Helping women love what they wear on a budget
Yes, it’s true, after 4 years of living in Las Vegas we are leaving. My family and I are packing up our lives here and moving back to Michigan. Back to the mitten state where both my husband and I are from. This time we are going to be living on the west side of the state in Grand Rapids.
Some of you may or may not know that Jack was born via C-section. I don’t think that I have ever shared my story about it, besides touching on it a little in my birth story post (HERE), but I never shared the whole experience. Since April is Cesarean Awareness Month, I felt like it was the perfect time to open up about my experience with my C-section. It’s something that I’m not 100% comfortable sharing for all to read, but I want to share my story because 3 years ago as I recovered and got to know my newborn son, I was feeling very alone. I hope that in telling my story, it might bring some comfort to another new mom going through the same thing.
My labor with Jack started when my water broke 11 days before his due date. After not truly believing that I was in labor, I decided to hold off on going to the hospital until I started contractions. (Bad idea, don’t do this, but what can I say, I was a first-time mom.) My contractions started about 3 hours after my water broke and that’s when my husband and I headed to the hospital. I remember that drive to the hospital being extremely painful. It was something out of the movies. The contractions were strong and painful as soon as they started, and when I got to the hospital I learned that my labor was progressing very quickly. I was happy to hear that I could have an epidural as soon as they finished my blood work. It all seemed to go very quickly and before I knew it I was sitting comfortably with an epidural going through labor and waiting for my baby to arrive.
Finally, the nurse said it was time to start pushing. It started off slowly, but it started to get very intense after about an hour or so. No matter how hard I pushed, the baby was not coming down at all. It was so frustrating. The nurse had turned off my epidural, so I felt every contraction. After 3 hours of pushing, the nurse called my doctor and he said that the best option would for me to have a C-section. My other options were to possibly use a vacuum to help get the baby out, which all seemed very scary and traumatic for me and the baby. I didn’t want to have a c-section. I wanted a natural birth. I wanted to be the first person to hold my baby. I had this idea in my mind of what it would be like when the baby came out and c-section was not in that plan. I was also exhausted from pushing and in a lot of pain, so I took the doctor’s advice and went with the c-section. I was scared, but at the same time I was in so much pain, I barely thought about the whole idea of being cut open when I was awake.
I remember shaking uncontrollably on the table. The nurse told me that was normal and it was because of all the pushing. I was scared, but I just focused on my husband’s eyes. The nurses had him sitting across the room from me, I didn’t know why. I wanted him close to me, but looking at him just helped me stay calm and distract myself from the fact that I was being cut open while I was still awake. When I saw tears in his eyes I knew Jack was out. Then I heard the sweetest little cry ever. It comforted me to hear Jack and hear everyone in the room telling us what a beautiful baby he was. Finally, the nurse brought him over to me and we just looked at each other. I was too scared to move my arms so I just kissed him and told him I loved him. Kevin snapped this picture below of us which is one of my favorite pictures ever.
When it comes to buying baby/kid gear, I’d like to think that I’m a minimalist. I try to stick to only the necessities. When I made my baby registry back when I was pregnant with Jack, I tried to keep it to only the things that I would absolutely need. One item that I struggled with finding was a diaper bag. The diaper bag was the one item on our baby registry that caused a fight between my husband and me.
I wanted something practical, but I also wanted something that was cute that I could carry around. I completely forgot that my husband was going to be staying home with Jack half the week while I was working and he might want to use a diaper bag too. When we got the “cute” diaper bag in the mail as a gift my husband saw it and immediately vetoed it. His argument was that he was not going to carry around a “girly looking purse” diaper bag. Anyway, I ended up finding a simple black over the shoulder “gender-neutral” diaper bag for us to share. It worked fine and I carried it for about the first 6 weeks, then I just decided to throw everything in my purse when we went out, but we still used the black bag as his school diaper bag.
*This post is part of a collaboration with Birdrock Baby. All opinions are 100% my own. This post also contains affiliate links, which means by clicking on and/or making a purchase through a link, I will earn a commission for this blog. Thank you for your support!
Birdrock Baby is one of those small business that I love sharing, because they sell quality affordable baby products at a low price. Plus they give back. For every purchase you make from Birdrock Baby, they will donate a day’s worth of food for a child in need. Check them out on their website (HERE) or you can also find them on Amazon (HERE), which is perfect if you are putting together an Amazon Baby Registry!!
Organizing is something that I have always really enjoyed doing. It always feels so good to declutter and have a place for everything. The only problem for me is that sometimes life happens and it gets hard to keep up with it all. I’ve recently been watching Tidying Up with Marie Kondo on Netflix, just like everyone else in the world right now and I’m loving it! I’ve never had time to read her books, but I’ve heard so many great things. Now that I’ve actually taken the time to learn more about the KonMari method I became so motivated to start organizing my house.
