Nursery Time!

I'll start our tour by saying that we LOVE this room. I always hear people say that the nursery is one of their favorite rooms in the house, and I think that is the case for us as well. So much hard work and joyful preparation went into creating this space. I have to say it actually turned out how I envisioned--something I've probably never actually achieved in a decorating endeavor. It is so warm and cozy but also bright and sunny. Peaceful and relaxing and yet fun and energetic. Perfect for mommy and daddy to enjoy and hopefully for baby as well!

A disclaimer: I know there are a lot of flowers in this room. I know, I know. When creating a gender neutral room, we chose gender neutral colors, and then of course I gravitate less towards geometric fabrics and more towards warm and cozy florals. If we have a boy, we will boy-up the room a little, and same thing with a girl--we will add some pink somewhere!

I guess the easiest way to show you will be through pictures, so here goes...

View from the door. This is the view I see every time I pass by the room. I'm so glad that we chose to put the tree here so we can see it all the time! Thanks Susan so much for painting this tree--it turned out just how I wanted!
You can see the crib bedding and curtains that I may have showed you in a previous post.

Moving towards the left. Here is our $200 Walmart chair and ottoman. We were looking for the perfect chair for the nursery and couldn't find anything that was quite right. I was seriously ABOUT to click on a final order for a $600 chair and ottoman when I decided to search the internet one more time, and came across this chair. I liked the look of it a whole lot better than any other one I had seen (besides the perfect $1000 Pottery Barn variety of course), but was a bit worried about the quality being from Walmart. It definitely is not as comfortable as some more expensive chairs might be, but for the money, and with the addition of this , we actually think it works pretty well!  You know how I love me a bargain...

Continuing left-ward. There is the "green" cabinet that is now gray. Susan painted this dandelion motif which looks great. The bookshelf is slowly being filled up :) Wouldn't be my child's nursery without a bookshelf.  Mostly it contains my old childhood books, including my entire Berenstein Bears collection that Mom just mailed us!
Cute little bouncy seat is from Mom. Elephant lamp is from Marshall's. Sunflower painting is also by Susan. Excited to use that sound machine on top of the bookcase. The frame with the ultrasound picture is not of our baby.

And we continue moving left. This is the corner across from the crib corner. Love this sweet little cradle/swing.

View of the changing table all ready for some changin! Do you like the hardware on the dresser? We think the lantern cluster is a nice touch and a nice way to add some light. On the shelf are some Ikea white vases from Kate, a white ceramic bird (random), 2 white ceramic elephants from our neighbor's garage sale, and an angel figurine that Jon and I got in Cabo when Baby B was only 20 weeks old. The baby pics of Jon will probably not stay there--I'll give them back to Betsy when she comes to visit! :)
To the left of the shelf there's a little framed-fabric collage. In decorating this nursery I developed a new love--for fabric. You can just do so much with it! So I decided to incorporate several of the fabrics used in the nursery into this element.

Close up of above the swing. These 2 cross-stitches (sp?) hung in my nursery and bedroom as a kid. We framed them and now they are a little piece of my childhood passed on to Baby B! The poem in the lower frame was written by my Gramps. Good for Baby B to have a little piece of Gramps here too!

Another view of the crib/tree corner. Don't you just love that tree?
And I made that pillow cover--my very first attempt at a zipper. I showed you the boppy zipper in the previous post because the zipper on this pillow case was not quite as pretty. But it works and I love this pattern and the touch of turquoise it brings!

Another one of my favorite parts of the room--the closet panels. I had originally measured the closet panels to basically cover the closet opening exactly, which was a mistake because that means you have to have them just right to cover the whole closet. I didn't have enough fabric to remake them, so I improvised and sewed scraps together to make a patchworky look and we like it better now!

 So there it is! Our sweet little nursery. There's still lots we could do, like add things on the walls. I'm sure Baby B will accumulate lots of personal touches that will continue to make this space special. Little one, don't you want to come out so you can see your very own house and very own room???? 

