photog.

With a background in design, I’ve always sort of had an interest in photography. In fact, that interest seems to have permeated it’s way through my entire family – there isn’t a time when at least one person has a camera with them.

I’m often scanning images from photographers websites and blogs and aspire to some day be half as good as they are. I was never able to take the jump in the past, mainly because of the expenses associated with the hobby, but now that I have a job, am saving money and rarely spend money, I recently made the decision to bite the bullet and purchase the Canon Rebel EOS T1i.

I have absolutely no experience with photography or 35mm film and luckily with digital cameras, you don’t have to have much experience. The beauty, obviously, is that you can take picture after picture and see the results immediately. This has definitely proved beneficial to me as I’m constantly making adjustments to try to determine which settings work best for the types of pictures I want to take.

I also purchased the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens after reading reviews and getting some input from friends, and I highly recommend it. This lens has been a lot of fun and has allowed me to take some truly beautiful pictures.

delish!

So I recently stumbled upon this blog in my search for healthy recipes. I’ve just about had it with our typical weekly dinners and was ready to try some new things!

I’m absolutely in love with this blog and all the recipes she’s posted! Definitely worth a look or two!

http://www.skinnytaste.com/

fulfilled. or not.

fulfil/fulfillment – To fill up; To satisfy, carry out, bring to completion (an obligation, a requirement, etc.); To emotionally or artistically satisfy; to develop one’s gifts to the fullest. A feeling of satisfaction at having achieved your desires.

There have been countless nights I’ve gone to bed feeling not quite fulfilled or satisfied; feeling like something is missing. It could be that I started feeling this way after my dad passed away 6 years ago or it could just be me. It may be a combination of the two, but most likely, it’s just me.

There certainly is no clear reason why I should feel unfulfilled. I have a husband I adore, a house that needs work, but a house none the less, a crazy but lovable dog, an amazing family, a job and a plasma tv. I graduated number one in my graduate school class in a field I love (or at least loved while I was in school – who doesn’t feel slightly unfulfilled in their job, right?), married my high school sweetheart, and bought my first car. All things that should point to fulfillment. Right? Wrong.

It must be the way I’m programmed. I always have to be busy. I always have to be trying something new and I’m always looking for the next adventure or room to paint. It’s exhausting! When I’m not doing something, or when I’m sitting idle, I feel unfulfilled. My experiments with new things are a plenty and I’ve started many tasks with the intention of finishing them… I just can’t sit still and I’m not capable of relaxing.

Sometimes I wonder if having a baby would actually be good for me. All the preparation that goes into having a baby – setting up the nursery, shopping for clothing, diapers, bottles, strollers, thinking up baby names – would actually keep me busy (something that makes me feel fulfilled) and focused and once the baby arrives, there will be no time to sit idle; busy would probably not even begin to describe my days. How could a little life, depending on me for everything; food, clothing, shelter, love, not make me feel fulfilled? I don’t believe there is anything else in the world that could make anyone feel any more fulfilled than that! I think I’m more than ready (and excited) for these changes and I’m optimistic, no, certain that the level of fulfillment I’d feel each and every night I put that little baby to bed would be through the roof.

I’m not sure my inability to sit still or my desire to constantly be busy is a bad thing. I’m not sure it’s a good thing. I’m also not sure a baby is the solution, or if there even is a solution.

What I do know is that it’s tiring feeling unfulfilled and tiring trying to make myself feel fulfilled, that pregnancy and motherhood would keep me busy and that busy, for me, equals fulfillment. I’m positive that a child would bring quite a bit of fulfillment to my life and I look forward to it, him, her, more and more each and every day.

apple pie.

I’m by no means fat, but I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as skinny. I’ve never been skinny, and lets just say, I’ve always had a little something extra to hold on to. I’ve been an athlete my whole life and 5 times a week you can usually find me exercising whether it be going for a run, playing tennis, or kicking the soccer ball. So, you’d think I’d be thinner…

My problem is, and always has been, that I enjoy food. I enjoy eating! I’m happy when I eat… though not always happy after I eat. I usually feel a lot of regret but that doesn’t seem to stop me at the next meal. My husband and I eat extremely healthy during the week and if you saw our shopping cart at the grocery store you’d think we were absolute health nuts! We rarely have snacks in the house, and when we do, they usually consist of healthy snacks and fruit. Weekends however are a different story… we sort of let ourselves go and undo all of our hard work during the week. Sigh…

My husband has always told me, even while we were dating, that he was grateful that I wasn’t the type of girl to order a salad; that I could “keep up with him” at the dinner table. I’m still questioning whether I should take that as a compliment or use that as a reality check.

I seem to constantly be trying to lose weight and I’ve lost the same 25-30lbs, many, many times. I’ve been thinking more and more about my weight recently, as it relates to the pregnancy that I hope to experience sooner rather than later (see he’ll come around)… Needless to say, I’m worried. I know that pregnancy = weight gain and I know once you have a baby, time for exercise or anything else for that matter, becomes non-existent. To be honest, I worry about becoming overweight and never finding the time to lose the weight.

