The Bump Report (35 weeks and counting!)
I haven’t really posted many updates on this whole pregnancy thing here on my blog, mostly because I’m not sure if anyone really cares to read about my swollen ankles and heartburn and (strangely undulating at times) belly (although oh how I love watching my belly roll around!) But, with only five-ish weeks to go, I thought I’d better give a quick state of the belly address (and maybe post a picture or two too!)
How I’m feeling: I feel awesome. Seriously. (Fellow pregnant ladies, please don’t hate me.) Yes, my feet swell, and yes, Sweetie sometimes needs to help me up off the couch if I’ve been sitting too long, and, indeed, rolling over in bed is way more difficult than I ever thought it’d be, but I feel, for the most part, great. I have been unbelievably fortunate so far in this pregnancy – no complications (knocking on wood!), no major sickness (beyond the three weeks of mild nausea I had right before Christmas), no complaints. And, with only a few weeks left to go, I still seem to have quite a bit of energy. I know lots of people who have been really sick for nine full months, have had serious health scares mid-pregnancy, or have been uncomfortable or in pain or dizzy throughout much of their pregnancy. I feel so lucky to have had it so easy for the past eight-ish months.
How the nursery is progressing: It’s coming! The walls are now painted a lovely Woodlawn Blue (thanks mom and dad!) and the crib is assembled (thanks Sweetie!) and the important components are all there. Is it done? Ummmm no. The crib still needs a mattress (which, I gather, is likely pretty important!) and the dresser/change table still needs assembling (if you’ve ever assembled an Ikea Hemnes dresser you’ll realize is no small or quick feat!) and there are cloth diapers to be prewashed and omg-the-cutest-ever little lamb mobile to be hung and a rug that needs to be purchased, and much much more. However, even with just the walls painted and the crib assembled, it feels like a nursery. And a very perfect one, at that. And I love it and can’t believe that a tiny little human will be snoozing there (peacefully, I hope!) very very soon. :)
How Sweetie and I are doing: We’re excited! And terrified. And a little overwhelmed that this crazy huge life-changing event is approaching so quickly. And feeling so blessed that our family and friends have been so supportive and helpful over the past several months. And hopeful that our fur family will adjust well to the new little person in our household. And aware that my beloved house renos will likely take back burner to this tiny human, and that we may continue to have squishy kitchen floors and tiled countertops and a bright red rec room and lackluster (and rather weed-infested) landscaping for quite a while going forward. But… mostly, we’re just excited!
So that’s the 411 on my beloved bun in the oven. Five more weeks. FIVE. And that’s assuming that Baby stays put until our August 4th due date (dear Baby: you’re perfectly welcome to stay right where you are for at least another month!) More nursery updates to follow shortly! But, for now, that’s the Bump Report. Swollen ankles and all. :)
(PS – photos courtesy of Sweetie. Thanks Sweetie!)
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How we announced some really big news (about a teeny tiny little person)
Sweetie and I were pretty secretive when we first found out we were expecting (despite that I wanted to tell absolutely everyone – the mailman, random children, the lady behind the counter at the gas station, stray dogs, etc – about our very happy news.) It had taken me quite a while to get pregnant (but that’s a whole other blog post for a whole other day) so we were both really cautious about spreading the news to too many people too quickly, before we were out of the scary anything-can-happen first trimester. (Translation: there was a lot of breath-holding and positive thought-thinking going on around here during those first few months.)
But once we reached our comfort zone (shortly after our 12 week ultrasound showed that baby was perfect and squirmy and had a good strong heartbeat) we decided to finally tell the future grandparents.
Being a rather monumentous and life-changing announcement, this wasn’t something I wanted to simply blurt out over dinner, mid-french fry. I wanted the announcement to be as special as the news itself. Unfortunately, I’m not an overly creative person. And while Pinterest showed me hundreds of amazing and elaborate and creative announcements, none of them felt like us.
Here’s the card I finally designed to spread the news…
(Please don’t giggle too much at my obviously lacking graphic-design skills. A graphic-design guru I most certainly am not, and the whole thing was put together using – gasp! – Microsoft Word.)
We printed the card on basic cream-coloured card stock that I had left over from some other random DIY project, and then I tied a ribbon around the card (so that the card wouldn’t accidentally flop open and ruin the surprise before the recipient had a chance to finish reading the cover.)
