5 years later - crafts!

I think it has literally been 5 years since I have done any sort of 'do it yourself' project - although there have been many on the list. 5 years ago I graduated college, looked for work, planned a wedding, got married, went to grad school and then started my first counseling job.... leading us to the present!

Now, school is out. I work 10 hour days/4 days a week for 2.5 more weeks, and things are pretty calm and quiet. I decided it was time to break out the mini glue gun and make some fun things (some of you may call this nesting.... but I refuse the term).

Plus, this is for my front door, so does it count as nesting if its not for baby?

Anyways, I follow several crafty blogs and am ALWAYS fascinated by what they can put together with some elbow grease and a glue gun. Shocked and amazed are also appropriate words when I see what people can do with a few dollars and an item from the thrift store.

I saw a picture over at Liz Marie Blog, and thought, I could maybe... possibly... do that.

Off to Michael's I went, because I do still have a few baby things on the agenda also, like the baby wreath for the hospital door/nursery and I really want some scripture over his bed. I've decided with 5 weeks to go, its not going to paint itself and I better get moving if I want anything to be done.

Here is her picture:
So cute right?!

Well, you know I have no creativity with color, so I had every intention of copying her exactly, turning to G into P.... but Michael's was out of all of the above items.

My materials: One wreath that I didn't notice was lopsided until I took this picture, the letter 'P', one strand of white random flowers and one set of purple puffy flower balls (its no wonder I'm not a florist as well).


Total cost, maybe $17.... because they were out of a lot of flowers, the ones I chose ended up costing $11.

And my finished product:
I had to pick the purple fuzzy flower balls because they had no green and they only had one strand of the white flowers like hers, and I needed at least 2. Also... I'm pretty sure I should invest in some paint other than white :) Purple?! Maybe that P will get redone in the next few days.

But its cute! And ready for summer on my front door.

The Never-Ending Nursery

We are still ticking away at the weeks/days before our sweet child arrives and yet the nursery seems to be far from finished.

Phase 1: We painted - success!

Phase 2: Order furniture - Not so successful. We ordered furniture from Legacy because it was the same company we ordered our bedroom furniture from and we knew it was good quality. Well, the kids dresser came in and it was awful. For nearly the same price as an adult dresser we got a dresser that was flimsy and appeared to be made of plywood and much smaller than I imagined (no I didn't see it in person before we ordered...). Thankfully, the wonderful Alabama Furniture Market, where we buy our furniture from, allowed us to exchange it.

Bring on Phase 3.... the search for another dresser that matched the crib. Again, unsuccessful. We knew that the crib matched our bedroom dresser (unintentionally), but I was very against having two of the same dressers in the house. Well, three weeks later of looking, phone calls and color samples, we ordered the same dresser.

Today the dresser came in! Hooray!!! (it looks small in this picture, but it is definitely not).


Now we are at Phase 4.... how does this all fit into this room?!?!

I plotted it out on Pottery Barn Kids for about an hour without getting too excited about any of the layouts I could come up with.

Here is how it was set up when the dresser came out of the box:
What I do not like about this is the bottom left corner - those are two bookshelves next to a window. Leaving that awkward empty corner. The crib is against the top wall and the dresser against the right side wall.

We pushed it around for about an hour after that and again ended up unsatisfied and giving up with it all sitting randomly in the center of the room...


Which brings me to my next problem.... I do not like the color of the shelves compared to the crib... AT ALL. So I'm back to having to paint. I'm thinking of painting them a sage/green color. What do you think? And when will you be coming to my house to arrange my furniture?

Before

I just uploaded months of pictures from my iphone and I can't help but wonder.... will I ever look like that again?!

One more from the recent maternity shoot:

Here I am!

Due to pure laziness I have no pictures to post, but I do have bedroom furniture and a crib with no mattress!! Yay!! In a quick update, we picked up the crib and dresser we ordered, but I hated the dresser... I was so dissappointed, so we took it back. Now we are waiting on the new one to come in and THEN I'll post pictures :) Hopefully it will arrive before we have a baby. Nothing like cutting things close.

Ben asked when I was going to get the nursery ready. I told him, the bassinet is washed and ready, so I'm good. :) I mean what else do you need to have a baby?! I have a basket of clothes that people have given me, a bassinet and some bottles... I'm good! (I guess I should get some diapers too, they may come in handy...)

I had my 32nd week appointment last week, and everything was great. 140ish heartbeat, which is where he's been sitting for a while now. Head is down and ready! I will be 33 weeks this Thursday and we are already into our 2 week appointments.

Lots of baby movement, stretches and jumps that I can see on the outside of my belly now. And no stretch marks still!!! Woop! Now I'm just trying to ward off any unnecessary pounds by attempting to not eat 43 desserts a day. (Do you know how I remember to spell desserts compared to desert? Because desserts has two 's's.... similarly, I'd like two or more desserts, thanks!)

In school news - tomorrow is our LAST day with students! How is it possible that I survived my first year of counseling?! I hope and pray that I have made a difference in these kids lives. I'll update more later, but will be working most of June since I am a 10-month employee. After I get things wrapped up, maybe I'll have time to reflect on the year behind me and give you some insight.

Happy last week of school!

Maternity Shoot

My friend Haley Graydon took pictures of Ben and I today and I just cannot wait to share. She did such an amazing job!!!

