A Little Bling

Miss. S is the girliest little girl. I'm not sure why this surprises me but it does. Maybe because her closest friends are boys? I don't know. She has been begging me for days to look through my jewelry boxes. Finally tonight I caved. I ignored the sink full of dirty dishes and piles of laundry. I set her down and talked to her about each piece as she tried them all on. Where they came from. Who gave them to me. I have a lot of junk pieces that I have bought myself but I have some really special family heirlooms too. It was interesting that those were the ones she liked best. "Mommy my favorite is the one with the white lady... Or the pearls. I love the pearls... Or maybe the gold ring is my favorite. Yes the gold one." She was so careful and tender. It was such a sweet moment shared with my little girl. I don't know why it took me so long to do this with her. Sometimes I just need to remind myself to slow down and take a minute to enjoy this amazing kid. One on one. Doing something just for her. Make her feel like a true Princess. As I looked at her wearing five necklaces, multiple rings, bracelets, watches Ect. Dripping in "jewelies" (her word) I truly did see a little Princess.

App Love

It's no secret I love my iPhone. Like most of you out there with a smart phone I have a ton of apps I rarely use, but there are those rare handful that I find endlessly useful and fun. Some that even enrich my life. I have never been great at journaling. I'm good at it for a while then it trails off. I'm constantly trying new ways to get it right. The closest I've come is keeping a family blog, but along with this one it fell by the wayside this past year. I needed something quick, easy and convenient. Enter My Wonderful Days. I love this app. It has made journaling fun for me. Every night I jot down a little about my day. Swipe my emotion whether happy or sad. You can even add pictures if you want. It takes me 5 minutes every night. It has helped me a lot with remembering events and details that other wise would be lost in the jumble of my brain. It has also amazingly enough really helped me de-stress. So good job My Wonderful Days! I love your app! Oh and the design of the app is really great. The look of it is simple and clean and lovely.

Lucky 2013 Pt.2

Our new view!

This post should really be titled Lucky 2012. Or a look back on 2012. Or something to do with 2012 because it really has nothing to do with 2013. However last night in my sleepy state I titled yesterday's post Pt.1 so this inevitably had to become Pt.2. Oh well. Forgive me. Oh and disclaimer this post has a lot of words! I don't blame you if you choose to skip over it!

So let's visit last year's word shall we. Action. Such a great word. Although it didn't really present itself until around April. That's when something clicked in my brain that I had to get healthier. I wasn't a fan of the baby weight anymore and I was just all around feeling blah. I was tired all the time, overwhelmed & stressed. So that is when I decided to take action. Then around the beginning of summer I decided to make a list of 40 things to do before I turned 40. Which has since grown so now I guess it's turned into my Life List. This was to help me make the most of my time and not be idle. Some items are big and some are pretty small. The point of it was to make more of life. Then this fall we really got sick and tired of living in an apartment so we started to look into moving to a house. We are bursting at the seams in our two bedroom town home. So it has now turned into a necessity to move up in the world. Action has been taken in all three of these areas!

This year I lost 20 pounds and generally all around got myself healthier. I won't tell you my before weight or what I weigh now. I will just say I met my goal & I'm really proud of myself. If you were to ask me 2 years ago if I would ever be this size again I would've laughed in your face. With loosely watching my calorie intake and running about 3 days a week for a half hour each time the weight came off and I'm feeling more physically fit than ever! Lo and behold diet and exercise DO work!

My Life List has changed the way I view life. I get so excited when I get to cross something off the list. I plan my time off now consciously thinking if there is anything I want to to do from my list. We were able to cross several things off this year. Even a couple of big things. It brings me so much happiness to know that I'm not sitting around wasting my time. I'm checking things off my list!

Finally our last big decision that required action this year was finding a house. When we started out we weren't sure if we would rent or buy. Then we decided buying is what we wanted most and we could afford it. We were surprised when the option to build came our way and we could actually do it. So we found the perfect piece of land located at the end of a very quiet cul-de-sac with a wonderful view of the Texas Hill Country. It's amazing and we start building this month (I think). I'm excited and terrified all at the same time. Most importantly I know it's the right decision.

So 2012 was good for us. Action was the absolute perfect word for the year. Now I'm looking forward to a lot of changes and great things to come in 2013. I'm still applying muchness (2011) & action to all I do in life but now it's time to add a little bit of gratitude. I can't wait.

Also this blog will be under going some big changes this year. Some changes are going to be pretty drastic. Denny, the Mister, will be posting every now and then. So in order to accommodate him the name and look of the blog will probably have to change. Also posts might sometimes be a little wordier. We've been talking about blogging together for a while now and I'm excited to finally get that going! Be patient with us while we work out all the kinks! Thanks!

Lucky 2013 Pt.1

So grateful for Christmas, Christmas Jammies & these two wee littles.

According to my Google Analytics people are still looking at this blog. On Saturday I got a whole 21 pages views! Amazing! If you haven't noticed I took about a year off, and I really did feel something missing from my life. I needed that year but I'm ready to start this whole thing over. I really am the type of person who needs a creative outlet.

