Friday Confessional...

Most people I know think that my house looks like this ALL THE TIME...









I have a dirty little secret...lately my house looks like this ALL THE TIME...



I HATE doing dishes. I would rather scrub toilets than do the dishes. How do you keep up with your dishes? My dishwasher is always full as well as my sink. I hate it. Dishes and laundry are always piling up and I am never caught up with either.

Emma loves to play in her room. Shes has WAY toooo many toys in her room. We are working on teaching her to clean up as she goes. I get the feeling we will be working on that for awhile.


The President, Head Honcho, Big Cheese....call him what you want, of the photography business we own called this last week and said he would be out on Monday and wanted to see our office.

This is currently our office:

Umm..yeah....I have my work cut out for me.

I am beginning to think I am a little too honest on these Friday Confessional Posts. People are going to start to think I am some psychopath slob that needs her head examined.....and, they would be RIGHT!!!

Mini Extreme Make Over...

Remember this horrible....err...a pink room? This was done about three years ago for Taylor. Marcus let her pick out the colors...yeah, we had words later on letting a 10 year old have complete say on her bedroom.

If you ever had a stomachache, you could walk into this room; it was just like you were walking into a bottle of Pepto Bismol...

Taylor turned 13 last week and we decided to redo her room for her birthday present. She was gone to her mom's house the week before her birthday, so it worked out perfectly. We had exactly a week to paint, shop, redecorate,clean and organize her room. And on top of that, we are in right in the middle of crazy photo shoots and not feeling great. But we did it.

So we go from crazy pink to:



Awesome Purple, Gray and Black!!!



Taylor showed Marcus a bed set she liked and then the rest was up to us. Jessi gave a lot of good advice and was a lot of help...from a distance. She had whooping cough and I wouldn't let her inside our house. With Emma's asthma, there was no way I was letting her be near the cootie, sick girl. Luckily, when it was time for the girls to come back to our house, Jessi was doing better.



We painted her wood dresser and bookshelf white. Marcus' mom made the throw pillows. Marcus did most of the painting.



Taylor LOVED her room!! Her reaction was the best!! It was a good thing for her I think. She just turned 13, this room is like a fresh start for her teenage years.

I love Taylor's room too!! It turned out so much better than we had hoped. Doing her room has made me want to redo the whole house. Instead, I think I will just clean it. With all the focus on Taylor's room last week, the rest of the house suffered. Let's just say I hope Emma can find her way out of her room in the morning...

Linking up to:

Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda....

Disclaimer:
The following post is not to gain sympathy or encourage anyone to build my self esteem. I have my issues and I have a blog; this is where I air my issues. I'm not fishing for compliments...
Yes, unfortunately for certain people I have to have this kind of disclaimer. Everyone is entitled to a pity party ever now and then. Today it's my turn.

Anyway, on to my point..

I have always struggled with self esteem and self image issues. It's not anything I can blame on anyone else; not my parents, not my siblings, not my friends...it's just me. I was loved and praised as a child growing up and was always told how smart and wonderful and blah blah blah I was. I won't be on a shrink's couch anytime soon blaming my parents for my low self esteem and poor self image issues. I have always been a perfectionist and HATE to make mistakes or do anything wrong. If something doesn't come naturally to me, I quit. Bad habit, yes, I know.

I have never been happy with the way I look or with my body. Even before I got pregnant, gained 70 pounds and lost MOST of that, I was never happy with my body. I have been a size 5 before family life took over. Even then I wasn't thin enough. I have issues. You can get lost in my many chins. I have big cankles. (hence the blog name.) I am a shy, reserved person because I am too worried about looking like an idiot. I am so stinkin' self conscious of every little thing I do.

For example:

For those who are friends with me on Facebook know that I just did a photo shoot for an online clothing company.

They were having a contest for models for their new Spring line. All you had to was send in a picture of yourself and they would choose a handful of girls to model their new clothes. I was chosen to be one of the models!! I was so excited. I got to go to Park City, to a 4.25 MILLION DOLLAR mansion (it was HUGE!!) and model their Spring line. I was so excited to have this opportunity to feel like a model and try something I had never done before.

Only now...I completely regret it.
(No, I didn't pose nude and now regret the pictures. :) Geeze, people.)

The company is slowly releasing pictures here and there on their website and Facebook. I am in hardly any. I know, I sound like a spoiled brat and a baby. But my self esteem took a HUGE dip after the photo shoot. It has affected me more than I ever thought it would.


(They used a picture of me, but cut off my head so you can only see my chest!!!...I didn't know my face was that bad!) Okay, I'm only kidding about this part. They are showing off the flowers on this cardigan, I know that.

So of course I'm thinking they didn't use any of me because I was the biggest girl there...and I really was. I wasn't even in double digit sizes, but I was still the largest girl there. I thought the other girls were all prettier than me. Or I only won the contest because they felt sorry for me. And on and on and on. I felt like I was back in junior high. I didn't feel like I fit in and didn't know where I belonged.


