Browsing Category: Intentional Living

Good-bye Winter, Hello Spring!

It’s been quite a winter! I love winter! I love the cold and snow. I love the coziness of a fire and hot tea and hot chocolate. I have always been sad to see the forced slowness of winter, giving way to the hurried rush of spring and summer. Until this winter.

This winter has kicked my ass!!

It has been a long, hard winter. Between jobs and life changes, illness and injuries, and the over abundance of ice, it has been a slippery slope of what felt like months of failure.

In February, Matthew had an interview where I worked long before kids. The phone interview went OK, and he was asked to come in for a formal interview. Fast forward and the interview was a lot shorter than he expected it to be, and we didn’t know how to take it.

A few days later he had a missed called (on a Friday night at 8pm) from them. What the heck? He called the next day and it was a few hours before they called him back offering him the position. Everything fell into place, and he started the beginning of March.

Through the whole of February and March we have been under a constant state of sickness. I don’t think I’ve been consistently feeling well for more than a few days since Christmas. The kids had a bout of strep in February, when they were on break, and we soon discovered that Henry was SEVERELY allergic to amoxicillin: Full body rash.

We thought everyone was on the mend, but Avelyn kept complaining about a stuffiness, and sometimes pain, in her right ear. I finally took her to the doctor. She was fully convinced that she was just going to go through life partially deaf in one ear (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree of dramatics). Another ear infection.

Then Monday morning James and Elanor woke up complaining about throats, I looked and we’re back to treating kids for strep again. We can’t win. I told Matthew next year we are going to a hot, sunny beach for a week on their February break.

And me? I’m glad for sunshine and warmer days.

In February we FINALLY, after a full year of going to Albany for Drs appointments, scheduled my Diastasis Recti repair surgery for April 2nd! Of course, winter took it’s toll on me too.

In the Fall, I was right where I wanted to be. I was strong, I was at my ideal weight, all of it was right where I felt good going into surgery, but then insurance denied coverage and we had to start the process again.

Throw in my general mood this winter of feeling beaten down constantly, mentally and physically exhausted from doing and dealing with it all, and the ice, and I was not taking care of myself. I haven’t walked. I haven’t lifted. I’ve definitely not been eating right. And I’ve gained 10lbs. Not where I want to be.

At the beginning of March, I decided I was taking my life back and started lifting again and putting myself back on good eating habits, and as life would have it, I sat on the COUCH with my kids one afternoon and when I went to get up my back went into spasm.

This was nothing like I’ve EVER experienced. When I had my major back issues from the diastasis recti I could work through it, it hurt, don’t get me wrong, but I could manage.

This was something different. I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t bend, I couldn’t walk. For 4 days I was unable to do anything other than lay in bed. It was muscles that abjectly REFUSED to do what I asked them to do. Talk about putting you behind!

Right now though, the sun is shining, the days are a touch warmer, there’s hope in our steps. We might just be making it through this winter after all.

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be blest. The soul, uneasy and confined from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.” -Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, 1733

2 Comments A Look at Our Life, Being Me, Intentional Living, Motherhood

A Faerie Room for a Faerie Princess

Elanor was moved into what has been the nursery for the past 10 years. It was a somewhat emotional “thing” to be painting over the green and yellow that I painted in there 10 years ago, when we were FINALLY expecting.

I think her room is my most favorite…but don’t tell the other kids. It’s a smaller room, it’s cozier, it’s always felt very “warm”. Not to mention that it was the easiest one to repaint and fix, even though there was some tedium with removing all of the wall moldings to paint properly.

Ellie is very much a fantastical girl, she loves faeries and magic, unicorns and rainbows. I wanted a room that embraced that, but allowed for the beauty of faeries and not just overblown pixies.

We went with a very woodland feel to her room. Painting the walls shades of pinks, but keeping the furniture very earthy. We went with Behr’s Desert Coral on the walls, then I mixed white ceiling paint in for the lighter colors.

Most of the decor, bedding, and furniture in her room we had on hand. The bedding was from Avelyn’s first big-girl bed (an Ikea duvet). I did purchase the netting from Amazon.com: I was expecting it to be way expensive, but the one I found was $15 and more than sufficient. Our biggest problem is getting her to keep her bed in one place.

Ellie’s bed and dresser are antiques; they were actually my dad and his brother’s when they were kids. When my grandfather passed away I held onto a lot of the furniture for “someday” and I’m glad I did, because the green is perfect for her room, as is the detail on the headboard. It’s pine cone perfection!

I bought the flower and faerie decals from HearthSong. So many other decals were way more money or they didn’t have what I wanted or ENOUGH of what I wanted. This one was perfect: Easy to put on, easy to re-position!

The mirror my mother in law picked up at a yard sale and the needle work (crewel) my grandmother did years ago for me. The cork board was from Amazon and I just painted it.

Just like in the boys’ room we stayed away from a bookcase and opted for wall storage of books. This was another piece of furniture from my grandparents’ home.

A shelf that my uncle had built for my grandmother years and years ago to hold her collection of decorative plates and bird figurines, I just painted it white. If you look at the top shelf you can see some of the plates that I held onto for this room.

I tried to keep things above the border light colored, and things below more earthy tones, to really help with the feel of being in the woods.


Again, the artwork for this room was mostly stuff that I’ve held onto for the past few years. The insects are a series of Pottery Barn paintings that my mother in law found years ago at a yard sale, that just never quite fit in anywhere. Now they do! The letters I ordered off of Etsy and painted to match the rest of the room.

We saved a spot to someday put a desk in her room. Right now, Ellie is more interested in playing on the floor and spreading out than she is at sitting at a desk.

The curtain panel I picked up at Pottery Barn Kids on the last day it was open and managed to get this heavy crochet-laced trimmed drape for $15.

Of course I immediately came home and washed it…and it shrunk, because I was an idiot. And now it also has black paint on it from the kids. THIS is why we can’t have nice things!

There it is! Ellie’s Big Girl Room!

Comment Creating, Intentional Living, Making a Home