My Resolutions For 2009

I am pretty private about my resolutions and things like that because if I change my mind or don't stick to them (for one reason or another). I always feel like people will feel disappointed in me or they will pester me about it and that is something I don't want. Then I read Stacy's (Squirrel Chatter) and was inspired to give it a shot. Here goes.

1) Find a church (that isn't outside of our comfort zone). Long story but we used to belong to a really neat little church that ended up dissolving. Then tried church shopping at several churches that were so, uh, not us. Then we just got a little freaked out on church period.

2) Be more positive. Whether that means in general or being nicer too, I am going to strive for this. BUT, this doesn't just mean on the outside, I can do that very easily. Trouble is that I often have little one liner jokes in my head all the time that I either hold in or say out loud. I have always loved to give people crap. Not necessarily in a mean way, I just love to make people laugh. Problem is that people don't always know that I'm joking. The police department is full of sarcasm and wit, I think that this is how the cops cope with the stress of their jobs. I am married to a cop who brings a lot of this home. In turn, I have been noticing myself talking a lot more like this. Probably because it is my way of coping with the stress of being married to a stressed out cop. If that makes any sense?

3) Possibly take a family trip somewhere and/or an overnight with my husband. Either of these sound fun but are a lot more work with a child. Even when they aren't coming with. I still nurse Little Buddy before bed and when he wakes up so that is a concern. Plus, we still do not have a will made up and leaving Little Buddy without some sort of plan I feel is selfish and foolish.

4) Get a will. This I feel is so vital. Not only that we organize everything and have some kind of plan in the even we die together without Little Buddy, there needs to be a plan for him so there is less of an issue for his life, happiness, and welfare. Even if Little Buddy and I survive, we need some kind of a plan to carry on. After all, being married to a cop is very high risk and we need to get everything organized just in case.

5) Get pregnant. This one is pretty self explanatory. We took December off but need to get "back in the saddle again," once the new year begins. Maybe it is in the stars for us, maybe not. Either way, Little Buddy is a blessing, a miracle, and a gift of God and we appreciate every minute we have with him. These days will not last forever and one day we will look back and miss them because they went sooooooo fast. I digress, we would love to add on. This little family of ours is a pretty cool thing.

6) Lose weight. Obviously this will not be happening if we do in fact achieve number 5. If we don't or until we do I am still overweight from having Little Buddy. I lost 30 pounds last year and then went up about 10 (darn holidays), but still need to be lighter. Life must be so excellent for thin people, it was for me back when I was thin. I really despise being fat, ugh!

7) Organize photos. Have prints made and put prints into frames and into Little Buddy's photo album. Send out doubles and extras I have loaded up in boxes, etc. Have some old black and whites of old relatives blown up and framed and even gift them accordingly.

8) Take Little Buddy even more places, do more things with him. The possibilities are endless. I want to show him the world. It is a complete joy and wonder to see the world and everything in it with and through the eyes of a child.

9) Take a yoga class. Just something I've wanted to try for a long time. It's very hard to commit to a class because of my husband's crazy schedule. They have a day care at the gym BUT Little Buddy did not do well there the last time I left him there.

10) Renew my FOID card and re-certify. I am not a fan of guns or violence. Years ago I got my FOID card and certified at a range as a fun thing to do to take part in my (now) husband's interests. To tell you the truth, I was a pretty good shot. I now see that it is vital to know how to use the guns in our home. Being married to a police officer is very high risk. For one, they are gone all kinds of odd hours. The dog would most likely be the best burglar alarm but if someone makes it past him I'd at least have a way to defend myself. For two, people who are arrested and/or thrown in jail or prison because of my husband can get a little nuts. It would be highly unlikely but people have been known to go after the arresting cop and/or his family. I don't want to take any chances. If it came down to someone coming in my home and grabbing Little Buddy or attempting to hurt my family, I would have no reservations, NONE! The one big thing that has held me back for the last 3 years was the lead exposure from the ammo (year one I was pregnant and the last two years I have been nursing, which I still am). I just learned (from my secret service agent friend) that there are lead free bullets that you can request, COOL!

