nursery – Myriad & Sundry

Room Changes

September 7, 2012 1 Comment

A new baby means room changes in our household (among many other changes, I am sure!). Because we opted not to find out our first child’s gender, we conveniently have a nursery outfitted for either a boy or girl this time, already in nice yellows and greens.

Jameson’s new room is here:

It obviously needs a little help before it can become Jameson’s new room. This is the guest room, and it’s so girly because of inherited furniture. Even the curtains are girly, which were left by the previous owner. Other problems include the fact that it is storage for all my craft items. I am not looking forward to going through all of that…

Luckily, we recently found great new office furniture on clearance, and that change (which I will share later) means that we can move the girly bed with the trundle beneath can move to the office so we can maintain our guest bed.

Jameson is probably ready for a big boy bed any time. At daycare, he sleeps on a cot; at home, he is expert at getting off of our bed, which is very high. We are about ready to stop using the blanket sacks and move to regular blankets since he’s nearly grown out of them.

Aside, a really adorable video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2WMgBteAmQ]

We are planning on getting his room all ready for him by his birthday/Christmas, and transitioning him the same time. That’ll give us about 3 months before baby arrives for him to get used to it.

Here’s the room plan; all of these items are already purchased except for his wall decals (I’m waiting for a sale!).

Curtains : Eclipse Braxton Thermaback Window Panel – Navy Blue, $12.99 each from Target; we have the kids green ones in the nursery right now. They’re not perfect, but they are perfect for us in blocking out light
Table Lamp : Stick Lamp with Chevron Shade (no bulb), approx $8.50 on clearance at Target stores, similar to this one online for $21.99 (colors are slightly different); I was pretty excited for this, it reminds me of tire tracks.
Trash Can : Turquoise Plastic Waste Basket 13-qt., $2.99 from Target
Shelf with Hooks : Three Hook Wall Ledge – Espresso, approx $17.50 on clearance at Target, same as this one for $34.99 online; we are planning on placing this at his height for his own nicknacks or rock collection and so he can hang up his own to-be-worn again clothes or pajamas
Unfinished Nightstand : TARVA Nightstand, pine, $39.99 from IKEA; we are planning on painting this and the shelf with hooks a nice red color for finishing
Red Paint : Not sure exactly what color yet, but I currently like Stop SW 6869 from Sherwin Williams
Wall Decals : Car Wall Decal Mural, $80 from WeeDECOR; the tree and birds in the nursery are from WeeDECOR, and we are pleased with the quality nearly 2 years out so would like to stay with their products
Navy Bed : Leo Twin Panel Bed with Footboard from Ashley Furniture, we purchased ours for approx $160 from a local dealer, our local Ashley store quoted about $175; after convincing Brian that a painted bed would be okay, I found that many are custom and expensive. The price was right on this one, and we are happy with other Ashley furniture purchases we have made.
Bedding : Blue Trucks and Yellow Cars Microfiber Quilt Bedspread Set Twin Size by Home Fashion, $29.98 purchased from Amazon; after observing that quilts are expensive, I jumped on this when I saw it. I did want a Pottery Barn one over this, but it was out of stock and discontinued which end up saving us a lot of money!
Artwork Line and Clips : DIGNITET Curtain wire, stainless steel and DEKA Curtain wire incl. clips, nickel plated from IKEA; we already owned this from years ago and never used. Since we have a stainless steal fridge, I’m excited to use this to hang his artwork on his walls.

We are also removing the dresser from the nursery into Jameson’s new room, which is why I was so focused on the colored furniture. This dresser would be time consuming to refinish and is impossible to match woods as is. Instead, it will be a stand alone wood piece in the room, and the knobs on this dresser will be painted red!

We’ll have to find a new dresser for the nursery, preferably one that matches the honey colored crib which can transition to a twin bed for Jameson’s future sibling.

Our to do list for purchase is pretty short:

Mattress
Bed rails to prevent Jameson from falling out
New curtain rods for Jameson’s new room
Red paint
New dresser for nursery
Bookshelf for Jameson’s new room – possibly built in

Can you tell I might have been nesting a little? The mass Target run happened last night; I was gone for an hour and a half!

general life, house, life with baby

One Year Later

July 7, 2011 2 Comments

One year and a couple months, anyway. Last year right around this time I took photos of our new house. At the time, we had been in it for about a month or two, and we didn’t even have anything hanging on the walls yet. We weren’t completely unpacked and I hid off sections of rooms and only showed the glory of perfect unclutteredness in the new house.

