So What Wednesday

I'm connecting up with Shannon again from Life After I Dew for another 

So What Wednesday

SO WHAT IF...

-I encouraged my husband to go to a friends last night, there is no way I would be able to watch Bachelor Pad with him around.  (Totally wasn't worth it)

-I'm letting my toddler eat a pop tart.  It's our last summer morning together.

-I'm a bit sad that I'm going to have to start sharing the TV with my Husbo, I love having total domination of it during vacation.

-I'm still trying to get my child 'into' TV.  Momma wants some down time.

-I 'braved the storm' for some Pumpkinhead Ale, it was SO worth it.

-I plan on treating myself to some Pumpkin Spice Coffee on my first day of school, nothing says fall like some hot Dunkins Coffee.

-A little bit of me is looking back to going to work.

-I am the one that consistently leaves the vehicles on little to no gas.  Whoops.

-The reason I'm truly excited for my birthday is to have a guilt free date night.

-I let my kid attack all my animals, within reason, it gives them character.

-Words with Friends is my new favorite obsession.

-My new weekend project is to devise a way to not let my toddler repeatedly turn off the DVR.

That's my So What Wednesday, Link up and join us!

Make Yourself Monday

Good Morning Monday....   My last Monday off with my H bug for the summer, boo.

I've decided to take part in Make Yourself Monday with Jamie from For Love Of Cupcakes.

As an art teacher I'm always looking for unique and different ways to dress and adorn myself.

I've recently decided to take part in an Alternative Craft Fair to show my artwork and my goods off.   In hopes to sell something.

I've been really into these canvas bags as of late....

They are perfect to throw my keys into, my credit card, my blackberry, and a snack for my rambunctious toddler.  This is the perfect alternative to a full size purse, which has become bulky to me as of late while doing quick errands.  I need my hands empty to stop my hurricane toddler from destroying the store.

I also discovered this clutch at my new found love, Hobby Lobby.

It's simple, it's natural, and it has leopard print inside.  That was a surprise to me when opening it, I didn't read the description to well obviously.

So I've been taking these items and making them my own.  I've been using my first one day in day out, and am in LOVE.  I throw the small purse inside my big purse on days where I feel like using one of my many large bags. 

   

This is one of the smaller purses that I happen to use day to day.

This is the larger size one, about 6in x 9in.

A close up of one of my 'small' purses.

Yet another small purse.

Now I kind of fell in love with this one and am debating whether I should add some color in small spots.  I love that when you close the clutch all you can see are a couple of curls if you want to mellow the look down.

 

 

As an art teacher I do create work of my own as well.  So naturally I put some in my Etsy shop.

As well as a drawing in ink.

Now I do all the typical fabric flower headbands, flower bobby pins, and pins like many of us bloggers out there as well.

I also dabble in doing inappropriate onesies for babies.  I loved putting my son in these... my husband hated it.  Which made it that much more fun.

So I do a little here, do a little there, and you can find most of it over at my website on Etsy... 

Swims At Midnight

Or you can contact me through my Facebook page at

Swims At Midnight, on Facebook

I'm going to be participating in a couple of giveaways very soon including one of my own fabric flower headbands, and BasicH2 an organic cleaner from Andrea.

Ashley

Saturday. Morning. Scene.

I'm a bit sad about my Saturday Morning Scene today.  Katie from Loves of Life is not doing a linky party this weekend, however I decided to post my scene anyways, due to my need to vent.

Yesterday, my hand-me-down dishwasher finally died.

I mourned it a bit more than I expected.  I hate doing dishes by hand.

This dishwasher failure has made me grumpy, verrrrryyy grumpy........with the Husbo off doing all these side jobs it's going to be down to me to do all the wash.   Yuck.  (Lets be honest I can't remember the last time He did the dishes anyways)


In the meantime I'm scouring Craigslist and Lowes to find a dishwasher that will make do, and won't break the bank.




In the process of sorting through Craigslist ads I ended up having a conversation with a... ummmm........    unique  pleasant individual. 

In our 5 minute conversation this woman must have yawned, I kid you not, 15 times.   Now, I apologized for waking her (at 9 am), yet she responded that she's been up since 7.  

It was just one of those conversations/moments where I questioned what I was getting myself into, and if I was in fact going to be a dreaded No-Show because I didn't want to go to this persons home.

I'm risking it, a free dishwasher is worth it.

It's that time again.

Yup.   It's that time.   

Time to continue renovations.  

UGhhhhhhh.

We had put a major pause on fixing up our house with major projects after the baby was born.  We just figured that after two years of major construction, ALL THE TIME, that we'd give ourselves and the baby a break for a little bit.  

We just barely finished the babies room and did a temporary fix on our spare room upstairs before Harrison was born.  Now I'm getting the itch to get upstairs, DONE.  Like 100 % totally and complementary done.  

We did a temporary fix with carpet that was being removed from my in laws.   In retrospect, who does that?   Who takes used carpet......... oh us.  We do.  The disgusting ones over here.   To give us some credit it was in good shape, in fact, it was refreshing to have one space of our house carpeted.

Please note the disgusting state of the floors.  

Can't believe I'm showing everyone the state of our house.  To our credit this is our messy room.  It has tons of scrap fabric pieces due to the fact that it was my old 'studio/craft space', and that I'm too lazy to vacuum   

So this spare room is a joke of a spare room.  It has become the animals bedroom, which I find gross.  I'm sick of layers of cat hair on the bed where I'm supposed to invite guests to stay, it's embarrassing quite frankly.

Our Mega Sized Cat Bed.   

Carpet + No Baseboard = Superb Craftsmanship

When we first moved it it was a massive closet for me.  It was incredible, but it wasn't heated that first winter.  Talk about freezing your ass off after a shower in the dead of a New England weather, brrrrr. 

