Work in Progress — In more ways than one

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Amy

We’re finally feel­ing like home is HOME now.  Our patio is in, the grass and land­scap­ing are all in and we are now “allowed” to walk and play on it. :-P   I don’t think I’ve ever spent more time out­side this time of year than I have this year! 

We got some “grown up” pots from Gerten’s finally (not the cheapy plas­tic ones that we’ve always had) and I’m really lov­ing how the front of the house is com­ing along!  And it’s all painted too, I love the color.

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I’ve also decided since every per­son in our neigh­bor­hood seems to be a size 2, that it’s time for me to crack down and lose this darn baby weight that’s been hang­ing around.  It’s embarass­ing once you have a one year old and still look like you just gave birth a few weeks ago.

I’ve attempted many dif­fer­ent approaches to doing this, but I know that I like food to much to really do some crazy sort of diet.  So, I’m attempt­ing a com­bi­na­tion of excer­cise and just mak­ing bet­ter choices when I eat.  This means less buy­ing break­fast and lunches at work and more of brin­ing left­overs and other things to eat for lunch.

Like many other busy moms, I have NO time to get to the gym dur­ing the week.  A friend of mine from Scrap­Girls has been doing some of the Beach­Body work­outs for the last few months and she looks AMAZING!!!  So, I decided to give one of their pro­grams a shot.  She rec­om­mended the ChaLEAN Extreme to start out with.  I’m only on Day 5, but I LOVE it so far and it’s the longest I’ve ever stuck with a “work­out pro­gram”.  It’s def­i­nitely more strength train­ing focused than just doing a 40 min DVD of pure car­dio, which really doesn’t do much for me these days.

The awe­some thing about ChaLEAN is that it comes with all the DVD’s that you need for the entire pro­gram, as well as the resis­tance band and the leg band, a nutir­tion book and a com­plete guide and jour­nal to track your progress.  But, I really wanted to get a set of adjustable weights to use to max­i­mize my work­out, so I’m going to give these a try.  I’ll let you know how I like them.

They also want you to take before pics, so I need to get around to doing that one of these days…I promise I won’t share them here.  :-)

Posted in Amy, Getting Fit, New House | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Mother’s Day

Posted on June 1, 2010 by Amy

I had an awe­some Mother’s Day this year, def­i­nitely one of the best yet!  I also love how the preschool teach­ers do lit­tle things for Mother’s Day as well for the kids to bring home.  The fun­ni­est thing was this lit­tle “About my Mom” thing they filled out.  The first ques­tion was “My mom always says” and Ty’s response was”

“TO-NY”, when she’s mad

I just about DIED laugh­ing.  We’re always jok­ing about how I say Tony’s name when I’m yelling for him and he thinks it’s hilar­i­ous when Ty mocks me when I do it.  So, the fact that he told that to his teach­ers as the one thing I always say…well, I’m sure they were rolling!

I guess I also like to wear pink shirts and that my favorite thing to do with Ty is play Wii Fit.  :-)

I also got my first break­fast and bed on Mother’s Day, which con­sisted of a very tasty gra­nola bar (again from the preschool teach­ers!) and lots of snug­gles with the kiddos.

I then got to go shoot a gor­geous lit­tle new­born girl, which was such a pleasure.

We then headed over to my sister’s house to cel­e­brate with my mom and fam­ily.  My sis­ter made some super yummy kabobs on the grill and the aspara­gus was deli­cious as well.

One of my fave new recipes are these super EASY and deli­cious potatoes:

Range Roasted Potatoes

Pre­heat oven to 425.

Take 3 lbs of your favorite pota­toes, skin on and cut them up into chunks, not too big though.

1/2 cup of Olive Oil (I like to use EVOO)

1 pack­age of Onion Soup Mix

Throw it all in a big Ziploc bag and shake it up (this is SO much eas­ier than mix­ing it in the bowl, IMO)

Once mixed, put into a 9x13” glass bak­ing pan and bake for 30–40 mins or until pota­toes are nice and ten­der.  Stir occa­sion­ally while bak­ing.  You’ll know they’re done when they’re a nice, rich golden brown color.

