{diy laundry detergent}

I found this tutorial on Pinterest and I love it! It seriously makes a lot for only about $20. For the tutorial click here. "How Does She?" is an awesome blog!

I omitted the fabric softening crystals because Wal-Mart didn't have them...weird. But I had a Costco sized tub of softener to finish up anyway. Maybe if I find the crystals I'll mix them in one day... 

So I made this back in December and this is all I have used so far and I do an average of 4 loads/week. Each load only takes 2 tablespoons. I think it works great. Oh yeah this isn't all of my supply! I still have three containers worth of this stuff! It is awesome. I also kept the ends of the Fels-Naptha bars that I couldn't grate down any more and pre-treat stains with them.

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{family room make over}

We are very blessed to live in the apartment we live in! Garett and I manage apartments for my aunt and in exchange for that work we get to live in one of her fully furnished apartments. Such a blessing in our lives right now. However, I was tired of my dark decor in the family room. I needed to lighten it up. Below are the before pictures. No, my Christmas decorations are not still up haha. I took these at the beginning of the month : )

It doesn't look super dark in the pictures but that is because every light in the house is on haha. I am just tired of the reds and blues and solid colors. I want something cute and I would like more patterns too.  My budget is around $75 dollars. I have already started collecting new decor and finished a couple projects. I would love to paint but that is not in the budget and we are just renting. It is already starting to look so much better and brighter. As soon as I finish I will post new pictures and include the tutorials I used for my projects. So excited!

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{homemade baby food}

Andersen is 7 months old today! Holy cow this little man is growing up way too fast! Here's a progress report. He sits up by himself and can stay sitting up until he decides to face plant. Last time we weighed him (a couple weeks ago) he was 18.5 lbs. He is on the verge of crawling; he scoots around pretty well. He loves real food! He eats apples, bananas (his favorite), avocados, cauliflower and sweet potatoes. 

     

The money savvy side of me must write about homemade baby food! If you have the time homemade is the way to go. Not only do you know what exactly is in your baby's food but it is also so much cheaper. I was at Wal-Mart the other day and I saw that you could buy 8 oz. of baby food for $0.81. That seems pretty cheap right? But compare that to the 160 oz. of avocados, sweet potatoes, cauliflower and bananas for $5.50. That's $0.10/oz versus $0.03/oz. You save over 50% if you make your own food! It only took me one nap time to make all that food so it's not that time consuming.

Here's my method for making delicious baby food. I have a Baby Bullet, which I use when I am making small quantities. But when I am making a bunch I use my Ninja Blender. Any food processor will work. After I have made the food I pour the purees into ice cube trays. Once they have frozen I pop them out and store them in freezer ziplocks with the date made on them. I stole this idea from Pinterest and I love it. If I want to combine foods for a meal I just grab one of each cube and let them thaw out together. Anders' favorite combo is apples and bananas. Below I wrote out some recipes I use.

Sweet Potatoes
3-4 sweet potatoes
rice cereal
water

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Wrap the potatoes in foil and stick them in the oven for about 40-45 minutes. (After they are in the oven I make the rest of the baby food.) When they are tender to the touch they are done. Let them cool. Once you can touch them, unwrap them and pull the peel off at one end and squeeze out the potato. It should squeeze right out into the blender. Once the potatoes are in the blender I put in about a cup of rice cereal and blend it. If your baby is between 4-6 months you will want to thin out the puree; just add water until it reaches the consistency you want. The older your baby gets the thicker your puree can be.

Avocados
3-4 avocados
rice cereal
lemon juice
water

Cut each avocado in half and remove the pit. Scrape out the good stuff into the blender. Add 1/2 cup of rice cereal and blend. Squirt some lemon juice into the mixture to keep the puree turning a gross brown. Add water to reach desired consistency.

Cauliflower
1 head of cauliflower
rice cereal
water

Cut the cauliflower up and steam it (I use the steamer bags....so easy). Put in blender and add 1 cup rice cereal and blend. Add water to reach desired consistency.

Bananas
5-6 bananas
oatmeal
water

Peel, put in blender, add 1 cup oatmeal (I use the boxed baby oatmeal; you can grind down regular oatmeal if you want) and blend. Squirt some lemon juice into the mixture to keep the puree turning a gross brown. Add water to reach desired consistency.

**I just buy all natural, no sugar added applesauce for Anders. It is cheap and so much easier than making it from scratch.

Anyway back to talking about Andersen! Lately, his new favorite toy is the diaper box. It keeps him so entertained I love it! So today we played with the box, took two naps (hallelujah!), snuggled, and took a lot of pictures!

Face Plant!

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{gettin' poochy}

I'm fattening up. Or as GGma would say "gettin' poochy". Thank goodness I'm only growing in the tummy area. I did have to come to terms with reality and buy watermelon smuggling bottoms. I bought some maternity shorts at Ross last week because all of my shorts are in Spokane. Man are they comfy! And it is nice to not have to worry about a down zipper : ) Then this week the clothing store Shade was having a store closing sale and everything was 60% off. They even had a maternity section. So I got two pairs of pant/crops (I have been living in these since I got them!), four shirts and a dress for $60. Not too shabby. I just took this picture today so it's the up-to-date photo. I'm almost 27 weeks here. The pants and striped shirt I'm wearing are from Shade.

