Another 101 in 1001 update!

I have actually crossed quite a few more things off of my list, so I figured it was time for another update! Some of these things will have to be put on hold for a little while, like I won't be trying any more new beers for a while... or I won't be losing 20 pounds in the immediate future... But I think I'll still have time to fit everything in :)

Start blogging (Started in May 2012)

Take a photography class

Take a cake decorating class (Completed in April 2012 at Michael's)

Blog every day for 30 days (In progress as we speak!!)

Go to NYC (Went for our 1st anniversary in May 2012)

Plant a vegetable garden (Planted a veggie garden with my mom in June 2012)

Sell 1 item a month from our Etsy shop (My mom and I had to temporarily shut down our Etsy shop so she could sell her stuff at Christmas craft markets!!! Hopefully soon we'll be up and running again)

Lose 20 pounds (get to 160 lbs) (this will now come AFTER baby is born :) )

Maintain weight for 6 months (see above)

Refinish a piece of furniture (A work in progress, hint: it's for the nursery!)

Reupholster an old piece of furniture (See above!!!)

Go to Las Vegas

Take a knitting class

Knit a winter hat

Take one photo I am really proud of

Take a photograph of a rainbow (in progress - this was actually code for "get pregnant again and carry to term!")

Say “yes” to something I wouldn’t normally

Host a dinner party for 8

Go a week without buying anything

Read 40 books (It's sad, but I have read 1 so far - The Help. I have edited this and picked a better number, 100 in 1001 days?? Yikes. Who can read 1 book every 10 days?? Yeah, new updated, I have still only read 1...)

Don’t say anything negative for one day

Complete a 365 day photo challenge

Try a sport I've never tried before (My husband and I played flag football summer 2012!)

Donate money to a charity

Kiss in the rain

Make spaghetti sauce from scratch

Bake and decorate a birthday cake for someone (Baked my husband's birthday cake in June 2012)

Try a new recipe once a month for a year

Find out my blood type (easy! Had to do this when I got pregnant, I'm O+! August 2012)

Go to the gym 5 days a week for a month

Take a cooking class

Send a hand written letter

Spend a weekend without the internet

Make bread without the bread maker

Train Leroy to come when called

Learn how to cook fish!

Finish the photo wall going to the basement

Go to a wine tasting

Make homemade ice cream

Watch Gone With the Wind (Loved it! July 2012)

Carve a pumpkin

Figure out what to do with my wedding dress (I donated it to a charity here called The Breast Dress Project which raises money for breast cancer research - October 2012)

Send in the paperwork and get my PEng

Have a blog post published on a well known blog

Have my blog redesigned to have a more personal style (Thanks to Emily at oh hello, love! this has been completed, July 14, 2012)

Make a meal with all ingredients bought at the farmer's market

Throw a surprise party for someone

Go on a girl's weekend with my sister

Have a will written

Try being vegetarian for one week

Write 100 thank you notes

Meet an internet friend in person

Go on a picnic

Go camping with the dog (We went camping in August 2012)

Go to trivia night

Be professionally fitted for a bra

Send at least 3 letters to the editor of our local paper

Move my blog to self hosted

Give up Facebook for a week

Try 10 beers I have never tried before (Rickard's White, Molson Canadian 67 Sublime, Upper Canada Lager)

Go to an exercise class that makes me feel awkward

See 45 movies in the theatre

Go for a ride in a helicopter

Get a promotion

Eat at 10 new restaurants (In progress - Must Wine Bar)

Host Christmas or Thanksgiving dinner

Make a surprise visit home to see my family

Spend 1 day a week television free for 6 months (Started this in July 2012, we're going with Wednesdays!)

De-clutter our house

Go to a comedy show (went to Absolute Comedy with two of my coworkers! July 2012)

See The Nutcracker at the NAC

Do something nice for someone anonymously

Go to a spa

Go to a Green Bay Packers game

Give a 100% tip

Have a booth at a craft sale

Take a spontaneous road trip

Create a scavenger hunt

Decorate Christmas cookies

Finish bathroom and back room in basement

Finish the fence in the backyard (Last pieces went up in May 2012!)

