I am moving on from Fab Brunette. I will no longer be blogging at this url, for a more proper explanation please click here. I will be blogging at a new blog, and if you wish, please follow me there! For memories sake and until I decide what to do with it all, I will be leaving this blog up for the time being, but all comments will be closed.
Thank you for reading my words here.
xo
Fab Brunette
I woke up today with one goal on my mind: to do nothing.
But of course, life always seems to get in the way of that plan! Sleep when baby sleeps! That was my intention. But as soon as baby got to sleep I thought of all the wonderful things I could do while baby was napping - laundry! meal planning! meal prep! cleaning! blogging! – and I just knew I couldn’t sleep the morning away.
The past couple of days I’ve been helping my husband set up the company office. It was fun to see a dreary and boring space turn into something a little more professional with a slight female touch added. Once it is completed, I will take some pictures, all that’s left is to hang up some frames, some art, and little more organizing and the place will be perfect! But it’s definitely been a bit of work, especially with a baby in tow.
I have to admit that my weightloss has taken a bit of a back seat at the moment. After losing 12 pounds last month, I was stuck with a few days of a baby who wouldn’t sleep, and when baby doesn’t sleep, mama doesn’t sleep. No sleep = a carb breakdown for me. When I’m that exhausted coffee can’t even help – only spoonfuls of Nutella & Peanut Butter will. Seriously. Try it. It’s heaven. Except for your ass.
While I haven’t gained anything back, I’m definitely looking forward to getting back on track. This Monday I start a jogging stroller circuit training class, which goes on twice a week for 8 weeks, and I’m hoping it actually makes me start to enjoy jogging more and want to eat healthier foods again. It’s such a silly thing, this mind over matter thing.
My mind knows that there are “bad” foods out there. I know that when I eat bad food (ie. ice cream, nutella, white bread) I feel like crap afterwards, almost immediately I get a sugar rush and then I’m stuck with a downward spiral of getting more and more sluggish by the second…. until my next bite of something sweet or chocolatey!….
SIGH… Do you know how hard it is to hear your thoughts with 2 kids shouting in the bathtub?
Along with this busy week of mine, I’ve also started working on a side project to Fab Brunette, which I’m super excited to share with you guys as soon as it’s ready…. which may be never as I hardly have time to update anything without my daughter shouting from the bathtub… “Hey mommy! Hey! Look! You don’t want to miss this!”
LE SIGH.
(that’s a sigh in french…)
I should get back to my super exciting life of drying off kids, putting one to bed and watching Harry Potter with the other one.
Bon nuit. More to come soon when I have a chance to gather my thoughts. In peace…
xo
Fab Brunette
Each night this week I slept a little bit longer than the night before. Monday my precious little Prince decided he didn’t want to sleep until 2 am, so Tuesday I was a zombie. Wednesday I felt a bit more human, and so on and so on. That was my week. It is so immensely boring to discuss sleeping habits of an infant – especially when that infant is hardly an infant anymore and is almost a 1 year old!
There have been many trips to Starbucks this week. Many Verona Blondes and Hazelnut Macchiatos and Grande Non-Fat Cappuccinos were consumed. I am drinking one as I type this. I think all mothers should get a discount to Starbucks for life.
Proposed Starbucks Membership for Mothers:
Understood?
xo
Fab Brunette
These past few months my husband & I have attempted to adopt a more budgeted lifestyle. I think after looking back on 2012 and wondering what we spent our money on (answer: pizza, beer, dining out, impromptu hotel stays, and a new vehicle), we’ve decided to cut back on the “luxuries” in life and try to focus on necessities. I quoted “luxuries” because obviously my definition of a luxury & my husband’s would not be the same, I digress.
Regardless of what’s a necessity and what’s a luxury, I’ve slowly been teaching myself to save money and shop more conscientiously. Online shopping is almost non-existent nowadays, and I’m certain I was a problem case because the POST OFFICE LADIES commented: “We never see you anymore! No big packages anymore? No more online shopping? Good girl! I’m sure your husband is happy!” I am not joking. This exchange happened multiple times.
Most recently I’ve been thinking more and more about how to save money on groceries. It started when I spent a whole day planning 3+ weeks dinners in advance. In one day I prepped and froze over 20 dinners. Not a day goes by where I have to wonder what we’ll eat, how nutritious is it, are we getting our vegetables, etc. And buying a lot of groceries in bulk actually worked out to my advantage – imagine shopping for 21 dinners at once – it cost me $250.00. And that’s before I started couponing.
