Lets Get Chemically Clean!

UPDATE 4/18/2017
After trying all of these things for several weeks, months, and years, the only one I have kept is the All Purpose Cleaner. It works GREAT on my granite and keeps it streak free!

The face cleaning with oil worked for a little while, then I suppose my face, or hormones changing due to pregnancy, did not like it anymore. I have since switched to just using my Norwex face cloth and then every-other day using the charcoal bar soap by BeautyCounter. I've been doing this over a year now and LOVE it. Followed up with Cetaphil Daily Moisturizer with SPF 15.

Hair care with ACV and pure soap. That one's a no-go for us. I have changed up our shampoo though and use a natural, SLS free shampoo: Nature's Gate Herbal Daily Cleanse Shampoo. We do not use any conditioner in our house, either. If the girls are having some tangle issues, I will use a small amount of Dr. Bronners Lavendar Leave-In Conditioner and Styling Crème. But only on the ends of their hair and never on the scalp!

Lastly, the laundry detergent. After further research, the "detergent" I had been using for over a year was simply just a laundry booster. So, over a three day period I had to strip away all the buildup that had happened on our clothes over that time. Let's just say the color of water the soaked clothes were in was not something you would want to put on your body. Yuck! We have switched to BioKleen Free and Clear and we are very happy with the result!

A resource that has proven very beneficial in education is the EWG Skin Deep Database (http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/). This organization rates thousands and thousands of products for their safety and protecting you from unwanted and harmful chemicals. Each of the products that it rates gets a score from 1, safest, to 10, run and hide from it. There's also an app you can use in the store and scan a barcode to see if it is rated and all the details on every single ingredient and it's rating as well. SO VERY HELPFUL!

This process of finding products that put less chemicals into our home and bodies is an adventure in trial an error. Hopefully some of my mis-steps will save you time and energy in your process!

~***~

Chemicals. Toxic. Harmful. Who wants these things in their house, much less on their skin and their children’s skin? This is my chronicles of my journey to keep my family and our home as healthy and chemically-pure as possible. I also needed anything that I wanted to try to be economical and of course effective. These are ways that I can serve my family and help them be the healthiest that they can be. If nothing else this is where I can keep up with my recipes! Here we go!

All Purpose Cleaner

In 2013 we moved into a new house and the counter tops were granite. I had not had this material in my previous kitchens, and my regular cleaner was leaving streaks on this new, beautiful surface! I had to figure out something else and I didn't want to have to buy the specific “granite cleaners”. Enter, alcohol. Yep, isopropyl alcohol is what I use to clean not only my granite counter tops, but my stainless steel appliances, my bathrooms, mirrors, windows, etc. It disinfects as I clean and there isn't any lingering smell. It’s simple and inexpensive and it TOTALLY works.

1 cup isopropyl alcohol

1 cup water

10ish drops of dish soap

10ish drops of tea tree oil

Mix in a spray bottle and get cleaning. I use cloth to wipe down everything in my house. I find it works better than paper towels or a sponge. The cleaner will look a bit streaky as it dries, but once the alcohol evaporates, you have a streak-free shine!

Face Cleaning with Oil

It all started with the Oil Cleansing method. Strange, yes. Effective, most definitely. It seems a little counter-intuitive to wash your face with oil, but basic chemistry to the rescue! Like dissolves like, therefore, oil will clean away oil. I want to use the good, moisturizing oils to take away the dirty oils produced from my pores that have pollutants from the environment and makeup on them all day long. I also want to kill bacteria so that I don’t have to deal with those pesky breakouts or blackheads, etc. You get the picture. Oh, and this needs to be a quick and inexpensive thing to do, too.

There are many different articles and opinions on the oil cleansing method. From what types of oil you should use to what type of astringent you should use to what types of essential oils to include. Since everyone’s skin type is a little different, there is no hard and fast rule which gives one magic formula for all. You have to test out different things and find out what works best for your skin. I have a combination skin type; oily in the summer months and dryer in the winter months. Here’s what I do:

4 parts cold-pressed virgin sunflower oil

1 part castor oil

10 drops tea tree oil

Mix together and store in glass bottle. Massage on your face about a quarter size amount every-other day. Put a HOT washcloth over your face to open the pores and draw out the nastiness. Rinse the towel and repeat putting two more HOT washcloths over your face. No need to wipe or scrub. The hot water will take care of the oil. Your face will feel soft as a baby bum and not oily at all. No need to moisturize. I do this at night just before bed so my skin has some time to “breath” without anything on it. Just splash warm water on in the morning and you are good to go. On the off nights, I just wipe my face gently with hot water.

