Updates: Nursery and Fatness

Hey, I said I'd have the room finished by March 1, and I made it (well, pretty much)!  This weekend I had a super surge of energy that allowed me to do almost everything around the house that I could do to avoid grading essays, AND to grade essays.  Of course, I did too much and my body hurt like hell afterward, but it's a small price to pay for the feeling that everything is in its place.  Now, this new pelvic-bones-loosening-up-to-make-way-for-Matt's-son's-giant-head sensation is, well, less than pleasant.  Oh well.  I'm 36 weeks, so only a few left to go, right?

Okay, so here's how fat I am at 36 weeks.  And that is a professional hairstyle and those are designer yoga pants.

Try, if you can, not to be too jealous of my mad fashion skillz.

But let's be honest, fatness if far less exciting than a super fun little kid's room.  Here we go!

The view from the hallway.

View from the door.

The closet.  Totes took the doors off and hung curtains so that we could access the entire closet all at once.

Boy clothes as far as the eye can see. . .  Matt says that the kid will just wear an outfit and then we'll throw it away.

We left the bed in the room so that we can still have a decent place for guests to sleep.

I want one of these for myself.

And, now, my totes favorite part of the room.  And our boy's name!  (Trying to keep people from being able to stalk him on the world wide web until he at least has some teeth.)

 Notes: name banner idea from here (I used Georgia font size 500), dino-brite instructions here. The cradle is the same one Matt slept in when he was a tiny little baby.  I'm in love with it.

Stole the wall idea from Sassy Curmudgeon. Our boy's picture will go in the middle (If he's cute.  If he's not cute, we'll probably just get a picture of Scott Baio.)

Well, there you have it.  Isn't it the most fun?

Dinosaur Mobile!

Months and months ago, maybe even before I was growing a fetus, I started eyeing baby mobiles on Etsy.  Truth be told, if I could have 25 mobiles hanging in every room of my house, I would.  So narrowing it down to just one (or let's be honest--2 or 3 probably when it's all said and done) was pretty tough.

Here are some of my favorites.

 (umbrella mobile, hanging monster mobile, and felt ball mobile)

I wanted something that I could make myself (because I'm the cheapest person alive), that would be super fun, and that would go with the rest of the room, and that would be something that the kid could play with later.  I had it narrowed down to either monsters or dinosaurs, and what do you think won out (after I made Cassie make the decision for me)?

DINOSAURS!

Here was my inspiration:

dinosaur mobile

I got myself some supplies: felt, embroidery thread, and one of those ring things from craft stores that I don't know what they're called, but old ladies use them a lot.  (I spent like $15 on supplies when I really only needed like $6 worth of them.  So if you need a mobile, just let me know.  We're swimming in felt 'round these parts!)  I already had some stuffing stuff, and if I hadn't I probably could have used the guts from Mitch's toy that he destroyed this morning.  

And I used the picture of the original mobile as a guide to draw a couple of the dinosaur shapes.  I wanted to have a couple more types, so I found silhouettes online printed them out.  Then I cut the shapes out in cardstock and used them to cut out shapes in the felt.  After some stitching and stuffing stitching again, we had some cute little dinos.

And then I hung them up on my ring thing with some string, and look!

(I placed my dinos face-down so that the baby would have a better view of them.  I also tied the strings to little tabs on the dinos backs so that I could take them off and let the kid play with them later, hopefully on his felt dinosaur mat.)

I'm kind of obsessed, and I hope the boy enjoys them, too.  He better, because I just we just spent all day yesterday at birthing class and I had to watch 4 videos of babies being born, and if he's going to do that to my body, then he'd sure as hell better enjoy my dinosaurs.  And if he doesn't, we'll fight.  I could totally beat a baby in a fight.

Dino-Brite!

So, like a year or so ago, I saw this little craft project on Martha Stewart and flipped out over its awesomeness.

I also figured that, assuming that I didn't use Martha's $2,000 canvas and her $95 paint, I could do this one on the cheap.  Originally, I wanted to put this in our living room on the mantle, so I painted it the color that I paint pretty much everything in our house these days: light turquoise.  I didn't know what design to do, and I figured that I wouldn't start the actual project until I knew for sure, until I had that "Oh, there you are, Peter" moment.

And then I got knocked up, and I decided that the grown-up lite brite didn't need to be grown-up at all, because it would be awesome as nursery decor, and could also function as a nightlight for little ole' Blast and for us.  So then I decided that it needed to be a shark.

But, after careful consideration, I decided that 1.) I needed to repaint the canvas because Blast's room is already light turquoise, and 2.) a shark might be too scary.  (Trying to use all of my allotted scaring-the-bab tokens for telling him about Krampus.)  So, after a very informal polling of friends, I decided to instead paint the canvas orange and to do a design that was even be better.  A DINOSAUR!

So here's how the process went.

1.  Paint canvas. (Using little sample thing of paint from Home Depot--$3)

2.  Borrow overhead projector from school.  (Def made it easier for me, but you could totes do this project without one.)

