Monday, November 16, 2015

Baby Girl Nursery Mobile

Happy Monday! I have a quick project I wanted to share for baby girl's nursery. First and foremost, Ross & I have been really careful to buy only what we need, trying not to get carried away with the craze of baby-galore 'omigod I must buy everything!' extravaganza. Baby stuff accumulates and adds up quickly! So for these frugal, minimalist parents, we've been really conscientious of what to buy and where to save money on. We've also been lucky to get a LOT of handy hand me downs (thanks Michelle!) so that's helped us keep costs down as well and we're truly thankful!

As for baby girl's nursery, we wanted to keep it simple and cost-effective. Ross & I bought her a white crib from IKEA (I loved the simplistic design and the pricetag) and bought the IKEA Poang rocking chair with footstool as her 'glider' for her room. I couldn't decide on a glider I loved and didn't want to spend the money if I was going to regret the decision. So the $200 pricetag for the IKEA Poang chair was the perfect solution. If it ends up not working out, I can always upgrade to a real glider instead! But so far, I love the Poang chair for what we need.

As for her dresser, she actually got my old dresser :) Ross came up with the idea of buying him & I new dressers for our master bedroom, since we were using handy-downs that I can't stand and we've never bought us furniture for our bedroom before! I loved the idea and have been bragging on him ever since, haha! Besides, I'm sure baby girl could care less what her dresser looks like... as long as it's functional, which it is. It's just not my taste. So it was a win-win situation!

Now that the furniture pieces were settled on for the nursery, I wanted to decorate just a little. I guess they call this the 'nesting' phase, haha. I found the cutest Nursery Mobile on Etsy. But the $40 price tag was a bit steep to me. Especially when it seemed like something I could make.

Let the crafting begin!

Here are the supplies I bought from the craft store: some cardstock, some fishing line (from the jewelry making section) and 2 metal rings, also from the jewelry making section that I guess are used for making necklaces:


Note that I ended up not using the blue polka dot paper. I decided on using the blush pink paper, the silver metallic and the gold/white polka dot paper as my 3 colors :) Here's a close-up of the necklaces I used for my base:


I stretched the 2 necklaces out to form the base then tied the middle together with wire. It's not perfect, but it'll do :)


Next, I googled the octagonal and triangular shapes, printed them on the pink card stock, then begun cutting out the shapes and gluing them together.


I traced the metallic silver paper and gold polka-dot paper and glued those to random sides of the cubes. Here are my 5 shapes with their random colors:


Lastly, I strung up the shapes to my base, and ta-da... a nursery mobile! For a final total of $10! And a weekend of crafting :)



It's not perfect, but that's ok with me! I decided to hang it over her changing pad for now with a removable 3M hanger from the ceiling, so it can be moved easily enough if I decide to later hang it over her crib. So that's that! A nursery mobile on a budget :)

*Kristin*

Monday, November 9, 2015

October Recap

Can anyone else keep up with all of the photos they take on their cell phones these days?? I'm falling behind. I finally transferred photos to my computer from my phone and couldn't help but want to share an October recap!

Oct. 2nd - we said goodbye to our home in Alabama. The movers came and packed up our house and we made the final trek north. I can't believe this was only a month ago that this happened!!! I feel like we've been living in Cleveland for so much longer!




Oct. 17th - Ross' good friend, Christina, got married! The reception was held at the Rivers Club at the Oxford building in downtown Pittsburgh, which was the same building and floor I used to work on when I worked at GVA Oxford 7 years ago! Talk about a trip down memory lane :) Ross took a pic of me in front of my old office too which I need to find and share!



 Does this dress make me look fat pregnant?!


Ross & Jay feeding eachother. Yeah.... I don't ask. I was just told to take the picture...


Here's *almost* the entire gang of Ross' friends! What a good lookin' group :)


All in all, it was a great night! And I spent a majority of it at the cookie table. No shame.

October 25th - Ross & I snuck in a maternity photoshoot before it was too late! I NEVER hire a photographer, so this was a true splurge for me, but I knew I just couldn't do it myself and I really wanted to capture this phase of life before our next chapter begins! (and a remote & a tripod only go so far!) I shared my favorite pics on facebook and am ecstatic with how they came out! The lady only charged $150 for a one-hour session, and I couldn't believe how many pictures she got in such a short amount of time! And how talented she was! Best money I ever did spend :) I've hired her again for a newborn session and some hospital photos. And THEN I promised Ross that I would stop spending all our money on professional photos and start doing them myself, haha.

October 27th - the official closing date on our house in Alabama. All went smoothly, at least I heard. We FedEx'd our portion of papers and didn't hear another word. Another chapter closed!

October 31st - Halloween!...

Ross & I had no special plans for Halloween this year, but Ross' parents decided to come up for the day, so it turned out to a be a fun day of carving pumpkins, handing out candy to trick-or-treaters and Ross trying to scare the trick-or-treaters.

I picked up a small pumpkin for baby girl, since it was the same size as my belly!


Ross always wants the largest pumpkin!





Below - My 'costume' for the year. And Ross' scarecrow costume he wore to scare children. I told him to only scare the older kids, I'm not sure he obeyed :/


Ross had Halloween music playing in the bushes, him and his dad both dressed up to scare kids, and my MIL, Rose, and I sat inside and handed out candy. It was a really nice evening and we had a good turnout of about 75 trick-or-treaters.


November 7th - Mom and dad came up for the day to visit and took us out to lunch. We tried to show them a bit of Cleveland. Mom just wanted to see the water though so we took them to a park up the road from our house and took in the scenery of Lake Erie :)


I have to say, it is SO nice being able to have day-visitors! And I bet they'll be coming around even more once baby girl comes along. I'm really enjoying it (for now!) and love showing everyone our cute neighborhood and our rental house. I am just so happy and content in this home, I'm counting my blessings that the Lord allowed us this opportunity to rent a 'house' and not be stuck in an apartment (again). I knew I would grow restless immediately if it felt like a 'rental' but our house doesn't. I am so content to not even think of our next step. I'm enjoying where we are right at this moment! And Ross is really enjoying the fact that we have a landlord to call on when something breaks, haha. It's a welcomed break from the home renovations we're used to!  And our landlords, by the way, are awesome. They are a married couple in their mid-30's with 2 young kids and simply outgrew this house. The had trouble selling the house this past year and finally decided to rent it out. They have been so easy and kind to work with anytime something comes up! I think they are just as happy to have someone renting it as we are to not be tied down to a mortgage :)

As for baby girl updates, Ross & I are anxiously counting down the remaining 4 weeks. I'm getting pretty uncomfortable these days. I'm having trouble sleeping and breathing when I lay down, heartburn, etc. I think now that we're settled in and our lives are calm again, we're ready to just meet her. And hopefully by the time she comes, we'll have thought of a name!! Ross has a few favorites, but I have none :( Ross may get to decide because I just can't think of anything I really like, haha. We'll see. Hopefully once she's born something will click.

Anyway, it's crazy to me to look back at this month and realize we only settled down in Cleveland a few weeks ago!! I feel like we've been settled for months. I guess my lightning speed unpacking did us some good, ha.

So for these next few weeks, I'll keep trying to enjoy the rest of this pregnancy and enjoy having Ross all to myself. But omigosh.... I'm so excited to meet our baby girl!!! *squeal*

*Kristin*