Tackling the week ahead and some blogging resources

How is it Monday already? This weekend flew by and I'm not ready to be back at work yet. We had a pretty low-key weekend visiting some friends and family and getting over our colds, but I definitely didn't get anything too productive accomplished! I guess that's what next weekend is for?? It is boggling my mind that we only have about 7 more weekends until Baby #2 arrives (give or take one or two!). We don't have much to get done, but there is a lot that I want to sort through/organize/clean before welcoming the little bundle into the world :)

(via)

We spent some time watching the Olympics on Saturday (Molly LOVED it and cheered "Go Canada Go!" when we explained it to her), and I hadn't realized that I would be so emotional watching Canadian athletes at these games. I have always felt a bit emotional when Canada wins gold at the Olympics, with the anthem playing and all of that, but my pregnancy hormones have thrown me even further out of whack emotionally. I was SO excited to see 2 sisters win gold and silver in moguls skiing on Saturday!! How cute are they?!? I can't imagine how it would feel to win an Olympic medal and stand on the podium next to your sister.

The Dufour-Lapointe sisters (the third sister finished 12th) (Via)

As you may have noticed last week, I updated a few things on my blog and I wanted to share the tutorials I used for the update, in case anyone else is in need of them!

1) To add social media icons, I mostly used the tutorial here.

2) For the header (which I will be updating again this week), I previously used this tutorial here.

3) For the favicon, which is complete but not uploaded yet, I used Hubby Jack's tutorial here.

My next goal is to update my "About me" section and take some more professional photos to put in that section, so watch for that! I am also attempting to use my blog twitter account more frequently. I still have a personal twitter account, which I had used to follow a lot of my favourite blogs, so I'm trying to merge the two. I haven't really shared my blog with very many family members and real-life friends, so I want to keep my blog accounts and personal accounts separate.

I also wanted to share a few articles/blog posts/series that may be of interest to beginner (or even veteran) bloggers like myself!

1) Grow your blog/tweak your pinterest page (Jen has started a whole great series on growing your blog)
2) Sarah at Venus Trapped in Mars has a great series of Saturday Sessions about blogging
3) Kelli at She Crab Soup shares blogging resources every week. This post was particularly interesting to me, but she shares useful tips all the time.
4) Lauren talks about blogging a lot, and her tutorials and discussions are awesome. Here's a few of her tips.
5) Good old Pinterest has a lot of resources too (obviously) ;)

Does anyone else have any other fantastic resources to share? I have lists of them all over the place, and Google provides a lot of answers too.

I think it's easy to get overwhelmed by all the things that you can do to grow your blog. In some ways, I'm not even sure if I want to "grow my blog" exponentially, but I do find that I benefit from the interactions and connections I've made from other bloggers, so I want to put my best foot forward and see where the year takes me! (I'm sure as soon as I tell my friends and family about the blog, however, there will be no shortage of readers...hahaha).

14 Things I'm looking forward to in 2014.

Happy new year!!!!

I do have parts of a Christmas recap typed up, but I have been wanting to post this forever as a start to the new year. 14 is my favourite number (I'm so creative - I was born on Aug. 14), so I am pretty excited about the year 2014 which is likely the only 14 year I will see in this lifetime! That being said, there are a lot of things that I'm really looking forward to in this upcoming year.

1) Giving birth to our second child/not being pregnant anymore (this one is a given)
2) The Veronica Mars movie (can't wait, but Brian won't come and see it with me...any takers?)
3) Divergent: the movie (I can probably talk Brian into seeing this one with me because he likes The Hunger Games)
4) Being off work with 2 children for a year (will be nice in some ways and likely overwhelming at first)
5) Watching the hubby turn 30 (he is freaking out about it but I think it will be fun)
6) Celebrating my sister's graduation from med school and her husband from law school (and hopefully watching them move to NS!)
7) Seeing my parents and brother in the summer (overjoyed!)
8) Having a raspberry beer (mmmmmmm)
9) Working on my blog (including a blog design and some weekly posts)
10) Participating in a book club: either Bonnie's or Laura's or both!
11) Running a 10K in the fall (this is a goal!) and losing the baby weight.
12) Enrolling Molly in soccer in the summer (Can't wait to watch her play)
13) Reconnecting with friends and family who have or will be moving closer to us
14) Molly's first concert, thanks to Nanny and Papa (a Christmas gift) - Raffi!!

And a bonus one...I am going to be keeping a VERY brief 5 year journal. I saw a book for it at Chapters before Christmas but I will be following the prompts from this site. It is only a sentence or two a day, but you can compare over the 5 years and I think it will be really interesting to see my responses over the next 5 years of changes!!!

Hope 2014 brings joy to everyone!

Wet (and totally wild) Wednesday

It has been insanely humid in Halifax these days, so I was actually really grateful when it started to rain on the way to work this morning. That's actually saying a lot, because I hate rain. haha. It was wet all day, so hubby's ball game was cancelled, and it's looking like rain for the long weekend too, which is disappointing.

I got a 3.5km run in this morning before all the rain. It was difficult getting out of bed at 5 am and getting out the door but I knew I wouldn't get it in unless I did it this morning. I was glad I went once I got out there and pounded the pavement!!! When I got back I was starving though!

We had a delicious supper tonight: tilapia, sweet potato fries and roasted asparagus. YUM. Brian had a bit of a hankering for something sweet so I made him a 5 min mug chocolate cake. Lucky hubby!! :) My daughter loved supper, but she got fish everywhere!!! So I went to sweep it up after supper, and she "helped" me by also sweeping with her little broom. Has anyone else out there ever tried to sweep with an almost 2 year old "helper" around? It can be frustrating, but also cute. She loves to step in the dust and spread it everywhere with her broom, so it keeps me on my toes to do it quickly. Haha!

***Speaking of sweeping, as I was writing this, two glass pot lids randomly fell off their rack upstairs and shattered into a million pieces, so we had to go upstairs and sweep/vacuum...luckily, we have a Dyson to get all the little pieces of glass away from tomorrow's toddler toes. :)



I am going to spend some time in the next month or so deciding how I want to make this blog appear to the general public. I'll be working on the design, header & social media aspect of it as well as starting up some weekly posts. I am thinking of something along the lines of a "parenthood" weekly post. I'll keep you posted!! :)

Have a great Thurs/Fri!!