Operation Nursery

Ever since we've known Baby Wheelock was a boy I've been planning the nursery...on a budget. There are so many great ideas out there, most of them a bit spendy, so I've had to dig deep and let the creative juices flow (along with roll up my sleeves and get some serious work done)!

It all started with the walls, but more importantly, the wall color. His nursery is the smallest bedroom in the house, so it had to be the right color (we didn't want to make the room seem smaller than it is). I had some fun picking out some bright colors that I loved...Richard wasn't too fond of them...he actually made a good point and suggested we do a neutral color so that as Josiah gets older and we change room themes, we won't have to paint the walls every time and create more work (and $$) for ourselves. So, just like that we had it narrowed down to a neutral color. Easy, right? I would have thought so, only did you know there are, like, a million different shades of neutral? Yikes. After a couple trips to Home Depot for paint chips and taking into account the owl bedding I absolutely fell in love with, we finally had our color and got to work:

The before color

And getting all the edges painted

I chose to do all the edge painting. I prefer the paintbrush over the roller, especially with the texture of the walls in this house...it takes a lot of muscle to get a good coat on, and lets face it, we started painting when I was about 6 or 7 months pregnant. I thought I picked the easier job of the two, boy was I wrong. I had to do so much bending and crouching I was in absolute pain for days afterward :(  But the finished product was worth it:

We waited until after our baby shower to purchase the other pieces that were needed for the room...new blinds, glider, and crib. With those purchased and assembled along with my homemade wall decor, Josiah's nursery is now ready for him :)

Now all we need is baby!

It's that time of year!

Let the craziness of the holiday season begin! Since I've been done working and have had more time at home, I've been able to get quite a few things accomplished. All my Christmas shopping and shipping is done (and what a relief it is)! I suppose I should back up a bit...some family came out in November. It was a busy time, but lots of fun. Boy, did this pregnant lady get worn out quick! We went down to San Antonio one day, had my baby shower on another, and then just did some random little things close to home. It had been awhile since I'd seen my mom, grandma, aunt, and cousin. It was great to see them all :)

The baby shower was a blast! My wonderful small group friends put it together and it was great to see some of my other friends/co-workers. I felt so special and was blessed beyond belief. We received so much for Josiah and have been given so much that friends could no longer use...a true answer to prayer financially. Shortly after my family left, Richard and I bought the crib and glider for the nursery. Those were the last of the big things needed to be purchased.

I love the bedding my family got us!

I've also spent some time making the wall decor for the nursery. I was lucky to find all my frames for cheap at Goodwill. I spray painted them and then got to work on the scrapbook paper owls I've been dying to create!

Before the paint

After the paint...a clean white

My scrapbook paper owls. These 3 will hang above his crib.

A little cheesy, but oh so cute!

The bible verse that inspired his name - "...turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength..." - my favorite part of the verse :)

We have yet to hang them all up, but we plan on doing that today...I'm eager to get his nursery 100% ready for him as we may be welcoming him into the world a little early. I went to my doctor appointment this week for my last, of the many, pregnancy tests (Group B Strep). He checked to see if I was dilated and after he told me he didn't expect me to be at all, since I'm still several weeks away from my due date, he discovered I'm 3cm dilated. We were both surprised! He told me not to hold him to his word, but proceeded to tell me there's a chance Josiah will be born before January. Now, I know people can be dilated at this point for weeks, which would put them at their due date, but it's been exciting (and a tad scary!) to think about our little guy arriving soon! I think we're as ready as we'll ever be, we just wait in anticipation now. This news gives me the motivation to get his nursery ready. There are just a few more things that we need to do...tidying up pretty much and hanging the decor. I'll post pictures of the final product when it's all done :)

I'll leave you with the latest pregnancy dream quote from yours truly (as told to Richard this morning):
"I had a dream I had our baby and he ended up being a kitten."

Freedom!

So yesterday was my last day with those little 2nd graders after 8 eight weeks of them calling me teacher. It's a tad bittersweet. They were a good group of kids, which helped me enjoy those 8 weeks. I'm sad to not get to see them grow anymore than I already have, but know I'll be subbing here and there and will stop by to say hi.

I'm glad to have been given the opportunity to help out my friend while she was on maternity leave. I know it meant a lot to her to have someone she trusts running her classroom for that long. I can only imagine how challenging it may be to get back into the swing of things after a break like that...I know she's stressing (it's in her nature). But those kiddos will welcome her and make her feel special...we had a little chat about that before I left.

Now the time has come where I can start to relax a bit more since I won't be working everyday, making lesson plans, or having to take work home with me to grade. I'm a couple weeks away from starting my 3rd trimester of pregnancy and it feels so good to know my stress level will drop a bit...though it may rise from time to time as I get things ready around the house. How excited am I to reorganize things, clean, and set up? Words cannot describe! I've been keeping the urge to nest at bay for a little while and now that I'll be home most day during the week I'll have something to do to keep from getting bored.

