Grrr...

For the past few 6 months or so, (maybe longer?), I've used photobucket to put pictures on here.  Well, somehow I missed the part of their policies that you can only upload a certain amount of photos per month.

Well, apparently this month I exceeded the photo limit, and without warning they disabled all my photo links. :(  They're supposed to all be turned back on March 1st, but in the mean time, all my posts are looking super sad with no pictures.

I tried logging into my photobucket account and deleting some of the photos I uploaded this month but never actually put onto the blog to see if it would reactivate the others, but that didn't work.  So I guess everything will just have to look sad with lots of empty spots where pictures are for the next few days.

This is super frustrating for me because I already had a few posts set up, but they'll not be very effective without their pictures, so I might be a little quiet through the end of the month.


Oh, and yes, I am still pregnant! ;)  It seems Henry takes after his momma, and can be a little stubborn.  He's not in any big hurry to come out and doesn't seem to care that there are lots of people anxiously awaiting his arrival. haha

I'm actually feeling really good, despite being impatient.  I honestly thought I would be completely miserable by now, but that's thankfully not the case.  I almost feel guilty because our fantastic friends and family keep calling/texting to check on me, and I really feel fine!  I am a little bored though.  You see for months I've had this monstrous to-do list of things to get done before my due date.  I did really well and actually got them all done on time.  So now we're sitting in an as-clean-as-it's-going-to-get house with no dirty laundry, a stocked freezer, a completed nursery, and absolutely nothing to do but sit and wait! haha ;)


As a result of the boredom here are a couple of pictures I took yesterday of my 40 week and 4 day belly:

Miss Kitty was very intrigued by what I was doing, as she usually is when I sit on the floor.

She wanted to be in some pictures too! ;)

Happy Monday everyone; hope you had a great weekend!

Jennifer

Fluff Post

I've mentioned several times the past few months about our plan to use cloth diapers on Henry starting a few weeks after he arrives.  We're planning to use the disposables we have in the house for the first couple of weeks until we get the hang of having a newborn, and then switch to cloth.

I've done probably way too much research on everything cloth diaper related.  That's my style, I like to be over-prepared.  ;)  I decided at one point though, that we were just going to have to do some trial and error once Henry is here, and in the mean time were just going to have to bite the bullet and buy a few different types to try out and see which ones work the best for him.  After a few months we could reassess what works best for him and add to our stash as needed.

So here is our current stash of fluff:

















We have:
-3 Thirsties Duos size 1 (in colors cool stripes, ocean blue and hoot), that I got during a buy 2 get 1 sale at a the Nappy Shoppe in Plano

-2 Flip covers with 3 organic inserts, (in color Noodle), that I got during a buy 1 get one sale from Cotton Babies
-1 Rumparooz One size diaper (we love the kangaroo pattern!), bought at a the Nappy Shoppe in Plano
-7 BumGenius 4.0 pocket diapers, (in colors Sweet, Grasshopper, Ribbit, Moonbeam, and Twilight), 1 from Amazon and the others during a buy 5 get 1 sale from Cotton Babies
-3 BumGenius 4.0 Artist Series pocket diapers, (in colors Eiffel Tower, Concrete Jungle, and Free Spirit), from a buy 2 get 1 sale from Cotton Babies
-2 BumGenius newborn diapers, (in colors Twilight and Albert) from Cotton Babies
-5 FuzziBunz One Size diapers, (in colors watermelon, kumquat, mac and cheese, spearmint, and big sky), that I bought during a sale on Zulily

I'm thinking we'll need at least a few more, but we're going to try these out and see what works first.  Before actual use and based on looks alone, the BumGenius 4.0s are my favorite and I think the FuzziBunz are incredibly frustrating with their button elastic on the legs and waist, but I'm interested to see how my opinions of them all change after we start using them.

Originally I had planned to just use disposable baby wipes with the cloth diapers, (honestly, nothing else ever even occurred to me, I've never seen anyone use anything but disposable wipes).  But over months of reading blog posts and forums about cloth diapers, I kept reading about how easy it was to just use cloth wipes too and toss them in the wash with the diapers.

