17 Weeks.

Here we go again!

I'm going to try to make things simpler this time around so we'll see how that goes. (Hence the iPhone photo.)

How Far Along: 17 weeks

Baby Size: 5 ounces, the weight of a turnip, the size of an onion!

Total Weight Gain: Ah! I just got weighed today  but didn't have the guts to ask. I think like 12 pounds. :-/

Maternity Clothes? Sporting my miracle worker maternity tanks under all clothing already, but definitely still wearing normal jeans and shirts on top.

Stretch Marks? No.

Sleep: Good.

Best moment this week: Today we found out what the baby is!!! We are SO pumped, but haven't told all of our family yet so I'll wait to post it everywhere else. 

Miss Anything? I've really been wanting a glass of wine lately, which is weird because I really don't like wine.

Movement: Maybe a few flutters? I can't tell 100%, but I wish!

Food Cravings: Water all. the. time. Fresh fruit. Mexican food. Steak.

Anything making you queasy or sick? Not really any more, thank goodness. Smells and the thought of sweets made me gag for a while though.

Other Symptoms: Still a little tired, already getting awful leg and foot cramps. Need to pee a lot.

Gender: It's a secret for the moment :) 

Labor Signs: Haha, no way.

Belly button in or out? In

Wedding rings on or off? On

Happy or Moody most of the time: Both? I swear I cry at everything right now. And when I'm mad, I super mad.

Looking forward to: Feeling first for sure kicks, picking out a name. Everything, really!

Differences from last pregnancy: This time around has been SO much easier, so far. Not near as sick, didn't break out, haven't had all of the weird skin stuff that I dealt with last time. Definitely feeling bigger a lot sooner this time though. And I have to pee a lot, which I never had to do with Parker (and I was well hydrated, I think)

Funny words/moments from Big Brother: Lately when I ask, "Is there a baby in Mommy's tummy?" He just looks at me dead-on and says "NO". He does love to point out all babies though and wants to pet them. Then he chucks a baby doll across the room and laughs.

We Have Some News!

For anyone who actually still reads this, we are excited to announce that we have another little one coming along this October! 

I think that the last time I posted on here I didn't even know I was pregnant, haha!

We are so excited and have been really looking forward to giving Parker a sibling and growing our family. The new baby is due October 22nd, although he or she may come a little early since Parker decided to show up a week early, but we will have to wait and see. I am 16 weeks today and look HUGE compared to what I did at this time with Parker.

Quite honestly, I have been meaning to announce this to the general public for about a month now but I had very unrealistic expectations of wrangling my two-year-old down to pose oh-so-perfectly for a picture with his new sibling's shoes but in the end neither of us had the patience to make that happen... 

I have been feeling a lot better with this pregnancy overall, just queasy and tired for a few weeks, but nothing like what I was with Parker. (Thank goodness!)

 I'm hoping to take my first bump picture tomorrow since it's finally starting to look like a real bump instead of just one too many cheeseburgers. :) My goal is to take them regularly this time!

That's about it! We had Parker's birthday party last weekend so I would like to post pictures of that sometime soon, too! 

More of our Dining Room

I really wanted to take some pictures of our laundry room to show you all but the weather has been absolutely miserable here (and everywhere else, I think) so it's been too cloudy to get any decent photos. That'll have to wait, I guess!

So, which room still gets enough natural light in the dreary misery that is winter to photograph? The answer: Our Dining Room. I'm still not completely done in here (will I ever be??), but it has come a few more steps forward in the last few months, which is worth a post in my opinion. 

I talked a bit about how the dining table makeover and how I spray painted the brass light in this post, but I also knew that it would be replaced as soon as possible. I have been eyeing this Pottery Barn knock-off chandelier on Overstock for months now. Like, to the point where I would get online just to look at it and then I would walk in our dining room and imagine it in there, and then I wouldn't do anything about it, and then Bryan would call me a crazy lady like he always does, and then I would repeat that process every night of the week. (Please tell me I'm not the only one?) 

Anyways, I finally bit the bullet and ordered it. I was really only worried about purchasing it in the first place for two reasons, the first being that it's black and although I am incorporating a few black accents around the house, I still get nervous since I love my lights and neutrals. The second reason is that it's three feet wide, and I wondered if it would look silly over our pedestal table that is just over four feet wide. It doesn't though, thank goodness!

It just looks awesome, to me at least.

Here is what the dining room looked like when we closed on the house.

Since then we have...

