First post of 2013!

Sorry for such a long delay in posts.  I could barely catch up with the holidays this year!  We visited M's parents for Thanksgiving, followed by M's final's week, and than a nasty stomach bug that hit C one week and M the other.  Next thing I knew, it was Christmas!  Followed by a trip to Phoenix to visit my sister and settling back into work.

First I would like to pose two big questions...

1.) They're are tons of articles about working moms (how to cope, what its like, don't hate SAHM etc.), but what about working Dads?  Do we just assume they're okay?  Like why is it okay for me to be emotionally upset about going back to work, but not M (I don't even know if this bothers him)?  Men become fathers and are expected to go back work within days of the birth of their child, meanwhile people complain that maternity leaves really aren't long enough?

2.) I was thinking it would be fun to start a parent's perspective of kids shows (some sort of hashtag thing on twitter). Like "do kids notice that Nina wears different pajamas throughout each episode" or "yo gabba gabba, why do the bubbles want you to kill them, that's just weird" or "I don't understand why there is a girl train on Thomas now."

Quick set of goals...

-Groceries this week (only spend $100), this year I really want to nail down the $400 monthly grocery budget.  So far I've spent $160.
-Finish the brown row on C's owl pillow
-De-Christmas the house.
-Organize the craft room again (this room becomes wrapping central during the holidays and always ends uo a giant mess.)

First Product Review - Umberto U Color Italian Demi Color Kit

Last October my hairdresser decided to close up her shop and move down to Florida, which has left me in a bit of a lurch for my hair care.  Pre-pregnancy I was a 6-8 weeks color, cut, highlights, and eyebrow waxing kind of girl.  For those of you who don't know, you're not really suppose to regularly color your hair during pregnancy - so I went once.  Since then I have been hoping around hair dressers trying to find one I like, trust, and is reasonably priced - one of things that makes me most nervous is color.  So I have gone back to saving the $100+ bucks and started coloring my hair again by myself.

In the past year I have tried many brands - Garnier, Clairol, John Friedia, etc.  I made a rare trip to Ulta to pick out some hair dye (I wasn't sure if I wanted to stay with the champagne color or go back to a golden blonde).  Ulta has a much larger selection of hair dye than the grocery store/pharmacy, so I was hoping this would help narrow down my decision.  I walked away with the Umberto U Color Italian Demi Color Kit in very light blonde.  One of the reasons I chose this one was that in came with two packets of color, which is nice for $11.99.

My newly colored hair.

This system is interesting, you have three packets that are attached together, all you are suppose to do is cut across the packets while folded together and work the mixture into you hair.  Let it sit for 25 mins (which seems a little longer than usual) and rinse.  Now the interesting thing is, after you rinse the dye out, you are suppose to shampoo your hair, and use your own conditioner.  This had me a bit worried, as often pre-conditioning my newly colored hair feels dry and brittle.  But not so much with Umberto!  My hair still feels like it did before (if not a little better), and the color looks great (I was worried about it looking orange).  Also my hair didn't have that hair dye smell, which is often the case.

My only complaint so far is that it only comes with one glove per packet and is a little messy compared the bottles/foam dyes.  I highly recommend wearing an old t-shirt while using this product, and keep away from any bath mats in case you drip while coloring (although it was fine during the 25 minute processing time).

So I give it 4.5 stars out of 5 for  the home hair dye coloring experience.

Goals-November

I've decided to try making monthly goals, rather than weekly.

Craft Projects
-Make a granny square for Friendship Square Exchange
-Start Swap On A Budget Project
-Finish baby blanket for baby receiving sweater in previous post.
-Finish C's pajamas
-Make 3 more tote bags

Christmas
-Complete 1/2 of shopping
-Figure out everyone's gifts

Health/Exercise
-Drink 5 glasses of water each day (I can seriously drink 2 things of water/juice and be fine).
-Get back on track with exercise plan (core exercises - I do everything but the crunches, and arms)
-Lose 3lbs

Financial
-Keep groceries to under $550 for the month (We are at $353 currently).
-Cut back to one lunch out a week, one starbucks run a week

Other things:
-Organize desk at home
-Finish akellydesign website
-Design and print business cards

Crafty Stuff

The one good thing about this past week is that I have completed a ton of craft projects (some have been "in progress" since 2010!

