Nursery (part 3)

More nursery advancements! It’s coming together, and with around 11 weeks to go, I’m glad to be finally making progress!

Color…check! Transformed into Meadow Mist! This was such a relief. A relief that it’s #1: done, and #2: I like/love it (my opinion changes depending on time of day, mood, lighting, etc). And fyi, the pics aren’t great examples of the true color because I’m a crappy picture taker and I they are taken at different times of the day…so if it looks too “In-Your-Face-Blue”, it’s not! *Refer to example below :-)

When Jim first brushed it on, I said “OMG I LOVE it! Don’t you LOVE it?”

…then I went back into the room 5 minutes later and complained, “I hate it. It’s too green or blue, or something. UGH!” and immediately wished I would have gotten sample colors.

Jim asked if I wanted to go get another color before he painted the whole room and I said, “No, paint everything and if I don’t like it we’ll just repaint it.” We did this with Jack’s room and I know that with enough paint, you’ll eventually find something you can live with!

Luckily, it’s growing on my everyday. And just like I did when the room was freshly cleaned out, I poke my head in every time I walk past it…and sometimes I walk past it just to poke my head in!

First DIY project…check!

A while back, I fell in love with Amy Butler’s LOVE Heart fabric collection. But seeing as I’m not a seamstress or anything close, I thought THIS project was 100% do-able for me. So I bought my fabric on Etsy. And after some careful/sloppy placement, glue, and patience, mission accomplished!

My fabric rings are done and I love them, but you can never see the backs of these because I’m too cheap to invest in a pair of good quality scissors, so it basically looks like it’s been chewed on by a dog. ;-) But that dog was me!

*Notice how different the wall color looks in the 3 pictures below...as noted above, don't trust my picture taking skills! Focus on the project at hand!
Taken in the early evening:

Taken in the afternoon light:

Taken in the morning light:

Two more checks off the list. Yeah!

This weekend I hope to paint the dresser/armoire and rocking chair…oh I’m getting so ready for this baby girl to come visit me! Lila Grace? I’m just throwing it out there and thinking about it…I have the urge to start having things monogrammed!

my new(ish) chair!

Remember my chair?! The chair I rescued from the garbage and hauled down my street in the middle of the night because I saw potential?! Well, it’s finally done! It only took me like 3 months to slowly, but surely, finish the job!

So without further ado (3+ months is “ado” enough!), here’s my new(ish) chair…

It was rusty and in need of a fresh coat of paint, so my first step was to sand it down to a nice smooth finish and give it a coat of Rustoleum (in Almond). (Refer to “Funny Story” below.) Here's the rusty mess...

And now, after $16 worth of fabric and paint, I am perfectly happy with my new chair!

Now all I need is some spare time to relax and enjoy it...lol: spare time! :-)

Funny story: I bought the brush-on Rustoleum paint rather than the spray. I painted it one day during Jack’s nap, so needless to say, I was up against the clock.

When I finished, I went inside to clean my brushes as I usually would: with water in the sink. As I squeezed my hand through the brush to remove the paint, I begin to realize that the paint wasn’t washing off as my interior latex would. I rubbed more and slowly began to recall that this is oil.based.paint! SH*T. I had no mineral spirits, my hand (and wedding rings), sink, and anything else I might touch are covered in Rustoleum, Jack would be waking up at any moment, and Jim was golfing so I was stuck, literally.

After minor panic, I grabbed a bottle of nail polish remover and doused myself made the best of it. And although I smelled as if I was combustible, I was mostly paint free.

Moral of the story: Read directions (ironic that I didn’t seeing as my profession is WRITING directions!)…know what kind of paint you’re using…always have mineral spirits…and steal your neighbors discarded junk!

The end

our weekend...

It was a b-u-s-y weekend! Our first goal was to cover the bare spots in our yard with topsoil and seed to hopefully grow grass. We had a total of 6 tons of topsoil delivered. Lots of scooping, wheel-barrowing, tilling, evening, spreading, seeding, watering...good thing we had fuel:

Luckily, we had 3 tough guys to get the job done.

Phase 2 of the weekend goal was to pick up a swing set I scored on Craigslist! After stalking Craigslist for months, I finally put a “Wanted” ad and totally scored within a couple hours!

Jim and Herb had a…well I won’t say “fun” time, but they had an experience dismantling, moving, loading, and unloading this bad boy. Thanks for giving up your Saturday... Here's what it looks like put together...I can't promise it will look the same once reassembled ;-)

Jack was SOOOOO excited as each piece was unloaded. He could hardly stand it. This week, Poppy is going to power wash and stain it to look like new, and hopefully we can reassemble it soon, because it’s bordering on just plain mean to make Jack stare at his play set in pieces all.week.long.

In baby news, our little girl is the size of a papaya this week (actually all month long). I only have 4 fruits left...which makes me kinda sad because I loved to see my "fruit" change by the week...now we're changing by the month.

She's an active little one, and Jack enjoys giving my tummy a kiss and saying hi to his baby sister...

And we also watched Up! this weekend...def my new favorite movie. Def! (Not taking into account that I've pretty much only watched Cars movie for going on 2 months straight...it was a really good movie!)

For now, here's men at work:

Transplant

We recently cut down 3 large trees and removed the stumps. The next step was to buy sod and/or seed to fill our patches. Jim was just excited to use heavy machinery, even though he was reduced to wearing my sweet sunglasses for protection! Minor detail, in fact, I think he secretly stashed them for later use...jk, he broke them instead.

This past weekend, on a whim, I started to dig out the grass around our mailbox because I’ve been wanting to make a flower bed. After a few digs, a light bulb went off: why don’t we dig up this grass and transplant it in our bare areas! Brilliant!

I didn’t think it would take more than 30-45 minutes. And we would be reusing just like Bob the Builder suggests...yeah! Little did I realize that “digging up grass” to transplant was a much more heavy-duty, time-consuming feat than I realized. I always underestimate projects! It took more like 3-4 hours! Good thing Jim was up for the challenge! ;-)

Since Jim was in charge of the heavy digging/lifting, Jack and I had the job of watering the area to be “sodded”, splashing in the mud, and watering the sod once it was placed. Needless to say, it was “work” that was more fun than actual "work".
Note: Yes he is watering the grass in his diaper. After splashing in the mud to the point that his shorts were too muddy/sticky/wet to wear, I resorted to this. Luckily, he's happier with little/no clothes!

Now we just have to hope the sod takes. Water, water, water! Good thing we have a professional sprinkler-operator on site!

My chair!

As promised, here are pictures of my rescued chair! You might look at these pictures and think, “This woman’s hormones have seriously messed up her judgment!” And I’ll admit, it’s not 'porch-ready'…yet! But it will be…I see potential!

I’m still debating on whether or not I want to sandblast my new find (to clean off the rust) and repaint it, or to keep it vintage-looking and just “Make it work!” like Tim Gunn says!

Decisions, decisions!