• have a large garden of flowers and lots of different food producing plants, trees, bushes
• to make food, household items, clothing, etc. from scratch
• live frugally
• have balance with nature
• less reliance on technology for entertainment and communication (at least a few days a month)
• raise our Girly in an environment that fosters exploration and natural learning

Then on the other hand, I have goals that tend to be more consumer-centric:

• travel often to different parts of the world
• be comfortable financially, even wealthy
• be fashionable in terms of well-decorated home and personal fashion
• have high-end technology (computers, dSLR, tablets, etc.)
• provide the best education possible for our Girly
• own a business that affords me the time with my family and for the goals that don’t produce extra income

I think all of these goals contribute to a valuable life for my family and I.  However, these goals seem to conflict or even be two different lifestyles.  How do I find an intersection of these goals, these lives?   Am I the only one that is having this dilemma?

Lately, I have been hooked on TED Talks!  This talk is so perfect for the TWLC3 Challenge and a great Friday Thought…

As Matt Cutts says,

The next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not, so why not think about something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the next 30 days?

What have you always wanted to try?

As I posted about earlier this week, I want to try a part-time vegan diet.

I first wrote about this over a month ago and I realize it has been a month since Pinterest updated their terms, but I still wanted to address this topic.

In my previous post, I was pretty upset with Pinterest and wanted to delete all my pin boards!  I’m glad that I didn’t delete everything (a lot of time went into organizing and pinning) and until today I didn’t pin anything.

What changed my mind?  Well, Pinterest did revise their terms, you can check them out for yourself here, and removed the wording about using images for profit and however they see fit.  It seems to me that by removing this language, it certainly could lessen the legality blow to Pinterest users if someone decided to sue Pinterest.  These changes do help make it more comfortable to use the site, but this whole discussion highlights the sensitivity one should use when using online media.  A lot of people assume that just because it’s on the web means that it is “free game” to use however you would like.  It is not “free game,” there are copyrights and various other legalities that pretty much go unseen and unheeded.

The rule of thumb I use is:

If you don’t own it, you should ask to use it. 

Hence, this is what I will be doing for Pinterest pins.   If the site does not have a “Follow me on Pinterest” button or a “Pin-It” button on their post, I will be emailing site editors / authors for authorization of use of their content.

I still think that my use of time on Pinterest before this discussion was egregious and needed adjusting.  I will still limit how often I visit, but I do love Pinterest….

Disclaimer:  I am not a lawyer, nor pretend to be.   Please consult legal consul if you have any questions regarding this topic. Check out full site disclaimer here.

I have joined fellow readers of That Wife Blog in the That Weight Loss Challenge 3.  The Challenge started yesterday and will run until October 16.

The prize is up to $500!  So, I’m getting very serious about winning.  To win, I have to have the highest percentage of weight lost.  So here’s my plan:

Goal:  Reaching my goal weight of 130 lbs.  If I reach this goal my percentage of weight lost would be 12.34%.  Which could win me an extra $500!

The Plan:

• Run 3 times/week – work on running a 5k mile split of 8 minutes
• Bike 2-3 times/week – where can I bike for an errand instead of taking the car?
• Garden – digging in the dirt is relaxing and a workout at the same time!
• Become a part-time vegan – for breakfast, lunch and most dinners during the week no dairy, no meat, and no eggs.
• Eat all the veggies and fruits I want, well mostly veggies
• Limit sweets to once a week
• Limit alcohol to an occasional treat (at gatherings of friends or a special dinner)

Wish me luck!  Or even join me!

I have taken Zumba classes through my local park district a few times and I had a blast working out!  However, the price of those classes can be pretty hefty when trying to cut and trim all you can from a budget.  So, I was trying to think of alternatives to paying for more classes or purchasing a dance workout DVD.   It came to me to create a playlist on YouTube of these types of workouts.  And it looks like others have had this great idea, too.  I was able to take a look at other’s playlists and created my own.

Happy Thrifty Thursday!

