Mom's recent projects

In lieu of the fact that we've officially re-signed our year lease and will most likely be staying in our apartment until September of next year, I decided that it was time to actually get settled into our house. Because I have an interior design background and am in my home almost the entire day, I crave having an environment to live and work in that is aesthetically pleasing. Otherwise I think I'll go crazy.

So, we've been decorating.

I'm not quite ready to post pictures yet, but we've made a lot of changes to all the rooms in our apartment and I love living here so much more now. Our bedroom is peaceful and serene, Taylor's room is cute and gives him lots of room to play, the living room is comfy and inviting and everything is finally tied together, and the kitchen and dining room have been divided by some pantry cabinets that give me a LOT more storage. It looks and feels great, and I'll definitely post some pictures once everything is totally done and decorated.


I've also picked up jewelry making after some inspiration from my step mom. She told me about some co-workers of hers that make necklaces out of scrapbook paper, acrylic sealer, and large metal washers from a hardware store. As soon as she mentioned it I thought about a large box of vintage roadmaps I've had for a while that I wanted to do something creative with.

Here are my first attempts at making these necklaces:





They're really fun and easy to make, and I'm planning on opening an Etsy store to sell them as soon as I've made a bunch. Prices will be set from $5-7 each. If you'd like to buy one let me know; I have maps of almost every state in the U.S. as well as some from Canada. I'll also be making more with vintage pictures taken from my roadmaps and vintage visitors guides.


Well that's what I've been up to lately; I'll try and post more regularly now that summer is winding down and we're getting back to normal life.

Potty Trained.

This is probably a post only a mother could appreciate, but it's really one of the only exciting things that have happened in the Nichols household lately. So here it is:

Taylor is officially potty trained.

I started training him the day before my birthday (June 23rd) and within just a couple of days he was going on the potty with minimal accidents. He's now wearing his big boy undies 100% of the time (yay, no more diapers!) and he tells us when he needs to go. He's such a big boy and I'm so proud of my baby.

I now no longer believe everything people say about boys being harder/taking longer to train than girls. I think it's just about the timing and making sure they're ready. And Tay was definitely ready.

I love you, big boy!

No more videos.

I'm sorry to do this, but most of the videos on my blog are now diabled. I started getting some really disturbing comments on some of the videos I've posted of Taylor, and my number one priority is to protect my son. I know I can set the videos to private and allow certain people to view them, but they still wouldn't work on my blog and whoever was allowed to look at the videos would have to have their own YouTube account, so it's just too much work.

I'll continue to try to upload videos directly to Blogger, but it's never worked for me in the past, which is why I posted them to YouTube.

Sorry about this, I hope you all understand.

It's all uphill from here.

Yesterday - the 4th of July - I participated in the Provo Freedom Festival 5K. My goal was to beat my time from the Firefighters 5K last month (35:10). It was a really fun race as most of it was along the parade route; there's nothing like TONS of people cheering for you as you run. It made the run seem a lot shorter and was a lot of fun - at least until the last mile of the race that was all uphill. It was hard to keep going but I pushed myself as hard as I could and ran the whole thing. The good news is I beat my time from last month:

The bad news is I completely blew my knee out. I'm in a lot of pain right now and my knee brace isn't helping at all. I'm afraid that my running days may be over as it's just too hard on my joints. I feel so old... I think I'll probably go in to my doctor and at least find out what's wrong with my knee and go from there.

In any case, it was a great run and I'm proud of myself for doing it!