No Net

Sorry y'all.  No post this lovely Saturday.  I'm actually typing from friend's house/computer because something is very wrong with our internet...it's been MIA for a couple of days and neither of us have had time to call and fix it.  Sooooo...look for a real post sometime this week as soon as we can get the world wide web back up and running.  We've got kitchen progress to tell you all about and the twins have seemingly grown a ton this week - my belly button is getting less and less shallow and it's kind of amusing.  So, until asap, whenever that happens to be, have a great day!

Lazy Saturday Morning

Breakfast:

Beverage:

I thought I'd try my luck, and my gag relfex, out this morning and brave the 'ole coffee pot again.  It's the "wonderful" second trimester so why not, right?  I grabbed a mini creamer yesterday at the grocery store just for the occasion and I've come to find, as I sip and type, that it's not too bad!  I'm not gagging and the rest of the world is revolving quite nicely so maybe things are looking up...or going down, whatever floats your boat.  I'm just excited that "I" am feeling somewhat normal again.  :) 

As for the culprits of taking away their mama's normalcy (gladly sacrificed), here they are now at 13.5 weeks:

Pregnant to friends and family,  and "that girl needs an ab workout" to strangers.  I know, I know.  Just wait...

Anyway, I'm sad to admit for the umpteenth weekend in a row that I have no beloved project to show-and-tell.  I could go on and on about how I went to the grocery store yesterday - a  pregnant lady with a starving belly - and picked up a few things we really didn't need...gushers, jalapeno poppers, mini pizzas, trix yogurt...or about how I literally climbed over 40 sleeping teenagers on an overnight tour bus ride last weekend just so I could make it from my little perch in the front to the bathroom in the back to empty my bladder at three in the morn.  Speaking of last weekend, Anthony and I were blessed to help chaperone a 150 teenager trip to Washington D.D. to march for life.  It was so exhilarating to brave the cold and rain (yes Grandma, don't worry, I was warm) to walk to the Supreme Court building in honor of the millions of aborted fetuses and it meant more to me this year, with the two little sprouts in tow, than any other year.  Hopefully all of our voices will be heard and the murder of these innocent babies will come to an end soon.  Pray, pray, pray.

.           .           .

I hope everyone has a great day and a great week!  Just to make your day a little more interesting:  Anthony notified me this morning that it is the 125th anniversary of the largest snowflake ever observed - 15 inches!  Crazy!  (Disclaimer:  In case you're wondering, he found that fact online.  It's not just one that's permanently logded in his noggin in which case I would think he was a little off his rocker.  Not that if you really did know that you're weird...)  So with that, Happy Snowflake Anniversary!  

P to the S.  If you live under a rock, you'd be well-informed to know that the Superbowl is next Sunday and if you aren't sure who to root for, well, let us tell you:

(Caps courtesy of a lovely marriage between nflshop.com and Photoshop.)

Tops

 We ordered new countertops!  Scuzzy laminate, it's time for you to go!  After waiting and researching and waiting and researching, we actually landed ourselves a good deal (surprise, surprise) at Home Depot.  We found and went with a Staron solid surface that's a tid bit darker than the sample shown on the very left in the pic below.  (I returned the sample before taking a pic...shame, shame.)

 Lucky for us, we snatched up a countertop that was on 'Special Buy' - regularly $42/sq. foot on sale for $37/sq. foot.  On top of that, all of Home Depot's countertops were 10% off plus we persuaded them (easily) to give us an extra 5% if we opened their credit card (to match the deal Lowe's swings around these days).  All of those awesome discounts add up to about $300 in savings!  We can't wait until they're done and in!  Should take two to three weeks.  While we were at it, we scored a new sink (because we can't put an old sink over new countertops, right?...think wine skins people...thank you Jesus)  at a fave discount store around here - Dirt Cheap.  It is/was a $400 stainless steel sink but we got it for 70% off because of one little dent that won't even show once it's in because it's around the undermounted part...if that makes sense.

Anyway, you can be sure we'll have a "they're here and in" post for ya in a few weeks.  As for the current bump situation...

Here 'we' are at 12 weeks.

While we were in our doc's office last week, Anthony asked him what his "professional opinion" was on the sexes of the babes.  He informed us that he usually doesn't give his opinion for a few more weeks but did tell us that the "old wives, whoever and wherever they are, would tell you you've got two girls in there based on their quick heart rates."  Anthony proceeded to put his head on doc's desk...

See you next week!

Expansion

Here's the three of us at 11 weeks...I know it doesn't look like much but...

since then, we've had some expanding:

I've had to resort to a few fashion tweaks and I'm officially on the hunt for good maternity jeans.  Even though we're only 12 weeks now, my uterus measures in at 15-16 weeks...some interesting info offered yesterday by the best Ob doc in the world, mine.  :)

Here are the twins this week:

And here's their last snapshot-in-utero together:  

Lately, during my spare time, I've found myself searching the net to find pictures of what your belly is supposed to look like week-by-week with twins but I haven't come out with any good results so, it'll be interesting to see how quickly the mid-section expands and to document it for other people with the same "what am I to expect?" questions as muah.  :)

Anyway, as we deviate from DIY into pregnancy land, rest assured that I feel hints of motivation rising in me.  We (I told Anthony he needs to make me) will be working on the loveseat this weekend and we're raiding home improvement stores today to seek and find the best deal on new countertops so, with all that being said, hopefully we'll have some more progress to share on all that mumbo jumbo next week.

Until then, be sure to keep up with Nicole at Little Spriggles!  She's made a New Year's resolution to do a project every week and I can't wait to see...and to get some added motivation and inspiration...from her ideas!

