22 weeks

How many weeks?:   22 weeks 

                                               

Have you noticed any changes lately?: Other than my belly getting bigger, my hair has grown a lot.  I'm in desperate need of a hair cut but I'm at the point where I don't know what I want to do with it.  Just a trim?  Chop it off?  Some highlights?  (I go to an Aveda salon, and their hair dye is up to 99% natural...how awesome is that?!?) Oh, decision, decision!

 

Have you decided on a name yet?: Well, we did have a name picked out; Lilly Rae.  BUT...I keep hearing that name more and more and I have vetoed it out!  The hubster and I have been throwing some names around.  We have a list and I think we've narrowed it down, but I'm not telling until we've officially decided. 

Could she be a "Modern" Miss Manny??

We are big fans of ABC's Modern Family in our household!  And anyone who is a fan of this show knows of the charming character, Manny.  Well, it was brought to our attention recently that our daughter could very well turn out to be a female version of Manny....in the looks and build department anyway.

Consider this, growing up, my husband was, well....let's just call him husky.  He was always "bigger" than other kids his age; height wise and width.  And his head was always (and still is) slightly larger than normal.  Thus.....

And then if you take my skin tone and dark features, you would get the latina-like "look" with my hubby's build.  Oh dear, this really is a possibility of how our daughter could look.  If this is the case, I may have to invest in some coffee for the little one so she can follow in Manny's footsteps.

Ahhh chooo!

The closet is slowly, very slowly coming along.  I did a little sanding with a handy dandy sander that I purchased at Lowe's.  Very much the worth the investment!  It didn't take too long, but I did have to take several breaks because it got so dusty....cough cough!

 As you can see, there's lots of dust that needs to be cleaned up!  The vacuum is going to be doing double timer here soon!

 And here's the handy dandy sander that I mentioned.  It has a nice little micro-vacuum attached that obviously didn't do it's job!!

The dust was literally everywhere!  All of the furniture that's still in the office is covered with a layer of dust.  As you can see in the photo here.

So it looks like there will be lots of vacuuming and dusting and wiping walls down before I can start the painting portion.

Taxes and the Nursery...what a combo!

This past weekend was productive and on the other hand, it wasn't.  Saturday we had the fun task of getting our taxes done.  I was looking forward to it, but yet I wasn't.  Casey has been an utter pain in the you know what since January about taxes this year so I was glad to get it over with.

I wasn't looking forward to it, because this is the first year we've had to file with me working for myself and we were very clueless as to what to expect.  In the end, we didn't owe anything (which I was expecting to)!  Whooo hoooo!  We actually got a little bit back, not much, but every little bit helps.  So instead of writing a big 'ole check to the government, I wrote it to the bank and put it on our house payment....cha ching!!!!

After that, I went looking for baby items.  I was really hoping to find some good deals on a crib, but no such luck.  I did however find THE baby crib quilt and bumper.  Here's a sneak peek....

I completely splurged on this, but it's going to be the center attention of the whole room.  I stood in the store talking myself out of buying this and then talking myself back into it.  I'm so glad I decided to buy it, it's been the first time I've seen a set and really loved it.  Now, I can get going on the rest of the nursery.

So, that was the productive part.  The unproductive part was that I didn't get anything done with the closet; we had a surprise visit from the in-laws on Sunday.  (That was the day I was planing on getting the closet done.)   But, I'll take a day with the in-laws over anything else any day!!  My mother-in-law brought over lasagna, salad and bread for a super yummy lunch and we watched the Nascar race....well, the boys did.  To me, there's nothing more boring than watching car drive around and around in a circle...not my cup of tea!

I guess this is really something I want, but it's for the baby.  This year, I really want to grow a garden (I've been saying this for about 2 or 3 years now), but this year I'm going to make it happen...at least that's the goal.  I want to grow a garden for a few reasons, 1) food straight from the garden is the best, 2) it's cheaper than purchasing food from the store and 3) I really want to make my own baby food for the baby.

This book really sounds like a good one!  There's tons of information, pretty much everything you need to know about feeding your baby; lots of recipes and how to's on making your own baby food.

Nursery Closet Home Improvements

Well, we have finally moved all of Casey's items out of the closet and into mine.  As well as all of the other misc. items that were stashed in there.  Here's what the closet currently looks like...

The blue wall color will be changed eventually, I still haven't figured out what color scheme I'm going to go with....there's just too many cute options out there!

This is what the inside of the closet looks like.  It's a single bar for clothes some boards on top for storage and some boards on the three side of the interior with nails in these that stick out.  I've never figured out the reason for them.  This closet isn't huge, but it's actually big enough to walk in....so there will be some rearranging coming soon.  

This is a corner shot of the interior of the closet.  Everything will soon be striped out!

This is a picture of the hideous light fixture that is in all of the closets of the house.  I want to change this very badly.  I'm sure I won't be able to convince the hubby of doing this so I'll go with plan B; do it myself (which I've never done any electric work so it may turn into an adventure) or Plan C; wait until my dad comes down and have him do it for me.


My goal (fingers crossed) this weekend is to get the closet finished.....well at least painted.  We will probably install the shelving another weekend.  I'm going to paint the interior of the closet a gray color.  Here's some samples I have up...

The lighting of this picture was a bear to get and doesn't really give a good idea of what the colors really look like.  But I'm leaning towards the top left and top right colors.  They are both very soft grays so they won't make the closet seem smaller than what it really is.

I've already got a small head start.  I took the closet bar down and all the boards, but I believe that I'm going to have a lot more work ahead of me than I anticipated.

 Here's the boards and the bar that I took down as well as my trusty hammer.

As you can see, there is an obvious color difference from where the boards were and the current wall color.  There's also a bump from where someone repainted and the paint was thick by the edges of the boards....lots of sanding coming my way.  (I've already started a little, this project is really going to suck!)

Here's a close up of where the boards are. As you can see, LOTS of little nail holes to fill in!

And who can forget a few large gashes in the wall.  Not a clue how they got there, but regardless, they need to be filled in.

We do have some other things that need to get done this weekend along with running Madison around to her many activities, so we'll see how much we really get done.  :)

21 weeks

How many weeks?:   21 weeks 

                                               

How have the emotions been?:  This week they have been all over the place!  It's actually quite comical. This past weekend Casey and I were packing more stuff up in totes and moving them into the garage.  I don't even remember the conversation, but for some reason I got really upset with him.  It was like an out-of-body experience.  I could feel myself get upset for this reason that was not a big deal at all and I was telling myself, "this is stupid to get so upset over"....I just had to walk out of the room and cool off.  I told Casey I was sorry and we chuckled about it later.


On the flip side, if I find something funny.  It's out of control funny.  I get going and I can't stop.  I'll have tears rolling down my face, my sides will hurt so bad from all the laughing and I won't be able to breathe.  I actually peed my pants I got to laughing so hard last week....I can't believe I just admitted that! 

 

Any food cravings?: Anyone who knows me knows that I don't really have a sweet tooth. I'm definitely a savory kind of gal but man, my sweet tooth has come alive!  I was making a valentine's dinner last weekend and was looking at a random food blog and there was tons of sweet stuff.  My mouth was watering like nobody's business.  Thankfully my dear hubby went to the store and got me some strawberries and I rolled them in some chocolate....sweet tooth crises solved!