5 Prenatal Work Outs on YouTube

I don't know about you guys, but being pregnant hasn't been a time where I've felt my sexiest. I'm sure each person has a very different and unique experience- for me, it has been super hard.

One of the things that is highly recommended by doctors and physicians is to continue to exercise throughout pregnancy. It makes it easier for birth, weight gain, the aches and pains of your body changing, and helps with the stress and anxiety of this crazy time period in your life.

We have been working on trimming our budget down a lot in order to anticipate Lincoln's arrival and one of the things we did cut was our gym membership. I haven't had the energy to use it and drive there since I've got a bit of a longer commute this year and next. Also, I am not as comfortable going to the gym with a baby belly. Shallow? Probably. But true.

Instead! I shut my blinds and have been doing some great work outs at home! Here are some of my favorite work out YouTube videos for prenatal exercise! *Make sure to check with your doctor on any work out regiments or routines.*

1. BodyFit by Amy 

Amy is super awesome! I don't always know all the fancy names for the work outs and she walks you through each step and gives you great modification ideas. She also works in a lot of breaks throughout. Each work out ranges from about 25 to 35 minutes. After a long day of work, that isn't terrible. You get in there, get out, and are already at home. You don't have an entire extra hour of having to drive to and fro and all that. I just throw the YouTube videos on to our TV using Google ChromeCast and it's great! She has strength work outs, pilates, and bodyweight workouts to fit where ever you are in your fitness journey.

One Room Challenge: Week 5

Friends, I have a confession. (Cue dancing Usher gif- circa 2006) I haven't made much progress on our nursery this week. We are in the final countdown to get done with the school year. 3.25 weeks, if you were wondering! And it's been a struggle to get all of us to the finish line. I've also decided to start taking on converting from my current blogging host to WordPress (Gods of Blogs, save me.) I think it is going to be a great move once I get it all figured out! I'm getting there! Also, it has been a beautiful week for weather in Colorado so we've spent a lot of time on yard work and cleaning up the patio for dinners and entertaining outside on the patio. 

So, here's a photo final list of all the things that we need to get finished. For actual progress check out week one, week 2, week 3,  week 4 for all the changes and updates. Check out all the guest participants this week and see the amazing work they've done!

I' would like to get more of the wall art set up and established. We are waiting for now until after our Baby Shower to purchase or frame anything major because we aren't sure what we might get for gifts or what other vintage pieces we may come across. We are still aching to put up the vintage National Park travel photos.

Remember these from my inspiration post way back when?

source

We're working on finding on a dresser or hutch of some sort for this area and have been missing out on all the vintage style ones we've located on Craigslist, so that is still a journey. But we've gotten the globe and salt lamp! 

Nursery: Organization & Cleaning- ORC Week 4

We've been working hard on our nursery the past few weeks! To see all the progress check out week one, week 2, and last week for all the changes and updates. It's been a lot of fun to see all the different varieties of work happening in all the other guest's different rooms! This challenge has definitely kept me motivated to see the project through to the end.

To-Do & Shopping List:

• Lighter paint color
• Better curtains (but with black out for more baby sleeps) Just need to hang up.
• Rug
• Paint crib
• Rest of the furniture r
• Organization and storage options
• Changing station assembled
• Lamps/lighting
• Assemble crib 
• Wall art
• Organize closet
• Accessories
• Name art
• Chair
• Pouf/footstool- hoping for this one from my registry!
• Smaller desk- likely this one from IKEA because we have a $50.00 gift card and it will adjust for when the baby grows up a bit and needs a little coloring desk or something. 
• NEW Additions: 
• Dresser
• Shelves/Storage above desk for office supplies
• Bigger bookcase???
• More baskets for under changing table

We are definitely making some serious progress! For most of the wall art I did a little shopping around our house and in the garage where I've got some of my extra art stored for now. I did this to save some cash and also to get more items out of my storage area.

So ready for some progress? Let's start right when we look in through the door. One of the first things you see is the new desk area:

Making A Rental Feel Like Home: Living Room

As you all know, we moved to Denver in June of 2017 and started renting our 1,000 sq ft 2 bedroom 1 bathroom home just 15 minutes from downtown Denver. You can check out more of our entire process here from when we first moved to the area and picked a home.

Now, since then, we've been fortunate enough to be able to work on different elements of the home to make it more "homey" and somewhere we feel like we could be awhile. We already talked about the kitchen and dining area, the master bedroom and lone bathroom, and if you've been following along with the blog we are currently working on converting the second bedroom that was once the guest room and office to the nursery (with tiny corner office area!) through the One Room Challenge. So far it's going well! Check out the week one progress , week two, and week three!