Dog Pile Soap?

Just ran across this soap from Lily Bay Soap & Sundry while snooping around on Etsy. Thought it was funny and original. Check it out. Oh, and it's chocolate scented, how appropriate :)

Busy Baker, Buyer, Wrapper, Gifter

Well, I still have loads to do for Christmas. We will have 3 Christmas get-togethers this year. Thank God that the third is on New Years Eve so we have a little more time, rest and another payday in between. Christmas Eve we will go to my FIL and SMIL's house. Hubby has the night off, woohoo! It gets very exhausting packing up Little Buddy and all his things, gifts and my own junk oh, plus a dish to pass when I am going places without him when he's working. He also has New Years Eve off so that will be nice too. Christmas Day daddy works but not til the afternoon. So we will be able to wake up on Christmas Day and have our own little Christmas with Little Buddy (the best part of the whole year). Then we get ready, pack up Little Buddy and all the gifts (in 2 separate cars) and head to my sister's house to have Christmas with them. Then Daddy leaves from there to head to work. Phew! It does get a little exhausting, help or no help. I deeply resent divorces for all the separateness that it creates especially during the holidays. It's near close to impossible to say that we will be spending Christmas elsewhere once you have a child.

Anyway, I am relieved that many of my family and hubby's family are being a lot more frugal this year and spending less and not getting and giving all the extra stuff. I have decided to bake a lot of cookies and put them in small cellophane bags along with small candy canes and Ghirardelli Squares and give that with a small gift. After all, who doesn't like to get a few homemade cookies during the holidays? I have narrowed it down to three different cookies. I WAS going to make an assortment of different flavored spritz cookies, but then decided against that. Too much conformity. So, I have selected to bake: 1) Chocolate Crinkles: never made them before but love eating them and that will fill the chocolate cookie requirement. 2) Snickerdoodles: One of my all time favorites. This is only the second time that I am attempting to make them but found a recipe with cream cheese and apple cider vinegar that sounds REALLY good. 3) Libby's Great Pumpkin Cookies: Never made these either but love pumpkin anything. I also plan to ice or glaze them and will skip the nuts and raisins. I feel the need for a creamy vanilla taste with pumpkin kinda like whip cream on pumpkin pie.

So, that's that. I have finished making the snickerdoodle dough and chocolate crinkle dough and have it chilling in the fridge. I will have to make the pumpkin dough later tonight. I stayed up late last night wrapping presents and am just so feeling so lifeless today. I have hardly been eating anything lately. Not sure why, maybe a little overwhelmed, maybe a little depressed too. This time of year I have high expectations. Not as far as gifts and money but just that it should be very memorable for us as a family and for Little Buddy. Instead, it turns into a stress fest and I just run around last minute like a nut. I am very happy and we will have extra money to get presents for people without using the charge card once. I have counted it and we end up gifting about 26 people. That does not mean that all 26 people get "gift" gifts, but we give something to at least 26 people. Maybe that's nothing compared to some people but it gets to be a lot for one person to take care of. Some of these people we are not very close to but we still want to give them a little something so we I will probably give them a card and little bag of Christmas treats. I love giving, I really do but it is a lot of work to get it all together especially when I am home by myself most of the time with Little Buddy needing my attention. Anybody out there get overwhelmed this time of year? The 26 people does not include co-workers or mailmen or anything like that.

Looking forward to Christmas for Little Buddy. There are just so many things I keep seeing that are really cool for him but I go very easy and just get a few. Plus, his birthday is just a month away from Christmas. Can't believe that the little stinker is gonna be 2. Where did the time go? I can hardly believe that I ever contemplated not having kids. What I would have missed seeing and experiencing in this life. I actually used to think that maybe I would just skip it. Now I think it's humorous when I meet a young person that says that. I think, "What do they know?" and "Oh, how you will most likely change your mind, just like I did, most of them anyway"

Oh yes, and I'm down 7 pounds. No wonder.

How are all of you doing this time of year? I stay home with my son and am out of the loop so to speak. I'd love to hear what other people's lives are like. Good? Bad? Stressed? Simply perfect? I know I read all your blogs and I know WHAT most of you are DOING, but I don't usually get to know how you are DOING this time of year.

