on friday nights

I routinely re-pin Sarah's pins on Pinterest.


And (especially when it involves dessert and other good foods) it is a highlight of my weekend.


Come Follow Along!

Shameless baby post

The bizarre and fantastic parts about being pregnant are all the things you learn and experience.

• Tonight as I sit here, my stomach literally is moving in the shape of ocean waves... slowly going up and then back down. If I push on a body part, she pulls it back in nicely.
• I never knew what the "intense" urge to pee feels like until recently when I get direct punches to the bladder.
• There is something about talking to other pregnant women about pregancy that makes me laugh hysterically every time. 
• Despite my desires, I don't really need to eat just ice cream for dinner.
• I probably only feel this way because tomorrow is my next doctor appointment and I need to step on the scale.
• I am tired. Sleeping through the night is long gone. I thought this was supposed to happen after the baby arrives!
• I love love love this baby. And when J talks to baby in the belly, I melt. I'm reminded that we've already got a great base to our little family and adding another person will just be amazing.
• If I could live in my uggs, leggings, favorite long-sleeve old navy maternity t-shirt, I'd be in heaven.
• Orange juice mixed with club soda is a favorite treat and can actually make me feel like I'm treating myself to a "cocktail".
• I have 5 weeks to go! 5 WEEKS (!!!)

BIOHAZARD: not really

This is what occured in my house Monday and yesterday. J donned a biohazard type suit to climb up in the crawl space to put in the baby chandelier. It's almost finished, but this picture was too good to wait to post. Happy crawl-spacing!

PS I support the whole SOPA protest but couldn't figure out how to make my site black out. oops.

Aromatic Flashblack

I ran out of my regular shampoo today. In the shower, I found a small shampoo from our Hawaiin honeymoon- coconut papaya or something of the sort. I washed my hair with it and oh my goodness, I felt like I was back in Hawaii (minus the 20 degree outside weather here).

A girl can dream. Sigh.

Kitchen Storage turns Baby Dresser!

We had this piece of furniture in our old kitchen. But our new kitchen has soooo much more space for storage in the cabinets and we didn't need it there anymore. But since it's solid wood and great quality, we put it away until we decided where it would go... And it hit me that it could be double-used as baby room furniture.

Here's the "before" but it's not really the best photo because it's after we already started to clear out our kitchen.

It was cute, and still is. But let's face it, it looked like a kitchen counter. The top half comes apart from the bottom half, so we took it apart and I realized we may not even need the top part for my current ideas for this....

However, it looked like a kitchen item, not a nursery item. Forgive the next set of pics, they are iphone. Camera battery was dead and well, I didn't charge it because I was sooo busy too lazy.

Step 1: Observe that this here above is still a piece of kitchen furniture. But the wood is pretty, so J gives the exnay on priming & painting that wooden surface.

Step 2: Buy a "remnant" piece of fabric from Joann's fabric for $6. I may have forgotten to measure be super great at eyeing size of fabric and got this dead on. A little bit, but perfect for what I wanted. I was trying to think how I'd attach it.

Step 3: Gather tools. These are legit all I used. A heavy duty staple gun, a hammer, and scissors to trim the extra fabric. I started at the back and wrapped the fabric around. Staple gun, staple gun, staple gun. . Then I just slowly made my way to the front, left side, then right side.

Step 4: Use lint roller on fabric, which for some reason had glitter on it. But look how much softer that light grey fabric makes it look. I thought this was just fantastic. I gave myself a pat o the back for the staple gun and scissor technique.

Step 5: Replace hardware with Anthro ceramic rose pulls. This took all of 2 minutes, just used a screwdriver to take the old ones off and these handy dandy anthro pulls actually let me just attach them and screw them on by hand. Simple. easy. I plan to use the bottom "wine" holders as baby shoe cubbies. She's got a lot already. A girl after my own heart.

Step 6: Decorate just for fun to see how it would look. I put the pottery barn kids silver bird book ends I love there holding up baby photo albums. Some light rose pink Ikea vases (49 cents each- go buy yourself some! I wish I got more!) and of couuuurse the "you are my very favorite person" framed sign that I keep moving around because I love it so much! This photo was taken in our guest room because the nursery is being painted, but I can't waiiiiit to put the whole room together!

**Bonus: I had extra ceramic pulls because I originally planned to use the top half too. So our changing table that came with run of the mill rather ugly white pulls got these too. J built that today. It had directions worse than Ikea. But it's cute! We just need baskets to put in it. But yay for matching ceramic pulls. Thanks, Anthro for contributing to baby room. I promise I'll return to shopping at your store when I no longer have a basketball sized stomach.

Such an easy project, and minus the shopping time to jet over to Anthropologie for these ceramic knobs and to Joann for fabric, this took me maybe 1.5 hours total. Oh, and the cost? $6 for the fabric, $8 for each ceramic pull. That puts us at a total of $22. For a perfectly cute & good dresser for the nursery.

And I did it all by myself. I'm pretty proud of this. Huge success!

Check this out...