The current project is deciding on a paint color for the nursery. Richard and I have talked about it and after a few of my suggestions receiving the "yikes, I don't think so" look, we've decided on a neutral brown type color. I first thought I'd like something colorful for the boys room, but going with a neutral color will not only make the colorful accents I'll add later stand out more, but it will also keep us from having to repaint so often every time we change the theme as he grows up. Now the dilemma is choosing the right shade of neutral brown...there are a TON! I think I'd like something light since it's a small room. We went by Home Depot yesterday to pick up a few color sample cards and the more time I've spent thinking about it and looking at color swatches online, I will probably go back today to get a few more, lighter toned ones to bring home to hubby. I'm sure he'll trust my judgement on which one to shade. I can just hear him now replying with "that's fine." Men have very little opinion about things like this, I think...at least my man does :) After I return with the new color swatches I'm planning on taping off the room for Richard. I really don't think I can help with the paint rolling, but the trim and touch ups I'm able to do. It's such a small room and with me taping it off for him will help it go rather quickly. What's even better is that when we decide to go get the paint we have a gift card to use to purchase it (a very late wedding gift from one of Richard's friends). We're all about saving money where we can!

This is the bedding I fell in love with!

I really want to make framed (or on canvas) owls in bright colors like this for the wall decorations using scrap paper.

Those are just some of the ideas I have for the nursery once it's painted. We haven't purchased the crib or the bedding yet...we're waiting until after our baby shower next month, just in case :)

Another exciting thing about November, aside from the baby shower, is that some of my family is coming out to visit! My mom really wanted to see me (in person) when I was pregnant because the only other time she'd see me is after Josiah is born. So my mom, my grandma, my aunt, and my cousin are all coming out for a long weekend stay November 10th-14th. I'm so excited! They will stay with us, so I'll have fun trying to find enough air mattresses for people since we only have one spare bed. Richard jokes that he'll clean out the shed for my aunt to sleep in. Ha! Everyone feels sorry for Richard since he will be stuck in a house with 5 different generations of women...I personally think he will enjoy it. He will have fun joking around with my aunt and my mom. I think that alone will make him forget about all the chaos they may cause.

With them coming I really wanted to have the nursery painted already. For that reason and also for the reason that the holidays will hit soon after they leave. Even though Richard and I are sticking around here for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, we'll have parties to go to and finalizing purchases and decorations for the baby then. It will feel so good to have the painting done so we can start putting furniture in the room and have a place to put the gifts that we'll receive.

Here's to having a BLAST organizing, cleaning, painting, and decorating for our new addition in the coming months!

Must stay positive!

Ever have one of those days where things just seem to get gradually worse rather than better? Now, granted, my version of "worse" is often not that bad at all, but work with me on this one...even if it's just to humor me :)

So, I'm 7 weeks into this long term sub job and it's probably one of the few Monday's where I walk in and actually feel prepared and/or like I'll really get to accomplish some things. Well...I was wrong. Half the stuff in my lesson plans we didn't even get to! With trying to juggle new students that arrived recently AND get all these darned assessments completed before the end of next week (throw in there the teaching time it will take to prepare these kids for the assessments too...), time quickly escapes my grasp and I'm left feeling completely stressed and not to mention confused about how I should spend the wee bit of time I do have left in the day! After talking with another 2nd grade teacher to get some ideas on how to manage my time and fit in those non-negotiable teaching blocks, I felt much better by the end of the day. It's a little before 4pm and I'm lugging work home to grade out to my car and...it won't start. I call Richard and just start crying.

Let me pause here and just say how stinking amazing my husband is. His hormonal and stressed out wife calls him crying and he's so quick to calm me down and make me feel better. He jumps in his truck to drive all the way out of town to come help start the car (it's a bad starter) and greets me with a hug and kiss and makes sure I'm ok before even working on the Jeep. Seriously, God gave me a good one.

So he arrives, gets the Jeep started, and then we have to rush back to pick up the Mazda from the shop because it was damaged from a head on collision with a deer a few weeks back...it's a race against time! Oh and I had to still make dinner when I got home (later than planned), not to mention that pile of school work to be graded, when all I really want to do is crawl into bed and wake up 2 weeks from now so that I can at least cross off the long term sub job from my list of stressers.

I'm trying my hardest to be positive, and having such an encouraging husband sure does help. But I'm (yet again) reminded that I need to be leaning on God and trusting that he will take care of me and our situations/circumstances. We are beyond blessed in so many ways, why couldn't He take care of us through this as well? I mean, really, what am I thinking? Where's my faith? It's one of those lessons to be taught over and over again through so much grace. Boy, is grace a good thing!