I’ve recently discovered whole blogs devoted to couponing, as well as places online to print coupons from, and companies that mail you coupons. I’ve started looking in the clearance bin at the store. I have trouble buying things full price now - I want to use a coupon! I want to save money!
….Who am I?
I wrote this post about Extreme Couponing, the TLC tv show, a while back – and I still watch it occasionally and am still always in awe of how these people shop. Now, you don’t have to worry, I’m not about to stockpile 72 bottles of mustard or 12 packages of paper towels, no no. But here is what I did today:
Shoppers Drug Mart was having a ‘secret’ Optimum points special – spend $50 & receive 18,000 points (which equals $10+ for your next purchase) with a coupon. So my goal was to spend $50 before taxes. I have a stack of organized coupons and I started shopping. Here are some of the deals I found:
Basically I’ve ‘stockpiled’ coupons, sorted them into mini folders (Food/Baby/Cleaning/Pharmacy/Misc), then I go shopping for what I need. I needed wipes, I had coupons for both Pampers wipes and Huggies wipes, but the Huggies big box was on sale, with my coupon, it was a great deal. I just kept looking to see what was on clearance in the store, what was on sale, and matching it up with a coupon to get the best deal.
It took a while to check out, but at the end of my shopping trip, I spent $54, and saved over $45 – Meaning my total cost would have been almost $100 and I spent only $54. Plus I got Optimum Points for my next visit!
I sound crazy. I feel crazy. But I’m saving money, and it feels great.
Do you save money on groceries? Do you have any tips to share or questions?
xo
Fab Brunette
This is me in 2007, my hubs hated this Victoria Beckham-inspired haircut!
The other day I found the first blog I ever created, still online, still intact, all the way from 2007. I had forgotten all about it, but there it was, in all of its’ pre-crazy blogging days. No fancy schmancy design, no mind or matter, no over-thought posts – it was just me. My life, extremely unedited.
It’s fun to read old blog posts, almost like unearthing a journal from your elementary school days – you are reading your own words and you know that they belong to you, but it’s almost like a different side of you that you had forgotten about. My hopes & dreams for the future back then were so different, things I hardly remember, but there they are in black & white on the screen to read.
I learned that when my little Princess was a year and a half old, I did indeed suffer from baby fever – I was insanely broody in some posts – in other posts I was considering becoming vegan (I had just read the book Skinny Bitch and was tres inspired!), I was constantly writing about trying to lose weight, I posted pictures of expensive shoes, I wrote about opening my own salon & spa one day, and I was trying to learn to cook by using my crockpot.
Which goes to show that although some things seriously change, some things have always been there – my current slow cooker adventures are proof of that!
One thing I did not ice is that my blog lacked any nuances, it was the voice of a less mature, starry-eyed young woman. She lacked any sense of “homemaker-ship” and was the complete opposite of frugal, rather spoiled, I would say. But she was unapologetic in her ways, her opinions weren’t edited & she certainly didn’t care how she appeared.
I’m not sure what I would say to her if I could go back in time. Would I let her know that “leggings as pants” will indeed be her future? No, no, let her be idealistic and young.
I think I would just let her know that no matter where life takes her (and it’s going to take her everywhere BUT Paris!) that she’s going to be okay. Better than okay, her life will be perfect, in its’ own way.
xo
Fab Brunette
ps. What would you tell your 2007 self?
As kids get older, planning birthday parties can become tricky. It’s no longer what the parents want (simple colours, modern designs) or what a toddler wants (Thomas the Train or Dora), but a party has everything to do with a little one’s personality. If my Princess was a real Princess I would throw her a pink & black Parisian-style party, complete with an Eiffel Tower as a centrepiece and macarons for dessert! Yet, as spoiled as my little Princess may be, she has a tomboy side to her, and her parties always include boys & girls, so I always try to do a party that caters to both genders and is fun and age-appropriate.
I kept scratching my head for a while – what to do? what to do? And it finally came to me, through her obsession with all things Lego, that we should do a Lego party – and she loved the idea! I found some great Lego-themed invitations all over the internet, Etsy especially, but I chose a Lego invitation from Tiny Prints which was super cute:
