Fabric

I love going to the thrift stores and looking the the fabric. I found theses cool patterns for a dollar.  I'm not sure what I am going to do with them  but they are interesting.

New year New plan

We are always working toward a better life. A big part of  that is reducing the trash that our household makes, and reducing our impact on the world. We where both brought up in frugal reused, recycle types of households. My goal in our house is  to not  use toxic stuff, on our bodies, in our house, or our yard.

We have gotten rid of paper towels replacing them with micro fiber towels,
we don't have paper napkins, we use cloth
we buy mostly in bulk, and make food from scratch
we use vinger and baking soda for most of our house hold cleaning.
We make our own laundry soap.
We buy 98% of out stuff second hand.
We are trying to be more local/homemade
We don't eat stuff that is not real. (HFCS, other chemicals)
We are fazing out store bought lotions, soaps, ect for natural alternatives,
Come spring we will start our compost bin again (it sadly failed in the fall and needs some work so that it is not a doggie all you can eat bar.)
We are planning a good sized garden, planning on joining a CSA.
Thinking about getting some chickens.
we have reusable coffee cups,
homemade not store bought
planning on canning food and making beer
planning on biking more maybe making a no drive day.


when i write out what we do a and plan on doing it makes me realize one how much we do, and to how much we can still do.

Soap

On our quest to make our home less toxic and in the spirit of diy, we have embarked on making shampoo.
The  other day I made a yummy body scrub out of coffee grounds, and  today we ran out of shampoo. After reading Skin Deep and how toxic the stuff that we are putting on our bodies, I vowed to make over our shower. We are going green, and that means that we are making shampoo.  I read a lot about making shampoo.
What we ended up doing, and we will see how well it works it using  Castile soap, made out of olive oil it should be good!  All  the reviews are  pretty good online so here we go.
After trying it for two weeks we gave up on the homemade shampoo it is horrible,  We tried a few different combinations of  Castile soap, olive oil, mixing it with other shampoo nothing worked so we've broken down and have switched to another type of shampoo that is organic and much better than the other stuff that we had been using.
We may try again the Castile soap smells good and makes a nice body wash but as shampoo it just made our hair dry,oily. 

Remodeling ~ Bathroom

Before

After

           

We spent the 1st day of the new year painting our bathroom and the second day hanging bead board. We worth it though, I think.  Our bath room is tiny and a looked a little depressing so we decided that the first project of 2011 would be to give it a face lift.  When we bought the house it had really ugly wall paper that we pulled off an painted the walls white. It was a little boring and so we decided to freshen up the little space with wainscoting, and chair molding. A classic, look that fit the style of  our house. We painted three of the walls a very pale yellow green and the wall with the sink a dark gray the end result is fantastic. With the bead board and little updates it looks much more fitting in our old house. 

New Year

It is almost the new year.
New year, new start.
New hope.
I love the idea of making resolutions, of a new start new possibilities. The idea that all your problems can be fixed by making a list and everything will be better.  I think most people like the idea.

me and my sister in 1992

Most people end up breaking there resolutions before the first full week of January. 

Still, I have hope that 2011 will be better.
I am going to work on myself on doing things that I have stopped doing.
Doing more creative things: art, writing, crafting; working on the house; finding peace in my life.
Finding organization for things.
Organizing my chaos. 
Be happy that is the biggest most important resolution of them all.

Good news

Yesterday I went in to the doctors office to get a blood draw and a check up. Good news, iron levels are back up and I'm no longer anemic. It's nice to have something go well. One less hurtle to face.
The only bad thing is the doctor was saying that we should wait 6 months till we try again.
 I don't know if we will wait that long, but we may wait a little longer than we had planned to just to make sure.

We have been going to the pool and I've gotten out the work out dvd's out. My new years resolution is to work hard get getting healthy for baby to be. I just feel like I owe it to both babies (our son and  baby to be) to take this seriously and work hard getting as healthy as I can. It wasn't like I was lacking when we got pregnant last time but there where moments that I slacked off.  When I didn't follow the Brewers diet, didn't go to the pool. I know that this time there will not be that sort of "oh lets just have pizza, and skip the gym" moments. Gone are the high fructose corn syrup, the ingredients that are hard to say, we've even given up the lotions and things that go on our skin that don't get a good score on skin deep a great website that rates products based on how safe the ingredients in them are.

Family

I am lucky, my family is amazing, they have been supportive. They get it, as much as anyone can.
My husband called my mom, and my mother-in-law from the waiting room of the hospital while I was in surgery. I can't even imagine what that phone call was like, to make or get.

My mother in law drove down to our house, with a packet of information on miscarriage, and flowers. She talked to me, while Rob slept, I was so hyper from the medications, that I couldn't sleep. That weekend my mom drove the 6.5 hours from Portland to Moscow to be there when we buried our baby.

We had put our baby in the freezer, later I took the hospital receiving blanket that my MIL brought and cut a small corner of it and wrapped our baby up, my mom knit a blanket that we wrapped him in as well.
 Its very surreal to go shopping for a box to bury your baby in. We went to a major shopping center and bought a plastic container and then to another store where we found a wooden jewelry box that the 1st box fit in.

When we buried our baby,  my sister in law and her family came. Other family members reached out telling us how sorry they where, supporting us. I cannot imagine what it would be like to go through this with out having a family that cares. I feel lucky that we have all this support. That is what I am thankful for this holiday season.