Ta-Da! Baby Storage!

Whew! We made it through putting the Sauder cabinet together without arguing. Nick does not like to put things together like this and I actually kind of enjoy seeing something come together but I read the instructions and Nick did all the hard work and ta-da we have baby storage! Here it is in it's place where my old dresser used to be. I can't really change my mind about where it goes now since Nick already anchored it to the wall.

Here is all the of the glorious storage it has! Yes, glorious. When you live in an old house, extra storage is a glorious thing!

I have rearranged the adjustable shelves so many times and probably will again. I went to Big Lots again looking for some storage baskets with no such luck. Their selection of storage and organizational items was lacking. While I was there though I picked up a small tension rod that I'm hoping will be able to handle a few hanging baby clothes. Even with the rod installed, I was able to space the shelves out to allow ample storage on the shelves. Now comes the fun part. I'm off to fill it up with baby things!

The Great Furniture Swap

Baby has less than 6 weeks before we get to meet him or her so even though we still have faith that God is going to bring a buyer for this house, even if it's after the baby is born, we need to make a few moves to be prepared for baby to arrive in this house. First swap was moving my childhood dresser and mirror into L's room. This is what her room looked liked previously looking out into the hallway. These are real-life photos of our house! No cleaning up just for the pictures here.

And this is what it looks like now with my old dresser. That dresser is so much more appropriate for a little girl's room. Yes, there is a dog on a bed in the doorway. No, she does not normally sleep in a doorway. On another note I REALLY want to change the paint color in her room but I'm trying to refrain myself because we are going to sell this house and I'll get to decorate a new room for her!

Now over to our room...

L's old dresser is now tucked into the bottom of our closet. The short little wall next to the closet is where my dresser used to sit. Yes, it did block a little of the closet but hey, we're working with 866 sq ft with 2 adults, 2 dogs and soon to be 2 kids. And our bedroom also serves as an office so there was no other place for it. The wall where the dresser used to sit needs to serve as storage for the baby so we went to several furniture stores looking at real furniture but came home with this Sauder cabinet from Big Lots that needs to be put together. This is the closest picture I could find, ours is the same except the handles are rounded.

The dog bed and our greyhound sitting in the hallway are usually in front of our closet too but they were just temporarily moved while we put this cabinet together. Although I do need to figure out a new spot for Lindy to sleep, probably in L's room.

Handmade Nursery: Crib Sheets

Yesterday I set up a tab on my blog for the Handmade Nursery. When we sell this house and start decorating new rooms there will be lots more posts of putting an actual nursery together but for now it's more a list of all the parts and pieces I've been working on. When I was putting the list together I realized that I never posted about the crib sheets I made. So here are the three I made using THIS tutorial and the Fox Trails line of fabric from Doohikey Designs.

Handmade Nursery: Bath Time!

I was in a sewing mood yesterday and my crazy pregnant brain thought it would be a good idea to make an Easter dress for L. I had fabric and a pattern ready until I remembered this skirt that I made her back in February! How could I have completely forgotten I had something sewn and ready hanging in her closet already for Easter? I'm blaming it on the crazy pregnant brain! Since I was already in the sewing mood I went back to my baby sewing to-do list and whipped up this hooded bath towel.

Since baby is still growing(thank goodness!) Bearemy decided to be my model.

I used a tutorial found HERE that I have had pinned onto my baby board. I've been trying to make Pinterest a little more practical than my bookmarks in the web browser. They usually end up a mess of things I never end up trying and I lose the ones I've actually made and liked. On Pinterest, once I've sewn a tutorial or pattern I liked, I move it over to my Successful Sewing board where I make a comment on how it went, if I changed anything, etc. The one other thing I did do differently on the towel other than rounding the corners was how I top-stitched the towel. I started and stopped (see photo below) where I had top-stitched the triangle piece. The flannel and terry cloth is very thick together and going through 4 layers would have been tough. I also think that the triangle will stay more rounded for the top of a bitty head to dry under. Because of the thickness of the fabrics again I thought if I had been able to top-stitch it that it would have flattened the hood part too much.

I'm not sure if this is too girly if the baby is a boy? I've made a receiving blanket out of the same fabric and have enough left to make some more burp cloths and wash cloths. What do you think? I have some obvious boy or girl fabrics I've sewn up that I figure I'll just donate or give to someone I know whichever gender isn't appropriate but I'm not sure about this fabric. I asked Nick but he wasn't much help!

Today I'm linking to:

Handmade Nursery: Wall Art Continued

I got on a roll yesterday and painted 2 more pieces for the future nursery. Here is the "g" that I was painting the other day. I used a canvas board for that one so I just need a frame to put it in. I have been in love with the state art for awhile now so I made one for the baby using a wrapped canvas. I painted around the sides so I'm just going to hang that one up on the wall as is. I have one more wrapped canvas I purchased so I might make an Indiana one too as most of our family is either in Indiana or Kansas. One of these days I'll get around to making a whole outline of the United States and put hearts all over it where all of our family lives to hang in the main part of the house.

I used another canvas board, so this one will need a frame too. The fabrics to the left are the three I made crib sheets out of so I pulled the star shape from the orange and green sheets. There's a little peak of the adorable fox on the polka dot fabric. I have more things planned for him!

Welcome to the new followers that just joined me the past couple days! I love having you here!

