Monday, May 28, 2012

{whew!} big ol' looonnnnggg weekend

i'm not even sure where to begin with describing our fun-filled pre-vacation weekend. maybe with a funny pic of keniston right after she woke up on friday morning. this cracks me up!!
she looks how I feel most mornings. for some reason I can't seem to get any sleep anymore. the girls aren't keeping me up but i think my body has gotten used to not getting uninterrupted sleep so i have been waking up at 3:30 and ready to start the day.....however, i don't, i just lay there. sometimes i drift back to sleep around 5, sometimes not. i am hoping my body will realize that my kids are FINALLY sleeping good and i am allowed to get 8-10 hours of good ol' sleep.
this was how karlie had been sleeping for awhile now....on our bedroom floor on her mattress. this was a HUGE improvement over her sleeping in our bed, which is where she has been sleeping since she's been in this world. however, after visiting with our sweet little neighbor, julia, she has decided to start sleeping in her own room!!!! this is major news in our house. julia is my new favorite person. ;) karlie has slept in her own room for the past 4 nights without a fight. amazing what peer pressure can do. hehehe
if she keeps it up we are planning a room redo. i started working on the girl's room when we moved to the new house but decided to stop wasting money on a room that they never are in. i'm really hoping she keeps it up because i already have ideas ready to go.



oh memorial day, how you bring out the redneck in all of us! we had a kiddie slip-n-slide that the kiddos were playing on, well apparently it wasn't big enough so my husband and brother-in-law to a trip to the wal-marts and made their own make-shift slip-n-slide. it was so much fun.....after we figured out to use a pool float to go down it. we all got a little banged up on the rocky ground but trial and error and now we have a plan for the 4th of July....buy a ton of pool floats and baby oil. we used soap but apparently the guys want to end up in the river so baby oil it is. i will be shocked if we don't end up in the e.r.



one of my girls loves the water, the other not so much. can you guess which is which? ;) hoping she will like the pool and the beach but it's not looking so good. we are leaving on friday and i absolutely can not wait!! we didn't get to go on our normal family beach vacation because keniston was only a couple weeks old and we didn't want to put up with chance taking a newborn to the beach.


so i have been busy this week and i guess i haven't been cooking as much as usual....apparently my husband thinks so too. he changed my menu board to tell me how little i have been cooking lately. :\ not funny karl, not funny.


so this morning i fixed the girls funny face pancakes. they loved this and i did too. i hardly ever get to be "that mom" so when i do get a chance to do something fun for them, i enjoy it just as much as they do.

so this week is going to be a beach-packing, play group playing, 90 minute massage getting, super secret graphic design project designing, spray tan spritzing week. :)

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

{juicing} all you need to know from someone who has no clue what they're talking about

so here it goes, my 411 info guide to all things juice fast related. i have been asked by several people now about my experiences with juicing and fasting so i figured i would put into blog form so i don't leave anything out.
first off, my mom has taught me everything about it. she has been juicing since i was in high school. my favorite was "grapple" juice, a combo of grapes and apples.
now days i don't juice fruits....not because i don't like them but because of the amount of sugar in them. i am desperately trying to get off the pounds my 2 sweet little angels put on my body during pregnancy. i wouldn't take it back for anything but i would love to not cry in victoria's secret and have to leave the store (true story).
so nowadays i do pretty much the same juice "recipe" every time I juice.
it tastes good and it's really really healthy.

Kerri's Super Green Juice:
2 cucumbers
3 carrots
3-5 stalks of celery
1/4 red pepper
1 med tomato
12 cherry tomatoes
1/2 lemon
3 stalks of kale
big handful baby spinach
3 stalks of romaine lettuce
handful of parsley
(sometimes I add a clove of garlic)

i am a salt-a-holic so i add a dash (or 2 or 3) to my drink as i'm drinking it.


i LOVE LOVE LOVE this bamboo cutting board/strainer for washing and cutting up my veggies. i swear this thing has saved me sooo much time.
that's the only thing i hate about juicing...it's time consuming to wash, cut, juice, and clean the juicer. i have my own system down now so it's not so bad but it's still not my favorite part of the day.

i have done a couple of juice fasts and i highly recommend it. i felt so much healthier plus lost some weight. you have to prepare your body before you do the whole fast thing though. the way i did it was a couple weeks before i started replacing 1 meal a day with juice then i gradually cut down the amount of food i was eating. slowly i started to only eat vegetables and brown rice until i was ready to do the complete fast. same way when you're coming off the fast, you can't just eat a big mac once your fast is over. slowly start introducing foods back into your diet.

if you can buy organic, DO IT, especially if you are fasting. I buy nearly all organic veggies not only because they're better but because i hate to peel and cut. when you buy organic, you can send it through the juicer peel and all.

i use a "jack lalanne power juicer".  i had a cheaper one and it just wasn't cutting it (literally) so i traded with my mom (isn't that what moms are good for?!) and now i'm using her juicer. i will be buying my own or possibly a "breville" juicer in the near future.

i try to juice once a day and i'm introducing it into my girl's diets as well. they seem to LOVE it. i make around 40 oz. and I usually drink around 28 oz. and the girls drink the rest. I have been known to drink the entire 40 oz. of juice myself.  Make sure when you juice that you are drinking your juice immediately....from what i have read if you let it sit or put it in the fridge for later, you lose the nutrients. and if i'm going to go to all the trouble (and expense) to juice i better be getting all the goodness i can get outta it!

let's face it, i have too many dishes to do already so just i just put a straw in my pitcher and drink.
my juice usually looks like brown stagnant water, it doesn't bother me at all but my husband can't even stomach to watch my drink it. hehehe

if you have any questions about juicing, please let me know!! shoot me an email or leave a comment below!
go forth and juice!

