Over Halfway!

It seems really crazy to me that in about 4 months we will get to meet our baby boy! This week I went out and bought Baby J some new clothes at Carter's big 50% off sale, and I bought myself a few outfits that will fit when I'm even further along.

This was my bargain find of the week! $15 maxi dress! It's nice and stretchy so I will be able to wear it for a while!

This week I have been really low on energy. I go out and run a couple errands and when I get home I completely crash! My back has been aching a little bit, but nothing horrible. But besides that I have been feeling great! In a couple of weeks I get to fly home to visit my family!

Nursery

This week I got paint samples for the nursery and Jared and I are still like different ones! I have also been collecting fun prints to hang on the wall for over the dresser. I made one of the prints and I love how it turned out, so I thought I would share!

Of course my watermark won't be on it!

20 Week Ultrasound

I had my 20 week ultrasound this week! I was so bummed Jared couldn't come since he's in the field. Baby did great! He stayed nice and still until the end and I'm pretty sure he got tired of being poked at and started wiggling like crazy! I think one of the coolest things I got to see was his tiny little heart! The ultrasound could show all the different chambers and everything. It's especially cool knowing he is only about 6 in and only 12 oz so it's incredible that we can see all that on such a tiny baby. They said he is for sure a boy! Thank goodness because I already took the tags off his new clothes!

Another thing this week, he has been moving and stretching out a lot! I can feel when he stretches because my stomach gets really really tight where he's pushing. When I try and push back he feels so strong it's incredible! Of course after a few times it's getting to the point where I wish he would stop haha. I can't imagine what that will be like when he gets bigger!

Baby looks healthy and when Jared gets back I'll have him take my 20 week picture!

DIY Pinwheel Mobile

Let's talk crib mobiles. Of course with Pinterest I found a million cute ideas, but of course being the crazy first time mom I decided to do a little research into mobiles. Mobiles are made to not only help stimulate your baby, but also sooth them. That completely contradicts itself, but it's true. While the fun colors and movement can stimulate your bay as they watch it, when they are sleepy the repetitive motion helps sooth them. Now how to choose what mobile I wanted....  I didn't like the ones in the stores...they were mostly bright colors stuffed animals, I was not a fan. I found tons on Pinterest that looked gorgeous from my eye level, but then I started thinking about what baby would be looking at. 

For example, I loved this simple mobile, but then I thought about what baby would be looking at and it seemed pretty boring. So I kept looking.

I finally found a Pinwheel mobile that I loved! Now to start crafting! I thought I would throw together a little tutorial on how I made the pinwheel mobile. 

Supplies:

12" wooden embroidery hoop

String (make sure it's the color you want because you will see it!)

Craft paper (Pick patterns or colors that match the nursery)

Glue stick

Hot Glue

Small Buttons

To pick out my paper I went to Michaels and bought a pad of scrapbooking paper so that I knew all the colors would coordinate. 

First cut your paper into 6.5" squares and glue (with a glue stick) the white sides together so that there is a fun print on each side. Next use a ruler or a straight edge and draw 2 diagonal lines from corner to corner to make an X on the square of paper. Cut from the corners towards the middle, but stop about an inch and a half away from the center. 

Now to make the pinwheel you are going to only glue down the right side of each triangle to the middle. Take the first corner and put a little bit of hot glue and press it onto the middle, continue all the way around. I then glued a small button in the middle to make it look a little cuter. 

Now this next part is a little confusing and I definitely just had to experiment a little to see what worked best. Take the inside hoop of the embroidery hoop and mark where you want each pinwheel to hang. I did 5 pinwheel around the outside. Then take the string and wrap it around the hoop a little and put a dap of glue on the inside to help secure it. Then trim the string leaving about 15 inches, enough to tied them all together in the middle. Do this at each of the markings. 

Once you have all the strings on, tie them in the middle of the hoop, this is where the center pinwheel will hang from. Now to fasten the pinwheels to the hoop! Measure what length you want the pinwheel to hang and cut a piece of string four times that length, yes I said four times! So if you want it to hang 7" down, you will cut a piece of string to 28". Double the string over and put it through a button and tie the button in the middle of the string. Then glue the button to the middle of the top side of the pinwheel. 

Then all you have to do is hot glue the top of the strings to the inside of the embroidery hoop where you wrapped the other string. 

I know that last bit was confusing! Sorry. You don't have to do exactly what I did, you might find a way to do this that is much simpler! 

But this is how mine turned out!