Hair Care with Soap & Apple Cider Vinegar

I am very attached to my hair. Very. Like crying after haircuts which took off 0.7 inches because all of my hair was gone! Yes, it’s bad. So, ditching my shampoo and conditioner had me a bit hesitant. I have read countless articles about people going “no-poo” and loving it. And other who hated it. The part of the shampoo that people are referring to as “poo” is the part that makes it foam. Without going into it too much, the “poo” comes from sulfates. These are chemicals that studies have shown will leave a residue in your heart, kidneys, liver and brain just from simple skin contact. Some of it never leaves your body, so yep, you’re just storing up those chemicals in your body. Yuck. The sulfates (most common ones are sodium laurel & laureth sulfate) are a cheap detergent that makes the shampoo have lather. The lather does nothing to actually clean your hair, even though cosmetic companies would want us to believe that the more lather, the cleaner your hair. Simply not true. And with so many other chemicals in shampoo and conditioners that strip your hair of natural oils to just cover them up with other chemicals, including silicon in our conditioners. But, I didn't want to give up my lathering shampoo and soft shiny hair altogether. Baby steps here! So, enter “sorta-poo”.  This recipe includes coconut milk which naturally has very gentle surfactants that will create a great foam when mixed with pure soap. The pure soap I use is castile soap. It is an olive oil based soap and has seemingly endless usage possibilities. Even though it is pricey, you can use it all over the house as a cleaner, and it is very concentrated so you only have to use a tiny amount for each use. After I did the “sorta-poo”, I rinsed my hair with an apple cider vinegar mixture to help with the shine and flyways. THIS WAS FABULOUS! My hair dried in about 20 minutes, which, for me is the nearest thing to a hair miracle. My hair didn't have all of those extra chemicals from the conventional condition coating each strand, so the air was allowed to do it’s thang and dry my hair! I have very, very thick, long, wavy hair. I typically straighten my hair with a ceramic flat iron once every 4-5 days, which is how long I could go between shampoos with conventional product. With the “sorta-poo” method, I  can go 7-9 days without a wash, and I am embracing my waves because they aren't as frizzy and “call-of-the-wild” looking as they use to be!

For a single use “sorta-poo”:

1 teaspoon coconut milk

1 tablespoon castile soap (I use the gentle baby one)

Shake shake shake and you get tons of foam! Just work it all into your hair and rinse.

For a single use apple cider vinegar rinse:

½ cup water (distilled is preferred, but regular tap is fine)

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

Pour over clean hair. Let it sit for a minute or two and then rinse. It smells really strong when you first put it on your hair, but the smell decreases as the vinegar evaporates.

Laundry Soap

This is one I had intended to try out a long, long time ago, but never actually got around to it. My mom gave me her food processor that she never used and I was itching to use it for something, anything! I had the bar of soap and all of the ingredients I needed to make the laundry detergent, so I decided to give it a whirl! The food processor makes this process take up literally 5 minutes of my day and I have detergent for over a month. I shouldn't even have to start with how many chemicals and dye’s and fragrances are in laundry detergent. All of these ingredients in some form and amount stay with your clothes and therefore get onto your skin, your largest organ, and eventually absorb into your skin. There are a plethora of recipes out there for laundry detergent: liquid or powder, pro-borax, anti-borax, etc. Do your research and come to your own conviction regarding borax, but for me, since there is such a controversy around the product, I am going to avoid it for the time being.

I have had great success with this detergent. The kids clothes are very clean the husbands shirts have no stinky deodorant smell, the towels are absorbent again and there’s no musty smells in anything. Clothes also dry faster because there is no chemical residue on them from the wash.

