Archives for March 2015

Nursery Progress?

March 19, 2015 By amusingmjblog 3 Comments

I feel like after my post last week about project ADD I have been able to get a few things done and some progress on others, one of which is really making some progress on the Nursery. Although it isn’t super apparent if you look at the nursery, it has come a long way and my vision for it has definitely been cemented a bit! (If you missed my original inspiration board, catch it here). Last time I really showed you the nursery it looked like this, which looks absolutely NOTHING like my inspiration board:

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Well, after having the painter’s come, buying new curtains (these from Pottery Barn in White with the blackout liner–scored with a gift card), a new rug (this guy from Dash and Albert) and moving the dresser I found in Waco last fall into the room, here’s where we are at now:

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Two things kick started my motivation, first, my mom was at Nebraska Furniture Mart and they had a bunch of super cute coral accent pieces/lamps/decor, so she and I were texting back and forth and I was telling her which ones to buy for the nursery! They are still in Kansas (NFM hasn’t opened here in Texas yet), but I can’t wait to get them in the room to see!

The other thing that kickstarted my progress was reading a blog post from one of the bloggers I follow about where she buys fun fabric and she mentioned Fabric.com. Well… I’d never actually ventured into online fabric shopping, and my bank account would probably prefer I had never started!! See here’s the thing… I learned from the best (ahem… my grandmother) that when you find great fabric or buy fabric for a project, you always buy an extra yard… or two. You would always prefer to have extra rather than not enough! (and this is how I ended up with a whole closet of fabric!) And why my mother tagged me in this photo on facebook with a line about how the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree: (original image from FaveQuilts)

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Well, 7 fabrics later, I had gotten free shipping and a plethora of coral fabrics to build the nursery around (and a few extras just for good measure)!! You can see one of them in the photo above. I think that I’m going to try to make a valance box for the curtains out of it, here is a close up along with a couple of prints have found to hang on the wall.

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The other super cute fabric that I found is this dandelion fabric:

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I actually bought it in both white with coral and coral with white. Mostly I thought I would frame the fabric or make pillows or something out of it, but when I got it I realized (under facetime consultation with my mom and grandmother) that the white with coral would be PERFECT for the chair cushions I need to make for the rocking chair. The other coral with white fabrics competed too much with the coral of the valance fabric.

I also spent some time last weekend getting everything out of the nursery that doesn’t belong. We used this as a staging room for a while after the room, so it had a lot of random items that needed to find homes. So now that has happened, baby girl has a closet to fill:

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Although thanks to some generous friends and family she already has a few hand-me-down baby items, a few super cute outfits, and an impressive board book library! The books will eventually move to a changing table/bookshelf that I’m going to build (from these plans at Ana-White).

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So here’s what is left on the nursery to do list:

finish painting the crib (we’ve started one side, but need to flip over and finish the other)
make the box valance for the window
build and paint the changing table
sew cushions for the rocking chair
Frame and hang photos
figure out some organization for the closet
find a fun light fixture

It has come a long way, but has a long way to go… and only 3 months until this baby is due, we better get on it!

Filed Under: Nursery

Bump Recap Week 24

March 17, 2015 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

First of all, Happy St. Patrick’s Day to everyone! Secondly I have added another link to the bar above that will take you to all of the weekly pregnancy updates in case you missed one and want to catch up!

It also has a picture of all the photos in one place so that you can see side by side comparisons of how large the bump has gotten! Its crazy for me to see how much it has changed week to week!

week24 Baby’s Size: Baby Girl is the size of a Rutabega. And since that is definitely not a vegetable I am all that familiar with, lets go with she is about a pound and a half and 9ish inches long.

Baby’s Progress: She is gaining a little bit of fat this week (haha… aren’t we all). These next three weeks should also mark her most active phase since she has plenty of room to do somersaults but is also big enough to move around quite a bit!

Weight Gain: I gained 2 lbs this week, so it sounds like all that ice cream eating is catching up. My doctor’s goal is for me to gain a total of about 20 lbs for this whole pregnancy, so for those of you keeping track I should be gaining about 1lb each week for the rest of the pregnancy. Mostly at this point I’m just trying to eat good for me food and not just fast food and ice cream. That works about 50% of the time.

Sleep: Sleep is definitely trickier these days. All the books say that your urge to have to pee all the time subsides in the second trimester and returns in the 3rd, and if this is the subsided version of that urge my third trimester promises to have lots of trips to the potty in the middle of the night.

Milestones: We took our ‘prepared childbirth’ class at the hospital this week. And they definitely don’t censor any of those videos. Suffice it to say we now have a mental picture for what birth will look like… whether we really wanted it or not. I am glad we took the class, it was helpful to hear about what the hospital’s policies are on most things and get tours of where we will be delivering. Our hospital is the highest level of NICU in our county (and I think in Dallas besides Children’s Hospital), which hopefully we won’t have to take advantage of, but is nice to know it is there. We also will have our own room for Labor and Delivery and another one for Postpartum. It is now starting to sync in that in just over 3 months (if all goes according to plan… and we know how that goes) this little girl will be making her appearance!

Although my favorite time of the class was the 30 minutes where the instructor had the dad’s do chair massages to learn how to be helpful, so I got a pretty great back massage from the husband!

Favorite clothing item of the week: I bought this gingham shirt from Gap maternity when I had a coupon for 40% off and I love it! It’s actually a pretty thick material so I don’t know how practical it will be for summer, but it looks super cute and I have a feeling it will make it into my post baby wardrobe rotation. (It definitely covers the bump but doesn’t look extremely ‘maternity’)

Symptoms: I’ve had some pretty rocking headaches this week, but those aren’t out of the ordinary for me this time of year (especially with all the crazy weather changes) and sitting in a chair for long periods of time is definitely harder, so i’m having to remember to get up and walk around a bit so that my feet don’t swell and my back doesn’t hurt.

Workout: I’ve kept up walking outside when it is nice, and now that the temperature is above 40 degrees I’m going back to my Camp Gladiator class. I am actually pleasantly surprised by how much I am able to do in the class without getting uncomfortable or doing something I shouldn’t be doing this late in pregnancy (i.e. I don’t do sit-ups or any laying down ab exercises, and while everyone else gets to do squat jumps I keep both feet firmly on the ground). But I do feel more energy after working out and am glad I can still keep that up. My doctor is a huge fan of working out as late as is comfortable in the pregnancy, but I do check in with her at every appointment to ask if its still okay!

Filed Under: Pregnancy