Brand spankin new windows, and HEAT.

  Hallelujah HEAT!   We used to have those old guillotine windows which were a nightmare, and clearly had no baseboard heat before.

It took a lot of work, and a lot of money to get the other three rooms to a point of where we're happy with them and now is time for the finishing touches on this room.

 

We have a lovely shared closet between the nursery and the spare room.  I swear, people who built houses a hundred years ago did not believe in closets.  We had to build our only modern closet into our Master Bedroom.  I also use the term 'Master' lightly.

 Lastly, the space between the two rooms.  Baby, and Spare.  This shows the old flooring that was underneath.  The new flooring that will be going into the spare room, and the stunning green carpet that will be going curbside. 

 Very. 

Very. 

Soon.

Now all I need to do is get hubby motivated this weekend to actually begin and we'll be one step closer to being done.  Thank the renovation gods.

So What Wednesday

It's my first Wednesday linking up with Shannon at Life After I "Dew".....

So what if I walk around my backyard with a nursing bra on.  It counts as a sports bra because it's a racer back.

So what if I've started making lunches for my husband, the last week of summer vacation, to only relieve myself of guilt for not doing it the entire time.

So what if I mailed my side of the family's thank you cards out first, if I'm the only one writing them I get to pick priority.

So what if I leave my sons high chair pad-less for a week, at least I'm finally making an attempt to get the month old spaghetti stains out.

So what if I just wipe a bottle off that fell on the ground.   Enough said certain family members...


So what if I'm excited to go back to work.  This Momma could NEVER be a SAHM.

So what if I decide that YES, we are in fact going to use my homemade laundry detergent contrary to what husband wants because I'm pulling the wife card.

Speaking of wife card...

So what if in the past I've always helped with the dog.  I'm DEFINITELY pulling it out when she has liquid diarrhea all over the house.

So what if I totally bombed at trying to make my own sushi, just having an excuse to eat massive amounts of cream cheese made me happy.

Lastly...


So what if I force my child to stay in his crib until he sleeps or stays quiet at 'nap' time.  I absolutely refuse to let him get down to one nap a day.  

My Goodwill Love Affair

I hit it good at the thrift store yesterday.

I love thrift shopping, it's something I've been doing since childhood.


This week I splurged a bit, meaning I spent more than 30 dollars there, which is a rarity for me.

It's my birthday in September, so 'splurging' at the thrift store has become kind of a birthday right of passage for me.  I have to show off some of my goodies.  Now keep in mind I had a toddler with me on a very short fuse, so it was a short lived shopping trip.  He was literally shouting in the changing room because he figured out how to create an echo.  Very entertaining for him, mind numbing for me.




So right as I enter I always hit the shoe section first as those are easiest to go through, and honestly I get anxious that someone else it going to snatch up my great find.

I found three pairs of keepers this trip.

One for the baby, and two for myself.            Momma loves her shoes...

 A great little pair of Stride Rites!  Yayyyy... Perfect for Harrison to grow into, and at only 2.99, affordable!

Also, meandered over to baby clothing, I don't go there a lot because H has tons and tons of hand-me-downs and doesn't need one more article of clothing, but I often find great jackets there.

 Point in case, Baby gap jean jacket.   How cute for fall.  1.99   Heck yes.

Now for me.  I snatched up two pairs of flats.  One black, one shiny sliver.  Perfect for teaching, I can't wear any heels anymore in my classroom.  Not only am I getting old, but I'm sick of getting paint on them. 

 (Lets be honest, my feet ache at the end of a day  I'm. Getting. Old.)

At about 4.99 each, I sucked it up and got these. These are to replace my other pair of trusty black flats, don't know about  you guys but mine get nasty, due to not wearing socks.  Yuck.

I then wandered on over to the clothing area, and scored myself a pair of skinny blue jeans (not pictured because they were worn asap), black skinny jeans, black dress pants, and beige dress pants.  All for 2.50 each.  Boo ya.  I love myself the half off color days, I only look for the half off color tags when I go through the aisle.  Also, a green and red spotted button up shirt.   It's a bit funky, husband just cringes when looking at it.

Lastly, my FULL price item.  A whopping 9.99 for a dress.  Something I ordinarily do NOT do.  But, like I said it is my birthday coming up, plus I have a fall wedding to go to the day after my birthday, and figured the color was perfect.  Brand new with tags, another big Boo Yah!

Also Has some pretty lace neck detail.  Don't mind my unbrushed hippy hair.

Brand new with tags, best kind of thrift store find.

So in doing this post, I was clearly bragging about my finds, how I was so excited I found so many awesome steals and wanted to show it off.  Well Karma got me.

You know those amazing shoes I was talking about for my son.  In the process of taking pictures of them I noticed something a little funny.

Not only are they TWO different sizes, but they are BOTH right foot shoes.  Sighhhhh.....


At least they were only three bucks.

Mickey Mouse Club, How I love thee...

This is very new to us.

TV watching.

Now this is not new to mommy, heck mommy could spend all day watching reruns of project runway and any other reality TV show that dominates my DVR at any given time.

No, no.... this is TV watching for my son.

He actually sat still on my lap (not even a bottle) to sit and watch the entire Mickey Mouse Club...... introduction. 
Yet I'm not discouraged.  This is a baby step for us.  One in which Mommy is, dare I say, very excited about.

My kid doesn't sit still, ..... E.V.E.R.
This is one bad habit I am happy about starting.
In fact, I don't feel one ounce of Mom Guilt about it... (How Bad is that).

I can't even imagine the joy I will feel the day he sits still for an ENTIRE episode.

This is our Saturday Morning Scene, what are you up to?