½ c. baking soda

1 cup washing soda

½ cup citric acid (this acts as a preservatives. It draws the moisture out of the detergent, so it gets rock hard. You have to use the back of a spoon to loosen it up, but then it stays loose afterwards. If you don’t want to have to do this, you can put a packet of silica beads in the container and it stays loose)

¼ cup coarse sea salt

1 bar pure castile soap (I use tea tree scented one and the tea tree oil is also anti-bacterial)

Shred the soap, and mix all other ingredients together in the food processor. Store in an air tight container. Use 1-2 tablespoons per load of laundry.

That’s all that I've tried for now! I just made some homemade baby wipe solution, so I’m going to test it out and see how I like it. Also up for experimentation is deodorant and homemade “paper” towels.

Valentine's Week- Day 3

Every girl needs some flowers for Valentine's, right?! I saw a simple tutorial on Pinterest for these flowers made from coffee filters. Super, super simple, but not the "wow" I had hoped for. Oh well, they still are cute and Amelia keeps running around saying she made flowers grow!

Making it nice and "smooooooth".

"smoosh it right here"

 

 

 

Valentine's Week- Day 2

Today we put together Valentine's for friends! This was so inexpensive and easy to pull together. The cello bags were in the Target dollar spot! A 20 piece pack, too! And the M&M's were about $3 and the paper I had on hand already. So, just a quick design in Word and the labels were printed. Amelia ate her fair share on the candy's, but hey, that's part of the fun, right?!

Valentine's Week- Day 1

It’s Valentine’s week and I’ve set a personal goal to do one valentine themed project with Amelia Jane each day this week, until the 14th! I know, it’s 4 projects, so not a huge commitment. But hey, you have to start somewhere!

Today, Monday, was getting the Valentines cards ready to mail to family members! (family, act surprised when you get these!) We did a photo session in our kitchen not once, but twice last week. My lovely camera decided to earase all of the original pictures, so we had to re-shoot, which meant we had to do it on a whole other day to get the grumpy’s away and the faces clean again! Two baths in one day would have been just way too much, right?! Anyways, we used those photos for cards and put puffy, pink ladybug stickers inside! I’m pretty sure the the most enjoyed part for Amelia was peeling the paper off of the backs of the stickers. Strange kiddo! Then we made a heart potato stamp and added some love to the envelopes!

"can we be done with pictures now so I can stamp some more!"

Introducing Claire Elizabeth

Well, it's about time! I feel like this has been a self-imposed hanging-over-my-head thing for months now! Here's the story of how Claire entered the world!



