Nursery's Ready...Come on Baby!

The final touches have been completed on Baby Gannon's Nursery...just in time for his due date, which is today...

Too bad he's not yet here to enjoy, but it gives me time to post the pictures!

So I know you've seen the paint job and the changing table makeover but there were two other major projects that we worked on: the mobile and the airplane picture. When you see them only one will actually look major, but I assure you the other one took forever too!

First, the mobile. This may not look like much but it took me pretty much all my pregnancy to complete as I am not all that craft-able without specific directions. Here is a link to the Pinterest mobile that started this obsession, but it didn't have templates or anything for me to go directly off of so I had a lot of improvising.

Honey drew me a template of a B-something or another plane. (No matter how hard I try to keep these planes straight I am doing a miserable job). He actually drew me 2 different ones, but doing both were leaps and bounds beyond my ability so we have all six of the same plane.

Overall I am really happy with it. Each plane is made of paper and balsa wood to make it more sturdy. And the little propellers really turn. In the end it probably cost less than $15 to make...not counting the gas of about 55 trips to hobby stores...but that is a whole other issue.

The other major project was inspired from this Pottery Barn picture on wood:

We really didn't want to spend $300 on it, but after I showed it to Honey he fell in love with the idea and got his heart set on having a B-17 on the wall because that was the plane his grandfather flew in the war.

So he found a wonderful gentleman on the internet that would let us use a photo he had, which we then tried to convert to 4 or 5 canvas panels.

Unfortunately, that proved VERY difficult because the size of the photo and the usual size of canvas panels we'd need and we gave up.

So I turned to again to the wonderful world of Pinterest. We found several pins on putting pictures on canvas but then found these great directions for transferring a picture to wood.

And here is how ours turned out...

Pretty amazing! It was a pretty time consuming process since it is like 6 feet long, but totally worth it. It probably cost about $50 for all the supplies, maybe not even that.  We just love it.

So here are a few shots of the whole room:

Now we just need the little guy to get here! Of course he will end up sleeping in our bedroom for the first couple of months, but I already love sitting in here to read so I am sure we will be spending a great deal of time in his nursery. 

It turned out just as I had hoped! 

My Manly-Man and His Candied Walnuts & Diaper Covers

For those of you who know my husband, he tends toward the manly-man side.

He loves guns. Hates musicals. Loves getting dirty. Hates the Kardashians. Loves wrestling with the dogs. Hates shopping for clothes.

Well the last couple of weeks he has had some time off so he's been very helpful around the house doing both manly things like making our toilet flush without the need to two hands and bicep muscles to push the lever down. And he has done more wifely duties like clean the oven and mop the floor so I don't have to on maternity leave. Let me just say here: I really married a keeper...I mean jackpot!!

Annnnnyway. Beyond these chores that I had added to his list, he also surprised me (and himself) with a couple of extra domestically cute actions...

Number 1: I came home from work last week to find him making candied walnuts.

Candied walnuts.

I have no idea what it even takes to candy a walnut because if I get to a recipe that calls for me to do that I immediately balk at the thought of an extra step and move right onto a new recipe. And to make it even better, he called it "easy" and "fun"!

And they were some pretty stinking good walnuts!

Number 2: He had a friend come over to watch a movie and pulled out the cloth diapers we had purchased earlier in the day to show off to his friend.

Mind you, this friend does not have kids...is not married even...is also more of a manly-man...and I swear did not ask anything about diapers to precipitate this show and tell.

Honey contends his friend did indeed ask about the diapers...but I'm not so sure. Honey did most of the picking out of cute diaper covers at the store and I think he was just very excited.

Again I tell you I hit the JACKPOT with him!! He is my cute manly-man and still all domestic!

Viola! Changing Table Makeover

So if you read my post about painting the nursery, I promised you I'd show you the changing table makeover. Here is the changing table before. And you can see sitting on it the lovely product I used for this transformation...Rustolium Furniture Transformation.

The Rustolium product is pretty nifty because you don't have to sand or scrape or strip the old paint off, which was really important to me since I didn't want all the chemicals of stripping.

Don't get me wrong, I like to strip...wood that is...or maybe I should say furniture...

