Angels Above

Angels above were watching out for us yesterday. I attempted to wash our pillows for the first and last time. If we didn't smell the burning I know our house would have been on fire. While drying, the drum stopped rotating. Now to try up fix our dryer sometime this week. Personally, if your pillows are dirty, just buy new ones.

R2D2's Nursery

Let's see if I can squeeze in one more post before R2D2's next feed. If you haven't picked up on it yet, I think I'm going to keep calling our bundle of joy R2D2 on the blog. For those wondering her name, sorry. I will say, hubby and I absolutely love it!

Joe and I hope to have at least one more child. Although we found out R2D2's gender ahead of time, I didn't want to make the nursery married to only one gender. We kept the walls neutral and I decided to play with the bedding colors to make it feminine. Pink is the default go to color for girls, but I much prefer purple, so that's what we used. I bet she's going to hate purple by the time she grows up.

This post is mostly going to be picture overload. I posted about her crib skirt, quilt, and mobile separately. We purchased her tree decal from Walldecals001 on Etsy.

 Well, first Dad helped finish up the nursery.  We didn't have everything hung by the time she arrived.

 Yes, that's R2D2 asleep in the crib.  She looks lost, doesn't she?

My First Quilt

I really wanted to make R2D2's bedding for her nursery. I ended up making her crib skirt and a quilt.

I have another quilt I still have to baste and bind, which maybe I'll get to before I go back to work. I have fabric to make curtains too, we'll see when those happen as well.

I started making the quilt above, inspired by Happy Quilting Time, but I became discouraged when my seams didn't match and I haven't decided how I want to baste it. So, I went to a more simple linear quilt.

I used a tutorial for the linear quilt from Momfetti

R2D2's Butterfly Mobile

Being a new mom, my posts are probably going to get shorter. Over the past several months I've been working on R2D2's nursery. Fortunately it came together prior to her delivery. When I heard about pottery barn's butterfly chandelier, I knew I wanted one for her nursery. This isn't a tutorial, but I'll include links that inspired my ultimate design.

Ultimately I used a butterfly punch, which is very helpful. I also sewed the strands using a sewing machine and invisible thread. The most tedious part was tying the strands onto the wires.

Project inspired by:
God Bless Our Nest
Project Nursery

R2D2's Crib Skirt

 I like to make things. I also like things to be one of a kind. I decided I want to make R2D2's bedding myself and for some reason thought I'd save money making my own bedding. In the big scheme, I probably did, but while making the skirt and quilt and I realized I have a POS sewing machine and ending up using my savings to buy a MUCH better one. I can tell such a difference and I look forward to using it for the decades to come to make even more things for the house and our little ones. I digress.

Unfortunately I don't know the name of the fabric, but I bought it from JoAnn's in the Calico Prints section.

God love the internet. With a little searching a found the perfect tutorial for a ruffled crib skirt. I think I also looked at some other sites and put it all together, but I mostly used the sew for home one.

Our New Bathroom!!

In total, I think it took about 3 weeks to completely redo our bathroom. I cannot thank my dad enough for all of the hard work he did. We decided to use our funds to redo our bathroom instead of going on a babymoon, and I'm so glad we did. It is so nice walking into our new bathroom, having more storage space, and a bathtub that's not multi-colored. Unfortunately I lost my camera with all of the before pictures, but here are a few.

And here are pictures of the final product. We love it! We still have to decide on wall art, but that will come.

Bathroom Update

It's starting to look like a bathroom again! I can't believe I thought it would be done in 1 week. We're reaching the end of week 3 now and while the end is in site, I still don't think we'll be able to take advantage of it until next week.

And after two weeks with Joe's aunt and uncle, we happily have Winston back! Damn, I missed that dog. I love this picture of his bed head.

Outhouses and Bathroom Remodel

A couple of months ago, I researched going to the Caribbean for a babymoon. We saved our wedding money for a honeymoon, which have yet to go on, so I thought it was a perfect time for a babymoon. The thing is, we're practical homeowners. We've really been wanting to redo our bathroom and that would cost a little more than we were going to spend on the baby moon. So, low and behold, we're redoing our bathroom. I had some great "before" photos on my camera that I lost, so we'll have to work with some mid-before.

There was a ton of wall paper that these pictures don't capture. If you're thinking about putting wall paper in your home, please don't! Your future home-buyers will thank you. Right now, our bathroom is completely gutted. I mean completely. Our toilet is hanging out in the the dining room.

We're fortunate to have another bathroom in the basement, but let me tell you, it's far in the middle of the night! Being pregnant I have to pee quite often. I can't remember the last time I slept through the night without waking up to pee. The past two nights I've grumbled about my trek downstairs, and then I remembered people used to have to go outside to pee. I couldn't imaging being pregnant and having an outhouse. I definitely think I would just keep a pail under my bed :p.

Homeownership...

Decisions, decisions. For the last couple of weeks, I've been thinking about a babymoon in the Caribbean. The prices were more than I wanted to spend and so I started thinking about taking a trip to Florida instead. Then, the past couple of days we've been talking about our list of house projects. Now I'm torn. I want a remodeled bathroom. It would cost about the same as the trip we were thinking about. We can go to the beach with a baby. I really want the wall paper gone and Joe really wants a new vanity. My gut is going with doing house projects. Joe thinks I should sleep on it before making a decision, and he's right. And this practicality and love of our house is why we still haven't gone on a honeymoon...