So far pregnancy is awesome. Maybe I've been lucky. But I'm pretty much enjoying every minute of it. Andersen is super active now. I have been able to feel him moving around for awhile now but this last Tuesday Garett was finally able to feel him! I woke up at 3:30am because my muscles were sore and so I put my hands on my belly, hoping to magically make the soreness go away, and after a minute or so I felt a kick or a punch. This was the first time I ever felt it from the outside. I contemplated waking Garett up but I figured he wouldn't remember it in the morning anyway. Good thing Mr. Anders was still kicking in the morning so Garett felt him then. This whole week I think he has been saying "UTERUS PUNCH!!!!!" over and over and then repeatedly punches or kicks me. I should respond with "BABY PUNCH!!!" and punch my stomach....but that kind of parenting is most likely frowned upon these days and I would still end up being punched. Plus Andersen would probably retaliate by giving me horrendous stretch marks. That is my one true fear about pregnancy (aside from complications or stuff like that). They say that there is no real way to prevent them. But I'll be darned if I don't try. I put this special collagen/elastin lotion on everyday morning and night, I drink a lot of water and I am gentle with my chest and belly skin. I also have vitamin E oil that I used to put on my knee surgery scars to help them fade. So if a mark does pop up it will be drowned in vitamin E! We shall see if any of this does anything. Like I said I have to try so I can say I put up a good fight : )

I think that pregnancy has been the best motivation to stay/get fit. I am determined to exercise regularly and eat healthier food. So far I've been pretty good. I haven't had any real cravings yet, no weird food combinations sound good to me (my old roommate Krista says that is because I already eat weird food...excuse me but my whole wheat macaroni, relish and red onion salad is not weird....it's delicious!). I have also found that the days I exercise I have more energy and motivation to actually do things. So I shall continue to exercise, modifying it as I expand : ) I went swimming today. That was fun and funny. Funny because I've outgrown my swimsuits so I had to wear a sport tank top and spandex. Oh well. The pool felt really good, my body appreciated it. I just like being in the water; it's a good feeling.

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{while you were out}

This past weekend Garett's parents went out of town for work and left us home alone. That is dangerous....haha! No we decided to pretend we were on the home makeover show "While You Were Out" and spruce up the house a bit! We spent a lot of time in Home Depot, Lowe's, Ross and on Craigslist. We replaced the seventies globe lights and eyeball track lighting with lighting from this millennium : ) 

Garett hung one of them and I hung the other two whilst he was sleeping so I could impress him with my electrician skills. It took me about 45 minutes to hang them because I had to clean up spider webs and dead spiders! I just swirled them around a screwdriver and washed them down the sink : ) We also tackled the family room and made the back part an office for his mom (I'll add a picture of the office space when I take one).

Then we took down the track lighting over the dining table and hung a chandelier. We got it at Home Depot for $50....it was originally $150! I love a good bargain! Garett can attest to this; I never pay full price for anything. Why not make your money go further? That is my philosophy. Anyway, from the picture you can tell that it is hung by a binder clip. Why, you ask? Well, we bought an anchor and when we got home we realized that the hook screw's thread was too big to fit in the anchor. Garett's parents were due to home in a couple hours and we wanted the chandelier up so they could see it so we got creative. Garett came up to me holding the binder clip and said we should use that....I thought he was joking. As you can see he wasn't : ) So he drilled the anchor screw through it and clipped the light chain to it. Perfect. We will get a hook eventually. Jerry (Garett's dad) says he likes the binder clip. Haha! 

I also wanted to get some pictures and decoration up on the bare walls so I made a picture collage on the entry way wall and hung up some stuff I got from Ross. Can I just say that I LOVE Ross?! Everything I own comes from that glorious store!

Above I mentioned that I spent a lot of time on Craigslist. That was true. For this little home makeover project Garett and I probably put in around 5 hours; between looking through all the ads for coffee tables, TV stands, lighting fixtures, couches and actually going to look at quite a few of them. Nearly everything we went and saw didn't work out. Except the TV table you see below.  I paid $25 for it and we bought new knobs for $20. So a grand total of $45 dollars went into this. After we bought it we were at a furniture store looking at couches for his parents when we saw the exact same table on the show floor. We were curious what this table new cost so we walked over to it to check it out. My jaw dropped....it cost $295! I just paid $25 for the same exact thing! Moral of the story? Craigslist is worth the time and frustration, haha! I also found a matching coffee table for $40 that is beautiful as well. We are going to put the extra new knobs on it as well so they will really look like a set (I'll put a picture as soon as I take one of it).  

 

It was a fun weekend overall. Garett's parents were definitely surprised and loved the changes! Garett and I are planning on refinishing their table, which is currently stained with a reddish brown stain. We want to sand it down and restain it a dark dark brown so it matches the living room furniture and the new lighting we put in. So stayed posted for those pictures : )

Just a quick update on our life....Garett goes into Costco today to fill out some additional paperwork. He has had two interviews there so far so fingers crossed that today he finds out if he got the job or not! He would start October 18th. That would be awesome! I have started playing indoor soccer again.....my first game was last night. We won but I am horribly out of shape. My lungs aren't cooperating with me. So we have decided to start a training program. It's the one I did for college soccer so this should be interesting haha. We will have to tweak it so we don't die the first training session. I am super excited to get into some sort of fitness regiment again. We love to be active and we are for the most part, but we just have a hard time finding time....or a better way to put that is that we have way too easy of a time finding other things to do besides exercising : ) We are going to start this program next week so I will keep you posted on our progress.

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