I think Sweet Pota­toes would be really tasty too this way!

Here’s a few pho­tos of my sweet mon­keys from our day

It’s scary how much they look alike!

Posted in Bailey, Cooking, Mother's Day, Tyson | Leave a comment

Busy-ness

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Amy

To say we’ve been a bit busy these last cou­ple of weeks would be a crazy under­state­ment!  But, it’s all been good.  I’m also giv­ing the blog a mini-makeover, so please excuse the dust while I get it updated.  :-)

Today, Tony offi­cially started his new job as a Trainer at Life­time Fit­ness.  If you know of any­one that’s look­ing for an awe­some trainer, who takes his job VERY seri­ously, my man, is your man. ;-)   We’re SO proud of him!  I can’t wait to see him do well, which I’m con­fi­dent he will.

We also went out of town to Dubuque, Iowa this past week­end for my cousin’s wed­ding.  It was GORGEOUS and such a blast.  I was hon­ored enough to be asked to sing a few of the songs dur­ing the mass as well!

While we were in Dyersville, Iowa for the cer­e­mony, we vis­ited the Field of Dreams Movie Site!  Sur­pris­ingly, I left my cam­era home for the week­end, so all I had was my cam­era phone.  So, here are a few weak shots from that.  You get the “pic­ture” though.  It was really neat to see it in per­son!  And for just $5.4 mil­lion it could be yours! LOL

Yes, Kevin Costner’s tushie sat on this bench.  :-)

“If you build it…they will come”

Posted in Amy, Baseball, Tony | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

8 wheels

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Amy

It’s prob­a­bly been at least 10 years since I have gone rollerblad­ing. Tyson got his first pair of rollerblades for his birth­day (and some awe­some pads and wrist guards too, thank good­ness!). It did NOT go well when he first put them on him. He was scared out of his mind and held onto us for dear life. But, we tried again a few days later and I had remem­bered what they had taught them to do in his ice skat­ing lessons, about stand­ing with their hands on their knees and bent down. And sure, enough, it worked! He felt more and more secure, and before we knew it, he was cruis­ing (slowly) down the sidewalk!

Lit­tle by lit­tle he’s get­ting bet­ter at it and he LOVES it. Brings back so many mem­o­ries! So many in fact, that I dusted off my old rollerblades and took to the streets. I’ll spare you the details on how that went, but let’s just say my life did flash before my eyes just before I hit the pave­ment. :-)

Posted in Tyson | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Inspiring Office

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Amy

Tyson’s big birth­day post is com­ing, I just need to fin­ish upload­ing the pho­tos (bad, mommy!!).  In the mean­time though, one of my projects was to fin­ish my new office space in our house.  I had a vision in my head and it was so awe­some to see it come to life! 

I must give my mom a MAJOR thanks for help­ing me get this desk.  It is a DREAM and makes me feel so pro­duc­tive when I’m pack­aing up client orders and hav­ing all of my biz stuff in one place!  Thanks mom!

The damask decals are from Upper­case Liv­ing.  I’m an UL freak!  I think I am going to add some more though as I want it to be a bit busier on that wall.  I also need to get some more pho­tos and what not hung in there and swap out the red boxes for white ones from Ikea.  But all in all, I’m in LOVE with it!!

This is my lit­tle pack­ag­ing sta­tion where I work on my clients’ orders and make them all pretty!

This is the cor­ner part of the desk, I love the lit­tle draw­ers for my var­i­ous piles and such. On top are frame sam­ples.

Posted in Amy, New House | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Slacking 101

Posted on April 28, 2010 by Amy

Yeah, that’s me.  I’m a total slacker.  I’ve been INSANELY busy, but still, not really a good excuse.  Nonethe­less, I’m going to try to post some recent pics at least!