For almost a year now, I have wanted to make my own household cleaners.  I hemmed and hawed because I thought it would be more difficult than just purchasing a new cleaner from the store.  Then I saw this article from Natural Home & Garden and it is really quite easy.  I had several of the ingredients already in my home:

• Water
• Dish Soap (substituted for Castile soap)
• Tea Tree Oil
• Eucalyptus Oil

If you have never bought essential oils before, you might be a little alarmed by the price for such a small bottle.  Don’t worry, a little goes a long way and so worth the results.

I mixed the above ingredients up and poured them into an empty spray bottle and… Voila!  Disinfectant household cleaner.  So easy!

I used it immediately to clean my bathroom and kitchen.  It was so silky, smelled wonderful, and made everything super shiny.  I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to store-bought again.  My husband even agreed that it was a superior product after cleaning our other bathroom.  Check out the article from Natural Home & Garden, there are several more DIY cleaner recipes to try (I used the Germs-Be-Gone Toilet Cleaner recipe for my general disinfectant cleaner).

Oh and I forgot to mention the best part.  This wonderful, natural, non-toxic cleaner cost me less than $2.00 to make!

Our Girly turns 17-months today!

As it is with most nicknames, there is a story behind this one.  My husband’s dad and wife are quite the genealogy buffs and have traced their family lines back to England, German, and several other countries.  In all his work my husband’s Dad had to research back over 100 years for a record of a baby girl being born into the family.  That’s right, all women in recent generations have been married into the family!  Our daughter was the first girl on my husband’s dad side to be born in 124 years!  She is also the first granddaughter for my parents and the first grandbaby for my husband’s parents.  While in the hospital with our new baby girl, my husband started to call her Girly and it just stuck.  By the way, we didn’t know until she was born that she was a girl!  For us this simple nickname means so much!

Happy 17th-Month Day, Girly!

Girly @ Three Weeks

Read the first part of this post here.

In desperation and panic, I began to pour over the internet for any thing else I could possibly do. I spoke to two licensed lactation consultants at two different hospitals, our pediatrician, my midwives, our Bradley Instructor, and two different La Leche League Leaders several times to make sure I understood what they told me.  One of the La Leche League Leaders was fabulous.  She said to me that there is a root cause of this somewhere, that a milk supply just doesn’t stop producing once it starts.  That there had to be some fundamental issue with the process and would probably have to do with the baby’s latch on the breast.  She said she would be happy to look at her latch for me when I came to the League’s meeting in a few weeks.  I didn’t have a few weeks.  I wanted, no, needed to get an answer for increasing my supply quickly or it might be gone.

Towards the end of this first week, I was fearful that I would lose my milk supply and began to think that I was going to have to take more drastic measures.  I researched a drug named Domperidone that one of the Licensed Lactation Consultants I was working with recommended.  She said she had seen it work for several moms in increasing their supply.  But of course with anything that sounds to good to be true, it had a few catches.  This drug’s intended use is for gastrointestinal tract issues and has a side effect of increasing milk supply because it increases your hormone prolactin.   Also because it increases your hormones you would need to wean yourself from this drug once you gain your milk supply back.  And the final catch is that it is not FDA approved for increasing lactation.  What this means is you have to ask for a prescription from your medical professional for this drug and a compounding pharmacy would have to mix the dosage of the drug for you.   And if all that wasn’t enough, this compounding process made the drug very expensive.  All of this made me pause before filling my prescription and try another week of my nurse, pump, clean routine around the clock.

There was also one other option to consider, I could contact a breast milk bank either through my hospital or a non-for-profit and pay for pasteurized breast milk to give to my baby.  I kept this in the back of my mind hoping that I wouldn’t have to get this far.  I even considered briefly asking a new mom I know if she would pump a little extra for our Girly.

