Aloha Friday

Aloha Friday #27


My questions this week:


Whats your poison? Are you the leaded or unleaded type, caffeine or no caffeine? If you do drink caffeine what is your choice drink?


I gave up caffeine two years ago when I got pregnant. I will not drink a drop of caffeine while pregnant or nursing. It is a personal thing and I just wont do it. I went cold turkey and didn't have caffeine for two years between being pregnant and nursing. When I stopped nursing I said, I don't need caffeine and am not going back. Ha... that lasted 5 minutes. Now I am hooked, must have my 2 cups of coffee every morning, fully leaded... thank you very much. I am now back to if I don't have my two cups of coffee in the morning then I have the worst head-ache around 2 in the afternoon and it stays with me the rest of the day. I am so mad at myself for ever going back. I am now trying to ween back down the caffeine. Not giving it up just backing off a bit. These head-aches are just not worth it.


Play along at An Island Life for Aloha Friday. In Hawaii, Aloha Friday is the day that we take it easy and look forward to the weekend. So I thought that on Fridays I would take it easy on posting, too. Therefore, I’ll ask a simple question for you to answer. Nothing that requires a lengthy response. If you’d like to participate, just post your own question on your blog and leave your link at An Island Life. Don’t forget to visit the other participants! It’s a great way to make new bloggy friends!

Reasons to Love my House

Yesterday I shared many things around my house that are unfinished. Today I am going to share 5 reasons why I love my house. This is sometimes hard for me to do because of all the unfinished things but trust me the good out weigh the bad and I have to remind myself of this all the time. So here we go.....

5 THINGS I LOVE ABOUT MY HOUSE.

1. Its old charm!!! How many of you can say you have a stain glass window in your house? One of the first things you see when you come into my house is this beautiful old window. Yeah, it leaks air and isn't very efficient but it is so pretty. It was one of the first things I saw and fell in love with when I bought this house.
2. My bay window in the living room. Sorry I can't get a better picture. The sun is blazing in this morning and when I take my picture up close it just turns really dark. This window goes all the way to the floor and lets the west winds blow right through our house on a nice day. The cross breeze is amazing.
3. I love the open floor plan of my house. Not to many old homes have this type of open floor plan. You can see from one end of the living room through to the dining room. Now my kitchen is off to the left of the dining room and my toy room/office is off to the right of the living room. Oh don't mind the little monkey climbing through the columns. He knows he isn't supposed to be doing that.

4. My house is small approximately 1400 square feet. This is little but the open floor plan makes it feel much bigger than it is. Plus my space is all downstairs and all the rooms downstairs are large. It is upstairs where everything is very small. We have two bedrooms and that is it. While the house is small we have a huge yard. An acre and one-third to be exact. It is large and offers lots of room for the dogs and kids to run and play.

5. The top reason why I love my house... it was cheap! Yes, we bought a bank repossessed house. Yes it was completely trashed when we bought it. We had to replace everything and do a lot of fixing up (still fixing) but it was cheep. We got this place for next to nothing. I never worry about one of us losing our jobs because the mortgage could easily be paid. If we really put our effort into it we could pay off our mortgage in 5 years. This is actually a goal of mine.

So every time I get the new house bug or envy someone else of their big new house I remind myself of #5. Plus we have talked about adding an addition onto this house that would give us a 3rd bedroom and an open kitchen with a new family room if we did it. Still talking!!!

What's five things do you love? Write a blog post and click here to join the fun.

Never Finished....

So last week I shared my stairway both old and new after we were done. Now I would like to point out that while we have done many great things to our house in the last 7 years we still have so much that is not finished. My husband is a DIYer and he is also the never finisher. We have one room that is 100% done (the boys bedroom) and the rest have a little or maybe a lot that needs to be done. Here are a few samples of the types of things that need to be finished.

Example 1: Trim... trim... shouldn't we have trim???? Yes, we have no trim in some rooms and partially done trim in other rooms.

Example 2: We put a new roof on our house in 2007 or was it 2008 or wait 2009. We started roofing August 2007 and I took this picture yesterday. This is over the garage, the last of the roofing and only a couple hours of work to be finished. 2010 anyone????

Example 3: The downstairs laundry/bathroom. It has half of a wall on one of the walls. Yes it was removed because of busted pipes but never put back in and finished. So one side of the bathroom all new, just don't turn around and look at the laundry side of things. Sigh....

Example 4: This is extreme.... this is my upstairs bathroom. Needs walls, flooring, new windows, pretty much everything. This was going to be this winters job. Winter is over... enough said. Oh and don't worry this room is closed off and their is no wiring that is live to this room. I wouldn't have it any other way. Will someone come fix this place up for me??? The funny thing, my husband has dreams of someday building a house. But wait for it... he wont pay for everything to be done because he can do it. Ha... I am not going for that!!!

