36 weeks :: Belly Progress

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope your holiday was filled with loved ones, yummy food, treats, and lots of relaxing. Ours was certainly low key, which baby girl and I greatly appreciated.

Here is the progress belly picture for 36 weeks. I wore a different outfit than usual, but you can still see that the belly is bigger. I can tell I'm growing, and I'm happy to announce that I'm not completely miserable yet. My back is stiffer and I'm slower, but I'm still feeling good!

The time table is starting to feel crazy! We can't believe that in just a month (or less, eeps!) we will have a cute little dino hanging out in our house with us. We've got all the clothes washed and put away, and all the gear is just hanging out in her room. We just need to do some organizing and rearranging and we'll be ready for her to join us.

The doctor is starting to check my progress and my body is starting to recognize what's going on. Hooray for my body not being completely clueless. And the baby is in optimal position for being born...as she has been for the past few months. Our shy little dinosaur hasn't looked at us for months. Oh well - I'm glad she's getting ready to come join our little family.

I hope you have a great Thanksgiving weekend!

34 Weeks :: Belly Progress

Seriously? 34 weeks?! Each day seems to move slowly, but then I look back and find an entire month has passed me by again. It's good and bad. Good because I'm keeping busy and the time flies. Bad because I realize everything I still have left to do! AH! We're slowly whittling away at the baby to-do list. We will get there.

Once again, can you tell I'm excited for Christmas because of those socks?? We're having a hard time keeping Christmas decor out of our house at the moment. But I will prevail! I just keep repeating: Putting up Christmas decorations will not make Christmas come any faster. Plus, I still have stuff to do before then!

It's finally getting colder around here. And I realized that winter coats don't fit me right now. Whoops! Steven and I came up with an amazing invention. I'm going to crochet a prototype soon and try it out. If it's good enough, I'll let you all in on the secret when it's finished. Steve is convinced we're going to get rich and retire early because of this idea. I'm a little skeptical, but we'll see how it all turns out.

Hope you are enjoying this chilly weather more than I am! :)

Happy Harry Potter Halloween 2014!

I hope you all had a loooovely Halloween. Or as I was calling it around here - Harry-ween. My Harry Potter Halloween was not as cool as I had planned. The only new things this year were the two owls I got and the sorting hat I crocheted. I wanted to make a giant Aragog and some of his kin, but it just didn't happen. And I don't feel too bad about it because I have been a little bit overwhelmed with my life in general. You know ... baby coming in a couple months and all that jazz.

So here was the end product for Harry Potter Halloween 2014.
If you want to see more detail, check out my Harry Potter Halloween from 2013.

Here is the sorting hat that I had so much fun crocheting. And it whipped up super fast from some chunky yarn that I abandoned from an earlier project (from like 3 years ago). And Allison at Crafty is Cool shared her sorting hat free pattern right here. Woo! I'm so glad she did!

Work is still crazy, my hormones are raging, and I'm feeling overwhelmed with life at least 3 times per day. I know it'll all be fine. It's just a lot coming at me at the same time. I have checklists everyday and I try to take it one thing at a time. It seems to be working so far.

So from our littlest punkin: Happy Halloween! I hope you enjoy the autumn season as much I do!

30 Weeks :: Belly Progress

Hey, my friends! I am here to give a quick update about the sweet babe in my belly. I know I've been a little MIA for a couple weeks. I had a block class for graduate school ending, and I've been pretty swamped at work. I think I say that a lot, but it's the truth.

Here is where we are today. Well...a week ago. ;)

And here's an update on the rest of our life - the fast version:

-Still pregnant. Still excited!
-Ended up dropping the graduate class I was going to take the second block of the semester. I've been so busy, I knew I needed to take things off my plate in order to be able to have time to get ready for baby.
-Started putting up things for Harry Potter Halloween 2014!
-Finally got blinds up in baby's window.
-Crocheting a few more things for friends and Etsy sales.
-Still working on projects for baby's room.
-Went to a birth prep and baby care class. We are so glad we did because they eased some of our first-time parent anxieties.
-We finally registered for baby things for baby showers.
-Recently my really cool brother-in-law saved our lives by fixing our bathroom. It was a serious problem, and we are so grateful for him and his quick action. Like a real-life superhero!
-Still working my buns off at work and trying to get everything set for when I leave.
-Still increasingly amazed with the step-upness (yes, I just made up that word) of my sweet hubs. There aren't enough words, so I have to make my own.


I'm proud to announce I still love being pregnant. A month or two ago I was almost ashamed to say that because so many women complain about being pregnant and all that comes with it. I didn't want to see like I was bragging. Yes, there are things that aren't so awesome about being pregnant. Yes, my back aches much of the time. And yes, it's much harder to control my gassiness. But it's worth it. I've been blessed to have a relatively "easy" pregnancy, and I'm thankful for that every single day. I'm absolutely loving feeling this sweet little parasite jump and hiccup inside me, and we cannot wait for her to join our family.

