Easy Maternity Belly Band

The inevitable has started to happen.  Some of my skirts are getting hard to zip up all the way. I have been eye-ing material and patterns on pinterest on how to make a belly band so I can stay in my regular skirts as long as possible.  As I am just about to enter my 2nd trimester and my skirts are starting to risk falling off if I unzip them any more without some aid!! 
When my husband and I were in Manhattan I spotted a clearance rack for 50 cents at a store- that is my kind of clearance!  There wasn't a lot to choose from, just XL knit shorts.  Wait a minute...XL knit shorts could make a perfect belly band!  I checked them over and they seemed to have just what I needed, and for 50 cents, how could I at least not give it a try! 

I loved the results:  In about 10 minutes the material went from  shorts to belly band, and all for 50 cents!!

 Here are the shorts before they got transformed.  

I just cut the legs off, the part where they were sown together.

I planned to have the waist be the part that showed as the band, so I didn't have to make any changes to that because it fit perfectly.  But it left a lot of excess material with the part that I wanted around my belly.  So I just added darts- 

2 in the front and 3 in the back, was just what it needed to stay up but not be too snug, so it will fit a growing baby and belly.  The knit material makes it stretchy enough to grow with, but the darts made it so it wouldn't fall off.  I trimmed the material inside the dark so there wouldn't be any extra bulk. 

And...I was DONE!!!

I love how it turned out.  :-) 

This is the side where the zipper is and there is no bulk or bumps, even though the skirt is unzipped halfway.  Perfect!

Thanksgiving

     It was my first Holiday away from home, that coupled with I wasn't sure if I would be able to keep my food down or not made me wonder how my first Thanksgiving would be here.  It went great- I was overwhelmed all day at how much I have to be thankful for.  I am living my dream- married to a sweet, godly man, a baby on the way, our bills paid, a pretty house that the Lord provided us with, so much new to be thankful for- church, friends, family, and all the "old" that has stayed the same
- my family and friends back home.  I am so blessed! :-)  Add to that- I even kept my thanksgiving dinner down, (temporarily) and got to go Black Friday shopping with my sister-in-law and another sweet girl from church and we got some great deals at Kohls.   AND we even had a puppy in the house (I have missed having animals around) to celebrate Thanksgiving with us- he is here for training for 2 weeks. 

 So much hard work and good food!

 A full table- even though we missed the oldest

three who are in college. They will be home for a month at Christmas.

 My plate was full and overflowing. 

And this was my first round! :P

 

Standing in line for 1 1/2 hours at Kohls- but it was worth it!

The cashier was so nice to us and gave us a 30% off discount and scanned her $10 

off anything coupon for all 3 of us.  Plus getting $15 Kohls cash- we made out like bandits!!

It's true- the more you know the more you Kohls.  

 

 Thank you Lord for all your blessings!!

My absence

Well, I started this blog with great intentions, but I haven't been doing a lot of updating on here lately.
The reason????  It's been pretty crazy!  I traveled back home to Rochester two weeks ago for a long-time friend's wedding, and then I attended a huge photography expo with another friend this past week.  Before that I took 2 3-day seminars of marketing, branding, and posing and I have been working on moving my business here and all that entails. 

 
      Also, we are going to be making our home sweet together a little different, changing things up a little.
We found out we are going to be adding two feet to our home.  The actual addition won't be until next Summer, but a lot of the beginning preparation is being done now.  So, in essence we are:

Though the house isn't actually growing any bigger, 

it sure will be a lot sweeter with those two little feet around.  

That's right!! Our addition is 2 BABY feet!!!!  :-)

Coming in June, 2013. 

Thanks to these two little feet coming, 

I have been really sick and the smell of cooking food is NOT my friend now.

My husband has been more than gracious as he tries to scrounge up meals from here and there and he never complains, even though his preference is 3 hot meals a day.  I am blessed right now if I can make that many a week.  :P  

So my home-making efforts right now are all being poured into growing those two little feet inside me.  :-) 

Thus, my absence!  I can't even go on Pinterest right now- the thought of all or any of that food cooking grosses me out and sends me headed for the porcelain bowl.  Peter says they should hire me at the airport to sniff out bombs, because I can smell EVERYTHING right now.  A common conversation will be, "do you smell our neighbors making spaghetti and meatballs?"  "Did you put cayenne pepper on your food?" "Why do your hands smell like baby wipes- oh yeah, that's your lotion smell." 

