Finishing touches to the nursery. Part 3. Subpart A.

I'm alive!  Barely.

I've been begging D.Soup to get started on the shelves for the nursery for MONTHS.  I had just come to terms with the idea that it wasn't going to happen when my friend mentioned that she wanted to make some shelves for a room in her house too.  Score!

We had them over for dinner and some football on Sunday.  And then we got down to business.  We "tricked" the guys into doing the cuts for us for all of the plywood.  I say "tricked" because it more went down like this:
D.Soup: Okay, you guys have fun.  Just move the table saw out from under the workbench.
Me: Wait, what?
D.Soup:  I'll come do it for you.
Me. Awesome!
.....
And once we all got down there, they realized one of us was going to table saw a hand right off, so they decided it would be smarter if they just did it.  And that worked out wonderfully for me, because they even had a hard time cutting the plywood down to the right sizes.

Lucky for us, L.Soup took 2 naps on Sunday, so we could all 4 work on getting everything situated before she woke up.  We timed it really well.

I thought I had enough 1x2's for both of us.  But sadly, I only had enough for us to get the shell part of the shelves put together.  D.Soup and I have to make a trip to the hardware store to pick up a few more 1x2's and then we'll have round 2 of building.  We got the shells finished though, and put wood filler in most of the holes and let it sit to dry.  I intend on heading back to the basement some time soon to sand the dried filler down and put filler in the holes on the other side.  We've hardly been home the last few days though so it hasn't happened yet.

Also, I fail at picture taking, so I'll try to remember to do that when I work on the wood filler.

Tonight and tomorrow we have some errands to run and we have to do laundry so we can pack!  We decided to head to the beach this weekend for Sunfest!  Mom and I usually go and have a girls weekend, but we're dragging the boys along with us this time around.  D.Soup was a little unhappy with it, since hunting season just started.  But its still a little warm to be hunting anyway, so he got over it.

In other news L.Soup has been making up for getting to bed late the last few nights by waking up earlier than usual.  So that's awesome.  I think that's part of the reason she's been taking two naps during the day.  The weirdest part is, the two naps together are about the same amount of time she was napping with just one morning nap, so I'm not sure how that's working out for her.  We are going to try to get her to bed at normal time tonight and see how she sleeps.  I want her to get a few nights of good sleep before we turn around and completely destroy it over the weekend.

She DOES NOT SLEEP in a pack-n-play.  She's never been comfortable in the lower portion of one.  She used to sleep all the time in the infant level, but once she got too big for that it was a no go.  She's pretty spoiled and ends up sleeping on/with someone if she's not near a real crib.  At home she naps in the crib just fine though.  She's a weird kid.  I bought her a sleep mat for my parent's house to try to get her used to sleeping alone there too... she's not really having it.

I was contemplating taking her crib mattress with us to the beach, but D.Soup claimed it wasn't worth driving the truck all the way to the beach just for the crib, when we can take the Prius and save a million dollars in gas.  *sigh*

I'm SO CLOSE to being able to post the finished nursery write up that I have, I can TASTE it.  I'm dying to get it out to you all. 

I've been seriously slacking recently.

A whole lot of nothing (aka so much of everything else there's no time for crafting! )

We have spent the last 2 weeks doing absolutely nothing around the house.   That's a lie... We cleaned up enough to not be completely embarrassed when my family came over on Sunday.  

Last week is pretty much a blur to me, other than L.Soup getting sick on Tuesday during dinner and then miraculously regrouping and playing for a few hours after being miserable all day.   Kids are incredible.

Friday we drove to PA to visit our friends and their baby girl!  We got stuck in some nasty traffic but we still had a great time visiting.

Saturday we went to Kegs&Corks with a bunch of friends.   I spent a majority of the first hour we were there freaking out because it was really hot and I was worried about L.Soup who absolutely refused to 1. stay in the stroller or 2. wear a hat.  I lathered her in sunscreen, but she was so hot that she was sweating and cranky.   I was sure we were going to have to leave early,  but I ended up spotting some unoccupied shade and informed everyone we were moving and basically sprinted over there.   I was a woman on a mission.  Success!   And all was right with the world after that and we got to stay the rest of the day.  L. Soup and I were both much happier in the shade (and after a snow ball).

Also, on Saturday my phone met a nasty end.  It slipped out of my diaper bag when I reached into the car to grab something and made an unfortunate connection with pavement.  It was not pretty.  

