Guest post: Jennifer

Hi readers! I'm happy to guest post for Danielle while she is on vacation. (Lucky duck takes at least one a year! Danielle- can I be adopted into your clan?) My name is Jennifer and I blog over at Starving, Insatiable (personal blog) and Mangiamo! (food blog). Lately, I've been a Pinterest fool. I live in a condo with my boyfriend. The condo has no storage, a poor layout, small bathrooms and is pretty much in disarray, but finally (after 5 years), we are renovating! I've found that when finding inspiration, I tend to pin the rooms of my dreams and not necessarily rooms that I could actually do in my place. Oh well- they are nice to look at and hope to have one day, right?! Since I know Danielle is also always looking for her next home improvement, I thought I'd share some of those rooms that I would love to have!

Cook-worthy Kitchens

                                                                                  Source: bhg.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

This open shelving is so nice! I'd love for this look to be realistic for the condo, but not only am I lazy enough to not want to keep up appearances, but we are just lacking the extra room.

Source: bhg.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

In this kitchen, I love the cabinet door with the glass. I definitely do intend to incorporate at least one cabinet like this into my future kitchen. Something so simple really opens up the space and adds some elegance. Aside from that, I love the yellow walls, the light wood floor and the decoration!

Dining Areas

Again, like everything else, our dining room area is teeny. I'm leaning more towards having a medium-sized breakfast nook as opposed to a rectangular table so there is more space to navigate from kitchen to dining to living rooms. I've pinned the following 2 dining areas:

Source: bhg.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

Source: bhg.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

Beautiful Bedrooms

Source: bhg.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

I love the soft colors!

Source: desiretoinspire.net via Jennifer on Pinterest

I would seriously love to come home to a bedroom like this, windows and all.

Lovely Living Rooms

Our living room is about the only room that we can work with a little bit. As soon as I get my boyfriend to move his unused 225-gallon fish tank out of the way, I can concentrate on really bringing the living room together. Here are my inspirations.

Source: bhg.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

Source: bhg.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

Bathrooms

If I said my bathrooms were an eyesore, it would be an understatement. This is going to be the biggest renovation we have in store for us. We need to maximize our small space with storage options without looking cluttered.

Source: bhg.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

The "mantel" above the sink is great for storing, as the picture shows, cotton balls and other small things you use semi-regularly. The mirror in the medicine cabinet creates the illusion that the bathroom is bigger than it actually is.

Source: bhg.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

I LOVE this idea of open shelving on either side of the sink. I could do so much with this.

Home Office

::sigh:: Again, no storage space in our condo. We don't have any closets besides our clothes closets...no linen, storage or even pantry! I work from home so it's important for me to have a nice home office for great productivity and efficiency. I would like to work a lot more if my home office was organized like this one:

Source: bhg.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

Not only could I always fill up a bookshelf with the amount of books I have, but I just love the storage bins and again, the open shelving.

Now, are there any home improvements/dream rooms you want to make happen?

Follow me on Pinterest!

Guest post: Megan!

I'm happy to introduce you to Megan! Go check out her blog because you will love her. :)

I am so excited to guest post for Danielle while she is away!! I decided for my guest post, I would share with you some (out of the 200) pictures from our first family vacation!

For our first family vacation we went and stayed for a week in Naples, Florida!

Our first full day we went to The Naples Zoo and then an outlet mall about 40 minutes outside of Naples.

The next day we did a pool day! Olivia LOVED the water!

The day after that we went to The Naples Pier and went to the shoppes

The day after this we did a day in Naples going to the shoppes in downtown Naples, and hung out by the pool. Jer also went golfing! The picture taken below was Olivia right before she rolled over for the first time!

On this day we went to Ft. Myers to visit some friends!

Another pool day at the condo we were staying at!

On our last day! We took some pictures outside the house before catching our plane!