I was supposed to have a hot date with the Mister to Urban Taco and Les Mis tonight but someone called in sick to the restaurant so here I sit in front of my computer. My baby boy (who isn't really a baby anymore) is asleep in the next room & Miss. S is watching The Incredibles for the time being allowing me a few minutes to quietly reflect on the passing year. Every year has it's trials and it's joys. This one seemed to be one of extremes. I read back to last year's New Year's post and a couple of the lines stuck out to me. It said "2012 looks to be better. Still hard. But better At least the struggles I see on the horizon in 2012 will all be to better our little family." Indeed this ended up being the truth. It was a hard year but it was the best year. Great things happened for us!

I don't really make resolutions. Someone put a status on Facebook today that said something to the effect of if you're waiting for New Year's to make a change, you've got it all wrong. I kinda agree. You can make a change at anytime of the year. I do however have a New Year's tradition of choosing a word for the coming year. A word to keep in the back of my mind as I go through out the year. Last year my word was Action. I'll tell you more about that tomorrow though. As far as words go that was the perfect choice for 2012. This year I've decided to go with Gratitude. I really want to concentrate on being a more grateful person. To give thanks more. To make the people in my life feel more appreciated. To remember all my blessings daily. Especially the small and simple things that make life beautiful. I haven't always been the type of person to express my gratitude well. I feel it in my heart but have a hard time showing it. This year I plan to show my gratitude daily.

Choosing a word of the year has really been an amazing experience for me. Each year I've learned something new about myself and grown as an individual. I'm really excited for this upcoming year and what it has to bring! I'm off now to celebrate this holiday of staying up late to play Spot It and drink hot cocoa with my favorite little lady. I hope you all have a wonderful New Year's and what ever your tradition may be (resolutions or other) I hope you have an excellent 2013!

It Happened Again

I am completely aware that I have not put up a new post in months. It's happened before and I'm sure it will happen again. And you know what? It's ok when that happens. Sometimes life just gets in the way. Back in December I started working again and since then life has been a bit busier than it was before. Trying to juggle work, family time, church, house keeping, exercise, ect. is tough. I do miss blogging though. I've been trying to think of ways that I can add it back into my life again. It wouldn't be in the same capacity. I don't have time to make it an everyday part of life and I don't have much time to sew and craft like I used too. So little by little I may add a post here and there. It makes me pretty happy when I do. I like having this space that is purely for my expression.

You know what I really don't have a problem with updating? My Instagram. I might be more than a little obsessed. You can follow me if you want to @baileyl. You'll see lot's of pictures of my kids and even some like the one above.

Monthly Photo Project: 9 Months Old

This is slowly turning into the monthly and a half photo project. Oh well! I do what I can! Funny thing about this fabric. I did a post about it here last year. I had found it on the Fabric Worm etsy shop.  Then I couldn't find it anywhere. It disappeared. The other day I was with the fam at Joann's and lo and behold they had it! I was super surprised to see it at Joann's of all places and on sale to boot. So I bought 2 yards.

Can you believe there are only 3 more pictures in this series?!!? Where is the time going? This boy is perfect in Every. Single. Way! I just adore him more and more as the time goes by!

Good Riddance

This just proves that I have found my muchness. I HATE posting pictures of myself. However I'm doing a photo a day project and the first day is a self portrait. This is as good as it gets.

Oh 2011. I'm not too sad to see you go. Don't get me wrong a lot of good things happened in 2011. But a lot of crap (excuse my crassness) happened too. By far the hardest year we've had. So I'm sorry to say this but 2011 I'm breaking up with you. I'm leaving all my negative feelings for you on the 31st of December. I'm on to bigger and better things.

Now 2012. That's a different story. 2012 looks to be better. Still hard. But better. At least the struggles I see on the horizon in 2012 will all be to better our little family. Hopefully they will all lead to great things. The only way to a wonderful life is through hard work. This I know. There are things that I don't want to do that I have to do in order to move our family forward. And I'm proud to say that I'm brave enough to handle those challenges. My words for last year were Simplify & Muchness. I may not have simplified as much as I wanted to. But this much is for sure. I did find my Muchness. So it looks like 2011 wasn't as much of a disappointment as I thought it was!

This year I want to continue to see how brave I can be. But I want to dig a little deeper. What 2011 lacked was action. I want to find what really inspires me and do it. Figure out what I'm really passionate about and live it. I'm the type that gets wild ideas and then they pitter out. Not this year. This year I'm going to learn to follow through. Even if the idea seems crazy. This year I'm going to put my whole heart into whatever I do. Even if it seems impossible. This is the year I'm going to make something of myself. Just you wait 2012. The word for this year is action. I'm going to try with all my might to act on the things I think are most important. There are a lot of changes that we've have talked about making in our life in the past. And they haven't gotten done. This is the year to change. Change requires action. So that's what I'm going to do.

So 2011 I'm done with you. 2012? Your future looks bright my friend.