I Got Beat Up

Oh boy did I get beat up this morning. Ugh. I am sooo tired.

I go to this fabulous 2 year old fitness gym near my house. I am not in bad shape, but I am not in great shape either. I don't do well working out at my house because of my two toddlers. As soon as I get on the treadmill, they are trying to climb on as well. I can entice them will everything loved by a toddler to stay in the other room, but it doesn't work. Not gummy bears. Not Caillou. Nothing.

I also recorded several hours of exercise routines from the FitTv channel but they climb on the step and they turn off the TV.

So, the gym it is. The great part is they have a Kid's Club. 2 hours at a time they watch all the kids. There's plenty of cool stuff in there to keep them happy, and I can go back in the afternoon again if I want to work out again.

Right off the bat I got talked into having a personal trainer. I don't like to think of myself as someone who is talked in to things easy, but it happens. Especially if I want what they are selling, then I just need to hear the right thing.

I love my trainer. Some of the others look intimidating. Big, bulging muscles and military haircuts. No thanks. I also didn't wan't an overly attractive man watching me struggle and sweat while I worked out. I got a slightly nerdy, medium sized trainer who knows his stuff. (I hope he never sees this).

We have been working out for 3 months now and I have had positive results. Definitely toned up and my recovery time is much quicker. BUT the pain for the couple of days following a workout is BAD. Last week every step hurt and the week before I struggled to pick up my kids. But the pain I am going to feel tomorrow will pale in comparison. I am already sore. THAT is a bad sign.

I told him I was at a plateau. He said we would work through it, right now. Deep lunges while holding 10lb kettle balls... squat jumps onto a step with 5 risers... pilates pushups (these are no joke)... single leg presses with 50lbs and wayyyy too many reps... pull ups and leg lifts while 2 feet off the ground... and the list goes on. The punishment lasted an hour. The sweat was dripping in my eyes. My shirt and hair were soaked. Then, he told me to go do the stairclimber for 20 min. I did 5 and I started to get a low blood sugar attack. You know the feeling when all of the sudden you are starving and trembling? Thank goodness I had a banana in my locker! I got the kids, came home and collapsed.

I don't think I will be having any tasty food today, just to get the most out of it.

NOT What You Want to Find In the Washer

A diaper. yes. A DIAPER.

I sorted the clothes... I swear I did. And, how did a diaper get in the laundry room???

I have an upside down house. It is very cool, but I have found several undesirables that I never would have thought of until I lived here. My kitchen, living room and master are upstairs, and three bedrooms, a bathroom and a large laundry room are downstairs. It was so unique and exciting to me when we first saw it.

Well, my little Lily who is now 20 months old loves to throw things from the upstairs to the downstairs. There is a banister above the lover half of the stairs, so when she throws things over they land pretty close to the hallway below. Well, I also throw dirty laundry over the stairs when I am going down to wash clothes. Or, I throw them over and yell to my 11 year old, Adrienne, to take them to the laundry room.

Lately, Lily has been trying to snatch diapers after changing and throw them down. I usually catch it, but I guess I didn't this time. FORTUNATELY it was a #1 diaper, if it was a used diaper at all. All of the unused diapers are in a cupboard, but I wouldn't put it past her to gain acees to it. #2 diapers are immediately taken to the outside garbage can, but #1 go to an inside diaper can. I guess I dropped the ball. Ugh.

Lily the culprit

So... I opened the washer to switch the clothes to the dryer and immediately am taken back by the buildup inside the door (front loader). These mushy, puffy bead like clumps are everywhere. And wouldn't you know that I threw some of my husband's Harley Davidson shirts in that load. Dark clothes with bits of fuzzy white material all over them will make you feel sick.

I took everything out, used several baby wipes to clean all the nooks and crannies of washer and restarted the load. This time I put it on heavy soil with an extra rinse. I will keep my fingers crosssed :).

Happy Sunday!

Good morning! I have noticed with self employment there are no real days off. Tasks for home and work all seem to melt together and it is a concerted effort all day to make time for the business needs. Unfortunately I am not one of those that was born with a sharp attention span or a fabulous sense of organization, so often that is what I am putting the most effort in to. I have become quite a fan of coffee and absolutely love it, but am realizing it probably doesn't help my focus, just my motivation. I think it would be pretty entertaining to watch a video of my movements throughout the day. I think I will start researching natural remedies for adult ADD :) . Yesterday I promised some pictures of my new beads... what do you think?

Boro Beads

I got a chance to make beads to day and they turned out really good! I am excited to clean and photograph them tomorrow. Since I have two toddlers, I rarely get to go to the garage studio during the day. Today I was able to get them both down for a nap within 15 minutes of each other. I grabbed the baby monitor and ran to the garage! I stayed out there for 3 1/2 hours because my husband made it home early and before the kids woke up. He said I could stay out there and he would tend to the little ones until they woke up. I loved it.

A long session like that can be pretty hard though because it is HOT! I am in Northern Cali so it was a hot day and being in the garage in front of a torch with a big flame is super hot. I usually don't spend more than 2 hours at a time either, but I had the time available to me so I went for it. I got 4 sets done and a few stragglers to add to my next orphan set. I will post some pics tomorrow. Good night!

Blog Launch!

I am always getting fussed at for my inability to provide fresh pictures on a regular basis and my lack of recording things that happen with my kids. Well.... here it is! I will try to keep this updated often and new pictures added regularly. It is a great medium for me to do it all in one place. All three kids, activities, developments and PICTURES! Feel free to leave comments under each post and I will try to make it as user friendly as possible. I will put some of my business feed items in the columns to link to what else is going on during our (my) day.

Google Chrome

I just wanted to give a quick shout out to Google Chrome. It is a new browser by Google that I downloaded yesterday. Wow is it fast! I have been going between both Internet Explorer and Firefox on my new computer and they are both painfully slow. I have been blaming this on the fact that I never uninstalled bloatwear and haven't really spent a lot of time trying to figure out why it is slow and fix it. Sometimes, especially when loading pics for new listings in Etsy, I will get up and go do something for a few just to pass the time.

Google Chrome is not fancy and doesn't have a ton of special features. In fact, the default is a 3/4 screen but boy is this baby fast! When you open a new tab, the page if full of thumbnails of you most frequently visited pages. It imported my saved passwords from my other browsers and fills the fields in after the first letter, instead of the usual second letter entry. Easy peasy to use. Go to the official google blog for more info and to download. Leave a comment on your experience so far!

StudioHaus Feature

I was playing around in Promotions on Etsy yesterday trying to drive some traffic to my store, and ended up finding a great buy one get one free promotion by thepaperaddict.etsy.com and bought these cool thank you cards to send out in my packages. Tried to make money... end up spending money! During my time in promotions I found a seller looking for colorful items to feature on her blog for a popularity contest. I submitted and she chose my item, which is the most colorful item I have :) I would love it if you could go over to her blog and leave a comment voting for my bracelet! It is item #5. Click here to go to her blog.