Claire Harper Glassman

She is officially here! Claire Harper Glassman was born on February 25th at 8:00am, weighing 6lbs 14oz and 20 inches long. Matt and I are so in love with her already, and can't wait for all the adventures to come with our new little family.

Bar Lights

The bar in our basement finally has lights installed. We found some hanging lights we liked at ikea (and the price was right at $14 each)... but once we got home realized they had plugs on the ends of them like you would plug into a wall outlet... not wires to install them straight into the ceiling wiring. Hmmm.

But after some quick DIY research we learned you can easily cut those plugs off the lights, wire them correctly to the ceiling electrical which we already had set up, and then buy a simple white cover plate to finish it off (for about $2 each at the hardware store).

And here they are, we love how they turned out and that the bar is feeling much more finished!

Any day now...

It's officially my due date today, and we are hoping this baby will come soon! Definitely getting anxious. =)

Last weekend we got to celebrate Matt's 30th birthday, and also my lovely friend Beth's wedding (to her now husband James!) which I was a bridesmaid in. I was sure this baby would come early and throw a wrench in things, haha, but the day went smoothly and we had a great time at the wedding.

Here is a cute polaroid picture the photographer took of Matt & I at the wedding:

39 weeks pregnant

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).