We moved into our current house 2 years ago, right before Jack’s first birthday. We wanted a house with more space because we quickly outgrew our 2 bedroom condo after having Jack. Our house is a decent size home, with lots of open space for Jack to play, but it’s not always very functional for space. The house makes no sense with its layout, but it is a rental house and sometimes you just need to work with the space you have. We are planning on moving out of this house this spring, so in order to make the packing processes less overwhelming for me, I figured that it would be the perfect time to purge and go through all my cabinets, drawers and closets to make sure everything had a place.
Today I want to take you through my organizing processes to give you some ideas and tips for your own house. Most of all, I hope to share some affordable ways to organize. Some people think that you might need to run out and buy some amazing organizing products at the Container Store, but you don’t. Sometimes all you need are some old boxes and a few baskets, even Marie Kondo approves of that.
*This post contains affiliate links, which means by clicking on and/or making a purchase through a link, I will earn a commission for this blog. Thank you for your support!
Kitchen
So let’s start in the Kitchen. The kitchen is hard for me because it’s the never-ending room. It constantly needs to be cleaned and organized. What drives me crazy in my kitchen is all the plastic Tupperware and sippy cups. I’m pretty sure everyone can agree that they hate storing Tupperware. It’s never pretty. I came up with a system when we moved into this house that works for me. I use 2 large baskets (HERE) and 2 deeper baskets with handles (HERE) that I bought both at the Dollar Tree. I keep all the containers in the big baskets and all the lids in the baskets with the handles. Round containers are on the left and rectangle and square containers are on the right. This system works greats. I also store all my sippy cups in a basket in the other cabinet.
One of the best things that I ever did in organizing my kitchen was buying baskets for my pantry (HERE). My current pantry is deep, which I’m not a fan of, because food can get lost in the back. The baskets help me section out my food into categories. It makes it so much easier to find everything I need. At the bottom of the pantry, I use beer boxes to store my recyclable bags and lunch boxes.
Linen Closet
Next up is my linen closet. I have a very small linen closet at this house. It is basically a bunch of cabinets in the hallway. It’s hard to cram in all my extra bedding and towels into it. Before, I was just folding up everything and cramming it into the space. Now I have added baskets to my closet to help organize hand towels, pillowcases, cleaning rags, cleaning supplies and baby towels. I was able to fold my blankets up to fit perfectly, (not perfect like Marie Kondo, but I tried). I also used the KonMari method to fold my bath towels. The thing I like about my linen closet now is that I can see everything and I have so much extra space.
Master bedroom
My husband is super organized and is pretty much a minimalist, so I never have to worry about keeping him tidy (besides leaving empty water bottles all over the nightstand). I feel like I’m the one with all the “stuff” in my room. I have a nice big walk-in closet that I try to keep most of my things in, but I have 2 dressers and a nightstand that often start to overflow. I prefer to hang most of my clothes in my closet so I can see them all. My clothes are always getting buried in my drawers and then I completely forget about what I have, especially in my socks and underwear drawers. I love the KonMari method of folding, so I folded all the clothes in my dressers so I could see each item. I also got rid of a lot of old t-shirts and tank tops that hadn’t been worn in years. I have been hoarding a bunch of boxes from all my sponsored blog posts over the last year in my closet, so I was happy that some of those could come in handy for my underwear, socks, and bras. One thing I really love about Marie Kondo is that she teaches people to use what they have for storage. She says to use what you have first before you buy anything new. Old boxes make for great organizing tools.
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| Top- Underwear and socks || Middle- T-shirts || Bottom- Tank tops |
My nightstand drawer is always a hot mess. I just added a couple long baskets (HERE) from the Dollar Tree for my pens and random phone chargers. I also left space for my journals. My bathroom drawers are similar. The baskets just help keep it from turning into a big mess.
Toddler Room
Jack’s room is actually my favorite room in our house. It has 2 big windows that let in lots of light and has a vaulted ceiling. It’s the perfect room for a nursery. The older Jack gets though, the harder it is to keep up with him and his mess. He wants to play with everything. That’s why I had to drop him off at school on my day off work just so I could go through his stuff without him freaking out. Getting rid of baby things is hard for me because I am still hoping for one more, but I realized when it comes to clothes, I’m not going to want to keep everything. A lot of his baby clothes were in really bad shape. I had to ask myself “will this bring me joy to see it on another baby?” If it had stains on it, I said no. I only kept the clothes that were in really good shape and something special. I folded up everything and stored it in a plastic storage bin from Target (HERE).
In Jack’s closet, his stuff was pretty messy. At one point I had his closet organized, but now it was just a mess. I added a couple baskets, eliminated the diaper boxes with old clothes in them and folded up his blankets nicely, and now everything fits so nicely. In his dresser, I folded his clothes like mine. The rest of Jack’s toys are in his play area in the living room. We use an organizer (HERE) to store all his toys and for all the miscellaneous toys my husband just throws them all into his old Pack n Play. It’s not pretty, but it does the job for now.
