Why I Shouldn't Buy Things Just Because They Are On Sale

This year I told myself I wasn't going to buy anything unless it was needed.  It's been over half way through the year and although I haven't been perfect, I haven't been doing too bad.  There were things I did actually need to buy and a few things had weak cases for being needed.  I did break down last week and bought a few things that were pure wants.

Nordstrom's big anniversary sale is coming up, and I have the itch to buy.  As I was getting frustrated by work today, I happened to look over and see a catalog that Nordstrom's had sent to us.  I was leafing through it, trying to determine if there was anything I "needed".  I know there isn't truly anything I need, so to prove it I decided to try on all the clothes I have bought during the past two years of Nordstrom sales.  And to make an even bigger and embarrassing point, I'm going to share those with you.

So let's start with the picture above.  In this picture I bought the leggings and shoes.  I actually wear these quite often, so it was a decent purchase.  Notice the pile of leggings behind me?  I believe that is 5 extra pairs of Zella leggings.  Which of course is too many, especially when that isn't all the leggings I own, just the ones I bought from Nordstrom in the past two years.

Now let's discuss an embarrassing picture.  This "shirt" while cute is too big.  I should have returned it.  I have tried to pull off wearing it with shorts underneath and therefore it looks like a dress, but I just don't think it works.  Even worse is the cropped leggings.  They are not workout material, just regular legging material.  I have not worn them.  Also on the bed is longer black leggings, that have barely been worn.  Common theme-too many leggings.  And lastly the gold shoes.  I have worn them a few times, but they are a little too crazy for me and I should have gone with my gut and returned them.  Also - can you tell which ankle is the one I sprained?  Still swollen after 3 weeks.

These next set of pictures highlight another category I tend to buy from and then hardly ever wear.  I call these "going out shirts".  They are not appropriate for work and I tend to not wear them around the house.  People, I don't go out enough to warrant all the going out clothes I own.  I need to stop buying them.  Absolute worst purchase is the gray lace bodysuit on the bed.  I have never worn it, nor do I think I ever will, yet I didn't return it.  Why?

Next set of pictures are displaying tops I bought that I actually like.  I also like the 2 pairs of jeans I bought, but let's be honest, I have way too many of those also.  The yellow pants are again a little crazy and capri style is not my personal best fit.  I hope some year to grow up and actually figure out the classics that work best for me.

I will end on a high note, showing the top I bought that has been a good purchase.  Versatile enough for work, going out, and wearing around home if I feel so inclined.

So after all the work of trying on and taking pictures of these clothes, I have definitely persuaded myself to sit this sale out.  I guess you could call that a job well done. 

Spring into Summer Update

And just like that 3 months has gone by since I've been able to post.  Work got busy.  As in crazy busy.  It's still crazy busy, but here is the thing, I can't keep up with it.  I can't put work first.  When I do, my health and well being takes a nose dive.  I don't have time to cook healthy meals, which affects the whole family.  I don't have time to clean the house.  My husband and I have no time to ourselves or each other.
It all came to a head a week ago when I was walking, just walking, and suddenly I was heading towards the floor.  My high heel had slipped and caused me to twist my ankle and go down.  I did very awkwardly catch myself on the back of a chair, so I didn't make it all the way to the ground.  But I managed to sprain my ankle good and give myself a good dose of embarrassment, as I was in a crowded restaurant when it happened.
After that embarrassing moment, I decided it was time to reprioritize.  I was going to start cooking and eating healthy again.  And as soon as my ankle heals up, I'm really going to get serious about adding a workout into my daily routine.

Here is daily life with the kids performing "Baby Shark" as I rest with my sprained ankle.

In other happenings.  We did go on our Napa Valley Trip.  Last we saw, I had modified my dress to take along on the trip.  Sadly, the weather forecast was calling for cold weather, so no dresses made the cut to go in the suitcase.

When I get more time I hope to do a post about our Napa trip.  We had a great time and loved the scenery.

Oliver just turned 8 this past week, and he requested as his gift, a trip to Worlds/Oceans of Fun.  I was more than happy to oblige his request for an experience over a thing.