-Taken down wallpaper and border, textured the walls

-Painted walls and ceiling

-Ripped out linoleum, added new wood floors

-Taken down blinds, hung new curtains 

-Replaced the chandelier

-Refinished our dining table and have begun decorating/accessorizing

Here is where we are right now:

It's like a breath of fresh air to me! The curtains probably make the biggest statement. They are from Ikea.

 Have I mentioned how hard it is to photograph this room? No? Okay...it's hard. The windows are always blown out in photos, which makes everything else super dark.

You can see a little bit of the craftsman style doorways my handy husband just finished last weekend. I LOVE them. They were just plain drywall before. 

And notice the barstools I told you all about that are a score from Craigslist. I don't know what color they will end up being (?) but we love eating our meals at the counter. They are currently black with natural seats but the finish is super worn. 

You can also see that I moved the birch painting that used to hang over our mantel. ( I get emailed about that thing more than anything else--except maybe Parker's room.) I sometimes think about moving it back, but am obsessed with how much it adds to this room. And a peek of our cabinets!! I will photograph our kitchen at some point. 

I wish I could convey through these photos how big these windows are....but my lens only shows so much. :)

We still need to bulk up the baseboards and paint them to match the cabinets, add blinds (probably bamboo...), and a rug. I am so torn on the rug because it really needs to be round to fit the room, but I'm also considering making the table bigger with the extra leaves we have for it. There is a good 7-8 feet between the table and the barstools (hard to see, I know), so I'm kind of wanting to fill up that space with more table and more seating. Would a round rug look weird with that? Thoughts?

So there's my before and after for the day. Have a great rest of your week!

Here's the Plan for Our Bedroom...

Hello! 

So, back to our house. We have been knocking out a TON of projects lately, and quite truthfully, I haven't been dealing with the mess very well, but it feels good to finally see real progress. FINALLY. 

More on those later :).

Another project that I have managed to be crazy enough to start during the existing chaos is making over our bedroom. I cannot take it anymore. Did you know that it is seriously depressing to wake up to this every morning?

These pictures are from our walk-through, so we currently have a bed in here and our dressers from our last bedroom, but that's it. We have not painted (I KNOW), we have not hung anything on the walls, and we definitely have not replaced that icky fan or the water-damaged carpet. 

(creepy mirrors)

I do want to say though, that I LOVE this house. I love this bedroom. I love the size of it! It is huge and it has the perfect spot for a king bed (underneath those creepy mirrors), room for all of our furniture, and plenty of space left over to play and walk around. I've always wanted windows on either side of our bed and now we have them. I am thankful--but I am ready for things to be pretty again.

The main reason we haven't done anything in this room (or most of the house, for that matter) is that I have been trying to save up some money. Well, I did that (!) but then was torn on how I wanted to decorate everything. When we moved into this house, I said that I was going to be more bold in my decorating choices...but I just can't. I am drawn to soft color palettes, natural textures, and clean lines. And I am happy with that. :)

With ALL of that being said...I have finally gotten around to selecting paint and fabrics and putting together an inspiration board for our bedroom. Here it is:

We already have the headboard. It's a Drexel Heritage and I got it at TJ Maxx for $250. It was extremely discounted because it didn't have the frame with it, which was fine because I was just wanting a headboard anyways. I LOVE this thing. It is huge and substantial and a true statement piece but in a subtle way.

The paint color that I have chosen is Benjamin Moore Refined. I'm going to use it at 50% though. I have about seven paint colors on our wall right now and this one is SO pretty and soft. It goes super perfectly with the fabrics for this room. I ordered about 30 swatches from fabrics.com and am SO excited to use these together. (Sidenote: When asked if he cared about using a floral fabric in our room, Bryan immediately rolled his eyes and said "I'm a guy, why would I care?" And that is why I love him ;)

I've already gotten a new quilt from Overstock (this one), and we just got it in the mail two days ago. It is awesome. I also went and got king-sized pillows last night so now we actually have pillows that fit our bed!! If only I could convey my genuine excitement over this fact--it is ridiculous.

I'm still on the lookout for an awesome couple of dressers and have my eye on several bedside tables. I would really like a mirrored set to add another layer to the room. Let me see....a woven bench or set of stools would be amazing for the foot of the bed---something light and airy though--gourd lamps are a must, and so are my favorite bamboo blinds, also from Overstock (I like that place a little too much). I'm also thinking of sticking with my favorite white curtains from Ikea for both windows. They are so airy and nice looking in real life!

We eventually want to replace the old carpet with something like sisal or a natural fiber (along with new baseboards), but that will unfortunately be the last thing we do in the house since we have so much dust and construction going on. I'm trying to be patient about that one but it is hard to wait!