I forgot to mention when going over my goals, I did make the living room curtains!  I also made matching pillows with the leftover fabric.  Earlier this month, I used some of the fabric to cover a side table (I bought years ago in the As-Is Section of IKEA, the top has a giant price tag on it, so it's always covered up).  The fabric in this project is Heather Bailey's Pop Garden Sway-Brown.

This pillow was "designed" by myself and just filled with fiber.

This pillow used a pillow form for its stuffing.

This is the table, I found something to make this easier to do was to use Iron on transfer paper to get it to stick to the top, then I stapled gun/glue gunned the underside.

For some reason this is upside down, but this is the right side of the curtain.

This is the back side (what you'll see looking into the house).

 The second project I completed was a baby sweater for my friend who is due in January.  I made the decision to make this project on a whim when I found the yarn at JoAnn Fabrics.  The yarn is Red Heart Team Spirit in Burgundy/Gold, the burgundy is much closer to crimson than what I think of as burgundy.  Crimson and Gold were our fraternity colors in college - and my friend and her husband are both brothers, so it only seemed natural that their baby would have something in those colors. This was my first time working with self-striping yarn, I think in the future I would buy extra yarn or choose a pattern that didn't create the jacket in one go.  It's the just the stripes are different sizes in the front, back, and sleeves.  The pattern I used was from Lion Brand's Crochet Baby Christening Set (which I had previously made for C.)  It's a free pattern on Lion Brand's site.

Love the penguin buttons, in honor of the fraternity bird.

 The very last project to mention was the start of my gift tote bags!  This year I've decided to make some tote bags as part of people's gifts rather than using wrapping paper.  The first one I made is for my sister E's birthday gift.  I used this tutorial from Skip to My Lou.  I'm pretty happy with this bag and plan on using the pattern to create other bags (I love that it allows the flexibility to change sizes).

Finished bag

Stuffed with goodies

Lining inside

 Have a good night and a fun weekend!  I hope to get another project finished before my next post!

Busy, Busy Weeks

Sorry for the lack of posts (not very good for a month old blog!)  Somehow things got busy last week(I still haven't pin pointed why) and I have spent all of this week catching up.

I'm really excited to announce that my business A. Kelly Design seems to be taking off - I actually have paying customers!  If anyone would like Christmas/Holiday cards designed, I'll be offering my skills for $10 a design - it's my Christmas present to you!


Last week's grocery shopping went super well - I did the curbside express pick up and only spent $108 ($5 though was part of the fee).  This past week I went shopping on my own again, and well I was back up to $200 (in my defense I decided to stock up on a bunch of meat, Giant Eagle was having a buy one get one free sale on a lot of the beef).  So clearly I need to use the curbside express...even if it does cost $5.

Highlights of the past two weeks include:

Going to the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium's Zoo Boo!  My little tiger is posing with the real thing !  We had a great time seeing all the animals and hanging out with Bethany and Grayson (from In This Crazy Life)!

Halloween Party at Fun Buy The Pound.  We called it the Itsy-Bitsy Halloween Party, for kids 2 and under.  We offered snacks, storytime, songs, playtime, and a photo.  As you can see C did an amazing job of staying still and posing for the photo shoot at the party...



On Friday, my friend Ashley and her classmate came over to "observe" C for their class.  Ashley wants to work with kids with Autism, so it's important for her to learn how to assess kids (they start with kids who seem to be developing normally).   C had a lot of fun (he thinks its just play!), and I swear since their session C 's vocabulary has grown and become more understandable!  M and I both think helping students/research like this is a great way to contribute to society, one of C's first studies was at Carnegie Mellon's Infant Cognitive Lab, if you're interested in trying something like this out!

