Did my recent absence launch you into the possibly that I had maybe decided to stay in Scotland for the rest of my life? Believe me when I tell you that I seriously considered it, but I’m just far too practical for that type of rash decision.

And I would’ve missed fresh vegetables far too much.

Much has transpired in the past month…

In true celebration of our U.K. Adventure, I made a proper Photobook on Shutterfly. I tend to be the person who takes eleventeen million pictures, uploads them to my computer (or Flickr), and then they never see the light of day again. I vowed that I wouldn’t do that this time, and I’ve even tossed around the idea of putting a few of the pictures onto canvas. That decision will come later though…

For now, I started with a Shutterfly Photobook. Baby steps.

Click here to view this photo book larger

After we got home from our vacation, I wasted no time digging into a new home improvement project. Actually, this project came in sort of a round-about way after we discovered that our living room had hardwood floors throughout.

First, I jumped for joy over the fact that we could scrap our disgusting blue carpets sooner rather than later (and save ourselves some serious cash money), and then I decided that in addition to the blue carpet, my Gazelle and his brother needed to also rip out the cat pee carpet in our sun room/dining room. It was a monstrosity, and it was making our new house smell like a farm.

That called for a complete overhaul of the sun room, naturally.

And in all honesty, I’m kind of proud of myself. This was only my second experience using grout, and I got this project (mostly) finished over the course of 2 weekends. I was so proud and excited and in love with the new room that I took a billion pictures of what a wonderful job I had done.

Then, I lost my point and shoot camera.

Shoot.

So, iPhone pictures are the best I can do.

This is the room in all of it’s “before” glory, taken before we moved in. The picture is kind of dark, but nothing about those flat-painted-white walls, 1980 ceiling fan, or berber carpet screams “dine in me”. I only wish I could convey to you how terrible this room smelled…only then could you fully understand why I was in a frenzy to paint and tile it (‘set it ablaze’ and ‘blow it up’ were two other options that I considered).

Here is a progress picture with the walls painted, but concrete floors still blazing…

Does the color freak you out? It freaked me out at first too. Luckily, the iPhone is not really doing it justice. It’s not quite as “pumpkin” as you might think. I wanted something bright and cheery, and orange seems to be my happy color lately, as also evidenced by the rug I recently bought for the living room…

I’m a new fan of orange. Maybe it’s the hormones.

I decided to use a groutable vinyl tile in the room because it was a) easy to lay, b) resilient, c) didn’t require any crazy tools, and d) quick. This is what it looked like before adding grout.

This picture is the view from the kitchen doorway, and if you look at the wall to the immediate left bottom corner, that is actually a more accurate depiction of the color.

I’ll share the fully-finished pictures with you in a bit, since I’m still deciding what else needs to happen as far as art and window treatments.

And now, I’m fully embroiled in “get the nursery ready for baby” mode! However, this project is becoming much more difficult as my belly expands, and since I am now almost exactly 25 weeks pregnant, things are getting a little wobbly. I’m starting to become even more clumsy than I was before (as if that was possible), so I’m a little daunted by the idea of climbing up ladders and such.

I also plan to share progress pictures of (spoiler alert) baby girl’s nursery, and start trying to get into the Christmas spirit. I suddenly have the urge to tell you how I’ve been too “busy” to decorate and prepare for Christmas (lots and lots of traveling lately), but we’re all busy, aren’t we?! This weekend, more traveling, but I’m taking my annual weekend trip to Christmas Candylane in Hershey, PA to spend time with my NY family (which is a major treat since I was just with them last weekend)!

So, no complaints from me about this trip. In addition to the color orange, I’m also a huge fan of chocolate these days! I definitely blame that on the hormones.

Through all of my seasonal activities and traditions this year, the one thing that keeps ringing in my head is “next year at this time, you’ll have a baby!” I still can’t really believe that I’m having a baby in ~15 weeks, and I can’t even fathom how much different my life will be next year at this time.

Scary stuff.

Hopefully, this one brain-fogged, slightly schizo update post will be the last like it, and I can begin blogging with some semblance of normalcy from now on. I feel like there is so much going on that I want to share, but it’s all happening so fast!

I probably need to get used to that…it’s not going to change anytime soon!

