Wednesday, January 9, 2013

I finally have finished up a project in my 'dining room' that I started so long ago!  I was browsing on pinterest and found this wonderful tutorial on how to make letters using nails and embroidery floss (check it out! jk jk).  I absolutely love the way that mine turned out, and have had many compliments from friends who have come over for dinner.



I used my cricut to cut out letters in a font that I liked and then taped them to the wall.  After that I nailed around the letters, and then wrapped about 6 times in the embroidery thread!  Super great project and it really turns out nice!
Ok.  Crafting with a newborn is sort of a bitter sweet experience.  It is really sweet because, as you know if you have had a newborn, they sleep ALL the time.  Apparently they sleep for about 20 hours out of the 24 hour period.  That is potentially a lot of time to get things done (though they don't tell you how tired you are going to be all the time, especially if you are breastfeeding and your body is in overdrive to be a milk machine).  The bitter part isn't really bitter, but the problem is if you get started on a big crafting project while baby is sleeping, baby will eventually wake up and you have to stop said project and go get elbow deep in dirty diapers and then feed them again!!

Well, that is what happened when I decided to make some roman shades for my kitchen window.  For almost a year now, my husband has complained bugged pestered (oh heck there isn't a nice word) me about my decorative curtains.  They are two panels that I got from Ikea, but I put them on 2 foot curtain rods so they would just frame the window.  Well, I haven't really noticed as much, but my darling husband doesn't like that the TV in the living room has a horrible glare from the window in the kitchen, and he can't fix it because of my *stupid* decorative curtains!  I wasn't going to get rid of my curtains because I love the way they look, so I started looking for a different way to fix the problem.

I started searching for some roman shades because that seemed like the most logical choice.  Do you know how expensive custom roman shades are?  I don't even want to talk about it.  Luckily we live in the land of technology so I went out in to the blog world to see if it was even possible to make it a DIY project.  Here are a few of the tutorials that I read through.  I didn't follow any one completely, but I learned a lot from reading different blogs and finding out which steps were going to work for my project.  Check out these blogs to see what the other ladies did, all of the projects turned out great!!

Beneath My Heart
Brown Paper Packages
Park House Love

A couple months back my mom and I were at target and I found some absolutely adorable place mats that I purchased to go on the kitchen table.  When I went to target to pick up my mini blinds for the project, I happened to walk past the clearance section and guess what I found?!  There were giant table cloths of the same fabric as my place mats on clearance for $8 each.  Okay, you can't find that much fabric in the fabric store for that price!!  I snatched up two of them and headed on home!!

The first roman shade took quite a while because I wasn't exactly sure what I was doing, and I had to allow for glue drying time and poopy diaper changing time.  However, it turned out awesome! I absolutely loved it.  But life happened and it was a couple of days (okay maybe more like a week) before I started on the second shade.  I measured and cut and got everything finished.  And then I hung my second shade up next to the first one.  Well.  You know that saying, "measure twice, cut once?"  That definitely applies to gluing mini blinds on fabric too.  Unfortunately the slats are about 1 inch off of each other.  That hardly matters when I have the blinds down.  Only a crafty person who is looking for it would notice.


 But when you pull the shades up.........


The shades on the right of the picture are the shades I finished first, and the ones on the left I finished last night.  I was very sad when I pulled them up and they have that cute little mess up.....see it?  Pretty awful, huh?  That is because of the inch difference in where I placed the mini blinds.  My sweet husband says they look fine, but I have a feeling I am going to be figuring out how to un-glue the blinds from my fabric and trying again.  I am seriously hoping that it doesn't ruin the fabric, because I can't get anymore!

Ever had a project turn out like this?


Frustrating!!!! Wish me luck!
My amazing girlfriends Erin, Danita and Brandy hosted a WONDERFUL baby shower for Cooper and I at my house.  It was so wonderful having all of my friends over to my house for the first time, and they did such a great job with all of the decorations!  My favorite part was a "wishing tree" where guests wrote their wish for baby Cooper on a slip of paper and placed them on a gorgeous silver tree (that I got to keep!!).  They also put their thumbprints on a picture of a tree as a sort of guestbook, which is now hanging in the nursery.  And let me tell you, those adorable little elephant sugar cookies were absolutely fantastic, and were completely made from scratch (royal icing and everything!) by Danita!  

I feel so blessed to have such great friends that care about me so much!  Enjoy the pictures!













Saturday, January 5, 2013

It is pretty incredible how much my heart and soul loves this tiny little human being that I miraculously brought in to this world. After being so, so sick from beginning to end of my pregnancy, I never imagined I could be so happy.

I was also blessed to have the easiest labor I could have imagined. This was also a shock, as I assumed it would be horrible. After pregnancy being so hard, labor seemed a breeze and even though this was my first delivery, it went very quickly. My progression was slow at first, only dilating from 1-3 cm over about 6 hours. But then I jumped from 3cm to 8 cm to pushing in about an hour and a half! I had absolutely no pain, thanks to a wonderful epidural, and in four contractions my amazing little boy was laying there on my chest!! I have also had virtually no pain post delivery so my recovery has been very quick.

My husband and I have chosen to not share photos of our boy on the Internet (Facebook, blog, etc). There are just too many pictures of young children out there that end up being scrutinized or words being added to them with vulgar phrases. I don't want my child growing up infamous for that newborn picture of him peeing across the room (which actually happened tonight after bath time...). However, I will share a picture of the birth announcement that we are sending out.

Can't wait to get back to blogging now that I am feeling so much better. I hope you welcome me back, blog world!!



 

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