When the time came to hand out the cards, there were happy tears from one set of grandparents, high-fives from another (who apparently had speculated, a couple weeks prior at Christmas, that something baby-related might be up), and stunned silence from the third set of future grandparents we told (which quickly erupted into squeals of joy.) All in all, the announcement (and this announcement method) was a huge success. :)
And now, several months later, all of the grandparents are eagerly anticipating the arrival of this new little one. Who is currently way bigger than a lime. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a happy little eggplant or butternut squash or watermelon rolling around in there now. (A really, really, cute one!)
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Nursery natterings (part one of… several) (since, well, I’m awful at making decisions) (and also because baby stuff is just so darn cute!)
I am officially 22 weeks pregnant today. Twenty-two! How the heck did that happen? It seems like I just finished a very nauseous weeks 8 through 12, and now, all of a sudden, I’m over half way to the finish line. It’s so exciting! But, honestly, so overwhelming at the same time. There are registries to prepare. There are maternity leaves to schedule. There are no fewer than a gazillion cloth diapering systems to decipher (yep – call us crazy, but we’re going to give the wild and wacky world of cloth diapering a shot!) And there are strollers and baby baths and car seats and boppy pillows and cribs and carriers and all sorts of foreign (to us not-yet initiated future baby-club parents, at least) stuff to research and plan and obsess about.
But my favourite pastime at the moment? Nursery planning. I know: swoon! The colour options. The decor. The accessories. Where the crib will go. Mobile or bunting or both. Sigh. There are so many happy possibilities for the room that will one day contain someone so tiny but so important and so very very loved. With about 18 weeks (insert panic attack HERE) left to go until my official due date, here’s the nursery inspiration pic (from blogger She Walks in Beauty) that I can’t stop looking at…
So peaceful and lovely. I absolutely adore this colour scheme. A-DORE it. We’re still undecided on whether we’ll find out the sex of little Baby in advance of the big day, but this soft teal-based colour scheme fits perfectly for either a little girl or a little dude (in my humble opinion, at least.)
Once baby makes his or her arrival, we can then add in some gender-specific colours to the mix, if we want. Maybe a little navy and/or some bright lime-ish green if the bump turns out to be a boy, like this nursery from Spearmintbaby…
…or some coral-ly pink and yellow (like in this gorgeous nursery from CraftinessIsNotOptional) if I’m currently housing a baby girl.
Either way, I can’t wait to get started. Can’t wait! And that’s probably where Part Two of this (likely drawn out due to indecisiveness) nursery natterings series will go. Regardless of everything else that ends up in the nursery (and all the decisions yet to be made), teal is one of my absolute favourite colours. I’m hoping that Baby (boy or girl) will really like it too. :)
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The giraffe gets all comfy cozy (staging the nursery for resale sans crib) (it’s all about the angles)
So remember the last time we chatted about our second bedroom, the someday-maybe-to-be nursery? Here! Let me refresh your memory. It looked like this…
Well, when we started gearing up to sell, we realized it needed to be cleared out. A LOT. Which lead to a massive purge. Which lead to the room looking like this…
But then I realized (now that all the visual clutter was gone) that the baseboards were in rather awful shape. Like, really really bad shape. They looked like this…
So out came the painter’s tape (heaven forbid I should mar a cute little elephant while painting trim!) and the baseboards got freshened up a wee bit…
And then I decided that we’d better make the room look sorta nursery-ish for our listing photos. So I grabbed my beloved brown rocking chair (which, a long time ago, belonged to my grandparents, and which I hope to one day have reupholstered and use in my for real someday-nursery), some spare drapes, added a throw and a cushion, and poof! Instant quasi-nursery…
…well, sorta. It’s not entirely convincing, but it’s not bad. If I had a spare area rug kicking around, that’d make the room way cozier. And, of course, if I had a crib that’d be even better. And the drapes are a tad (ok, a lot) long and they cover up the sweet little elephant more than I’d like, but you can still see him peeking out a wee bit. For now, it’ll do.
So long as the house listing doesn’t actually show that there’s no crib in the room, we’re good. It’s all about perspective. :)
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My big baby shower blunder (note to self: always take pictures of the final product!)