ANYWAY, I have refinished many pieces of furniture the old fashion way, but didn't have the time or inclination to do all that work here so this product takes out a lot of that hassle.

After the gloss

So in this handy box they give you some cleaner/primer stuff to wipe everything down with. Then you have a base coat that you have tinted at the store based on the color you want to end up with. Then you have some cool gloss to make the base coat more unique, darker, etc. And finally a top coat.

We went with espresso to match the crib and I did a pretty heavy dose of the gloss to make it as dark as possible.

I loved that the gloss almost mimicked a wood grain since I hadn't actually done the full stripping to get to the wood.

Some things to think remember if you ever use the product...

1. The base coat is VERY fragile...seriously putting a piece of paper towel down would take off the base coat.
2. So you definitely need 2 coats of it and then be very very careful.
3. Like sugar in your coffee, it is always easier to put more gloss on than to take it off after it dries.
4. Plan on doing two coats of the top coat and don't try to touch up with this, just redo the whole section if you need to.

Other than that everything went really well and this is the final product:

Overall I am very happy! I wasn't sure about keeping the knobs white but they've grown on me.

And the motivation to spray paint them brown has disappeared entirely :)

 

And at this point we have two more projects...a wood transfer of a 5 ft long plane image and a DIY plane mobile...and one month left to do them both...

I promise to post them once they are done as well as final nursery photos!!

The Nursery...Paint is Done!

So over the last...well, forever...we have been working on painting the nursery. Personally I think I have looked as forward to this as to actually having a baby. I LOVE painting, but usually live in rentals where it is not allowed. Luckily here we had the okay to paint away.

This is how the room looked before:

The yellow wasn't a becoming shade at all, so changing that was a no-brainer. You can also see a built in dresser thing that had cabinent doors on the top that I took off to make a bookshelf. The other thing about this room was the ceiling...

I don't think this picture does justice to how grey and dingy it was...but take my word for it. It was gross.

So first Honey and I came to an agreement on the exact shade of grey we wanted the room. This conversation went like this:

Me: "Honey which of these greys do you like best. I think the darkest one is too dark."

Honey: "Hmm I like this one or this one." (He pointed to the two 2nd darkest)

Me: "Well I like this one that isn't so dark but isn't the lighest one either."

...Skip to the next day...

Me: "So I think we are going with the grey I liked best. Is that okay? I really like it better than the others.

Honey: "Sure. Whatever."

I love him!



So once we (I) picked the color we got to work on repainting the ceiling and making the walls grey.






And viola! Here is the lovely grey room. And just the perfect shade of grey, I might add. Not too light and not too dark.

I also wanted to do something fun with the built in dresser thing so I started by painting the drawers and then added color on the back of the bookshelves to add a little accent color to the whole peice.

So there you go. We have it all painted! 

Now for the next project--refinishing the changing table to an espresso color to match the crib. I will keep you posted :)

Heathy Food Fail

I try to eat healthy. I try to make my own meals with ingredients from scratch, or mostly so. I pin those great sites I find on Pinterest that tell me how I can eat unprocessed food for 100 days and live a richer, happier, and healthier life.

It was on one of those sites that I found a recipe for homemade cheese crackers. You have to understand that Goldfish (whole grain, of course) and Cheeze-Its are a staple in our house. There will be times we are out butter, have expired milk, but do have at least one type of cheesy cracker in the cupboard. They are important to our well being.

So when I saw the recipe I thought it would be great if I could get us away from the processed crackers and make my own. Especially because the reviews were fabulous. Everyone raved about how AMAZING the crackers were, their favorites ever, better than store bought, and on and on and on.

I either screwed up massively or these people haven't eaten a decent cracker in a decade and are fooling themselves into beliving these things actaully taste good. Or my household is addicted to processed cheese crackers. Or maybe all 3?

I planned to post these pictures victoriously when I told you all about the amazing new crackers that I make for my family...

I know there is quite a bit of chedder cheese and wheat flour in the recipe, and in the picture looks kinda like a sausage.

Well I made those lovley crackers about 3 weeks ago and here they still are...

I'm pretty sure we've gone through about 4 boxes of Cheez-Its since then. Like an addiction group for Target, is there an addiction group for cheesy crackers?

