Monthly Archives: January 2014

26 Week Update

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Hello everyone! Today we are officially 6 months into the pregnancy – woohoo!

25weeks4days

This was taken last week. Apologies for the iPhone photo, I promise I will post a better one next time although I do love this one.

The most common question I get is, “How are you feeling?” and I’ve been feeling great! I’m not especially exhausted, no headaches, no nausea anymore (knock on wood!) so all is good. I do tend to get out of breath easier when I’m climbing stairs or doing a lot of activity but I can’t complain. This has been such an amazing experience so far and it’s all worth it. I’ve been trying to join CJ at the gym once or twice a week to stay active and, the other days, I’ve been trying to make more of an effort to walk places to get some exercise in (shout out to my fitbit for keeping track of my step count!). I’ve been sleeping really well too but I have a feeling that will change once I’m further along, at least, that’s what I’ve heard from other moms.

In the first trimester, when people would tell me that they loved being pregnant, I would think to myself, “How could you love being nauseas 24/7??!” but now I understand. Everyone has a different experience, but for me, the nausea went away after the first trimester and I really have loved every minute of it since. My favorite part, above everything else, is feeling Baby T kick. It seriously is the coolest thing in the whole world especially when CJ can feel. Every week she gets a little bit stronger and we feel her on the outside more often. Now, once in a while, we can feel some body parts move past an area on my belly! I can’t even explain how cool it is and how happy it makes us. We already love her so much and can’t wait to meet her in a few short months. I definitely know I will miss feeling her kicks.

For my birthday, we went to a 3D/4D ultrasound place and finally got to see her cute little face. It was so fun and the best gift ever! We might be biased but we think she is just absolutely adorable! We also got a cute little teddy bear with a recording of her heartbeat which will be really fun to show her as well as a few other goodies. I highly recommend doing that to anyone who’s expecting a  little one.

As far as how the nursery is coming along – we are slowly making progress. We got rid of all of the guest room furniture – we sold the bed and the nightstand to our friend and brought the dresser to my parent’s cabin in Arnold. We’re glad the furniture will be put to good use because they still have many years left in their lives. CJ painted a second coat of the wall color since we only did one coat when we first moved in and our uneven wall surface definitely needed a second coat to get all the spots we missed. Now, we’re working on getting the furniture and goodies to fill up the room. We’ve decided that we’re not going to reveal the room to anyone (other than ourselves obviously) until Baby T arrives. We thought it would be nice to keep that a surprise along with her name. So, no photo updates will be posted on the blog or shared with anyone until after her arrival. We are really excited for what we have planned for the nursery and are excited to share the final result once she’s here.

People are definitely noticing that I’m pregnant now when we’re out and about which is fun. I do get a little shy when people start asking questions because I’m not used to the attention but I still enjoy it. And luckily, no one has come up to rub my belly uninvited – success! I still think that’s the weirdest thing that people could do that without an invitation but, to each his/her own.

And lastly, I’ve been asked if I’ve had any strange pregnancy cravings – not yet! The only pregnancy craving I’ve had is for clementines. Oh dear those little cuties are so incredibly delicious, I could eat an entire box of them if I had no self-control. Actually, I have to give most of that credit to CJ because he’s been looking out for me and making sure I haven’t been binge eating clementines. Luckily, they are a healthy craving!

Pottery Barn Love

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I dream of having a whole house of Pottery Barn items someday. The store is just so glorious. But, until that dream becomes a reality, my goal is to decorate our house in that style with little sprinkles of Pottery Barn items… at a much lower price.

One area where we’ve done that – the family room. We knew pretty quickly that we wanted some beautiful drapes in the family room that would make the wall with the TV an accent wall and that would also soften up the area. I thought that by adding drapes, it would make the wall less about the monster sized TV and more about the overall feel of the room. We wanted to room to be cozy, inviting, and classic. I mentioned a few months ago that we ordered beautiful drapes from Pottery Barn (with a coupon -thanks Mom!) and were super excited to hang them up.

One of the hardest parts of the whole process was lining up both curtain rods to be at the same height. Since our house is older, our ceilings aren’t exactly level so we weren’t able to just measure from the top of the wall down. We had to carefully go back and forth measuring bottom to top, top to bottom, and any which way to make sure they were even. Then, we used a level to make sure the rods wouldn’t be lopsided. Once we were comfortable with that, we had to screw them in and hang them. We are not big fans of hanging curtain rods and get frustrated every time (not at each other, just at those stupid rods). It’s worth the effort though because they always end up looking wonderful at the end.

Family Room 1

We had a feeling they would be too long after hanging them up and that feeling was confirmed immediately. We kept them hung up for a couple of weeks to decide what length we would prefer. I highly recommend that because you never know until you actually have them hanging in front of you for some time. Once we thought we knew what we wanted, I asked our superstar seamstress (aka my mom) to come over and pin them up. We pinned them shorter, longer, and in between to figure out what we liked best. We decided to have them just kiss the floor so they almost looked like they were puddling on the floor but not long enough that they were full puddles (if that makes sense). The reason for that is, as I mentioned before, our house is old and the walls aren’t all perfectly equal in height. We wanted both drapes to be the same length and feared that one side might end up hovering over the floor while the other side was puddling on the floor. To be safe, we decided to make them a little longer so you would never be able to tell the difference. It worked! They look perfect and you can’t even tell they were hemmed at all. My mom did such an amazing job! I’d explain how she did it but, to me, it’s all magic. I’m not quite sure how she does it so well. 🙂

Family Room 2

Family Room 3

At-Or On Deck

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The new year is here and so are the new projects. So what has CJ been up to you ask? Well, at the end of 2013 my services were requested by Mom-in-law to put together some furniture. The furniture was in about 5 boxes so I moved what I could into the soon-to-be sewing room. We emptied the box that was too heavy to be carried and brought everything inside. After sifting through all the Styrofoam and tape and cardboard, we had about 100 pieces and a few instruction manuals.

After we got started, we hit a road block when we realized that the side of the corner desk was warped and we had to order a new piece. About a week later, we got the piece and finished the corner desk. That weekend, I went back and put together the storage cabinet while Emily cleaned our house, not sure who got the best on that one…but it was finished and looked great.

Which brings us back to the new year. One last piece of furniture remains – the TV console for the other room. We spent a few hours working on it this week and got about 3/4 of that one finished.

So what are we doing at our house you ask? This year, we decided to do Christmas at our house and we (the royal “we” that is) are still working on cleaning up but are now almost finished. Another project that has been sitting in the garage is our Adirondack chairs for the front of the house.

We picked up some supplies to prime last week and I spent some time priming them and my right arm on the 1st of January. They are now all primed and mostly ready for a shiny paint coat and assembly. The table that came with the chairs is another problem. I have gotten myself into a little pickle. While trying to save some time, I primed the table while fully up but now it won’t open up so I can get all the other spaces…and I need to do the top. So it’s looking troublesome. Lesson learned: Take your time.

Priming

Priming Adirondacks

So that’s what we have been up to in the new year! On deck for our projects are picking a color (white) for the chairs in the front and there are oh so many shades of white. What whites do you love? The rest of our time will be BABY ROOM ROom room!