PINS

Here are a couple pins from my Random Love board. They might come in handy to those of you silly peeps who have yet to catch on to Pinterest!

Hang a picture. I plan to use this in the nursery. {pin}

Perfect for kids, am i right? {pin}

Put it in a bowl so that the sound will amplify. Genius. {pin}

Who doesn't hate when liquid spills down the side of the pan. Oh, that's right, no one. {pin}

Do you have a stripped screw? Put a rubber band over it and screw away! {pin}

Check out all my pins HERE and if they still require an invitation, you can wait for one, or leave a comment and I can send one your way for instant access!

Happy Friday!

Thursday Randoms

* My shoes don't really fit but I haven't purchased new shoes to go with my new black maternity pants so i'm sucking it up while walking and while sitting in my desk chair I am barefoot. You'd think i'd attribute this to pregnancy.. but no, it's always been like this. Apparently I don't know how to purchase the correct size flats on more than one occasion.

* OJ gives me throat burn (which is essentially, heartburn). But i looove OJ :(  I did bring tums with me to work today though!

* I might have a nursery breakdown. That's a bit dramatic but i am having trouble picking fabrics for the quilt that will serve as part of the bedding which will determine what fabric i use for the crib sheets i want to sew, which will have to go with the rest of the room in an aesthetically pleasing way. Longest sentence ever?

* Today marks Alex and I's fifth anniversary of the day we met. We're going to celebrate tonight with a fresh Lobster dinner. Homemade. Suck it Red Lobster.

* The past couple nights I've been having vanilla ice cream with the chocolate magic shell stuff and those little sprinkle balls. It's been awesome. I'm sad to report that last night I ate the rest of the ice cream, so I won't be having it again until I get more. Tragedy.

* The baby is currently rolling around inside my tummy. I think she likes OJ too.

* I'm way more freckly this year than last.. I wonder if this is going to continue to increase.

* I'm really glad tomorrow is Friday. I don't think anyone would disagree with that statement. And with that, I will end this post. Baii!

FIVE

Alex and I have been today for 5 years today. I think I posted on an old blog the story of how we met and I don't really feel like typing it out all over again but I will say a couple quick details to paint a picture.

Natural Icee
Dancing
Pizza
Walk Home

Here's a story of one of our first phone calls.

After him finally calling after about a week and having his phone number, I called him one evening to see what his plans were for the night. It must've been a thursday or a friday. (Words may not be exact but this is close enough).

(Ring, Ring)
Alex: "Hello"
Michelle: "Hey, what's up?"
Alex: "Who is this?"
Michelle: "What?! You have my number, it's Michelle"
Alex: "Michelle who??"
Michelle: "Michelle Elscheid, what the heck??!!"
Alex: "I don't know any Michelle Elscheid"
Michelle: "........(silence probably)"
Alex: "Just kidding, I know it's you"
Michelle: "Oh my god, I thought you were serious"

..Laughing, etc. even though I was completely caught off guard. The conversation was normal after that and I think he did a couple more things like that in the beginning of the relationship, just for a laugh. I laughed too so it wasn't like I was mad or anything. He's a jokester and I was just getting to know him.

I can't believe it's already been five years. I'm the luckiest girl in the whole universe. He's my best friend forever, literally and I couldn't think of a better person that I would want to bring a baby into the world with. He's going to be such a great Dad. And finally, his college nickname will actually be legit.

I love you babe!

Martin Drive Drafthouse: The Kegerator

Alex's personal brew pub (since we can make food in this joint) is called the

Martin Drive Drafthouse

And there he is, the Kegerator, i mean. With his new shelf from Ikea to hold the glasses (and clear up some space in the kitchen cabinet). And the sweet sign that Nick and Laurel made Alex for his birthday to show what beers he has on tap. I will get a close up of that tonight. He currently only has an APA on but I think he just kegged an ESB last night so that'll probably go on soon as well. He's such a craftsman. He has more hobbies than any other person I know, and I'm very proud of him for that. :)

21 weeks

I really hate the background of these images. I should cut myself out and plant myself on a beach somewhere or something.. but that would look silly since i'm always fully clothed.