Crazy times!! And I thought some pregnancy symptoms were stereo-typical...boy have I learned a lot!

 

"The pitter patter of tiny feet
leave behind something dear and sweet
a precious treasure for me to keep
the memories of your tiny feet"

Hallway and Bathroom makeover

  Simply because all these updates have taken so long it seems like I have a giant house- be assured, it's actually pretty small, but I love it...it's perfect for us!

  Anyway, the last 2 "rooms" that got the woman touch are the hallway and bathroom.  Believe it or not, I actually unpacked and redid all these rooms by the second week we were here.  I am apparently much faster at painting than I am at blogging!  It didn't help that for the last week I have not been able to upload pics on my blog, thus the long delay between posts.

  I was going to leave the hallway "as is" but I had some extra paint from our bedroom, and we're SO glad I painted it.  It needed the update.  I didn't paint the bathroom, but I don't feel too bad about it, I feel like I sufficiently decorated it by hanging the shower curtain.  It was a daunting task.  Actually, it was so daunting that I think in most of the pictures it was only hanging by a couple shower hooks, but rest assured I did finally get up there and hang the rest.  It is pretty labor intensive to put those hooks through the liner, curtain, and then get the little doo-dad to close correctly.   Which unfortunately means that it will probably be a very long time before it ever gets taken down to get cleaned.  (If ever!)  :P

The dreadful before:

(If only smells could come through the www.  LOL. My husband scrubbed this room on his hands and knees the first night to make it decent for habitation.  He looks pretty cute scrubbing!)

 

And after: 

Not a huge difference, cosmetically, thank pinterest for the neat way to hold our extra towels.  :-)

Then the hallway: 

(Somehow I never got a before pic, but I trust you all have a good imagination.)

We labelled our closets with leftover wedding decorations- so we don't get them confused! :P

Not that the insides are equally neat and orderly.  

Love how the fridge is at the "end" of the hallway- like the light at the end of the tunnel.  If you just keep walking towards it....you'll get it....almost there!!! LOL.  The fridge really shouldn't be the first sight you see when you wake up- really, it's not right.

Yankees Game

The first Friday after I got married, I got to go to a NY Yankees game!!  They played absolutely terrible, but it was still so much fun to go to the Yankee Stadium.  I was thankful for the free tickets we all got.  :-)  Everyone was surprised that I left my husband for the first time- on his first day off, no less!  But he isn't a big fan of watching professional sports, and was totally happy to stay home.  What was really nice was all the texts he sent me while I was there telling me all the chores he was doing at our house.  The place looked and smelled great when I got home!  It was a wonderful night.  :-)

Bedroom Makeover

 This was our first day in our home- believe it or not, this was after a few hours of work- 

You can see the bed frame was already set up and made.  This was where almost all of our stuff had originally gotten put until we got here.  That corner was all the miscellaneous stuff that didn't have a place until my sweet husband built me a closet. 

 It kind of got worse before it got better- as we were cleaning out some of the other rooms, stuff got dumped in here.  Enter wood, totes, junk, etc...

 After moving that mountain of a pile and frustrating behind the scenes labor, my husband and I stayed up until like 2 AM on labor day assembling the closet.  It was grueling, and I think I wasn't really much help after midnight, (It was also the day I had painted the living room, so I started out pretty tired!) but Peter was determined to finish it.  I'm so glad he did! It fits our stuff perfectly, and has room to grow.  Laundry hampers on the bottom, totes and boxes, Christmas decorations, sewing machines, and everything else fit in our new "closet."

  

Then a couple days later I painted and hung up some decorations.  

It was so nice to have it in order!  :-)

Here it is finished:

 I love how the bedframe turned out- It came from my Grandpa and Grandma, and it started out like gold metal with rose colored flower balls. Welcome black spray paint and decoupaged damask wrapping paper, and you get this!  I think the total remake cost less than $5.

 

Celebrating a month of marriage :-) and another great week

It seems like time is flying by!  Last Monday we celebrated our first month of marriage.  In some ways it feels like we've been together forever because it is so normal and so wonderful, but in other ways it feels like my wedding was just a few days ago. 