It must just be something about dinner time that makes my body ready to give birth! We had just been to the chiropractor for our every-other-week adjustment. Our regular Dr. Karen was out of the office that night, and for the life of me, I cannot remember the “substitutes” name. I knew I had had her adjust me previously, and I wasn’t so fond of her style, but I felt like I really needed an adjustment, so I just went with it. She adjustment my stomach in a way I had never had done before, but I didn’t really think anything of it. Nothing hurt or felt “off”, so we gathered up our things and headed home to our frozen pizza. It’s 6:30pm. We sit down to take our first bite and there it was, an unusual contraction. I’m thinking to myself, “No way, I have 10 more days. No one has a baby 10 days early.” We keep eating, I don’t mention a thing. Then, 7 minutes later, there it was again. I knew these were not regular Braxton-Hicks, but surely this was false labor, right? I asked Neal to get out his contraction timing app and start timing these for me. 7 minutes later, there was another one. We finished dinner and kept talking on and off about how this I probably just false labor and I should just rest and they will go away. Oh no, I was not going to rest one bit. Should this actually be true labor, there were bags to pack, laundry to wash, fold and put away, bathrooms to clean, floors to sweep and vacuum and a refrigerator that needed to be cleaned out…just in case. As I scurry around doing these oh-so-necessary tasks, Neal and I were continuing to monitor my now 5-6 minute apart contractions. We decided to go ahead and put Amelia to bed and called my mom to put her on standby…just in case. Neal had a very big deadline at work the next day, Friday, so he was frantically working to make sure that everything was in place…just in case. My contractions are 4-5 minutes apart now and lasting about 1-2 minutes. So, every few minutes I just pause folding the laundry and rock back and forth until it passes. It’s now 10:30pm and we decided that we should just go to the hospital and let them check and tell me it’s false labor so that we can get back home and get some sleep. We get all the bags and Amelia in the car and head over out…just in case. I called my OB and told him what was going on. He said, “Well, I suppose you should come in and get checked and I’ll be there shortly”. No sense of urgency whatsoever! I call my mother and tell her we are going to head to the hospital and get things checked out, and without a moment’s hesitation, “Ok, see you soon, bye” as if her house was on fire! During the 20ish minute car ride to Woodstock to drop off Amelia, I had maybe 2 contractions, maybe. And they weren’t bad at all. So, we get to my parent’s house in Woodstock, I get out of the car, bam, super contraction in the driveway. Neal gets Amelia upstairs and back in bed, and I think I finally made it into the house. As long as I was standing, MAJOR contraction about every 4-5 minutes returned. But, heaven forbid I sit down, because then there were no contractions at all. So, we decided to walk around at their house for a little bit to make sure that the contractions were still happening with some sort of frequency. I just remember them being incredibly intense and everyone just staring at me through each one as if I was some sort of attraction they paid good money to see! We decided about midnight to head the remaining 30 minutes to the hospital. During those 30 minutes, the contractions were nearly constant. A stark contrast to the peaceful, non-painful car ride just a bit ago! All I can really recall saying was “I think I want the drugs this time. I can’t do it again”! We were 2 miles from the hospital at this point and Neal said, well, honey, I don’t think you’ll have time if you’re already asking for them… then he ran all the red lights! Once again, I was fiercely determined to walk into the hospital on my own, so we pulled under the drop off and out of the car we walked up to Labor and Delivery. I walked right up to the nurses’ station and had a major contraction. So, as I stand there with my head leaning on the desk waiting for it to pass, the dear nurse kept asking me, are you alright, what can I do for you. “Just a minute ma’am, I’m having a baby”. Once the contraction passes I tell her what’s going on and before I can finish, I’m having another contraction, telling her I’m about to pass out, and asking for the bathroom because I’VE GOTTA PEE!! A flock of nurses come from who-knows where with a wheelchair, and seriously, it was like we were in the Indy 500 trying to get back to labor and delivery! It felt like I asked 45 times for the bathroom because well, I HAD TO PEE! The dear, sweet nurse wheels me to one, and as soon as we get there I have another contraction. When I have contractions like that, I don’t talk, I don’t look at you, I don’t move. My head is down, I’m focused, and nothing is going to distract me, not even the final arrival to the long awaited bathroom. So, I don’t respond immediately to her, so apparently that meant I didn’t need it anymore and she took me away. Well, the contraction passes and I asked again for the bathroom. Somehow we got to the bathroom and as soon as I stood up out of the wheelchair, my water broke, seriously broke. Then, every nurse in the entirety of the hospital, or so it seemed, was in that bathroom. I was in a recovery unit in .02 seconds, the curtains were pulled, because, well, I couldn’t disturb the ladies on either side of me that had just come out of C-sections, and I was pushing. Everyone and their mother was walking in and out of labor and delivery that night, right past where this was all going down, and since we weren’t in a room, they all partook in our happy occasion! I informed the doctor (not my doctor, but whoever was on-call that night, again!) that we didn’t know the sex and that I wanted Neal to tell me what the baby’s gender was. She was happy to oblige and told me to push again because the baby’s heart rate was dropping. 3 pushes later the baby was born. Neal told me, with great excitement, It’s a girl! I asked him to check again to make sure, because I was convinced the whole 9 months that it was going to be a boy! They placed her on my chest and all I remember saying was that she was so little! 5 pounds 14 ounces of pure bliss! They had to take her down to NICU to clean her up since we didn’t have a L&D room and the hospital was insanely busy that night. Neal went with her leaving me to go at the stitches and cleanup solo. I was ready to head to my overnight room, and when I went to put my feet on the floor, I had the worse Charlie horse of my life! The nurse grabbed my leg and straightened it out and rubbed it so hard I thought she was going to pull my calf clean off my leg! We tried again, and bam, it happened again! Cue insanely tough leg muscle massage! Finally, on the third try, I made it to my feet and then into my room. It felt like eternity, but about an hour later, Neal, Claire and I were all together in our room!