Go visit Angie at 7 Clown Circus for more great Wordfull Wednesday post.

DANCE, DANCE, DANCE

This morning we went shopping to get a few items. While their I decided to buy Easter present. Thomas is my musically inclined child. He loves anything that makes music. So we walked through the toy section and picked up different toys to see what really grabbed his interest. Then we found the Little Tikes Guitar and it was over. He loved this thing and was trying to rip it out of the box. Now remember this is supposed to be for Easter. We get home and he is still trying to rip it from the box. I take it out and think OK he can play with it until Luke gets home and then I will hide it until Easter. Let me just say he isn't going to give this thing up with out a fight.

Here is a great clip from this morning of our new Guitar. So come on in, pull up a chair and enjoy. Oh and don't mind the mess, I wasn't expecting company or I would have picked up.

It is now hours later and this thing has not left his side for a moment.

VACATION, STAY-CATION

I would first like to start off by saying I am on vacation this week. It is a stay-cation as they call them. Thomas babysitter is on a real vacation this week and Luke went back to school so this morning Thomas and I are hanging around the house. I have a million things I want to do this week and probably wont get half of them done.

First task this morning, take Thomas to the doctor. Not the best start to my week off I must say. Poor Thomas has been very congested, snotty and his eyes are so watery they are matting constantly. Yesterday in the midst of tornado warnings and the sirens going off, he throws up. He cried hard for about two hours. I thought maybe we had a stomach bug but today I am thinking it was lots of snot in his tummy, mixed with milk and it didn't agree with him.

Went to the doctor and we have an ear infection (again). The eyes are part of the discharge. He just has so much it is coming out his eyes and nose. Poor thing!!! A couple days of antibiotics and we should be good as new.

Here is glimpse of what I want to achieve this week.

- Pictures: I have two years of pictures that need printed and put into photo albums. I am so behind.

- Spring cleaning: closets, cabinets, you name it, I am cleaning it out this week. The trash people will not like me this week.

- Laundry: I was caught up and now I am behind again. I have two baskets of socks that need matched up. I hate socks!!! Their has got to be an easier way to manage socks.

- Working out: This is an every day must this week.

- Potty training Thomas: OK, I am not doing this until he feels better. My method of potty training is putting away the diapers and going with the underwear. Yeah we have lots of accidents but it worked with child number one. Plus I have hard wood floors so messes are easily cleaned up. I set a timer and every hour we go potty. This child is a little more stubborn so this might not go well. I don't want to make this a bad thing so he has to feel better before we tackle this one.

- I had outdoor activities for my vacation however it is snowing outside. That kills any out door projects this week. Last I checked it is Spring for crying out load. That's OK because I have plenty to do today and I am keeping everything to one project a day (with a few exceptions).

So that is a look at my week. Not exactly the ideal vacation but I love time off like this to get many things done.

Motivate Me Monday

Time again for Motivate Me Monday . Yeah, I know it has been a while and I have really been dragging my feet. I need to get back into Motivate Me Monday. If my mental work outs got me in shape wow, I would have a tight little body but instead I think more about working out than I actually do, so there is no tight little body. LOL....

So lets get down to business. I have major goals to work out every day this week. I am on vacation so I have no excuses. I want to really dig into weight training. Some of my favorite things to do is use my large exercise ball. It is a great "bench" so to speak for lifting and working my core at the same time. I have also really gotten into the Wii fit. It has this part on it where you go jogging and it seems silly but you put the remote in your pocket and go for a jog. You have to maintain a consistent speed or the game lets you know it. I have do the island jog that takes 12 minutes. I know, boring jogging around the living room for 12 minutes but it isn't to bad and it gets my heart rate up. I also unlocked the 10, 20 or 30 minute jogs. I don't know if I can jog in place for 30 minutes, that might be to much for me. The jogging gets my going so I can lift my weights and work other muscles.

I just need to figure out what time of day will work out best each day for my work out. I hate working out after I eat, I am not one who likes to work out in the morning and typically the afternoon works well for me. When we had a YMCA membership I would go on my lunch hour and work out all the time. We gave up our membership for now to save money so I have to make do with my home equipment. I am thinking it is going to be a mid afternoon work out each day for me. What time of day do you like working out the most?

I have a new goal to reach, we are going to South Carolina in June and I have got to get myself back into shape. I have 10 weeks and that isn't much time so I have got to get focused. Wish me luck! Oh and would somebody come over here and through out all this Easter candy we keep buy. Seriously it is my worst enemy.

Remember I am only playing every 1st and 3rd Monday of each month. Define your goals and get moving. Play along, support each other and never give up on yourself. Share your tips and tricks to help keep your self motivated and moving.