We also have something fun planned for the ceilings and the only thing I'm still truly torn on is whether to stick with a new ceiling fan since we do actually use it throughout the summer (SO HOT), or go the pretty but less practical route and get a glitzy ceiling mount like the one above.

ALSO. There is this weird little corner in the room. It's about 3 feet deep and 6 feet long and neither of us know what to do with it. It's driving me nuts!

Originally we talked about building a desk for me to work at. But then I didn't want to bring work mess into our room, so that idea was nixed. Then we talked about building bookshelves, but we have those in the living room (though they can be moved...), then we talked about being a small sitting area....and then about closing it off to be an extra closet. (We each have our own walk-in closet in our bathroom though.) What do you think? Any ideas? I'm having a hard time finding inspiration for this particular problem and am just stumped.

So that's where we are with that. It's so exciting and refreshing to get going on this. I hope to hear some of your thoughts and suggestions!

Have a wonderful weekend! 

Ten Things to Blog About

Hi!

Merry Christmas!

Happy New Year!

Just wanted to pop in and blog something because, oh, I don't know, I was feeling guilty about starting a new blog and then being the worst blogger ever.

I have a couple of things bouncing around my head tonight and I thought I would share them since this is my blog and all.

{1} We finished our laundry room! I will take pictures at some point in 2014 ;). And we went all out, too. New everything--floors, ceilings, door casings (craftsman style!), shelving, paint, lighting, and accessories. Going in there makes me happy which is a big deal because laundry sucks.

{2} This little one is turning 2 in a couple of months and I started planning his birthday party this week. I am bound and determined to keep it small and simple, but I love the theme. It has to do with some of his favorite things, which are construction trucks. :)

 

(Oh, those times that he wraps his arms around me and smiles! Melts me.)

{3} We are in Austin right now at a SUPER nice resort that has been fully funded by the school district thanks to the fact the Bryan's golf team is playing in a tournament and I'm the official "women's sponsor". I had to get a background check and everything. We are having a blast and even bribed my mom (with Parker's presence) to fly down from Denver (Go Broncos!) and spend the long weekend with us.

Yesterday, we shopped around the famous 6th Street District (more like on 2nd Street though), saw the capitol, and ate some great food. (Annie's and Hula Hut for the locals.) Today, we are going to the park so Parker can ride the "too-too" train and possibly to the children's museum if we have time.

 

(Picture of the resort. Yep!)

{4} I have read a lot of books since Christmas break and have loved most of them. They are: The Divergent Series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant---I can't even...they are good...and I don't want to spoil anything, but I had a hard time with the last one), The Spectacular Now (great book, and maybe the only book I've ever read that I liked the movie more--I mean, it has Kyle Chandler in it! Coach Taylor!), If I Stay (sad), The Maze Runner, and Reconstructing Amelia (it was good, although it has a ton of plot holes). I am currently on Sisterland. It's great so far.

{5} I need to re-paint my brand spankin' new-to-me barstools that were a total score off of Craigslist (3 for $60). Yep. And they look almost identical to these from Pottery Barn but with a natural wooden seat instead of woven:

 

 I can't decide between the original black or maybe a gray or maybe like a deep gulf green?

 

{6} Speaking of barstools, I also need to suck it up finish the kitchen and post pictures. It is done from a glance, but we still need to:

-Paint the pantry door
-Put new craftsman door casings on pantry and kitchen entrances (this is Bryan's to-do), paint
-Paint baseboards to match cabinets
-Pick out a freaking chandelier. Guys, this has been torturing me for months. Maybe I should blog about it?
-Get a new rug for the dining room
-Paint barstools
-Possible paint door hardware and knobs (is anyone opposed to the antique brass trend?)
-Possibly, maybe, but probably not convince my husband do to a bead board backsplash
-I would love a new SS dishwasher and stove but that ain't gonna happen right now. Patience is a virtue! And appliances are expensive.

 {7} The shop has been super busy lately which I am extremely grateful for! Parker isn't going to college and our house isn't getting decorated without my little shop on Etsy. (You think I'm kidding, but I'm actually not, ha!) This is my newest invite and I like it a lot--just added it the other night.

{8} Bryan just finished talking in his sleep. Something about toilet paper and effectiveness. My mom and I died laughing as I egged him on. And yes, I am writing this post in the middle of the night. And yes, my mom passed her insomnia on to me and my sisters.

{9} My main New Year's resolution was to go to bed before midnight which I am failing at miserably right now. Oh well, I'm on vacation, right?

