This is not an "I'm Pregnant!" post...

...but it IS a post about babies.

Happy lazy Sunday everyone!

Today I'm thinking about marriage and motherhood, and how becoming a parent = no-more-lazy-Sundays.  I think about marriage everyday, and how lucky I am to have found the one person in the world that was meant for me.  I have no doubt in my mind that Bobby will be an amazing Dad just as he is an amazing husband.

Just to clarify, no I am not pregnant.  The mere possibility and (most likely) inevitability of future motherhood is what has been on my mind.  It is such a huge step to take in a marriage, and one that has me feeling mixed emotions.  

I know that I want to be a mom.  I didn't always know this, but now I do.  I also know that Bobby wants to be a Dad, and that he will be a great one.  Bobby is so great with kids and always has been.  He is the oldest grand child and has been around younger kids his whole life.  I, on the other hand, have rarely been around kids and babies.  

It was not until my now sister-in-law and her husband had their kids that I truly learned that I wanted to be a mother.  When our nephew was first born, I was so scared to even hold him.  I had never changed a diaper even.  It was definitely a learning curve and one that I will cherish forever.  When my niece was born not even two years later, I couldn't wait to hold her in the hospital.  I have now changed countless diapers, have sang babies to sleep and I can definitely say that I am confident in my maternal instincts.  

Now, the fun part is to decide when I want to add "Mommy" to my resume.  

I'm twenty-five and Bobby is thirty, so we definitely don't have to rush into anything.  We've been married for nine months now and I love every minute of it, and I know that once we make that decision to start trying, it'll change everything.  We've talked about it many times, and one of my biggest fears is that once a baby comes along, Bobby will no longer be as important to me.  I think it's a good step for us to even have talked about that, so that we know that we will work very hard to make each other a priority even with a little one.  

So when is the perfect time to start trying?  I don't think there is one.  We'll never have a magic amount of money, we'll never been on enough trips just the two of us, and we'll never have done enough projects to our house before we're ready.  

For now, I am just going to enjoy my life as a wife and an auntie until I feel like I am prepared to turn the page to the next chapter.   

To finish off my post, here are a few of the many photos from this weekend!    

Hangin out with Bay

Holding hands!

Happy little flower

What about everyone else?  How did you decide when it was the right time to start trying?  

August Re-cap

Hello everyone!

I'm back and ready to blog my butt off.  August was a very busy month for me.  A lot of fun stuff happened, and guess what that means?  A LOT of photos.  First I'll start by saying that today is a pretty awesome day for me.  Why?  Because I am typing my first blog post on my brand spankin' new MacBook Pro.  Yup, I'm pretty fancy.  It was my birthday in late August and I asked for Apple gift cards, and let me just say that I am a very lucky girl because I basically was able to get this beauty of a laptop for free.  I was pretty excited once I bought it, so I obviously took a picture of my new toy:

isn't she pretty?

But back to August and all of it's fun-ness.  First of all, I finished that kitchen set re-vamp that I had been chatting about in my last post.  Remember this?

Well, it now looks like this:

I am SO excited about how it turned out.  The colours go perfectly in the room and it looks bright, fresh and modern.  Yay!  

Okay, next up is our trip to Milwaukee with my parents.  My Dad goes every year in August to Milwaukee for baseball games, but Bobby and I had never gone before.  This year we went and let me just say that it was a beautiful city.  My favourite part was going downtown to the lake front.  It is gorgeous and the architecture is breathtaking:

pretty amazing, hey?

 We ended up coming back that night for dinner to a place called Harbor House (which is actually the small little building to the right of the huge white ship-looking building in the previous picture, if you can find it).  It is a fancy restaurant and they make the most amazing seafood.  We were all incredibly happy with our meals, and of course, I took a picture of all of our orders.

From top left, clock-wise: Branzini, Seafood risotto, Lobster Pot Pie and Sea Scallops...YUM!

 We also went to two Brewer games, and here are a few of the many pics we took while we were there:

Matching Brewer hats :)

On our way back from Milwaukee, we stopped for one night in Minneapolis and took a stroll hike around the Mall of America.  All in all, it was a really fun trip and I thank my parents for such an awesome opportunity to have seen a city in the U.S.A that we probably would have never gone to without them.  So here is a shout out to Bob and Jeannie, woop woop!

A few days after we got back from Milwaukee, it was my 25th birthday.  My super-sweet hubby woke up extra early before me the morning of, and went to Tim Horton's to get me coffee and breakfast.  He also bought me my favourite magazine too.  What a nice start to my day.  I took half a day off work that day, and had some people over for a party.  It was a really nice time and I am really blessed to have such amazing friends and family.    