As I was struggling to complete my injury-ravaged marathon in 2009, the only thing that got me through to the finish line was to continue telling myself,

“Just do 5 more minutes…you can do ANYTHING for 5 more minutes.”

And, when the 5 minutes was up, I’d just tell myself the same thing over again. It doesn’t really make sense logically, but something about consistently reminding myself that my condition was temporary eased my mind (and kept me from curling up in the fetal position in an alley somewhere in Baltimore city).

Now, two years later (I can’t believe it’s already been 2 years), I’m completing a different type of marathon. It’s a 9-month-long baby-growing marathon. I’m not feeling defeated by the slow expansion of my belly and body–I’m actually quite happy about the fact that after trying for so long and having so many complications, I’m finally growing a healthy baby. Maybe in reality, the “trying” part was the true marathon.

Despite my happiness, even after being ‘recovered‘ for so long, it’s still difficult to face the fact that I’m inevitably going to gain around 30 pounds between now and March. I will be heavier than I’ve ever been in my entire life. This isn’t a new fear–even before I was pregnant, I feared gaining weight during pregnancy. Now that I’m fully invested in this whole baby-growing journey, I’ve accepted that it’s just going to happen.

Now, as I’m steadily expanding, all I can think about is getting back in shape.

As in, being in better shape than I’ve ever been in. People do it all the time…they have babies, then they look hotter after the baby than they did before. My own Sista did it.

Up until the past month, all of the fitness magazines that I subscribe to have been thrown into magazine racks and stored on shelves to collect dust. As my belly expands more and more by the day, I’m pulling out more and more fitness magazines. Pouring over them, reading all of the articles, studying the recipes. As I struggled through the uncertainty of infertility, I cast my interest in fitness aside. At that time, half of me was scared that working out would jeopardize my getting and staying pregnant, and the other half of me just didn’t care. I was kind of feeling defeated at the time.

I don’t feel defeated anymore. I care again. I just can’t do much about it right now.

So, in the meantime, I have memorized every article in the new issue of Oxygen Magazine, and I’m gearing up for a serious comeback in 6 months.

I can do anything for 6 months.

[and please remind me of this post 20 pounds from now.]

p.s…Don’t  forget to enter my Wasa giveaway (and get a ridiculously yummy recipe for Chocolate Caramel Cracker Crisps in the process)!

One of my least favorite meals growing up was stuffed cabbage rolls. Hated them. In fact, anything with cabbage in it was on my “no thank you” list. It didn’t take my Mom long to realize this fact. Eventually, rather than make my sister and I eat the “cabbage package” of the stuffed cabbage roll, she would lovingly shape only the filling into little rectangles for us so that we could avoid the cabbage.

Another one of my mom’s favorites was boiled ham and cabbage. Doesn’t that sound completely horrendous? Nothing about the name even sells it. Boiled. Ham. Cabbage. Maybe if she gave it a clever name I would’ve liked it better. The one and only time I ever found myself sitting at the table until I finished my dinner was on a boiled ham and cabbage night. It was a very lonely night at the dinner table.

You can imagine my surprise when I immediately started drooling upon seeing Rose’s recipe for Healthy Pigs In A Blanket (a.k.a Stuffed Cabbage Rolls). I get it. I’m extremely food-impressionable at the moment considering my current hormonal state. However, while reading the recipe, I honestly couldn’t believe that I was getting excited about a stuffed vegetable.

[although...stuffed mushrooms...mmm...those are good...]

What initially attracted me to this recipe was the fact that Rose used Swiss chard rather than cabbage. I don’t so much hate cabbage anymore, but it does still seem a little boring and blah-ish. I planned to stick to the recipe on this one and use Swiss chard and ground turkey.

However. The only grocery store that I felt like stopping by after work is kind of ‘inside the box’ when it comes to vegetables, so Swiss chard was not an option. Again considering my hormonal state, I decided I wasn’t driving across town to go to the natural market. I opted for cabbage instead.

You win, Mom.

I had also planned to make these on Tuesday evening while I was cooking Tuesday’s dinner [Shake -N- Bake chicken breasts, fried potatoes, and corn...in case you were wondering like I would've been...considering my current hormonal state], but I just ran out of energy. Rather than getting all of the completed rolls nestled into my CrockPot for the night, I ended up only cooking the rice and mixing up the filling, and that was all I had in me.

