Baby girl's room

So I'm pretty sure her room isn't finished, in fact, I have canvases set aside that I want to do something with, but I haven't quite figured that out yet so for now, most likely until she's born, it's done. 

I've never been very good at matching colors in my head so I have like 5 different pinks happening in here but oh well. 

My friend Lauren made this elephant (and she sells these adorable knitted creations in her etsy shop if you want one, btw) and Logan fell in love with it the second he grabbed it for a snuggle. It may end up being his...

 I found this little elephant at goodwill and it was a little creepy. White spray paint once again saves the day!

 I found a tutorial and modified it to make these curtains turn out the way I had them in my head. It would have been a great $20 project except that my sewing machine bit the dust halfway through so I bought a new one. $220 curtains just don't have quite the same appeal. 

This is going to be a guest bedroom for a little while still so the bed had to stay. Kinda made it easier for me to decorate since I decided to only commit to half the room :)

So here's what it looked like before... 

And after!

Spoon mirror

Have you guys seen this fabulous chrysanthemum mirror floating around the internets?

As soon as I saw it on Addicted 2 Decorating I pinned it and vowed that I would make it happen!

She's got a great tutorial on it so if you want to make one yourself you should go there first to see how it's done. 

There were a few things I did differently though, so I'll share in case you are in the same boat I'm in.

First, I bought 200 spoons which was not enough. I used 300. Second, even though I bought the cheapest ones I could find, I couldn't cut them with scissors so I sawed a notch just at the handle and snapped them by hand. When I tried breaking them without the notch they were really hard to snap, and didn't always break cleanly.

I also couldn't find the wreath forms she used (probably because I was too lazy to go to Michael's and they didn't have them at Joann's) so I cut up a cardboard box we had laying around. I traced our Christmas tree stand to get my large circle and a plate for the small circle.

And then there was much gluing. I used a hot glue gun which was perfect. Just be sure to have PLENTY of glue sticks on hand. This was also the point where I realized I should have taken more care to cut off as much handle as possible. It gets in the way if it's too long, and I had to pull off several spoons that were messing me up.

Once I got my spoons glued on I took it outside and gave it a coat of primer. You should prime your cardboard first by the way. Just... do it. It'll save you time and contorting your body trying to cover the little cardboard bits peeking through. 

Once I primed, I got to work painting. I wanted the ombre look like my inspiration, so I chose one color and added more and more white to it for each row. After I got every petal done and dried I sprayed the whole thing with a shellac to make it shiny.

Once that was dry I glued the mirror and a ribbon for hanging on the back. I used both a hot glue gun and my trusty E-6000 to keep the mirror really stuck on there.

It looks like this :)

Then I hung it in my baby girl's room :)

Hooray! I love it when a craft delivers. Especially when it costs me less than $15.

Instagram Birthday

Told ya I was addicted. Oh well. 

So... I turned 29 a few weeks ago. I don't like thinking about this being the last year in my 20's so I try not to dwell on it too much. I love the 20's!!

Anyway, I woke up that morning and lounged in bed for a little while (wonderful!) until a little munchkin came to wish me a "happy". Guess he forgot the rest of his line. Then we headed to Krispy Kreme for some delicious doughnuts and ate them at home with two breakfast beverages. Sometimes the drinks are the best part of the meal. 

While we were eating Logan though he'd help me open a present, and then I went and got ready for the day.

Tyson sent me off for a solo shopping trip while he cleaned the house (prince!) and I had a great time trying on clothes and shoes. 

Sidenote about those pants I'm wearing: I hadn't worn them in weeks and when I put them on I discovered they still sorta fit! And by fit, I mean with a hair elastic keeping the button closed of course. But still! I was very impressed with myself. Anyway, when I took them off that night I discovered not one, but two holes in the bum/crotch area where my pants were being torn apart. So I guess I'm at the point where I can only get pre-pregnancy pants on if they are literally ripping at the seams. Sad. 

After shopping I went out to my car and... it wouldn't start. Oh no! I was just about to call Tyson when I thought I'd try one more time, and that's when it started and I made it home.

Prediction: Both cars will die right after the baby is born and we will spend more money in one month than our lifetimes to date.  

