30 Weeks!

We finally hit the 30 week mark, which makes me think there might actually be an end to all of this somewhere in the near future! I officially don't remember what its like to NOT be pregnant. I have no recollection of what it is like to put on pants that have a button and a zipper, I couldn't imagine sleeping through the night without getting up to pee 3 times, and walking up the stairs without feeling like I just ran a marathon is just a distant memory. Here is some photo evidence of my current situation:

Yikes. My mom thinks its hilarious that I won't go do mirror aisles in stores anymore, but it's just too scary. I accidentally caught my own profile reflection in a window yesterday and just about fell over. Oh well, I know it will all be worth it in the end.

Two weeks ago we had our 28 week doctor appointment, complete with the "dreaded" Gestational Diabetes test...

 

Everyone seems to make a HUGE deal about drinking this stuff, when in reality it just tastes like flat Sunkist. Like I told my friends on Instagram, I willingly drank way more disgusting stuff on a regular basis in college. (Case in point: Jagermeister.) The worst part of the test for me was waiting to get my blood drawn. We had our doctor appointment during the hour wait, but it was a quick one so Ryan and I still had about 25-30 minutes to wait before they could take my blood. Neither one of us is very good at waiting, so I was not happy about the possibility that I would have to do this again and wait 3 hours if I failed this time. Luckily, my score was just over 100 and you have to be under 130 to pass. The nurse told me I got an A+! This was actually pretty surprising since Ryan and I basically ate an entire cake in the 72 hours prior to the test. 

Everything else at the appointment was normal. The funniest part was when the nurse was trying to get his heart rate and as soon as she would put the doppler on, he would kick right where she put it and move away. This happened 3 or 4 times and I was about to die laughing. She said we have a very stubborn baby (NO idea where that came from... must be a paternal trait???!??!) but he finally gave in and his heart rate was 139. Seems so low compared to the 150s and 160s of before but I know it slows down as he gets bigger. Another GREAT part of the appointment was when they checked my weight and I LOST A POUND! Considering the whole "we ate an entire cake in 72 hours" thing above, I was prepared for her to tell me I gained 10 pounds or something. My weight gain was 11.7 pounds and now it is 10.7. Now if only I can keep that up over the next 2.5 months - HA HA!

Our next appointment is September 4th (32 weeks) and we get to see our little guy one last time before we meet him. I had a "very slight" placenta previa at 20 weeks and our doctor wants to make sure it has moved up since then. I hope it has - and I hope the next 2 months fly by like everyone says they well!

DIY No-Sew Crib Skirt

When we found out we are having a boy and I started shopping for nursery bedding, I immediately fell in love with the Indigo Summer bedding by New Arrivals:

 

I love the entire set, but we eventually decided that we did not want to use a bumper, since they are widely considered to be unsafe now, and in my opinion they serve more of a cosmetic purpose rather than a functional one - at least for infants. We will use a breathable bumper down the road when we have a rolling baby that likes to stick his limbs through his crib, but for now we are going bumper-less. So I decided I would order the crib sheet and the crib skirt until I started shopping around and realized that the sheet is a little pricey and it is also not organic, which is also really important to us. I just feel like if his face and mouth are going to be on that piece of fabric everyday, then it should be as healthy as possible. So then I was left with just buying the skirt, which would be $108 plus shipping. That seemed like a reasonable price, but then I started researching (Googling) the possibility of making a crib skirt without sewing, since my sewing machine and I have a pretty unhealthy relationship. I also have this overwhelming need to get everything I want at the absolute lowest possible price that I can - and then I feel like I have succeeded!

I eventually ran across this video from Young House Love and I was immediately convinced that I could make the skirt on my own. Since our crib hadn't arrived yet, I used the Pottery Barn website to get the dimensions so that I could order the fabric. Once I had the dimensions, I found the fabric on fabric.com for $15.98 a yard, found a 30% off coupon online, and took advantage of their free shipping on orders over $35 and ended up paying right around $35 for 3 yards of the fabric. Call me crazy, but paying $35 sounds better than paying $108 any day.

Once the fabric arrived, I basically used the same steps in the video above for making the skirt. The only difference is that instead of the hem tape, I used Stitch Witchery Fusible Bonding Web in Super Weight. I used to hem pants with this stuff in college so I know that it is reliable and holds up through lots of washing and drying.

The steps are pretty simple. First, add 3" to the length and width of your crib side measurement to allow room for the fusible web, and cut. (This is the back of the fabric)

As you can see, the sides are not perfectly straight. Cut fabric is rarely ever perfectly straight, but you can just straighten the edge based on wherever you put the fusible web. To make the hem on each side, I would rip off a piece of the fusible web that was about 1/3 as long as the side I was working on. That way, I could be more accurate in making sure it stayed straight all the way down the side, since a shorter strip is easier to work with. Once you decide where you want it, you just fold it over and iron.

