Yeah! My office/studio is all done!

Well, after a few weeks (instead of a few days) my new and improved studio is done! I can move around without climbing over things, I can work without moving things out of the way first, and people can actually walk into the room without tripping over everything. It's very exciting and inspiring for me. I have felt a lot more motivated to work on some more clothing and bows, and maybe I will actually be ready for my shows this year!

Basically the room got new floors, new cabinets under the sewing area, new shelves in the closet, and a whole lot of cleaning. Still to do is finish my curtain (the fabric is the color inspiration for the room), get it hung, and get to work on the basket of unfinished projects under the sewing table!

This House is so Much Work!

Along with my kiddos, business and everyday life stuff we have this house, the house that was such a great deal! For those of you who have never bought a house that's a "great deal," you may not quite understand what that means. It means that yes you save a little (or even a lot) of money when you actually purchase the house, but you are going to be working on this house until the day you die or pawn it off on someone else!

In all seriousness, I have begun to love this house, but it has taken a lot of time and work, and some money to get here. I think the main reason I got sucked into it is that I could see a lot of potential, and if I didn't have the kids, business, and everything else that comes with the two, I might even enjoy all of the work that it is taking. Last year's projects included some painting, a lot of work in the kitchen (still not a new kitchen like I want, but money is a little tight and kitchens are a little expensive), and other small projects here and there. We have lots more planned for this year.

The first is a complete redo of my office/sewing space/get away from everyone else and try to get something done space. This is the smallest bedroom in our house, 135 square feet including the closet. It is also the room with the most junk, or crap, or materials, whichever word you would like to use to describe it. Which means that before I took almost everything out of it over the past few days it was so packed full of crap that you could hardly walk in :( But that is all about to change...or at least I hope it is!

The project is going to start with new dark laminate floors, a clean up on the paint, new shelves in the opened up closet and then cleaning it all up. Hopefully parting with stuff that is not needed and figuring out just what I do have. I have already found that I need to ban myself from Joanns, Hobby Lobbby and any other place that sells fabric, ribbon, trim, etc.

Above are some pics of the before, not only to embarass myself, but to make the finished product look that much better :) As you can see, I have painted (before the room was a very dirty cream color), added lots of storage in the form of shelves (which are staying) and have generally made an attempt to clean up and organize this room, but it hasn't worked out so well. Maybe I'm just creative, maybe I'm just messy, or maybe I just have too much crap. Whatever the reason, this is a new year and I'm tired of working (I'm sure many of you are wondering how!) in this room. We are tearing out carpet tonight and getting to work on this crazy space! New pics to come at completion!

In the Parenthood

Considering that my little ones are pretty much my whole life, and now even my job, I know that I'll be writing a lot about their antics and craziness. I couldn't think of a more perfect start to this section than a post I made to my MySpace Blog in April of 2008. So here it is for everyone to have a great laugh...including me!

The Joys of Motherhood
Current mood: drained

Ok, since I now think that I’ve fully recovered from my hellish morning, I guess I can share it with everyone. If you think that you’re having a bad day, read this and I swear you’ll feel much better! It worked for Ana.

The morning starts off pretty normal, I’m tired from being woken up at midnight with a phone call, and of course I couldn’t go back to sleep for a couple of hours. But all and all not bad, I took a shower, got dressed, ate breakfast, and then when Emily got up made her a bowl of cereal and left her to eat while I finished getting ready.

I then hear her little voice telling me that she went poop. Terrific, just what I wanted to do was change a pull up. Yes, we’re potty training, and she will pee everytime in the potty, but no way will she poop. I ask why she didn’t tell me so that she could go in the potty and I got the normal answer, "I can’t push it out on the potty." So I stop what I’m doing and head to her room to get the wipes, but what do I see on the floor...poop!! Even better, right?!? Now I get to clean the carpet too. Well, after finding the majority of it in her room, I get some wipes out to start cleaning up and seeing as how I’m pregnant, of course I start to gag. It only gets worse from here, I make a mad dash for the kitchen sink, the closest spot to me, and ideally I would have made it there, but not this morning, I threw up all over the kitchen floor, the cabinet and managed to get some in the sink. As I continue to get sick, I have a poop covered almost 3 year old yelling, "YUCK!! What’s wrong mama??"

Well, now I get to bathe Emily (as she cried that she doesn’t want to take a bath, like that’s an option at this time), clean the carpet, clean the kitchen floor, clean the kitchen cabinet, and try to finish getting ready for work. Amazingly I did get to work on time, and have actually started to feel a little better about the day! I hope that you at least got a laugh out of my terrible morning, it’s one of those mom moments that I guess you never forget!

Its about time I get on here...

...and actually write something! I've finally made it through the busiest time of the year for my entire household and I feel like maybe now I can relax for a little while. All the time that I've been on the internet I just never really got into blogging and figured what do I have to write about anyway. But 2009 was quite a year for me, and I think I'll share a little each day this week, and then move on to more exciting things to come this year!

The biggest and possibly hardest change came at the beginning of the year when I went from work away from the home mom to work at home mom. I have had a job working for someone else since the month after I turned 16. I just thought that I would continue working during the day, coming home to my kiddos, and then working for myself after they went to bed, and that's just the way that it was. But after being at work for a month after my maternity leave with Miss Hannah, there I was with no job other than the business.

At first there was a lot of worries about bills and expenses, but Josh's promotion proved to be the 3rd best thing to happen in 2008 (1st would be baby number 2, and 2nd would be baby number 1 loving baby number 2)! With the majority of our bills being paid by him, the loss of daycare expenses and my wonderful side job doing tastings on the weekend, I had the rest of my time to play and learn with my kiddos and grow Dilly Dally!

I'm very excited about each day and my future. I never saw myself as a stat at home mom, but it is truely a gift to be home with your little ones each day. I see each and every moment of the day what I was missing working away making money for someone else. The kids grow and learn so much each day. I'm not about to act like they never drive me crazy or that staying home is always a lot of fun, but when I look back over the past year I can say that there is no way I would give up one day of it!