With Amelia, we had 14 minutes in the hospital before she was born. We had about 20 minutes in the hospital this time before Claire made her entrance. It is perfect for me, because I do desire to have natural labors not in the hospital, but I want to deliver in the hospital in case of emergency. It was a source of some anxiety this pregnancy just not knowing if this labor would be faster and how it would be different. I knew I wanted to labor at home as long as possible again, but with the added time to drop of Amelia, how would we know to time it just right? Thankfully, the Lord’s timing is always perfect, even during labor! I've done a 10 hour labor and 7 hour labor, so next go around, we should probably leave at the third contraction…just in case!

Sisters much?!

Another Baby Wave!

It seems that these things come in massive waves; seriously, tidal wave proportions here! It is either no one's having a baby, or it is what seems like everyone is having a baby....all at the same time! Right now, we are in the everyone is having a baby phase! So, that means I get to work on lots of projects! I loved getting handmade specialties when I was pregnant with Amelia, and I hope that the sentiment is the same for other mommas who receive something especially made for their little blessing! Also, I try to make them practical becuase really, who needs one more thing to clutter up space that will probably be discovered by and destroyed played with by that little blessing a year later!

Handmade Faux Chenille Blanket

This blanket was a tedious one, as in this is the blanket that never ends... but WELL worth the end result! I just followed the tutorial on  Dana Made It. If you are wanting to try this one, it's simple in the fact that you are simply sewing straight lines, then partially cutting them, but it took me 8-9 hours over the course of 2 weeks during nap times, which are now infrequent at best, and after bedtime! 

Self-Binding Flannel & Fleece Baby Play Blanket

This blanket was a lot less time consuming. It took only about an hour to make and it's a great size for playing on the floor or even outside! Instead of two sided flannel, I made it with one side flannel and one side anti-pill fleece for some extra softness. Here is the tutorial I used from Tea Rose Home.

Nursing Cover

Another go-to gift I like to do for baby showers is nursing covers. These allow a considerate nursing mother to feed her baby nearly anywhere without the risk of exposure and making others possibly feel uncomfortable. It's lightweight so that neither the baby nor mother get hot, and it has boning at the top so eye contact with the baby never has to be disrupted. I don't have a tutorial to send you to on this one as I just sort of make them now without directions. Maybe one day I'll write one up on how I do it, but they are fairly simple to make and I'm sure Pinterest is abounding with great ideas for embellishments and all the bells & whistles you can add to these!

That's it for now....until the next baby shower wave...next month!



Making Laundry...Enjoyable?!

The laundry room has long been neglected around here. But, with the shifting of rooms to make space for the new nursery, I'm loosing the craft/office/everything-happens-in-here room. So, I needed to move all my scrapbooking, sewing and other craft supplies somewhere, and the current linen closet was just the spot. So, now what was I to do with the towels and sheets?! With a quick and inexpensive addition of a shelf, shopping the house for some baskets, they now have a new home and I get slightly giddy every time I look in my laundry room! The new spot for the cleaning schedule has even helped me to stay on track, for the most part, over the last month! Gotta love that! All I need to do still is add a few attractive labels and I'll call this one done.

Before

After

After


Cleaning Schedule

Easter 2012

This year, we spent Easter celebrating the Lord's ressurection with our church family and then with our family family during the afternoon! Amelia Jane was in quite the mood after church, so a decent family photo was difficult to come by. But, after a nap and some tasty lunch, she was all ready to dye some eggs, throw and break a few, and then go on her first egg hunt!

Re-Stocking

I try to keep the "essentials" in stock around the house just in case someone jumps in the shower and oops, we're out of shampoo! My modest stockpile was getting a bit low, so I jumped over to a few of my go-to websites for these types of situations: http://www.couponmom.com/ and http://www.krazycouponlady.com/. Fortunately, some of the things I needed were on sale at some really good prices, and there were a few money makers at the stores I was going to anyways! Always love it when that happens, but unfortunately, once I got to the store, the money makers were gone :( Oh well, good deals were still to be found!