Ouch

Lucky for me my previous clumsiness forces me to get insurance on every piece of electronics I own now so I got a replacement with no issue!   Phew.  I ordered a case for it as well, something that I had been meaning to do for months but never got around to it.  Well I learned my lesson, and I am now the proud owner of this:

Sunday my mom, sister, niece and nephews came over for the afternoon.   It was beautiful out so we went down to the river and played in the water for a few hours and then had dinner.   We even got some use out of the swing set!   It was a really good (busy) weekend. 

Monday rolled around and my girl woke up not herself.   She ended up sleeping most of the day and being generally miserable.  Luckily she bounced back again and was better late in the afternoon. 

Tuesday we went to Red Robin for a friend's birthday.   It was really fun.   Unfortunately D.Soup wasn't feeling well, we think he caught whatever the baby had.  He was sick Tuesday night and ended up staying home Wednesday from work.   He still wasn't feeling well today but went to work, he's feeling better now... a little.  So we've had a fairly lazy week this week.  Not really any chance to get any house work done, let alone crafting or painting.  We are completely out of groceries.  So that's priority one for this weekend.  Hopefully I can get to work on some other stuff too.  Luckily we get 3 days!

I did take some time to make a list of things that have settled in the house over the year we have been here.  We are supposed to give it to the builder before the year's up so they can come fix everything.  We bought our house in September of last year... Procrastinate much? 

Some day I will actually get around to those things I've been promising.

Really.

Week wrap-up

This week has been so busy!  We haven't had made a real dinner at home the entire week.  One night we had time to make grilled cheese, but that's it!  Hopefully tonight we'll have a real dinner, in our own home.  Next week is going to be just as busy.  Everything always happens at the same time.  I never have time to do any crafting!  <insert foot stomp here>

Since I have no crafting to talk about, I'll just recap the week.  Because I know you all are soooo interested.

Sunday - We went to a party at a nearby bouncy play place for our very good friend's daughter's 3rd birthday.  L.Soup (despite only getting a 30 minute nap in the car because she REFUSED to sleep) had a blast.  She hasn't quite figured out the idea of jumping yet.  So she just marched around in the bounce houses all wobbly while the other kids bounced around her.  She also made D.Soup take her down the big slide about 40 times.  It was cute.  I'm glad it was him and not me, because we probably would have died.  I don't have enough balance to pull myself up the little ledge stairs, let along drag her along with me.

Monday - This was grilled cheese day.  That's all I remember from that day, and I only remember that because D.Soup reminded me about it this morning.  Pretty sure I laid on the couch most of the afternoon.

Tuesday - Dinner with some great friends that we don't get to see very often anymore.  They have a little boy that's just over a month younger than L.Soup.  They are finally getting to an age where they acknowledge each others existence, so it's really great to see them play "together".  L.Soup chased him around the house and handed him back anything that he dropped like "dude, stop making a mess".  She's becoming a mild neat freak.  I don't know where she gets that from.  Definitely not from her parents.

Wednesday - We had surprise dentist appointments.  I say surprise because when I got the "reminder" call on Monday, it was the first time I had ever heard about it.  I'm the one that makes the appointments, so I had to have done it the last time we were there.  But I have NO recollection of that AT ALL.  Glad to report that I am cavity free, as is D.Soup.  So that's awesome.  I signed L.Soup up for her first dentist appointment, but promptly had to reschedule when I realized that I'm an idiot and only added her to my medical health insurance and not dental or vision.  They should give a mother more than a month to get that stuff situated.  My brain was in NO place to think about all that stuff within a month of having her. 

So now I have to wait until December to add her during "open access" with my company.  So I scheduled our next appointments for February.  That should be fine.  Its not like she needs anything actually done to her teeth anyway.

Wednesday was also a big day for us because it was L.Soup's first time having Maryland Crab Soup!  As a Maryland girl, I'm proud of her for eating every drop.  It was homemade (by my momma) too.  Delicious.  L.Soup and I had dinner at my parents house while D.Soup was working on (conveniently enough) a crabbing boat that he's planning on buying off his friend next year.  He wants to make sure its in working condition before he acquires it though.  So hopefully there will be more crabs for more soup in the future!  Yummo.

Thursday -  Family dinner!  My sister has an au pair to help take care of her kids.  She's (the au pair) moving to a new family this weekend, and my sister's family welcomed a new girl into their house.  We went over her house to have a welcome/goodbye get together.  We had pizza and salad and fruit, and played with the kids and hung out.  It was super fun.  L.Soup got to go "shopping" and get a new toy from Aunt Sissy's house.  Since her kids don't play with it anymore, it's moved to our house.

