Friday, June 22, 2012

The Nursery

Nursery's are so fun. Seriously. Just funness all around. I was really excited to be able to do this nursery before our little guy arrived. I had bought a boy nursery set when I was pregnant with Macy because it was on hardcore clearance and it matched a boy cross-stitch that I had made. It had been sitting in the back of the closet in Macy's room for almost 3 years now. I had the bedding and the room ready to decorate for a boy but for some reason I just couldn't bring myself to get started on the room. It took me forever to decide what color I wanted to paint it, and even then I really wasn't excited and kept putting it off. 

On Pinterest I found a bunch of grey and yellow nursery's that I fell in love with and the sadder I got that I had bought that bedding set. I've turned into a pretty frugal person and I couldn't stand the thought of spending money on this bedding and not using it. I finally decided that it just didn't matter. I got the bedding 4 years ago and I just didn't love it anymore, things change.

 I told my mom my plans of a grey and yellow nursery and she took it and ran with it. There was a week that she could come before they (Mom, Dad, Kyle, Chris, and Uncle Gary) all went on the Race Across America that she could come help me set up the nursery so we started making plans to do it. Some friends had a baby shower planned for that Saturday so we figured we'd just have a "get ready for baby" weekend and jam a bunch of stuff out. I had about 2 weeks to get the room ready for my mom to come with all the fabric to make the bedding so Kyle and I hit the ground running... at that point we only had 10 weeks till my due date! 

This is the room before we started. We had already moved things away from the walls but luckily I remember the "before" pictures before we did too much.




THE WALLS- This room has been the "don't know what to do with this so toss it in there" room since we moved in. The girls sleep in the bedroom at the end of the hall, it's bigger and the door is right across from our room and I wanted to keep them in there, so decided baby boy would just be a little down the hall. The walls were still white from the investor that fixed the house up so it was a pretty blank slate. I picked a grey from our local hardware store and hoped that it would match the fabric that my Mom got. Macy walked in while I was washing the walls (lots of dust from not being used) and helped me. Sweet girl. 


I got this painted in a day, started early and ended late. I LOVE the color. Love love love.

THE CRIB- We were lucky enough to be given a crib when we had Macy, but it was definitely used and the paint was started to chip off. I really wanted a new crib, but decided it would be cheaper to just sand it down and repaint it instead. It took Kyle all week to do the crib, it's a lot of sanding! I'm happy with the way it turned out though. It used to be a drop side crib and Kyle figured out how to turn around some of the drop down mechanisms so it stays in place now. The bedding is all props to my Mom. She really did a fabulous job and we worked out butts off. She looked at some tutorials before she came, but for the most part we just winged it.

 Originally she was supposed to come up on that Wednesday and help with the nursery but only half of the fabric that she ordered came in. The next half of fabric didn't come in until mid-afternoon on Thursday. Our "week" had turned into 4 days, and then turned into 2. We had Thursday night, Friday, and 1/2 of Saturday to complete the nursery. 

Thursday night we started the bumper. We basically just did a big pillow case for the girls bumper and just slid the boy one on. I say "slid" like it was easy, it's not, at all. We accidentally made it too short at first so we had to undo seams to make it the right length in the right spots. Long story short, it wasn't easy! :) but I think it turned out AMAZING. The inside of the bumper is grey corduroy on the longer sides and then a super cute fabric with giraffes on the smaller sides.  The sheets turned out awesome, we made one with big white polka dots and one with small white polka dots, the one in the picture is the bigger dots. The dust ruffle also had a little accident. We accidentally made the part that goes under the mattress too small so we had to redo that. It doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but we only had a certain amount of fabric to work with and if we messed up again we were going to have to go to Walmart (30 minutes away) which would take time out of our already crunched schedule. Anyway, we had enough fabric to add to it and it turned out just perfect. We used the stripes for the most part and even though you can't see it, in the pleat is the giraffe fabric.  