Last night, prior to going mall-walking (clearly another story for another day), I slapped together all of the cabbage rolls, put them in a baking dish, and baked them at 300 degrees for about 90 minutes while I was mall-walking.

Yes, I’ve gone from marathoner/triathlete to pregnant mall-walker. But I’m not ready…we’ll have to talk about it later.

When I came home from walking, the house smelled amazing. And I drooled.

I wasn’t sure if My Gazelle was going to like stuffed cabbage rolls, so I also sauteed some turkey kielbasa with Fuji apple slices for him…just in case cabbage was also on his “no thank you” list. It turns out that he liked both the cabbage rolls and the kielbasa, so that’s a win/win for the wife.

Although, he did ask for “more ground turkey” next time. Noted.

The great part about this recipe is that I had enough filling and cabbage leaves left over to be able to put together an entire second pan of rolls. I constructed all of the rolls, put them in a disposable baking tin, poured the sauce on top, popped the tin into a Ziploc bag, and now it’s in the freezer. Perfect solution for any future night in which I have another hankering for stuffed cabbage rolls.

Which is very likely, considering my current hormonal state.

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls (a.k.a. Pigs In A Blanket)

[Printable Recipe]

• 1.5-2 lb. ground turkey (or, cannellini beans would be a good veggie substitute)
• 1.5 cups of cooked rice
• 1T Basil
• 1-2 cloves garlic (or 1T garlic powder if you don’t have fresh)
• 1 small onion, chopped (or 1T onion powder if you don’t have fresh)
• Salt & pepper (to taste)
• 1 T Worcestershire sauce
• 20 cabbage leaves (or, swiss chard, purple cabbage, etc.)
• 2 small cans of tomato sauce (I used the ‘basil & garlic’ variety)
• 1 small can of tomato paste
• 2 cups water

1) Cook rice using slightly less water than normal (you’re going to be baking the cooked rice, so you don’t want it to start off soggy).

2) Mix together the cooked rice, ground turkey, basil, garlic, onion, salt & pepper, and Worcestershire sauce and set aside or refrigerate until needed.

3) Boil a large pot of water. Cut off the bottom “stem” of the cabbage, and place the head of cabbage in the water until the leaves begin to soften and come away from the head. As they peel off, set them aside. This took me about 10 minutes to get all of the leaves off (without ripping them).

4) To assemble the rolls, place a small amount of filling in the center of each cabbage leaf, then fold the sides around the filling to make a little “cabbage package”. Here’s a good video that explains how to do it: Cabbage Stuffing Video. If you watch the second video, she also explains that you can put the cabbage in the freezer overnight rather than boiling it. Interesting…maybe next time.

5) Place the tomato sauce, tomato paste, and water into a blender and combine all together (you can also do this by hand, but I’m lazy). Pour a small amount in the bottom of a 9″ x 13″ baking pan, then begin laying your completed cabbage rolls on top. This keeps the rolls from sticking to the pan.

6) After placing all of the rolls into the pan, cover them generously with the remaining tomato sauce.

7) Cover with foil, and bake rolls until the cabbage is very tender and the sauce is bubbling. For me, this was approximately 90 minutes in a 300 degree oven. Alternatively, you could bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.

My Mom always served this with mashed potatoes, and the tomato sauce is so yummy on the potatoes. You can also serve this with pierogies, kielbasa, or a simple green salad and buttered rye bread.

Delicious!

What was your LEAST favorite meal that your parents made you as a child?

I’ve been pregnant now for approximately 3.5 months. I’m at the tail-end of my first trimester, and I’m starting to feel all “hindsight is 20/20″ about my first stint at my first trimester of pregnancy. I’m also starting to feel extremely irritated that nobody told me the truths about pregnancy before I was pregnant.

Do pregnant women who have endured a horrible first trimester just forget how horrible their first trimester actually was? Is it kind of like the whole “I don’t remember how much child birth hurt because it was such a glorious experience” thing?

No matter the case, I’m mad at you, previously pregnant women. You shouldn’t make the rest of us suffer so.

