Adding You Tube videos to blog posts

I just remembered that awhile back a reader asked me how I managed to get the you tube video to show up here. The answer is, it's easy! When you have a video on you tube that you want to feature on your blog, if you look on the page where your video shows up, you see some linking options to the right. one of those says "embed." This is the code that you need to put in your HTML editor to have the screen for the video show up on your blog. Super easy and fun!

Q&A: Decorating for a new baby

Hi there Dollymama! I have a question for you. I am having little girl in April. This is the first girl in 28 years on my husband's side...so everyone is VERY excited. I am trying to put a nursery together, but I am becoming oh so frustrated! I know that I need to go with a girly theme in some way (because I know that lots of pink is coming my way), but I'm trying to go a bit unisex as well. I don't want to have to buy everything over again if the next little one is a boy (decorating and bedding wise). Do you have any suggestions?

See now? Here's a smart reader. If you want to get me talking, ask me something. :)

My first thought about this is, are your relatives the type that are going to want to buy lots and lots of baby goods next time around? If so, I would just go all-out on the girl stuff now, and let potential future sons wait until you're crossing that bridge. :) Plus, nice quality secondhand baby stuff will sell great on ebay or whatever, so if you really want to part with the stuff to finance boy things later on, go for it!

That being said, if you do want to try to get the girl thing going on while keeping some versatility for adding a boy into the mix later, my suggestions are these:

-go for yellow walls. Yellow is a great color for walls because it doesn't jump out at you screaming "I'm a YELLOW WALL!" like some colors do (well, unless you get "sunshine" yellow like I once did--it just about matched the school bus...). To the right yellow you can add white lace, reds, pastels or brights, pink and lavender, whatever. I love yellow because there's almost no color you can't make work with it.

-On furniture such as dressers or armoires in the baby's room you can get a classic color or wood, but get fun or beautiful drawer pulls or hardware to work with your current theme. Those are easy to change in the future and not too expensive.

-If you are getting a rocking chair for the nursery you could go with leather (easy to clean spit up off of!!) or denim, and then add girlie throw pillows.

-Artwork for the walls can be moved to other rooms of the house later, so you can get totally girlie prints now, and them move them on to her big girl room later if you need to put up some "little slugger" stuff later. :) Or, you can get some great, fun children's art that is for everybody, such as what I sell here.

-Mobiles and other decorative things that hang from the ceiling add personality but are easily switched out.

-You can get a classic crib in white or wood, and then get bedding that you like. Most people get attached to the comforter stylein a set, so you can always cut corners by getting basic crib sheets that will work for anybody, and get the adorable bedding that you love to go with it.

-Basically, on big ticket stuff like furniture, go classic, and on the accessories, go specific. Put up shelving that is classic, but add girlie picture frames, stuffed animals, whatever. Later the same shelf will work just as well for a boy.

-The other thing to consider is just planning on using the room you start with for the kid that starts in it. Go all-out for your little girl, and later do a new room for a boy if you have one and have another room. :)

-In a lot of cases it seems that grandparents love to have new things to buy for new babies, so I would not worry too much about future purchases. It's a sad Grandma that has nothing to buy for their new grandbaby! :) What grandparents don't buy can usually be gotten through gift registries, or second hand if need be.

Quick Hello

Hello neglected blog readers. Here's the short version:

-I lost 9 pounds in three weeks. Yay me! Only a million more to go...

-am still working out and will not quit

-lived through the 3 week candida yeast thing. it got very unpleasant by the end, and I am now happily able to eat about one serving of fruit and one serving of whole grains per day in addition to the other stuff. Just expanding that much feels like a big relief.

-my business bonus week went well and kept me busy

-I had an epiphany last night about restructuring my life, mainly related to how I have allowed my work on my businesses to crowd out almost everything else that I like to do. I'm not really ready to start blabbing about my big new change yet. I'd like to just start living it.

-My kids are hoping for a big snow storm (4 inches of snow in KY is considered a big snow storm--hilarious) tomorrow, so we shall see if their dreams come true. It would seem kind of sad to not have any snow days for the whole winter, so I'm all for it. Especially the part where I get to sleep in a little bit.

-Sorry that the blog posts are so few and far between. I haven't had much writing inspiration for blog type stuff lately, and I don't feel like manufacturing something. I have considered writing a blog that was entirely fictional, but I don't have energy for that either. :) Sorry--reality ain't fancy 'round here.