 THE DRESSER- My original thought was to paint the whole dresser white with the stripes. Kyle sanded it all down and put some primer on it and I decided I loved the way it looked just like that. It looked more white washed then solid white, and with the crib and changing table being solid white I think it's more visually pleasing since it's a little different. I put some grey stripes on the front and we got some new hardware. The original color of grey I got was WAY too light, you almost couldn't tell between the white and the grey. I added some black acrylic paint I had and got this color. Hopefully I never have to touch it up because I'll never get that exact color again. The lamp on the dresser is actually my Great-Grandma Bochat's that was given to me by my mom. It used to be just plain wood color that I painted black a while ago. It used to be in my living room but the dresser needed something on it and this was perfect for it. The lampshade used to be white and we covered it with the polka dot. The box on the dresser was a gift from my mom,  each of my girls have a hat box like it that I keep their baby book, coming home outfit, blessing dress, and other odd and end baby keepsakes- so now baby boy has one. It won't stay there, but it was there from my Baby Shower.



THE CURTAINS- This is a fairly long window that had a super ugly vertical blinds covering it. My budget was fairly small for this nursery so I just got the same cheap mini-blinds that are in the girls room (I like that they match now from the outside of our house) but it's amazing how much cleaner it looks with simple new blinds. We tied in the bumper, dust ruffle, and sheets all the the curtains. The top is the small polka dots, the middle is the same fabric as the dust ruffle, and the bottom is the giraffe fabric. We added some huge ric-rac in between the two bottom panels to add a little something to it, and I love how they turned out.




THE MOBILE- My original plan was redoing the fabric on the girls mobile that hooks onto the crib and making little birdies to hang from it. That way there was still the moving parts and it would still play music.... then I found something I loved on Pinterest. My mom didn't find out my plans changed until she got here and I said "ya... I don't think I wanna do that anymore..." :) I think it turned out amazing. I love to turn on the fan and watch it wave. We already have a music thing that hangs on the side of the crib so I didn't think the moving mobile really mattered. You might have to zoom into the picture to notice but on some places instead of using circles we used animals. There are a couple whales, elephants, and giraffes.


THE CHANGING TABLE- Our changing table was given to us along with our crib and the paint wasn't chipping so all we needed to do was given it a good little wash down. My mom found these baskets at Alco for like $0.50 last time she was down here and they fit perfectly in the changing table and matched the girl bedding really well, you can see them in the "before pictures" in the changing table. We had enough corduroy left over from the bumper that my mom made the baskets new liners. I also didn't have a changing pad sheet to match the bedding, so she made one of those too. Told you, she's amazing. 


WALL ART: I found the embroidery hoop art work idea on pinterest. My mom carted her silhouette up here and that's how we got the elephant and giraffe from the fabric. We still need a couple more to finish it up but I still think it looks great.


After reading all this remember.. we did this in 2 DAYS. We got started around 8am and went to bed around 10pm, working the entire time. I have a couple shelves I still want to put up, art work, and some knick knacks to finish it off, but I'm super duper happy with the way it all turned out.



Blue's Clues

London gets up right around 5:30 every morning. She comes into our bedroom, gets as close to my face as possible, and says "ungie.. ungie" (hungry, hungry) and if I don't get up in 2 seconds (literally) she starts crying and yells "UNGIE, UNGIE!" We have to immediately go to the kitchen, get a sippy cup, and get oatmeal cooked. She goes into the living room, drags out the bean bag chair, plops down, and waits for me to turn on Blue's Clues. It's a favorite around these parts and we all watch A LOT of Blue's Clues.

One day I was trying to get stuff cleaned and Kyle was on kid duty. I heard them in the other room and they were playing blues clues, going around the house and finding "clues" and drawing them in a little notebook. There wasn't any real rhyme or reason to their clues and they were just drawing pictures. It was about nap time so Kyle and I decided to make a real Blue's Clues game out of it. I kind of felt like it would be mean for the first guessing to be "Blue wants you to take a nap!" so we did a different one first instead. I cut out some paw prints, sent Macy and London into a room to count to 20, put the paw prints around the house, and let the girls play.

The first clue was Barkley....

 She wanted some help in drawing him.

The second clue was a dog bowl...
  the third clue was dog food...
 They sat down in the "thinking chair" and Macy guessed in about 3 seconds that Blue wanted them to feed the dogs! 
 So she did...
 In the next game the first clue was her blankie...
 the second clue was her bed...
 and the third clue was her music.