A couple months ago, my friend Nad and I threw a baby shower for one of our BFFs, the (then) uber pregnant Tiff. And it was a lot of fun! We knew that our Tiffer was having a little baby boy, so we pretty quickly settled on a blue and green theme for the shower (since a colour theme is way easier to follow than, say, trying to work with an armadillo theme, or a backhoe theme, or something rather obscure like that.) (Blue is easy to find. Armadillos? Not so much.) And, being the Pinterest junkie extraordinare that I am, I volunteered to look after decor. Of course. :)
I worked and I toiled for weeks and weeks and I’m happy to say that everything was perfect and I was absolutely ecstatic with the final outcome. And (also important) Tiff’s shower was a success! Unfortunately, what did I NOT do? I did not take ANY pictures of the final product. At all. Oops. I know. Insert a dramatic and sad muted-trombone “wop-wop” here. Silly blogger. Nad and I were so busy day-of making sure that everything looked perfect, and ensuring that guests were eating/drinking/mingling/being merry, that it never once dawned on me to take pictures of any of it. And, sadly, despite all of the ooohs and aaahs that rewarded our decorating efforts, none of our guests took pictures of the decor either. Not one. Which, I suppose, I can’t really fault anyone for. The shower was for Tiff, afterall, and not at all about the decorations. (But I still really wish someone – ANYONE – would have captured just a tiny little bit of our lovingly planned-out and assembled decor.)
Suffice it to say: it was LOVELY. And I was proud. And Tiff was happy. So mission accomplished. :)
But despite that I don’t have actual images of the actual decor to show you, I wanted to pass along some of the free baby shower printables that I found while planning. These were all a huge hit at our baby shower, so I’m hoping that other shower planners might find these handy-dandy as well. :)
INVITATIONS
We could have purchased those fill-in-the-blank invitations that you can pick up at any party store or Walmart or, well, pretty much anywhere. That would have been the simple route. And, well, that would be very unlike me. I wanted to do a custom baby shower invitation, of course (which also required quite a lot more work, but the end result was very worth it, I think.) We didn’t have a big baby shower budget to purchase custom printed invitations, but, after a bit of an extensive search via my good friends at Google, I found these adorable customizable (including the colours!) umbrella invitations, courtesy of On to Baby…
Obviously the actual invitations themselves had a LOT more detail (and included important pieces of information like, um, names and dates and addresses and such.) But c’est cute, non? We were thrilled. And an evening spent with my printer and my beloved paper cutter later and – poof – we had invitations ready to go. :)
DECOR
I made tissue paper pom poms, of course. Tissue pom poms are my thing. You could even, perhaps, call me the Pom Queen. (Ha. Get it? Pom Queen? Prom Queen?) (Groan… I know. K.) I made LOTS of them. In blue, bright green, and white. They were gorgeous, and a lot of time and love went into making each little fluffy ball of loveliness. We hung them behind the main table in the room, and so many people commented on how lovely and pretty they were and how they made the room look super cheery. I don’t have any pictures of those. Of course. But trust me when I say they were gorgeous. :)
What I CAN show you, however, is a free BOY subway art printable I used to add a little extra decoration to the main table in the room (printable courtesy of Simple Crafter):
I printed this on card stock and framed it in an expensive HomeSense frame and placed it next to the fun diaper cake we put together (as you may have guessed, I don’t have any pictures of our diaper cake either.) It was just a little something extra and fun, and not at all necessary, but it was cute. (And it now sits next to the change table in Tiff’s little blue nursery.)
FAVOURS
Favours are one of those seemingly unnecessary extras, and Nad and I debated quite a bit over whether to do favours for the shower guests. I am a big fan of the non-trinket favour, so I was pretty adamant that if we did do shower favours, they needed to be either usable or consumable (and not just some random item that would eventually be thrown away.) Rachael Ray came to the rescue with a free printable and customizable chocolate bar wrapper…
Coincidentally, Walmart had Cadbury Caramilk bars on sale for $0.60 each around this time, so we were able to do favours for our group of about 20 guests for about twelve bucks (well, plus taxes.) And (most importantly) people loved them. :)
So there! Those are a few of the free printables that made our darling Tiff’s shower pretty and special. If I can’t share the photos, I can at least share the printables!
And, well, to put things into perspective: pictures may be worth a thousand words, but a happy friend with a beautiful baby boy (he’s now about two months old and he’s absolutely gorgeous) is worth way, way more. :)
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