'Before' Pics of the Bathroom

Here are the before pictures of the bathroom we are redecorating! The painting is now complete, just waiting til tomorrow (payday) to go get the fabric/shelving and accents to finish it completely. I will post up as soon as its all complete!

Redecorate Phase 1

Redecorate the Apartment - Phase One!

We started on the redecoration of the apartment today and have decided to start with Hannah's bathroom/bedroom since we already had that paint, its one less thing to buy right now. So today I started painting her bathroom and am almost done with it. Just need Sean to bring home the ladder to finish the top of the walls.



It will be a color scheme of this deep pink with black and silver accents. I will be using black shelves to put some cute decorative stuff on. Also, in the bedroom and bathroom I will be making curtains for the shower and window. The one in the bathroom will go from the ceiling to the floor and I am hoping to find some black/white damask print fabric. I am looking for glam/dramatic in both of these rooms. I will be going this weekend to hopefully find the fabric and the shelves that I need for the rooms!

22/30 Blog Challenge

We are at the halfway point in our blog challenge that was issued on July 14th! How have YOU done?

I am 22 (this blog makes 23) out of 30 with this blog and my photography blog and there is still 2 weeks left in this challenge.

What are you waiting for?

Bedroom's Up First!

We have decided to redecorate and paint the master suite first! I have picked out the color palette for the master from Dunn Edwards (www.dunnedwards.com), if you want to see the actual palette the colors are

Hope Chest (DEA 160)
Raging Tide (DE 5809)
Spring Leaves (DE 5640)

Basically, brown, blue and sage. We will probably only paint one wall and use the other colors as accent colors for prints for the walls or things like that. I am so excited! I haven't gotten to redecorate in quite a while! Whoo!

Move or Paint?

We live in a nice 3 bedroom apartment in North Peoria, we love the neighborhood, the complex and our neighbors. We haven't ever had any problems here and we absolutely love the actual apartment...with one exception, we have kind of outgrown it. So we found out that there are some 4 bedrooms available in the complex and decided to go take a look. The 4 bedroom is 100 sq ft bigger than what we have now, but the layout makes it actually seem at least 100 sq ft smaller! Plus, the only 4 bedrooms available are all WEST facing windows and as my peeps who live in the PHX know, west facing windows in the PHX are a big HELL NO! The rooms are all smaller than our current 3 bedrooms, plus the kitchen has way less counter and cabinet space than our current apt. We have decided to stay put in the smaller, but better laid out 3 bedroom. So since we are staying here for another couple of years (already been here 2 years) we are going to paint! Woohoooo! Stay tuned for paint colors....

Menu Plan Monday!

Yeah, so I totally forgot to do this last week, so here is this week's menu!


Monday - homemade chicken tenders with edamame

Tuesday - quesadillas and beans

Wednesday - shepherds pie

Thursday - pork chops and steamed vegies with baked potatoes

Friday - pizza night!

Bad Mommy Weekend...

This has been a horrible mommy weekend. First off, Hannah is sick right now with a cold. I have a feeling it will turn into croup before all is said and done just like the last several colds she has had. Well yesterday she was playing in the living room and had gotten out a set of measuring spoons. She then threw them on the floor and forgot about them (as did I). Until, she slipped and fell on them and tore her knee open. Blood everywhere. She is screaming, I am nauseous at the sight of my child's blood. I rush her into the bathroom, put her up on the counter and start running water over the knee to see how bad it really is. Its bad. There is a flap of skin hanging there. OMG. Nauseous. Can't handle touching the area, my bones hurt because she is hurting. I somehow manage to get her all cleaned up and bandaged without completely losing it myself. Sean calls a while later I tell him what happened and he says I need to take the bandage off and clean it again and rebandage it. Oh. HELL. NO. He said I have to so that we make sure it doesn't get infected. Sweet LORD man. And of course, he won't be home for HOURS still so I HAVE to do it. Ugh. So off we go again to the bathroom to wash it out and put a clean bandage. Hannah of course fighting me because it hurts like a son of a BLEEP. Finally it is done and she is calmed down. The rest of the night went by fine. Then today because she has this cold, I have been giving her some decongestant once during the day to help her breathe better. Well this afternoon I go get her some meds, pour it in the little cup and bring it out to her. I had left the cap undone and the bottle on the counter in the bathroom knowing that I needed to come right back in there to rinse the cup and put the bottle away. So I give her the medicine, then the phone rings, then I see all the dishes in the sink so I go and start doing the dishes. Next thing I know, Hannah is bringing me the EMPTY bottle of decongestant. O.M.G. That means that she DRANK THE REST OF THE BOTTLE. Oh, and have I mentioned I am at home today with NO CAR or CARSEAT. Yeah. So I flip and text Sean to have him call me and tell me what to look for. Thankfully there really wasn't that much left in the bottle, one more dose and that was it, so she only got a double dose, but still. OMG. So now I get to spend the next several hours paying close attention to her heart rate, if she is sweating or hyper and fidgeting. Those should be the only side effects the doctors in the ER says to look out for. Since there was only 1 dose left in the bottle it shouldn't be anything to worry about. Ugh.