39 weeks tomorrow--I can't believe it. I'll let you know how the visit goes. Better yet, maybe our next post will be a picture of Baby!!!! A girl can hope.

Advancements in my sewing career

Hello folks,
Well, no babies coming out of me just yet, which means I have to find something else interesting to post about. Thought you might like to know some of the projects I've been up to the past few months...

I'm in the works of putting together a post about the whole nursery, which I will post tomorrow. Mom flies in tomorrow and I want her to see the nursery for herself not on the blog hehe.

In the meantime, I thought I would show off a new sewing skill that I am particularly proud of and has truly opened doors for the possibilities of crafting!!!!!

Ladies and gentleman, I have learned how to sew a zipper!

Ta-da! Do you see that right there? That is a custom made boppy cover complete with a working zipper. Now, before you think that my pride is getting the best of me, please let me explain that sewing a zipper is actually quite easy and I am embarrassed that I have not attempted it before but instead resorted to things like hot gluing the unfinished edges of my pillow cases. Zippers are the way to go--cheap, easy, and quick, not to mention nice looking and quite functional!

I'm thinking if this PA thing doesn't workout, I could be a professional boppy-cover maker. What do you think?

So there you have a little sneak preview of the nursery--more to come tomorrow! Get excited! 

It's beginning to look a lot like...

A Nursery!!!!

Yesterday we had the chance to do some fun nursery odds and ends and ended up putting together the crib, hanging the curtains, buying a cute lamp, and arranging some of the furniture how we think it might go once the room is finished. And we cleaned up about half of the construction site mess so it looks more like a room in general. It looks SO great!!! I get giddy every time I go in (and I walk in there frequently!). Even Jon had a little taste of the giddiness. I wanted to wait until the nursery was all the way done to post pictures but maybe when I get home from work this evening I will post one or 2 to give you a little taste :) MAYBE

Jon competed in the Colorado Chess Championships this weekend and it was a great tournament. I don't know if he will post about it or not but I will leave it at that in case he wants to give you details. We might travel up to Wyoming for a long weekend this summer so he can compete in a regional tournament and Baby B can go to his/her first tournament outside the womb.

Last night was class #2 of our birthing class series. We first had to fill out a "belly map" to see if we can tell where our baby is positioned. I cannot tell. This child moves ALL OVER. We also covered the phases of early labor. A little overwhelming I admit but it is good to be informed. I am trusting that Jon and my mom will be the ones in charge of "knowing" what is happening and I can just focus on relaxing and concentrating on the contractions! Jon is going to be so great through all of this I can already tell.

Other exciting news of the weekend:
-We are getting an IKEA in Denver! Coming this Fall. I know this is silly news but seriously I was ecstatic when I found out!!! Tons of awesome inexpensive house and baby stuff right down the road. oh yesssss.....

-Some more legitimately exciting news... Elizabeth (Jon's sister) is engaged!!! She told me while I was at the chess tournament (which are very quiet settings) and I literally had to run outside to the street so I could jump and scream! We are so so happy for her and Ben. I feel so honored to get to be her Matron of Honor and they asked Jon to officiate their wedding which is so so special to him. We are thrilled to get to know them more through doing their premarital counseling and thrilled to welcome Ben into the family!



**Update**
Ok ok, i can't resist showing you a little peek of the nursery... enjoy!!

Pregnancy brain

Sigh.... I need to take a break from my current project for a second. I'm sewing fabric panels to cover the closet in the baby's room. Probably the easiest sewing project I have undertaken so far. And I just spent 15 minutes ripping out a seam along a 6 foot panel because I sewed the pieces together backwards. Thanks Mom for buying me a seam ripper for my birthday last year when I got my sewing machine.

Pregnancy brain is for real.

I find myself dropping things on a regular basis. At work I will be putting something on my desk as I run past it in between patients and it will turn out the desk is a good 6 inches away from where I actually thought it was. Whatever object was heading towards it will clatter to the floor. Luckily most things made for pediatrics are sturdy. I have dropped my $400 otoscope several times these past few months. I also drop dishes all the time while washing them. They splash into the sink and spray me with water.