Monday, May 14, 2012

{keniston's 1st birthday party} - cute as a button

Whew!!! It's over. All the planning and creating for Keniston's birthday party is finally come to a close. I love seeing it all come together. All the little details that I stressed over. The photobooth was a huge hit....now I think every party should have a photobooth!! ;) At the end of this post I will list all the vendors that I used to make the party a suceess. If you have any questions about any of it, please email me and let me know. Enjoy!!

***UPDATE: keniston's party was feature on the Hostess with the Mostess blog. I'm so excited!!




















 


Frames- Wild Sorbet Frame Company
Cake-Susan Jackson
Button Cookies- Paradise Sweets
Photobooth Props- Party Goodies
Tableware and Balloons- Sweet Lulu

Thursday, May 10, 2012

{non-blogging?} i blame it on instagram!!

instagram. the lazy (wo)man's blog, well sort of.
instagram makes me feel like i'm blogging even though i'm not.
bittersweet, that instagram.

the above was taken at 10:22, just one year apart. amazing what one year can do.
don't get me wrong i am super sad my baby turned one yesterday BUT BUT BUT somehow it feels amazing knowing that i made it thru her first year.
what is even funnier is that she's not my first child....i've done this before only i didn't have that sense of relief with karlie. i was SAD SAD SAD when karlie turned one. but then again, karlie was an easy baby compared to the second.
it's hard to explain but i just feel like with keniston, turning one is putting her on the 'up swing' of things and it can only get easier (please Lord tell me it will get easier!!)

don't get me wrong though, keniston is super sweet and a lovely little girl. she's a momma's girl thru and thru and i love it (most of the time). ;)

yeah, she's kinda cute. ;)

i have been working on her birthday party for 4 months now and it's coming up this sunday. the stress is on!!! especially since my husband has told me not to spend another dime on this party because i have spent too much (p.s. i will never tell him exactly how much i have spent because he would pass out) party planning is something i enjoy to do for my girls though so it's not at all a waste. they're only little once so i plan to make it special.
so in the mix of all this party planning i have also decided to start training for a 5k and eventually a half marathon. i am going to try to blog more about this as my journey continues. let me start off by saying I HAVE NEVER REALLY LOVED RUNNING.....until i had my second baby. for months now i have dreamed that i was running up and down the road, around town, at the park, etc. i have no clue what those dreams mean (any dream interpreters?) but i took the dreams as a sign that it might be something to try. i am so outta shape after having 2 babies in the past 3 1/2 years so i didn't think i would actually be able to do it. so i started off with walking at the park with the girls in my awesome jogging stroller. i would fast pace walk until the girls started fussing then i would take them over to the playground and we would play for 30 minutes or so. i did this routine nearly everyday since mid-february.
then....
I GOT BORED. the girls would only hold up for maybe 3 miles of me strolling them while walking. i wasn't "feeling the burn" anymore and my weight loss plateaued. my husband watched the girls one afternoon and let me go to the park sans stroller. so i ran a little. i was really discouraged at how little i actually ran. in college, my roommate (the infamous "Doctor Dani" as she is referred to in our house) and i would run laps around our apartment complex, roller blade from one end of campus to the other (until the toothpick accident of 2002....that ended up with a trip to the e.r.....don't ask. lol) and we would go kick butt in the gym. so i was highly disappointed in the fact that i couldn't even run a 1/4 of a mile (and let's not even mention the extra baby weight that makes me feel less than fabulous).
but i kept at it, running a little, walking alot. it's really hard to run and push a stroller, just fyi. especially when it's a 60 pound stroller that contains a 40 pound child and a 20 pound baby. the front wheel is fixed which means you have to push down on the handle to lift the wheel up to go around curves. it's hard. believe me and if you don't believe me i have a couple of weights for you to try named karlie and keniston. ;)
so now as of a couple weeks ago, i started running more than i am walking. big accomplishment for me, the non-runner. just today i ran a straight 16 minutes without slowing pace. that probably doesn't sound like much to most but it is a whole world away from where i started just a few months ago. and a little added bonus.....I'M LOSING THE BABY WEIGHT!! I'm over half way to my goal of 30 pounds. and i honestly don't really need to lose the whole 30 lbs to be happy (although it would be nice).  more than anything i just want to look in the mirror and look halfway like i did before the babies and be healthy.