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By Alyssa, January 3, 2012 3:19 pm

I got this idea from my friend, the Lazy Homesteader.  I know, I know… another list, but I was inspired by our Christmas card post and figure this is another way to visibly keep me thankful and on task.

My 100 goals for the New Year include:

Blog-From Military to Mom

1. Finish college story by 31 January 2012 and back-up data
2. Finish El Paso story by 30 June 2012 and back-up data
3. Finish Colorado Springs story by 30 November 2012 and back-up data
4. Keep the “My Story” section of the blog current through 2013 and back-up data
5. Post a veteran interview
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Self Improvement 

11. Turn to God first instead of trying to plan myself to exhaustion
12. Complete my devotional each morning
13. Run a 5K under 25 minutes
14. Finish Breaking Free devotional by 1 February 2012
15. Forgive always and judge never
16. Research options for Masters with GI Bill
17. Less cleaning of the house
18.
19.
20.

Blessing Haus

21. Save up and buy him a new wedding band (he’s too fit for the one he had)
22. Run a race together
23. Ensure he gets a hunting trip
24. Pray with him daily
25. Celebrate our anniversary with a group date night
26. Take a kid-less weekend away
27. Go out on monthly date nights
28. Make his lunch for work daily
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.

Blessing my kiddos

36. Finish Zeke’s one year scrapbook
37. Teach Bubba to ride a bike
38. Make Little Princess’ quilt
39. Teach Little Princess sign language
40. Sign up the boys for advanced swim lessons
41. Start Little Princess’ one year scrapbook
42. Attend a field trip monthly
43. Teach the boys to roller skate
44. Run in a race with the boys, maybe this one
45. Visit the Denver Children’s Museum
46. Visit the Denver Art Museum
47. Visit the Colorado Springs Zoo
48.
49.
50.

Travel

51. Take a family vacation
52. Visit our friends in Kansas
53. Take a family bike ride
54. Go on a family hike
55. Go to an outdoor concert
56. Go watch a parade
57.
58.
59.
60.

Home

61. Plant a garden
62. Plant shrubs in the back yard
63. Paint the boys’ bathroom
64. Replace the sand in the sandbox
65. Pave a sidewalk from the front to back yard
66. Decorate Little Princess’ room
67. Redecorate the downstairs bathroom
68. Fix the rocking chair
69. Paint the master bathroom cabinets
70. Tile backsplash in the kitchen
71. Download old CDs to our iTunes
72. Put all recipes in my recipe app
73.
74.
75.

Childbirth Education Business

76. Research CAPPA certification options
77. Volunteer to doula one birth
78. Send birthday postcards to former students
79. Make an 8-week class outline
80. Organize a one-year class reunion
81. Research meeting place options for classes
82.
83.
84.
85.

Financial Goals

86. Research investment options
87. Plan out kiddo’s college fund
88. Continue to contribute to 3-6 month emergency fund
89. Start paying extra on home mortgage
90.

Army

91. Complete 42H classes
92. Research ILE options
93.
94.
95.

Other

96.
97.
98.
99.
100. Finish 100 goals!

As you can see, it’s actually pretty hard to come up with 100 goals.  Or at least it is for me.  Feel free to comment if you made any goals this year.  I would love to hear them.

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By Alyssa, December 25, 2011 1:00 am

Hey friends and family!  Here’s a recap of our year:

Photo by Karma Hill, SimpleMauiWedding.net

January- Pregnant! We found out we were pregnant with #3 only a few weeks into the new year.

February- Alyssa started teaching natural childbirth classes at a local baby boutique.  She met some amazing couples and had even more fun a few months after the classes meeting their sweet babies!

March- The whole family celebrated Auntie C’s wedding in Maui.  After almost a decade, Haus finally got an “in-law” to join him in the circle of trust!

April- Alyssa became Major Mom after receiving a promotion in the Army National Guard.  Both sides of the family and many old Army friends visited for the ceremony.