To see more, search facebook for Haley Graydon Photography... click 'like' and you should be able to view what she has uploaded so far. We took these THIS morning and she already uploaded 8 and she's out at another photo shoot this afternoon. I don't know how she finds the time.

28 & 29 Weeks Pregnant

Here I was 28 weeks (and 6 days) pregnant on my 28th birthday.

How far along? Today I am 29 weeks 5 days

Total weight gain/loss: Bleh... 25ish pounds. I was sitting pretty around 20lbs until this past weekend, from Wednesday through Sunday I gained 5lbs (no power = lots of eating out). Here's hoping some water and healthy eating over the next few days will help me level back out.

Maternity clothes? Even those are starting to not fit well!!

Stretch marks? Not yet!

Sleep: is precious :) and very hard to find.

Best moment this week: Hmm... best pregnancy moment? Making it to nearly 30 weeks??

Movement: All day long! I had to emotionally talk to faculty today with baby hiccups constantly in my belly.

Food cravings: Nothing! Heartburn is so terrible I don't want any food!

Gender: We assume he's still a boy!

Labor Signs: None yet, hallelujah!

Belly Button in or out? In

Wedding rings on or off? I actually took it off today. I think the sudden 5lb gain made my fingers fatter too.

What I miss: Being heartburn free and sleeping on my stomach.

What I am looking forward to: Having a baby on the outside instead of the inside.

Weekly Wisdom: Everyone tells me to keep eating and not worry about weight gain, but I really don't think I need to continuously eat.... lol!

Milestones:
That I am still pregnant! Now that I'm nearing the last 10 weeks, I'm just thankful that he is doing great in there without any complications. I don't expect any either, so hopefully he'll be a healthy little chunk come July.

And this was 29 weeks pregnant 3 days:

A birthday I will never forget

I'm sure you have seen all of the footage from the tornados that ravaged the south. I've heard there were over 100 that touched down that day, but the one that hundreds of thousands will never forget was on the ground for an estimated 180 miles... ON THE GROUND!!

Here is a video if you have been hiding out (or maybe they haven't showed the 24/7 coverage in your area like here).


This guy is crazy....


Anyways, it was a very scary day and yes, also happened to be my birthday. My 28th birthday.

The plan was that we were going to have school and host my first Career Day at the middle school and then we knew bad weather was expected and thought we'd possibly get out half a day like we had twice in the past two weeks. Well, at 5:30am Ben and I woke up to horrible rain, wind and limbs falling on the house and went and got in the bathroom. Our power was already out at this point, so we just waited for it to pass.

Once it did, school was canceled because this brief storm caused quite a bit of damage already through Tuscaloosa. We managed to slip out during lunch, while it was sunny as could be, and grab a few cupcakes and get lunch before we hurried back home. On our way out though, what we saw was that about 1/2 mile from our house our neighbors houses were destroyed from that mornings storm. Power lines were down everywhere and trees through their houses and yet, this was minuscule for what was to come.

We made it home and I had my iPhone trying to listen to continuous coverage at that point because there had already been several monster tornados destroy towns like Cullman (hour north of us). The tornado in Tuscaloosa formed shortly after and I lost it, I could see bits and pieces of it on my iphone and they kept saying it was atleast 1/2 a mile wide. I was horrified for my friends, school and my students in Tuscaloosa (thankfully, I had heard from my nephew who lives just north of the path that he was okay) and yet the tornado was still on the ground moving towards us. As our FAVORITE meteorologist James Spann was calling out towns, Ben kept saying, if we hear Brookwood, we'll go to the neighbor's basement. Well, sure enough he said, if you are near Brookwood take cover immediately. So we went with the dogs to their basement and huddled up in the corner of their garage praying it would miss us, and thank the Lord it did.

Here is a picture of the path from NOAA. We live about 10 miles northwest of that 11 symbol.

My cousin John, from Tallahassee, was texting me letting me know where it was because we were still relying on spotty cell phone streaming or the radio station (who was also streaming the coverage from the djs iphone and playing it over the air... not kidding).

Once we were sure it had passed, we just waited and listened to see where it was going next. Onto Birmingham, it demolished (I don't even think that word does justice to the devastation it caused) five or six towns in the way and continued on past Birmingham up towards Gadsden where my brother's family lives, sparing them also, thank the Lord.

Here is a preliminary track picture from the National Weather Service showing the tornadoes from Wednesday. The huge one is in pink, still unconfirmed if it was an EF-4 or EF-5.


We remained without power until late last night, but are so thankful to be alive. The main tornado in Tuscaloosa missed my school, but hit several others in my system and the city's school system. Ben's boss's home was completely destroyed while they were in it, the only thing left standing was the hallway walls, the place they were huddled as it went over them. If you have not seen pictures of what these tornadoes did, just google it, there are millions out there. NOAA has before and after pictures as well. Its just heartbreaking. Yet, there are so many blessings in spite of this terrible disaster that went through our state. I know God is here and everywhere helping to give people hope and healing in this devastating time.

As of this morning there are still 420 people missing and somewhere around 250 confirmed deaths. Please pray for each of these people missing that they will be found alive or were able to find shelter and just cannot get in touch with loved ones due to power outages.

This morning in church as we discussed the process and need for rescue and recovery, we were told that this will take at least 1000 days for people to recover from. Almost 3 years. If you would like to donate, there are dozens of places accepting. Our church is also accepting donations through North Alabama UMC. Just really think how it is God can use you during this time of need.