"You Are My Sunshine" Nursery

We put the finishing touch on Baby Sayler's nursery today when we hung up the video camera for the baby monitor. Before we hung it, I snapped some pics of the room to share. I have LOVED decorating this room and using yellow, which is a color I normally don't like in decorating. The room is bright and light and neutral, just ready and waiting for baby!

The paint color we chose is called Gray Husky (Benjamin Moore) and the accent stripes were done with a pure white sample from BM and a pale yellow color of Ace brand paint. We will be putting the baby's name in the stripe with white letters once we know if we have a little miss or mister.

I couldn't find any bedding that I really liked so my mom, the amazing sewer, helped me pick out fabrics and made the changing pad, pillow for the glider and crib skirt. My dad constructed the window cornices for us, which hide pull down blackout blinds. The fabric totally makes the room and I couldn't be happier.

Dresser - IKEA

Crib, mobile, sheets - Target.com, baskets - Joss and Main, window treatments and crib skirt - handmade 

We'll be adding baby's name in white block letters after he/she arrives.

Glider - Buy Buy Baby, shelves - Smartfurniture.com, picture frames (need to be filled!) - IKEA, pillow and blanket - handmade

 I love the little details in the room too. Here's a few close up pics.

Lamp base (spray painted) - Goodwill, shade - Target, rhino toy - gift

The little elephants in the sheet match the art prints and our humidifier (not pictured.)

Frames - IKEA, art prints - Etsy

Changing pad cover - handmade

Daddy checking out one of the books we received at our baby shower. 

I'm excited to add photos or maybe baby's footprints to the frames and display some personalized items once we have his/her name. Just a few more weeks!

5 Weeks to Go

It is so hard to believe I am 35 weeks pregnant and we're a mere 5 weeks (assuming Baby is prompt...) from meeting our son or daughter! I have been seriously lax on this blog, mostly because winter laziness + pregnancy had taken over for a while. And, we have been busy! For me, work has been crazy which is actually a blessing because time is flying by and, mentally, I haven't had time to sit around and obsess over labor or worry about things.

I figured I would share some updates on what we've been up to and how Baby is shaping up (literally)!

I have been lucky and continue to feel pretty good, considering how late I am in the pregnancy. I've been having a bit of back pain and sore feet but mostly I'm just starting to move slow. I don't think I have the full-on pregnancy waddle yet but people on the Metra train are being pretty nice about giving me space on the platform and letting me board. Nice little perk of the bump!

Nesting kicked in early January and Scott has been amazing helping with whatever I want done around the house. The nursery is complete (full post of that to come soon) and we've been crossing off projects that have been on the "house to-do" list for a while. We've hung shelves, gotten the house painted, organized closets, etc.

Everyone always asks about cravings. Once I got my appetite back in the second trimester, the only cravings I've had are cool creamy things like milkshakes and ice cream, and citrus. I have bought more orange juice and clementines this winter than ever before!

We started our series of pre-natal classes as well. We took a hospital tour which made me feel great about where our baby will be born. We've taken Babycare Basics and Infant CPR. The last one the list (purposely) is Childbirth Basics. We've read some sleep books and I've read about the first couple weeks of having Baby at home. Overall, we're feeling as prepared as we can be and mostly relaxed and excited (vs. nervous.) We're just going to take things one day at a time.

Here's a look at how my baby bump has shaped up over the past 8 months. It feels like I am growing really fast right now and I still have 5 weeks to go! I am definitely excited to put the maternity clothes away and get back to a shape I am more used to (though I know everyone says it's never quite the same.)

Babymoon to Cabo San Lucas

According to the Oxford Dictionary:

babymoon

Syllabification: (ba·by·moon)

Pronunciation: /ˈbābēˌmo͞on/

Noun

• a relaxing or romantic vacation taken by parents-to-be before their baby is born:on the eve of my third trimester, we boarded a plane for a week-long babymoon among the quiet canals of Amsterdam

Now, I don't know if I'd recommend Amsterdam as a babymoon destination, like the example above, but I would DEFINITELY recommend Cabo San Lucas, where Scott and I spent a blissful week.