Have a great weekend everyone!

P.S.  Be sure to cast your vote on your thoughts about the male/female-ness of the two tots in the sidebar!

A Lack Thereof

So the twins conception has brought with it a lack of motivation for anything diy...or really anything of anything for that matter.  Hence why the loveseat still sits in the same, unfinished condition it was in a month ago, our master bath window is still naked, and my sewing machine (and the pile of must-do's I have waiting for it) are out of commission.  I blame this lethargy partly on the fact that, unconsciously, my mind is tantruming over the fact that paint of really any sort is out of the question right now.  Don't get me wrong, I'd choose our two little souls over a hundred cans of spray paint and projects any day, but I'll admit that I'm going through a little withdrawal.  I'm hoping trimester numero dos brings with it my former motivation to take on everything (but painting) and I'll be counting down the days - nine - until then.  :)

Lucky for you, I still have my will to write.  :) 

First things first - towel rings. 

I'm not sure if writing about this will slightly ease my withdrawal pain or just cause it to go into overdrive, but c'est la vie, right?  Here's what happened:  I had been on the hunt at my favorite discount store - Dirt Cheap - for some oil rubbed bronze towel rings to give our hand towels a home during our bathroom mini-makeover.  Well, I came up short time and time again until ReStore came to the rescue and I found these:

 As shiny as gaudy, shiny gold can be but ringing in at $4 a piece.  And you can probably guess where I'm going from here...

Yep, after one coat of primer:

And two thin, even coats of Krylon's oil rubbed bronze:

We have these (Anthony has one on his side too) - used for two months now and without a scratch or scribble to be seen.  I heart spray paint!

So that's that and this is this.  You'll probably think we're crazy...because we are...but we've scored some more free furniture.  This time from our parish priest's home.  Yes, we recently had a priest switcheroo in our parish and our new priest casually ridded his new home of some of the previous priest's furniture...of which two club chairs were a part.  So, we (Anthony) kindly asked if, since the chairs were in indecent condition and would probably be thrown out or given away, if we could take them off the hands of the parish, thereby releasing them of the dirty work.  We're so selfless, aren't we?  Well, a borrowed truckload (thanks Jess and Alan) later and two over-sized raspberries we've got:

 We didn't like the skirt and they had nice legs so with a little bit of pregnancy motivation one night while watchin' the tube, off they came.  What do you think?  Better with or without the skirt?  Thankfully, they were really simple to remove.  All I had to do was lay each chair on it's side, lift up the skirt to expose the staples,

and rip them out one-by-one, after which the skirt came right off and we were left with some slightly better looking club chairs.  The plan is, someday, to diy some slipcovers (for their washable advantage) and construct a home decor friendship between them and our sectional but for now they're just sitting in our office.  Since it'll be the future nursery, we wrapped up the twin bed that was in their place and stored it in the attic for now.  The chairs will eventually be moved out (after the twins take up residence circa six months after birth?) and placed elsewhere but for now, they give off a good home office/library vibe, even if they are still pretty sore to look at...raspberry, not my idea of a a good furniture hue.

Anyway, what else can I bore you with?  Oh yeah, we're officially going to take on a small kitchen makeover.  I wrote an itty-bitty post a while ago about my wish to do so and now the other half has officially signed on.  We just feel that in order to sell this house (we've had it on the market for a good while now in hopes to move closer to work), we need to give our semi-sad kitchen a freshening up.  We started pricing out countertops today, trying to get the best bang for our buck.  We don't want to spend loads because we know that we're probably not going to get much of any of this small investment back but we also don't want to skimp either.  That means that laminate is out and we're leaning towards a solid surface like Corian or an inexpensive, simple Quartz.  Of course, we'll let you know how that tops out.  Other than that, we're going to paint the cabinets white...let me rephrase that...Anthony is going to paint the cabinets.  I'm simply going to sit in a back room with a mask on sulking.  I'm really excited about it though...the project, not the sulking!  More to come later!  We've only just started researching countertops which could mean, with our tightwad ways, that it could be little bit before any actual progress is made.  :) 

Last but not least, I can't not give the twins their due.  Here's the three of us last week, at 10 weeks:

Not much of anything yet besides a little b-l-o-a-t and a messy bedroom.  :)

Before I sign off:

While we were perusing the addicting corridors of Pinterest for "white kitchens" Anthony said, "all these pictures are of huge, expensive kitchens!  Why don't they make a Pinterest for poor people?"  Agreed.  Pinterest, although incredibly inspirational and much-loved, is quite I-wish-we-could...except for the diy and crafts area of course.

It's so very refreshing to know that I'm not the only one who thinks that spending $20 for a shirt is outrageous.  Thank you for the ego boost Ana!

Sign this petition.  It's to protect the eyes and hearts of young people...and everyone for that matter...by making it a requirement for Cosmopolitan magazine to encase their ill-worded mags in a non-transparent casing.

You must read Grace's blog daily if you want to be at all in high spirits.  Laughs, doses of lovely reality, incredible sewing inspiration, and lots of simple wisdom abound...and her kids are about as cute (and sometimes mischievous) as they come.

Check out Mona Lisa in her earlier days.

Consumer Reports is the most incredible research engine for those of you, who like us, like to research to the death before we buy anything to make sure we're getting our pennies worth.  Seriously, we make every big purchase decision after we check it out.  They're so smart, non-profit, and totally worth the subscription fee!

Problem:  My blog header is blurry and no matter how many times I remove and reload the crisp image from my comp, it's still all fuzz!  Anyone know how to fix?

Adieu!