Sunday was our nephew Parker's 2nd birthday.  It is really crazy to think it's been two years since he was born.  He is the sweetest and most thoughtful kid I've ever met, and I love him dearly.  He is such a good older brother to his beautiful little sister and I hope that one day our kids will take after the two of them.  Here are a couple pictures of him from this past weekend:

Eating candy with Uncle Bob

Playing boardgames

My very talented and hard-working sister-in-law had a Sesame Street themed birthday party for him, and here are some of the photos of the spread that she put together:

Yup, those are Cookie Monster cupcakes.  How great are they?!?!

Rubber Ducky Punch

Elmo plates!

I want to end this post by saying that today is my niece Baylie's 3 month "birthday" today.  It is insane how fast time flies.  It feels like just last week that we were in the hospital meeting her for the first time.  Now, she is smiling lots and we can really see her little personality forming more and more. 

From a beautiful newborn...

...to a happy smiling baby!

I don't think I could end this post with a better (or cuter) picture than this one, so I'll stop writing for tonight.  

Lots of laughs and lots of love,

M.J. 

Small projects and missing hubby big time

Since Bobby has been gone since Friday on a boys band trip, I've been trying to keep myself as busy as possible.  Tonight I put the 2nd and 3rd coats of white on my kitchen table and chairs.  The set originally looked like this:

At Ikea in Minneapolis I bought a fabric to make pillows, and I realized that it would be the perfect fabric to cover my chairs with.  So after I go back to Canadian Tire to return the staples I bought that don't fit my staple gun (don't get me started), I will be recovering the chairs.  This is a sneak peek at the fabric:

I think the green will go really well with some of my kitchen art, and it really compliments both the blue in the fabric and the blue on the walls.  

I've got one or two coats left on the table and chairs, so they're hanging out downstairs right now (with a pile of laundry on the red chair in the background that I haven't folded yet, sorry hubbs!).

 

I've also been focusing the past week or so on trying to make our back yard nicer.  Since our back yard is actually kind of our front yard (since you don't see our "front yard" when you drive up), I have been trying to think of creative (and cheap) ways of making it more attractive (for now, since we can't afford to do all of the non-cheap things I want to do, such as a fence, big patio, etc).  

I wasn't going to do any flower planting this summer, but I caved and got 3 planters spray painted 2 of them, and planted some flowers.  I also spray painted the 2 patio chairs a really pretty blue colour (pictures pending) to add a pop of colour to the patio.  I don't have a picture to post yet, but here is a pic of my feet after the fact:

Ew.

On the boring but highly functional side of things, I also bought a hose reel and had Bobby attach it to the side of the house before he left.  It looks a lot more organized back there when there isn't a whole you-know-what-load of stuff lying around on the ground.

Here is a before pic of the patio/deck, and I will soon post an after:

On the more personal side of things, it's been kinda tough so far without Bobby around.  He went on a 13 day trip two years ago with the band, and that was REALLY tough for me too.  Since we've been married, I don't think we had spent one night apart up until Friday, so it's been a pretty lonely home these past few days.  He will have been gone a total of 10 days, which in my opinion is a pretty long time, and I cannot wait until he's back.  

Don't get me wrong, I am very happy he's having a blast out in Toronto with the boys, and it was my idea in the first place that he went on this trip, however I've been trying to do as much stuff possible to keep busy so that the days go by quickly.  I honestly don't know how some people can stand it when their spouses/partners go away for long periods of time.  I have a lot of respect for military wives and husbands who go months and months without seeing their loved ones.  This is also probably why I cry my eyes out at any show related to "military spouse reunions".    

On a lighter note, I've also been doing a lot of silly stuff, like this:

Yup, I'm a total stalker wife and screen-shotted a pic of us facetiming and made it look like I was kissing him...

This one is much cuter, and less creepy pathetic:

So cute.

I also found myself listening to The Feugh (Bobby's band) at work today.  I thought it was totally appropriate since at that exact time they were playing music in real life.

  

I have been looking at our wedding pics over and over again, and even wearing his shirts a lot this week, too.  But no need for those pictures.  Just admitting it is funny enough! :)

I will keep up with the painting this week and then I'm off to my in-laws cabin for the long weekend.  I can't wait to spend time with my niece, nephew and everyone else.  Bobby gets home on Monday (yay!) and I can hardly wait to see him.

That's all for now.  I'm going to go facetime with my long lost husband and hope I sleep okay tonight.

Lots of laughs and lots of love,

 M.J.

   

Brrr, it's cold in here! ...not.

