You Are Beautiful

Hey guys!

At some point I'll be back to publishing more regularly than once every month or two, but for now, this is the best I can do.  I started back at work six weeks ago, so things just keep getting more and more hectic.  Don't assume that means we're not still house projecting, we most definitely are!  We're just a little bit slower, and it takes quite some time to get it up here on the blog.

Onto the project ...

I've been mentioning that we're redoing the master bedroom.  Part of that was the vanity / closet area, which we painted a little while back.  The closet has the two big sliding doors that are mirrors, which I walk by every time I go to take a shower or get dressed.  That didn't really used to bother me...

And then I had Kalia.  I'll be completely honest here, I've never really struggled with body image or my weight or anything in that regards.  I've always been really active, and my body, for the most part, has reflected that.  The doctor released me to exercise when Kalia was 6 weeks old.  I thought it'd take a month or two, but that I'd be back to my old shape in no time.  Well, two and a half months have come and gone since being released, and I'm still not where I'd like to be.  I do exercise every day, I do a minimum of a 2 mile walk with Kalia and Kodi, and a few days a week I do a 5k with Kalia in the jogging stroller, but I'm still not there yet.  I continually have to tell myself that it took 10 months to put all that weight on, it's not just going to disappear in four long months.

I walk by that stupid mirror (its become stupid now) every.single.day and am constantly reminded of how my clothes don't fit yet, how my body seems to have a mind of its own, and how I'm not where I want to be with my weight loss.  I'm not far off, I'm just still not there.  I'm at the awkward stage of my old clothes fitting, but looking like someone glued them on me.  I'm going to be 30 in 5 months, and I'm a Mom...pasted on pants isn't exactly the look I'm going for. 

Well, enough is enough.  No more pity parties, no more feeling bad about myself, and no more feeling sorry for myself.  Motherhood is such a beautiful thing.  The fact that we're willing to put our bodies through what we do to get this incredible little person here that we get to shape and mold and love more than we ever thought possible is a beautiful thing.  The fact that we sacrifice our bodies for 10 months to carry this little person and then bring them into this world is a beautiful thing.  That's what I need to focus on ... that's what I need to be reminded of.  My new found extra poundage is well worth the extreme joy and love that my little girl brings to me every.single.day.

Sorry about the rant...I'll try to avoid being too Mommy hormonal and move on.  There's a project in here too, I promise!

I bought two of these canvases on clearance from Jo-Ann's forever ago.  They were 8$ total, and I knew I'd find a use for them at some point.

Chris thought I was crazy.  Well, Chris always thinks I'm crazy, that's not really anything new.  Those canvases have been sitting in a closet for quite some time.  When I came to my "enough is enough" epiphany, I busted these bad boys out and got to painting.

I took step by step pictures of this, but they're lost somewhere in the 1925 pictures that are currently on my camera of mainly Kalia.  I'm a little obsessed, I know.  So, you get a few pictures of my cutie instead :

Amen to that!!!  Hehe!

Really, I took those canvases and put a coat of white paint over top of them, then took my brush and dipped it in a little bit of the dark aqua paint that we painted the vanity area with and faded that down halfway through the first canvas, and then took the light aqua color that we painted the master bathroom and faded that down all the way through the bottom of the second canvas.

After that dried, I just took my paintbrush and painted on the words using the metallic white paint I had left over from doing the faux granite effect in Kalia's bathroom.  It's not perfect, but that's kind of the point of the project.  It's not really supposed to be.  It's still beautiful because I made it, and it means something to me.  For-warning though, it's semi impossible to photograph.  There's no lighting in that area, and the flash bounces off of my metallic white, so just use your imagination to picture it a little bit more subtle :-).

With the flash on.  Kodi thinks the addition of Kalia is exhausting!!

 The rest of these are without the flash on, so the color is a bit more true.

I used the colors I did because of where I hung it.  I like how it blends both the vanity area and the master bathroom colors together.

So, what do you guys think of it?  I debated about doing it for awhile because I didn't want to come off as conceited, but it's my bathroom vanity area.  I know why I painted it!  If you have any questions on how I did this, please feel free to ask.  I'll respond to them in the comments section.