Happy Holidays All!!!!! Keep yourselves safe, warm, and appreciative. Oh and sane too :)

*Little Buddy's first visit with Santa. No crying but couldn't snap out of the "deer in headlights" look. I love him!

In Seek Of The Perfect Lasagna Recipe

Hi all! I am just beside myself with crap I need to do so I apologize for slacking on the blog. I am however already thinking of party ideas for my son's 2nd birthday at the end of January. I plan on making a big pan of lasagna and salad and some type of garlic bread. That should make a nice meal for all (after all, who doesn't like a nice hot cheesy, piece of lasagna?). Just curious if anyone out there has an awesome recipe for lasagna? I am hoping to find one that uses fresh garlic and real cheese and also has a good yet simple recipe for the marinara/tomato sauce. I am open for suggestions, recipes if they don't meet those criteria. Thanks in advance for any help you can lend in the lasagna department.

Support Farting?

I saw this magnet on the back of a car the other day. I was at that moment in a tense/stressed mode and started laughing out loud uncontrollably. Needless to say I saw it at the exact time that I needed a good laugh. Enjoy! Farts ARE funny!

Reunited And It Feels So Good

Well, Little Buddy is back to sucking his thumb again. About 2 weeks ago his thumb got so dry and cracked from all the saliva, sucking, and dry cold weather, (plus, I still need to get the house humidifier up and running) that it started to bleed. It didn't do this last winter. I noticed it was getting bad but left it be thinking that if it got bad enough maybe he'd stop sucking it. Yeah, right! It got so bad that one night when he was eating corn chips, he began to cry and make a pain face and was rubbing his little thumb all over his shirt. It took me a bit to figure it out. We thought he was having a painful poop or something. Turns out the salt was getting into all the cracks and burning really bad.

I called the pediatricians office and asked the nurse if she had any recommendations. She told me that I could put Neosporin and a band-aid on it but to be careful because if he kept sucking it he could choke on the band-aid if it came off with all the saliva and suction. Then she told me that there was a good chance that he'd either start sucking the other thumb or that he'd wait til the sore one healed and go right back to it and it would just be a vicious cycle all winter.

So I got big knuckle band-aids and Neosporin and bandaged it up. It was very frustrating for him. He was used to soothing himself to sleep that way for so long he was very restless. He's keep sticking it in his mouth if he was going to sleep or sad or scared and then pull it out right away and look at it all pissed off. (It was kinda funny, am I the worst mommy ever? Oh, well.)

Before long his thumb healed and he wasn't sucking it anymore even with the band-aid off.

Then about a week ago I went in to check on him during nap time and saw him sucking away. It was very cute. I was a little happy that he found it at least for sleeping purposes. He was not sleeping very soundly when it was bandaged. Think it will be OK if this is just an occasional think he does in his sleep. Turns out usually when I go in to check on him he isn't sucking his thumb. Just once in awhile for short periods.

Discount Laundry Room Re-Do

OK! I did it! I did it! I did it! It was agonizing and probably the hardest room to do in the whole house despite the fact that it's the smallest next to the bathroom. I actually re-did the laundry room with a little help from my mom and my husband. I had to do a low budget, low dust, and most of the time low noise re-do. We have since we moved in re-done every room in the house except the garage and the laundry room until now. The garage even got new insulation and drywall a few years back. The laundry room was the pits though. Honestly, I could have cared less BUT it is right off of the kitchen and the door is open the majority of the time so I had to look at it and it was so gross. If you haven't seen the before pictures check out my original laundry room post called Val's Big Idea. I wanted to get this room done forever and my deadline was to get it done before Thanksgiving when we were having 20 people over. It had never been properly painted since it was built. The popcorn ceiling had cobwebs loaded with dryer lint hanging from it. The light fixture was from the 70's and so ugly. The one outlet in the room had only one working receptacle in it. The light switch was completely dirty and grimy like one in a car repair shop and had been clawed at by a large dog from long before we moved in. The blinds we hung needed to be shortened and the AC drainage hose was grotesque transparent vinyl that was loaded up with dirt and mineral deposits, was barely attached and had become a toy for Little Buddy.

