Aloha Insanity

Apparently, out of nowhere, E and I are going on a Hawaiian vacation this year! It actually fell into place so perfectly that I'm still not convinced it's going to happen.  Plus, we essentially owe the entire trip to E's mother and his father.

Coral Reef I will hopefully be snorkeling at

E's father's family owns a timeshare on Honolulu that his father and uncle usually visit once a year. This year, his father called us up and asked if we wanted to go with him and his wife for 7 days. They have a two bedroom suite so we'd each have a room and E was actually off work that week. He said the accommodations would be covered, we'd just need to find a way to get there. While this was a wonderful offer, plane tickets were about $1200 which was just outside of waythefuckoutside of our price range.

Random Island View

Now earlier this year, E's mother had repeatedly mentioned that she wanted to go to Hawaii. When we heard from his father, we knew we'd need to call and discuss with his mom. Right off the bat, she says she has credit card miles for the plane tickets there. Score! Then she proposed that we spend a week with her and a week with his father. A few inquiries later and bam, she had booked her friend's 10 person house on Kauai for 10 days, giving us the flexibility to stay a few extra days with her, or for E's father to stay there for a couple days while we stayed on Honolulu.

Kauai Waterfall

E's father had his plane tickets all set up, so E's mom went ahead and booked seats for her and her longtime boyfriend R to go. E and I were kind of hesitant since we're still waiting to hear about E's job interview so we hung back for as long as possible until the plane was almost completely full and we had to book. Luckily, we got seats together (after some stupid seat upgrade charges. Apparently window seats and aisle seats are $40 extra??) on the same flight in as his mom so we can carpool together. Our return flight leaves at about the same time as his father's, so we should be able to get a ride to the airport with him too. I was going to book the inter-island flight but decided against it so we'd have the flexibility to change dates if we wanted.

Sunset!

With all this excitingness going on, it hit E and  I pretty hard that we are incredibly out of shape. Actually, I'm incredibly out of shape, E is looking pretty damn good since his job is really physical. It was clear that we'd need to do something, so in a moment of insanity (ha) we signed ourselves up for the insanity fitness program! We start tomorrow and I'm psyched to see if it's as hard and impossible as it looks. E wants to tone up while I would like to lose roughly a million pounds so I don't look completely pregnant in a bathing suit. I'm a little nervous since the weight loss plan calls for 1900 calories a day (what on earth will we be doing that allows you to eat 1900 calories and lose weight??) but we're determined to do at least the full 60 days.

Insanity ahhh!

We're going to need some serious fortitude to get through this, but I'm hoping it pays off so I can look like one of these people in the end, except I'm a lot chubbier than they are so I'd settle for a decently flat stomach and some trimmer thighs. A girl has got to be realistic.

This could be me! OR more realistically, E!

Wish us luck! We're really going to need it to get in shape for this trip!

Congrats E and N!!!

Congratulations to E and N for their beautiful wedding! I met E and N in my Freshman year of college and could not be happier for these two finally tying the knot. They're such a well matched couple and are sure to have a long and happy marriage. Plus, they're going to have some pretty adorable babies!

Milou Snuggles

Baby Rabies

Lately E and I have been experiencing a serious case of baby rabies. I'm used to a low grade case of BR but it's definitely been working in overdrive these past couple weeks. It's probably due to our family planning discussions which are becoming more frequent, but I'm going to blame it on the insanely adorable baby clothes I've gotten my hands on and nursery planning even though we don't have a nursery.

As I mentioned previously, I found my old baby clothes and my mom's collection of awesome vintage wall letters. The baby clothes were cute but my inner mama bear wanted to dissect and sterilize everything before even considering using them for my kid. Plus a lot of the elastic was worn out and just yuck, apparently I stained everything I touched.

The real treasure for me is the vintage letter collection because I've been seriously loving on alphabet nursery walls and bam, there's one in my garage. A bunch of the letters are missing but I plan on having fun replacing them. My mom, although she runs hot and cold on the baby front, has also offered to find replacements which would be sweet as well since they were originally hers. They're actually cool enough that I'd hang them in the living room instead if they didn't fit into my hypothetical imaginary nursery.

Please excuse the backwards J. And missing dot i. And are Z and N switched?

On the shopping front, I have a serious weakness for organic cotton and bright, preferably gender neutral prints. One of my favorite discount stores has recently had a bunch of Eleanor Organic, Trumpette and Zutano baby clothes.  I pretty much adore those brands, and at super low prices I couldn't let them get away. We're not expecting and won't be for a little while yet, but I don't mind storing a few boxes pieces if they're good quality and mostly gender neutral.

Can you see how hard it would be to resist the cuteness? They are definitely my dirty little secret, who buys baby clothes before there's a baby? They practically make my ovaries hurt just looking at them, and I got them for a fabulous price. They make great additions to the shower baskets I love to make for friends babies so I don't feel so bad about buying them. Plus, they're so fun and colorful that they make an excellent decoration above my new red storage shelf.

Milou loves sandwiches

Redecorating and Organizing

Since we've been running out of usable floor in our relatively tiny space, we decided to move our storage up on the wall. It took three trips to IKEA (unfortunately I couldn't find any antique wall mounted storage) and eight hours to hang them in the studs and with toggle/butterfly bolts. One is a bright red wall shelf with a cool hinged door but the others are actually kitchen cabinets that I flipped and used for DVD storage. They were definitely a creative score, since they're normally eighty bucks and I got them for less than twenty bucks on clearance. A few modifications and an additional bracket and bam, DVD storage on the wall.

Right now there are storage bins inside the red cabinet and storage bins above it.

The kitchen cabinets are filled with DVDs, double stacked, and freed up tons of space on my shelves. I generally don't like double stacking DVDs since if you can't see them you won't watch them, but I ended up putting seasons of TV shows back there and I think it'll be okay.

Both of them are up there so solid a small adult could sleep or hang on them. They definitely make the walls look a bit "fuller", a nice way of saying cluttered, but I'm happy if they free up space elsewhere.

In the spirit of spring/summer cleaning, we also started tackling the closet and garage. Some lovely Ikea shoe boxes now sit on my shoe shelves stuffed with rarely used clothing. Five of those small bad boys and space bags for sweaters freed up an entire drawer and shelf, making way for my massive sock collection to have its own drawer. We also donated a good couple bags to charity which freed up even more space.

The garage was a bit more complicated since we have tons of boxes filled with stuff, so space bags and those big rubbermaid storage bins came in super handy. I very much enjoyed going through things and found a bunch of my old baby clothes (hello eighties!) and my moms old letter collection, which pretty much exactly matches the nursery letter walls I've been coveting on pinterest. It's not helping to reduce my baby rabies but I am really looking forward to putting them to good use :)