She guessed that one right away too, but then when we said "okay, now we need to do what Blue wants us to do" we got a definite "this was such a set up" look from her. They had a lot of fun with finding the clues around the house, I kept the paw prints and we will for sure we playing Blue's Clues again.

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Stitches

Well, I think we have officially been broken in as parents. We did the broken leg thing and now we've got stitches under our belt.

On May 6th we were at Kyle's Mom's house for Sunday dinner- I was heading to the bathroom and London wanted to follow me. I was only going to be a minute so I just shut the door behind me and figured she could just wait for me. Once I shut the door I heard her scream, not a "Mom just left me in the hall" scream but the I'm really hurt scream. I opened the door and London just fell to the ground grabbing her finger. She had gotten it pinched in the door on the hinge side. I figured she had got her finger in the door, but didn't realize how bad until I picked her up and there was blood all over her hand and my shirt. I yelled for Kyle, swept her into the bathroom and put a massive amount of paper towels around her fingers. She was wailing all over the place so Kyle and I were both trying to look at her finger to access the damage but it was kind of difficult. Kyle finally got a look and immediately said "We gotta go to the ER." We hopped in the van and off we went. I had to hold onto London's finger/paper towel wrap or it would bleed everywhere so London just sat on my lap the way there. I think her defense mechanisms kicked in and she fell asleep on the way to the hospital. We go to Show Low to Summit Healthcare, so it's about an hour away and I think she pretty much slept the whole way there. I still hadn't seen her finger, so when I knew she was good and asleep I slowly lifted up the paper towel and immediately felt sick to my stomach, it was pretty gross and I felt so bad for her. We were definitely a sight walking into the waiting room with Kyle holding London and me holding her finger with blood all over my shirt. Once they got us checked in I ran to the bathroom (pregnant woman needed to pee over an hour and I had unborn child on my bladder and London on my lap, ya- I really had to go) and they called her in while I was still in the bathroom, so it was pretty quick that they took us back. 

London didn't like the nurses touching her one bit but we eventually got the bleeding to stop and were able to get an x-ray to make sure nothing was broken. I never actually saw her finger at the hospital, it was too gruesome for me and made me sick if I even thought about looking at it, but Kyle got a pretty good picture pre-stitches.


They did the stitches while Kyle was holding her down with help from a nurse. I couldn't stay in the room, made me sick, and it was awful hearing her scream while they did the stitches.  People kept poking their heads out of the rooms to see who was torching the poor girl and a nurse even came up and asked me if I needed anything, apparently I looked a little stressed. After they were done I went back into the room and picked her up, poor girl was exhausted and cuddled right in.
 After Macy broke her leg we had to go to Walmart to get some pain meds and a toy, so we did the same for London. She is in LOVE with baby dolls and Walmart had a super cheap and super cute baby doll just for her.  While we were waiting for the stitches and x-ray she kept asking for a "ink" (drink) and "ungy" (hungry) but the nurses told us no in case she needed surgery, so when we got to Walmart we got her a drink and some teddy grahams too. You would have never thought that 30 minutes ago she was screaming bloody murder. 
 She got a total of 4 stitches and the doctor said he probably could have done another one but decided she'd had enough. It healed up really well and just a few days later she wasn't babying it or anything. It was definitely an adventure. Since everyone tells me it's worse with boys, I guess our girls are just breakin' us in.


Saturday, June 2, 2012

Let's Go Fly A Kite...

For Memorial Day weekend we went CAMPING. It was very fun, and very relaxing. We met up with my Grandparents, Steph & David, Amber, Mom & Dad, Derek, and Chris & Kati and their kids. There was a lot of chillin' around the non-existant campfire (fire restrictions), good food, and card games. Sadly I don't have any pictures, but it was very fun. While we were there Aunt Steph gave all the kids kites, which they loved. Luckily we live in windy Holbrook and finding a good time to fly it didn't take very long. The girls loved their kites and they could seriously just walk and the kite would pick up and fly. They loved their kites, Thank You Aunt Steph!