Information Overload!

I have mentioned on here before that I really enjoy doing research and learning about different things.  But I think I may have crossed the line with reading too much!  My head is swimming with all the info I have been reading, but I want to be prepared and there are so many things I need to be thinking about now.

I want to make sure I am doing what I need to in order to keep me and baby healthy during this pregnancy.  I am doing excercises to prepare my body for birth and reading up on all I can about birth.  But then there is the whole reality that this time is extremely short compared with how long the baby will live outside of me!  So I am reading books from authors I trust on child training and reading about all I need to figure out the right pediatrician and the debates on vaccines and just over all health of newborns and infants.

I have been working on my registry and doing tons of reading about all the different products out there we will need and which car seat, stroller, diapers, equipment, etc, etc, etc. will be right for us....

It's just too much to think about, so sleep and I have not been the best of friends the last few nights and I realize i need to take a break from all this learning and researching and stressing.  I am sure like every new parent,  I just want to make sure I am doing what is best for my baby and I am certainly learning that what is best is not always the most popular or most convient way to do things. 

I have to come back to the reality that both me and this baby belong to the Lord and that as I seek to honor and please Him, He will guide me in the things that I need to do.  I find time and time again I trust in myself and look far too little to the Lord for His wisdom, strength and guidance.  I have so much growing to do in the Lord, I'm thankful for his patient love toward me.

Fried Chicken Brownies

No doubt I caught your attention with that title!  As I have mentioned before I have not had many cravings through this pregnancy.  But I have wanted to have some just so I can tell people when they ask.  I still can't say that I have had any weird "cravings" but I did make a really weird food combination the other day...

It was homecoming Sunday at church and we were all eating in the fellowship hall after service.  I had my plate of food that included some fried chicken and other miscellaneous potluck selections ( I must say I'm not really all that big of a fan of pot lucks!)  I also had a plate of desserts.  Given the title I am sure you know where this is going, but I'm going to tell you anyway! 

I am a HUGE fan of things that are sweet and salty; I love chocolate covered pretzels, m &ms with my popcorn, french fries in my frosty, etc.  So as I was eating my fried chicken, I looked over at my dessert plate and suddenly had a genius idea! "I should totally peel some of this chicken skin off and put it on top of my brownie and eat them together!"  Now some of you might be gagging, but I must say, to this pregnant lady, it was delicious!  In fact I thought perhaps I should market this!  I mean, if Burger King can put bacon on their sundaes, why not fried chicken brownies?!?!?    I don't know that it would go over well with the non-maternity crowd though, so I'll just keep it to my one time experience and tell you all about it!

Homemade Cleaners

Anyone who knows me very well knows I am a big time bargain shopper!  I love to save money, I'm pretty passionate about it!  When Joey and I first got married and I stayed home, I learned all kinds of ways to save money on household things, and I got really really into couponing.  I was one of those crazy ladies with a big binder and everything.  I still coupon, but it's very different now, because doing things that way takes ALOT of work and time.  One day when I was couponing, I was able to get a years worth of dish washing tabs for $1.50!  They were the Finish brand and they worked great in our old dishwasher that was not all that great at getting things clean.  So after the year was up and I had to buy some more I found out they are really expensive without a coupon!  But we bought some anyway because with only 2 of us, we don't run the dishwasher all that often.  A few months ago we got a new dishwasher and now it has the silverware compartment in the door, which I really like.  But...it is right in front of the place the washing tab comes out and I have found that the silverware stays covered in the soap and I have to re-wash them.  No point in having a dishwasher if I have to wash them too!  So I decided to see if I could find a recipe of my own to try instead of buying some more detergent.

I found an easy recipe on Pinterest...1 cup baking soda, 1 cup borax and 2 small packets of sugar free lemon Kool-aid.  I mixed it up and put 1 Tablespoon in the dishwasher and they came out clean and the silverware didn't need to be re-washed!  I estimate the cost was around $.75 and it will last me 32 loads, I'm super excited!

I was telling a friend about it on Facebook and some other friends mentioned they wanted my homemade laundry detergent recipe too, so here it is with pictures ( I took a picture with every step, but couldn't get them all to work right!) 