I personally love it! I tried to take more pictures, but the pinwheels like to spin so much it was kind of difficult, so I took a couple of videos to show you what it looked like! Sorry the mobile is on a hanger in a doorway, we haven't painted yet, so I haven't hung it up in it's official place quite yet. 

Anyways, I hope you all try this, I think it would be perfect for a boy or girl room! The spinning pinwheels are so much fun for baby to lay down and watch!

Week 19 Update:

This has been a tough week. Like I posted I was redoing a dresser for the baby's nursery. Unfortunately some bad advice from a Lowe's worked ruined all the hard work I put into it. He gave me a polyurethane to "seal" my dresser. Too bad that "sealer" ended up yellowing the dresser and even bead up and dripped off some parts. It was horrible. All that hard work out the window. I wanted to cry. I got my money back for the polyurethane and decided to just avoid the dresser for a while. A few days later I took a deep breath and started sanding. We reprimed and repainted the whole thing. I'm not thrilled with the outcome, you can still see where the poly ruined some of it. I will for sure post a picture once all the drawers are in.

So to help me get out of my cranky funk, we decided to completely clear out the office to turn it into the nursery! That took some work! It was my sewing room, and I'm a pretty messy person, so it was quite the task cleaning it all. But we got it done and moved the crib, chair, and some other small things into the room. Next up to get paint samples and figure out what color to paint!

Week 19: I'm feeling pretty good! My back has been sore, but it's not horrible yet. I'm starting to feel like everything I eat is just sticking to my stomach now. Jared got to feel the baby kick a couple weeks ago, but it doesn't happen very often because every time he puts his hand on my stomach the baby stops! I have my big 20 week ultrasound next week, and I'm hoping they still say it's a boy. I'm looking forward to that, and I'm also looking forward to flying in and visiting my family!

This is me at 18 weeks! I don't have one from this week, sorry!

Dresser Redo

As you saw in my last post I got the cutest white crib! So I really wanted a dresser to match. To bad those are super expensive..... So I kept my eye out on resale pages for a dresser that was in nice condition that I could just repaint to match. I would have gone with a free dresser, but those usually come with broken parts and I'm not handy enough to fix all that. So I found a gorgeous dresser for $100 on a resale page. $100 seems like a lot, but considering its a huge dresser, in perfect condition, it was a deal.

So after getting our crib, I matched the creams at Lowe's and got some wonderful primer and we started working on it!

Here's what we started with.

And here's my wonderful husband helping me prime!

Tonight we got all the primer done and a coat of paint! So tomorrow I'm hoping to get a couple more coats of paint on.

Beyond Blessed

As a Christian I believe God provides for our needs. Sometimes I have a hard time realizing he provides even for the littlest things that seem pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. But after this weekend I must say, he does take care of even the minor things!

Friday afternoon, Jared and I decided to go to Ikea. We wanted to shop around and also look at the crib I picked out online to see if I really liked it. I LOVED the crib! It was so perfect. It was white like I wanted, simple, and in the budget! $99!! Plus the $50 crib mattress, so altogether that was a bargain! I checked the tagged and it was out of stock. I wasn't worried, there was a store up near LA, I was sure they would have it.

We got home and I got online to check if the LA store had the crib. Nope, sold out. I started to panic a little when a lovely little pop up said I could just order it online! Perfect! So I did, and then another pop up, "Sorry but the item in your cart is sold out and unavailable." NO!!! I started checking all the stores for availability, nothing! This crib was sold out! I was so upset, then I realized I was being ridiculous, they had the same crib but in a natural wood color, getting a white crib wasn't a big deal. It was definitely a WANT and not a NEED. I NEED a crib, I just WANTED a white crib.

Saturday morning I was feeling bummed but realized, that having a pinterest perfect nursery wasn't all that important. I wanted a healthy baby, and it would be okay if he had a different color crib. I decided to just hop on Craig's List to check there just in case. I had been checking for the past few months with no luck. I scrolled, and scrolled, and scrolled some more. Suddenly I saw it! The exact white crib I wanted for $80! I text the lady as fast as I could to check if she still had it, and she did!!

We went over to her house to check it out. I kid you not, that crib was in mint condition! The family had only used it a couple times for when friends were visiting. She was so nice she sold me not only the crib, but the mattress, mattress protector, mattress pad, a changing pad, and several sets of sheets, all for $80!!

Can you believe that?? If that crib had been available at Ikea, I would have gone and spent $150 on just a crib and mattress! But I got all of that and way more for HALF the cost! So part of me doubted God really cared what type of crib I got, but I honestly think he provided this crib for us! It might seem silly, but that's what I believe!

The crib has been approved by Chance.