Buy a mouse pad for my desk at work (Just did this! I got a mouse pad AND a keyboard wrist rest. July 2012)

Learn how to use all of the applications on my Mac

Grow and use 3 varieties of herbs (Grew basil, oregano, and parsley, used all 3 in my roasted red pepper soup! July 2012)

Organize all of the documents/photos on my computer

Finally load up my digital picture frame

Go to a drive-in movie theatre

Have someone guest post on my blog

Go on a date night once a month with my husband (Edited to add a timeframe - let's go with a year! Started this in July 2012)

Get 5,000 views of my blog - I just checked and I can't believe I've already passed this goal!!!!!! Thank you to everyone for reading :) (5550 of 5000)

See the Best Picture Oscar winner from the last 10 years.

Enter a photo contest

Complete a crossword puzzle

Host a poker night (We did this recently, it was so much fun! We had about 8 people and I made homemade pizzas and had some other snacks - November 2012)

Buy a bigger TV for our basement den (We unexpectedly crossed this off on Black Friday 2012!)

Plant a tree

Read a novel in french

Make homemade jam

Write a letter to myself to open in 10 years

Write a list of 101 things I have already achieved in life

Celebrate finishing this list!

An important milestone...

Sitting on the bus is such a rare occurrence! I commute about 40 minutes each way to work and by the time my stop rolls around there are rarely any seats left. This was complete torture during my intense morning sickness days, as standing in a moving vehicle just made things so much worse!!

Lately though, I've been getting seats. Is it weird that this was the point in pregnancy I was most looking forward to?? People are actually giving up their seats for me. I'm finally looking that obviously pregnant! Yay :)

As a side note: this 30 posts in 30 days thing is rough. I'm aware that my topics have been boring, but my everyday life just isn't that exciting! I have some Christmas baking to do and parties to attend though, so I'm pretty sure it's going to get better for you guys :)

Big nursery component has arrived!

Here's a sneak peek of what we are up to this evening. Can't wait to share more soon!!

21 weeks!

This week was fairly uneventful. I did go to a friend's bachelorette over the weekend and that was tons of fun, even if I couldn't make it out to the bar!!! I think I did pretty good going from 2pm to 10:30pm!

I bought a new outfit for the occasion but then didn't get any photos of me in it, whoops!

This week I craved chicken McNuggets, and I gave into the craving. It was not worth it, my tummy ached a lot afterwards. Right now I'm craving a ham and Swiss sandwich. At least that's much healthier :). Damn deli meat being a no-no though!!! I'm thinking of buying a ham to bake and slice myself. That'll be this weekend.

Here's your photo for the week!

About weight gain in pregnancy...

Guys, I am struggling. Before I got pregnant I had all of these ideas about what kind of pregnant lady I would be: a healthy eating exercising kind. I figured I could keep up my gym routine and hopefully keep my weight gain to 30 pounds. I was scared of gaining more than that. Well, I am learning now that you can make all of the plans you want, but your body is going to do what your body is going to do.

My dreams of healthy eating quickly went out the window when I was so sick from weeks 6-18 and couldn’t stand even the sight of a vegetable. My dreams of keeping up my gym routine went around the same time, when I was nauseous and falling asleep on the couch around 8pm every night. It was all I could do to make it through the work day and home to my new favourite spot on the couch. My husband had to cook all of my meals. I was barely functioning!

It’s been better lately, I have been getting out for walks with my husband and Leroy, but still haven’t made it to the gym. I’m back on vegetables, thank god, and have been having a big salad for lunch every day. I’m trying very hard to cut out all of the fatty, carby things I have been eating daily, but it’s hard! I have almost no self-control.