May- Haus quit his job and took a contract Engineering position in Portland.  He drove up to Oregon right after seeing ultrasound pictures of Baby #3.

First day of school

June- Haus and Alyssa celebrated their 10th Wedding Anniversary!

July- Summer travels included Zeke and Alyssa to Idaho, Bubba in Seattle, and the whole family reunited in Portland and Seattle for a family reunion.

August- Sweet Zeke turned 3!  Bubba started homeschooling Kindergarten.

September- After four months away, Haus started a new job as an Engineer in Denver… hurrah!  We sold our first car and paid cash for the first time ever to buy a swagger wagon.

October- After a whirlwind labor and delivery, Baby Girl was born!

November- Bubba turned 6!  Thanksgiving was spent in Idaho with Alyssa’s fam.

December- We’ve spent this month enjoying Advent, snuggling during snow storms, and loving that our family of five is together for the holidays.

I’ve never listed our big events before, but it might become a tradition.  I’m encouraged by God’s providence in our lives.  Merry Christmas and blessings to your family this new year!

Photo by Lauren D Photography, Boise, Idaho

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By Alyssa, November 21, 2011 11:16 am

I’m deactivating my Facebook account today. I realized that although the website makes me thinks I’m building and maintaining friendships, in reality, it keeps me sitting by myself at my computer. I love getting updates from my military friends on the site, but again, most of those friends comment on this site.  I also researched the privacy settings or lack thereof and didn’t love the results.  I’m only deactivating, not deleting as I want to see how the rest of the year goes without it before I decide on permanent deletion.

I truly miss writing more regularly here and find myself spending way to much time sifting through friend’s Facebook picture albums instead of posting.  It was a surprisingly difficult decision.  I tried for a few months just not to visit the site.  I cut my friend list down to local friends I saw all of the time and out of town friends that I would stay with if I were in town.  Alas, I’m weak, peeps, and as much as I thought I could have a Facebook account and never look at it, I just don’t have that kind of will power.

I’m curious to what others think about Facebook. Do you love your account or do you feel chained to it?

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By Alyssa, September 21, 2011 3:45 pm

I mentioned in my nesting post that I’ve been, well, a little crazy about redecorating our house this summer.  Maybe it’s because Haus was out of town (and I could get away with it… mwah, ha, ha, ha), maybe it’s creative juices from the baby, whatever the reason, I’ve went a little nuts!  Be prepared for A LOT of pictures.

First, let me post a picture of something I could NOT do by myself.  I tried and failed.  When we darkened the wood floors throughout our house after the kitchen disaster, we noticed that the railing ended up not matching anything.  Wasn’t a big deal, but I got it in my head that I could paint it myself.  The rest of our house has white baseboards and I thought, why not paint the railing white.

So I dusted, cleaned, taped, caulked until it looked like this:

Not so bad, right?  What I should mention is that I did all of this six months pregnant.  Yep, ladder and all.  It got worse when I started priming the lower section and realized there was NO WAY I could reach the outside of the railing on the second floor.  It would put me much higher up on the ladder than when I taped and my big belly prevented me from leaning over the railing.

Soooo, I swallowed my pride and started getting estimates.  Didn’t realize how hard it would be to call painters, but after painting the rest of my house by myself (my mom and sis helped some too), it was really my first painting call for help.  Long story short, the guys I hired were worth every penny of their $500 estimate and the stairs now look like this:

After the railing was finished, I called in some help for my next project.  My super tough friend, Nanc, helped me pull down a 9 foot mirror from my bathroom.  Here’s the mirror and, yes, that sucker was probably a little too heavy for a pregnant chick to pull off the wall, but Nancy might be as crazy as I am:

You can see there is a common theme with me doing ridiculous things preggered.  I DO NOT endorse that kind of behavior for others.  Anyhoo, here’s another before picture of the bathroom:

