ONE

I can hardly believe that my little Mr. Baby turned one this week.  They say time flies and it really does.  I'm not a "mommy blogger" so I haven't been posting monthly updates on the boy, but I figured a quick montage of his monthly pictures as appropriate, just this once.  This chair is older than me; my parents bought it a few years before I was born, and then I claimed it when they redecorated in the 90s.  I love that it is in Mr. Baby's room, and knew I wanted to use it for his monthly pictures.  I did not consider that once he got wiggly, it would become exceedingly difficult to get him sitting still in the chair.  I have many outtakes of him diving at me!  

        

       

So anyway, we officially made it through the first year.  It was overwhelming and wonderful and too slow and too fast and just kind of unbelievable.  There are a lot of cliches about babies and parenting, but they sure seem true to me right now.  

Blogger vs. Baby: Navy Camo

In the couple of months where people knew I was pregnant, but didn't know we were having a boy, they liked to say things about how if I had a girl, we could dress alike, and how fun that would be.  Well, who says my boy and I can't dress alike?  In my defense, I did not buy him this shirt, but I love it.  

I was going to make a poll for who wore it better, but it wouldn't be fair.  I mean, look at him.  He's cheating with extra cuteness.

Top: Gap
Jeans: Jessica Simpson
Shoes: Sperry

Baby Room (finally)

Way back in April, we "finished" the baby's room (shortly after I shared the "sneak preview").  And I thought I would get a little blog post together, and then four months later, I still hadn't done it.  So here it goes.  This is my favorite room in the house, and of course, Mr. Baby just doesn't care at all.   

Before we found out that we were having a boy, I wanted to paint the room navy, and then do bright colors as accents.  A girl room would look almost the same as this, but with bright pink instead of the orange and green.  Or maybe I'd keep the green...  

Anyway, as one does, I started searching Pinterest for ideas.  And as I do, I kind of went into it without a real plan, but I really love how it all came together.  So I'll just share pictures of each main area and then give a brief summary (brief? not likely) of the situation.  

Step 1 was painting and adding the molding.  John did most of this work.  I didn't know it was weird to put chair rail up so high, but I wanted the lower part of the walls to be navy, and I wanted the majority of the wall to be navy.  I really like how it looks.  My only complaint is that hanging pictures gets a little awkward.  

I made the mobile after seeing this pin, but I made up my own directions, and used felt instead of paper.    

The crib is a convertible, so it will transition into a toddler bed, etc.  I made the crib skirt using these instructions.  And the crib sheet is one of my favorite things!  I found it on Amazon, and it's elephant print!  FYI, the price keeps going up and down.  I think it was $12 when I first added it to the registry, and then a few weeks later, it was $200 (who would spend that much for a crib sheet??), and then it went back to a normal price.  

To the left of the crib...

The little table is a hand-me-down from John's great-grandma, which we painted to freshen it up.  Since it was laminate, I used these instructions.  

I made the pillow-cover using these instructions.  It's polka dot, but hard to see in the picture.

The lamp and ottoman are from Target.  (if we are being honest, the ottoman is currently sitting on top of the side table, so the video monitor can see into the crib.  Night-vision doesn't work through the crib slats!)

The little basket was a gift from John's mom (filled with books), and I think it makes a pretty perfect stuffed animal holder, but it is overflowing already.  

I have made a big 16X20 canvas with baby's first initial on it, but haven't gotten it hung up yet.  I painted the stripes on it before he was born, but didn't add the letter until we were 100% sure of his name.  So just imagine a big canvas in the empty white space above the chair.  

The chair is a hand-me-down from my parents.  They bought it about 35 years ago as part of a living room set.  If memory serves, the couch was floral (cream, olive green and burnt orange), this chair had a twin, and there was a mustard yellow recliner.  Imagine this furniture sitting atop bright green carpet, and you have my childhood home.  When my folks redecorated in the 90s, my sister and I each claimed an orange chair.  And I still have it!  I think it's in pretty good shape considering the beating it probably took when we were all young.  I thought about trying to cover it, but I kind of love the orange velvet.  Oh, here's a picture of my brother and me in the chair when I was 6 weeks old, and he was 3.  It's cool how his turtleneck kind of blends in with the chair.   

Wait, what are we even talking about?  Oh yeah, room tour...  

Continuing around the room...

I looked and looked for curtains that I liked, but couldn't find any, so I made these.  Fabric is from Hobby Lobby.  I didn't follow instructions, I just followed my own common sense.  

The art was one of my projects.  I just painted stripes on the canvases, found silhouettes that I liked via google images, and printed them out on cardstock, which I then painted and mod-podged onto the canvas.  There were a ton of cool ideas on Pinterest that you could buy, but nothing exactly like I wanted, so I just made my own.  

