Nursery: complete!

We've finally finished the nursery, and what better timing than on Mother's Day? Although I don't really feel like this is my "first" Mother's Day without an actual outside-baby, we celebrated anyway by going to dinner and a movie last night. And Travis is currently cleaning the bathrooms as I type this - nice :o)

So without further adieu, here are pictures of our completed nursery:
So our theme is a French-romantic theme, sort of shabby chic but without all the white furniture. I found these wall decals on Etsy, my favorite go-to site when I'm looking for something unique that I can't seem to find anywhere else. It doesn't help that I live in a one-horse town with my only retail choices being Walmart and JCPenny. Little did I know that the decals were coming from China, but they made it in about 3 weeks and I'm very happy with the results.
This is our dresser/changing area, complete with a Diaper Genie stationed nice and close for those stinky diapers! We also have a hutch that goes on top of the dresser once Emily is out of diapers, so I didn't want to spend much money on what went over it. The shelf was free thanks to a Lowe's gift card, and the stuffed animals were all gifts. The frames and artwork totaled $32.

The artwork is a page out of the original "Madeline" book and "Madeline goes to London". My big idea was to actually frame 3 or 4 pages out of the books. For those of you that don't know the Madeline books, they go something like this: "in an old house in Paris covered with vines, lives 12 little girls in two straight lines, they left the house at half past nine, the smallest one was Madeline" by Ludwig Bemelmans. Now if you actually glance through a Madeline book, you'll see that all of the artwork is by Bemelmans. Bravo to him for being a much better artist than I, but they weren't exactly what I had in mind to put up in my daughter's room. Most of the artwork is dark or, like in the first book, all one color. We also ran into an issue with finding appropriate sized frames that didn't cost an arm and a leg. (See above re: my limited retail options) So we settled on the first pages from the books. I think they turned out pretty cute!
Here's our rocker, and hanging above it is the antique baby painting that hung in my Dad's nursery, my nursery, and now Emily's nursery.
Here is only some of the clothes we have for Emily, grouped by age/size (of course). There is more in the dresser, and a ton in that laundry basket that I haven't tackled putting away yet. It's like laundry day x 1000, so I just do a little at a time. You can't see our diaper stock in this picture, but we also have tons of diapers at this point. So we should be good for...6 months? Let's hope so!
Here I am at 29 weeks! I can't believe we just have about 10 more to go!

In other news, I think our weather has finally decided that it's Spring. We haven't seen any snow in about a week (fingers crossed!) and it's been a tad warmer. Yesterday was nice and sunny, and Walmart and Lowes have all their flowers/outdoor stuff out. Travis has started playing in a band with a co-worker's husband, and they have their first paying gig on Memorial Day weekend. It's 3 nights, and from what I understand this band makes pretty good money, so that would definitely be a nice added bonus right now! However, every time he goes to practice with them, he comes home with a new instrument. We have an additional guitar, electric keyboard, and a banjo....yes, a banjo. This is a country band. My husband is playing music in a country band. We're all a little shocked! He keeps promising that all the new instruments won't be staying here, which is a good thing. I told him our house is starting to look like a second hand store for baby items and musical instruments!

Easter showers

Hopefully bring May flowers! This weekend we got a bit of everything: snow, rain, and sun! My parents flew up for the weekend and my baby shower. Unfortunately the very first morning we woke up to snow. Sorry guys! The day proceeded to be rainy and gross, but all the snow melted! Easter Sunday was a beautiful day, and of course the day they left was absolutely gorgeous.

The shower was so much fun. I was a little nervous because I don't really love being the center of attention. But a ton of ladies came. We ate, played games, and of course - opened presents! Travis and I are so blessed to have such wonderful, giving people in our lives! Baby Emily got tons of clothing, of course. She will be one very well dressed little girl! We also got some fun toys, lots of diapers and baby care items, and a Baby Snugrider that our car seat can snap right into and transforms into a stroller. So cool!