3.  Google "brontosaurus silhouette" and find this.

4.  Trace silhouette onto transparency.

5.  Pencil silhouette onto back of canvas.

Maybe next I should work on actually putting pictures in the frames in our gallery wall?

6.  Mark spots for lights to go through with a pencil.
7. Cut small slits into canvas with an exacto knife where lights would go.
8. Pop lights through spots.

And, voila!

I actually used button lights from Target, which worked perfectly for this project because of their size.  You can do it with regularly-sized lights, but you'll need to use craft glue or a glue gun to secure each light.  I would highly recommend using the button lights because they're not only much simpler, but you can also easily replace the strand if the strand goes kaput.

Also, you should know that it is really hard to get a good picture of the dino-brite, especially if you're impatient and hungry and wishing that you were lying on the couch watching Parenthood instead.  The dino-brite looks approximately 50 times better in person. Plus, it only cost like $15 to do, which makes me happy because I'm a cheaposaurus.

Mitch is also a big fan.

Now I kind of want to make a million of these, so I've been trying to think of other shapes and designs to do.  A bicycle!  A squirrel!  A snowflake!  A Mitch!

What else?  

Living Room Novella, and Some Cheap Art

Okay, so I had grand plans to paint the living room yellow.  The living room project included about one bajillion small little jobs, most of which were kind of grueling and miserable (spackling and painting a ceiling is a job for masochists), so even though I'd been planning on painting the room since the moment I finished painting the kitchen (in SEPTEMBER!), it took a long while for me to muster up the energy to tackle the project, and to finally select a yellow color for the room.

This is going to sound weird and George W. Bushian, but when I'm looking for something, whether it's a pair of shoes or a new camera or a husband, when I find the one I want I just know.  It's this weird inner assurance, kind of like a little click inside of me that is like, "Oh, there it is."  For example, I hunted and read reviews and stressed about which new camera to select, and then when Hugh showed me the white Pentax Kx, I was all, "Oh, that's my camera."  And there was no more looking. Once I have that realization, I don't go back.

And the problem with the painting living room yellow plan for me, and probably part of why I put the whole thing off for so long, was that I just didn't have that "There you are, Peter" feeling with it.  Once school was out I soldiered on, though, started painting my trim, and selected my yellow color, Custard by my friend Martha.

I painted a little swatch of it on the wall, decided that it was good, and kept painting trim.  I was trying to envision a more grown-up looking room, since there's no place in our house that looks like grown-ups live here.  I was going to do yellow accented with gray and black--you know, something more subtle, more sophisticated.

But the problem with that plan, and the reason I didn't have that inner click about it, was probably that I am neither subtle nor sophisticated.  And Matt doesn't care because he's colorblind and even if he wasn't he wouldn't care.

So when Cassie was here last week, she threw out a suggestion that I should paint the walls ultra white with lots of brightly-colored accents.

Oh, there it was.  The click.  Bangarang!

Now, this plan was kind of terrifying to me.  All that work just to paint walls white?  Shoot.  Plus, the room was white to begin with.  Well, not really white so much as an off-white-smoker's-paradise-dingy-used-to-be-white grossness.

Painting walls white was actually about the most bold thing for me to do in a room.

So, anyway, that's the inspiration for the living room.  And if you're reading this (still!? not so much into the brevity today, huh?) and you're asking yourself if I just do everything that Hugh and Cassie suggest, well, I would say, "Not everything."  Just like 90%.  What can I say?  They make good suggestions.

Now, I'm not showing you everything just yet because the finishing touches are not yet complete.  BUT!  You get a fun preview.  I just couldn't do everything white, so I painted our little entryway/alcove/foyer the same blue color that I painted the kitchen.  (Because I totes had leftover paint and I am more obsessed with this color than I was with hunter green in 1995.)

And then the space totally needed some art.

Well, about four years ago I bought these pictures at Target because I got all four for $15, and although I didn't love the pictures, I figured I could use the frames.  Four years ago.

Cris, post-wrist-surgery, posing with ugly cheap Target art.

Then I had an idea.  I really want to point out that this was actually my very own idea and that I didn't steal it from anybody.  I steal like 99% of stuff I do from other people, so I'm really proud to have come up with something on my own.  

And it was quite simple.  Cheap frames.  Free downloaded fonts.  Some M's.  An exacto knife.  Yep.  That's about it.

Look how fun!

But is it as fun as our mail slot?

Kind of in love with this room now.  More to come.

A Need and Not a Want, I Don't Care What You Say.

Have you ever been out shopping and seen something that was just so ridiculous, or so weird, or so hilarious, that you knew that you had to buy it? But then you didn't buy it because it was ridiculous/weird/hilarious and you know that responsible adults don't buy such things, so you walked away. And then for the next week you thought about that awesome hilarious weirdness and how much you needed it and so you rationalized the purchase, and went back to the store to splurge--only to find that your treasure was gone.

I've had such regrets.

Like, one time old roommate Cris and I were at TJMaxx around Christmas, and there was this 2 ft. tall stuffed cat, dressed as Santa, holding a scepter and wearing a crown. Cris and I stood in that aisle doubled over laughing for like 20 minutes laughing at that Cat King Santa.