Our first family vacation was AMAZING, so relaxing and fun!! This was the first time Jer and I had this much time off together since my maternity leave! It was nice to just be a family of 3 with no interruptions! :)

Thank you Danielle for letting me guest post! It was fun to relive these memories! I hope everyone will come say "Hello!" :)

Guest Post: Krystal

Hello! I'm Krystal and I blog over at Krystal's Kitsch. While I've never met Danielle, I feel like I "know" her since we have a mutual friend--Jen! Since Danielle is expecting numero dos and I'm well on my way to having my first, I thought I would share the first helpful baby book I read--Baby Bargains. This book is really popular with girls on The Bump and I wanted to see what the fuss was about.

It's a massive book--608 pages! But, it's not a very wide book. The pages are narrow...there's just lots of them. There is SO MUCH information but it was easy to process once you dived in. I think what I liked most about the book was the general knowledge stuff that I had NO idea about. How many diapers would you need in a year? How much does it cost to breast feed versus formula? What do you need in a diaper bag? They estimate it will cost $7,000 for a baby in its first year.... Yikes. Since I'm the first person I really know to get pregnant and go through this process, I didn't have many people to ask these kinds of questions to. It will REALLY help when I'm ready to make a registry or make purchases myself. I can use its reviews as a guideline to see what products in my price range are recommended. They always list "cheaper" versions of expensive and popular products. I really liked that section. The only thing I didn't like was my crib was rated an F in the last edition....this new edition (they reprint every 2 years with more info!) bumped it up to a B-. Well, that makes me feel better. They even have a website where you can download a sample chapter and join their community for more reviews of products.

Buy it on Amazon for $11. It's worth it if you're totally clueless like I am and can't seem to navigate the thousands of baby products out there that all seem so similar!




Ummm..okay..so I had no idea about this book with Rylee! Poop! I totally would have ordered it!

Thursday randoms

• Rylee LOVES playing with her daddy!

• I made homemade lasagna the other night & well the turn out wasn't so great. The top layer of the noodles cooked fine & the first layer (closest to the bottom of the pan) did NOT cook! I even baked it longer than what I was suppose to. Overall it was tasty, just with not-cooked-all-the-way noodles..ha ha HELP?!

•   Last weekend was the Sun n' Fun & instead of paying $35 to get in we went over to my moms house & watched the show for free! Weee. See how close we were? Okay, not really..my zooms lens is just that awesome.

• Rylee finally got her wee squeak shoes in & she was terrified of them at first & now she loves them. They are so annoying though! haha

 

A little early Easter

Since we are going to be on vacation during Easter, we had it on Sunday with my family. (Jeremy's family doesn't celebrate Easter.)

My mom wasn't very toddler friendly with their Easter baskets. Tons, tons & tons of candy. Candy that a toddler shouldn't even be eating anyway. Somehow Rylee knew this was a candy bracelet and freaked the hell out if we tried to take it away.

Of course they had to go for the same eggs, duh!

 And Rylee is always trying to steal other peoples stuff!

My mom bought these little 4 wheelers for Christmas for them- 1 pink & the one above. Rylee refuses to ride on the pink one & Ethan refuses to ride on his- so they trade..babies are crazy!

Liquid sidewalk chalk!

Rylee loves playing outside & loves chalk. Then I saw this liquid chalk..really?! I figured this would be such a messy time so she went outside naked because I didn't want to worry about her ruining any clothes. Naked+being outside+chalk= a happy toddler.

Of course she had to stick her hands in the cups & then knock them over..what fun is it if you don't make a complete mess?

And then we had to stick our feet in the chalk...

Oh, what fun. She was wondering what was on her at the end of this..

This is a must to do with your toddler this summer! It's virtually free as long as you already have the stuff in your cupboard like I do!

1 cup of corn starch

1 cup of water

Mix together & then add food coloring!

8 weeks

I have officially decided that I suck. 

I thought I was going to take full belly pics every week, but I have failed...big time.

 I have no time or desire to get ready, put my face on to get a pic.

This will have to do from now on or at least until I start feeling better.

I will admit that I'm a little scared about how much bigger my stomach is this time around (so far). I didn't last the full 40w with Rylee & I don't see how I could have, but if my stomach is bigger than last time- god help me. Seriously. 

Sickness: All day sickness blows. I get it when my stomach is the slightest bit empty- so I just keep eating. oops.

Food: I'm not a big fan of meat right now.

PS- Don't forget to enter the Missy's Portraits giveaway!