Since moving in three years ago, I’d wanted that stinking mirror gone so when it finally came off the wall I was ecstatic.  My dad helped me recenter the light fixtures (with a super cute helper):

He also retextured a few spots where the mirror was glued and pre-hung some mirrors I found on Craigslist. Thanks, Colonel!  You can see from that last pic the mirror was HUGE.  My dad and a girlfriend’s hubby moved it to the garage, not me.  I’m not that nuts.  Once it was down, I painted, hung the mirrors and decor stuff, and made curtains.  Check out the transformation:

I painted the mirror wall light tan and the other walls a dark chocolate brown.  The curtains were really easy to make and almost all of the decorations were waiting in my basement to be put up somewhere.  Total cost for the shelves, mirrors, paint, and curtain material… $125.  That’s it!

About the same time I decided to transform the bathroom, I changed up our master bedroom too.  I pulled down a picture bar holder thingy (yep, that’s the technical term) from our den and put it above our bed.  I sewed curtains with coordinating material to the bathroom, and made wall art to create this:

Sorry, no before picture.  Just imagine this room without curtains or the wall hangings.  I love two things about this wall.  First, I faked a window.  There’s actually only one to the right of our bed, but I’m kinda weird about symmetry.  I also love the way the canvases turned out.  I got the idea from a friend of a friend’s website.  It was so easy!  I used her instructions to glue old atlas maps my father-in-law gave me on blank Hobby Lobby canvases:

This picture doesn’t really do them justice.  The Modge Podge made glossy, expensive-looking wall art and the materials only cost me $15.  LOVE!  I surprised Haus with the entire master suite transformation and, thank goodness, he LOVES it too.

With the picture hanging thingy off the wall in the den, it looked like this downstairs:

Of course I couldn’t leave it like that!  My final do it yourself project was to create a gallery wall.  I found some cute shelves at the new IKEA in Denver (my first IKEA experience and that’s a whole other post!) and gathered all the excess stuff I didn’t use in the master bathroom.  I discovered this website which showed me gallery wall options and just started nailing and affixing things with command strips.  Now our den wall looks like this:

I bought and modge podged the “A” from JoAnns, and, believe it or not, everything else was in the basement or in other parts of the house.

Hubby doesn’t LOVE this like he loves the master suite, but he doesn’t hate it so it stays.  Yes, it’s busy, but what I really like about our gallery wall is that it isn’t like anyone else’s house, encompasses a lot of aspects of our family, and, much like the other decorating, didn’t break the bank.  The two IKEA shelves and new picture printouts cost me about $30 total.

So there you have it.  Want to change up things in your house?  Gather every unused decor item that you can find, search some websites for inspiration, and just go for it!  I’m so glad I did.  I know I didn’t provide a lot of tutorials in this post, so feel free to ask questions in the comment section.  Happy decorating!

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By Alyssa, September 6, 2011 10:42 am

Remember my weak sauce suburb garden from last year?

This year I had zero motivation to redo the garden, but Haus surprised me by installing an automatic drip system on Mother’s Day.  Hmmmm, no watering work, I thought.  Why not throw a few seeds out there.

So that’s exactly what I did.  I used all the seeds I purchased last year, bought a couple bags of compost to mix into the existing dirt, and let the boys help plant.

What happened next was crazy!  With an automatic watering system nourishing the plants 10 minutes in the morning and evening, I became the owner of the garden of Eden.

Squash with lettuce thrown in

Marigolds surrounding beets, carrots, and lettuce

I enjoyed fresh salad from the garden all summer and yesterday I harvested about a dozen beets and carrots I hadn’t touched since planting in June.

Lesson learned?  Go ahead and buy a super easy to install drip watering system and watch your thumb turn green.

P.S. As a side note, I don’t think my harvest was quite as plentiful using last year’s seeds but it didn’t cost me anything extra so I didn’t care.

P.P.S. The Dig Corp drip irrigation starter kit Haus bought and supplemented from Home Depot cost us about $50 total.