The kids deemed the park more fun than Disney.  Gray is already requesting that her birthday present be a trip to the park.

Also in the month of June, Jesse turned 40.  We celebrated early with our trip to Napa and then locally by going out with friends down to the KC Crossroads district.  It was a fun night.

In a few weeks we head off to Colorado for our summer vacation.  We are looking forward to it, but for now we are pushing ourselves to the max trying to fit in our crazy work schedules, with the caveat for myself of making sure I am taking the time to cook healthy meals.

The Vacation Clothing Syndrome

What is it about vacations that makes us want to go out and buy all new clothes?  Just me??  It's not like we often will know anyone we see on vacation that would even realize the clothes are new.  Nor would we see them again.  In fact vacations should be the time you can get away with wearing anything. 

Every time we book a vacation I worry about what we are going to pack and what clothes I am going to wear.  Especially when it's an adult only vacation.  I usually look at this time as me being able to wear something a little bolder.  Something that I don't have to worry about what it will look like when kids are pulling on it or spilling on it.

Since I made a pact with myself this year to not buy new clothing, it's time to revamp some clothing for our upcoming "We are turning 40 - Napa Valley - BottleRock Festival Vacation".  While trying to get some inspiration pictures for our vacation I made the fatal flaw of searching festival outfits.  Being that I'm turning 40 this year, I should probably wear a little more clothing than your typical festival goer.

So the first dress up in my closet is one we will call - The Pilgrim Dress.  This one was named and nominated by Jesse.  I actually don't mind it as is.  I think it's main problem is that there is a lot of fabric and it kind of swallows my smaller statue.

My inspiration picture for changing this dress is these button down midi dresses.

I chopped off the length, neckline and sleeves of the dress.  I then hemmed them all up and here was the result.

I'm trying to figure out if I can pull off the hat.  It seems practical for a summer festival in California....I just don't know.  Also full disclosure, the filter on the pictures was used so that I wouldn't have to put on makeup and because I didn't realize till afterwards that the mirror was all dusty.

Here is one last look, side by side of the before and after.

My Nutrition Journey - Part 1 - Becoming Vegan

We left off talking about the documentary that made the biggest impact in my life - "Forks Over Knives".  Again, I highly recommend watching this documentary, even if people talking about being vegan and having whole food plant based diets scares you.  Bottom line is, I didn't feel great and if changing my diet could help me, why wouldn't I try it.

This picture above was taken at a musical festival and it was my big gorging out party to myself before I was going to become Vegan.  The thing that resonated with me the most about the whole food plant based diet was that I believed our bodies were never meant to eat as much meat as most people do.  I was a meat, dairy and potatoes kind of person.  And the meat portion of my meals was the main portion.....by far.  I hardly ever ate vegetables or even fruit for that matter.  So I needed to get myself out of the rut of eating so much meat and dairy.

The additional documentary I watched at this time was "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead".  It followed a guy who changed out his diet to only be juice (mostly vegetables) and how it made amazing changes to his body.  So I too did a 4 days juice cleanse, in fact it's how I started out my journey to become vegan.  I will admit that juicing is a really hard diet to follow, and it probably isn't needed for most people.  The amazing thing it did for me, was to kick my soda habit.  After 4 days of juicing I haven't touched soda again.  I used to have to have at least one can/glass a day and now it's been 4 years.  When soda accidentally gets mixed in a drink, I can tell immediately and it's way too sweet for me.  Since that 4 day juice cleanse, I have tried a few more times to do a reset and juice again, but I haven't been successful.  I was extremely tired and had headaches during the juice cleanse and since I still have children to take care of and work too, it just doesn't happen.  People claim if you make it past 4 days you start to feel amazing, I can't personally vouch for that.

Taking meat and dairy out of my diet forced me to try new kinds of food and figure out what I liked.  Honestly taking out cheese was the hardest part of the process, and the part that I cheated on the most (still do).  I cut out almost all meats and fish/seafood.  Only eating chicken on very rare occasions.  I also cut out over processed and refined flours/breads and replaced them with whole grain options.

