The Nursery!

The nursery is "done", and I am finally posting pictures of it!

The last piece I kept waiting to finish was to put up letters on the wall above the baby's crib with her name. Apparently, you can't have a nursery without the baby's name on the wall somewhere (every nursery I looked at for inspiration on various blogs had wooden letters on the wall, and I do think they are cute, so it was a must).

I finally found some letters we liked on Etsy which were unpainted and in a font that we liked (I wanted to find something more unusual and not just standard letters). I put in the order on etsy (for a steal at $22 including all 6 letters and shipping), and got them in the mail this week. We painted them a bright yellow of course to match the other yellow accents in her room, and now that they are up we are ready for this baby to get there!

So here it is... the finished room!

More Bump pictures

Well the bump just keeps getting bigger. =) I'm down to the last month now, and have to say... I'm getting ready for this baby to be here and to no longer be pregnant. Don't get me wrong, I've had it fairly easy with this pregnancy (no bad morning sickness at all, and no crazy complications so far), but this last month has been a bit rougher so I sure hope the last four weeks go by quickly.

A few things I never realized about pregnancy:

1. I had no idea how bad heartburn could really be! I don't think I ever truly experienced it until being pregnant. 
2. How much a persons hands and feet could swell...which apparently causes them to itch. Super fun. 
3. What an inconvenience it is to not be able to reach to put on your own shoes. 
4. That people are seriously nice to pregnant ladies. Not just friends and family, but strangers everywhere I go. 
5. And how much you can care about and love a little person that is not even here yet! 

34 weeks 

35 weeks 

36 weeks

Baby Shower

Matt and I feel so lucky to have wonderful family and friends who love us and are already so excited for this baby girl to get here. Some of my Mom's friends (Thank you again Teresa, Julie, Marylou, and Carolyn!) planned a baby shower for me which our families all came to, and I was so overwhelmed with everyone's thoughtfulness and generosity. There were lots of pictures taken... but here is just a sampling of them.

My Mom, Sister and I 

My Sister in law Lydia and Mother in law Chris

Aunt Cindy and Grandma Hanson 

Cute Diaper Cake 

The wonderful hosts of my shower

The Basement Bar

The basement has been our long work in progress... and we always planned to eventually put in a bar/kitchenette once it was finished to make the main living room a true "entertainment room". Well, we were finally at a place where we could get started on the bar (basement was painted, carpeted, most of the molding done, and other projects).... so it was time to look at cabinets.

Since it is our basement and not our main kitchen, we didn't want to spend a ton of money (goal for the whole Kitchenette was to keep it under about $1,200 - $1,500). After looking at quite a few options we ended up back at our good old Ikea and picked out base cabinets, a counter-top and sink. All the cabinets are white which we knew we from the beginning (they should "pop" nicely against the dark grey wall). Once the bottom cabinets & counter-top are done we'll go back in the next month or two and get the upper cabinets... we couldn't decide which size we wanted and thought this could just wait until the main part was done.

The whole process was pretty easy to get everything at Ikea (they had friendly folks on hand to help us get a list of all the pieces needed - and since we had everything measured ahead of time it went much quicker). Then we just had to go to the warehouse and pick everything up.

We can't wait for it to finally be finished and invite friends over to hang out, watch football games, have some drinks, and have plenty of space!

Here are the first pictures of it in progress....

Lots of boxes (this is actually less than half of them)

In progress, making sure things are level. 

The Ikea cabinets come with black legs that are adjustable to help level things... which was super nice for this do-it-yourself project since our basement floor can be a "bit" uneven in places. 

Cabinets put together, and the white back & side panels on. Oak counter-top on. 

 A view from the other side. We still need to install the metal handles on the drawers and cabinet doors. 

The sink. We still need to hook up the plumbing and caulk it. (you can see it is currently a storage space for all our extra cabinet hardware). 

Mirror Mirror

I knew I wanted to put a mirror up on one of the walls in the nursery, so it was just a matter of finding the right one to go with our grey/white/yellow decor. It couldn't be too huge since the largest wall has all the decals on it, and the second largest wall has the crib ( I didn't want the mirror hanging above the crib), so it would hang on a small area by the french doors and the entrance to the room.

Not finding any mirrors that were just perfect (or that weren't over $100), I thought I could instead find an old unique looking mirror and refinish it instead.

For a fantastic $30, I found this beauty at a antique store in West Seattle, and I knew with a little paint it could look really cool for the babies room. Well after taping off the glass and using a $2 can a glossy yellow spray paint from Home Depot... I think the finished product turned out pretty good!

Before



and After...