The changing table is just a dresser from Ikea (this one) with a topper attached (this one).  A lot of people say a changing table is ridiculous, but I'm so glad we have this one.  The basket contains essentials, like hand sanitizer, diaper cream, extra diapers.  I sewed the basket liner using the same polka dot fabric as the pillow cover.  

Following around to the left, is the closet, which I almost left out, because it is not fancily organized.  Basically, I have current "dress" clothes (like polo shirts and stuff) hanging on the left bar.  Bigger sized items hanging on the higher right bar. Extra diapers and wipes stored up high.  Shoes are in the basket (which he has yet to actually wear).  The 2 woven navy baskets are full of random things that he either doesn't use anymore (like the newborn insert for the carseat) or things that he doesn't need yet (like toys for older babies).  

The pretty hamper thing in the bottom corner is full of blankets.  The gift bag in the middle is full of things I need to take to consignment.  Pretty exciting, I know.  

The final main wall in the room is small, and mostly taken up by the width of the crib.  This dresser matches the little nightstand, which I also painted.  And apparently didn't push all the drawers in before taking pictures.  I'm a real professional, you guys!

The top of the dresser has important stuff, like the carbon monoxide detector, the thermometer, and the night light (this one).  And a couple cute gifts for decorations.  Because every baby needs a rolling xylophone!  

The art has the same origin story as the ones on the other wall.  

AND NOW, quite possibly my favorite part of our whole house:  THE BOOK NOOK!

The door opens into this little nook, which is just wasted space.  I'd seen this pin a while ago and knew I wanted to do something similar for baby's room.  After talking through the options, and realizing how expensive these little shelves would cost (and not necessarily be the right size), John determined that he could make them.  And I think we can all agree they look awesome!  Plus it is so much fun picking different books to read each night.  

Another idea that I copied was putting "READ" above the shelves.  I stole it from this pin.  If you happen to be a perfectionist, don't look too closely.  Stripes are not all the same size.  

So basically, this is the nicest room in our whole house now.  And since I stole almost all of my ideas from Pinterest, I'm linking up with Anne and Jacq for Pin to Present this week.    

Accidental Matchers

Mornings have been tricky, because our child is a night owl like me, and then sleeps later in the mornings.  So we hadn't been to morning church in a few weeks.  We finally made it last week, and I accidentally wore a combination of what my two favorite guys were wearing.  In our defense, I was getting dressed while John was getting himself and the baby dressed, so I didn't realize we kind of matched until we were heading out the door, and it was too late to change.  

Church went pretty well.  Baby Smith slept for the beginning of the service and then woke up about halfway through the sermon, so we ducked out.  Then he fell asleep again for Sunday School.  

He's not really into outfit pictures!

Cardigan: JCF 

Dress: banana republic factory

Belt: gap

Sandals: target

Wedding Baby

You guys don't mind if outfit photos occasionally include a baby, right?  What if he is dressed better than me? 

Last Saturday, some of our friends got married.  We very nervously took the baby, hoping he wouldn't cry or scream at any awkward moments (like "if you oppose this union, speak now").  So we got all dressed up and ventured to the church.  He was pretty content during the prelude and processional, but once the music stopped, he started squirming and grunting.  So I quickly escaped out the back doors before he started crying.  And then he was pretty popular at the reception.  People tend to think he's kind of cute.  I agree.

Since we were all dressed up, we took a little family photo!  

And this might be my new favorite picture.  He doesn't really know how to smile yet, but it sure looks like he is grinning here.   

Cardigan: Gap factory

Dress: Gap

Shoes: Target

Brand New

  

As you might guess, I finally had a baby!  Or if you follow on Instagram, you've already seen a couple pictures.  Anyway, this guy joined our family on Saturday evening and life has just been a whole new adventure ever since.  We are all doing well!

Obviously, blogging is on the back burner    for an unknown amount of time.  I think I have a few random posts scheduled in the next few weeks.  I suspect I will be checking in periodically, but no promises.

April Showers (and one in March, too)

I've been mentioning various baby showers over the past couple of weeks, so it's about time that I actually blogged about them!  I continued my trend of failing miserably at taking photos, but luckily, other people take pictures at such events, so I was able to steal their evidence.   (Thanks!!)

First up, here's the one that my friend Brooke threw for me.  This was friends/family (except most of my family lives far away, so they are saving their trips for later this summer to actually meet the baby.  This did not stop them from sending gifts!).   She did a safari animal theme, complete with zebra cakes and a "Match the baby animal" game.  There are some weird names for baby animals, of which I have already forgotten.        

Next, my church threw me a shower.  The theme was Peter Rabbit, even down to the food (carrot cupcakes, veggies, strawberries covered in orange chocolate to look like carrots)!  The timing worked out for my sister and nieces to be in town for this one, so the girls were the official gift carriers and brought me presents to open.  (Epic fail - I didn't get a picture with my sister!)