If you want to try these crackers, I will send them to you. They might be stale, but that probably didn't change them much. If you want the recipe, just let me know. Maybe you'll have better luck :)

The Bread Monster

For anyone who has known me long, or has tried to give me a plant, you know I am absolutely horrible at keeping things alive. It is truly amazing that I have 2 dogs that live and thrive. Possibly because they are very clear when they want food, water, a walk, etc. If plants could do a little whining or scratching at the sink, they would probably live longer in my household.

I am now proud to say I have kept something else alive for over 2 months--it is a bread monster. Now, if you are like me, you might not know that some breads need "starter." This starter is yeast but not the handy stuff that comes in a packet that is always in my cupboard but never used. This starter has to be fed.

Every 3-5 days.

My mother-in-law makes the most amazing Sourdough Bread and it is Honey's favorite so over the holidays she promised to give me the recipe. Overall it is pretty easy. But with it she gave me a little mason jar of 35 year old starter. Yes, 35 years old.

Someone has been feeding this bread monster for 35 years. You can imagine the pressure I felt that I keep this thing (that is older than me) alive.

Pressure.

But I can say, I have. Every few days I mix up it's food--potato flakes, sugar, water, and bread flour--and I feed the yeasty bubbly thing in my fridge.

Ok, once I went 7 days...but it still seems to live, I think, and it still makes good bread so I must be okay.

Who would have ever known!

Office Organization Please

I am weird. I know it, and I'm okay with it. Like I LOVE home improvement stores--the smell of the wood and the lighting area, oooh and the paint colors...ahhhh. And I also LOVE office supply stores--all the little stickies and I adore desks, and really all things organizing like baskets and files. I am not sure where these obsessions came from but luckily I enjoy looking at these stores but don't end up buying much.

Anyway, when we moved, the first area I wanted to work on was our office. We have a large room called an "office" but really limited space in it for office stuff (because of the gun safe, Ms. PacMan Machine, and 80's Pepsi Machine...don't ask). We also only have a small desk that I found in a thrift store in San Diego and have finally just refinished so I wasn't ready to part with it and buy a bigger desk like we probably need.

Here are some pictures of before:

While the top of my desk isn't usually this messy, I will in all honesty admit this picture was taken about 3 months after we moved in and I had been simply setting my computer on top of all the papers and crap. Now if someone had been coming over I would have smushed them all into a pile and possible shoved some of them into the filing cabinet but these are true before pictures, sad as they may be.





I took most of my inspiration from Better Homes & Gardens January magazine. Especially for the filing system that we now have in place, which includes an Inbox and files for Do Now, Do Later, and Pending. I also added a Receipts folder and then hanging bins for each of us and for Filing. I found some pretty fabric to go with my color scheme so I covered some cheap plastic hanging bins from Target with the fabric so they look nicer.

The other big help was a label maker. I love label makers (part of my organization fetish) and Honey gave me one for my birthday a few years back and I truly was SO excited. In the office I made labels for everything! Greeting cards, different types of paper like Cardstock, Photo Paper, etc, and for all our filing. If I ended up on a desert island, I might want to take a label maker, just so I would have something to keep myself entertained.

Greeting cards and stationary.

A folder for each type of paper.

Throughout the years I have collected about 15 different types of paper...don't ask me how. And before, they were all over the place getting shuffled around and making a mess of the shelf under the desk. So now I put them all in their own labeled folder in mesh bin so they can be easily found and now take up way less space. 

I wanted to find a way to keep the cords for my printer, iPhone, camera, and charger off my desk and out of my way when not using them. I have seen the great idea on Pinterest where people use binder clips to keep cords neat, but my desk edges wouldn't allow that so I rigged some tacks and twist-ties to make little holders for my printer cord and charger cord. Then I found a great little box at Target in their $1 section for all the other little cords that hang about.

And finally I added a calendar, little cork board and white board as well as a cover for my ugly, beat-up, filing cabinet. In the end this is how it looks...

Yes I am loving it! It also makes me feel way more productive and once something is neat and organized, it is easier to keep it that way. 

Let me know if you have any questions or if you have any further recommendations. Hopefully all my notes made sense!