Let’s just consider this post my public service to those of you who haven’t experienced the miracle of the first trimester yet. If you’re a man, you may want to turn back now.

1) You will probably not want to eat as often as you need to eat. In addition, you will most likely not want to eat the foods that your body needs you to eat. This seems to be a universal truth, and like me, you will just have to feel your way through this. Eat what you can handle at that moment.

2) Don’t bother grocery shopping. The food you buy now will not be the food that you want to eat tomorrow.

3) You might not poop for 3 days. You will hate yourself. Don’t take the Dulcolax that your doctor recommends, or you’ll be up all night in agony. Just wait it out. Trust me on this one.

4) I was watching TMZ yesterday, and one of the guys in the press room said that “discharge” was one of several words that women hate. There are good reasons for this, of which pregnancy is one.

5) You will want to eat things like Sour Patch Kids and Life Savers Gummi’s…even though you normally hate these foods. I suggest eating a piece of fruit first (if you can stomach it), and save the Sour Patch Kids for another day. Fruit is your (my) friend.

6) You will grow body hair faster and more aggressively than you ever have in your life. Plan accordingly.

7) Your skin will become dry like the Sahara. You will need to become innately familiar with The Butters.

8 ) Although you may think that your “baby bump” is starting to grow, it’s really just bloating. Trust me…my “baby bump” is smaller now than it was 4 weeks ago.

9) You will need a reliable pair of nail clippers because your nails grow at lightening speed!

10) You will sweat for no reason at very inopportune times. It’s not cute.

——

Now that we have that out of the way…

Labor Day weekend was relaxing for me, hope it was for everyone else! Spent a lot of time relaxing, floating and swimming in my pool, and hanging out with the dogs and My Gazelle.

I’ve been reading this book, which I LOVE so far…

And yesterday, we went to the movies and saw this movie, which was an action-packed way to spend 2 hours on a lazy Monday:

——

We moved into our house exactly a month ago, and it’s still primarily looking the same as it was when we moved in. We have managed to pile all of the “extra” stuff into the future nursery, and it’s a constant reminder that I only have approximately 7 months to get everything organized and put away. We somehow managed to purchase a house that has less closet space than we had in our prior condos, which seems really odd. We’ll get it figured out.

In the meantime, the pool has sucked up all of our budgeted funds that we set aside for the floors! It looks like we’ll have to live with our ugly blue carpets for a few more months until we can save up more money for the floors. Just when we thought that the pool was all fixed and lovely, a geyser erupted under our deck. It seems as though the wonderful contractor who built the new deck before we moved in conveniently set the footers directly on top of the water line from our pool  to the pump. Wasn’t that nice of him!?

The good news is that the pool is fixed. The bad news is that my lungs hate our blue carpet.

**wheeze…cough…wheeze**

Oh well–we’ll get there. Slowly…but we will get there!

[image cred]

Thank you all SO much for the love on yesterday’s post. I’m happy to have been able to finally let you guys know. It’s been like torture having to stay away from the blog because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut!

I’ve had so many things that I wanted to blog about lately, but they all seem to relate in one way or another to pregnancy. I’m going to try not to completely BORE you with all things pregnancy-related, but the reality is that the next 7.5 months of my life are going to be kind of consumed with babies, pregnancy, and nesting. That’s just how it goes. My apologies in advance.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about food. This is no big surprise, since I generally love food anyway, but the difference between the non-pregnant food-loving-me and the pregnant food-loving-me is that pregnancy has taken my diet back to a place it hasn’t been in years.

I don’t talk a TON about my daily diet, but just know that I generally keep a fairly balanced diet of protein, whole-grain carbs, fruit and vegetables–with some extras sprinkled in there for good measure. For the past few years, I hadn’t considered anything to be “off limits” in my diet. Or at least that’s what I thought pre-pregnancy.

Here’s a little chronicle of my pregnancy, in food:

Weeks 4-5–Meatballs, Meatloaf & Steak, Please: I knew I was pregnant initially because I was craving meatballs and steak. This is standard for me very early on, and I’ve actually had this symptom for all 4 of my pregnancies.

Weeks 5-6–Food?! I have to actually EAT…FOOD?! OK…but only if it’s saltines and Easy Mac. Don’t even put meat NEAR me. And you’re telling me the only way I won’t feel pukey is to eat every TWO hours?! This is ridiculous.