Friday - Today is Friday!  Hooray!  I'm so happy its almost the weekend!  My grandfather needs some help moving a heavy water tank in his basement.  So D.Soup is going to check that out today, and we'll probably go back over there tomorrow so he can help him get it moved.  That's really the only thing we have going on this afternoon.  It's beautiful out, so maybe we can go for a walk, or just spend some time outside this afternoon.  I'd like to get some more of the foyer wall worked on, but I'm not holding my breath.  We are such slackers. 

Today is also L.Soup's first "golden birthday."  She's 16 months today (the 16th)!  I know it doesn't really count since she's not 16 YEARS old.  But it's still her birthday.  So there.  She's so big.

Weekend - We have got some serious cleaning up to do around our house this weekend.  We are having my family over next weekend, and our week is so packed full that we aren't going to have time to work on the house much during the actual week.  We'll see how that actually goes.

Here's hoping that I can get some craftiness back into my life sometime soon.

tOWeL

Holy crap you guys... I'm completely geeking out right now. LOOK AT WHAT I JUST MADE.

I took 3 innocent towels:

1 bath, 2 hand

Then I gave them a face:

And ears:

First try ears are a little uneven.  Oh well.

 

And a forehead:

And got a bath towel! For the baby! And apparently for me! Well, not really, but I was the only model available...

 

How awesome is that? I've had the towels to make this for a while, but I hadn't gotten a chance to yet, with all the other "emergency" projects that I was working on. I found the tutorial here.  She's got a ton of other towels patterns on her site.  I'm planning on making a lady bug one too, but I think one was enough for tonight.  It only took me about an hour probably.

L.Soup's towels are all getting too small for her.  So I'm pretty excited about making some new ones to replace the tiny baby ones we are still using somehow.

Too Cute!

A productive week

We have been getting some stuff done around the house!  There's about a million more things to do but, progress!  I already told you about solving the baby beaver problem.  But theres so much more thats actually happened.

Sadly no more crafting.  BUT huge giant leaps and bounds towards being more capable of using my craft room to its full potential!  You guys.... THERE'S A FLOOR IN THAT ROOM.  Its supposed to double as a computer room.  And store our important documents... and they were stored alright, all over the middle of the floor.  I'm usually the keeper of all important papers.  And I just haven't had time.  Well we cleaned up!  Purged all the unneeded paper and made a nice neat pile of what we wanted to keep.  There's definitely a lot more work to do but !!! floor!!!  Soo much more space.  I'm pretty excited.  Now I just have to figure out what my next craft project is.

After that, D.Soup installed a towel hook in the spare bathroom upstairs so we would actually have something to dry our hands off with.  Now I just need to get some hangers for the pictures I made for in there and it will be pretty much done... for now.   There's no shower curtain up, but we figure L.Soup isn't taking any showers right now anyway so no big deal.

THEN I went into our bathroom and did some scrubbing.  Mainly sinks and toilet, because I didn't feel like coming downstairs to get the other stuff I needed to work on the other rest.  Next time.  I can't believe we have been in this house almost a year and I still don't have all the supplies I need for each floor.  I guess that shows how much I clean.  The other thing I've never done?   Organized the bathroom closet.  It's a disaster.  Maybe that will be next.

AND lastly... but certainly not least.  We (with the assistance of D.Soup's brother) moved the couches around on Wednesday.  They are in their proper places finally and the window that was behind the couch is open (and in need of a cleaning, ugh).  Also, before the move we cleaned the living room of all the toys... and miraculously it still looks like this:

 Not sure how we managed that.

ps. I've got another post coming right after this one, because I'm too excited about it to wait until tomorrow.

One more thing for the nursery

So D.Soup and I have been very lazy about getting the supplies we need to make the shelves for L.Soup's room.   We have most of what we need but haven't had the chance to get to the store for the last pieces.   I almost bought premade shelves earlier this week but couldn't bear to pay $25 A PIECE.  For them.

Ridiculous.

So in the mean time I decided to procrastinate on all my other projects and make a bumper for the top bar of the crib in the nursery.  I think my little girl is part beaver, she chews on the crib when she is angry.   The crib is an ugly mess.   It's driving me insane and I need to fix it before my brain explodes.

I have a ton of fabric triangles from when I had huge plans of making a million pennant banners for the nursery. Well that didn't exactly pan out and I ended up making two.  And I am very happy with them.   More would have been too many.   But,  that left me with all the extras.  So I measured the length of the section of crib that needed to be covered and started sewing.