The only place we haven't talked about much is the living room space. Here is a reminder of what it looked like when we walked through it the first time last May:

A pretty great space with room for larger sized furniture and to have a bunch of people over. Something that we definitely enjoy being able to do!

Let's talk about what we did to take this peanut butter living room and transform it into something more cozy and that reflected our style. Thank goodness for our amazing landlord who has a lot of faith and trust in us!

Nursery: Furniture & Progress- ORC Week 3

We had an incredible time over the weekend finding out the gender of our little human on their way to join us in this world (we're down to about 16 weeks! Which is still awhile... but... ya know.) and in case you missed it check it out from Monday's post here! It was so special and his brother made this awesome art piece for him to keep forever.

Knowing the gender definitely has helped us solidify our ideas for what we want to do for our little guy's nursery. Ready for week three of the One Room Challenge?

On last week's post we talked about some of the things that we needed to do to get this room "done." Here's a reminder of the list:

To-Do & Shopping List:

• Lighter paint color
• Better curtains (but with black out for more baby sleeps)
• Rug
• Paint crib
• Rest of the furniture
• Organization and storage options
• Changing station assembled
• Lamps/lighting
• Assemble crib 
• Wall art
• Organize closet
• Accessories
• Name art
• Chair
• Pouf/footstool- hoping for this one from my registry!
• Smaller desk- likely this one from IKEA because we have a $50.00 gift card and it will adjust for when the baby grows up a bit and needs a little coloring desk or something. 

Backyard Gender Reveal Party

We have finally discovered the gender of our baby! It was a really long 22 weeks of not knowing what was going on up in there. We were able to put our Gender Reveal Party on my birthday weekend which was kind of a fun combination! We had a lot of wonderful friends and family that joined us for the weekend!

Since it was a small get together, about 20 people, we decided to keep the festivities small and pretty tame. We used our chalkboard collection and some dollar store tassel banners to decorate. Otherwise, the reveal image was the star of the show! I'll show you that later in this post. It was really awesome.

I am notorious amongst my students for my absolutely love of all things Little Mermaid and Brennan is well known for loving his Dallas Cowboy football team. So we decided to have our party inspired by that. As folks came in for the party we asked them to cast their vote for the gender using paint chips and throwing them in the basket.

Total count for Cowboy: 17. Mermaid: 12.

28 Facts About Me On My 28th Birthday

Oh man, my 28th birthday is today! Friday the 13th. Whatwhat! I was also born on Friday the 13th, which was also Good Friday that year. Ha. I always think that is a fun fact about me. Especially when I tell my freshmen students, they get a little nervous. A good spot to have them in!

Just kidding!

Now that it is basically my birthday, here are 28 random factoids about me you may not know:

Nursery & One Room Challenge Week 2 Progress

As you saw last week, we have joined in on the One Room Challenge Spring 2018! Ready for week 2?

It was in pretty rough shape last week when we got started. Here's a reminder: 

Very embarrassing. Very bad. Terrible awful.

Nursery & The One Room Challenge

I'm linking up to the Spring One Room Challenge 2018 with one of my best blogging friends Sam at Away She Went Blog. She always inspires me to do the things so, here we go. What better reason, right?

We've decided to turn our second bedroom from a guest room/office into a nursery for the baby when it gets here. We luckily have a great landlord who lets us customize our space and, since we're staying for sure another year, we figure we may as well make baby comfy in the meantime. Right now, it is a hot filthy mess. Luckily we've got a few months left to get it all together.

Full disclosure: The following photos may trigger you into organizing your entire house. If this mood strikes you please let me know in the comments below and you can use that passion on this room! just kidding of course... but... here is a picture of the room as it is currently:

Our DIY Wedding: Invitation Suite on a Budget

 

We are so excited to be getting married! One of the first pieces to that process was how we planned to communicate to our families our pending nuptials and information that they needed to have to plan or determine if they would be able to travel to be a part of it.  So. Step one in our DIY budget wedding planning?

Selecting a Wedding Suite on a Budget! 

What to look for, what you need, and how to get it in your budget.

5 Helpful Podcasts for New Moms

Becoming a mom has been completely unexpected for me. We were engaged in August and I was in the throes of planning our dream wedding when- SURPRISE - we found we were pregnant in early December. We originally were supposed to get married this June but decided to postpone.

I'm a person that likes to do research and gather as much information as possible about things that are going on so I've been listening to a lot of great parenting podcasts and mom podcasts. It's been a huge help! It makes me feel less alone and more excited about this new adventure.