Now I'll say this, I have been using this for a while now, almost 2 years I'm pretty sure.  At first I was a little skeptical and only used the homemade stuff on sheets and towels and still used the store bought stuff on our clothes, especially Joey's since he can get pretty dirty at work.  But a few times Joey washed his clothes and used the homemade stuff and it worked just fine.  It doesn't have that nice smell that Gain has, but the clothes are clean!  We recently had an issue where some very expensive laundry deteregent I got for free was eating holes in our clothes, so I'm really sold on my homemade stuff now!!

Supplies:

• Washing Soda (not baking soda, I'm pretty sure I found this at Brookshire's in the laundry aisle, don't think I was able to find it at Walmart)
• Borax - you should be able to find this at any grocery store on the laundry aisle
• Soap - Fels Naptha is recommended most often, you can find that on the laundry aisle also, but you can use other soaps, but avoid soaps that say "moisturizing" or that have heavy perfumes because they will be oily and you don't want that on your clothes!

Equipment:

• Grater
• Bucket (at least 2 gallons)
• pan
• Containers ( I like to use old detergent containers because they have the cap that is the right size to measure out the new stuff, but I also use gallon jugs when I don't have the laundry containers)

Instructions

• Heat 3 pints of water (which I'll be honest, I had to look up becaues I'm not used to measuring in pints! it is equal to 1.5 quarts)
• Grate 1/3 bar of soap

• Add soap to water hot water, stir until it dissolves
• Add 1/2 cup Washing Soda and 1/2 cup of Borax and mix until dissolved ( you don't want it to boil)
• Put 1 quart of hot water in your bucket 
• Add your mixture
• Fill the bucket to the 2 gallon mark with cold water and stir well

• The mixture will begin to gel a little
• Pour it into your containers

• When you are ready to use, shake your containers and use 1/2 cup.  It will be kind of gloppy and there won't be much suds, but it works! 

Here is the website I got the recipe off of, http://tipnut.com/10-homemade-laundry-soap-detergent-recipes/ there are 9 other ones you can try, including powdered ones.  You can also go to Pinterest and find all kinds of recipes on there.  It may take you a little while to find what works for you, but I recommend trying because even if you make some that doesn't work right for you and your family, you are only talking a small amount of money to try.  But once you find the right recipe, you can save hundreds a year depending on your family size.  I was able to get 4 plus bottles of what I would have regularly bought in the store and paid at least $5 a piece for, sometimes more .  Not sure on the exact estimate, but I think I spent less than $1 for the ingredients here!  I love saving money!!!

Full Week!

Last week was a very full week for me.  I had a wonderful day Tuesday celebrating my birthday with some wonderful friends from church and my second family here at home.  Wednesday I went to church to teach my class ( I teach a class of youth girls age 13-18 for those of you who don't know!)  My class has grown a lot the last few months and we are in a tiny classroom and I knew we were going to have several more visiting this week with us, so I asked the woman in charge of the classes if I could possibly move to the youth sanctuary which is MUCH larger and explained my situation and she just flat out said, "No, not tonight."  I was a little surprised by her abruptness since I thought I had a pretty good reason, but I just told her that was fine but we needed to work on a solution soon!  She and I talked a little longer and then she said she wanted to come up to my room and take a head count with me.  We got to my classroom and the lights were off.  The week before a couple of girls literally busted into class late and scared us all.  I told them I hate being scared and not to do that to me again.  So I thought the girls were trying to scare me because I know they were in there.  So I started yelling at them through the door to open the door and that I was not coming in til they turned on the light!  The lady I was with, just went ahead and opened the door and all the girls jumped up and yelled "surprise!"  They had the whole room decorated and had everything all set up for a party.  Turns out they had been working on the surprise with some of the adults from church for weeks and had it all planned out for my birthday.  I was totally surprised!  I immediately began apologizing for yelling at them to turn the lights on!  We had a great time, I really do love these girls and am so thankful God has let me be a part of their lives and them a part of mine.