This morning, during my way too early waking for Saturday hours, the hubs told me to go to www.4moms.com. I figured it was some discount baby website, but no...instead... I saw this:

How awesome is this? So expensive, but really cool. I told J I want one. Now. Likely not happening, but I'm thoroughly entertained by the whole concept. Origami stroller, you have my heart.

Ch-ch-ch changessss at 34 weeks

I thought I had escaped the whole "swelling" part of pregnancy. And for the most part, I have. But the other day at Home Depot while waiting for a nice new bucket of light yellow paint, I looked down at my pretty rings... and went to take them off... and I couldn't. I figured I ate too much salt that day, so a healthy dinner and a few days later, I decided to give it a go. Still pretty tight. Don't get me wrong, first thing in the morning and when my hands are freezing in this cold weather, those bad boys still slip on and off. But I got nervous that they would get stuck. And let's face it, no one wants an eternity band sliced off their finger with a blade instead of nicely placed in the jewelry box.

So I said goodbye to this gorgeous little number (shown here against the nice orange HD cart)

And after a quick trip to Target, for $9.99 (wow, could I always have worn a fake for $9.99? Imagine all the other presents I could have gotten with that!!) I am engagement ring-less, but fake diamond band-ed.

 To be fair, these were taken in crappy night time lighting. And inside. The other was in daylight. And it's not perfect, but it will do the trick. So thanks, Target.

In the news of BETTER changes, my hair grew like a foot and much thicker. Check it out. Sorry for the creepy blurry self iphone bathroom photos. It's all I've got tonight. It hasn't been this long since I was probably 16. I sort of love it and dread ever cutting it, but I know post baby this will fade.

Happy 34 weeks baby, thanks for the long healthy hair... and I guess I can deal with the swollen fingers too. Please excuse the messy bathroom closet. Yikes! We're working on things around here....

Before + Afters: Part 1

After working on more house projects this evening, I took a walk around today and realized- we ALMOST renovated every single room. That's pretty huge. And I love our house now (which was 100% NOT the case when we moved in, the floors were scratched, and it smelled like wet dog). A great feeling pre-baby (even though umm baby's room is not finished yet).

It got me thinking I should go back and look at how far we've come. So tonight, I bring you, Before and After Part 1. My camera died before I got upstairs to take a photo of the master bathroom or the latest bathroom update, but we can start now and finish when the baby room is complete. Besides, the cat room is almost finished thanks to my mom's help, so it wanted to make a appearance. Let's start there.

CAT/STORAGE ROOM BEFORE

 CAT/STORAGE ROOM AFTER

New Carpet remnant, ikea storage boxes already owned, storage container from Ikea, pillows already owned and in the "man cave", relocated kitty things. It could still use some paint and more decor!

FAMILY ROOM BEFORE

FAMILY ROOM AFTER

New paint (x2- did not like first color), new couches, storage window seat already there, frame layout stolen from PB, frames from wedding gifts, Pier 1 lamp, gifted carpet, tons of photos!

GUEST ROOM BEFORE

 GUEST ROOM AFTER

This room was horrid when we moved in. The floors were refinished, half the walls ripped out and redone, many coats of paint, new curtains, Jamie's grandmother's tray for the "guest things", new headboard made by moi, and the other side of the room houses an antique dresser and tons of photos with frames too.

KITCHEN BEFORE

KITCHEN "PROGRESS"

KITCHEN AFTER

This kitchen went through the whole reno, and you saw it all here. It was stripped down to the studs. New walls, new ceilings, new floors, new cabinets, new fridg, new oven, new microwave... New tiling, new everythingggg. Oh, the eating area still needs to be painted and the china cabinet reno-ed. But this totally works for me. LOVE.

That's all for tonight. In Before + After Part #2, we've got the baby's room (!!!), "man cave", downstairs bathroom, upstairs bathroom, and master bedroom. This makes me feel retrospectively productive. Yay for our renovated house.

Life Lesson #321

You cannot clean the kitty litter and flush it down the toilet AS IF IT WERE HUMAN waste. Human waste does not come with clumps of clay (if yours does, consult your doctor).

The outcome of flushing said clay kitty litter down the toilet = using a super extra long plunger while still in your work attire. At least J was in good spirits. Lesson learned.

quick and cheap table centerpiece.

I had these gorgeous flowers from my baby shower that finally bit the dust recently. They are now residing in our woods, perhaps giving some nutrients back to the soil.

But the little glass vase they came in was super cute so I decided to see if I could find something to keep it in use. I had some ribbon in the house so I went to work.

Since the ribbon was an iridescent one I had two rolls of sitting around, I just used clear packig tape to secure and kept wrapping it around. I also lined the inside with ribbon since my aim was to put faux flowers in there, and not water. Then on an adventure to Joann Fabric for another project I'm working on, I picked up the prettiest cheapest flowers. I think they cost about $5.

For a whopping cost of $5, this bad boy is appropriate for winter with its ribbon but can also last through spring. Ummm and let's face it-- anything I do now so my house looks semi acceptable when baby comes is great because I won't have much time after that!

Oh PS we did make a trip to Ikea today- and found some great finds for both baby room decor and the "cat room". But I needed a nap so the cat room updates will have to wait until this week or next weeked!