Beach Bums

Spending the day at the beach…

 (Image of wee Anthony and wee Sheena courtesy of Photoshop.)

Twins: 28 Weeks

 

Actually measuring 34-36 weeks, it’s needless to say it’s getting a little tight…for me and my two little pals.  Honestly, it’s really a hair short of a miracle that stretch marks haven’t yet made their mark…any day now, I can just about feel it.  On the bright side though, life is swell (no pun intended).  :)  We’re about to move our efforts from an almost completely organized, super-clean guest room/office to a currently disastrous nursery.  Don’t worry family, I’m not doing any heavy lifting, super-hard work, or straining myself in any way…everyone freaks out at the slightest mention of ‘cleaning’.

Next week you’re in for a treat as the twins have another photo shoot!  One of the last two before we get to have outside the skin shoots!  Have a great rest of the week!

Guest Bedroom + Office =

A full week of decluttering, newly formed Goodwill piles, and the tedious melding of two rooms in order to give the twins their own space.  This has been my self-imposed project for the past week…me thinking we’d have a fully functional, picture-perfect guest bedroom/office by today.  Well, using the easy excuse of slower functioning due to pregnancy and the fact that my better half has been away more than home this week, I’m having to extend my deadline.  But, we did make quite a dent over the past six days.  Let me divulge.

Here’s where we started circa last weekend: With Anthony’s muscles, we managed to move the bookshelf and desk over from the future nursery, beginning the process.  We thought this was the layout we’d stick with, but then I had second thoughts.  You see, we were planning on selling the desk that was previously in this room…the one I had primed and thought I’d get around to painting someday but I just couldn’t do it.  It was so much more attractive than the one we planned on keeping: Super-functional but super non-appealing in my opinion.  So, putting my best persuasive skills forward, I convinced Anthony we should sell the above desk and chair in lieu of the other…me still thinking I’d one day get to repaint it.  I even souped up my argument with a new room layout.  It took a little convincing, but he was sold.  Off I was to craigslist to sell a desk and chair. 

So that brought us here: I single-handedly and once again emptied the entire bookshelf of it’s contents so that Anthony could more easily move it and created this new mess:

This is where Anthony disappeared into the busy world of being a Director of Religious Ed during the spring and I began pregnancy-safe jobs like paring down the contents of the closet and dresser.  And the Goodwill pile grew, and a trip to ReStore to drop off unused lamps came.

As of yesterday morn, here’s what the room looked like: A mess, but an organized one…in my mind anyway. 

Then, after a Saturday of more sorting, decluttering, and organizing, I got us to here:You can’t see it in this picture but the bookshelf now resides, fully stocked, on the right wall next to the chair.  The bed, while still not habitable, is at least a little more visible and mainly covered with pictures from each of our pasts which I refuse to just stuff into a drawer like they were before – I’m working on filling up albums during my sit-down breaks based on which era they’re from…fun, fun.

So, in case you’re still here reading about the boring process of converging two rooms and the mess we’ve made doing it, you must have figured that, yes, it’s the most interesting thing going on in our lives right now.  Even though it’s not near as exciting as spray painting stuff and sewing creations, it feels so good to get rid of stuff we haven’t used and don’t really need.  We’ve got an entire section of closet in the future nursery full of picture frames and mirrors that we’re finally going to put up around the house too in the next few weeks to get these bare walls looking more normal and homey.  I’m really excited about that.  :)

Anyway, I promise I won’t bore you with more progress pics of this bedroom but I might share a pic or two of the picture-perfect completion.  Then it’s on to the nursery, waiting to be used in two short months…can you believe it!  Cray cray. 

I hope everyone has a great Sunday!

New Look

You  may or may not have noticed that I, once again, switched up the look of Bean In Love.  Why?  For kicks and because it's like decorating...for FREE!  I absolutely love making backgrounds - they're like fabrics to me that I can use without paying for - headers, and just changing up the color scheme to reflect my mood, the season, or even a color fad.  Honestly, if I had time, which many moons into pregnancy and then nursing two might afford me in a couple of weeks/months, I'd put a new face on the blog every week.  So we'll see what happens. 

In saying all of this, which you probably don't care about anyway, I was thinking about posting a little itty-bitty tutorial on web design and then got cold feet about it.  I'm no pro by any means and just putting up this little facade I've got goin' on now took me a good six or so hours of work only because I ran into a few glitches I didn't know how to fix until my genius-in-web-design brother-in-law swooped like a knight in shining armor and helped me fix them.  So, I realized I probably shouldn't write about how to do something like web design that I still am so rusty with myself.  So, I'll just pass on some good places I've found to go if you'd like to learn more.

• For a TON of free background patterns that you can change to any color you desire, http://www.patterncooler.com/ is the place to be.  All you have to do is find a pattern you like, switch up the colors and/or size using their background editor, save it to your computer, and upload it as a background in Blogger's template designer.
• For thousands of cool and free fonts, check out http://www.dafont.com/!
• To make your own header or blog graphics, especially if you don't have access to Photoshop or other computer software, http://www.pixlr.com/ works just as well.  We do have Photoshop but lately I've found myself using pixlr more often because it doesn't take my old computer as long to launch and use it.  Pixlr even uploads all of the fonts you have saved on your computer so you have access to all of those cool fonts you've downloaded from dafont...bonus!
• For really great tutorials on everything from the basics to the more advanced ways to make your blog more attractive, a few good websites are http://www.bloggersentral.com/, http://www.puglypixel.com/, and http://www.makincuteblogs.com/.

If anyone has any questions, please feel free to comment or to email me and I'll try my bestest to answer you or to at least point you in the right direction as regards web design.  But remember, I'm faaaar from being a pro.  Also, like I mentioned above, I love creating headers and backgrounds and I'm going to have lots of relaxation time in the next couple of months before the twins get here so, instead of making myself a new header everyday with all that spare time on the couch, I'd love to help whip up some headers for anyone looking to get a new one.  Of course I'd do it for free - heck, you're doing me a favor by a) giving me something to do while I rest the weight of the beanettes on any surface that'll have me and by b) giving my blog a design rest.  Just send me an email with your ideas and I'll get my pixlr on.

Anyway, I need to get off my tush and go wrangle the chaos that is currently invading our guestroom.  I hope to be back later today with a post of my progress so, if you're in the virtual neighborhood, stop by.  :)

Twins: 27 Weeks

Feelin’ it in my bones people.  The past two mornings it’s taken me approximately seven minutes to roll over and out of the bed and once I get to the out part, the weight of our two little pretties makes itself fully known to my hips and knees.  Oh the joys.  :)