 

After I finished one side, I would re-measure just to make sure that I was staying on track with my dimensions. If for some reason you still had 2 extra inches on the other end, you could just fold over more fabric and fix it that way. Once all four sides were finished, the back of the fabric looked like this:

Once you have a panel finished, you can attach it to the crib. Just like in the video, I also used velcro to attach the panels since it is washable and adjusts easily. Since velcro is sticky on both sides. I just attached it where I wanted it on the crib, and pressed the skirt panel down on the sticky edge as I went. I also used office clips to act as an extra set of hands so that the panel stayed put as I worked further down each side.

Once I finished attaching the side, the panel looked like this:

 

And then once all the panels were attached, the view looking into the crib was like this:

And here is the finished product:

We haven't bought his mattress yet, so I guess I should say that is the semi-finished product. I also wanted a longer skirt that went all the way to the floor, but obviously that is a matter of personal preference. The video suggests adding another line of velcro on the back so that you can move the skirt up as the crib moves down, but I cross that bridge when I come to it.

I really love how it turned out, and the bonus is that the total cost was about $38 (fabric + fusible web), so we saved $70 off the price that I was going to pay for the skirt online. Definitely worth about 2 hours of work in my book. This method really was so easy - I would highly recommend it and gladly do it again sometime down the road!

DIY Canvas Quote Art for the Bathroom

Whenever we found out that we were having a boy, I immediately had this urge to redecorate the bathroom that will be his bathroom. Yes, I realize he won't be spending too much time in there for awhile, but for some reason I needed it to feel like a little boy's bathroom - without actually feeling like a little boy's bathroom. I've said it a million times: I'm just not that into overly babyish/ kiddish rooms. I want us to be able to go in his bedroom or bathroom and not feel like we're visiting a daycare. So basically my plan was to make the bathroom a little more masculine and add some kid-friendly details. This bathroom is NOWHERE near finished, but we have started making some changes. Here is the bathroom as it was before:

It's a pretty basic bathroom with a tub & shower, and a big awesome closet behind the door. Luckily, it was already painted navy blue - which was perfect for making it fit for a little boy. After buying a shower curtain that I had been eyeing at Target for a few weeks, we decided that the room needed some art. I had seen a lot of projects I loved on Pinterest and Etsy that were basically quotes painted on a canvas in a funky way and decided that would be a good addition to this room.

We decided to go for a VERY subtle ocean theme in here because we have a framed print we bought in Maui several years ago on the wall across from the toilet, and basically I refuse to take it down. I love that print and I especially love it against the navy wall. This is the print:

 

This picture doesn't really do it justice, but it is big and colorful and I just love it. So this is the reason for our subtle ocean theme. Since I loved the quote idea, we spent the next few days trying to think of a good quote that relates to the ocean that would make sense on the other wall. Since Ryan is a big music guy, he listened to a lot of songs at work that he thought might fit until we finally decided on a portion of the song Swallowed in the Sea by Coldplay. Ryan is a much bigger fan of Coldplay than I am, but this is by far my favorite Coldplay song. And I think the words of the song kind of work for a child since it's about an enormous love for a person that can't be contained.  

I didn't use any tutorials or anything for this one, I just decided to kind of wing it based on images in my head. The supplies I used were: a large canvas, 6 packs of letter stickers and a bunch of various acrylic paints. The cost was around $25 for everything. 

The hardest part is figuring how how many letters you will need. Technically, you could write out the quote and count, but that wasn't happening for me. I did end up running out of the letter E but I was able to make it work.

The next step is writing out the quote with the stickers on the canvas. You could line it all up and make it neat but I wanted a finished product that looked a little more imperfect, so I just eyeballed it as I went. Mine looked like this:

As you can see, there are some Es missing in the last 3 lines. Instead of going to buy more letters, I just painted the top of the canvas first and when it dried, I peeled off the Es and put them down below where they were needed and then painted over the bottom half. This is the part where I forgot to take a picture, but basically I just used 6 colors of paint, and painted in a slight circle pattern over the letters with a cut up kitchen sponge. It's also important to remember to paint the sides of the canvas, since they will be visible when this is hung on a wall. Once everything was dry, I slowly peeled the letters off, and this was my finished product:

 And here it is with his shower curtain:

 

I have to say, I'm pretty obsessed with how it turned out. I love how it is kind of unfinished/imperfect looking and how all the letters have a rough edge. I also love how it ended up matching his shower curtain really well. As long as Coldplay doesn't sue us, I think this is a DIY piece that we will keep for a very long time! :)