The Perfect Pushup

“And I’m spent…”

Our kids are good little motivators. Ezra asks everyday if it’s time to go on our walk yet and Memphis brings us our Perfect PUSHUP set throughout the day. They both enjoy walking on the treadmill, too, though I think it’s losing it’s “shiny” so to speak. I only let them walk at a level 1 which is a 60 minute mile snail pace. They get bored within a few minutes and hop off, but it’s still cute when they tell me it’s time to exercise.

P.S. Brad saw the title of this post and thought I was going to be talking about a bra. 🙂 Sorry to disappoint, honey.

My Lillberg Rocking Chair Makeover

When I was pregnant with Ezra my mom gave me $100 to use towards a rocking chair. Money was tight so our budget for a rocker was, well, $100. As you can imagine there aren’t really any good-looking modern options in that price range. The best we could do was the Lillberg Rocker from Ikea for $200. It was comfy, but a pretty AWFUL design for rocking babies. First of all, it hardly rocks. at. all. To get any sort of motion you’ve got to slouch back, scoot your bum forward and work it. Try doing that for an hour. Buns and thighs of steel, man. I kid you not. The second major flaw is the too low back. When you are freakin exhausted  at a 2 am feeding and you doze out your head will flop back and hit solid wood. If this doesn’t render you unconscious it will at least give you a nice big goose egg on the back of your head as a parting gift. The third flaw is that it is too deep. You just spent an hour rocking your baby to sleep only to wake him up during your uncoordinated, limb-flailing attempts to get from a nearly horizontal position to standing upright. UGH. I could go on and on.

When I was pregnant with Memphis my mom offered to chip in another $100 towards my dream rocker. This meant we would have to come up with an additional $895 on our end. Ha! After my success with selling my Ikea Pello chairs. I decided to try and sell my Lillberg and use that money towards it. That didn’t happen. I listed it a couple times and got a few nibbles, but no bites. Apparently in this area you have to ask next to nothing. I asked something like $30-40 for the pair of Pello chairs and had people beating down my door to get ahold of them. $75 for this one and no takers.

Oh, well. Now I’m actually really glad it didn’t sell. I just don’t think I could part with my newly made-over chair.

Here is my before:

ikea lillberg rocker makeover

Boring. Zzzzz……

And here is my after:

ikea lillberg rocker reupholster

Hubba hubba! Come to mama! “You are hairy! Like animal!” (Austin Powers, anyone? Anyone?)

As you can imagine I spent hours slaving away on this makeover.

Not really. I just pulled out my Greek flokati. Shake. Toss. Tuck. Voila! I also turned the back cushion on its side to give more head support, but it looks great left down as well. It still isn’t good for rocking babies to sleep, but it makes for one super cute and comfy lounge chair to curl up in with a good book.


Easter

We said goodbye to my mom and brother early Sunday morning (the reason for my bed head). Family visits are always too short. Church service was great and it was an all around beautiful day. We had a little Easter egg hunt in the back yard for the boys that afternoon and enjoyed a little too much sugar afterward. Good times. Hope you all had a wonderful Easter as well.

sharing the nitty gritty

Want a peek at the disaster zone we’ve been living in?

$20 if you can spot the panty liners.

It took days to unpack all the boxes.

This is the humongous living room. It’s so nice to have our furniture back.

nitty gritty This mess is the boys’ room. At this moment it’s actually much worse than this picture shows. We put together the crib, but there is a knee-high pile of clothes and toys that covers most of the floor.

This mess is part of the master. The little area where that chair is will be the home office. It will be nice to use the 3rd bedroom for it’s intended purpose… a bedroom. Does a sleeping puppy in the picture help the room look less terrible? No?

How about a baby and a puppy? You can’t beat that. That’s like cuteness overload. It totally takes the focus off the piles of junk that surround them. Still no? Fine then. Be that way.

This room scares me. Ezra, too. It’s the 3rd bedroom that we will pretend is a guest bedroom, but in reality is a storage room. Ezra went in to look for a toy and we didn’t see him again for days.

Nothing like moving to make you feel like you belong on an episode of Hoarders. Did you ever spot those panty liners? No? Here they are:

Now I can’t give you the $20 because I had to tell you where to look. Sorry, Charlie.

I have 24 hours to tidy before my mom and brother come to visit. Wish me luck!