Even after reading about cloth wipes for months I continued to just disregard or skip over everything about them.  It just was not something that I really wanted to think about, I was putting all my energy into building the perfect stash of cloth diapers.  ;)

Then we took a childbirth class at the hospital where I'm going to deliver, and they mentioned something about not using disposable wipes the first few weeks of the baby's life anyway.  What?!  I'd never heard/read this anywhere!  So that started me thinking for the first time about maybe using the cloth wipes...  but I still wasn't 100% sold on the idea.

Enter week 40 of my pregnancy.

This past week I've been bored out of my mind and have been constantly looking for new projects to work on to keep my mind off the fact that I have not gone into labor yet.  I made another batch of appliqued burp cloths, worked on some blankets, filled our freezer to capacity, (I'll post about that soon), and then ran out of things to do.  I thought about making new curtains and pillows for the guest bedroom, but my husband nixed that idea real quick.  Apparently he thinks that 40 weeks pregnant is not the ideal time to redecorate the guest bedroom.  ;)

I checked out the JoAnn ad in this week's paper for some inspiration, and they had solid flannel on sale for $2/yard and printed flannel for $3.50/yd.  The only thing I could think to make out of flannel was cloth baby wipes!  I thought it sounded like an easy enough project that it wouldn't stress me out and I wouldn't have to be on the floor pinning large pieces of fabric or leaned over a table too long cutting fabric, and cheap enough that I wouldn't feel bad if it was a total failure.  So, I bought 6 yards of fabric, (3 prints and 3 corresponding solids), and got to work.

Now, I'm going to attempt to do a mini tutorial of sorts on this.  For the record this is WAY out of my comfort zone because I still feel like such a novice in the sewing department.  However, when I went to look at tutorials for making cloth wipes, I thought that all of the ones I found kind of made a lot of assumptions about their readers' sewing abilities.  So I'm going to attempt to write this up with every single step laid out so that anyone who doesn't sew on a regular basis can follow along.

Also so that if I want to make some more in a few months, I can look back at this and remember exactly how I did it.  I tend to forget things easily! ;)

Just be warned if you sew on a regular basis, the following may seem a little like freshman orientation all over again.

Back to business!

First off, I washed and ironed all the flannel, then used an 8 1/2" x 8 1/2" quilters square template and a rotary cutter, and mat to cut the fabric into squares.

Ideally, I would have used a 7"x7" square template, because that's the size of the wipes that come out of the box, but oh well.



For the record, this is WAY easier than trying to measure everything out perfectly and cutting with scissors.  I knew that I would have a little extra fabric on the sides and the top and bottom, so it didn't matter if I didn't measure everything out perfectly, I could just kind of place the template semi-straight and get to cutting without having to think about it too much.  Thanks to the template I got 16 perfect squares out of each yard of fabric.  Without the template and rotary cutter I honestly can't cut anything in a straight line to save my life.

After I got all my squares cut, I pinned one square of printed flannel to one square of solid flannel and got to sewing.

*The first few I made I tried finishing out really nicely...  I pinned the right sides of the fabric together, sewed around the square leaving about an inch unsewn, turned the squares right side out, ironed, and sewed around the outer edges again, sewing the inch hole shut and putting a nice seam around the edges.



I do not recommend this method.  I decided real quick that was entirely too much work to make baby wipes and abandoned this way after about 6 squares.  I didn't like the extra fabric around the edges, I thought it would be a more efficient wipe if it were the same thickness throughout.*

The method I landed on was just to pin the wrong sides of the flannel together, (where the pretty/soft side faced out), and use a zigzag stitch to sew all the way around the square.

My two fabric squares pinned together with the pretty/soft sides facing out.

Here you can see the solid fabric pinned to the monkey print fabric.  It's easy to tell which side of the printed fabric you want to face out, the solid is a little harder, make sure you use the softer side, not the rougher underside.