Hope everyone is doing well.  I've actually made quite a bit of progress in the Master Bedroom, redid the office, and am now planning away at making our awful formal living room Kalia's playroom.  Oh yeah, and we're repainting the house. Life is never dull around these parts!!  I hope to get the posts up soon.  My goal is to really start back blogging more regularly after Christmas time.  Kalia's starting to finally sleep through the night most nights, and I'm finding my balance in life, so I hope you guys will stick around to see what's next!

Happy Monday, hope you guys have a great week!

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Still Alive

Hey guys!

It's been over a month without a peep from me, so I thought I'd let you guys know that I'm still here.  We've actually got a few house projects that we're working on, but things go quite a bit slower these days with Kalia around.

I got quite a few emails and comments from you guys when I was pregnant about not knowing how I was doing everything and something or another about being a super woman.  Well, I'm here to tell you I am most definitely not a super woman.  I'm a new mommy, and I spend my days figuring out my baby.  Initially, I felt the need to still get a lot of house projects done.  I felt that I wasn't being 'me' without it.  It kind of put me in a sad place, so we did the vanity to give me a little bit of sanity.

But somewhere along the way I realized something.  I'm a go-getter, I'm a do-er...I don't rest that much, and my idea of relaxing is playing volleyball or running.  I don't stop.  I'm committed to doing things the best I can, I love to learn, and I love to be hands on with things.  I love to be active, I love to create, I love to inspire, and I love to finish every day proud of what I've done.  That's 'me'.

And these days, I get all of that, and so much more with this little girl :

She's 'me'.  Her and her Daddy fill my days with so much joy and happiness...I can't even begin to describe it.

I had motherhood all wrong before she arrived.  I thought I'd teach her the ways of the world, I'd teach her how to be a good person, how to do the basics initially, and how to succeed in life later on.  What I didn't realize was how much she'd teach me.  In 10 short weeks, she's taught me to see the world differently.  She's taught me that I have a whole lot more patience than I ever thought I could...she's taught me to be empathetic to other Mommies...she's taught me that the best things in life lie in those little eyes and those little dimples.  She's taught me how to love more openly and completely.  She's taught me how to be a better me, and she's teaching me new things every day.

So please forgive the lack of diy posts.  Right now, Kalia's not at the age where she can participate in diying too much (although it's hard not to write posts on every little thing that she does do...but I spare you guys and have a family blog just for that :-)), and until she gets there, my diying is limited to naptimes and after bedtime.  House projects can wait until then...I've got more important things to learn and grow from in the meantime...

I hope all of you guys have enjoyed your summer and are doing well!  Thanks for sticking around Kara's Korner, I really appreciate your support.

I'll end on one last one of my little cutie.  Enjoy!

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Vanity Area Update

Well, we finally got around to our first home improvement project since having Kalia.  She doesn't really sleep as much as normal babies do, so getting things done, besides feeding her every hour or so, is quite challenging!  Unfortunately, she came down with a cold last weekend.  While she was sleeping her cold away (she's better now!), Chris and I took advantage of the down time and repainted our vanity area.

We had repainted our bathroom back in January (post here), which left our vanity / closet area looking pretty bad.  The two colors clashed pretty badly, and we knew we wanted something a bit darker to make the area a little bit more cohesive, but went to work on the nursery instead.

Here's what the area looked like prior to our paint job on Sunday :

And here's what the area looks like now :

If you look carefully in the next few photos, you can see how this area ties in with our Master Bathroom paint color scheme.

The paint color is Mermaid Net by Behr.  We took the Tide Pools paint swatch that we used to paint the bathroom and went two shades darker so that the colors would flow well from one room to the next.

We both were a little iffy at first about the dark color, but it feels warm and soothing all at the same time, and definitely makes the bathroom a cohesive area instead of being so disjointed.

This is just one of a multitude of projects I've got planned to get our Master Bathroom up to par.  Every time I walk into Kalia's nursery, I'm jealous that she's got a nicer room than us!

So what do you guys think about our new vanity area?  Do you like the dark color, and how it compliments the light color of the master bathroom, or is it too dark for you?

Stay tuned to see what else I've got up my sleeve.  I'm ready for a nice, relaxing Master Bedroom instead of the hodge podge of a room we've got going on right now!

Hope everyone's doing well.  Thanks so much for all of the sweet compliments about Kalia's nursery...I so appreciate every one of them!!!

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