A little girl's nursery

I am starting to have a few mini panic attacks about having everything ready for baby girl. When I was pregnant with Colton, I had a plan. I researched nursery "themes" and looked for hours upon hours, and settled on a nautical theme fairly quickly after we found out the gender. Of course, I had much more time to research and choose, back when I had no job and no child, and we lived in a new place where I barely knew anyone at first!  I knew which exact bedding I wanted, Blake by Nautica. We are renters, and so I knew his walls would be plain colored, which helps a lot when deciding on what to get. By the time I was 31 weeks along, which is how far I am now, I pretty much had everything figured out. We had purchased or been given everything we knew we needed, or had a plan of when to purchase it. I did spend the last month doing all of the finishing touches, but that was completely intentional. We moved during the last two months of my pregnancy to North Carolina, and Brad almost immediately left for a month of no contact training, SEER school (Survive, Evade, Escape and Rescue school - basically POW school). But I had a complete plan. I was calm, mostly, and extremely excited about getting everything ready and perfect for our upcoming bundle of joy to change our lives forever.

The bedding we picked for Colton's room. Isn't it adorable?!

This time, I have a bit of a different perspective. I do not have hours upon hours to sit and research what exactly I want to do in the nursery. I have a sweet little boy who keeps me more than busy, and hates when I sit down at the computer. The limited amount of time I have spent trying to research and decide, has left me frustrated and discouraged. Needless to say, I keep putting everything off. But I now feel like I am at the point where I just need to make a decision and stop stressing. As much as i want her nursery to be absolutely perfect for her, as great as it makes me feel to have everything "ready" to welcome her into our hearts, arms, and home, I know it just isn't going to happen. The nursery I pictured whenever I would think about having a little girl is NOT coming together. I completely understand that not having everything perfect will definitely not change how much we love her, want her, and are excited about her. But I still want her room to be planned and prepared for her!

My favorite fabric for baby girl's room

So here is my dilemma. We moved into this rental home, that we absolutely love, and have a two year lease. To paint a room, we have to pick a color, submit the color and plan to the property management office, and they will pass it on to the home owners. The home owners then have the option of agreeing to the paint plan, or nixing. The owners live in Germany currently, and don't seem to be the easiest people to get ahold of. Also, we really just don't want to paint. So baby girl's room color is: light pink. And yes, all of the trim in her room is dark pink, including the two closet doors and the hallway door. It is a pink overload! I am all about pink, honestly, but I don't know if that room can handle any more pink without feeling like the inside of a pepto bismol container! So I need to find bedding that incorporates the pink, while not BEING pink, if that makes sense. My thought has been to not buy a bedding set, as the AAP now recommends no bumpers anyway, using a plain colored crib sheet, and picking the fabric I want to make the crib skirt. Also, I want to make the curtains to either match the crib skirt or coordinate with it. But I just can't find material I like, in my  price range! Here is a sample of the one I am absolutely in love with, but at $30/yard, it is definitely NOT practical! Plus a 2 yard minimum on each order, I just can't get it. Not even for a little "pop." But I love that it has the two colors of pink from the room, plus a pop of tiffany blue in it - I love tiffany blue in a little girl's room!

So I am on the search for fabric. Cheap, sweet, not entirely pink fabric.


But I did find a crib mobile I love that I think I can recreate (it's from Etsy).  It has the birdies that I love and want in her room, with enough dimension and contrast to be very visually stimulating. I imagine it will take quite a bit of time to cut all of those birdies out, in two or so different card stocks each, but this may actually be a project I can work on while Colton is awake. If he is coloring at the table next to me, he is usually fairly content with me doing something a bit different than him, as long as I am next to him. So as soon as I pick fabric, I will get the paper to match and start on this cute bird mobile!

Can you tell I am trying to do this nursery on the cheap? We are using the dresser/changing table from Colton's room and purchasing him a new dresser. The crib that matches the dresser will also be in baby girl's room. We purchased Colton a new crib that converts to a toddler bed, so he will be in that. Actually, we didn't purchase it new - we purchased it from someone, but it looks brand new. Their baby decided to be a complete co-sleeper, and now that she's 3 and has slept in it less than a handful of times, they decided it wasn't worth it to keep it. Score for us though! We will be using the glider from Colton's room, we have his old swing and vibration chair for her as well. She gets to use his car seat, luckily it's gray and green so no worries about it being too "boyish" :) Really, we haven't had to purchase very many things for her at all so far! My mom's sister has a daughter who is turning 2 soon, so we have been given all of Mayli's hand-me-down's from when she was tiny, so baby girls wardrobe is pretty set. :) We will probably purchase a few things, since I have never gotten to shop for a girl before, but it's nice to know that we don't have to! So really.. I don't know why we are stressing. Lots of little things to get (girly paci's, blankets, swaddle blankets, maybe a few girly toys, etc.) but none of the "big stuff" besides bedding and curtains. And I have right under two months.

Two months.

Oh gosh, if I am going to be sewing something, I better get on it. I only have two months.