To use the zigzag stitch to sew around the edges, set your machine up to do the zigzag stitch, and line up the edge of your fabric squares with the needle on your machine.  On my sewing machine, (and I think every other sewing machine I've ever used), there is a nice red line on the center of the foot that marks right where the needle will hit, just line up your fabric edge with that red line.

And then start sewing-keeping that red line and the edge of your fabric lined up at all times.


When you get to a corner just stop the machine with the needle still down in the fabric, raise the foot, rotate the fabric 90 degrees, put the foot back down, and keep going.  If that makes no sense at all to you let me know.  I took pictures of these steps too but since this post was already so picture heavy I left them out, but I can easily add them in to help clarify if need be! ;)

Sew all the way around the edges of your square.  When you catch up to where you started stitching, overlap the stitches a little bit, and then backstitch a couple of stitches to keep everything in place.

The edges of your wipes should look something like this:

BTW, this is about the 30th wipe I'd done, my first looks almost nothing like this, so don't be discouraged if yours doesn't either.  ;)  These are great to practice zigzag stitching on, by the time you make a batch you'll be ready to do appliques like a pro!

It definitely took some practice to get right, and these are no where near the prettiest things I've ever sewn, (and that says A LOT because I've only been sewing for about a year, so most things I do don't look great), but honestly, they are literally going to be used to wipe a baby's bottom, how perfect do they really have to be?









This project went pretty quickly, but it was also easy to do for short periods of time all throughout the week without trying to remember what I was doing when I stopped the time before.  I have one set of 16 left to do, (they're going to be green and white stripe on one side and solid green on the other), and then I'll have a total of 48 cloth wipes for about $15 and a few hours of sewing.

Like the cloth diapers, we'll have to wait to review these in a few months to see how they work/how we like them.  I can say this much for sure though, little monkeys on bicycles are way cuter than just the plain white disposable wipes. ;)

Besides, I can always use them for rags around the house if all else fails.

Jennifer

P.S. Ugh with the giant pictures again, really photobucket?!

Henry's Nursery

**EDIT June 29, 2012 - This is an old post that I am linking to Kelly's Korner for Show Us Your Life Fridays!  This is our sweet baby boy's nursery as it was before he was born, (he's 4 months old now).  Shortly after he was born, we ended up moving his crib into our room, and now we're packing up our house to move, so these are the only pictures I'll have of the nursery all put together.  I loved it so, so much, and I'm excited that soon I'll get to recreate it in a new house! Thanks for stopping by!! ;) **

I said last week I was going to take some new pictures of Henry's nursery because the ones I took a couple of weeks ago are really dark and there are a couple of things out of place. But, with even more cloudy days lately, I just give up and these will have to do! ;)

We didn't really have a "theme" when planning his nursery, we just picked lots of things that we really liked, and that we hoped would grow with him past the bitty baby stage. Also, because we rent our house, we were a little limited on big changes, because we can't paint. It's a little different, but so are we!

This is the view from when you walk in the door to his room. See what I mean about the dark pictures? When I started thinking about what I wanted his room to be like I picked navy, grey, and orange as colors to start from. Eventually an olive green and dark yellow kind of snuck in there too.

This is the wall to the left of the door into the room. For his dresser we used one we already had that was previously our tv stand in the living room. Most of the artwork above the dresser is from Etsy and framed in IKEA's Ribba frames.

A basket for diapers, wipes, and other diaper changing necessities, (we do plan on using cloth diapers, but we have a stash of disposables for the first few weeks while we're still getting used to having a newborn in the house), lamp and shade from Target, Sophie the giraffe, and a plate that could not have truer words on it.

The mobile in the corner above the giraffe is a solar system mobile from Pottery Barn Kids. The mobile was actually one of the first things that we bought when we found out we were having a boy. We're kind of nerdy like that. ;) The giraffe is one of my absolute favorite things ever. Her name is Georgina and she's almost 5 feet tall, and while she serves no actual purpose, (except looking great), I love her. Somehow I didn't take any close up pictures of the crib, but there are actually little grey giraffes on the crib sheets. Apparently we like giraffes?