Bonus Week is HERE!

Hey kids! Supermom's Bonus Week has arrived. Customers will receive over $100 of FREE BONUS GIFTS! How cool is that? Check it out here. Bonus Week ends Jan. 31.

3 More Down...

Hey peeps!

I lost three more pounds. (May they never be found again!)

I've been working like crazy trying to put together this huge promotion for Supermom's No-Lice Advice. I've had so many online business friends offering me freebies to give away to my customers, it has been kind of overwhelming to get the sale page and download pages ready to go. I am really excited though, because I now have over $100 worth of freebies to give to people that help me meet my goal! THAT is cool.

I've got some more work to do on it, so will probably not be able to tell you all the details until next week.

Good news! Supermom's Health and Wellness is open now too. I've had the button on the sidebar for a few weeks, and have been held back mightily by a web designer that has fallen way behind. The site is not entirely finished yet, but I decided to stop waiting for it to be perfect and just go ahead and get started with what I have to work with now. It'll be improving dramatically in the next few weeks.

My workouts are going well. I am still always tweaking it to see what will be a good fit for helping me reach my goals. Finding out about another 3 lost pounds sure put a spring in my step today. :)

The candida yeast diet lives on. I have seen dramatic results, and also saw the symptoms reappear almost immediately as soon as I did a small journey of widening my diet. Looks like it will be at least the full 3 weeks for me to not eat sugar, fruit, or grains. It ain't easy, and really doesn't feel like it's getting any easier, but I'm doing ok and will be very very thankful to finally beat the yeast beast!

One Week Report

Today marks one week since I started the candida yeast battle. I retested myself this morning and had dramatically improved results, which was very exciting! I had already noticed a great improvement in the skin issues I was working on, as well. So, it's all-around encouraging!

I've done great at my work outs, have been walking faster than ever and have even managed to run some of the time on the treadmill, which is quite a thing for me considering that my previous policy on running was to only do that in case of emergency. :) I lost 4 pounds this week, so can't complain about that! (It feels like 4 down, 400 to go....)

It is still very hard to stick with the candida diet. I did figure out several more things I could eat, but I feel hungry all the time and don't enjoy eating this way. It's much more of eating to stay alive vs. eating and enjoying it. I am looking forward to getting back to the point where I can have a morning smoothie or some whole grain bread or cereal!

I am also still struggling with the amount of time that my workout takes up. When I started working out last fall it was taking me 90 minutes to do everything, and I felt like that was too much time. So now I limit it to 60 minutes. However, I still need a shower when I come home, I'm still hungry when I finish my workout (usually finishing around lunch time), etc. By the time I shower, prepare food, eat, etc. I feel like a very large chunk of my day has been taken up. I'm falling behind on business stuff and am not sure how I am going to find a balance with this. Obviously I have to keep exercising, but I need to be able to get my work done too.

This week my main business challenge is to set up a really big sales promotion for Supermom's No-Lice Advice. If you've been putting off getting everything you need to stay lice-free every day the all-natural way, you won't want to miss this! I can't give you any details today, but I can tell you that if you love FREEBIES you will want to make sure you sign up for the Supermom's No-Lice Advice newsletter here.

Hey!

Guess what? I lost 3 pounds so far. Yay!

Hello Out There

Not that I ever had a very wide readership here, but I fear that with my infrequent and increasingly boring posts, I may drive away the few of you that still come around to check in on me. Sorry about that, but I've only got what I've got. And right now it's not much time for blogging and not always a ton of inspiration.

I'm on day three of a candida yeast kill-off. Candida yeast can become overgrown in your body, and once it does it can give you all sorts of problems. Things like skin problems, fatigue, depression, trouble losing weight, and a ton of other stuff. I've suspected for a long time that I had a candida yeast overgrowth, but all I knew to do about it was a diet so strict that I didn't think I could manage it at the time. Last year I found out about an herbal product that speeds up the process of the yeastie beasties getting killed off, without having to do as extreme a dietary restriction. I've kept it in mind for when I felt like I could take the plunge. I decided to wait til after all the temptations of the holidays were over, so now I am on day 3 of this process.