{10} While shopping in Austin, we came across a FLOR store, which I have seen around blog world and was interested in since I (eventually) would like to get a new living room rug. The one we have right now is too small for the room so I am being forced to shop. ;)  I was very pleasantly surprised at the quality of FLOR's carpet tiles! After going to the store, I'm also thinking of using them wall-to-wall in our bedrooms, since you can just switch out the tiles if they are ruined and they have some great natural fiber options which is what I have been planning to put in the bedrooms anyways. My favorites are Roadside Attraction, Weave a Story, A Tisket A Tasket, and Suit Yourself.

 (Roadside Attraction)

 Well, I HAVE to go to bed, especially after this novel. What has been going on in your world? Any new projects? Books? Trips? Great places to go in Austin?

 

Have a wonderful day!

My First Oversized Poster Print!

To be perfectly honest, one of the main reasons I wanted to start decorating with black in our new house was because of my obsession with chalkboard prints. :) I know that I share this obsession with a lot of people right now and that is fine by me! Now that we finally have some black in our kitchen and dining room (cabinet hardware, shelf brackets, etc....so exciting!), I thought I would make my very own chalkboard print for Christmas. I used Isaiah 9:6. I had this verse on my bible cover when I was like 9 and have been obsessed with it ever since, haha. Just a side note. :)

I made this to fit a cheap-o Ikea frame that I've had for about a year now. I actually think it looks really nice when spray painted with gold leaf...not too cheap at all! I may spray paint it a different color eventually because it was hard to get the gold to look even, but we will see.

This was also my first time to print one of those super popular over-sized blue print posters from Fed Ex. It cost me all of $3 for a 20"x28" black and white poster!

(Aaaaand you can see me. Looking awkward. I think I was trying to duck from the tri-pod, haha)

The quality is actually pretty nice, except for that it didn't print quite as much of the chalkboard texture as I would have liked. For the price though, I am A-okay with that. ;)

I put this on our Craigslist buffet which now has a new home in the dining room. I LOVE it here! 

I may end up moving this poster to the mantel, but I wanted to get a few quick pictures today because I have listed it in my shop! It is available as an instant download 8x10 printable OR as a custom-sized print. (Perfect for these oversized posters!) Please head over there to check it out!

We just got our NEW faucet in the mail today and I am in love! Hopefully Bryan can install it tonight and then I will take some pictures. And then after that maybe I will get around to decorating the rest of our house for Christmas! Y'all, I can't handle our house right now. I am looking at pumpkins and ornaments in the same room and it's driving me nuts. 

Yay! Two posts in one week. Go me! Have a great rest of your week.

New Curtains and Shower Decorations

Hello! We've had a crazy couple of weeks, but I wanted to pop in and share a little peek of our new dining room curtains and some of the decor my friend and I made for a lingerie shower this past weekend. I LOVED it. 

My friend Alli pinned a triangle garland that we both fell in love with, so we decided to make our own version. I ran these through my sewing machine and was amazed at how much I loved the look! 

We went with the super popular gold and pastel color scheme. I found some beautiful lace fabric on super sale (very similar to this inspiration image) and we used that as our table cloth. The shower was at night so I took all of these before the food was out...all of the platters have sticky note labels on them if you were to zoom out :). 

We also did a monogram theme and had several B's around the house (for the bride-to-be's future last name) as well as some delicious custom monogram cookies that I forgot to take a picture of! (Similar to this but in our colors....if you live in Lubbock I will hook you up with the best cookie lady ever!) I got that frame at Goodwill and painted the frame gold, the matte board white, and the original print with chalkboard paint. Alli drew the B and the laurel....she is great with chalk!

I also sewed a few ruffle garlands and basically want to keep them up forever. I LOVE them. They don't look as substantial in the pictures as they do in real life, but they added a lot to the table backdrop! Easy to make, too.

Our new curtains are from Ikea and so is the curtain rod. The curtains are pretty popular in blog world and I think they look a lot more expensive than they actually are. They are thick with a linen look and have the hidden pinch pleats which is a plus! Also, finding reasonably priced curtain rods for bay windows was a pain in the hiney and I was so relieved to see them at Ikea! 

In the living room I hung more paper and ruffle garlands. And added a B. I never know how to decorate living rooms for showers but I like how this turned out. When I took these, we were in the middle of a nasty dust storm so all of the colors look weird since it was brown and dark outside...sorry. ;)

We also finished our KITCHEN. Yay!!! Well, it's not completely finished--I ordered a new faucet and am still waiting to get it in the mail... and I also need to paint the pantry door and the trim, but other than that we are done for now! Y'all...it makes me so happy when I walk in there. I absolutely, positively, LOVE it. Cannot wait to share! Oh, the power of paint and a handy husband :). 

Have a great day!