The Nursery {Part 3 cont'd}

If you remember from the first "Part 3" post, this part is all about the Nursery DIY projects I'm working on.

I recently completed the mobile that we're going to hang over the changing table. I definitely cut out more flowers and butterflies then were needed but that's okay. Maybe I can use them for something else?

Basically the materials needed for this were:
Scrapbook Paper
Scissors
Embroidery Hoop
Fishing Line
Floral Wire

Though it wasn't hard to put together it was time consuming. I jabbed myself a couple of times with the needle to put the holes through the paper but it's all in the name of love.

I just hope that those colors look good against the blue walls in the nursery. It appears the colors we're going with are purple (light/dark/in between), pink (magenta, light pink, maroon) and of course most of our furniture is white, while the walls are an aqua blue. We'll see how it all turns out, fingers crossed.

The next project looks easy. I thought it was going to be easy because the directions are so simple. Well, it's not as easy as it looks folks. It's not hard, just time consuming. Probably because i'm a beginner (this makes me dread the sewing machine a little bit) But since I have to make two of them, I definitely think I can cut some time off of the project with a few short cuts.

Behold, the roman shade. The color looks lighter in the picture then it is in real life (my skills behind the camera are sub-par). There is a navy felt backer which will help create a 'black out' effect when the shades are down, which is exactly what I was going for.

I used our existing mini blinds, felt, fabric and fabritac which is probably the best invention ever if you're trying to glue fabric. The glue they say is just for fabric did not do as well as this and is getting returned! Of course there was a tape measure and scissors involved too. If you want to do something similar, i found the idea on pinterest (where else?) but it links to this blog: Little Green Notebook.

I do need to train them to go up a little bit easier, but the existing mini blinds weren't that easy to get up and down either so I don't expect it to run perfectly.

Couple more projects in the works so stay tuned!

14 weeks remaining!

Monday marked the beginning of week 26!

See the bump, doesn't look much different from last week, does it?

Each week it will grow about a centimeter which will be hard to detect via photo week by week but in the end when I mesh them all together into a video, i'm sure it'll be clear that it was getting larger.

Nothing new to report though, things are still going smoothly. She still kicks to tell me she's alive in there.

The baby websites say that this week the baby's eardrums, etc are basically fully formed and she can now hear me talking. We decided we're going to sing her a song every night and see if that helps her when she's out in the world when she needs to calm down. I've read that it's possible they can associate the two so we'll do a little experiment. Still trying to choose the song to sing though. We're going to have to sing it for 14+ weeks so it needs to be one we're not going to get tired of. Born this Way by Lady Gaga sounds appropriate, right?

The baby websites also say she's the length of one of those long cucumbers in the grocery store. It also says on the site 14 inches, so that's easier to think about. She's also about a pound and two-thirds in weight. Keep growing little girl!

Monday night we started our childbirth classes. We're probably on the early train for this but I didn't want to start later when the holidays are in full swing. It went quite well. It was interesting to sit down with other couples who are going through the same thing at the same time as we are. We mostly talked about anatomy and some labor stuff. I think next week we'll be talking about the stages of labor, so that'll be interesting even though i've already read about it. We did a neat activity with a balloon and a ping pong ball.

14 weeks to go!

iPhone 4 or 4s?

I'm struggling to decide what phone I should get as an upgrade from my current phone, a blackberry. I really don't use the blackberry for email or even web, just phone calls and texts. The iPad is my primary tool for email and web, as it should be.. it's larger and easier to read/write content on.

I know I want an iPhone but I don't know if the new 4s is really something that I need. Here are some of the main pros and cons. We'll start with the cons first.

Cons of buying a 4s:
-Price.. obviously. A 16gb 4s costs $200 while the 16gb 4 costs $150 and the 8gb 4 costs $100.
-I don't really need the personal assistant Siri. I don't do business on my phone, so I don't make appointments that need to be changed/moved and I can type my own text messages.
-iOS5 is available to all iPhones.. not just 4s. So i don't need the 4s to get iOS5 and the new apps/features that come with it.
-The iPhone 5 will probably be out in a year. If i take the 4 now, it would make it less expensive to upgrade when the 5 does come out.

Pros of buying a 4s:
-The camera is better in the 4s than it is in the 4. From 5 to 8.. plus the 1080 HD video capability. With a baby coming in January, it would be nice to have the 8MP over the 5 but is it really necessary?
-The A5 chip makes it faster. Twice as fast as the 4. But the 4 is still pretty fast.. what's another nano second?

Obviously I have more cons listed than pros. I still don't know what this means in whether I'm going to get an iphone4s or not. Part of me says, you don't need it, those extra features aren't good enough to warrant another 100 or even 50 dollars. The other part says, you probably should get the newest technology. The MPs in the camera are going to be better.

Anyone have any thoughts?!?!!!

Teaser: The Quilt

Just a teaser photo of the quilt that Alex's mom, Charmayne is making for our baby girl.