Anyhow, the point of all of this is that I have gained way more by 21 weeks than I was intending. When I went to buy some new clothes on Friday, I actually cried in the dressing room. I’ve never seen my body like this, and even though I know it’s ridiculous because it’s for such an awesome reason, I couldn’t help but feeling bad about myself. I just feel fat. Again, I realize this is insane, I am growing a baby after all! I think it’s just hard to adjust to the new you, even if it’s temporary. My mom and sister were super supportive when I called in tears over this, but were quick to tell me how silly I was being. I realized that pretty quickly. I’m just not entirely sure how to snap out of this funk…

My “cure” for these feelings? I’ve decided that I need to spend a little bit more time, money, and effort to make myself feel pretty. It’s really important that I feel good about myself, not just for the next four months, but beyond that too. On that shopping trip on Friday I bought myself two new shirts that look really pretty, and tonight I am going shopping for a dress to wear to a Christmas party next weekend. I’m also going to replenish my MAC makeup supply. I also got my hair cut on Saturday and plan to keep up the look because I like it so much! I’m hoping that these things will boost my self-confidence about my new body, the one that’s going to continue to change shape for oh I don’t know, the next 2 years?

Oh, and I am signing up for prenatal yoga and making an effort to get out for more walks, and hopefully a few trips to the gym in my near future, not so I can gain less weight, but so I can feel better about myself too.

I just have to have faith that my body is doing what it needs to do, and enjoy the ride…

One of my first baby purchases!

I told my husband that if we ended up having a girl, he was in for quite a shock. I feel like I will definitely shop WAY more for a girl than I would for a boy. Girl clothes are so fun! There are just so many options, dresses, headbands, polka dot tights, etc. So. much. fun.

Anyway, as soon as we found out we were having a girl I took right to Etsy! Here's what I picked up.

The green and gold one is for my husband, it's a Green Bay Packers baby hat! It's girled up a little with the appliqued flower. I absolutely love it and so does he! I ordered it in 6-12 months so she'll actually be able to wear it during football season next year.

The pink owl is hopefully going to be a prop for our newborn shoot, although it's 0-3 months so it could be a teeny bit too big depending on how big our baby is when she comes out :)

Yay for Black Friday!

Oh hello, brand new much bigger TV! We have been waiting so long for you :) I know what I'm doing all weekend!

Giving thanks...

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American friends!! I am pretty jealous that you're all probably in a pretty awesome turkey coma right about now...

I thought I would take some time to reflect on what I am thankful for this holiday season:

- my amazing and supportive husband, who's strength I admire, and didn't even know the power of until this year.
- our comfortable home. I know we're so fortunate to live in such a great neighborhood and beautiful house at our age.
- our little doggie, he's been so much better behaved these days, and I am very thankful for less poop in the house!!!
- my wonderful family. I am so blessed to have 2 amazing and supportive parents, an awesome sister who is my best friend, and incredibly lucky to have amazing in-laws who make me feel loved every day.

And finally, I am so grateful for this little bean growing inside me. I already love her so much and I just pray that everything continues to go smoothly and we get to meet her in a few short months!

What are you thankful for this year?

Leroy's "shenanigans"...

I haven't posted about Leroy in quite a while, so I thought I would take this opportunity to let you know what he's been up to:

"Hanging" out with us inthe basement

"What do you think you're looking at?"

After a long evening of chewing a bone...

So many toy options, but oh so tired...

"Hmm..  this little unused corner by the stairs is really promising."

Sleeping on my baby belly!

He lives such a hard life, he needs a sleep once in a while!

That is one LAZY dog we have on our hands, I tell ya! It's quite a change from the super energetic little puppy who couldn't be left alone for a second lest he chew on baseboards or pee and poop everywhere. This is such a better version of him, in my opinion :). Don't get me wrong, he still has a ton of energy and needs a lot of attention, but he sure doesn't take as long to tire out! I love my awesome little doggie.    

30 posts in 30 days!

I haven't been blogging like I would like to since I got pregnant. First it was the sickness from 6 to 18 weeks, now it's just laziness and lack of anything very interesting to write about!!! I'm sorry and I really hope to have some interesting content for you over the next month.

One of the things on my 101 in 1001 list is to blog every day for 30 days, so I've decided to embark on that adventure to kick start my writing! I also figure leading up to the holidays is an excellent time. I should have more to talk about, like holiday baking, social events, and shopping! And we can't forget the decorating, which is scheduled to happen on December 1st :)

So get ready for my return!! I promise this includes responding to all of your sweet messages and reading/commenting on your blogs too!!!