See, I somehow skipped over the crib area. We picked the crib because I've always loved Jenny Lind style cribs, and we knew that we would be using the bookcase and dresser we already had in the room, so that dictated the color/finish we ordered the crib in. We decided not to go with a crib bumper for safety reasons, (we'll look into one of the breathable bumpers if he starts getting body parts stuck in the crib slats, but until then we'll go without completely), so it doesn't look as cute as the cribs with the full bedding sets, but oh well.

The chevron curtains are another one of my favorites in the room. Originally I had planned to do curtains that were really wide grey and white horizontal stripes, but I could not find fabric like I wanted ANYWHERE. The closest I came was some special order fabric that was going to run me about $350 for just the fabric for the curtains, not to mention lining fabric and the fact that I would still have to sew them! Umm... no thank you! Husband actually picked the chevron fabric, (I had decided I was going to make my own striped fabric, at 35 weeks pregnant, thankfully he nixed that idea), and while I was a little worried about it looking too trendy originally, I really love it now that everything is finished.

My Daddy made this bookcase when I was probably in 7th grade, and I stained it myself all those years ago! It's got a little wear on it in spaces because it's been in my room since I was 13, but I kind of like it looking a little beat up. I've known I wanted to use it in a nursery for years.

I was an early childhood education major for 3 years in college, so I have lots of childrens books, and we've gotten lots more as gifts for Henry. I really hope that he loves reading as much as I do! The orange box has all the instruction booklets for all his stuff and cards from our baby showers.

The last wall is between the closet door and the door into the room and is just big enough for his swing. The swing was a gift from husband's coworkers, and I think it looks so comfy! The sleep sheep is hanging out in it until Henry is here.

That's pretty much it! I moved around a couple of things after I took these pictures, but for the most part everything is the same as it was when I took these a couple of weeks ago. I am still looking for another navy basket for the middle shelf of the bookcase. I got the one we have at Target and just assumed I could go back and get another one. I've now been to four Targets and have yet to find another, so frustrating!

If anyone is interested in a more detailed post about where we got specific things in the room, I can certainly do that. I just didn't want to spend a couple hours doing links to everything if no one was interested. Basically I'm lazy. ;)

And now we wait...two days until my due date!

Jennifer

Any Guesses?

I'm not sure if you've ever noticed this, but my husband and I could not look more different.

Case in point:

Now, I'm not saying that we should look alike, (that might be kind of creepy), but we have absolutely no common features. He's tall and thin, I'm short and round. He's blonde hair blue eyes, I'm dark hair dark eyes. He has almost no top lip, I have a big top lip. He's really fair skinned and burns easily, and I tan very easily, (when I actually go out in the sun!). I could go on and on, but you get the picture, (literally, just look up). haha

Anyway, we've always been extremely curious as to what our children will look like. Now that we're 6(!) days away from Henry's due date, our curiosity is definitely at an all-time high! I thought it might be fun to show y'all a few pictures of us growing up and see if anyone has any fun thoughts on what Henry will look like!

So, here we go! I tried to kind of match up the pictures where we're either around the same ages, or doing something similar, but it's really hard when I only had a few pictures that were already scanned in to choose from.

Husband:

Me, (with my older brother):

Husband:

Me, (again with my older brother):

Husband:

Me:

Husband in a hunting vest that's too big:

Me with a teddy bear that's too big, (for the record that bear is actually not very big at all):

Husband has clearly always been interested in baseball:

And I have always been interested in photography:

One interesting tidbit about the above two pictures, they were both taken on the back patios of our respective Grandparents' houses! ;)

Husband:

Me (on Christmas morning hence the bed-head, pjs, and holding what appears to be a package of socks):

Husband with his siblings, (he's on the left):

Me with my siblings, (I'm also on the left, and no, I don't know what the crap I think I'm doing in this picture?!):

So, what/who do you think Henry will look like?! Your guess is as good as ours! ;)

Jennifer

P.S. Just an FYI, I've mentioned a couple of times my love for my Erin Condren Life Planner; well they just announced a special today where if you buy a Life Planner and a pack of gift labels you get 40% off! The deal is good on 2012 planners while they're still available.

