones which gave it a huge face lift.  You can check them out here.

And almost everything we planted in the fall (from mom and dad's house and Lowes 75% clearance) has come up which also makes the house look a little better!

But the back of the house is an entirely different story.

Last summer, before we were in the house, Bill tore out the large deck and a huge mud spot was what was left in it's place.

Until we save to build a new patio back there, our plan is to grow grass on the left and have a little garden contained by some black fencing that was in another spot on the side of the house.

Getting it all ready took a couple days! 

We planted pumpkins, zuchinni, cucumber and beans in here.  Herbs are potted.  

Thanks for the help, big guy!

4.) I recently completed a WHOLE30... I know, I can't believe it either.

30 days of detox, pretty intense, almost impossible initially...
This one did it before me, but she's awesome and has a lot of discipline! We will probably do one together in a few months if anyone wants to join us...?

Quick thoughts - prepping and cooking all my food was a lot of work, feeding my family different things on top of it was a lot of work (I know you can feed them what you eat, but have you met my husband???) ... Overall I think I'm glad I did it and I guess it was worth it (and started to lose some much needed baby pizza weight - still have lots to go, though!); but I don't know how to go back to normal.  For instance, eating healthy, pretty much the same foods I was for a month and then throwing in a treat here and there hasn't worked since I finished last week - Eating some chocolate here, popcorn, there just makes me want to keep splurging.  It's like oh I had that one thing this morning, I might as well cheat the entire day, or the rest of the week for that matter!!!  Or take yesterday for example - I had a healthy compliant soup I made but then realized it was cinco de mayo and thought I better have some nachos. and.a.chocolate.bar. maybe a margarita, and so on! ARGHHHH.

As my super healthy sister Katie said, "Once you get a taste of that sugar or grease in your system again, you want it all the time."  Man, I hate it when she's right.

In addition, I never had this surge of energy people talk about -

Maybe I'll just have to accept the fact that as an adult, I should be eating healthy ALMOST all of the time.  Tell me, please, what is your secret to balance???  I guess it's called discipline.  

And I guess there is something to be said for not just eating whatever we want when we want it (which is what I do).  Craving something?  We can just pop out to get it!  Our culture has access to everything nowadays my parents remind me, so we never tell ourselves no... that's probably a whole other post for another time.  

Anyways, I'd just like to be able to splurge a few times a week.  

#thestruggleisreal #firstworldproblems.  

Thanks for the tissue ;)

5.)

I was outside painting a bistro set during Sunday naps (sometimes I still sneak away), and went around to the garage and found Bill doing this - turning our junk into something useful.  I don't know it's it's "trash to treasure" worthy, but it will work nonetheless! 

He didn't want to go to the dump with these old doors that were leaning against the garage (isn't that where most people keep their trash?!) so he got creative -

And he didn't want to bother me to help him, so he got super creative supporting the old doors with chairs while he drilled - and of course I had to snap some pics.

 Bill calls it the hillbilly yard tool shelf - 

Then he put nails inside to hang yard tools too.  AND IT WAS FREE!!! Yea Bill! 

6.) The blog needs some desperate sprucing up.  Any recommendations on who to use for help with title and layout and such? Or are you all super savvy blog technicians that do it yourselves and could maybe point me in the right direction? 

*Keep in mind, I don't do computers; it's pathetic I know, so something easy please! And thank you! 

7.) Next week, I'm going to post an IKEA "hack" on the Tarva dresser.  Hope you come back to see the transformation!  

Happy Mother's Day weekend.

Linking up with Kelly!