Anyway, I hit 21 weeks on Monday. I never know what to say when i'm in the next week, so I always just tell people "I was __ weeks on monday, or I'm going to be __ weeks this monday" makes it easier. It really gets me when people ask how many months that is because apparently my brain has trouble dividing by 4. Anyway, it's 5 months or so I guess.. In the 2nd trimester. Babycenter says the baby is about 10 1/2 inches long and they relate that to a carrot (must be a big carrot). Eating healthier has been going pretty well. I try to bring my lunch everyday as opposed to buying it.

Everything is still going smoothly, still some minor backpain from the sciatica which I'm positive can be helped by a chiropractor if only I wouldn't be so lazy and go visit one. I did really well walking around Ikea on Saturday though.

I feel like a bus but I'm sure that's normal. Yesterday my bump looked huge and today it looks down a little bit. I should line up the first 5 months of pictures and check out the progression. Maybe i'll do that at the full 6 months! Something to look forward to.

No new milestones to report other than I feel her moving more. Sometimes she taps me a couple times in a row which is cute. I don't think she likes that I sit at a desk all day and don't move around all that much. I'm trying to pay closer attention to the patterns though to see when she's awake and when she may be sleeping. It's pretty early for her to set any patterns that won't change by birth but it's interesting to try to decipher.

Delaware +. Ikea + Bachlorette + Baby Shower = Busy

Busy weekend!

Friday after work, we headed down to DE to spend time with Nick and Laurel. They made a delicious dinner, we at Gelato on Main Street and played Mad Gab, which was hilarious to say the least. I almost touched their cat Dilla, which is pretty much a success because he's the shyest kitty on the planet (but also possibly the cutest).

Saturday morning, after breakfast we headed to Ikea in Baltimore. It was awesome. I hadn't been to Ikea in about 6 years so it was nice to go back and see the whole showroom setup. We ended up getting a bunch of stuff for the nursery. We got a 4 cube shelf, some picture frames, some little globe-y lamp things that I want to use as 'night lights' as well as the image to the right.. I pinned it a while back but didn't actually look to see where it was from. Pleasant surprise to find it at Ikea, at obviously an awesome price. Now i don't have to try to recreate it myself! We also got some new bathmats for the bathroom up there as well as a new shower curtain. I'm going to try to add pops of color in there as well. Why not! The last thing we got was a shelf for the dining room to go over the kegerator to hold beer glasses. Alex put it together and we put it up yesterday, so i'll snap a picture of it and include it in the post about our new mailbox that Alex also installed. He's so handy! Anyway, back to Saturday. After Ikea, we hit up PF Changs (and weren't overly impressed due to the amount of hype we heard prior) but it was still good. I love fried green beans and they give a huge plate as an appetizer.

After this late lunch we parted ways. I had a bachelorette party to go to in the evening which started at Jen's house with silly cookies and sangria that looked amazing (but I couldn't drink, obviously). We headed to dinner at Cultura's and it turned out I had an awesome coupon for 50% off food. Cultura's is a tapas restaurant so we probably ordered 30 plates of food to share between 10 people. It was delicious as always. I thoroughly enjoyed my two raspberry (virgin) margaritas as well as some red raspberry ice cream from the Strasburg Creamery. After dinner we headed to the bride's sisters home to hang out, play games and watch a movie. We played Mad Gab, which was hilarious again and then watched Bridesmaids which I was so excited to see. The movie was funny but had some slow parts. That whole night, I probably did more laughing then I have in a long time. That group of girls are hilarious! I ended up getting home around 3am. Crazy! Time had just flown by and I didn't realize it. I knew I would have to do some hardcore sleeping in the next morning.