Now here we are, one year later, older, wiser, and much more cluttered.That nursery has actually been used, cause yeah, we had a baby (though a year ago, the nursery wasn’t remotely finished).

I thought it would be fun to show you how our lives have changed in just one short year.

house, life with baby

My Favorite Non-Baby Baby Item

May 20, 2011 No Comments

My favorite non-baby baby item happens to be a little wall decor piece. It has four swinging swallows hanging from a black box. Doesn’t sound attractive? It actually is, and Jameson loved it. He still enjoys it, but now that he notices color he’s been more fascinated with the owl and tree wall decal right next to my nursing glider. But for a long time, that swinging bird piece would keep him from crying whenever he noticed it. He’d just stare forever. It runs on batteries, and is super quiet. It has been running now for about 6 months and one of the birds just finally stopped, needing some replacement batteries which are double AA’s.

So I bought it from one of those places that send you a thousand catalogs and has some fun random giftables. But really, I had a great experience and I’d buy from them again. And as far as I know, Signals is the only place you can get the Swallows Kinetic Wall Art. Bonus: It’s on sale. (Here’s some more about Jameson’s nursery, and the leaves for his mobile are Bazzil from Overstock).

Jameson lately has also been loving the large red plastic cup we use to rinse him off during bath time. Something about that running water that he loves. Makes me tempted to get one of these… last time I looked it wasn’t available via Amazon Prime but it is now. Soooo tempting…

house, preparing for baby

Nursery and Baby Shower

November 10, 2010 No Comments

This past weekend was my baby shower, and we go lots of great gifts. I feel almost prepared now! Just a couple more classes (like the Baby Care class this evening) and a few more items (like the baby monitor) and we will be set!

Here’s a few pictures of our Peapod’s nursery:

The baby shower was great; Brian’s mom did such a great job. It was catered by the same company that did our wedding food, so everything was excellent (I’m still eating the leftovers!). We had crescent sandwiches, vegetarian wraps, cheese and crackers, fruit, pasta salad, swedish meatballs and of course punch, cookies and a cake! I had a lot more people come than I expected. A good friend who I haven’t seen in over two years, Sasha, came to visit. Also some of my old Centerville friends and a lot of new friends! Most of Brian’s family came as well, and my aunt Carol and cousin Stacey. Sadly my mom couldn’t make it, but she did give me a gift to make me cry in front of everyone (a bonnet made from a handkerchief when I was baptized). See some pictures from the baby shower.

Yesterday I had my first Non-Stress Test (NST) and an ultrasound. I am now going to the doctor once every week and getting a NST each week because of the gestational diabetes. Luckily I am managing just fine with diet and so I am type A1 diabetes and only need to go in once a week instead of twice! The diabetes is a pain, but I have only broken the diet a couple times. I haven’t gained any weight the past two weeks since my last appointment, but the doctor says that is good and okay that I have some fat stores that are probably being burned up.

The NST is the same type of monitor they will use when I deliver. It measures baby’s heart rate and contractions. I got to watch the graph change when baby moved — the heart rate would go up. I also had a mild contraction while I was there and baby’s heart rate goes up then too. It takes 20 minutes so that is kind of a pain, and I had to wait to get the monitor since they only had a couple. But otherwise it’s painless and relatively easy!

The ultrasound was great! Fluid around the baby is normal, and Peapod is head down! The tech was nice and told us again when to look away when she was looking at the pelvis area so we still have no idea what the baby is. Brian needs to get working on some baby name ideas!

In other news, recently I got a new china cabinet which I am displaying my grandma’s glassware in! I spent about 5 hours cleaning all the crystal and it just looks fantastic. Grandma would be happy to see her glasses all clean and shining in the beautiful china cabinet, I just wish she was still around to see it.

preparing for baby

Room Layouts and Colds

September 14, 2010 No Comments

Last week was a bit hectic and not so much fun; I worked late on Wednesday night, until almost 8:30, which is quite a bit more than my usual 7:30-4:30 days. I think also consequently my little cold developed into a bigger cold, and I was pretty miserable by Friday/Saturday.