Pregnancy Journal Scrapbook :: In Progress

The moment I got pregnant, I started imagining this amazing pregnancy journal scrapbook.

This is just the beginning. It's been a great place to make a spot for each ultrasound picture. (My doctor's office is cool and I get an ultrasound with every visit!) Then I can journal about different details of the pregnancy that I don't want to forget. I'm already a little behind. I blame that on getting baby's room ready. The craft room has become a complete sty since we're temporarily storing things in there that need to be organized and moved.

I originally thought I was going to do a mini Project Life album. I've been following Laura Rahel for a little while, and she's got me a tiny bit excited about Project Life. It all seems so simple to do. However, I have so much craft stuff already that I refuse to add more to it at this point. I just got the Project Life album cover and the Project Life journaling cards. I'm hoping to do a purge/reorganization project soon in the craft room. We'll see if and when that happens.

Here is the album cover I chose. We had already picked the teal color for baby's room, so I continued that theme with the scrapbook.

Then I raided my paper stash for all of my favorite girly papers. Does anyone else save certain paper for some amazing project you have planned? Well, I do. That's probably why I'm a paper-hoarder. This was the time to bust out that beautiful paper! And I think I'll also make a goal to just use the paper I want to use, instead of saving it for years. ;)

Here is just one little spread in the book so far. I'm planning to print out all the progress pictures I've been posting on the blog, plus some that I haven't posted, and include them in the book where they belong chronologically. So far I'm loving that the papers aren't all exactly the same and that there are hidden treasures throughout the pages.

There ya have it! My pregnancy journal scrapbook thus far. I'm loving creating it. I think about it much more than I probably should. I can't wait to show you the finished product!

Do you have any suggestions for remembering details of pregnancy or when you had little children?

Baby's Room :: Sneak Peek

Hey! Guess what! We are finally finished with all the painting in baby's room! Exciting, right?!

And guess what else! The dresser, changing table, and crib are all set up and ready to be filled with teeny tiny clothes, diapers, and toys! Double exciting, right?!

Do you wanna see a sneak peek? I had a feeling you would.

This picture shows you the color we chose. It's adorbs, and I love it more each day. It's actually a little more green looking than in this awesome phone picture. When we first finished the walls I was afraid I wouldn't love it because it was "too bright." At least that's what I kept saying. But as it's been there and I've seen it in all types of lighting, I've fallen in love with it.

And again, what else can I say about this guy? He put together that dresser and changing table with very little help from me. I just sat in the corner and watched him and talked the whole time. He's so great. And I love that when I asked him to stand next to his hard work, he crouches behind it like this.

There will be better pictures to come in the near future since the basics of the room are set up. We're thinking pale pink and a gold-yellow will be the other colors in the room. What do you think?

DIY Paper Autumn Crafts

Earlier this month I showed you my super easy and simple autumn mantel for the coming fall season. Hopefully it gave you a little bit of fall crafting inspiration that you can do yourself on the cheap. In fact, it was so cheap it was FREE!! I love when that happens.

Now I'm going to share the whole process for the crafts I made for the mantel. If you saw my DIY paper Christmas trees from last year's Christmas (super great quality pictures, you're welcome) then you'll see the process for the pumpkins is very similar exactly the same. That's why I didn't include any progress pictures for them. Just kidding. It's because I forgot to take any pictures. You're welcome, again.

In a nutshell, I picked out autumn-y paper from my scrap stash. Then I made a stencil out of one of the cardstock papers of a pumpkin shape. I would imagine just using a circle could work as well. I just thought the butterfly-type shape would sit more straight.

After cutting a million pieces of paper, I folded them in half, used some tape and taped the pieces together. I tried to line up the sides as much as I could, but I just had to trim some of the edges to make them look even.

Then I remembered that pumpkins have stems. I grabbed my twine, opened up one of the sides of each pumpkin, and made loops with the twine. Glue those in, hold them together for a bit. Then you're good to go. I think it would have been cute to add some vines or something with ribbons, but I wasn't that ambitious in the moment. Maybe I'll add them later on a day when I'm feeling particularly crafty again.

Now, on to the little leaf art thingy I made. I'm really not sure what this is called. Again, cut out strips of my autumn-y paper. Sketched and cut out the shape of a leaf. I wanted to do a maple leaf, but I knew my drawing skills weren't that advanced. I figured I'd stick with the tear drop shape.

Then I put that cut-out on top of the glued-down strips, and glued that down. I trimmed the whole thing a little bit because it was originally 12 by 12 paper. But I thought there was too much white space on the sides.

After trimming, I remembered I had some fun fall stickers and embellishments. I added those and here we are!

I love my pumpkins. They gave my living room just the right amount of autumn coziness. Even though it's been in the 80s and 90s this week. Boo. I hear this weekend is supposed to have more of a fall feeling weather-wise. Hooray!

What cool crafts have you been making? Or have you been decorating for fall? It's all so exciting and I can't wait to do some more in the coming weeks!