When springtime rolled around a few months ago, we finally took the tarp off of our A/C to reveal this beast of a machine:

In case one picture isn't enough, here's a sweet view from the side of this beaut:

At that moment, we A) realized why the former owners had sold their house in the winter and B) knew that it might not even turn on when the time came that we needed AC.  So when it actually did turn on and work quite well (although I'm sure it wasn't very energy efficient and it sure as heck wasn't quiet) we were pleasantly surprised...

...and then it happened.  Last Sunday morning, Bobby and I woke up and realized our air conditioner had turned off in the middle of the night.  No big deal, we'll just get it repaired, right?  Not when your air conditioner is as old as some of your aunts and uncles.  So anyway, it's been about 30 degrees celsius all week and in turn, our thermostat has looked like this (keep in mind that it was 82 fahrenheit at 11 pm, so you can imagine how hot our house was during the day):

So we did what anyone would do in our situation.  We set up camp downstairs where it is quite a bit cooler (albeit still not as cool as I am used to).  I hardly slept at all this week because I am one of those sleepers that needs the room to be very cool, so even in the basement I was hardly able to sleep.  I apologize to anyone I saw or talked to this week for seeming a tad "zombie-like".  

Here's a shot of the set up downstairs.  Bobby was sweet enough to bring the mattress downstairs and set up the bed for us.

Even though it was much cooler downstairs, we still had a very hard time sleeping.  I know, boohoo, poor me. 

Anyway, we found a company to come and install a brand new system.  Luckily, Hydro offers a month by month plan for payments, so we don't have to pay a big lump sum of money right now.  We'll work it into the budget which we think will be much easier in the long run.  

So, here is the new guy.  Much sleeker and less 1950's airplane engine:

Now that we have a new air conditioner, I found a fun pinterest idea to make the area around the AC unit look even nicer:

One thing at a time though, I suppose.

Bobby and I came home tonight from a night out at the ballgame to our very cool house and it was such a relief.  It was an incredibly hot day and night and coming home to a comfortable house was a great feeling.  (Here is a pic of us at the ballgame.  I got my hair coloured today, yay for no more roots!)

Finally, I just want to quickly say that I know some people go their whole lives without having air conditioning, and that we are very lucky to be able to have central air in our house.  Now that we have gone a very hot week without it, we will forever be grateful for it and we won't take for granted that our house is a cool and comfy retreat for us.

That's all for now!

Lots of laughs and lots of love,

M.J.

Home is where the heart is...

...and our hearts lay in pretty little St. Boniface.

Hubby and I bought our first house in November 2011.  We had looked at a few other houses before we found this one, but nothing had really quite caught our eyes.  When Bobby saw the listing on MLS he told me he NEEDED to see it, because it was on a street that he had always loved.

Well, we went to see the house.  Outside it was just a normal looking bungalow with a single garage and a big yard.  It was wintertime, so there wasn't much to see since the entire yard was covered in snow anyway.  When we went inside, we were really not that impressed with how it looked.  It was a solid house in need of some updates a la MJ.  It was about the fourth or fifth house that we had gone to see, and the first house we had put an offer on, so I really think it was meant to be.

We knew that with some paint, a little elbow grease and with the help of the Rona gift cards we had received for our wedding shower, that we could really turn this house into a great one.

Here are a few before and after pictures:

Kitchen (we painted the walls, cabinets and added new hardware to the cabinets) :

Some cute art I found on Etsy really made it look more bright and modern

A little paint and new hardware really brightens up the room (although the picture doesn't do it justice)

 The basement (we painted the paneling, had new carpet installed and changed out the weird interesting outdoor light fixtures for new pretty sconces):

We added some fun decor and storage to make the room more fresh and comfortable as well as useful

The now fully stocked bar really pops against the white walls.  We plan on painting the bar eventually but for now it does the trick!

...and finally the Living Room (only had one shot of one side of the room from before unfortunately, but you get the picture).  We decided to turn the living room into a living room/dining room combo:

This is looking at the same spot where the couch used to be.  It is definitely in need of some art or an accent wall.  Stay tuned.

This part of the room (opposite to the dining table whose corner you can see in the bottom right corner of the pic) is a bit out of sorts but I am going to be re-organizing it to get more balance in the room

We have 2 bedrooms upstairs that we are currently working on updating, so I will leave the big reveals for a later date.  But for now, here is a picture of our so-called office before our trip to Ikea, a picture of Bobby at Ikea, and the wonderful result of some of our purchases: 

Yuck

Poor Bobby didn't know what he was getting himself into

We got a new table turned desk , a book case/shelf and 2 new office chairs for just under $250. 

There is still a lot of work to do, but for now it is what it is, and we love it.  As I mentioned before, we are working on the 2 other bedrooms (new curtains in the master and a whole new look to the 2nd bedroom) so stay tuned for more pics!

That's all for now.

Lots of laughs and lots of love,

M.J.