Here’s Easter 2010!  The Easter bunny was very good to our house.

We headed up to Scott & Amy’s to see their new house in St. Cloud.  It’s SO nice to have them only about 90 mins away now.  I can’t wait to get up there more often to hang out with them and to go golf­ing with them.

The weather was SO gor­geous and for once, we dind’t have to cover up our nice Easter clothes with parkas!

Here’s B and Grandma

I LOVE this photo, these 2 lit­tle dogs are part of the brood of crea­tures from the Lee house­hold.  Aren’t they cute?  Bai­ley didn’t seem to think so.  She is DEATHLY afraid of small dogs, which is hilar­i­ous con­sid­er­ing she lived with a Dober­man the first year of her life!

Broth­erly love.  He’s the *best* big bro in the world.  Seri­ously.

Love this smile.  Not lovin the hair…

We got a good fam­ily pic cour­tesy of Tony’s cousin!

With the grandparents…so much for the well behaved boy!

Hope you all had a blessed Easter!

Posted in Amy, Bailey, Family, Tony, Tyson | Tagged | Leave a comment

Showing off her birthday chair

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Amy

Here’s the birth­day girl show­ing off her birth­day dress and new chair from mom & dad.  I just LOVE this lit­tle chair, it’s so cute and I think I’ll get lots of use out of it as a prop too!

We’re get­ting bet­ter at standin now!  yay!

I love this one <3

Big hazel eyes :-)   I think she’s look­ing a lot like Tyson in this one.

Posted in Bailey, Photography | 2 Comments

Project 52: Week 10

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Amy

Ok, so did you fig­ure out what last week’s photo was of?  I’ll tell you.  I was fill­ing a bean bag with bean bag beads and it was a MESS!!!!  So, there you have it!

Now, onto Week 10!  Here’s the Princess, chillin’ like a villain…

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A Party fit for a Princess

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Amy

We had Miss B’s first birth­day party at our house on Sun­day.  Just as we did for Ty’s first birth­day, we invited all of our extended fam­i­lies over to cel­e­brate this day with us.  It was so nice to see every­one and to have them all over to the new house.

Here’s the birth­day girl hav­ing her morn­ing break­fast.  Ty said “I won­der if she’ll look older now that she’s one” before she woke up in the morn­ing.  I think he was a bit dis­ap­pointed when we went in her room to see that she still looked the same! LOL

As soon as b’fast was over, it was time to get the giant cup­cake cake dec­o­rated for the party!  We had a cup­cake themed party. :-)

We also had a whole slew of smaller cup­cakes for every­one.  I loved this Cup­cake Stand, it was so cute to dis­play them all!  To feed my Esty addic­tion, I got these adorable cup­cake wrap­pers and per­son­al­ized cup­cake top­pers.  I just loved how they all came together for the dis­play!  And Tyson was such a good lit­tle helper and put all of the giant sprin­kles on the lit­tle cup­cakes.  :-)

It’s Party time!!  Here with Grandpa Al & Grandma Arlene.  Adorable birth­day dress from here and bow from here.

The dainty pinky in the air.  Don’t we all eat our crack­ers like this? LOL

Who are all of these peo­ple and why are they here?

Time to sing!

Good thing we have our help­ful big brother around to blow out the can­dles for us!

Time to enjoy a cupcake

SO big!

Time to open some present!

She LOVES her new tea party set!

Me and my girl :-)

Tea any­one?

I’m still hop­ing to get a Bailey’s first year post up later this week, so stay tuned for that!

Posted in Amy, Bailey, Tyson | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Project 52: Week 9

Posted on March 11, 2010 by Amy

Ok, I’m going to let you guys have a lit­tle fun here and see if you can guess what I was doing that caused this havoc!  Let’s just say my vac­cum did not like me very much after this. :-)

Posted in Amy, Photography, Project 52 | 1 Comment