The other day I was drinking a glass of milk and somehow forgot to tilt the glass back upright before bringing it away from my mouth. I got a lot of milk on my lap.

So this sewing project is just another example of my life as I know it now. But can I just say that I try to compensate for what I know is a decrease in mental function--and that I even double checked the fabric before I sewed it and I still did it wrong...

Dear little baby in my belly, I love you so much. I love having you inside me. But remember how Daddy and I have been talking to you about how great it will be if you come out of my belly early? Well, I just wanted to remind you of those chats. We are so excited to meet you and get to hold you and kiss you and the sooner the better! And also, Mommy really needs her brain back so the sooner you come out the sooner that will happen! Please remember to leave behind any of her arithmetic skills, memory, sentence-forming ability, and brain processing speed when you do decide to come out. You are kicking me right now so hopefully that means you understand! Wait, is that laughter I hear from my belly... ?


{Hopefully at this moment I am taking on the bulk of the stupidity available to our family because Jon needs the brain power more than I do--RIGHT NOW he is in the middle of defending his orals paper! I am so so proud of him. This will be basically the culmination of his entire seminary experience. He has worked so hard and learned so much!!}

Our Weekend

As mentioned in the last post, Jon and I had a check-things-off-the-list kind of weekend. This is a big accomplishment for us, since often the option of lay-in-bed-and-watch-movies trumps check-things-off-the-list. Here is the story of our productive weekend...

Our good friend Barton joined Jon bright and early to start on the windows. We have 4 windows that we need to replace (2 in the dining room and 2 in the nursery) and basically had no idea how to get the windows out before starting. Once they figured it out, I think the boys had fun breaking glass and sawing through the metal frame and banging the window out. It turns out they had to cut the drywall on the sides of the windows to get them out. See that big whole in the wall on the side of the window? Yep, that's still there. The "Making Things Look Pretty Phase" will come later, I'm told.

  

Carl joined us later on for taking out window #2. I hope you can tell from this picture what a messy process this was... Our lovely dining room table doubled nicely as a work bench. And there is still a fine layer of dust covering half our kitchen and living room to remind us of the work that was done here. Doesn't that new window on the left look nice???

 

This is the nursery, which functioned as the holding chamber for the windows waiting to be installed.

Here is my handsome handy-man hubby working on taking the first window out of the nursery. AND here's a little shout out to the college roomies--recognize that big cabinet??? Last weekend it got painted gray and is no longer the big GREEN cabinet but now the big GRAY cabinet (although we still refer to it as The Green Cabinet). We will paint some kind of yellow sunflower motif on it and use it in the baby's room. Who would have thought that big clunky green cabinet would end up being in my baby's nursery! haha

Some instructional technique for ya... They first taped around the edges of the glass panels, and then hammered the edges to free the panel from the window. The tape held most of the glass in place so the shattered pieces didn't go all over... theoretically. Pretty smart huh?

Then once the glass panel is released, they just take it out.

Here was my project for the day--painting the crib. We found the exact crib we wanted on craigslist for a great deal, but it was light yellow. You can see the original color here. Pretty cute actually, but not the same yellow as we are using throughout the room, so it had to be painted. Luckily it was a beautiful day to be outside painting! Yes I used a mask while spray painting (although this poor child probably still got her fair share of inhaled fumes...oops!). I love how it turned out with the white--it will look PERFECT in the room!

Here is my project pile that got thrown into the sunroom because the guys needed the dining room for the windows. Yikes. You can see a few of the fabrics we are using. There are a couple panels of the bumper that are finished underneath all that fabric... the bumper has proven to be a looong task, but it is turning out really good. In the background see those little turquoise rings hanging from the white fabric? This was a result of a suggestion from my fabulous artsy designy sister--who suggested adding something turquoise to the gray and yellow curtains to bring all the colors together. So I decided to paint the curtain rings turquoise. She is brilliant!