After lunch I opened the rest of my presents and the boys went for a bike ride while I worked on a project for young womens. Oh! And a sweet friend stopped by to bring me flowers on my special day.

Later that night we had family over for jimmy johns (I ususally like pizza on my birthday but the heartburn is just soooo bad. :( ) and then we had cheesecake for my birthday treat. 

It was a delicious and wonderful day, thanks to my fantastic family and friends. 

Here goes 29!

Catch up

You GUYS! I'm so behind. And I have so much to tell you about too. I'm just gonna jump in, K?

First, and most importantly, I joined 2012 by getting an iphone. 

And of course, one can not have an iphone without having instagram so I'm totally all over that.

Let me just spare you scrolling through the millions of pictures that I've already taken and just show you a few in a collage.

Now I'm torn between wanting to use the SLR and my phone. It is so much easier to chase (lumber after) my boy with the phone, so it'll probably be that at least for awhile. I'm sure when the baby comes I'll be wanting higher quality pics again though!

And if you want to be my friend on instagram (please do!!) my username is marilowder.

Speaking of baby, here are my preggo pics so far. I've got all these on facebook which is why they haven't appeared on the blog, but for posterity's sake I'll put them here.

12 weeks

16 weeks

20 weeks

25 weeks

28 weeks

32 weeks (yesterday)

Pregnancy details: My thyroid is low so I'm on medication for that. I'm anemic so I'm taking iron. Since I'm taking iron, I'm also taking another pill to keep things moving along (if you've ever taken iron, you know what I mean). I have heartburn so bad I can't even take a nap without choking on stomach acid so I'm on two medications for that.

Plus prenatal vitamins and DHA. 

I need one of those pill organizers but I can't just take everything at once so I'd need it to be organized by the day and hour.

8 weeks left (optimistically), I can do this!

I have lots more to say but I'm going to try to break it up in multiple posts so I'll end with a little craft I did recently. Can't go so long without blogging and not at least have that!

Remember these shoes?

Well...

There was a crack, then a piece missing, then I started peeling at it, and now they are hideous. No lasting power.

So I had to give them one more shot before throwing them away (the way I eventually threw away the yellow shoes).

And I ended up with these.

I used some chevron fabric that I had leftover from some pillows I made, then mod podged it to the shoe after painting the shoes white. Then I used some leftover white fabric from my headboard redo and rolled a couple of flowers.

So happy! Maybe I'll wear these ones since they actually look good AND probably won't fall apart :)

Progress

So I painted baby girl's room. It is definitely far from being finished (as in I'm artfully showing you the clean half of the room) but it's still something!

So here's a before:

And here's an... well, not after exactly, but you know.

I ended up choosing paint color number one, which was a custom mix, and then I just used glidden's basic untinted white for the stripes. Both are in eggshell.

Wanna know how to get crisp stripes? 

Google it. 

Just kidding. What I do is paint my base color first, in this case the grey. Then I let that dry completely before putting down my tape. After the tape is down you'll want to paint your base color again over the edges of your tape. I even dig in a little bit with my paint brush to make sure that any gaps between the tape and the wall will be filled with the base. I think this is especially important with textured walls which, as you can see, we have. Then, when that has dried, you can paint the stripe color.

Works like a charm. I didn't have a single spot where I needed to touch up which is the best I've ever done. It takes extra time of course, but so does touching up and that never seems to look as good. 

Slow and steady we're getting this done. The next big project is convincing Logan to give up the crib and try out his big boy bed. 

Should be fun...

And that's the news from Lake Wobegone

It's about to get real up in here.

Sometimes, after you have a baby, there are certain bodily functions which fail to operate in an efficient manner. Luckily I narrowly escaped the need of artificial assistance in that area after Logan was born, but we did have supplies on hand in case of emergency. These supplies, along with feminine products I'm not currently using, are now stored under my sink. A sink that Logan loves to rummage through looking for things to peak his interest while I shower.

And this is how I found Logan gleefully sitting in a sea of tampons squeezing an enema fountain out of his new favorite "watee" bottle.

There are no pictures. Sorry/you're welcome.

Pictures from our week, aka we celebrated Easter too, aka I meant to post these last week

(he fell off the counter a few minutes before egg dying (yikes!) but a little bread dough eased his pain.)