Charmayne was telling me yesterday how intensive quilting is, which I wasn't aware of. I didn't realize that after you sew all of your squares together and put the batting in and sew the back on that you have to go through by hand and sew on top of all the squares again. I repeat, by hand. I guess I didn't know much about quilting but I have to say, not that we weren't thankful for this before, we are, definitely, but there's a lot of love, time and effort going into this quilt from Grandma Charmayne. I hope our baby girl will grow with it her whole life and when we explain to her how much love went into it, she'll treasure it forever.

Hot! Peppers

For the last couple years, Alex has been growing hot peppers (or chiles). We generally use the jalepenos and serranos for salsa and guacamole and Alex puts them on lots of other stuff too.

 He's grown a few other varieties that aren't easily found in grocery stores and farmers markets in our area. Most of these pepper will never even get close to my lips because they're all past my heat tolerance.

With a lot of these pepper plants, he gets a bountiful harvest and can't decide what to do with all of them, so he strings them up to dry in our dining room. The ones he currently has strung up in the dining room are Thai Yellow, De arbol, Punjab small and Assum. Honestly, I don't know what's what in the pictures. There's lots of orange this year which is perfect for fall and halloween and also some red which will carry into Christmas. He uses them as much as he can (since I can't really tolerate levels of spice greater than a serrano) but some of them end up going to waste when they've been dried and hanging for over a year.. there's just too many to eat.

He has to wear gloves or else the peppers will burn his fingers!

If anyone is interested in trying any of the varieties I've listed. We'd be happy to give you one of the peppers to eat/use in cooking/trick your friends (though that last one could be dangerous, literally).

One from every board

Since I love Pinterest so much, I thought i'd share a recent pin from every board I have on there. Enjoy ;)

Random Love- Book Holder Opener Thingy

Baby Love- Custom Birthday Onesie

Food Love- S'mores Krispie Treats

Home Love- Trash & Recycling that dumps into the garage bins

Party Love- DIY Chillers that look awesome

Art Love- Vintage Disney Poster

Kid Fun Love- How to manage glitter

Jewelry Love- DIY Necklace, so pretty

Hair Love- If only I could do this myself

Clothing Love- Cute little dress tutorial

Gift Love- 137 inexpensive homemade christmas gifts

Holiday Love- It's early but I'm doing this for Christmas

DIY Love- This is awesome and probably super easy!

Fabric Love- Deep Purple, I'm thinking crib sheets

Happy Hour + Typical Saturday + Pumpkins

Friday, I left an hour early from work. Alex and I grabbed Jen and we headed to Bulls Head in Lititz for 'happy hour'. This is deceiving because they don't actually have any specials and we stayed way longer than an hour. Alex invited a bunch of people but I guess they had other friday plans so it was just us 3 for a while before we were joined by Scott and Michele and later we saw Bob and Karen. It was nice to see everyone and catch up a little bit, not to mention eat the best 'nachos' ever and split a bison burger with Alex. After Bulls Head we hung out at the McHenry's for a little bit before heading home.

Saturday, Alex went to work on the farm and I cleaned up around the house. When we got back we went to Bombergers and then Stauffers for groceries. Alex picked out some decorative pumpkins as well as some carving pumpkins for Sunday. Later in the day, I headed over to Courtney's for a little bit to hang out with her, Evander and Jen. Evander just gets cuter and cuter. I headed home for the special dinner we were planning to have, which turned out not as expected because the awesome salmon we purchased from Mr. Bill's had spoiled :(. So I whipped up some risotto and it turned everything around. After dinner, Dan and Steph came over so Dan could help Alex get the rototiller working. Steph and I chatted and watched the first 3/4ths of Bridesmaids.

Sunday, I got up nice and early to start the crock pot chicken chili and clean the house even more before our guests came over. I really don't enjoy cleaning that frequently but it had to be done. My sister, Jess came down because she needed to hit up the Apple Store, so I went with her and ended up getting two really awesome nail polish colors at Sephora. One sparkly gold and one sparkly red. I'm currently wearing the gold and i'm in love, I stare at my nails constantly. They couldn't fix her phone without an appointment so she headed home. The Hix's and Herr's arrived and we did the following: Girls- eating, chatting, pumpkin carving (i should've taken pictures, darnit!), watching the last 1/4th of bridesmaids, reigning in the men. Boys- eating, football watching, taking shots of jameson, engaging in some target shooting, being reigned in by their women. We had a great time! After they left, Alex and I got subs from Caruso's and relaxed for a while before saying goodnight to the weekend.

I regrettably did not get any nursery projects accomplished as I planned to. I am going to do the Roman Shades tonight though for sure and if that goes as fast as I think it will, I'm going to finish putting the mobile together. Because this weekend I need to get reacquainted with the sewing machine so I can start some other projects. Oh crazy baby nursery stuff!

Enjoy the week!