Easter was pretty successful, if I do say so myself. I offered to host it here since my mother-in-law was busy shower planning. Really, we didn't make that much because Trav's grandma loves to cook and bring stuff. So we made the ham, a cheesy potato casserole (family recipe I found in the Bear River Lutheran Church cookbook!), and a 24 hour ambrosia-type salad. Memaw brought a cold bean casserole, pineapple casserole, and two pies. Yum! Everything was so good and everyone was stuffed by the end of the night. I consider that a success!

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from the weekend. I'm not sure how that happened. My Dad did video record the entire shower, so maybe I'll post that if I get a copy. Then I can torture you all with 2 hours of present opening :o)

Pink has landed

Pink is slowly taking over our house. No, not the singer - the color! Travis finished painting the nursery tonight, and I'm so excited! After living for years with beige walls, let me tell you this: any pink is pink. Whether it's muted or barbie doll pink, it's still very bright! Once we get stuff up on the walls and the bedding set up though, I know it'll look great.

Last week was kind of interesting at work. All of the reps except me got to go to Las Vegas for our annual continuing education conference. I'm not sure why I was overlooked for this trip, but Vegas at 6 months pregnant sounds like zero fun. The city changes every year though, so while I'll likely have to go next year I'm sure it won't be in Vegas again. Since I was the only working rep in our territory during the week, I got to see clients on two days instead of just one. Woo hoo! Now it appears that this will be the norm for awhile since the others are getting so busy with hearings. I love client days and actually meeting the people we help so this excites me!

Next week is a four day week for us, yay! The company gives us Good Friday off, so Travis and I will be driving down to Duluth to pick up my mom & dad for the weekend! I'm so excited to see them and to have them see all the progress we're making up here. Then Saturday is my baby shower! (I'm pretty excited, can you tell?)

Here's my latest bump picture at 26 weeks:
Finding pants that fit is getting a little tough lately. Looks like I need to do some shopping!

We have windows!

That's right ladies and gentlemen, we have windows. Not just hanging out in the house - successfully installed! Travis is finishing the inside trim as we speak. I don' t have pictures yet because they still look a little ugly at this point. Once they're finished then I'll post some. We have to paint the outside trim as well. The weather turned for the worse so Travis will finish the paint when it's a bit drier. Currently our house looks like it has a black eye because the new trim is bright wood. But eventually it'll go back to looking normal!

Next weekend: we paint! There is an end in sight to our nursery renovations, and then I can start "nesting". I'm quite anxious to begin this part of the process! Up until now, it's been all nit, grit, and ugly stuff going on in there. I'm ready for it to be pretty!

Here's my latest bump photo at 25 weeks. Don't get too excited about that short sleeve shirt - it's still pretty cold here! I had a cardigan to go over this. But I'm starting to get to the "hot all the time stage" so I like wearing layers. It is warming up a bit here in northern Minnesota. We've been in the 40's all week! Woo hoo! On sunny days it's even nice enough to go without a jacket. Look out, summer will be here before you know it!

One check

We've got one more check off our baby to-do list. Closet doors! The nursery had sliding doors, and only one was functional. Not so great. So we planned to get new bi-fold doors to put up. Of course, nothing can be easy, right?

Once again, our special house makes things harder. Standard doors were too tall and not quite wide enough. Luckily Travis found some doors on a local auction website, so we not only got closet doors but a few extra doors too. I'm not sure what we'll use those for, but we got them all for $10 less than what one new set of closet doors would have cost. I'm ok with that! So first he had to trim off some of the bottom on the doors to make them short enough. Then he had to add more trim to the door frame so there wouldn't be a huge 3 inch gap on each side of the doors. Then he had to sand and paint it all. 3 weekends later, we have the finished product!

Aren't they pretty? Much better than what was there before, trust me. Did you notice the little special touch I added to them? Those aren't just any old closet door pulls:
Pink crystal knobs! Aren't they fabulous? It's ok, you can be jealous :o) I originally just wanted one, but found the pair on Amazon for $13. I think it looks way better with two anyway.