During this second week, I increased my Fenugreek and Mother’s Milk supplements.  I found on KellyMom.com that I needed to be taking far more Fenugrreek supplements then the bottle prescribed.  One of the side affects of taking this amount of the supplement was that your perspiration smells like maple syrup.  Once I stated to smell sweet, I knew I was taking enough.   I also started to expand my pumping sessions to 30-35 minutes to try to signal to my body that there needs to be more milk produced. With these two changes, I started to see a slight increase in my milk supply and was pumping about 10 cc (about 1/3 ounce) after nursing.

My Rented Medela Symphony

The same wonderful La Leche League Leader who was so kind to offer to look at my Girly’s latch also recommended that I upgrade to, at that time, the top of the line Medela pump, the Medela Symphony.  This pump was more to rent from the hospital per month then the Lactina, but at this point I was willing to try everything.  The Symphony pump was also softer to my sore nipples and it felt like it drew the milk faster and more effectively than the Lactina.  And then more improvement by the end of the second week to 20 cc (about 1/2 ounce) after nursing.

The third week of the nurse, pump, clean routine every three to four hours was the breakthrough week.  I was finally able to meet with the La Leche Leader to take a look at Girly’s latch.  I learned that because I produced so much milk at first, my Girly learned that she really didn’t have to work very hard to get the milk, it pretty much just came and when it did it was forceful.  So, she also developed a bad habit of pulling her tongue back up into her mouth to protect herself from choking.  The La Leche Leader coached me on a few techniques that I would need to practice with my Girly to latch on properly and keep her tongue down.  In my case, I would just tickle her chin and then use my pinky finger to lay her tongue down then offer the breast every time I nursed.  After working with her for the remainder of the week and a little into the next she was able to latch on without it hurting my sore nipples and heard her swallow much more.  I was also still taking the supplements at the increased level and still pumping at the increased times with the new pump.  By the end of this week, I was able to pump nearly 30 – 40 cc (an ounce to 1-1/3 ounce).  This was the level I was at when pumping at the hospital.  All the hours of pumping, tears, cracked nipples, and research had paid off!

Over the next few weeks, I worked I weaning myself off of pumping all together by decreasing the time at each session.  I would also go into the Lactation Consultants office each week to do a transfer weigh-in, where I would weigh our Girly before feeding her, nurse her and weigh her again.  This is the most accurate way of measuring how much breast milk was transferred to the baby during nursing.  This would help me understand if I needing to pump more or continue weaning the time back.  Soon, my Girly was able to nurse enough and I was able to stop pumping all together!

Our Girly solely nursed until she was six months when we started to feed her some solids.  She then self-weaned from day time nursing at 8-months and about 12-months from her night-time nursing.  At 16-months she still asks to nurse in the mornings.

I am so proud of our new family!!  Every member had to do their part in order to work through this issue and create a very nurturing and wonderful breastfeeding experience.

Nursing my 6-month old Girly

Then the following day, I coincidentally saw this pin on Pinterest from Kwoed regarding Pinterest user terms.

Basically, the terms state that you, the user, by pinning an image agree that you own the rights to the image, are releasing the rights to Pinterest and therefore fully liable for any legal fees, etc. that Pinterest might incur if they sell one of images that you pin.   Whoa!  Are you as shocked as I was?   This seems so contradictory to me because Pinterest’s own “Pinning Etiquette” states that the site should not be used for self-promotion.  So, then how are you suppose to pin anything?  But don’t take my word for it, check out the terms for yourself.  I am certainly not a legal expert!

I love you Pinterest, but I have decided to reorganize the must-have pins from my account via bookmarks or my Action Method  or Evernote account and delete my boards.

From now on, I will use Pinterest as a search engine, idea gathering, or project finder from time to time and nothing more.

Weaning myself down to an occasional glance rather than several times a day look-see will allow me to engage in more meaningful, relationship building activities.  So, really this “issue” with the terms is a good thing, it led me to apply what I learned from Oh My!  Handmade Goodness and reevaluate.  So, thank you, Oh My! Handmade Goodness and Knoed for opening my eyes a bit wider!

Please read:  UPDATE: I love you Pinterest, but… for the latest on the Pinterest terms and what this means to me.