Weeks 6-7–Easy Mac Obsession in Full Effect: I was also trying to bring a few vegetables into the mix, but the only thing that really sounded appetizing vegetable-wise was raw baby carrots. On most days, I was still having to eat every 2 hours in order to feel human. Hamburger Helper was stocked in my pantry for the first time in at least 10 years.

Weeks 7-8–Bring on the Olive Garden Five-Cheese Baked Ziti! I made the mistake of going to The Olive Garden during my lunch hour one day, and the only thing that sounded remotely appetizing was this cheesy pasta dish. Now, I’ve been craving it, and have eaten it a handful of times in the past 3 weeks. It’s difficult when everything else sounds pukey besides Five-Cheese Baked Ziti. *sigh*

Weeks 8-9–Your Pukey-ness is GONE! …psych!!! I seriously thought I was home-free in the all-day sickness realm during this week. I was able to eat vegetables, and I even had salad twice during the week for dinner. I still couldn’t really eat any meat, but I was eating plenty of nuts and beans to make up the difference. I thought I was in the clear.

Weeks 9-10–You Were WRONG! Last week brought with it my all-day sickness. Again, I resorted to my trusty Hamburger Helper (minus the hamburger), Five-Cheese Baked Ziti (damn you!), and buttered noodles. It seems that anything having to do with pasta was OK, but if I tried to add anything produced with anything other than white flour into the mix, it was a nausea party all day. I do have to admit though, I ate more peaches last week than I ever thought humanly possible. In fact…I’d still give my left ear for a peach right now. p.s…I don’t even like peaches. They’re hairy.

Weeks 10-11 (now)–Get Used To It, Sista! So, here we are. Almost 11 weeks. My bambino is just larger than a shriveled up prune, but somehow it’s managing to cause me great intestinal strife. I had Five-Cheese Baked Ziti yesterday for approximately the 4th time in a week. On Sunday, I had Hamburger Helper (minus the hamburger) for dinner. Plain bagels with Earth Balance are the norm (p.s…I haven’t had a plain bagel prior to this week in about 5 years). I’ve been having a problem drinking water this week because it makes me want to puke. This morning, apple juice is my water. Interestingly enough, I’ve eaten Gummi Savers and Sour Patch Kids…two of my most HATED candies ever. I don’t even LIKE candy, actually.

What is the point in all of this play-by-play of my food aversions? Well, considering that this blog is mostly for my own ‘get-this-straight-in-your-head-lady’ purposes, I just want to mention that this has been difficult for me mentally. I’ve realized over the past 11 weeks that I still have some programmed “rules” in my mind about what I ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ eat.

• I shouldn’t eat white bagels.
• I shouldn’t eat pasta every day.
• I should eat vegetables often.
• I shouldn’t request sour cream on my burrito bol at chipotle.
• I shouldn’t drink juice.
• I shouldn’t eat candy.

The problem with all of these rules is that I’ve had to ignore them because of the simple fact that if I DIDN’T eat white bagels and pasta, I wouldn’t have eaten anything. I can’t avoid these things that I “shouldn’t” be eating. The candy can certainly be avoided, and definitely won’t be a habit, but the core of my calories right now are coming from processed food and peanut butter.

I can’t avoid it.

I’m just rolling with it. It’s been an interesting shift of consciousness to have to believe that the things that I want to eat are actually OK to eat. I know that they’re nutritionally void for the most part (besides the few bouts of carrot and peach eating thrown in the mix), but I’m just holding onto the fact that this is a temporary solution, and I’ll get back to my normal eating habits soon enough.

I can promise you that if I hadn’t already done the work with my eating disorder, I would probably be a basket case right now. Recovering from an eating disorder is a lifelong process. I’m not actively engaging in disordered eating of course, but it’s just amazing to me that I can still be triggered at any moment by the most innocuous events. Eating a bagel seems harmless enough, right?

In the meantime, I might try to concoct a more homemade version of boxed Hamburger Helper goodness…

The good news is that I’m not feeling triggered by any of this. I’m actually kind of impressed by my ability to roll with the punches. As I said, I’m just looking at my horribly imbalanced diet as a temporary solution to my pukeyness problem.

A girl has to eat what a girl has to eat…Easy Mac included.

Just a little math for you this morning. It’ll be easy, I promise.

OK, ready?

2 (us)

+ 2 (them)

+ 1 (her)

+ 1 (!!!!!!!!!!)

= our little family!

This latest development is actually the reason for my “blog silence” lately. I have this condition in that unless I can talk to you about exactly what I want to talk about, I can’t talk about anything. It’s kind of an affliction. Because of all of the problems I’ve had staying pregnant (which you can read a little about here and here), I decided to keep the news of my pregnancy sort of quiet for a while. I’ve learned from past experience that the un-telling process is much less enjoyable than the telling process is.

My Gazelle and I actually had our first appointment at a fertility clinic scheduled for July 11th. The fun part about this whole story is that we found out I was pregnant on July 7th, which meant that we didn’t need to keep our appointment because I was already pregnant. Although I would’ve taken the “infertility clinic route” in a millisecond (and was fully prepared to), I was happy to not need as much medical intervention as anticipated.

This time around, as soon as I found out I was pregnant, I immediately called my doctor and requested to be put on a progesterone supplement. After having two back-to-back miscarriages, I didn’t want to chance losing another pregnancy because of something as simple as a progesterone deficiency. I already had reason to believe that my levels were typically low (because I had early pregnancy blood work in the past that indicated low levels), and since progesterone is the hormone that keeps you pregnant, I wasn’t messing around this time.

I took a pregnancy test while I was visiting my family in New York for ‘summer vacation’. Throughout the course of that week, I hiked up Bald Mountain, enjoyed several trips down the Cascade Falls and Black River water slides at Enchanted Forest, and I even ran/walked The Boilermaker 15K as originally planned. I didn’t overdo it, but I was not willing to believe that the simple act of living my normal life was going to cause me to lose this pregnancy. I had fallen into that pattern for a good portion of the previous 10 months, and I wasn’t going to do it again.

And now, I’ve further affirmed my position that water slides, running, hiking, and exercise in general do not cause me to have miscarriages. Because I’m still pregnant, and I’ve done all of the above in the past 10.5 weeks.

I have learned to trust myself again. It turns out that I still know my body, despite all of the drama that it has caused me over the past year.

I have still continued to work out when my energy levels and schedule will allow me. However, with having moved recently and trying to get everything in order with our house, I’m TIRED. Only over the past week have I started to feel a little relief from my ALL DAY sickness, so hopefully (even just a tiny bit of) my energy will return soon as well (please?).

So for now, the plan is to just eat the foods that my body will allow (meat is pretty much off-limits right now…*gag*), get the boxes lying all over our new house unpacked, prepare for our housewarming party (this coming Saturday), move my body as often as possible, prepare for our trip to Scotland (which has somehow managed to sneak up on me), and just be happy.

Not allow myself to be overwhelmed with everything that “needs” to be done, and just enjoy this time in my life. Stay present. Relax.

Everything is falling into place, and it makes me smile.

It’s been such a busy week of painting, packing, moving…sweating. My primary focus for the past week has been to keep my sanity in any way possible. That means that last night, I finished “working” at 7PM, sat on the sofa, and watched 4 hours of reality TV. I stayed up way past my bedtime, solely because I was suffering from reality TV withdrawal. It’s a problem.

We survived the move, and now we’re just trying to get the last odds and ends moved out of the old condo and into the new house. We have weekend plans for the rest of the month (including a housewarming party!), so I’m going to have to find the motivation to get all of the unpacking done throughout the week. In addition to working my regular job. In addition to getting back on a workout schedule. In addition to maintaining my sanity.

Oy.

So, throughout this post, just keep in mind that this is the adorable remodeled kitchen that I left back at my condo:

And, because I think you might care, here are some progress photos of my new kitchen (which is not finished, and likely won’t be finished before the party)…

Oy.

Can you believe that people PURPOSELY glued this monstrosity to their walls?

This wall also had wallpaper on it–this is what it looked like after taking 1/2 of it off. Did you know that newer wallpaper is kind of two-layered? I didn’t either, until I started trying to remove 2 walls of it! That brownish layer of stuff on the right side of the wall is the 2nd layer of paper/glue. All I did is sprayed it down with some warm water, and it scraped right off with a putty knife.