Bump Update: The First 20 Weeks

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Magical Engagement Photos by Samantha Paige Photography

I absolutely adore looking through our engagement photos. They are so beautiful and our photographer, Samantha at Samantha Paige Photography did an amazing job capturing our love for each other, our excitement, and the beautiful country we live in. Find her on Insta @samantha_paige_p that's where you can see snippets of her amazing work.

I love her light, bright, and airy look. It makes these magical times seem even more so. 

We wanted to do a fall shoot (we got engaged in August) and something that was a bit more formal. We already have beautiful winter photos, we will have gorgeous summer photos from our wedding in 2019, and this spring we should get some cute maternity photos.

 Here are a few of my absolute faves:

Making Our Rental Feel Like Home: Bedroom & Bath

I won't lie to you, friends, I very seriously miss my GIGANTIC old bedroom, huge closet, attached master bath, and wood floors. I loved that I had room for a chair, bed, dressers, desks, nightstands... all the things. However, what I've quickly realized since we moved is that we don't really need all of those things. In many ways it is much easier to keep the bathroom cleaned without it, I have less places to stack items I don't need in the bedroom, and cleaning is much faster with less floor to mop or vacuum. 

Our new room is probably just over half the size of our old one. Here's a small angle of what the master looked like when we first toured:

Making Our Rental Feel Like Home: The Kitchen & Dining Room

We spent a lot of time after we moved in making the house cozier for us. We love the kitchen and dining room area, but it definitely lacks in storage and the washer and dryer are in the kitchen right there. That was a compromise, for sure. At our old house it was off of the kitchen but separate enough that it worked. I wanted to make sure that it was at least as attractive as it could be. Having a place with a washer and dryer hook up was big, so dealing with it in the kitchen and not having shared laundry seemed a fine trade.

A Messy Biz Announcement!

So, we think we should probably tell you about another thing we've been working on during our year of crazy change! 

Finding a Rental in a New City

After owning a home for nearly 10 years, it was super weird and super hard for me to transition to being a renter. I spent a ton of time looking into different places, locations, and types of rentals.

A few key things I realized about renting in a city, specifically Denver, Colorado:

1. It is very expensive. Full stop. We pay $1400 for a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom duplex 15 minutes from downtown Denver. It has a giant yard, garage, and fireplace. Our mortgage in Grand Junction was $870. Ouch. Some things we lost in this rental: A/C, 2nd bath, 3rd bedroom.
2. Private rentals seem to be better. They are more willing to work with you, are friendlier, and much more accessible for maintenance. They want to protect their investment. I eventually found ours on Zillow.com.

5 Things to Know About All This Messy Business

Moving away from my home town has been quite the experience. There have been so much to learn and so many new roads and directions to figure out! There's also been learning the ropes of my  teaching job at my new school and designing new coursework and curriculum for classes. We have way more freedom to do different activities and lessons here, but that means I have to build or rebuild a lot of it from scratch. Because of these tumultuous changes I've taken a break from blogging and we have tried to focus on our new life here.

Now! I realized just how much I miss it and am going to start all over, even if I never become a mega popular blogger where I can leave my day job to communicate and write all day with you guys, at least I have a spot where I can have a great time talking about things that are important to myself and others at this stage. So! Here are 5 things you need to know about This Messy Business moving forward into the new life and phase of this little bloggy and I'm excited for a fresh start!

Back in 2010 

In 2013.

1.  I am a 27 year old high school English teacher and Speech & Debate coach! I've been teaching high school for 5 years now.  I love all things reading and talking. I am hoping to incorporate more book reviews, suggestions, must read lists, and even some lesson inspiration. 
2. Brennan and I are engaged! We are going to be getting married on June 15, 2019 and I gotta tell you... I love wedding planning. If I were to forgo teaching I would totally go into the wedding planning business. It's awesome. 
   
3. I started this blog when I was 19 or 20 to document remodeling and renovating my 3 bedroom 2 bath manufactured home in Grand Junction, Colorado. We sold it in under a week in July 2017.  You could read all about how I staged it to have it move quickly here.
   
   
4. We are primarily a plant-based family! We are working to shift all our products to cruelty free and vegan. Brennan has been vegan for 4 years and I have been working to transition into that same lifestyle.  We love when we get to do a CSA with a farm in the summer, hopefully we find on like what we had in Grand Junction here in Denver! 
   
5. We now live in Denver, Colorado and it is a huge change! We are hoping to go on more adventures that I can document and share with you, try out different awesome restaurants, and find cool neighborhoods. We want to purchase a home in the next 3 years so we need to explore the right place for us.  Right now, we love renting. Read all about why here!
   

I'm hoping reinvigorating the blog and widening my scope from the previous years will make this a place where I can enjoy others, collaborate, and share some fun pieces of our lives. What do you think makes a successful blog? What do you like to read about?