So hope you are impressed by our weekend! Well, only be mildly impressed, because we still have one window to take out/put in and LOTS of clean up. And of course that pile of fabric is still sitting in the sunroom waiting to be finished. And of course 2 of the crib panels need another coat of paint. BUT PROGRESS WAS MADE! Getting our house ready for Baby B!!!! Love it!!!

Catching up...

This past week was a bit busy with work, school, snow, etc so we forgot to take a 23 week picture. Rest assured, this belly is growing at a mighty pace. We will take one at 24 weeks and post it with our 24 week appointment update.

So, a few ramblings...

--I hope you all loved Jon's post about his chess tournament. :) So proud of my nerdy hubby. It was actually kind of fun... if "fun" is the right word... to be there for the tournament. I started reading "The Immortal Game" by David Shenk, which is the book that initially spawned Jon's more serious pursuit of the game. The book is actually very interesting and it is helping me to become more familiar with chess. Jon and I both realize that chess will never be my kind of game, but it helps to at least know more about it, especially when it is so important to Jon.

--This past week marked a milestone in my pregnancy. The belly-band-paired-with-my-regular-unbuttoned-pants option is no longer on the table. As my mom put it, I finally admitted I am pregnant, and was forced to buy some maternity pants for work. Jon was such a supportive husband about this and took me shopping Wednesday to purchase some VERY comfy work pants from Target. When I got home Tuesday night basically in tears because I felt sick, tired from my drive in the snow, and totally uncomfortable from my clothes, he was like "Why haven't you told me this before??" My new maternity pants give me a much needed attitude boost at work and make the long drives much more comfortable!

--Baby wise, this little one has been moving around a lot these last few weeks! Like I said in our Cabo post, the movement really picked up that week, but then the week after we got home it slowed down a lot. I was wondering if the baby was responding to the cold temps and lower oxygen level here in Colorado, but then those kicks and squirms returned so I know we are not causing brain damage by living at high altitude.  I am so thankful that I have been able to feel this much movement early on. I know it is not unusual to not feel ANY movement for a few more weeks, but we got to feel the position of the baby and some movement as early as 16 weeks I think.

--On that note, aside from the discomforts, and the recent sick bouts that have been returning, I still do love having this little one inside me. I feel more bonded to this baby every day, and feel like I am getting to know him or her as a unique person more and more. I feel like I already have a sense of his/her personality--is that weird?? Or even possible? We are so proud of this little one who is growing so much!! Now the baby weighs a whole pound and is about 1 foot long. That seems SO big to me but then I think about how much bigger he/she will get!!!

--The due date seems to be coming up faster and faster... Nursery planning is underway, albeit slowly due to my indecisiveness and frugality. I am trying to find some furniture on craigslist or antique stores that I can spruce up, and I'm going to order fabric and make the bedding/curtains myself (yikes... I hemmed some pants the other day and they are quite a piece of work. If you come to my house someday please do not look closely at the stitching of said curtains and bedding). I gave myself a deadline that if I don't find what I want on craigslist by the end of February, I will splurge and by new furniture. That seems reasonable.

Here is the main yellow fabric that I like for the nursery, and a gray one that will complement it.

 

I feel like I have spent so much time looking at fabric online I need to just bite the bullet and order it. I am so indecisive. The other night when I was falling asleep I kept seeing fabric patterns every time I closed my eyes. That's got to mean something right? Yep, time to make the decision...

--Man I know I could be more decisive if only my amazing, creative, crafty sister was here to help me! Oh but wait---- She WILL be here soon!!!! (Ok that lead in to this next piece of news didn't quite work, but go with it...) We found out about a week ago that Kate has an architecture internship next summer here in Littleton! She will get to live with us for the summer and get to help us out around the house and get to watch her little niece or nephew grow the first few months of his/her life! We are so excited to have her and Baby Buck is excited too :) What a lucky baby to get to have TWO wonderful aunts close by when he/she enters the world! We are looking forward to a super fun summer :)