Good bye tree!

I have to give Dad and Joe credit where it's deserved. I didn't think they'd be able to remove it without it falling into the house, but they did! We probably have to have someone remove the stump, but we'll get to that eventually. Each time we look out our front door, we do a double take. I'm curious to see how long it takes us to get used to not having a tree anymore.

And of course I have to throw in a photo of Winston for good measure! He was afraid of the chain saw, but loved being outside when Dad and Joe were loading the branches into the truck.

TIMBER!!!

Oh the joys of home ownership! We're thinking it was hit by lightening last night. Fortunately, it landed 2 feet AWAY from the cars and fell away from the house. Joe and Dad cut up these branches and we've decided we want to get rid of the tree all together. It's beautiful, but I really don't want to find a tree in our roof. Dad and Joe say they can remove it on their own. While I love that price, I'm worried the tree is too big for someone who's not trained in removing trees. We'll see.

Farmer's Market Love

I love Farmer's Markets. I wait all winter for it finally to be warm enough for fresh produce. Sometimes I feel like I spend a little more, but I love supporting my local farmers. In Omaha there was an awesome market just 2 miles from our house. Our new town has one, but it's not as large. Eventually I'll hop on the highway and go to the larger farmer's market, but I've loved what I found already!

I've fallen in love with Keye's Creamery and the icecream! It's rich and delicous. Another thing I love, I drive past the cows every day! I've only tried one of the cheeses, but I look forward to trying more.

I've also really enjoyed my few purchases from Dear Meadow Farm thus far. The premade pulled pork is out of this world!

Every Saturday, so of the Amish come by and set up shop as well.

On the left is a tomato plant and on the right a lettuce garden I purchased from the Amish. The lettuce garden required more water than I thought it would need, but I'm slowly nursing it back to health.

I admit, it's a little frustrating when I buy a pound of strawberries at the farmers market for $4 and then see them for $2 at the grocery store, but I have to remember I'm supporting local farmers. Yay for warm weather and fresh produce!

Baking Withdrawal

I'm wrapping up a week of vacation and I didn't try a single new recipe, I'm going through withdrawal a little! You might remember we recently bought a house. Well, being an intern and setting up home is not the easiest thing to do. I spent most of my vacation working around the house and unpacking some boxes. There are still tons of boxes to unpack, but we need our master bedroom furniture to come in so we can get things a little more organized first. And we're still waiting on our living room furniture =( Thank goodness we using our old bedroom set for our spare room, or we'd be sleeping on the floor.

Before I can dive back into tackling more recipes, we need our kitchen! After living here for almost a month, I was happy to find my spices this week. I've been contemplating on baking tonight, but I just don't have any counter space to do prep work yet. The kitchen has definitely become the dumping ground for the tools and boxes. On a better note, I've solved my "kitchen dilemna." Since we didn't win the recent Mega Millions, a new kitchen just isn't in the budget for us right now. So, we've decided to go with an island.

It has a leaf we can use as a breakfast bar too. I'll be so excited when I get my kitchen floor back and we can set this up. However, I'm definitely not looking forward to the time and frustration it's going to take to assemble it.

I'm so happy with our other house projects. We've finished our basement and Dad added an office for me down there. I've bought 3 bookcases to fill and a winged back chair to make it have a semi-library feel too. Oh, and if you're thinking about crown molding, do it! Dad added it to our living and dining rooms, what a special touch! I'd love to show more pictures, but hubby requests I don't share everything with the virtual world. I can respect that. Oh, and can I just say how blessed we are that my Dad's a contractor?

Kitchen Dilemna

If you follow my blog, you've probably picked up that I love to be in the kitchen. That being said, I'm trying to determine what to do with our new kitchen. I took some pictures tonight and it's currently a dumping ground while we paint, so please disregard the mess.

Here's the kitchen walking in. I like having the space behind the stove and all, but I'd like some more counter space.

And as you can see, this wall is completely open.

As is the dividing wall...

So I'm left with deciding how to use that extra space. It's definitely enough space for a little table or a breakfast nook, but since the kitchen is directly next to the dining room, I really would prefer more counter space over a place to sit.

My initial thought was to add another row of bottom cabinets along the length of the long wall. However, I'm having trouble matching the cabinets. I know the current cabinets are aged, and they'll not be directly next to each other, but I still want to get as close as I can. I can't lie, the thought of redoing the whole kitchen has crossed my mind, but that's just not in our budget right now.

Another thought is purchase a kitchen cart or island, but I'm not falling in love with any. So, I'm trying to decide if I should settle on a kitchen cart for now and eventually redo all of the cabinets when we have the money, but I don't know when that will be...or if I should just try to find cabinets that are very close and go ahead and put in cabinets on the opposite wall.

Any thoughts or other suggestions? Also, any tips on removing wall paper?

We're Homeowners!!!

It's been a whirlwind of the past couple of weeks. Regardless, Joe and I are ecstatic to say we're now homeowners! Hopefully I'll be able to update the blog with our projects, but needless to say, Intern year has been just a wee bit busy.