Cue Gweneth Paltrow:

“After my first pregnancy, the weight had come off a little bit better but after the second one it was really stubborn. It was really hanging on. It was not easy and, when I started it, it was by far the hardest thing I have ever done – but I really was seeing results so it motivated me to just work through it … Every woman can make time—every woman—and you can do it with your baby in the room. There have been countless times where I’ve worked out with my kids crawling around all over the place. You just make it work, and if it’s important to you, it’ll be important to them.”

Hmm, if I had the money to hire a personal trainer and didn’t have to work 50 hours a week…

Anyway, I hope to lose some weight, and have already started dieting a bit, before my first pregnancy (which seems far off at this point) and I hope to keep my exercise regimen in tact, for the most part, and/or modify it once a baby does come along…

I have been craving warm apple pie with vanilla icecream though… and I did get a pretty sweet kitchenaid mixer as a wedding gift… and I did exercise this week… and I do dream of being the next Martha Stewart… and it is the weekend…

Weekend Baking Experiement #1: Old-Fashioned Apple Pie

i had a dream…

Last night I had my first dream about pregnancy. Now, I’ve had many thoughts and daydreams about being pregnant and bringing a precious little life into the world, but last night was the first dream I’ve had where I’ve been pregnant. And go figure, I was pregnant with twins!

I couldn’t help but be a bit curious about the meaning of twins in dreams, so I googled. I’m a googler. I google everything. I’ve googled recipes. I’ve googled “best vacation spots”. I even used google to incorrectly diagnose my mom with Scarlet fever…

Anyway, google led me to this interpretation of twins in dreams:

“To see twins in your dream, signify ambivalence, dualities or opposites. It also represents security in business, faithfulness, and contentment with life. It may also mean that you are either in harmony with or in conflict between ideas and decisions.”

No matter what the meaning, I have to say, I didn’t want to wake up from the dream. For just a moment, I was aware of what it feels like to be pregnant, and I liked it.

Here are a few more interpretations of twins in dreams: http://en.mimi.hu/dreams/twins.html

Tags: dreams, google, pregnancy, twins

everyone’s doing it! (no pun intended)

Everywhere I look, I see babies. Friends are having babies left and right. Baby bumps are showing up in facebook statuses almost daily and “Baby at 3 months”, “Baby at 4 months”, “Baby at 6 months” albums flood my news feed. I receive emails from friends about baby showers, name suggestions and dilation measurements and questions from family and friends about when we think we’ll have children. It takes all I have each day to not think about how much I want a baby.

All my life, I’ve felt the tug of peer pressure. Nothing too major or overly serious like jumping off bridges or skipping school. More like a tug to “keep up with the Joneses”. A few years ago two friends of ours got married. They were the first, but certainly not the last. Their wedding set the ball rolling for couple after couple to get engaged and married and within a matter of a few years it seemed that each of our friends had joined the club. The feeling that” everyone’s doing it” seems to fuel the urge to be the first or the next and seems ever present in the battle of the bump, at least from where I’m standing. After all, first comes love, then comes marriage then comes… that’s right, the baby carriage.

My husband and I have always seemed to take things rather slow… some of it has been purposely whether we had spoken about it or not, and some of it has been pressure from family I’m sure, but, it was years 9 years before we lived with each other and 10 years before he placed a ring on my finger (to be fair, we started dating when we were 16). My husband and I always seemed to have different goals and ideas for our future than our friends, not that they weren’t interested in being successful or traveling the world, but they seemed quick to finish school and “start their lives”, get married, buy a house, get a dog, etc. We, on the other hand, decided to continue on to graduate school, both graduating with Master’s degrees and therefore, “starting our lives” and buying a dog a bit later than the others. You’ve probably guessed by now – we were one of the last couples to get married.

I’ve always felt behind in a way when I’ve looked at the lives of our friends – perfectly decorated houses, nice cars, and baby on the way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m completely thrilled and couldn’t be happier for them, but I often have to remind myself that it’s not a race, that everything happens for a reason and that things will happen when it’s time. What I’ve recently started to realize, is that when it does happen, when we do have our first child, it will be perfect because it will be how and when we want it to happen and not just because everyone else was doing it.

Tags: friends, life, marriage, peer pressure, pregnancy

he’ll come around…

Almost immediately after we were married I started feeling the urge to have kids. Yes, we’re still young. Yes, there are still many places we’d like to travel. Yes, we still have a lot of work to do on the house. None of these things however make me want a baby any less or any later in life. With my husband, it’s a different story…

His ideal age to have kids is late 30′s. My ideal age would be, well, now! We both agree on 3 kids, so that’s a start, but ideally I’d like to be finished having kids in my mid-30′s. Discussions over what time is the right time leave me frustrated, wanting a baby more and more and feeling like it’s never going to happen. Now, I know that’s not true. I know that he’ll come around. I just wish I knew how to help make him more comfortable with the idea and I wish I could figure out how to help us meet in the middle… He’ll come around.

How did you and your spouse decide what time was the right time?

Tags: baby, husband, pregnancy