Anywho, I couldn't go hog wild patching and sanding due to noise and dust with a young toddler in the house. So I did my best and used a wet sanding sponge for most of the evening out of the plaster patches. I asked for gray paint on Freecycle and actually received some fairly quickly. When I picked it up it was more like a light blue but I noticed it was originally from Home Depot so I took it there and asked if they could tint it for me. They said that the bargain paint (originally purchased for $1.61) was 6 years old and most likely had expired. Then after telling them that it had been stored in a basement and being checked, they decided that it was in fact still good. The tinting process took over and hour, Little Buddy was such a good boy. I had a kitchen floor tile with me so they had an idea what I was aiming for shade wise.

I painted a sample patch of it on the wall and left it there for a few days to see how I (and my husband) felt about it. He said it was way too dark. Then a few days later he said it looked really good. Men?!. So, it was a go.

The floor, is not my favorite. I am not a fan of linoleum BUT was told by the guy that did our kitchen that we would have to go that route due to the fact that there was a sloping floor for the utility drain in there. I purchased a few single tiles from Menard's in various styles to see what would look the best. I had several that were faux stone or ceramic looking and one that was faux wood. We have real light wood floors through our house so I didn't think that the darker faux wood would work. Then when I placed the faux stone and ceramic next to our real ceramic kitchen tiles it looked totally bad. The faux wood surprisingly looked like it would work pretty well due to the fact that it was pretty far from any of our actual wood floors and was not too far from the shade of our kitchen cabinets.

If I thought that contorting my body in all kinds of bizarre and painful positions to paint around and behind and under the appliances, water heater, and furnace was bad, the issue of flooring in there was another story. I laid many of the floor tiles in the center of the room fairly quickly by following the marks on the floor from the old floor tiles. Then came the hard part going around the doorways, under the water heater's feet and piping, around the furnace, and under and behind two monstrous appliances. My mother helped me one Sunday evening for 7 hours (the absolute hardest parts of the room) and then I finished up the remainder of the tiling which took half a Monday. Again, making paper templates and a hundred little cuts and angles, lots of cutting, measuring and back aching!!!

So, below is the breakdown of the cost involved in my discount laundry room redo. I cannot believe that it came to less than $100!!!!! Keep in mind, we wanted the room to look nicer but do not plan on living here much longer than we have to. I think it turned out pretty well for a budget redo that I did mostly alone minus the help from my mom with the flooring and some roller painting my husband helped with (the easy, gratifying part of course).

Peel and stick floor tiles $56.88 Menard's (On sale, 79 cents psf down from $1.09 psf)
Paint Brush $7.99 Menard's
Painters Tape FREE (Found on the ground in the parking lot)
White paint for ceiling and trim FREE (Leftover from previous house projects)
Gray Paint FREE (Asked for on Freecycle then brought it in for tinting at Home Depot to more desirable shade, tinting also FREE because paint was originally from there)
New Light Switch and Switch Plate and Insulation FREE (Leftover from previous house projects)
New Outlet .39 cents Menard's, Outlet Plate and Insulation FREE (Leftover from previous house projects)
Slim Roller Refills $8.99 Menard's
Spackle and Caulk FREE (Leftover from previous house projects)
Cable Ties FREE (Leftover from previous house projects)
Utility Hose $2.88 Menard's (Drains AC condensation, old one was trashed)
Hose Clips $4.99 Ace (Positions hose onto floor and into drain and makes it harder for little hands to yank around)
Light Fixture $5 On Sale at Menard's (Floor model, I asked if there was a discount on floor models, the guy gave me an additional 20% OFF!)

The rest of the items we had leftover from previous house projects like the paint roller pan, stepladder, rags, etc.

Phew, so much easier on the eyes and cleaner to look at from the kitchen :) I love how the gray looks with the white trim, ceiling and appliances. Amen! Now what do I need to work on next before Little Buddy's 2nd birthday at the end of January? JK! That should do it . . . . . I think?