Here's the breakdown (pre-tax):

Full Price- $39.97
Total Actually Spent- $17.93
Total Savings- 54%

I thought that was a pretty good day and especially considering I would have bought these types of products anyways. Sure, we don't always get our "preferred" brands, but fortunately, no one around here is that picky and will usually just use whatever is available! It works for us!>

Let's Play in the Dirt

Spring is here and in full swing…or maybe it’s already summer and we totally skipped spring this year!? It’s a hot one nonetheless, and for the gardening, it’s been great! No threat of freezing temperatures anywhere in sight.

We/I have wanted to build and grow a garden ever since we moved into our house about 2.5 years ago, but we just haven’t actually done it. That is, until this year! Back in October, I started researching and planning all of the delicious and nutritious foods we would plant (keep alive) and grow and eat and preserve. (These were great resources for me: Vegetable Garden Calendar & Vegetable Planting Guide both by UGA CES) I had squash, zucchini, bell pepper, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumbers, beans, lettuce, spinach, corn and okra on the list. I had even printed out the 2012 calendar and added specific plant dates and estimated harvest dates for each variety of plant. Neal and I sat down and I asked him to realistically tell me if he thought I could handle it and make it worth our while to spend the money investing in this garden. Did I have too much of a variety? Could I manage it all and have a baby right in the middle of the harvest (sounds like a Little House episode!)? Would something I planted actually grow and survive since I can’t even keep a house plant alive for more than a month. Or a cactus, but that’s another sad, sad tale. We talked it all through, I showed him the “Master Plan” and we decided to scale back the variety a bit. So, after an afternoon of planning together, we were all ready to get the dirt and plant! This is what we settled on: Zucchini, Squash, Beans, Cucumber, Bell Pepper, Eggplant, Tomato, Spinach and Lettuce.

One trip to the hardware store, some wooden planks, braces, nails, etc later, we had these 10’x4’ boxes built and ready for some soil.

The soil is now unloaded and some of the seeds are planted. I’ve not planted everything all at once, because I don’t want a whole harvest of everything at one time. The plan (fingers crossed) is that things will harvest in a nice and steady stream so that we can eat what we want to, preserve what we need to, and I can try to keep some sanity during the process!

Our first plants have sprouted and I was SO excited to see that this dream is coming true! Organic, homegrown, healthy, nutritious, non-pesticide treated foods here we come!

Bush Beans

Spinach

Add that to the menu!

I've been doing what seems like a LOT of new recipes so far this year! I've even got one in the oven right now, and if it turns out, I'll let you in on the sweet surprise! It seems like I'm going overboard on my goal of at least one new recipe a week, or maybe I can just look at it as "stocking" up for if I miss a week or two when the baby comes this summer! Foodgawker.com and Pinterest.com have become my new best friends in this arena and are an endless supply of yummy ideas.

I mostly just want to document these for my own rememberance sake so I can look back and remember the ones that we really liked!


Paella with Chicken, Salmon and White Shrimp

Chinese Dumplings with Pork and Spinach (in place of cabbage)

Jambalaya with Shrimp & Sausage (I used Chili Powder in place of the Cayanne pepper and it was still SO SO SO spicy!)

Beef Stew with a Twist (I used V8 classic in this and it was actually a really good take on an old favorite!)

Corn & Potato Chowder

Roasted Vegetable Enchiladas (these were good, but could have used more veggies)

Black Bean Burgers (SOOOOOO Good you don't even miss that they aren't meat!)

Spaghetti Pie (We eat a LOT of spaghetti, so this was an interesting twist. Not amazing, but still good)

Cinnamon Rolls (Ah-MAZING! The intent was to make enough to freeze them, but we ate them so fast they never made it to the freezer! In fact, STOP READING AND GO MAKE THESE NOW!)

Beignets (who could forget these delicious treats! Really easy to make and unbelievably scrumptious!)

Alright, that's enough for now! I've got a new one on the menu for tonight and then a sweet treat in the oven now that hopefully will not be dissapointing!

Happy Eating!

A Quick Look Back at 2011

I almost can't believe we are already into 2012! It has been a very restful holiday break. Neal has been off work since Friday before Christmas! It has been really nice having an extra pair of hands and eyes on the munchkin! He goes back tomorrow, and I, and definitely Amelia who yells for "DAAADDYYY" as soon as she wakes up, will miss having him home all day.

But, we must move along with our days and get back into somewhat of a routine. I took a quick look at my goals I posted for 2011, and well, I didn't get many of them done, only 47%, but I did do a lot of other things that weren't on the list!