Starting this anti-candida yeast campaign coordinates with the other things I'm doing to try to get my health and weight under control. I've gotten back on the exercise bandwagon, and am even doing the very strict candida yeast diet that I thought I would not be able to do. It just happens to fit other goals that I had for myself, such as getting off of sugar, and not eating high glycemic foods. So, basically, for the time that I am going through this process I am eating veggies and meat/chicken/eggs. What I'm not eating is:
-sugar
-fruit
-grains in any form (no pasta, bread, crackers, or ANYTHING!)

As the yeast starts to die off you experience cravings for the foods that would feed the yeast (sugar and yeast, basically). So, now that's it's day three it's starting to feel rough. Add in sugar withdrawal and I'm headed for a tough couple of days.

Fortunately, I've gotten off of sugar before, and know that after a day or two of intense cravings, it becomes very easy. I can remember being so unaffected by sugar that I could go to a church pot luck and pass by the dessert table without feeling even one little pang of wish that I could eat something from it.

The hardest part about doing this is that my food options feel very limited, and also that there is absolutely nothing "fun" that I can eat! In the past when I got off sugar, I still had my fruits and breads and honey. Now I have nothing. It ain't easy!

I'm really looking forward to feeling better and resolving some health issues that I believe are caused by this yeast issue, though. It will be well worth my efforts.

Since I'm eating so little food plus exercising extra, I hope that I'll be tossing off some weight too. It was a severe bummer to see pictures of myself from Christmas and realize how really, really bad (fat!) I look. I think that in my imagination I was still thinking of myself as looking a lot better than I do. The truth hurts, folks. I've gotten weepy about it almost every day since seeing those photos.

There are some other health issues that I believe have been standing in the way of me feeling good and being able to lose weight. One is some pooped-out adrenals, the other is a messed up thyroid system. I am getting to work on both of those soon too. After that, I'm going to give Hoodia a whirl. I'm normally very skeptical about weight loss supplements, but as I've learned more about what Hoodia is and how it works, I think it's worth a try. Basically, it's from a plant, and it helps you lose weight by both acting as an appetite suppressant, plus burning up excess fat for fuel. Lord knows I've got plenty of extra fuel here to burn up! Burn baby, burn.....

Looking at weight loss from a holistic standpoint makes so much sense, I don't know why it's not done more often. I am looking forward to going through this process both for my own health benefits, as well as to learn first-hand so I can help others down the road. So many people have a very hard time losing weight, and if their body systems aren't functioning well, they are not likely to have much success. It would be so great to be able to help people be healthier all the way around!

Recent Movies

I'm behind on telling you about the movies I've watched lately. Here is a short version:

Touch The Sound is another documentary done by the same producer as did Rivers and Tides, which I loved so much. Touch The Sound is about a deaf percussionist. This film had elements I love to see: true creativity in that we see people that make music in unexpected ways, and experience music, rhythm, and sound in unexpected ways. Once again this is one of those movies that is interesting for the whole family, and really engaged the kids and got them exploring music and sound in different ways than they ever had before. Now that we have the new bass guitar, drums, and recorders, it is fun to see how the recent influence of movies like Rivers and Tides and Touch the Sound seem to be making an impact, as the children are sometimes trying out making sounds in ways that aren't "right" but are interesting and fun. I love helping to expand their (and my!) minds.

You, Me, and Dupree was supposedly going to be great, but really, truly, it wasn't. There were some laughs, but mostly it was kind of dumb and flat. If you like seeing Owen Wilson playing the same guy he always plays, like watching Matt Dillon pretend he's not Hollywood Hunk material, and just plain old like watching Kate Hudson, then go ahead. But if you're looking for something clever, truly funny, or thoughtful, look elsewhere.

Flight Plan is a thriller that my 14 year old and I watched tonite. It stars Jodie Foster as a mother of a six year old daughter who ends up missing while on an air flight. It's done in typical thriller style, making us cringe and only watch out of the corner of one eye every now and then, as the music makes us think we are about to get a sudden scare. Thankfully there really aren't any gratuitous BOOs in this movie. But it did keep us on our toes, trying to figure out where the twist would be. Each time we thought we knew what the story was, we'd realize that there had to be more to it than that.... Not my favorite thriller, but a decent one. And as a mother, it gets you right where you live.

Happy Racket and Good Vibes

I woke this morning to the sound of a happy racket. My fourteen year old son bought a bass guitar and amp with his Christmas money, so he was already up experimenting with his instrument. The younger children received recorders (thanks, Mom!) and a real drum set for Christmas. The kids were trying to have a band, so we had toot-toot-toot and thrum-thrum-thrum and rat-a-tat-tat going on.