My entry into Strut Your Stuff sponsored by Appliances Online and the Bosch Washing Machines

Handmade Nursery: Wall Art

I made up my mind over the weekend that I wasn't going to wait until baby has a nursery to start on art for the walls. I have a vision in my head of a collage wall of different pieces. Some will be painted on canvas, some will be printed artwork and there has to be at least one big painted wooden letter in there too. Since we finalized our baby name choices over the weekend and they both start with G, this was the piece I started with. It is completely ironic that we ended up with names starting with the same letter again. When we were trying to come up with names for L, the boy name also ended up starting with L. We have had the boy's named picked out for some time but were still struggling with the girl's name this time around. I heard the name over the weekend and knew that was it and so did Nick. And it was again completely unintentional that it also starts with a G! I am so excited and relieved to have baby names picked out now that I'm 31 1/2 weeks along.

Handmade Nursery: Giant Ric Rac Baby Blanket

I've gotten a little relief from the spring allergies thanks to some cooler, more appropriate March weather. I pulled out another baby project that has been cut waiting for me to sew and finished it up. I used THIS tutorial with some Snoopy flannel that I've leftover from when L was a baby and paired it with a solid yellow flannel from JoAnn's and some super cute giant ric rac that I found at Hobby Lobby.

Burp Cloths for Boy or Girl

Since we had our "big ultrasound" that normally would have told the gender of the baby, I've been sewing for either a boy or a girl. Nick didn't want to know still and I was on the fence but they couldn't tell with the way the baby was positioned! That was enough of an answer for me to know that we weren't suppose to know until it's born. Only problem with not knowing is we have all these pink girly things so I'm sewing while keeping both in mind. If we have a girl, I have 16 fluffy terry cloth backed burp cloths. If we have a boy, I have 9 and I'll find someone with a new little girl to give the other 7 to!

Showing it's ugly face

Pregnancy swelling has unfortunately been showing it's ugly face this past week. And with as bad as my preeclampsia was the first time around I am trying to do everything I can including trying to have a low sodium diet. I know I can't prevent preeclampsia but I have already been able to tell I can control some of the swelling with my diet and daily routine. My dinner tonight has become a familiar site in different variations.

I found this great guideline for a low sodium diet tonight that opened my eyes to something I don't think I'd ever have thought of: Avoid softened water for cooking and drinking since it contains added salt. We have well water that runs through a water softener! I like drinking water and normally get a good daily amount and I've been making sure that I have kept that up for this pregnancy. I don't know how much sodium actually makes it through softened water but I don't think I'm going to take a chance. I'll stick to drinking the salt free water from the store!

Self-Binding Flannel Blanket

Remember that big stack of fabric I showed you Friday that I was planning on sewing up? Things didn't quite work as planned and my Friday night of sewing turned into a quiet Friday night of cutting out projects and wandering Pinterest looking for sewing ideas for baby. Last night I finished sewing up one of the projects I cut on Friday night, a self-binding flannel baby blanket. I've had this pattern bookmarked from a baby shower last year. But Cluck Cluck Sew posted a link to this tutorial that gave me the ah-ha moment of how to sew the mitered corners! The first and only other one of these blankets I made, I sewed the corners wrong the first time but thankfully checked them first before I cut the excess fabric off so I was able to fix them.

The flannel pattern was part of our Black Friday shopping that L picked out specifically for a blanket for the new baby. I was going to go back to the store for a solid color flannel to match but found this red in my stash that matches the elephants. 

Out with Christmas, In with Baby!

All things Christmas got packed back up yesterday and baby boxes started coming out. Since it's been almost 5 years since L was born we had gotten rid of some things so we're having the task of going through everything box by box to see what we still have. L is having a blast looking at all the baby things and it makes me a little sad how big she is! There is an occasional preemie reminder in the boxes that I've found. This sign is one of those reminders. We were VERY protective of her when we finally did get to bring her home and rarely took her out when she was little but if we did this was always attached to her car seat or stroller. I always had positive comments from  people who saw it and respected it, especially when we explained that she was a preemie.

Even though I purchased these close to 5 years ago they still look great! I have no affiliation with the company, they are just a product I loved having. It looks like they are still available directly through the company - www.mytinyhands.com.

Rolie Polie

I just bought my first Rolie Polie! Although I'm still confused about the quilting fabric pack terms I thought this was actually a Jelly Roll but a Rolie Polie seems to just be a smaller pack of fabric, same size pieces as a Jelly Roll. Isn't it cute? 

 I almost didn't want to open it up... almost.

This is the ADORABLE Fox Trails line from Doohikey Designs.

My plan is to leave out the blue colorway and just use the brown and green colorways and make a gender neutral baby quilt.

Our BIG secret!

I'm sure no one really noticed I've been missing but there's a reason why...
L let our secret out of the bag yesterday!! Miss L is finally going to be a big sister, and what a good big sister she is going to be. She is so excited! Thankfully this pregnancy has been completely different than the first one. I've still had so much lovely morning/all day sickness but that's it. The most exciting thing right now is that I got to buy smaller maternity pants!! I put on my old maternity clothes and they were so big! I had gained 50+lbs by 29 weeks when L was born from preeclampsia. I weighed more pre-pregnancy this time than the last time so I know now that the swelling had really started so early. I am due in May again and we are praying for a May baby. L was due May 15th and came March 1st!

Now our next order of business is getting our starter 2 bedroom house up for sale because I have no idea where we would even squeeze a crib in!!

We got this adorable shirt from The Pecking Order - Zoey's Attic Personalized Gifts

It was a big hit and the perfect announcement! I ordered the shirt from their Etsy store, super easy to order and super fast! http://www.etsy.com/shop/zoeysattic