If you're still reading this, give yourself a pat on the back. You have just read my repeated rambling thoughts for the past week. Sorry it's so long and not that interesting!

Loves, Jessica

It snowed in Texas!

A week or so ago, here in TEXAS, we had a bit of snow. It didn't stick, but we had big ol' pretty flakes falling from the sky. Colton and I quickly got dressed for snow, which isn't hard when really it's not all that cold, and ran outside to experience our first, and possibly only, snow of the year. I got a couple of pretty great shots of Colton loving it. He was very excited to point at the snow, and try and "catch" the flakes. You can see a few of them on his jeans in the photo where he's sitting in his adirondack chair. What a sweet little boy. :)

Birdie canvas

Tonight, I made this cutesy birdie canvas to put in baby Eliza's room. I bought the canvas a few weeks ago, and stained it right away. But it took me awhile to have the time to finish it. I knew i wanted birdies (that's the nursery theme!) and I knew what verse, but I just never did it. Finally, I took the time to complete it! The dishes may be sitting on the counter, dirty from dinner, but the canvas is complete. :) what do you all think?

Note: my etsy manager (aka husband) decided to list this on my Etsy site! This is only my second listing, I never did make another pouf to sell, after I sold the first one. (Oops!) Check the link out here:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/92753060/singing-bird-canvas#photos

Love you all!

Blessings: 02/06/12

Hello again, dear friends. Week #3 (can you even believe this!?). Let's jump in!

1) They say it's my birthday (na na na na na) and it was! Feb. 1 I turned TWENTY-SIX! I love birthdays. Mine, yours, Brads, Coltons, everyone's really. Any reason to make an ordinary day extraordinary is definitely good by me! Colton surprised me with a very extra special gift: saving all of his poops 'til Daddy came home from work! (It really is the little things in life, isn't it?) I wonder if he knew it was my birthday...

The beautiful cake :)

This is the chosen cake mix ... seriously delicious!

2) Brad BAKED me a cake. YES - BRAD BAKED A CAKE! My husband is not one to spend any time in the kitchen. Ever, really. The kitchen is my domain - and the garage is his. But on a very special occasion, he will get in the kitchen and make or bake something. My birthday apparently constitutes one of those times, and the cake he baked was to die for - triple chocolate cake, with a chocolate glaze frosting. I wish I had some right now! But we definitely ate it all!

Working hard in the kitchen! 

3) Taking away the paci has been.... difficult. Re sleep training has been ... challenging. I think it may be even harder to re sleep train this boy than it was to initially sleep train. Initially, he LOVED being rocked and cuddled. Now that he hates it, there is not much we can do to calm him down before bedtime. He knows when it's bedtime - we have our routine - but nothing really works help him self-soothe, or soothe at all really, but the paci.. which we aren't giving in to. So as hard as it is to set a screaming toddler in his crib and allow him to scream, that's all we can really do. Luckily it only lasts maybe 5 or 10 minutes TOPS, but those minutes are excruciating. The rest of the day though has been SO NICE without it - he "talks" more, he hasn't even really missed it. Such a blessing to not need to take it everywhere with us -and to know when Baby Girl gets here, we will not worry so much about how to teach Colton that she can have the paci, but all of a sudden he can't. It will be more "normal" by then! Pressing on towards this goal...

4) Colton has gotten to be quite HILARIOUS lately. He honestly does the funniest things I have ever seen! Last night, he realized his drum can also be a hat... so he has been walking around with it on his head since then. All last night throughout the Super Bowl, all this morning, pretty much as often as he can. He will take it off to eat, and of course to sleep, but other than that he loves his "hat". He plays with his cars, while wearing the hat. He pushes his push-car around, while wearing the hat. He builds with his blocks, while wearing his hat. Here's a pic to show you what I mean:

Don't be fooled by the slightly sad face - I took this with my phone and had a hard time catching  his happy face! But he LOVES it!

5) We found a playgroup on post in the Youth Activity Center, and Colton had a BLAST there! He was a little unsure at first - it's a big open gym with tons of toys, for only kids 3 and under. After a few minutes of grasping my hand so tightly while exploring the gym, he let go and took off running. It was so sweet to see him having such a good time! He found a couple basketball goals, and figured out how to make a basket. Several times, he tried from different distances from the goal to see if he could make it. He is actually a really good shot! Honestly, I could not get him away from this corner of the gym for almost 45 minutes. Afterwards though, he finished exploring and found many blocks, trains with tracks, ride-on toys, tents, tunnels, cars with roads to drive on, etc. I kept trying to play with him, but this boy was not interested in mommy at all. He would give me the stink-eye and walk off, continuing to play on his own and with the other toddlers. What a blessing to know that he is so independent! Although it occassionally made me a little sad when he would snub me, I really am glad that he (already!) is not 100% needy of me. Hopefully that will help to ease the transition to life with a new baby!

Basketball! 

I think this is all I have for this week. Thanks for reading! :)