Now is the part where I'd show you a picture of Cat King Santa, but I can't, because it was $35, and we didn't buy it because we were trying to be grown-ups. That was like five years ago, and every time I pull out my Christmas stuff, I think about that glorious opportunity that we missed, and I become sad. Time and again, Cris and I have lamented our poor decision, and every year when TJMaxx puts out their holiday stuff, I hunt for another Cat King Santa, but to no avail.

But I've learned from my mistakes. And that's why this weekend when I was at HomeGoods, I not only found, but also purchased, the greatest object in the history of mankind. (Except for maybe the KitchenAid mixer, but we can have that argument later.)

It's a porcelain roller skate.

Isn't it the greatest thing you've ever seen? It was $25, which is approximately $25 more than one should pay for a porcelain roller skate, but I don't care, because it makes me much more than $25 happy.

I mean, is this roller skate kidding me right now with its awesomeness?

Anyway, lest you think me irresponsible for spending $25 on something so useless, you should know that it'll make a great doorstop (it's super heavy), and that it can be either a groovy sculpture or a flower vase.

 It would also make a great bookend, or defense weapon in case of an intruder. I think I might even use it to store pencils.  Or to earn the respect of one Gloria Gaynor.



What else can I do with my roller skate?

Penelope and Pip

I want all of these.

This and That

1.  Will someone please let all of the teenage girls know that slipper booties are not shoes, and are not appropriate footwear for going out in public?

2.  We got our Christmas tree tonight!  And there was some guy with a French accent who was trimming our tree who gave me greenery (probably because I was basically dressed like a Who from Whoville and was whistling Christmas carols).  I overestimated how much greenery I would need to put on the mantle, and now we basically have two Christmas trees.  But I'm learning to make wreaths, and perhaps some of the bough things that people put above doorways.  We'll see how that goes.  Even if they're ugly, at least the house will smell delightful.

3.  It's fancy dinner night here at M Cubed.  Shake 'n Bake, canned corn, and Uncle Ben's rice.  And you know what?  It's going to be delicious.  So what if we feel horribly inferior while watching tonight's Top Chef All Stars?  We already feel inferior while watching it (go Richard Blais!).

4.  My students were being really chatty today, so to punish them, I blasted the soundtrack to The Nutcracker.  That'll show 'em!

5.  Hoping that one of the all-female teams wins Amazing Race on Sunday.  I'm secretly rooting for a Brooke and Claire win, since Claire had to endure not only the most grueling of challenges, but also the watermelon face smash.  Also, what was with all of the douchey guys on this season?

6.  Also, today at school, my ninth graders and I were talking about people who had big ears (yeah, pretty tough to stay on track lately).  One of my boys mentioned that Martha Stewart has big ears, and I got a little defensive and was all "No she doesn't."  But he insisted, so we did some Google image searching and, wouldn't you know it, she's got some gigantic ears.  How weird!  (I think she always covers them up with her hair.)  But then I used our Martha Stewart conversation to teach the students about insider trading.  Teachable moments, people! 

7.  Get here, new camera!

8.  Get here, Christmas break!

Gonna Have Some Fun, Show You How It's Done. . .

I was going to title this post "Happy Friday" or "TGIF" or something like that, but last week I did a "Happy Friday" post and Matt said that was a lame name and I was all "Whatev!" and then he just rolled his eyes at me and shook his head shrugged his shoulders in that way that lets me know that he may or may not be second guessing his decision to marry someone who says things like "Whatev!"

Last Friday was a very happy Friday, and this one is, too.  Here's why today is awesome.

1. I went to bed super early last night (11:00) without doing several of the items on my to-do list, and I don't even care.  I mean, if I really want to walk through the house without my feet turning black, I can just wear flip-flops.  And I'd rather be well-rested than clean anyway.
2. I am wearing my favorite black sweater.
3. My hair has been really cooperative today.
4. I read about this awesome owl calendar generator.  I kind of want to make one for everyone I know.
5. Every one of my eleventh graders that took the graduation writing test passed!  Today's class was fun (but not terribly productive, what with all of the whooping and hollering).  Even more fun was the game I played with each of them as I passed back the scores, looking sad and disheartened, telling them that I hated to have to be the one to tell them this, letting out long, sad sighs.  They'd be all, "I failed?" and I'd be all "Well, look at the score."  And then they would, and they'd jump and scream.  It was a good day to be a teacher.
6. Found a recipe for Butterbeer.  Does anyone know where I can find butter extract?
7. As of 10:28 this morning, Iris and Opal have a new sister! (Whose name has yet to be determined)
8. Only two more school days until Thanksgivpalooza.  Thanklicious.  Thankseat-a-thon.  I'm pumped.  Time to do some stretching.  (Let me explain to you how the human body works.) 
9. Matt just brought me a bean burrito from Taco Bell.
10. There's a box of wine in the refrigerator.

Recipe Card Maker

How do I know I'm old?  Well, for one, I know I'm old because I was giddy when I came across these printable recipe cards today.  How cute are they?  Methinks they could be fun for homemade gifts.

You can find the generator here.

Now I'm going to go drink a big glass of Ensure.