Thursday my mom came into town for the weekend, and we did a ton of baby stuff!  We went and saw a friend of mine who gave me several of her baby items, which was a huge blessing!  I also picked up some cloth diapers from a lady in town and got my cloth diapers I had ordered online.  My mom and I also registered for my baby stuff, which was a bit stressful because I really don't know what i need or want!  It was so much fun to be shopping with "Mimi" and also my mother in law (who doesn't have a grandmother name yet, she is going to wait til the baby comes and gives her one!)  We bought fabric for the crib bedding, the curtains, and to recover an ottoman and glider we got.  It always goes by soooooooooo fast when my family comes for a visit and I can't wait to see them again, which will be next month! 


Here are a few pictures from the last week!

Monday was opening day for hunting season, Joey was all decked out in his camo. It always freaks me out a bit when he comes in the dark room in the early hours of the morning to kiss me good-bye and he is covered in paint, or wearing his leaf suit!
                                                                          
                                                                           

Registering!

 

Super excited about this deal we got. I have been wanting a glider and ottoman for the baby's room. I actually have an old glider, but it doesn't have the ottoman and I can't find just the ottoman for sale anywhere. At places like Target a new set is $200 and at this expensive baby boutique we went to, the sets were $500 plus! But then there was this ottoman all by itself with a tag of $50 on it, apparently someone bought the rocker and didn't want the ottoman. It was the same wood color as my rocker and my mom will recover both to make them match each other and the baby's room! I researched the brand and module number and found just the ottoman to sell for $200! It's some kind of special nursing ottoman.

Birthdays

Birthdays have some how evolved into a really big deal for me and my sister.  We don't care that much about presents and things like that, but it's the one day out of the year that is yours and it's fun to celebrate.  When Joey's birthday was approaching after we were dating, he told me birthdays are not a big deal to him and he didn't need me to do anything special.  To which I exclaimed, "What?!?!?  This is the day that I get to celebrate that you are ALIVE!!!  Of course it's a HUGE deal!  If you weren't alive, then who would I be about to marry?!?!?"  He replied, "Well, when you put it like that..."   So he very graciously put up with a whole birthday weekend in Dallas, complete with a birthday crown I got for him, I have pictures somewhere, but I am not so sure he would want them published on the web...

I know some people hate to grow up, but I have enjoyed my life more and more as each year passes.  Every year is something special to me because every year at this time I get to look back and reflect on what all the Lord has done in my life and how grateful I am to Him that He spared my life when it could have ended so many years ago.  I deserved death and He gave me life! This year is particularly special because of not only celebrating my life, but the life that is growing inside of me. 

Two years ago on my birthday it was first one after Joey and I were married and I was certain that I was pregnant.  It was a Saturday and I told Joey all I wanted for my birthday was a fishing trip just the two of us.  That is actuallly what I asked for the year before and when we got on the water the weekend after my birthday, he stopped somewhere and asked me to marry him.  So my plan was to get him to go back to that same spot and tell him we were going to have a baby.  But it became clear before we left that we were not pregnant.  I was a little disappointed, but by that point we had only been trying for about 4 months so it wasn't so bad.  But last year on my birthday we had been trying for a year and 4 months and the fear was beginning to mount.  The first year I was certain that by my birthday the next year I would either have a baby in my arms, or at least growing in my belly.  So by the second year I began to wonder, will we still be without a child next year as well.  How many birthdays will come and go without, or will we ever have a baby at all.  (I plan on writing some more posts about the struggle I went through with this and how the Lord helped me to draw closer to Him as a result of the fear and pain of not being able to conceive)

So here we are this year and it just so happened that this month's Dr. appt fell on my birthday.  So it was super special because I got to spend a little extra time with Joey in the morning and eat breakfast with him and then we got to hear the baby's heartbeat.  It was beating so strong and so fast, Joey said it sounds like she is playing the drums in there!  So it was a great day to celebrate the fact that I am alive, not just physically, but spiritually as well.  And celebrate the blessing God has given me with Joey and our soon to be born daughter.  I also got to be with some wonderful friends from church and my wonderful second family.  It was a great day!

Birthday Pics!!!!