Work Work Work

Here we are another weekend and again, Sean is working. I am starting to really hate that he doesn't have a regular M-F 8-5 type job. He works almost everyday picking up OT and when he works he leaves the house at 6am and doesn't get home til 8pm. That makes for a very long day for him and very little time for him to spend with Hannah. That is what bothers me the most is that Hannah is missing him. I can deal with it for myself, but in her 3 year old mind, she doesn't quite get WHY daddy has to be at the hospital so much...So we have started looking for other jobs for him...and me. Life is just to much playing catch up and trying to make ends meet these days and there is never anything left over to actually have some fun and enjoy our time together. I am looking at getting into Non Profit Management now that I have been doing that on a volunteer basis for a year with TMN. It has been a great resume booster, but now I am ready to start getting paid. I will still keep on my PhoenixMommies and TMN stuff, but I just have to start bringing in some cash. Unfortunately with gas, food, rent and everything else going up except for INCOME well it just gets even worse in the making ends meet dept. Anyway, hopefully we will find some work that we enjoy and pays well and start actually enjoying the down time!

Another Successful Session

I had my second maternity session of the week today and it was fantastic! So excited and I got tons of great shots. The model was happy and me too. Perfect!

Moment Of Silence

One of the members on my PhoenixMommies site told us that her newborn son Tristan passed away over the weekend. They knew before he was born that he was going to have a long hard fight to even survive past birth, but he was born a few weeks ago and took a turn for the worse on Sunday. He passed around 5 on Sunday evening. So I have decided that I am going to close the site (PM) for one hour tomorrow morning during part of the memorial service. Its so sad and I cannot imagine the pain that family is in...anyway, so we will be honoring little Tristan with closing the site down for a while tomorrow.

Back On The Train

I had my first photo shoot today in at least a couple of months. I had so much fun and I completely fell a little more in love with photography. I have another shoot tomorrow morning that i am really looking forward to. I have a busy week with 4 shoots total, but so excited!

Its That Time Again...

Time to


and smell the roses. I am in desperate need of another recharge. I don't know if its just that I am taking things more personally or what the case is, but I am definitely getting worn down again and I cannot be having that! I have too much positive going on right now!

I Made It Home Safely

Do you ever have one of those days where you just know you should have stayed home in bed? Yeah..today was one of those days. Sean worked today and and my mom hurt her back a few weeks ago and can't drive right now, she had a chiropractic appointment today and needed me to take her. So Hannah and I got up and got ready and left the house by about 9 am, we got to mom's house and picked her up. Got to Dr Warlick's office early so they squeezed her in early. Then we went to lunch at Arby's. We had a nice girls lunch and then we dropped Mimi off at her house. Hannah and I decided while we are on that side of town why not drop in and say hi to Sean at the hospital. So we took him our leftover lunches and visited for a bit. Now, on the drive home, we witnessed 2 serious accidents and another couple of near accidents. I was so paranoid on the way home that every road I took there was road construction and accidents! People were driving completely insane and I just wanted to get the hell off the roads!

So we are finally home safe and sound now and chillin in the nice cool A/C. Its 109 degrees today. Ugh.

Are You Up To The Challenge?

We are doing another blog challenge on PhoenixMommies. There are quite a few of us 'bloggin mama's' as I like to call us, so I issued a challenge to my fellow bloggin mama's to see if we could do 30 blogs in 30 days! I am doing pretty well so far on my challenge, so be prepared to hear lots of boring little details on my life and the things going on with us!!

Kids Eat Free on Wednesday!

So we had an event today for PhoenixMommies in my area group (North West Valley). We decided to head over to the Chick Fil-A by Arrowhead mall so that us moms could get out of the house and socialize and let the kids get a good healthy lunch (for free with the purchase of an adult meal) and then play in the kids play area.

Hannah and I got there just a few minutes after 11 and there were only a few other moms and kids (not from our group) there eating. We got our lunches and went and sat to eat. A few minutes later the place was packed and a total madhouse! Soon after that a friend from PM joined me with 4 of her 5 kids (Thanks again Lynnette!) and we got to sit and chat while the kids went and played. Yay for mommy time!

I really like going to CFA even if its crazy busy like it always is on Kids Eat Free day, its just nice to get out, get a deal and let Hannah burn off some energy with other kids!

Have You Been Bitten?

Ok, so I fought the first round of ...'you have got to read the Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer'! They are found in the juvenile section at bookstores, and I don't know if anyone knows this or not, but I passed the juvenile department a long time ago! Well then, some of the moms on PhoenixMommies decided to do the Twilight books for the book club. I was intrigued after hearing them talking about these books, so I went and picked them up at Costco.

I read the first book, Twilight, in 24 hours. Yes, it is THAT good! I read the second one, New Moon, in 24 hours. Again, yes it is that good! So I am reading the third book in the series now, Eclipse. It is taking me a little longer to get through, but still just as good as the other two. I can't wait to finish this book and see where things end up! I am dying for the fourth book in the series to come out in August!

So, I am just going to say here and now I am on Team Edward! and if you haven't read these books, go get them! You will be sucked in just like I was!!

A 3 Year Old With A Crush?!

I was standing in the kitchen cooking the other day when Hannah comes in and sits down on a bucket...after a minute she gets a great big smile and says, 'so mom, can I marry Ron from Harry Potter when I get bigger'? ...I'm sorry, WHAT?!! I laughed and said, why do you wanna marry Ron? She got all giggly and said, 'cuz I think he's cute and he is a nice boy and I have a crush on him'!

After I recovered from my laughing and after my heart rate returned to normal, I said, well Hannah if you still have a crush on Ron when you are a grown up, you can marry him!

Its good we have these moments because they make the not so funny moments worth it!

Menu Plan Monday

Yes I am finally trying to get back on the wagon after, what...a month off I think?! So here is my menu plan for this week!

Monday - Breakfast! (waffles, eggs and bacon!)

Tuesday - Shredded Pork Quesdadillas and refried beans

Wednesday - Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

Thursday - Spaghetti and meatballs with Garlic bread

Friday - Pizza night!

Saturday - Potluck, friends are coming over