Okay so it seems that my life/my lack of organization over the past 10 months has not been very condusive to starting up this blog as I may have originally thought.
So much happens in ALMOST A YEAR! So today is the day I will complete my second blog bost in 10 months. Since I first posted there is a lot that has happened. In June on my 23rd birthday my husband and I found out that we are expecting our first baby! We were so very excited to hear this news.
After finding out from a home pregnancy test we went to the doctor to confirm. And yes! In nine short months we were going to become full-fledged parents! We started our regular doctor visits and signed up for prenatal classes that are provided locally so we could learn all kinds of things about pregnancy, healthy eating, what to expect and meet other expecting parents from our area.
Our summer was filled with visiting family in Alberta as well as spending a week at summer camp. My husband was the speaker at a Bible camp outside of Winnipeg. At the end of the summer we got to hear our little one's heart beat and that just showed us how much of a miracle pregnancy is! In September we had our first ultrasound which I will attach and found out that we are having a BOY!
Since finding out that we are expecting I have had a strong baby craft fever. I will share some of the things I have made with you.
I have done my best to record any significant pregnancy event. I have not been the best at organizing my life over the past while, however I have found that since being pregnant I have had an increased urge to organize as well as plan ahead seeing as there is a a deaadline until my life is going to change and I wanted to start off my life as a mom as organized as possible.
We started our organizing by re-arranging our office/spare room in our two bedroom apartment to make room for the arrival of our little boy! This included getting rid of our hide-a-bed couch that we got off of Kijiji three years ago for when we have company. This ended up being easier than we thought it would be as one of our neighbours had a son who needed a couch - they even came and took it away! It was great.
While we were in Alberta this summer I used IKEA gift cards from our wedding - at that time 3 years ago and bought a square nightlight/lamp in frosted glass and some dark wood square bookshelves to use in our office/spare room to organize our closet and use the other one as a book shelf in the room. My husband generously offered to help me assemble one of the shelves. Before we assembled the second shelf we discovered that we did not have a dresser for clothes for our little one and no other way to organize our little guys clothes. My sister-in-law had one she was not using and said that we could borrow it. It is perfect! We were able to fit it in the closet so as to save space in the room. (I will have to add a closet photo with the dresser)
Friends of ours who have three boys offered us their crib as their boys are all done using it so that was a second major piece of furniture that we did not have to buy - it is a beautiful wooden crib, very sturdy and the color of the wood totally matches the doors and trim in our apartment. It even came with a matress what a blessing!
This began the process of converting the office/spare room into a baby room/nursery/office. Then my parents came out to visit us in October and helped with the assembly of the crib that was given to us as well as put up a shelf I bought at a garage sale in the summer and painted white for some cute, small nick knack type things. The one of our friends went out and she is such a sweet heart and she bought us a picture frame that has a matte inside of it with spaces for a picture of each of us as well as our little boy and it says,
"Mom Dad = Me." I just love it.
Then with crib, book shelf, nick knack shelf and dresser we could begin to put our nursery/baby room together. My mom and I went to Dollarama and bought some fabric bins for the bookshelf to organize everything and give it a place. We got one shallow bin for books, another one for baby powder, lotions, diapers, wipes and bath stuff. The other bin is being used for small toys/rattles and miscellaneous stuff.
Since we rent our apartment painting the nursery is not an option so instead we opted to hang a photo frame collage on the wall to decorate it. My parents as an early Christmas present bought the exact frames I wanted for me and my Dad helped me hand then up on the wall. Then over time as we took maternity photos I began the process of printing pictures to fill the photo frames.
Also as I said before since we are not able to paint I knew that any color I wanted to add to the room to make it seem more like a nursery would have to come from what I put into the room. This brought up the problem of deciding on a theme and or color scheme. I knew I wanted to add bright colour because the walls are a very neutral colour and so is the carpet. While in the states on a short holiday a few years ago I picked up this adorable dinosaur fabric that looks like a patchwork and has all these different squares with cute little dinosaurs on it - the colour are very bright off - primary colours. I also picked up a dark brown fabric that coordinates that has cute dinosaur words on it. I knew I was planning on making this into a small crib quilt since it is like a cheater quilt in that you can just pin the two fabrics together with batting between and quilt around the squares. No extra sewing required! And for the binding I picked up a also coordinating striped fabric with the same bright off- primary colours. This was something I planned I would make while pregnant. Camp this summer proved to be the perfect opportunity for me to sit down and quilt this project. Once I had the blanket done it gave me something to go on as far as a theme for the room. After the crib was put up I discovered that there would be room underneath - until we lower the mattress to store boxes of things and since we have limited space I was excited. This provided the problem of needing a crib skirt to cover the stuff that will be stored under the crib. I got my sister-in-law to pick up more of the coordinating bright - off primary colours striped fabric from the states as well as some extra cute dinosaur fabrics. Then I sat down and took some time to figure out what kind of crib skirt I wanted. I decided to just do something easy - very little sewing, just measuring the sides of the crib, cutting the fabric to size, ironing up a hem, sewing the hem and then adding ties to each of the panels so that as the mattress gets lowered the crib skirt will be lifted off the ground and not pool underneath the crib. thus providing a cute covering for the bottom of the crib that will hide all the boxes I will be using for extra storage for diapers bought in bulk as well as clothes that are too big or small. Then along with the crib quilt/blanket, crib skirt and some coordinating crib sheets in light green and light blue I was able to create my own crib bedding. To go along with this I made a small stuffed dinosaur for our little one that has the same striped fabric as the spikes on the spine of the dinosaur. In October my husband decided that our little one needed some encouragement that from birth he will like Star Wars - one of my husbands favorite things! So he went out and bought a stuffed Chewbacca teddy bear. It even roars or growls! And it is to be a crib buddy for our baby. Now with the crib complete we felt like we had a place to put our baby once he comes. We took the blackout curtains from our room and added them to the baby room because it had frilly white curtains - I must say I am not all about frills and lace. And the curtains from our room were perfect because they are orange and totally match the colours we picked. This meant getting new curtains for our room and I found some on sale! Perfect how that all worked out.
The last thing our nursery seemed to be missing was a spot for me to rock the baby. We do have a lazy boy in our living room but I thought it would be nice to have something to sit in if the baby and I need some alone time when we don't want to be or feel like being in the living room. My sister-in-law came to the rescue again by offering the use of their second fabric recliner that also rocks that they had in their basement. When we got it I used a textured white blanket from IKEA to add a balance of white as it was a dark brown chair and a fleece blanket with green and blue squiggles to throw over the back of the chair. This chair really seemed to tie the room together. Now I feel like everything has a place - it is great.
At Christmas my other sister-in-law gave us an early baby shower gift of a beautiful diaper bag! So I looked online to figure out what to put in the diaper bag to bring to the hospital. I washed the small outfits I want to bring as well as packed: a baby hat my mom crochet for our little guy, diapers, some receiving blankets, socks, and anything else I think I will need. Then I was inspired to pack our "Go Bag" for the hospital so as to be ready whenever the time comes. I put some pajamas I got for Christmas right into the bag (they are so cozy I got them from my mom they are big enough that they are roomy and they have a cute light leopard print in grey on them which makes me feel girly and nice), slippers, fuzzy socks, a book, clothes for husband, etc. Now I feel about as ready as I can be for our little one and this is probably a good thing since our due date is in just over a week. I will attach the pictures I took tonight of our nursery. I cannot think of anything else I was going to say so I will just leave this as it is for now - hope this rambling makes sense. I will keep you updated on the little one.
