Sunday, August 28, 2011

Introducing...

the newest part of the Team T family!

Connor Bradley
6 lbs, 10 oz
19.75 inches long

The whole family is doing great! Thanks for all your well wishes!

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Still hanging in there...

After the nursery reveal post, some of you have asked about labor progress and if the baby is here yet. I'm officially due on Wednesday, but still have an inside baby as of now.

If you would have asked me a week ago, I would not have been ready and I could have gone on for weeks. But now, I'm totally ready and getting impatient! As much as I would have liked to finish the house projects we've had going on this summer, it's not going to happen. With the basement flood, power going out for days at a time, and me being a whale, they just didn't all get finished. I'm at a stopping point (as much as I don't like things unfinished) and I'm ready for our little one to join our family.

Like I've said before, this blog is meant to be about crafts, recipes, projects, and fun things that make me happy. I have another baby blog that will probably turn into a "Look how cute my baby is!" blog. It's private, but I'm happy to give anyone access that wants to read it (just send me your email address). Hopefully, my baby will sleep lots (I can dream!) and I can be on here blogging away as usual during my maternity leave.

Hope everyone is enjoying that last little bit of summer! I'll keep you posted!

Monday, August 15, 2011

Baby's Nursery Reveal!

The baby boy nursery is finally done! It's been such a fun experience to renovate the room and come up with crafts to personalize the space. Hubby and I spent so much time this summer trying to make it perfect for our little boy.

(See the list at the bottom of the post for tutorial links and where I bought things)First, let's go back to the room before when it was just for storage and random crap...
The nasty mirrored closet doors and icky 80's blue blinds are horrible!
Old ugly trim and doors...and Kitty taking a look!
To this little baby haven!

So let's start out at the door with the new 6-panel door and updated white trim. We painted the room in light yellow with a blue border around the top.

I couldn't resist this cute door hanger for 50 cents from the thrift store
We bought white wood blinds with a valance for the windows. Curtains are just too much of a mess with a hairy cat! The white dresser will have the changing pad on top and we can look out the window as we change diapers.

The white wall shelves in the corner are perfect for showing off future baby photos, heirloom books, etc. The lip on the edge is great so nothing falls off. The frames were thrift store purchases that I painted to match.
(See the sock monkey and crayon frame tutorials at the bottom of the post.)

Ah, the glider. Sadly, this glider decision stressed me out more than anything! I had the hardest time picking one that was comfortable, cheap, and matched the room. After hours spent at baby stores, I took a risk and ordered this one online. Who knew it would match perfectly? We love it and it was a lot cheaper than those baby store gliders.

The lamp was also another struggle. Of course, I needed white to match, but it's pretty hard to find a white floor lamp. After some searching, I found one, but it came with a pink lampshade. I figured it would be super easy to find a blue or red lampshade to replace it with. I was wrong! Apparently, colored lampshades are harder to find than I thought! I gave in and decided to cover a white one in fabric...until I put the white one on and realized I just liked it plain white!

The wall letters were a fun project that Hubby and I worked on together. It's a little twist to the normal wall letters because we hung them on drawer knobs.
I love the bedding we picked! I never would have thought this would be my choice, but I got really into all the preppy boy stuff I saw in the stores. I love that it's not super masculine, but it's still cute and really soft. It's been fun to be able to make pillows to go with it also. The embroidered C pillow and the patchwork one pictured above were some of my fun crafts from the summer.

Did you happen to catch the old light that used to be here? It looked almost like a spotlight and the lightbulbs made the color in the room horrible. I picked out a white fan to replace it.

So maybe we're bad parents, but yes, we have a tv in there. I admit to being a tv addict, so Hubby convinced me that we would want one in there if I'm going to be spending a lot of time nursing and sitting in the glider. We plan on taking it out later when the baby knows what it is.
Wall art was really hard to find because we don't really have a theme in the room. I saw these pieces and I knew they would match perfectly!

After our baby shower, I realized we would probably need somewhere to store books and toys. We found this small shelf set and bought some canvas storage cubes to hold toys.

Remember those nasty mirrored closet doors? Now we have 6-panel white doors to match all the doors in the house.

Nothing too exciting in the closet, but there's lots of room for baby stuff! We got very lucky that our house had Elfa already in the bedroom closets when we moved in!

And our growing collection of baby clothes...

So there it is! We're so excited to have it done and ready for baby to come home to!

Shopping List:
Yellow paint - Behr Pale Honey
Blue paint - Behr French Court
Baby furniture - Babies R Us Baby Cache collection
Glider & ottoman - Target Danielle glider & ottoman
Floor lamp - Target (comes with a pink gingham shade that we changed)
Bedding - Babies R Us Bacati Boys Stripes & Plaids
White storage shelf & colored storage cubes - Target
Wood Wall letters - Joanns
Framed wall art - Hobby Lobby

Tutorials:
Crayon Name Frame
Patchwork Pillow
Embroidered Initial Pillow
Sock Monkey
Wall letters - coming soon!

Monday, August 8, 2011

DIY Initial Crayon Frame

I saw this a lot in the spring in blogland when people were making cute teacher gifts. I kept thinking how cute this would be in a child's room. Once we decided on a name, I was super excited to get started!

Ok, so Hubby gave me a lecture because I bought cheapie crayons instead of Crayola. Am I bad mom? I was just trying to save a couple bucks!

Anyway, I started out by printing out a giant letter outline in a very light gray with his first and middle name inside. The light gray letter outline works great so you can see the shape and you'll know where to put the crayons.

I'd suggest printing one on some regular paper to use while you're setting things up and then print out a final copy on some heavier card stock to use for the finished product. In this picture, I'm using my scrap copy to lay out the crayons and figure out how long to make each one.

I used a utility knife to cut the crayons. Maybe I'm just weak, but it was hard to do! I had to enlist Hubby to help me cut so I wouldn't crack all the crayons.Once I had everything laid out on the scrap paper and all the colors were where I wanted them, I used Elmer's Glue to attach all the crayons to the card stock. Make sure to let it dry completely before moving the paper.
And here it is! I spray painted a frame in red to match his room and put the cardstock in the frame. No glass on the frame is needed since the crayons stick out too far.
And if you like his adorable little sock monkey, go here for the tutorial!


Monday, August 1, 2011

DIY Sew a Sock Monkey!

Ok, so I have a slight obsession with sock monkeys. I don't really know how it started, but I love them! Hubby bought me my first sock monkey last year for our anniversary and I was super excited. Since then, I've collected a few more, but I've always wanted to try making my own.

I do a lot of sewing crafts, but for some reason, making a sock monkey really intimidated me. It looks so hard to do and I didn't want to mess it up and ruin it! Hubby convinced me to try it, so I finally bought some Rockford Red Heel socks from Hobby Lobby in the winter. Then it took me another few months to finally get the guts to try it! I'm so glad I did it because it turned out so cute!

There are a lot of sock monkey tutorials out there and I collected a bunch before I did this. After looking through some of them, I liked this one the best. They aren't very detailed, but I was able to figure it out. It also really helped to have my original anniversary sock monkey nearby to look at.

Fox Sox Tutorial
Go here and download the PDF instructions.
I used black buttons for the eyes and hot glued them on. To me, it seemed easier than embroidering them.


How could I not show the butt? So cute!
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