Starting my own business

In my post the other day about our office renovation I mentioned that I'm starting my own business. A few of you have asked about that so I thought I'd just link you back here for more info.

The office reveal!

Well I've been wanting to redo our office for months! It was ugly and a mess and just really not functional for us. My wise husband said we had to wait until we got our tax refund back so I waited (not always patiently) and waited and I'm glad I did.

Two weekends ago we painted and picked out furniture. And just this past weekend we put things on the wall and took care of the finishing touches, so to speak. For the week in between we disagreed on how to decorate and what colors to use for accents, but finally we were able to come to an agreement that we're both very happy with. If you know us well you might be surprised to see how modern it is. I'll confess I'm surprised too because that's not what I usually gravitate toward, but I took a chance on Jeremy's ideas and it paid off.

So here he is painting the ceiling...

There used to be shelves above my desk, but we took them down before I thought to take pictures.

Ta da! A pretty, freshly painted, organized and highly functional office! I like to call it "the IKEA special" because pretty much everything is from Ikea - desks, printer cart, chairs, wall file, shelves, cubby bookcase and the fabric that we put on canvases and hung on the wall.

We got a cubby bookcase that has tons of storage space so we're still figuring out how best to use it, but we're well on our way. And we painted the walls a very pale gray that I think turned out really nice. It's subtle and neutral and great!

Especially since I'm starting up my own business it feels really good to have a nice, organized space that I can walk into and feel motivated and ready to work. Thank you, tax return money!

Happy 1st Birthday, Lola!

My dear sweet, darling girl.... you are ONE today!

At 6:00 AM on March 9, 2010 I was largely pregnant with you.

And at 12:49 PM we got to meet you and see your beautiful face!

You wasted no time in stealing our hearts. Since the day you were born you have been nothing but sweetness and joy. Okay, maybe not EVERY moment, but pretty close. Almost without exception everyone who spends time with you tells us how sweet-natured, happy and smiley you are.

You are getting to be a big girl now. Not so much a baby anymore, which makes mommy a little sad at times. I will miss the cute little baby things you do.

Like the time you were playing in the living room and you literally just put your head down on the floor and passed out asleep.

And the way you scooted everywhere on your bottom rather than learning to crawl.

And your yummy, chubby cheeks! I could kiss them all day long!

You aren't taking any steps on your own yet, but for the past few weeks you've been pulling yourself up to standing by the furniture. You've gotten very good at it, but it seems like you sometimes don't know what to do once you get up there.

You don't have many words yet. You say "ba" for "bye" and if we ask for a kiss you put your hand up to your mouth as if to blow a kiss. You make other sounds like "da" and "ga" and "ma" but they still seem to be just jabber rather than real words.

We are beginning to wonder if you might be really easy to discipline like your mommy was. If you're going after something and we tell you "no" you usually stop right away and just start crying.

You really like when we put sunglasses on you. You'll sit there just looking at us with a silly little smirk on your face, as if you know you're super cute.

You have six teeth now and no more patience for pureed foods of any kind. I can occasionally get a little spooned foods into you, like oatmeal or cottage cheese, but for the most part you definitely prefer anything that you can feed to yourself with your fingers. You eat lots of banana, Cheerios, graham crackers, apples, peaches, pears, dried prunes, avocado, lunch meat, turkey hot dogs, cooked carrots, potatoes, bread, cheese, pancakes, toast. I'm not sure if there's anything that you don't like right now. This morning mommy had a piece of coffee cake and you were very quick to scoot over, open your mouth and say "ahhhh" and beg me for bites. You loved it!

We are SO happy to be your parents, and your big sister loves you SO much (even if she does steal toys from you all day long)! Happy birthday, Lola!

February Recap

So this is mostly for my own accountability, but read on if you're interested. I'm reviewing how I did with my New Year's resolutions this month.

Daily Bible reading - this month was better than last month, but still not as good as I'd like. I read probably half of the days this month.

Work on 2011 reading list - I finished Professionalizing Motherhood and I read Steady Days. Both good books, but I really loved Steady Days. I do plan to write a summary of them on the blog, soon I hope. I was hoping to get one more book done this month, but I ended up devoting a lot of time to Clara's quiet book instead since I knew we'd be going out of town this past weekend and I wanted her to be able to use it in the car.

Get in the habit of family devotions - we're still struggling to make this happen, though there were a handful of days that we did something really intentional.

No TV between dinnertime and Clara's bedtime - I feel like this one has fallen off our radar a bit this month. I need to talk to Jeremy about this and not be so quick to push that 'on' button. But hopefully before too long it will get nicer outside and we'll naturally want to be out there rather than watching TV.

Work on Kitchen Stewardship's Top 10 Foundational Habits - yep, we're still slowly working on this. Several of them I do already, but I have yet to try making homemade yogurt or bone broth. Someday this year I will. At least the broth for sure. For some reason the yogurt kinda scares me still!

Potty train Clara - we actually made some progress on this in February! She is showing a bit more interest and has actually worn underwear for a small portion of a few days. She's gone potty in the toilet five times in the past week and a half!

Work toward a routine for me and the girls - we've made some progress on this too this month! Steady Days helped give me some ideas and fresh motivation so I did write up a routine and post it on our fridge last week and we're trying it out. It's not drastically different from what our days looked like before, but it's working pretty well I think. And I know it will change once the weather is nice and we start playing outside more too.

Have two Norwex parties each month - totally didn't meet that goal in February. I had no parties, but I do have two on the calendar for March and I'm hoping for more.

Take the girls outside on every nice day - totally didn't do this either. I think we went out for a walk once. They've been sick a lot so we've been indoors a lot. A lot. I'm so longing for health for our family again.

Do more crafts - I did! I worked on Clara's quiet book a lot, plus I made some Valentine's decorations.

Good-bye February, hello March!

Proof of a Quiet Book

Have any of you noticed the button in the sidebar of my blog that says I'm working on a quiet book? It's been there since last Spring I think. We'll here's some proof that I truly am working on a quiet book. It's one of those projects that takes quite a long time so I work on it in spurts. I hadn't worked on it for several months, but then a few weeks ago we took a road trip to Wisconsin and I was wishing I had gotten more of the book done so we could have brought it for Clara to play with in the car. Knowing that we'd be taking another road trip this weekend I resurrected the project and have made some good progress on it in the past few days.

Here's the cover. Obviously I'll be making one for Lola too some day.

A gumball machine that has gumballs that velcro onto matching colored circles that are sewed down.

A place setting with a bag of food. I'm planning to make more food, but for now it's enough to use these pages.

Noah's Ark with finger puppets.

Back cover.

And some pages in progress...

A doll that will have clothes for dress up.

and a tree that will have flowers, summer leaves, and fall leaves that snap onto it. When they're not in use they will be stored in the "grass" pocket.

I'm also working on a mailbox page that she'll be able to put notes into.

I got inspiration and some templates from Serving Pink Lemonade and Homemade by Jill and How to Make a Quiet Book. The great thing about quiet books is that you can really do whatever you want. If you Google "quiet book" you'll find all sorts of examples of different ways people make quiet books. It's all personal preference.

When I first started this book for Clara I was intending to sew it all by hand with cute stitching, but now I've decided it will take FOREVER to do it that way. I'm now doing some by hand, but a lot by machine. I've even used a bit of hot glue in a few spots! So it's totally a project that you can tailor to your skill level, amount of time, and budget. And whatever you make, your kids will love.