See, I told you my version of worse it's really all that bad. I've taken it down a few notches over the years, trust me :) I am a work in progress, as we all are.

Ready for Fall

I realize this is Texas and we've had a drought for the past 4 months, but can the weather give just a little so it will start feeling like fall around here? I see the leaves falling, but it being 90 degrees is truly disappointing. I guess there IS a possibility of missing Oregon rain and cold days...

In light of this feeling, I've tried very hard to get into the season that is undoubtedly here (whether or not it's actually, physically changing to that season).

 My homemade wreath! I purchased a straw wreath (kept the plastic on so not to make a mess...these are cheaper than foam ones too) and spent a few hours wrapping brown yarn around and around AND around. It was worth it, gives it a very clean look. I then added some fall embellishments I purchased for real cheap at Hobby Lobby (gotta love their sales) and a wooden letter for our last name...I left the letter the natural wood color. I liked the neutral look with everything else rather than painting it. I purchased a few sheets of felt (super cheap as well) and made my felt flowers. All this for a grand total of $16 :)

I look at the door every time I pull up and love the way it looks. Our front door is kind of in a nook and this wreath stands out so you can see it from the street.

I was in a rather 'nesting' type mood today. I had this HUGE urge to rearrange, organize, and clean...not normal for me on a weekend. I started with rearranging the bookshelf downstairs and mantle above the fireplace. I then moved the room that will be the nursery. We've been given quite a few items and have just piled them in there along with some of my school stuff I don't want in the attic. Going through the school stuff I decided to organize my craft supplies. In the spare bedroom upstairs, I decided to use the shelves that are in the closet for these items. I filled each tub I had left over from teaching, with the various craft supplies I've accrued over the years. There's not a whole lot, but it's better than leaving them in a huge cardboard box that won't fit anywhere in the house. I'm excited to start working on the nursery. I can't wait to get some of the items out of that room to sell and/or give away so that we can make room for baby! We've been given a changing table, bassinet to use in our bedroom until we get into a routine and he's in the crib, we already had a dresser, and we're waiting to purchase the crib (or see if it's gifted to us). It will eventually all start coming together. When I'm done with this long term sub position I'll have more time at home to really get organizing and start planning. How exciting!

To go with the fall theme of the day (with a little baby nesting thrown in there), I had been planning to make these pumpkin cream cheese muffins I found on Pinterest. I was dying for the house to smell like autumn! The recipe I found looked like they were done in mini muffin pans, but I went all out and went for the normal sized muffin pans. There are several steps to this recipe, but it's fairly easy. After mixing the pumpkin batter and the cream cheese filling, I got to creating!

You put about 2 tablespoons of the pumpkin batter on the bottom then about 1 tablespoon of the filling in the center, then cover with more pumpkin batter and top with the cinnamon-sugary struesal mixture. These is how they turned out:

It called for what seemed like a lot of oil, so the paper liners kind of soaked it up, but the hubby has tried them out and he says they're delicious and not oily at all :)

Well, I think that's all for today in the arena of making it feel more like fall. Here's to hoping it continues to cool down!

We'll give this the 'ol college try...

Well, along with Facebook, getting a new email address (minus the maiden name...wait, I had one of those??), and my new love for 'pinning' on Pinterest, I've decided to step foot into the world of blogging. With both Richard and I's family residing all over the United States, my main reason for doing this is to keep them up to date with all the happenings in our life. But, I'm not going to lie, I will probably post a few crafty endeavors here and there :)

We have been married for not even 2 years yet (getting close!) and are expecting our first child in January 2012...rather close to my very own birthday. We planned to wait a little while longer so we would be in a better financial state, but God had another plan. And let me just say that, though the situation isn't ideal, it is perfectly God's. For as long as I can remember I've always wanted to be a stay at home mom. The original plan was to wait until December to even try to have kids so that by the time the baby would be due it'd be close to the end of the school year, I'd take maternity leave, then not return to work. Well, I'm working a long term substitution position right now (3 more weeks, hooray!) then I'll sub a few days a week until around the end of November or early December then be home. I am beyond pleased with this choice for the simple fact that I don't know if I could have done another full year at my current school...things get very overwhelming and each year there seems to be more expectations than the year before. I don't think I would have survived!

Richard is working in Austin for CISCO Network systems. He enjoys it and sees a lot of potential for growth there...we could do without the commute though. Luckily, right now he's on night shift so he's able to work from home a few nights a week. I will sure be happy when he's off that shift, however. We hardly see each other anymore.

Shortly after we got married we purchased our first home. We've done little things to improve it and keep adding to it when the finances allow it. I've enjoyed finding ways (and bargains) to decorate for the holidays and I'm getting very anxious to start getting the nursery set up for the baby! I think Richard has learned that I may like certain things, but I can find a way to do it on a budget ;)

I will update soon...keep up with the Wheelocks from the comfort of your own home :)