· DIY curtains for Master Bath
· DIY curtains for Office/Craft Room
· Frame Diplomas
· DIY Bedspread in master
· Find and refinish bedside tables for master
· DIY skirting for crib
· Put shelves in nursery and master closet
· DIY something to the fan for the nursery
· Install above mentioned fan in nursery
· Decide on wall art for behind the sofa
· Set up a chair/rocking chair in the bay window (We actually just re-arranged sofas!)
· Refinish a buffet piece for downstairs
· Figure out how to plant a vegetable garden
· Keep the aforementioned vegetable garden alive…long enough to harvest its fruits!
· Research becoming a certified natural childbirth educator
· Sew more
· Scrapbook 2010 (pictures have been ordered!)
· Scrapbook our 2008 Europe trip (pictures have been printed for over a year now)
· Take more pictures in 2011 than I did in 2010
· Cook at least one new meal a week (A lot of new ones, but not every week)
· Bake bread
· Prepare Sunday school lessons before Saturday
· Keep files organized as we go through the year


We did do a lot of traveling and celebrating with friends this year. Here's a quick synopsis:

January
Snowmageddon (wasn't that what we were calling it?!)

February
Neal and I had our 25th birthdays
Celebrated 6 Parker family birthdays

March
Nephew #4, Damon August was born
Day trip to Helen, Ga

April
Neal travelled to Croatia for 10 days
Amelia and I travelled to Savannah
Day trip to Chatanooga for wedding of Louisville friends
Amelia's first Easter in her handmade, forgotten buttons in the back, dress
Travelled to Athens for a welcome party for Damon August

May
Celebrated 125 years of Coca-Cola at Centennial Park downtown Atlanta
First Mother's day!
Overtnight trip to Montgomery for Air Force OTS graduation

June
Little sister's high school graduation party
First Father's day!
Sharon's going-away party at our house

July
Amelia's first plane ride
Travelled to Washington, DC to celebrate Independence Day
Travelled to Athens for Nephew #1's 2nd birthday
Neal travelled to West Virginia for one night to help move his sister
Travelled to Savannah & Statesboro for Anderson family reunion

August
Travelled to St. George Island for a week beach vacation
Mini highschool reunion
Overnight trip to West Virginia for Sharon's White Coat Ceremony

Septemeber
Travelled to Boone, NC for Labor Day weekend
Went to 6 Flags for the first time in about 8 years! (and Neal lost his keys and broke his phone :( )
My first overnight trip away from Amelia
Amelia Bedelia book signing
Travelled to Savannah for weekend
2 year house anniversary

October
In-laws in town from Israel for the month
Lots of friends over for dinner
AMELIA JANE TURNS ONE!!
Amelia's first visit to the zoo (and it was free! Check out your library for details)

November
Found out we were expecting Baby #2!
Joined the neighborhood BOD for the HOA
GT vs. VT Game (we lost and it was freezing :( )
Thanksgiving at our house
Thanksgiving at in-law's house
Ran a 5k

December
Christmas parties
Christmas shopping trips
3 Christmas celebrations
New Years eve party with friends
Neal home for a whole week!



So, it was a whirlwind year, and I'm sure 2012 is going to keep marching right along. I should really sit down and figure out how many miles we travelled out of town! But in the mean time, I wanted to just jot down some simple goals for 2012, just so I can look back in another year and see part of what I did do.

• Clean out and move the office into the guest room before Baby #2 comes



• Paint Baby #2's room



• Twin beds in Amelia's room



• Build toy storage



• Plant the vegetable garden that I've spent several hours planning and researching



• Again, keep the vegetable garden alive!



• Cook one new meal every other week



• Go to the grocery store more than once a month



• Do better with coupons (currently, I can save about 30%)



• Keep bathrooms cleaner



• And the floors vacuumed



• Blinds on the windows



• Complete the year-long Bible reading plan



• Scrapbook 2008 Europe trip!!!



• Take just as many pictures of Baby #2 as I did of Amelia



• Have Baby #2



• Blog more about the meals and projects completed

OK, I think that's enough for now! I may add some things as I think of them though.

Happy 2012 everyone!

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