I have a new favorite food obsession this week. We bought some "Garlic Garlic" seasoning from Tastefully Simple, and it has a dip recipe on the container. 2 tbsp seasoning, 1/2 cup of mayo and sour cream each, mix and enjoy. OMG is this heaven. I suppose you could use it to dip veggies in, but I've only tried it with potato chips to date. It's so yummy! After you eat it you'll be able to ward off friends, enemies, and vampires alike: bonus! I've also been craving milk like nobodies business. At least that's healthy!

Here I am at 24 weeks in my jailbird stripes:

Blizzards. I dig them.

No, I haven't lost my mind. To 99% of the population, a blizzard looks like this:
But this week, we were supposed to get a blizzard. On "Blizzard Day 2011" our weather looked more like this:

That's right. Sunshine, not a cloud in the sky. It was a beautiful day. I think the weathermen that air the doomsday snow and wind pictures on TV are really just lying. So I've decided that if that's what all our blizzards are going to be like, I'm totally cool with that.

In other news, being pregnant is hard work. Really! Think about it: 100% of my day is now spent growing another person. I don't think that's to be taken lightly. We went to Target yesterday to finish off our registry, and then walked around the mall for 45 minutes and I'll tell you what - I was pooped. I spent the rest of the evening on the couch with barely a cognitive thought going through my tired brain. But you know what's really cool? Visible kicks! Travis felt his first kick the other night, and I now sometimes see her kick instead of just feeling it. Like I said: it was hard work creating that :o)

We're in the middle of all types of nursery themed projects. Travis has nearly completed the new closet doors, and we're measuring for new windows in there. Of course because our 90 year old house has to be you-neek, nothing is standard size. So our "special" windows are going to cost about $75 more per window. Special windows indeed. We bought paint, but Travis said there is no sense in painting until we have the windows installed and the trim back up. So we wait. The color I chose is called "Water Lily Bloom":
I wanted pink but I didn't want PINK!, so I thought this was a nice muted shade. We'll see how it looks on the walls! Here's my latest picture at 23 weeks. I'm starting to feel like I look huge!

You know you're a grown up when...

Lately I've been feeling very "grown up". I've always sort of felt like a 12 year old living this adult life, despite getting married, having a real job, buying a house, etc. Having a baby certainly brings on that "adult" feeling, but until she gets here I think that it still doesn't feel real.

What really makes me feel grown up? Purchasing our first set of real, matching bedroom furniture! Shocking, right? Travis and I have never had matching furniture in our room. Or very much at that. No headboard, office furniture as a nightstand, and one lone dresser. Quite the college set up if I ever did see one. So we decided to bite the bullet and buy some furniture for ourselves before everything became about the baby.

Our beautiful furniture came this week and I couldn't be happier!

Our lovely headboard/footboard combo and nightstand.
Separate dressers! *Angels sing*

The set is pretty Mission style, although I wouldn't say that that's my "style". I was just drawn to this set and I think it's beautiful. A little big for our room, maybe, but we can live with it! Best of all? We got it 1/2 off and it's all paid for!

So for right now I feel a little grown up. As soon as the newness wears off though, I think I'll revert to feeling like I'm 12 again, playing wife and soon to be mother.

In other news, I believe we have a shower date set! The moms have picked Easter weekend, April 23rd and my parents got their plane tickets all booked. So now we have to get the registry done. I started one on the Target and Babies R'Us websites, but holy-overwhelming-baby-madness. There is so much stuff. And it all has to be researched. Is it safe? Is it soft? Is it necessary? Welcome to my headache! Slowly but surely we'll get there. Plus, I keep telling myself: my parents survived lead-based paint and cars with out seatbelts (never mind carseats!). I survived a trip down our basement stairs in my rolling walker. Our baby will be ok!