This project actually made me interested in quilting.  The way these pieces fit together felt (to me) like I was making a quilt.   I stitched the triangles together until I reached the right measurement and then finished the edges.   Then I measured against the crib to see where the best fit would be for the strings to hold it on the crib.  Then I sewed the strings on to the back.   I will take more pictures when there isn't a sleeping baby in the crib.   I'm hoping she doesn't figure out how to untie the strings.

Another option I have is using the snaps that I bought to make bibs.  I have about 500 snaps, so if she figures out how to untie them, I could always replace the ties with snaps.  We'll see. 

UPDATE:

I just put tied it onto the crib!  It looks so cute.  And we have one satisfied customer:

 

I've missed crafty time.

A nice little weekend

First and foremost, we found this little guy on the back of the truck. I can't remember what day we found him, but I'm pretty sure it was this weekend at some point.

Sup?

A few months ago, my grandfather gave me two praying mantis nests to relocate to my house.  They are supposed to eat mosquitoes, so I happily took them.  I think they've finally hatched!  This is the only one we've seen so far, but I thought it was pretty cool.  Saturday we saw him again, on the garage door.  I moved him back to the safety of the flower bed.  I haven't seen him since.

Friday my parents kindly kept L.Soup and brought her home for bedtime so that we could do this:

Pretty sunset

Our friends have a boat, and asked us to go fishing with them after work. We had a great time and it was absolutely beautiful.

Saturday we cleaned up around the house in the morning. We all ended up napping when L.Soup was ready. That's one good part about her not taking naps in her crib, its an excuse for us to nap too!  After her nap, we went down to the beach in our neighborhood.  It was a beautiful day out, and the water was so warm. We walked around in the water and on the sand for about 45 minutes, and then we came back home.

L.Soup got a bath, and we changed our clothes and headed to Target!  I decided during the week that I needed 2 things in my life:

1.  A "recycle bin" trash can
2.  A basket for all L.Soup's dirty bibs and wash clothes.

I had a trash can I wanted to use already, problem was, it was being used in L.Soup's bedroom.  And it was definitely overkill for what we needed in there.  So we found a smaller, replacement trash can that fits perfectly in the space.  So we moved the bigger trash can downstairs next to our actual trash can.  I'm going to make some stickers with the little "recycling" symbol, so that its clearly marked for guests.  Now I just have to teach L.Soup the difference between the two!

The basket is actually working perfectly.  It's exactly what we needed to put her dirty stuff in.  When it fills up, we just carry it upstairs.  It's much easier than scooping it all up off the table and trying to fumble up the stairs with it as a pile in  your arms.  I already have enough problems going up the stairs.  On top of the fact that usually I'm not alone when I'm making the trip anymore.

We got back from Target later than we expected to, and L.Soup was HUNGRY.  We had dinner planned out already, but hadn't taken the chicken out of the freezer.  Luckily it thawed pretty fast in a bowl of hot water, and we were able to make a delicious version of Cajun Chicken Pasta.  We substituted asparagus for mushrooms because D.Soup does not like them, and we had asparagus in the fridge.

It was a delicious decision. A serving size is 1.5 cups. The meal itself makes 7.5 cups so we had a million left overs. It was so amazingly good. We've made it before but I had forgotten how yummy it was. Also, luckily it is really filling, so I didn't even eat over my serving size.

NOM NOM NOM.

Sunday we did some more cleaning, packed up a bunch of things that don't belong to us and took them over to my parent's house so they could be delivered to where they actually belong.  It was great to get more stuff moved out of the main level of our house.  The last thing we really need to do is switch around where the couch and loveseat are and the living room will be complete (for now).  D.Soup went out for a few hours with his brother, so L.Soup and I settled in for a nap.  Not soon after we woke up, D.Soup came back home.  So the timing worked out really well for us.

The rest of the afternoon we played, had leftovers of the deliciousness above, and watched Firefly because I had control of the remote it's awesome.  We all went upstairs when it was time for L.Soup to go to bed.  When I came out of her room D.Soup was asleep on the bed!  Rude.  I went in and took a bath in scalding hot water, and it was glorious.  He was still asleep when I got done.  So I went back downstairs and watched TWO (!) more hours of Firefly before I came upstairs and finally got in bed.

Then, it felt like someone was playing a cruel joke on me, because I couldn't fall asleep for almost an hour.  That was terrible.

I fully intend on finishing the foyer wall this week.  So I can finally stop talking about it and actually show it to you.  Other than that I don't have much planned for this week.

We'll see how that works out.

PS How many times did I say "delicious" when referring to my dinner.
Obviously I liked it.
Jeez.