Brian and Melissa and the my in-laws went to see his grandma (and some extended family) on Saturday without me. His grandma is doing very well, which is nice to hear after the ups and downs this year! Becky made a fantastic lasagna, which they were nice enough to give me leftovers 🙂

While he was gone, I attempted to put up my yellow & green owl & bird decal, which is pretty much the reason why I didn’t feel like we have to paint, and which was the base around the entire nursery theme (it was the very first thing I purchased, during a big sale). Of course, nothing goes quite as planned. I purchased it in June and so when the edges kept unpeeling and not sticking correctly, I got upset since we’re well past the return policy time period! However, on Sunday they emailed me back and since June, they have switched their decal material; they believe the new material will stick to my walls no problem. They have a long shipping period, so it will be a while before I get it. In another 2-3 weeks I will be able to try the new decal. They are allowing me to keep the old one though, so I am thinking of things we could do with it. Brian suggested we could spray on a better adhesive, so I might fill a couple picture frames with some pieces of it. As a last resort, if the new one doesn’t work, I’ll be using it to trace and paint a similar picture instead.

Sunday I started to feel better, and I’m pretty much good to go now, except for the awful sounding cough I have, which is pretty much snot drainage in my lungs. And if that’s TMI then you’ve never had a proper cold!

We did end up keeping the changing table which pretty closely matches the crib! It is made out of real wood (except for the shelves) and even has the nice curves that make it look as if it were made to go with our crib! So recently I spent some time on layouts in the room. I went back and forth, we tried a couple different ones.

Last nice, I decided to try one of Brian’s original suggestions (hopefully he won’t rub it in too much), to put the crib along the wall near the closet. Initially I was against this, because the crib sticks out pretty far and will partially block one of the closet doors. However when we actually did it, I found that I wasn’t that bothered by it at all, the closet is still very easily accessible. The room is much more opened up by this move, so I think this is how it will stay!

general life, preparing for baby

Chicago and Peapod

September 8, 2010 1 Comment

A couple weekends ago, Brian and I went on our “baby moon” to Chicago. The idea is you go on one last fling to relax and spend time together before baby gets here. I particularly wanted to go before walking around gets to be no fun! As it was, I still was far more tired than I would’ve been without the extra baby weight. The walking took it’s toll, but it was well worth it!

We spent Friday at the Aquarium, had lunch at the Goose Island bar/micro brew/pub and went to dinner at a nice Italian family style restaurant. Saturday we spent at the Field Museum most of the day and ate real Chicago deep dish pizza for lunch and a tasty French dinner. Sunday we went to the Planetarium, which I of course promptly fell asleep in. In between we walked the Navy Pier, saw fireworks, walked the Magnificent Mile and putzed around Millennium Park. We had a great time!

See more pictures of our Chicago trip >

The baby is moving all the time now, poking around and making flips in my belly. Brian felt the baby move for the first time a couple weeks ago, and since then has felt it a couple more times. For some reason, Peapod is sleeping when Brian is around! But it moves all day long at the office, which is pretty distracting.

We recently purchased our crib and glider. The glider my parents are graciously gifting us. The baby better be a rocker like me! Brian teased me recently that we would probably have a baby that doesn’t want to be rocked. Sitting still would be impossibly hard for me! The crib is lighter than we originally wanted to go, it is a honey natural color. The glider is an ebony with light olive fabric. Combined, I have a non-matching room! This was a little difficult to move past for me, since I am big on matching. However, the quality of both pieces more than makes up for the color difficulties.

Currently, we’re trying to find a matching honey colored changing table. If we cannot find one that matches, we’ll probably switch to dark wood in the hopes that it looks like we mismatched on purpose, the glider and changing table would be dark! The oak dresser that was Brian’s as a child we are going to refinish in the lighter honey color, and change out the handles and hopefully the drawer tracks as well. However, Brian is working hard on his shed, so until the weather turns the baby dresser is taking a back seat!

The baby’s room is coming along nicely; we have curtains, the crib and a glider, which must be the most important pieces, right!? Meanwhile, Brian’s mom is planning the baby shower for November 7. We are having it nearby; the previous owners of our house moved to a complex down the road and their HOA includes a very nice party room which we will be using. I’m very excited. The time is just flying by! It won’t be long before we are having the shower and putting finishing touches on Peapod’s room. Maybe somewhere in this time I can get Brian to look at a few baby names 😉