I have now realized that it IS completely my fault that my pictures weren't used. But, it's not because of how big my thighs looked or the fact that I was having a bad hair day. I didn't LET myself have fun. I didn't let myself relax enough in front of the camera to get pictures that didn't look so stiff. I was too worried about looking dumb.

If I could go back and do it over again, I would do a lot of things differently. Relax. Have Fun. Smile. Be Silly. I need to apply that to all of my life, not just the photo shoot. I need to stop taking myself so seriously and be okay with making mistakes and doing stupid things.

I don't know how to build my self esteem now. I am in my 30's. I should be comfortable with who I am and like the person that I have become. I should love my body, imperfections and all. But I'm not and I don't. How do you conquer your fears of rejection and not being good enough? How do you start to love the person you are?


I don't completely regret finding the clothing company. I LOVE the clothes they have. They are affordable and modest, two things that are hard to find. Marcus may regret me finding them when we have a little extra money to throw around though...

I will continue to be involved with photography...I will just stay on the other end of the camera. I will continue to try to learn how to deal with my imperfections and insecurities. I will continue to hate my cankles...always have, always will. They aren't going anywhere. :)

Another disclaimer:
By no means am I talking bad about Impel Clothing or the other models there. They were all so awesome. Go check out Impel Clothing. They offer way cute stuff!

Friday Confessional: Free Therapy...

Time for Friday Confessional again. I really love these kind of posts; I get to write down a bunch of random thoughts and feelings and not worry about trying to make sense of it. So here we go. Hold on, it's gonna be a wild ride.

I confess:

I'm exhausted.
Not the "I've just ran 13 miles" exhausted.
Not the "I stayed up too late and got up too early" exhausted.
Not even the "I haven't had my daily Diet Coke" exhausted.
I'm the kind of exhausted that comes from trying to hard: trying to be someone I'm not. Trying to please everyone and feeling like I am letting everyone down instead. Trying to figure things and just ending up more lost than before.

I'm stuck in a rut and can't seem to find my way out. Every so often I think, "Today is the first day of the rest of my life. Today is going to be the day that things change." Without fail, that exact day turns out to be an icky kind of day. So I end up gorging myself on cheeseburgers, french fries and cookies. I feel better for about five minutes and then feel guilty for eating my weight in nasty, greasy food.

The kind of exhausted that comes from moving but not going anywhere.

I confess:

I find myself living vicariously through a handful of blogs I read. They are the kind of blogs that only talk about rainbows and butterflies, never the storms before the rainbow. They have the perfect families, spotless houses and amazing friends. They are the perfect moms who sew, bake, cook and craft like Martha freaking Stewart. They are the opposite of me, maybe that's why I enjoy reading them so much. I used to have a spotless house. Everything had it's place and everything made sense. Only homemade cookies if we were to make cookies. Twice in the past week we have made cookies; they just had to be put on a cookie sheet and put into the oven. No cutting out or frosting required. Did the kids care? No. Did I care? You bet your sweet booty I did. Next time we make cookies, I'm sure they will all ready be cut out and ready to go. I can't even access my craft room at the moment. My Valentine's decorations are still in the garage. I have good intentions of getting stuff done, but that's about how far I get these days.

I confess:

I hate how I can write really good blog posts in my head while I am driving down the freeway. Then I get home and I try to write a post, and I sound like I am in fifth grade trying to write a complete sentence. Grrrr...it's annoying. I have lots of good ideas for posts, but I never get to writing them down.

I confess:

I am too lazy to walk up to bed. I am now on my third episode of The Nanny on Nick at Nite. I love The Nanny. It cracks me up.

I confess:

My three year old is OBSESSED with Justin Bieber. I mean completely and totally head over heals in love with his boy. She is three. I think she is gonna need therapy soon. She listens to his CD non-stop. She has to have it on to go to sleep at night. She takes it with us in car. She will lay in her room and listen to it for hours. She has this white tiger that is bigger than she is. She has decided that he is Justin Bieber. He also goes everywhere with us. My mom, bless her heart, bought Emma a Justin Bieber t-shirt. She would wear it all the time if I let her. She says she is going to marry him in the temple. If you say anything bad about him, she gets honestly upset. It started out as cute, but now it's a little extreme. Come on, she's three. I fear what she is going to be like when she is 13.

I confess:

Today is the one year anniversary of my surgery. Medically speaking (regarding the kidney anyway) it is safe to get pregnant now. Now I just need to convince the husband. Realistically we can not afford adoption, like ever again. Unless we win the lottery. Or come across some rich uncle that leaves us a small fortune. I feel like someone is missing from our family. There is room in my heart for another baby. But I don't think my patience has anymore room at the moment. Maybe someday...

Pepe, the wonderful man who received my kidney, is doing wonderful. I received a very nice card from him in the mail today. His medication has been cut in half and he says he has a new lease on life. I love that I was able to make someone's life better.

All right, now that the fourth episode of The Nanny is starting, I think it's my bedtime. So go check out the rest of the Friday Confessionals and link up. It's refreshing, like a free mini therapy session.