{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. :)

{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!

{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

{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.

{i love pinterest} apparentaly so does lady gaga.

Just some quick post-Grammy humor. When I saw Lady Gaga at the Grammys last night, I immediately thought of a picture I had seen back around halloween for a comic book character. Striking resemblance.

{breastfeeding} tantrums and other things i am learning to deal with

so this post is a little more personal than i would like it to be, namely because i really don't like sharing with the world about nursing my baby girl....nobody (especially guys) want to hear about it. i get it.
i don't nurse in public (not that there is anything wrong with that though) and rarely do you catch me talking about it in front of anyone. BUT i am making an exception because i have learned a lot about it in the past few days even though i feel like a seasoned pro after successfully making it to the 1 year mark with my first baby and 9 months and counting with this second baby, i have figuring out their was some tweaking that needed to be done to our meal plan for sweet little kenna.
as i mentioned in my last post, keniston has been a difficult baby. cries all the time, needs to be held, up all night, yadda yadda yadda. she has been to the doctor...i've been on the phone with the nurses for months now, and no one seems to know what is up with this little babe. well i finally figured it out today....i was starving the poor child. i broke down, bought formula and gave it to her. i felt like someone buying something illegal when i went in to walmart at 11 pm last night to purchase it. i didn't want anyone to know i was buying it. sounds silly i know but i have been under the "breast is best" spell for years and although i still totally agree with that i have a revised version...."don't starve your baby is best". It doesn't rhyme but you get where i'm going with it. Seriously though, why did i have no clue she wasn't getting enough milk?!??
since giving her the formula, it's been like having a different baby in our house. she didn't cry AT ALL today and she slept thru the night last night. SUCCESS! Look at this sweet happy baby:

i guess what i am getting at is that i should have been tuned into this a long time ago and i feel awful. parents lead a life of guilt and it stinks but i guess that's just how it's going to be. thankfully i figured it out now and maybe now we can get on track. now if i can just get karlie back on track....
tantrums. i'm not a fan and i don't know how to deal with them. everyone talks about the "terrible twos" but what about the "terrible three and a half"!!!! it's been horrible. like dealing with a teenager. i did come up with a seemingly good idea that works for her though. instead of throwing her in time out or getting a spat on the booty, i am trying to catch her before she gets in trouble. when she starts misbehaving i tell her to get a puzzle and go to the "quiet time spot". she isn't allowed to get up or talk and she has to stay there until i tell her she can get up. think of it like a pre-time out. i didn't think this would work but it totally has.....as long as i am tuned into her behavior and don't let her get to the point of getting herself in trouble.

always on the move!

being a parent is hard. it used to be so easy with just one child. she was pretty well behaved in her early years and we devoted every waking second to entertaining her and making sure her needs were met. now, well....not so much. it's hard with 2 but it seems like it's getting better/easier. she has been a huge help with keniston and i truly mean that. i absolutely hate the days that she is at school because keniston isn't as happy. plus it's nice to say 'hey, get me a diaper. throw this away. where's her paci?"

LOVE that they are making the same face.

she loves kissing her reflection in the stove. so cute!

  so yes, today was a good day in my book. we had a major breakthrough and i feel like i am slowing regaining a little freedom around the house. i even had time to do a project that has been on my list of things to do since we moved in. Here it is:

i've had this frame hanging empty for the past few months. i knew exactly what i wanted to put in it but i hadn't had the time to put into it. overall it took me about 2 hours to do it. i really love how it turned out. one step closer to being done with my bedroom!! i have a wall of frames i will be doing next on the other side of the room. then the west elm diy headboard. and i should be done with projects. then i have to wait until keniston moves outta our room so that i can put a couch and mirror where the pack and play is currently sitting. might i mention she doesn't technically sleep on the pack and play but in it. confusing? let me clarify. she got so used to sleeping in those little hammock like baby sleeper thingys (i have no clue what they are actually called!) and she refuses to sleep in anything else. she's entirely too big for it and it was getting a little dangerous so i put the hammock inside the pack and play so that she could safely sleep in it. i'm pretty sure her legs are going to start hanging off the sides of this silly sleeper but hey, i'm tackling one ordeal at a time. so now that we are sleeping and eating and not crying maybe, just maybe she will transition to the crib. fingers crossed!!!!

{i did it} what i said i wasn't going to do!

ugh....i hate myself for not blogging, like at all.  in my defense we moved right after i started the blog and i had no clue we were going to do that....the right house (for the right price) opened up and we jumped on it. so moving into a new house, even though the house was brand new (practically) and had nothing to be repaired, no problems at all, i still felt the need to redo the whole house. i have a very distinct style and when you mix a photographer/graphic designer/seamstress/mommy in a new place, ideas are bound to come up. ;) that mixed with a very difficult  baby has made it IMPOSSIBLE to blog....until NOW. I thought about trying to catch up from where I left off and I will probably do that but it seemed like to daunting of a task so I'm just going to pick up with life as we know it (don't you love a katherine heigl movie reference!).
so let's see, Keniston is crawling, well scooting. the.exact.same.way.as.karlie.did.  i find it extremely odd and ironic that both of my babies are scooters instead of crawlers. i am convinced it is something genetic. maybe it's the same gene that has made both my babies geniuses. i joke....i can't stand the mommas who are convinced they gave birth to the next Einstein just because their baby is walking at 7 months and can say their abc's by the time they are 15 months.
i'm hoping that she starts sleeping better than she has in the last few months. for the first 4 months of her life she was sleeping thru the night (genius) ;) but then she started waking up crying and hasn't really stopped crying since. nothing seems to be wrong, just likes to cuddle. i can't blame her, i like to cuddle too but what i also like is sleep and when i sleep i don't like to cuddle...just ask my husband. lol
she slept good last night so i am hoping we are coming outta the funk she has been in for the past couple of months.
ok so i am going to post a pic of my bedroom...one project i can check off of my list. it is not even close to being perfect but i really really like how it turned out. i feel alot fancier than i actually am when i'm in our bedroom now. it's amazing what a $20 can of paint can make you feel like. i didn't want to do a tutorial on this because there is one here. my only advice is if you even slightly ocd, do not attempt. i'm really not that bad ocd, but this project flared it up and now i'm stuck in an ocd rut. maybe it's a good thing though because i am cleaning and organizing like a mad woman now. the only project left for my master is the headboard. did you know you can buy fabric by the yard from west elm?!!! i just found this out. i have been checking out and thinking about purchasing their crazy expensive headboard but now for under $50 I am making my own!!! my husband and i made a headboard for karlie last year and realized how easy it is to do so i am going to order the fabric this week and hopefully have it done in the near future....i'm so ready to be done with at least one room in my house.

I am convinced pinterest is going to be the death of me. too many ideas to try, too many ways to get hurt doing them. just yesterday i crushed my wrist with the ladder. i'm talking crushed like worst pain you ever felt in your life/can't even find a cuss word to say because the pain is too bad/call your momma to come to the house because you are convinced your hand is broke/call the doctor/google your symptoms/ice pack and elevate your hand/get outta cooking supper kind of pain. needless to say i won't be hanging the letters s-p-l-a-s-h above the girls tub anytime soon. i'm still thinking that i need an m.r.i. i am pretty sure their is some sort of ligament damage.

anywho, off to the grocery store i go with little kenna in tow. karlie is at school today and it bums me out. it's amazing how much more smoothly things go around the house when she's here. she is such a helper when it comes to the baby. she is such a big girl....how did that happen!??