And that's exactly what I did. I finally got up around 10:30am. I putz-ed around and then vacuumed the house. We put the shelf up above the kegerator like I mentioned above. Then we headed to our friends Courtney & Derek's couples baby shower. We'd never been to a couples shower before but it was so fun. They had some cute games like guess the baby food flavor (which baby food is pretty gross, even more reason why i'm probably going to make my own food, although the fruit was much better then the meals) and bobbing for nipples, which Nick won! We got to meet Dedra and Justin's brand new baby boy, Jack, who was super cute wrapped up in Dedra's (what i'm assuming is a) Moby Wrap. He was so tiny at 2 weeks old, which is completely normal obviously, and when Alex was holding him he looked like a complete natural. Cue the awes. After the shower, Nick and Alex watched the Eagles game we recorded and Laurel and I watched Bridesmaids.. long movie, the funny kind of dies off in the end and is brought back with the Wilson Phillips. There was a small break at half time for them to move furniture though which was a huge help. I'm so glad that's completed and now I can actually take picture of the nursery and get moving on all my other things related to it. After Nick and Laurel headed back to DE, Alex went over to the Herr's to watch the night game and I really needed to go to the grocery store, so I did that, plus I hadn't eaten anything since lunch so I made some spaghetti/meatballs and spent the rest of the evening facetiming with Julia and then my parents. Gosh facetime is amazing.. it's going to come in SO handy when we have this little bundle.

That sums up our super busy weekend. I can't believe it's already the 2nd week of September. This month is flying by already! Tomorrow I will take a picture of my 21 week bump to share with you! It's definitely getting bigger!

What a week..

Well this week just FLEW by, which is something I love about weeks after a holiday weekend.

It was supposed to be a 4 day week anyway but due to the flooding, I actually 'worked from home' yesterday. This just means accessing email since I can't actually do any other work at home. It was weird to be off on a middle of the week day but also nice.

We didn't have any damage from the flooding, our basement didn't see a drop of water which is a relief. We have a large patch of wetlands behind our house that held the water from the creek, at least for us. Some of the other neighbors down the street weren't quite as lucky. We also live at the top of a slope, so i don't think it would've gotten to us anyway. It's nice that it's not raining at the moment. Hopefully it'll be a nice weekend.

Sorry for the reflection but it was raining and I wasn't going outside.

So yesterday, with a whole day off (Alex came home as well).. we weren't sure what to do. We decided to make homemade pizza for lunch so I started the dough around 9:45am. We went to the grocery store for some ingredients we didn't have. We watched The Wire (or Alex did). We made delicious pizzas. One pepperoni, one cheese, and one onion/pepper. They were probably the best pizzas we've ever made. I should've taken the opportunity to photograph the process, maybe next time. After we stuffed ourselves with pizza, Alex accompanied me to the mall to buy some maternity clothes. Shopping while pregnant is no fun thing to do. 2 pairs of pants later and we were done. I found out later that I bought a pair of skinny jeans instead of bootcut. Which is fine, except I need a pair of bootcut, so I guess i'll have to get them at some point. Skinnies make me look huge these days. Anyway. After the mall, we stopped by the Herr's which turned into hanging out at the Herr's for a couple of hours. Alex was downstairs playing old school NES and Steph and I were upstairs having a great conversation and watching Brutus be the cutest rotty ever. When we left it was around 5:30pm. We didn't think the day was ever going to end. So when we got home, Alex made dinner and I probably just sat on the couch, I can't remember. Then we watched the Packers/Saints game and I went to bed at 10.

Here we are now. I'm finishing up work for the day and then we're headed to DE to visit Nick and Laurel. Tomorrow we're traveling to Baltimore to hit up the Ikea and then I have a bachelorette party to attend in the evening. Sunday we're busy too. Nick/Laurel are coming over to lend a hand moving furniture upstairs since I can't help Alex. I can't wait to have that stuff put into storage so I can really get a good look at the room that will be the nursery. And of course, before pictures will be taken! Hopefully we can get some sunny weather so I can spray paint the crib and we can put it all together. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures of that too (look at all these promises!). I feel like my excuse is that I have a blog that people look at but don't comment on. LOL. Things really went up since I posted it on Facebook. I'm not surprised by that though, I'd be doing the same exact thing. :)

Have a great weekend! Maybe we'll welcome baby Snyder into the world?!