Saturday was our Trick Or Treat (it was moved due to Hurricane Sandy), it was C's first time going around. We just walked around our block, but it was a lot of fun (we got to meet a lot of our neighbors for the first time. Then we handed out candy until we ran out (our block seems to get 2-300 kids each year, and apparently I didn't stock up well enough this year!).

Monday was Guy Fawkes Day, which I know normal Americans don't celebrate, but I'm first generation English-American, so we do.  My parents seem to throw a bigger bonfire every year, there were probably at least 30 people there this year.  My dad made Carrot & Honey Soup and Bacon Sandwiches (which are delicious, but terrible for you).

Also on Monday, my sister (J), flew in to town from Phoenix.  It was really great spending time with her, and I am really looking forward to visiting her in December.  We spent some time getting coffee on Monday, she came voting with me & C on Tuesday and then ate dinner with us (while we watched the election outcomes).  I took Wednesday off to spend some more time with her - we went shopping at Grove City Premium Outlets.  I was excited to get some clothes for C at Carter's, including an adorable Thanksgiving outfit as well as finally finding an I LOVE NANA shirt at Old Navy in his size.  I also got some Christmas shopping done (which is great, since I feel really behind, last year I was a third of a way through before I had C.)  We also went to the Wendall August store, which I just love.  Their pieces are so pretty, and its a cool local business.  My mom got C a Christmas Ornament from there, and they are personalizing it with his name.

In between all of this, I finished my first baby gift for one of my college friends- will post photos later!

I promise to be better about updating!

Goals 10/22-10/28/12

Goals 10/22-10/28/12

Life

• Clean/reorganize my craft room.
• Make living room curtains.
• Work on Pinterest stuff for Fun Buy The Pound
• Figure out Social Media Pricing for my design business

Money

• Keep grocery bill to $100
• Figure out how to keep my self from impulse buying

Blog

• Write 1 product review
• Write one other piece
• Announce my blog to Facebook

Goals 10/15-10/21/12 - Review

Life

• Clean/reorganize my craft room.
• Make living room curtains.
• Get my design site up and running
• Work on Pinterest stuff for Fun Buy The Pound

Haha, these were ambitious goals.  I'm really glad I got my design site up and going, I wish I could include some of my stuff from work, but I haven't received approval yet.  Maybe I should make monthly goals too for the other stuff.  Should you be in need of social media or design services, please visit akellydesign.com.

Money

• To pack a lunch 
• Keep grocery bill to $100
• Try using my 5 dinners 1 hour meal planning menu (hey I spent $15 on it, so I need to make sure it works!)
• Be better at filling out surveys and watching Jingit - if I'm going to waste time on the internet, I might as well earn some money!

I did really great at bringing my lunch to work, I do need to work on either portion control or bringing more food, because I get very hungry around 10 and 2...and that leads to snacking...

I failed at keep my grocery bill down, it was $200...I tried shopping at Walmart, since its suppose to be full of great deals.  I spent two hours wandering the aisles, sometimes having to guess what would be a good subsitute.  I did not think they few cents in savings was worth the energy spent by me and C in Walmart.  Next week I plan on Giant Eagle's Curbside Express.  It costs $5, but I have found in the past that I am less likely to pick up extras.

We have eaten 3 of the 5 dinners so far.  I'm not so sure on the chicken & dumplings, but everything else has been good.  I really liked the Cheesey Bacon Honey Mustard Chicken.  It really was pretty simple to put everything together.  On Friday night I assembled things while cooking dinner.  I think we will definetly try this out again next week.

Surveys and Jingit, some days I'm really good, sometimes I have no interest.  Sometimes C decides to help me fill out a survey and makes the survey program mad by pressing an incorrect button.

Blog

• Write 1 product review
• Write a review of C's parties
• Write C's party supplies reviews
• Write C's toy review

Yay!  I got all of the party reviews done!  I did combine them into two posts, but I think I covered everything.  It was a lot to think about, so much food, toys, and fun.  I will get a non-birthday product review done this week!