I can't remember exactly but I followed this diet for about a year.  Jesse also joined me on the journey.  It helped me to loose the pesky baby weight I had put on with all three kids, and Jesse really slimmed down too.

The problem was - I didn't feel much better.  I was still tired all the time and I was still getting migraines.  I did realize that the few times we tried to eat meat again, I felt absolutely awful afterwards.  My stomach could not process red meat or pork, it would leave me doubled over in pain.  I took that as a sign that taking meat out of my diet was a good choice, but I still needed to find more answers.

Also on a more vain note, I had lost the baby weight, but my body was definitely in different shape than before I had kids.  I had problem areas that it seemed like no matter what I did, the fat wouldn't go away.  On the outside I probably looked healthy, but on the inside I didn't feel healthy.  I also still had three young kids and finding time to workout just wasn't happening.  So I started doing more research.

I came upon a book and phenomenon known as "The Elimination Diet" which lead me to the second part of my journey.

Laundry Room Reveal

The laundry room is officially finished.  Don't I look so happy to be doing laundry now?!!  We had some functional and aesthetic concerns in this room.

Our laundry room is actually located between our kitchen and family room.  When we changed all the flooring in those rooms to be the wood grain tile, we planned to carry it into this room too.  The current flooring was a beige tile floor that was actually falling apart, so we had to replace it regardless.

The old cabinets were original to the house and a poor grade wood/plywood, so we planned to tear them out.

We had differing opinions on how we would replace them.  Originally I wanted to paint and reuse the cabinets we had torn out from the kitchen.  My husband wanted all new cabinets.  When we tore down the cabinets we found some lovely wallpaper, an abandoned light fixture in the ceiling, and an abandoned vent in the wall.

With all that going on, we decided to order new cabinets from IKEA so we could get the exact size we needed to cover up all the existing surprises we found.  We created some shelving in the middle to house our laundry detergent.

The original hookups for the washer and dryer were placed so that with our particular washer and dryer the doors opened into each other.  We could adjust the dryer door so that they opened in the same direction, but I really wanted them to open opposite so that we had a clear path from the washer to the dryer.  That meant changing the location of our washer and dryer and creating extensions for the hookups.  Let's just say it was a little more work than we thought.  Functionally it works great now.

We also wanted the washer and dryer up on platforms so that it was easier to load and unload laundry.  Jesse created a very solid wood structure platform for them to sit on and then I stained it to match the flooring.

My favorite feature of the new laundry room is how we decided to tackle the drying rack.  We had originally mounted a shelf with a rod to dry our clothes.  That shelf made the room feel claustrophobic when doing laundry.

So we now have a hidden drying rod in the cabinet.

That's a wrap on the laundry room.  Now we will just continue to work with the kids on doing their own laundry, they are both getting pretty close to accomplishing this goal.

Florida Family Vacation

We were able to take a trip to Florida over our kids spring break.  It really was a great trip.  I've always commented that a vacation with kids isn't really a vacation, its just a regular busy life with different scenery around.  This trip made that statement false.  Although we are going to have to address the elephant in the room.  We left Bella at home.

Oh Bella.  I'm aware every day how much we have to do for you and how our schedules have to revolve around you.  After 10 years we are "used to it", it is our norm after all.  What I didn't realize until we went on this trip without her, is how much is changes the dynamics with the other two kids.  They still had their moments of sibling fighting, being tired and cranky, etc.  But with both parents able to be around to defuse the situation and not getting our energy taken up by Bella, it was a lot smoother.  I had a moment mid-trip when I realized, this is probably how most families function, and I'm going to admit, it's a hell of lot easier than our lives.

It makes me feel really guilty to say that from now on I would like to take our family vacations and leave one member of our family at home.  Facts would tell me that Bella is a creature of comfort and routine and likes to be home.  She also doesn't like long car rides, and a plane ride would be near impossible with her.  Not to mention we have taken her on a few vacations and she is usually only slightly happy for one of the many days we are gone, and cries/fusses the other days or while in the car.  So I should probably let the guilt go, and as long as we can find caring people to watch Bella, Bella would probably choose to stay home anyways.  Thanks Grandma Judy for staying with Bella and being the person who for the future will probably watch her for us!