This is what it looked like with all of the wallpaper removed. The wall definitely needed some spackle, but it cleaned up fairly well. I was surprised to find that there used to be a different window on that wall, and not too happy about having to try to hide the terrible patch job that was done to close it in!

This is a view taken from the middle of the living room. I still love how the kitchen opens up so nicely into the living room. Don’t you love the blue carpet?

This is what the wall in that first picture looked like after the wallpaper was removed and it was painted with 2 coats of Olympic’s Zero VOC ‘Brown Clay’. The pictures aren’t great because they were taken with my iPhone, but the color is pretty true to this picture. Luckily, I’ve located my big girl camera, so future pictures should be much prettier.

Here’s the main wall after 2 coats. It looks a little ‘pumpkin’ in this picture, but it’s not in real life.

You may have missed it in the first picture (because it has a very “cavernous” effect), but residing around the perimeter of the kitchen above the cabinets is about a 12″ high section of faux brick panel. It’s not actually faux brick…it’s real brick, but only in that the manufacturer decided to cut  1/4″ slabs of brick (brick “slices”), and mount them onto a wood panel.

Genius?

Not really.

I’m not super crazy about the brick itself, but rather than ripping it down right now, I decided to just paint it. Now that I’ve started to paint it white(ish), I actually like the way that it adds a little bit of texture to the space.

I’m still debating whether I’d like to paint the trim a different color, or maybe I’ll paint the “brick” a different color in the future. The beauty is that it’s my house, and I can.

This is the main kitchen wall, after painting the window trim and the trim that goes around the doorway. In the future, I plan to switch out the doorway trim–partially because I think that it could look better, and partially because the ceiling is sagging a bit and I’m concerned.

As a side note, I’ve been trying to convince My Gazelle that we need to remove that door that you see next to the refrigerator. That is actually the door that leads to our dining room, which was built as an addition to the house. Since that door used to lead to the back yard, it still remains, but really serves no purpose.

My safety-first police officer husband is convinced that the door adds extra security should someone ever try to break in. However, I’ve never left that door closed unless I was painting the wall or brick behind it. To me, it’s pointless, and detracts from the space that I’d like to use for a 2-seater pub table!

What do you think? Should we remove the door, or leave it?

In the future, I’ll also be painting the trim around the living room window that shares the wall with the kitchen. I’m really not a fan of wood-colored trim, so it’s likely that all of the trim in the house will be updated to a more chipper color.

This is a little better picture of the partially-painted brick, and you can also see the 2 drawer faces that I’ve already refinished! I’m so excited about my cabinet refinishing project, because I think that it’s going to make a HUGE difference in the way the whole room looks.

The plan is to finish the cabinet project after I’ve finished the remainder of the brick and trim painting. At my current rate, I should have the cabinets finished by around Christmas…in which case, I’ll have to do the cabinets first, because they’re messy and need to be done outside (and I won’t be staining cabinets in the driveway wearing snow boots).

When it comes down to it, I’m really excited about everything we have going on, and I’m happy with the way that the kitchen is turning out…but, there is a lot of work left to do. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed, since now I also have to worry about unpacking in addition to remodeling. I will just continue reminding myself that we have a lifetime to live in this house, and it will not be “perfect” overnight. That’s OK.

I love it anyway.

We’re settling on our house in 1.5 hours!

I’m excited!!!

I’ll have a full update later…just wanted to share my excitement.

Since I have been absent from the blog for more days than I’d like to try to count, I feel like I should explain (in iPhone pictures, of course) the things I’ve learned during my little “vacation”. It’s important. Take notes.

1) It is my duty to take a picture when a dog runs away on my husband’s watch.

2) It is also my duty to take a second picture, just in case the first one does not turn out.

3) Being a baby is extremely hard work, apparently.

4) If a boat tour is offered, always take it.

5) If a castle tour is offered, take it.

6) When touring a castle that is located on an island, make sure you know when the last boat leaves.

7) The journey is always worth the destination.

8 ) Don’t be afraid to eat pizza at a restaurant with a wildlife scene featured on the placemat.