I babysat over 30 kids on Monday in Manhattan with a big group of other babysitters, but I got home in enough time to take a little nap (30 kids are exhausting!) and get ready to go back into Manhattan with my date.  We had a groupon that we bought months ago but had never used, so we decided to go there before our groupon expired.  So for $20, we enjoyed salad, bread, 2 entrees, tea and cappuccino, and 2 desserts!  It was a great little place, and made a perfect *one month* anniversary for us.  :-)

  Tuesday I babysat again, so that was pretty uneventful as far as writing details about it, although it was certainly not uneventful while I was there!

 
  Wednesday I caught up on all my work at home- cleaning, laundry, organizing, and marketing for my photography business. Then mid-afternoon we left for the (dreaded) DMV where I stood in line for 3 hours, but Praise the Lord was successful in getting my driver's license.  My license got stolen when I was in Texas so it was little tricky to get my name changed without my old license, but I knew I needed to work on it because I need it to fly back home for a wedding next month.  Anyway, we were SO hungry when we got home, so I skipped my good meal plan and we got some Chinese that lives dangerously close to us.  And its really really good. 

My laundry system :-) It will be really fun in the Winter time!

On Thursday my friend, Laura, came and visited.  She had been visiting her family on Long Island so it was kind of on her way back to Chicago for her to come see me.  It was a great time- on Thursday I was babysitting so we just stayed in Astoria and made a really good dinner- Grilled Cheeseburger Wraps (which I forgot to grill :P) and BLT salad which was SO yummy and I got "stuck" with eating the leftovers for days.  Yum!

   Friday we went to Manhattan together, and braved navigated the subways all by ourselves.  It was fun.  She is headed to the Philippines next month, so she picked up some souvenirs and I got my first fast food since I have been married- and sadly it is even better than I remembered!  I also got a cute little brown hat, but we were down to our last pennies, so we asked and re-asked the guy to take 7.25 instead of 10.  He finally said yes just to get rid of us.  I think as we stood there counting pennies he realized that really was all we had.  We headed home, but then I realized Laura had never seen the statue of liberty, so we headed back to where we had just come from and farther to the Staten Island Ferry.  It is such a nice ride, and it's one of the only things you'll find in the city that is free.  We got home to Astoria just in time to meet her brothers to head back to Rochester.  Laura drove my car, "Hoda" back to Rochester where my family will be keeping and loving her now.  It's a relief to not have to worry about parking here, but it was sad to see her go.  Friday night brought an apple-themed family fun night at church. Hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, and apple crisp.  I gorged.  To bury the sadness of seeing Hoda leave...or maybe that was just an excuse, but the food was SO good.  It was the perfect junk-food day!

Saturday was the first day of Fall, so after visitation I was in the baking mood.  I cooked all day while I watched a photography seminar on lighting. I made chicken terryaki, rice,corn, and green smoothies for Saturday's dinner, apple craisin muffins with cheese cream filling and crumb topping for Peter for snack, 2 loaves of complicated honey oatmeal wheat bread, (It was the neediest bread I have ever made, and it was still pretty dense to me, so I am not convinced it was worth the 4+ hours it took,) peanut butter pie and cut up veggies for our company on Sunday, and made a huge batch of refried beans. :-) I was pretty tired by the end of the day.  I did get a chance to go play the piano for a little while at night, and then Peter took me for a little snack at this frozen yogurt place we found right around the corner.  Anyone that comes to visit me will certainly go to this place.  It is SO yummy!!!

Sunday was such a great day. We had church in the morning, a birthday party with SUCH GOOD Greek food for lunch, a quick nap, making dinner, evening church service where my husband preached to the teens a great message on how easily God could replace us, and also introduced a new system and booklet of journal-ing their devotions each day to make sure they are getting meaningful applications every day. I am looking forward to implementing it in my own life.  Then we had friends from church over and a few neighbors who we are praying to receive salvation over for mexican night.  I always forget to take pictures of the spread and our guests, but we had a great time.  Carolina and Dave brought decorations to help it feel more authentic, so we had a pinata burro and pretty flowers and confetti.   It is so good to get to know my new church family and make friends.  I am really enjoying it.  :-)