Now if you would like to hear a short recap of our trip......keep reading.

We woke the kids up at 3:30am and got on the road.  The hope was that they would fall back asleep for a little while.  Reality was that they did not.  In the end, I still liked the early morning drive versus the late night one, but maybe not quite as early as 3:30am next time.

We stopped in Nashville hoping to find something to do for a short break.  It was rainy and cold so we stopped at an indoor garden area.  I quickly researched an authentic Nashville bar to eat lunch but when we got there we noticed it was busy and there were absolutely no kids in the whole downtown area, so we kept on driving.  We made it to Atlanta that evening to spend the night (about a 12 hour car ride for the day).

The next day we woke up and drove the remaining 6 hours into Orlando.  We stayed with a friend...thanks Lindsey, and socialized with her family that day.  On Sunday we woke the kids up and told them we were headed to Disney.  They had questioned if we were going to go, since they knew it was in Orlando.  Luckily they kept asking if we were going to Disneyland and I could honestly tell them we were not.  We spent a full 9am-9pm day at Epcot.  We walked all over that park, multiple times.  I think we walked around the worlds 3 whole times plus some.  Oliver loved collecting the passports and some of the rides.  Gray wanted to meet all the Disney princesses.  Jesse and I got to enjoy a few drinks.  What I learned at the end of our day at Disney is that even being there 12 hours we did not have enough time to see everything, and that my daughter Gray is definitely going to be more of the risk taker/thrill seeker over her brother.

Monday we left Orlando and starting traveling towards the beaches near Tampa.  We ate in the Clearwater Beach area and then headed South until we could find a place to park.  We ended up getting to Indian Rocks Beach and spent a few hours there.

The kids loved the beach.  We also were spoiled enough to find a house that had its own heated pool on Anna Maria Island, one block from the beaches there.  We arrived Monday evening and immediately the kids wanted to swim.  The island only had a few restaurants and by the time we went out that evening to try and get dinner, everything was packed, so ice cream for dinner it was.

The next day was one of those 72 degree cloudy days that ended up being the best day for the beach.  Although we did a bad job keeping up with sunscreen and all paid for it later...sorry kids.

They did such a great job playing (Dad joined in on the playing too) I was able to read an entire book at the beach that day....bliss.

That evening we did an early dinner at a beachfront restaurant.  It was delicious and the views were great (although it did not take a good picture).

The following day was more of the same.  Beach in the morning, pool in the afternoon, early dinner (this time out on a pier restaurant).  Gray took a quick nap through dinner, so we were even able to go out for the sunset on the beach that evening.

The next day we had to pack up and head home.  We realized that we were 21 hours from home.  I really wanted to stop in Memphis so we made it our goal to get there that evening.  It was about a 14 hour drive.  Hindsight, that was probably a little too far to drive.  The kids really did great with the car trip though, can't complain at all.

In Memphis we visited the National Civil Rights Museum, which is located in the original hotel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated.  This really was a well done museum.  Oliver is 7 and he did fairly well there, although Gray (age 4) really did not want to be there, and they messed around some which was embarrassing.  Gray had thought we were going to a children's play museum so she was grumpy and wanting to just run around the whole time.  The pictures crack me up because in the first one she is pretending to be pouty, but the rest she is full on pouty.  The last picture we took, she wouldn't even turn around for the camera.

We also stopped at a wonderful park to let them run around and get their energy out before we got back in the car for our final 7 hour leg.

I really enjoyed the little bit of Memphis that we got to see, and hope to go back again someday.

It really was a great trip like I mentioned earlier.  I planned the whole thing just 5 days before we left, and I think we really lucked out being able to stay with friends, get Disney tickets, and get the house we did on Anna Maria island.  The kids are already begging to go back and asking if we can make plans for this summer.  If only money grew on trees kids.