9) There are very few things in life that are more beautiful than the bond one has with their siblings children.

10) Always try on swim suits [and take pictures] before buying them.

11) I repeat. Always try on swim suits [and take pictures] before buying them.

[shudder]

12) When you think you’ve found “it”, be sure to get a second opinion. Then get a third. Only then is it OK to buy it.

13) Stop to smell [and photograph] the peonies.

14) Stop for a moment and just enjoy the view.

So that’s it for me!

What have YOU learned this summer?!

Happy Monday!

I’m excited to report today that I did almost nothing for the entire weekend besides bake cookies and bread pork chops. I made chocolate chip cookies with vanilla pudding (try it, they’re amazing), and Parmesan crusted pork chops for dinner yesterday, and My Gazelle was very appreciative. As I’ve explained more than once, he values home cooked meals more than practically anything else in this universe. This was his last weekend off for a while, and I’ll be visiting my family for the entire week of July 4th (he will be joining us for 3 of those days), so I wanted to take advantage of our last weekend.

As such, I didn’t work out at all…but I’ve postponed my long run for today, and I’m prepared. My training schedule is still rolling along pretty well. I’ve only missed a few workouts, and I’ve actually not missed a run in the past 3 weeks. That’s progress, right?

In light of the fact that the house we have been trying to buy since January was taking so long, and because we realized that the property taxes in the county we were purchasing the house in were sky high, we decided to start looking for another house. We expanded our search out to a neighboring county, and we started looking. I quickly got frustrated. Despite everyone telling us over and over that “it’s a buyer’s market”, it’s actually a really tough market right now in our price range. Although we were able to expand our budget by quite a bit just due to the decrease in property taxes and homeowners insurance, the prices of houses in this “new” county were also higher. I felt like we were back at square one again.

Then, we found our house.

This time, I mean it.

After getting through a short initial offer/counter-offer process, we are under contract, and this is NOT a short sale. It’s a standard sale, with real live people selling the house as opposed to a bank. We had our home inspection last Friday, and pending some decisions on repairs that need to be made, we will be settling on July 21st. The plan is that we’ll take about 2 weeks to paint and lay laminate flooring, then we’ll move in the first week of August.

The house is by far not a finished product. Since we don’t believe in credit cards or exorbitant amounts of debt, we’re going to fix the house as we save the money, and we’ll do anything on our own that we can. There are some modern day examples of families who live by this philosophy (love the Petersiks!), but my first example of this was my own parents.The reason why I know how to hang wallpaper and such is actually all due to my parents and their love for the remodel. Well…actually, my Mom loved starting projects, but needed my Dad to help finish them!

When I was just a baby, my parents purchased the home that they still live in for about 1/2 of what most new cars cost these days. It still blows my mind that they were even able to live in the house, since it was definitely not a finished product. They had purchased a drafty, old, sort of falling in farmhouse from the 1800′s. My mom recounts stories of sitting on the steps crying because it was such a mess. Through the many years that they’ve lived in the house, however, they’ve turned it into a beautiful home. My parents have not gone into debt through the process, and they can probably count on one hand the number of times that they’ve hired someone else to do a project for them.

My Gazelle isn’t quite as tool-friendly [har har] as I am, but he’s very willing to learn. Our goal is to turn our new house into a home over the weeks, months, and years that we live there. This is going to be our forever house, and we will raise children there. It’s the perfect house for us, but it needs some love. It’s going to be a long process, but all we have is time–right?!

Our family has many memories of the remodel of our family home, but the one thing we always wish is that we took more pictures as it was happening. My little brother was so young during the early years of the remodel that he can barely remember what it looked like before now…which is really a shame since he missed the whole “oak paneling” phase! I don’t want to look back and wish that I had “before” and “after” pictures [and I also don't want to bore you with house stuff if you're not interested], so I started a separate blog for our house!

House Becomes Home will follow the saga of buying, remodeling, and “homing” our house. And we’re going to Home the ‘ish out of it. The first post went up today about our home inspection and all of the demanding things that we’re asking the sellers to do. Should be interesting to hear their response.

So, check it out. There’s a full story on the house, complete with descriptions and pictures of the rooms. And, if nothing else, it’ll be fun to watch us screw stuff up!