No one is paying me to mention this, I just wanted to share because I love, (borderline on obsess over), my planner so much and wanted to share a good deal! ;)

Weekend Update

Yes, I know it's Tuesday, but husband had a rare three-day weekend off work, so yesterday still seemed like the weekend to us. Like most of our weekends lately we spent it trying to finally finish up the last of our baby to-do list as Henry's due date is rapidly approaching, (we're in single digits now, CRAZY!). I swear we used to do things on the weekends!

We finally finished Henry's room! It's a little different, but so are we. I pretty much love it. Sometimes I just go sit in there and look at it. We've had a rash of cloudy days here lately, so I haven't been able to get really good pictures of it yet. But, rest assured as soon as we have a sunny day, I will take full advantage of it and get some pictures up for you! Here's a little peek:

If you're friends with me on Facebook, there are some on there that I posted the other day, but it's amazing what you notice in pictures that you didn't notice in person, so I made a few tweaks since I took them. Plus, the pictures are pretty dark from the cloudy weather.

Saturday for breakfast we made some whole wheat pancakes with homemade blueberry and blackberry syrup, (I used this recipe, but half blueberries and half blackberries because that's what we had in the fridge). They were so pretty I had to take a picture.

It was amazing. It took approximately 3 minutes for my plate to go from the above to this:

With the pancakes we also had some bacon and some farm fresh eggs from someone husband works with, and let me just say fresh eggs are about a bajillion times better than even the organic free range eggs at the grocery store. I need to acquire some chickens, and a yard big enough to put them in, because our current yard is would not work at all.

I finished two quilts that I started in May and August respectively. The pinwheel quilt was originally supposed to be a gift for some friends of ours, but I used a walking foot for the first time on it and the stitching got so stinkin' wonky I just couldn't give it away.

I'm too much of a perfectionist to make and giveaway homemade gifts, I never think they look good enough. I start lots of them, but rarely finish them and almost never actually end up giving them to the intended recipients.

This one was made up of scraps of the pinwheel quilt and I originally made it to practice with the walking foot, but never actually got around to it. I was also experimenting with the rag quilt finishing. Technically this one is actually a blanket instead of a quilt because it has no batting and isn't actually quilted at all. I ended up using minky as the backing on both, and kind of cheating on the finishing on both of them, (there's no binding on either one), but I think they'll be great for play mats for Henry. I mean they don't have to be perfect for him to lay on the floor and drool/spit up on them, right?

We did a little bit more work on stocking up our freezer with post-baby meals. I have learned in recent days that my husband has seriously been holding out on me in regards to his cooking skills. He's made tacos, spaghetti sauce, sauteed chicken, and mashed potatoes all from scratch, and they've all been absolutely delicious! I know spaghetti sauce and taco meat might not sound all that impressive, but we don't use any seasoning packets/blends or jarred sauce or anything of the type, so I was incredibly impressed! Who knew that somewhere in the past 7 years that we've been cooking dinner together that he'd actually picked up lots of skills! I secretly want to test him to see what else he knows how to cook. ;)

This weekend we added two gallon bags worth of spaghetti sauce, 2 gallon bags of white chili, and 24 banana muffins to our stash. Not too shabby.

We got all Henry's bottles and pacifiers sterilized.

They've been in boxes in the bookcase in his room, and I filled that up with clothes and diapers, so I wanted to get them all ready and put up in the kitchen before he came. I'm hoping to be able to breastfeed him, but am trying to be as prepared as possible for all scenarios. That's just how I roll; way too OCD and particular.

Hope you all had a great weekend! I think we've finally finished our before-baby-comes to-do list; he's free to come at any time now! ;) And until he does come, maybe I can also go back to posting about things other than sewing projects, nursery decorating, and food, but it seems like that's what our world has revolved around lately. haha

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Jennifer