C's First Birthday Review (Part 2)

October 6th - Family Party

For C's Family Party we had 14 guests (family from both mine and M's).  For some reason I'm crazy and decided to have a sit down dinner.  It was a lot of fun seeing everyone, and nice to have our house feel full.  This is the party I stressed the most about, but had the most fun decorating.  For his theme, we went with Sweet At One Safari Boy Birthday, which is a cute set with baby jungle animals.  We purchased on the products on Amazon.  We purchased the following items:

• Tablecloths
• Lunch Napkins (I ordered a ton of these, so we didn't bother with the smaller matching napkins)
• Dessert Plates (They also have lunch plates, but I decided that paper plates would not withstand dinner).
• Birthday Blowouts - I thought this would be fun for everyone and totally amaze C.  He was pretty enthralled.
• Birthday Banner (This was the only thing I wasn't happy about, the sticker letters for the name we're really hard to peel, and a lot of the letters only had 1 uppercase and 1 lowercase (so if you ripped one, you had to carefully stick it back together).
• Bib-I'm actually pretty impressed with bib.  It's pretty nice quality and washed well (I was worried the screen printing might rub off.  It was probably the priciest thing in the set, but at least C will get lot's of non-birthday uses out of it!

At GFS we purchased blue cocktail napkins, white square cocktail plates, and white square dinner plates to complete the evening.

Now more importantly, the FOOD!  After an extremely long and expensive trip to Giant Eagle, here's what we had -

Appetizers:  Most of these a purchased ready to made (veggie tray, pizza bites, pretzel bites, and eggrolls), I also put together a cheese and cracker plate - with two of my favorite cheeses (stilton with cranberries and double glouchester).  We also made pigs in a blanket (M's favorite) and Figs in a Blanket (from Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express).  The pigs in a blanket turned out pretty well, the Figs in a Blanket not so much.  Figs in a Blanket are wrapped in bacon, which sound delicious, but it is a little greasy.

Dinner: Pot Roast with Cranberries and Glazed Carrots (Mark Bittman's Quick & Easy Recipes), Rosemary Potatoes (One of my dad's recipes), and Easter Egg Bread (made into rolls without Easter Eggs).  The only problem with dinner was that I made way too many potatoes!  My family is English and M's is Irish (so we're all potato fans!), so my dad had suggested 10lbs of potatoes.

Dessert: Cupcakes and a Smash Cake.  I made a variety of cupcakes (mostly box mix and store bought icing), but I did make homemade pumpkin cupcakes, which everyone thought they were delicious - what's the fun in having an October baby if you can't have some pumpkin flavored things at his party!  I have to say, I loved the monkey cupcake liners I purchased.  They were the Reynolds StayBrite baking cups, they really did hold shape well, they didn't get transparent like other liners, and they gave the perfect cupcake shape.  I highly recommend them! C's smash cake was a monkey to continue the safari theme.  I baked a small cake in the 4 inch cake pan, and then sliced a cupcake in half for ears.  The dark brown icing is chocolate, the light is the cinnamon icing from the pumpkin cupcakes, and I used a dab of strawberry icing for the tongue, and chocolate chips/sprinkles for the rest!


Lastly, C was spoiled with tons of toys, clothes, and books from our families.  Some highlights were a drum, a tunnel, a rocking "bug",  a bear that sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (which C loves, he almost always calms down when it starts!), playtime peekaboo book (it pops up!), Blue's Clue's DVDs, and a Pitt colored sweater.  Everything our families brought were amazing and perfect for C, we're blessed to have two supportive families who love to spoil C!

October 10th - Baby Friends Party

For C's little friends we had a party at Fun Buy The Pound on a Wednesday night.  It was by far the easiest, most relaxed party.  We ordered sandwiches and chicken fingers from East Coast Sandwiches for dinner.  The food was tasty - I love the chicken fingers!  We let all the little ones run around in both the playground and the baby room, it was really nice having the whole store to ourselves!  After a bit of playing we had cupcakes, that I ordered from Paddy Cake Bakery, I love their cake and they did a really cute job decorating C's special cake!