Since I posted yesterday we'll call this day 2, ok?

Whoah, we're half-way there!!!

We are half-way through this pregnancy! I couldn't be more excited about making it this far. I didn't write an update last week, I was too busy cooking this baby, and that pesky little thing called working. We started making some progress on the nursery. We cleared out the room of all the junk that was in there, and we bought a new dresser for our bedroom so we could put our old one in the baby's room. My sister gave us 2 huge containers of baby clothes, all of the gender neutral stuff she had since they were team green. We went through it all and put it away in the dresser :)

Ok, I have been holding out on you guys. This week we also found out...

It's a...

GIRL!!!!!

I couldn't be more excited. I would have been just as excited with a boy, but a girl it just so awesome. Bring on the frilly-ness, I'm ready. :)

And we're officially caught up!

So you are finally (almost) all caught up on my pregnancy journey so far! I am lumping 17 and 18 weeks into one post because I didn't write anything last week. I did take the weekly photo though. Soon I am going to attempt to take nicer weekly photos, preferably not self portraits in the bathroom at work... haha. Which means I will have to start taking them on Sundays, when I change weeks on Tuesdays. I'm sure that's not going to make a huge difference :)

Anyways we had a good weekend in our house! On Saturday we hosted a little poker game which was tons of fun, even if I didn't win... sad face... I made homemade pizza and had chips and candy and everyone seemed to have a great time. I'm definitely going to be posting the pizza dough recipe because it's totally worth sharing. Since I am still trying to get back into the swing of things, blogging wise, I took no pictures. Boo!

Ok, enough small talk, here's my update for this week!

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How far along?:  18 weeks (plus some notes from 17 weeks)

Total weight gain/loss:  I finally checked and at 18 weeks I am up 13 pounds. That doesn't seem as bad as I thought!!

The Bump:   At 17 weeks, on two different occasions, 2 different people offered me their seat on the bus, so suffice to say, I think the public can tell I am carrying a little bambino, and haven't just eaten too many donuts!!

What I’m excited about/looking forward to:  Our next ultrasound is next Monday and we're going to find out the gender!!! Wohoo!!

Symptoms:  Still not feeling great, but there are more days of feeling good than days of feeling nauseous. I'm still super tired though, and if I push myself too much I start feeling sick. It's definitely getting much better though, I've actually been up off the couch and contributing to the household... haha. My poor husband is so relieved!!

Belly Button in or out?:   It's in, but it's very shallow. I'm predicting it'll pop out at some point.

Food Cravings/Aversions: Honestly, nothing in either category really, which is awesome! That should help control my weight gain, especially being able to eat veggies again.

Milestones: We had an appointment at 17 weeks and my midwife found the little heartbeat right away! It was good and strong. My husband couldn't come with me so I took a video of it, which ended up being awesome because I sent it to my sister and my parents :) Plus I listen to it several times a day!!

Here are the phots, and yes, I am wearing the exact same outfit in both... I only have so many maternity clothes and this top and sweater are my favorite :)
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17 weeks:

18 weeks:

16 weeks!

This post was written on October 23rd, 2012

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How far along?:  16 weeks

Total weight gain/loss:  I didn't check again this week!!

The Bump:   I think strangers might be starting to wonder...

What I’m excited about/looking forward to:  I booked our anatomy scan! it's in 3 weeks and we'll most likely find out the gender :)

Symptoms:  Still not feeling great, but I have better days mixed in, so I am hoping this is the sign of good things to come. I haven't been sleeping very well because for some reason I have extreme hip pain that wakes me up. I just bought a snoogle pillow so I am hoping that helps out a bit.

Belly Button in or out?:   Definitely in, but seems stretched out a bit.

Food Cravings/Aversions: I ate a couple of salads this week! This is huge for me. I might be on the other side of the veggie aversion :). As for cravings, nothing specific, mostly salty stuff though.

Milestones: Nothing to report this week really...
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