I guess some parents would not appreciate their day starting this way, but I loved it.

I love it that we've gotten to this point where the kids can all work together on a meaningful project and make some semblance of sense to it all. (My 10 year old daughter was directing her little brothers on how they could make the recorders and drums play "Who let the dogs out" which, if you haven't heard the who-who-who-who part played by off-key squeaking recorders, you haven't quite lived yet...)

Really, I'm just enjoying my kids a lot. A few years ago when I hit a bad patch of depression and drowning I had to go into Save Myself mode to get a grip on life. I was originally a very enthusiastic mother who drank in all the fun and wonder of life as mom. As time went on and things got more difficult, I lost a lot of that joy mainly because I was too swamped to be able to.

Since I've restructured my life and felt much better and more settled inside myself, it has been a little distressing for me to notice that I still didn't feel like I enjoyed my kids as much as I knew I used to. I was still doing all the things that "good" moms should do, but I wasn't feeling as mentally present, wasn't feeling many warm fuzzies, wasn't feeling as connected as I wanted to. I've wondered if that part of my brain was just....broken, or something.

So, it's been a great encouragement to me in the last few weeks to realize that I have had a return of feeling like the mom I want to be. I've enjoyed drinking in cute little conversations, have been able to set aside work more easily in order to be the shoulder to cry on (10 year old girls can be so mean!!), the one to read a book to a little guy, the mom that spent an hour putting together a complicated wooden train formation (much to the delight of my 5 year old), letting little ones paint, goofing off, taking kids on errands and not minding it, etc. It's been so great to know that I can truly feel how precious each day and each moment with my kids is. It's been great to feel the importance of my moment-by-moment investment in my kids and know that all of this adds up to big stuff in my kid's hearts and minds.

I'll probably never be the same great mom that I was in my 20s, but now I feel like it's possible that I may eventually be able to be a better one.

Large Family Article

Today there was an article featured in MSN about large families. Some of you may enjoy it.

Hopefully With Slightly More Zest This Time

We've ushered in the new year with a bang. The hubby took me to Lowe's yesterday and we proceeded to purchase several home improvement items. New paint for the bedroom (he picked a *purple* if you can believe that! We are still trying to decide if we like it, but it definitely beats that sad, banged-up, dirty yellow we have had for years.... I think I can make it work with the right accessories.), a shelving unit for our oldest kiddo, two drawer units for our laundry room (I keep 4 of the kids' clothing in there instead of them having dressers. Up til now we have had long shelves with laundry baskets for sorting and storing their clothes, but these white metal mesh drawers are what I have wanted for a long time. It takes up less space and looks a lot nicer.), a mouse trap that is basically a baited box that the mouse goes into but gets electrocuted once inside (we already caught one--yay!), potting soil for various plant projects that were in limbo, and a few other odds and ends for things that have been waiting and waiting to get done. Thankfully,most of the stuff has already been done or is in process. I like progress.

We had a fun evening with our kids. We rented Freaky Friday and A Knight's Tale to watch (skipped one scene, but otherwise a very fun movie), had a junky kid-friendly meal that they loved (hot dogs, mac and cheese), and let them have an indoor camp out. My husband and I also stayed up until 2am with our 10 year old daughter playing Monopoly. :) So, the new year is off to a good start.

My kids still have one more day off from school. I am way behind on business work, and don't know how I'm going to get things done. My web designer is behind on my site, and I have appointments Wed. and Thurs. which will take up big chunks of my "free time." Oh well. I am trying to adopt more of a "It'll get done when it gets done" philosophy. After all, if it's my business, I guess I don't have to do anything on someone else's time frame. Still, I have my own time frames and often can't manage to meet those goals.

I fell off the exercise bandwagon some time ago, mainly because I was struggling with spending an hour and a half of my 4.5 hours of alone time each day. I have decided to limit my workout to one hour or less, but to make it happen even if it means less business gets done. Hopefully I can stick to it because this extra weight seems content to stick around unless I do something to boot it right off of my bootie.

My To-Do lists loom large and grow all day long as I think of more things I "should" do or "need to" do. I know that other people manage to run successful online businesses without it taking over their lives, so I am hoping to become one of them.