And last but not least (and chronologically first), my co-workers had a shower for me back in March, before I retired.  We had it at a local restaurant, so we ate dinner, played some games, and then the presents piled up, and of course, had some dessert.  One of my co-workers brought her one-month old baby, so I got to practice holding a pretty new little one.  She was super calm, but my kid was going wild punching and kicking me while I held the other baby.  I think he was feeling possessive or something.

Baby showers are so incredibly overwhelming.  I cannot even put into words how amazing it is to be surrounded by friends and family who care so much and are so generous.  Babies need a lot of stuff (or at least, we think they do), and so much of it has been given to us.  It's a huge blessing and I cannot thank everyone enough for planning and attending and showering us with gifts!

A note on the Top 10 Remix:  2 of these showers were in April, and I wore both of my remix dresses, as well as my pink cardigan.  So far, so good on the challenge!

Baby Room Sneak Preview

A few people have asked about how I'm decorating the baby's room, so I figured I could share my vision and a few of the projects I have been working on.  If you don't care about baby-related stuff, you've been warned - just go ahead and come back on Monday when I will be showing an outfit I wore and talking about something else.

Pinterest is a blessing and a curse when it comes to everything.  Baby room decor is no exception.  Before we even found out the gender, I wanted to paint the room navy, so I was pinning navy room ideas like crazy.  John asked if an entirely navy room would be too dark, and then I wasn't sure, so we decided to make even more work for ourselves by painting the bottom 2/3 navy, and the top 2/3 white, and adding molding.  Here's the final result (with the crib, too!)

After searching for ideas, I pretty much fell in love with this entire room.  A million dollars later...  Just kidding.  I wasn't going to spend too much money on a baby room, so I just decided to focus on the navy/white color scheme with some other bright colors mixed in (mostly orange and green).

Way back in the olden days (probably the late 1970s?), my parents bought a very nice/modern furniture set for the living room.  I claimed it when I was in middle school and they redecorated our house.  It is orange velvet.  It's also very comfortable.  I briefly considered trying to re-upholster it, but then I decided to leave it as is (equal parts lazy and sentimental).  This chair has lived in our basement for the past few years, but it's moving on up to the baby room.  I hear it's nice to have a chair to sit on in the middle of the night when the baby isn't sleeping.  I'm hoping to make a throw pillow in some kind of navy/white pattern for the chair.  We got this ottoman for a foot rest (and it doubles as storage!)

We also didn't want to spend a ton of money on furniture, so it seemed easier to repaint an old dresser and night stand that had been in the guest room.  I mostly followed these instructions.  Of course, I didn't take any before or during pictures because I'm not a DIY blogger, but here's the finished night stand.

The other idea that I just HAD TO DO, was this little corner library thing.  Our room has the same kind of nook for the door, which is just wasted wall space, and I love the idea of the books being front facing, and part of the overall room decoration.  I was going to buy the picture ledges, but the sizes weren't quite right and they are kind of expensive, so John said he could just make them.  Awesome.  I painted these letters to hang about the shelves (totally stolen idea from the aforementioned favorite room):

As I was pinning ideas for the room, I noticed a lot of fun artwork with stripes and animal silhouettes (like this).  This is a pretty cheap and easy project, so I've made a few canvases to hang around the room.  I think these sets of 3 will be pretty cute on the walls.

I have a couple more canvases (including 2 bigger ones), but haven't decided what to do with them yet.  I'd like to do one of the big ones with baby's initial (like this), but I'm not sure we will have a finalized name until he is born, and then I doubt I will have time for craft projects (I hear babies are super needy!).  So that might wait a few months.

Here's another completely stolen idea!  I thought this DIY mobile was really cool, and looked pretty easy, so I did it myself.  I used felt instead of paper, but it's a pretty straightforward little project.

My final project was making curtains.  I thought I could just buy some, because it should be easy to find navy/white stripe or chevron curtains, right?  You would think.  But the answer is no - unless you want to spend $80.  Or maybe I am just bad at shopping.

Plan B was to sew some curtains, because it should be easy to find navy/white stripe or chevron fabric, right?  Apparently not.  I went to every fabric store in town and completely struck out.  The navy was either too gray, or the white was too tan, or they only had 3 yards when I needed 5.  I was getting SO FRUSTRATED.  But then I went to Hobby Lobby for the third time in a week and found this chevron print that hadn't been there the previous times.  HOORAY!  Here's a closeup of the curtain.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

So what now?  I still have a few projects in my mind.  I got a plain white lamp shade that I want to paint something on, but haven't decided what.  I want to sew a crib skirt, but need to find the perfect fabric.  And otherwise, it's just a matter of getting all the furniture into the room and arranged in the best way.  And then organizing all the baby stuff that we are acquiring along the way.  

I'm sure I will share more pictures when everything is somewhat finalized.