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| Before |
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| After |
Now that I’ve reorganized my house, I feel ready to take on the year. I know that it’s going to help when we have to pack up. It feels so good to purge and have a place for everything. If you haven’t watched Marie Kondo’s show yet, I highly recommend it. Have you purged and re-organized your house this year yet? I’d love to hear your stories!!
I can’t believe that I have a 3-year-old. How did that happen? This year it’s really hitting me that I don’t have a little baby anymore. It really goes by too fast. I feel like the first year I barely remember and then the second year flew by too fast. This past year was definitely the year of the terrible twos. Luckily it’s also been filled with lots of memories that I can look back on and truly appreciate. Jack has really grown into his own little person in the last 12 months. As a first-time parent it’s finally clicking that I need to just stress less and soak in all these days with him while he’s little like this.
There are so many things that I want to remember about Jack right now. He is so full of life. He is always acting something out in his head. I love the way he says “Thank you, mommy, you’re welcome” or “Hello boys and girls” or “hey what’s going on here”. He has so many cute catchphrases that he says right now. He’s really getting good at talking, which makes it a little easier at times. He’s a very sweet little boy. As active as he is, he always stops to give me a hug and a kiss. He’s still a pretty big mommy’s boy. He’s always with me and he watches everything I do, which he sometimes acts out.
Jack has been loving his school this last year. Last year he made the big move from the infant room to the toddler room and it took him a while to adjust, but now he runs the class. He loves learning. His teachers tell me that circle time is his favorite time of the day. He has a photographic memory and if you tell him something once, he remembers it. He’s known the entire alphabet since he was 18 months old. People are always impressed and they ask me what we did to teach him. I tell them YouTube kids. He just memorized the letters from watching videos, plus he has a lot of letter puzzles and letter toys to play with.
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| Taking pictures with a letter board and a letter obsessed child does not work. |
There are still a lot of challenges with Jack. His tantrums are becoming less often, but when he has them now, they are much more intense. I’ve been a lot more patient with him lately because he has more words and can actually tell me what he wants now. I’ve been using a lot of the techniques that I use at work with my preschool children and he’s been responding pretty well to it. All my training in Positive Behavior Support is really paying off. It still is hard for me though. Jack is extremely stubborn and a little OCD. Things have to go just perfectly and if they don’t, he has a complete meltdown and we have to repeat everything from the beginning. One morning he had a meltdown because all week long I wore my blue winter coat to work, and on Friday it was a little warmer outside, so I wore a different coat. He threw himself down on the ground and I had to carry him to the car kicking and screaming. He cried all the way to school. All because I wasn’t wearing my blue coat. Nighttime is when I lose my temper the most with him because he fights me on bedtime sometimes. He wants to stay up until 10 or 11, but I try to get him in bed between 8:30 and 9. I’m hoping once we get him a big boy bed this year he will sleep better. I’m praying he will, because having a child who does not sleep through the night, has been the hardest part of parenting so far.
We are trying to start potty training, but that’s not going so well. Jack wants nothing to do with the potty. I try to get him to sit on it as often as I can, but he fights me. When I ask him if he wants to sit on the potty he quickly responds with “nope”. I’m pretty sure he will learn how to read before he learns to poop in the toilet. I’m praying that when he’s ready it just clicks, but for now, it’s a big frustration for me.
Even though it’s not always easy, I honestly don’t know how I ever lived without this little angle in my life. He fills my world with love. I say this all the time, but there is no greater title I have than being “Jack’s mom”.
Happy New Year everyone!! I haven’t been spending much time blogging lately, because to be honest, I just haven’t been feeling it. It’s been really hard to keep up with my blog and social media the last few months and I started feeling like I needed to take a break. I don’t like to post things when my heart is not into it. That’s why I have just been only posting when I feel like it, instead of forcing myself to write up a blog post or post on Instagram just because I feel like I have to.
Today I just wanted to take a minute and look back on 2018. 2018 was a challenging year for me personally, but I am proud of my successes from the year too! It’s been hard for me to balance my family life, work-life and keep up with my blog that I truly love having for myself. Even though I’ve been disappointed with my growth lately, I really have to take a moment and appreciate how far my little blog has come this year. I’ve put out tons of new outfit posts, joined rewards style, worked with some really great brands and met some new blogging friends. It’s been so much fun to connect with other women who share the same interests as me and collaborate with them! I am also extremely grateful to all of you who follow along with me through my blog, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook or however you found me. THANK YOU!! I use to be afraid to share my blog thinking I wasn’t good enough or no one would want to read it. Now not only do I write this blog for me, I write it to share it and inspire all of you!
Here is a little round-up of some of my personal favorite outfit posts from my Instagram this year, plus my favorite mommy and me picture with Jack!
I’m really looking forward to this year and seeing everything pan out over the next few months. I guess I can say that overall this year my main goals are to stress less and focus more on my family.
What are your 2019 goals?
Below are some of my favorite purchases from 2018!