We stayed at the Hilton Los Cabos Beach & Golf Resort and it was wonderful. The pool area, service and food were all excellent. I went to the spa, Scott golfed, we ate lots of chips and drank margaritas (virgin for me!). Cabo San Lucas is a fun town and I can't wait to go back when I'm not pregnant. Here are some of the highlights from our vacation:

El Squid Roe Bar

Amazing tableside guac AND salsa

The famous Cabo Wabo Cantina

Scott hit the links at Cabo Del Sol's beautiful Ocean Course

Cabo Del Sol

Cabo Del Sol

24 week picture fell on golf day :-)

Cabo Del Sol

Cabo Del Sol

Hanging at the hotel bar

Hotel lobby pic before heading into town

Beautiful beach at the Hilton

Sunset Da Mona Lisa restaurant on our last night

Sunset selfie

View of El Arco and Lands End

It was a little cloudy but still made for a beautiful view

Can't wait to go back!

 

Facelift!

If you visted today, you may notice that I'd been changing up the fonts/backgrounds/etc. and pretty much just playing with the whole layout. I was using a great template from LeeLou Blogs but the template was going to expire. So, I had to search and search for something I liked better. Finally found some options I liked on Shabby Blogs so a huge shout out and thanks to them! I might still be playing with the title to see if I can jazz it up a bit, but for now, here's the new look.

Start Spreading the News

We are officially halfway through my pregnancy! There's lots of excitement that comes with the 20 week mark. We're busy working on the baby's room, tackling the daunting task of choosing a stroller and I have spent some serious time in the Destination Maternity fitting room.

One of the most exciting moments in this pregnancy (so far!) has been telling our families that we were expecting. I captured the moments on video and have been playing around with some editing programs. I made this video using Microsoft Movie Maker.

To tell my parents, we gave each of them an impromptu present. Each grandparent opened up a book; Just Grandma and Me and Just Grandpa and Me from the Little Critter collection, a favorite when I was a kid. To tell Scott's parents, we surprised them with a decorative sign for Nancy's "family photo wall" that said "The best parents get promoted to grandparents." Each family had a different but wonderful reaction.

The Project That Involved 1,000 Squats

Since we moved in, we knew our fence needed some love. We put it off for two summers as we worked on other projects. We also knew that there's no way we'd tackle it next summer with a new baby so we decided to do it this fall.

Our fence is a cedar fence and it had gotten so gray and very moldy/mildewy, especially on the north facing sides. Here's a shot of it before; this picture makes it look not that bad, but it was.

We started the project by power washing it clean. Side note: power washing is amazing. Here's an action shot of a section that had been power washed (on the right) and an old, not power washed section (on the left.)

Amazing difference. When the fence was wet, it looked like it had a reddish color to it, however, once it dried, it was very light, almost like plywood. We needed to stain the fence to give it some color and protect the wood from future mold and water.

We chose Sherwin-William's Woodscapes Semi-transparent Stain in Chestnut, which is a medium brown color. We chose a semi-transparent stain because we figured it would be more forgiving as the fence aged vs. a full coverage stain. We severely underestimated the amount of stain we'd need for the project. We bought 2 gallons. Then we went back and bought 6 more. We chalk some of this up to using a paint sprayer aka the best thing ever. 

More on the sprayer. The sprayer is where the squats came in. We purchased this Homeright Finish Max Sprayer from Amazon. It was worth every single dollar we spent on it, and I already have some plans to use it on other projects. The beauty of the sprayer was that we could apply the stain with it and then I just back brushed it over the fence slats to work it in. It made the project go a million times faster, though we did have to stop to fill up the paint cup often. As for the squats...Scott got a major workout. When you use a sprayer, you have to keep it level and move it up and down, so he had to squat down to get the bottom of the fence on every other slat. Two coats worth. He was sore! I followed with the brush which involved some moderate squatting and bending!

We applied two coats of the stain (first coat Saturday afternoon, second coat Sunday morning). The second coat really brought the color out and we're thrilled with the results!

Overall, this project was easy but time consuming. Scott and I spent about 8-10 hours power washing the fence (he did the majority of it) and then the next weekend, we spent a total of probably 6-8 hours applying the two coats of stain.

Even though this is a project we hope we will never need to tackle again, at least we know we can! We've been enjoying the updated fence with the beautiful fall weather and already changing leaves in our yard. We were so tired after the project, but we felt a huge sense of accomplishment. It was definitely a rewarding DIY project!

National Dog Day

This is apparently a thing! I'm into it. Love our little guy!