2009 Christmas Cards
Our Fourth Anniversary - December 2009
INTRODUCING
These pictures were taken this past Sunday, the 6th. At 22 weeks and 7 days, the baby bump finally arrived. I can no longer fit into my former pants - even my chubby ones and most of my pre-pregnancy shirts are now too snug as well. Guess I'm going to have to get used to wearing the same four pair of pants and 6 or 7 shirts/sweaters over and over again. I am super blessed that my day job is very casual so jeans and sweaters will work most days. Not having to invest in a job and an at home wardrobe has been wonderful! :)
Less than 17 weeks to go now. I can't believe that once we make it through the holidays we'll only have around 3 months until the little one arrives. Exciting and scary at the same time.
We are back from our Thanksgiving Holiday travels and as promised I'm posting some photos of our newly re-designed sun room. Have I mentioned before that our house seriously lacks space for a baby let alone a child with toys? (Yes, I know that I have!) The nursery for Baby Dreher will have just enough space for sleeping and storage of clothing so this sun room is our attempt at creating a little area for his/her future playtime.
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Being that this room is a sun room, three walls house nothing but windows and the fourth wall, not much better. It contains the french doors that lead into our dining room. With all of this being said there is only one tiny bit of wall space for storage. The wall space pictured above and below.
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We purchased the above storage units from JC Penney several weeks ago. They are actually individual modular units so we could pick and choose and mix and match which types of storage we preferred - drawers, open cubbies, closed doors, etc. And as you can tell, we took full advantage of the vaulted ceilings in the room. I'm sure the upper units will house all of those items we won't want our kiddos getting a hold of - i.e. scissors, markers, etc. - without adult supervision.
The T.V. is also housed pretty low in the unit. Having nieces and nephews I know how fascinated they are with electronics and televisions. This one sits low enough that they can still play with the buttons (which I'm sure will become very annoying) and yet if they manage to pull it down on themselves it won't have far to fall - although I'm sure it would still do some damage. Although hopefully only to the TV. :)
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In the future, hopefully the baskets, closed doors, and sliding drawers will provide plenty of storage for all of those blocks, Lego's, crayons, coloring books, and other toys.
The sofa and coffee table were already pre-existing in the room. Although, I'm not sure this lighter-colored sofa will withstand many markers with their lids accidentally left-off nor will it serve as a very unnoticeable napkin for chocolate covered faces and hands. I guess it's just a good thing we got it on clearance a couple of years ago. :)
Above and below are some more storage units that line another wall of the sun room. After the Christmas village is put away I'll also need to start working on some cushions to line the top of the drawers. I think these drawers will make the perfect window/seat benches and they'll also be able to house a ton more toys. 
Hope you enjoyed the tour - even though the room is now quite complete. I've also posted photos of my Crossroads Cottage office on my other blog - to take that tour, just click here. :) 
Well, we spent the weekend Decking our Halls, and our walls, and just about every free space left in our little house. And, even though the nursery is not even complete our little Baby Dreher already has a tree of his/her very own. And he/she also has an ornament on the tree.
Here is our little carrot (I say that because that is apparently the size he/she is this week - he/she has progressed from the size of a banana last week). And my, I just noticed that the above is not at all a flattering photo. (Poor way to debut he/she into this world!) So, below are some more ...
These were taken several weeks ago at our 18 week appointment. At the time he/she was 18 weeks and three days and measuring at 19 weeks. And just look at that foot - it's our little big foot.
Love this side shot of his/her little face. Speaking of his/her - typing he/she, his/her, etc. is getting kind of annoying. But, we did not find out the sex. Roger wanted to know, I didn't - he joked that he could find out and keep it a secret. Yeah, me knowing Roger as I do, that secret would have lasted until ... we got to the car - if that. :)
I've been able to feel little big foot kicking since October 30. At first it just felt like a flutter, but now the kicks are feeling more real. And over a week ago, he/she kept me up by doing an entire gymnastics routine in my tummy - I could actually feel parts protruding from my little belly. And when I say little, I still mean little - especially then. I don't have much of a baby bump yet. I've been trying to wish it to grow - especially since I have Roger's families baby shower this weekend. I've joked that I need to borrow one of those fake baby bellies just so I can pretend to look preggers at the shower. Now, don't get me wrong, my stomach is larger than my stomach of old - quite a bit larger but it just doesn't look like a pregnant stomach yet. At 21 weeks, it still looks like a bloated stomach - you know, kind of what your stomach looks like after you've eaten way too much - for me, it looks like I've eaten way too much for several weeks now. Not too flattering. Although, I've noticed it protruding a bit more over the past few days - maybe I'll get lucky and it'll 'pop' just intime for the shower. :)
Roger still hasn't felt any kicks - as soon as the baby feels a hand on the stomach it shys away. I'm sure he'll be feeling them soon enough.
When we return from the extended Thanksgiving Holiday, I promise to post more photos of both the nursery, our newly re-done sunroom, my office (which was re-done this summer), and all of our holiday decor.
I've just realized that it's been weeks since my last post. Between work, home projects, and the business time seems to fly by! If anyone at all is curious, we did get around to re-finishing the dressers we purchased the day after Halloween. Actually when I say 'we' I mean Roger as he had a brilliant idea to not just re-paint them, as I had planned, but to strip and stain them. Yeah, being pregnant and all, I couldn't be around all the fumes (perfect excuse, don't ya think?) so while I worked away on business stuff Roger spent an entire weekend stripping and staining the furniture. And we ended up having gorgeous weather so he was able to do most of it outside and save a few of his brain cells (and mine and the babies) - which is good.
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Anyway, above is the before picture of the first piece. (Roger had already kidnapped one of the drawers before I shot this photo.)
And above is the after shot. Roger thought it would be fun to strip and stain the drawers and repaint the outside white. It turned out so much better than I had imagined. And now it won't bother my perfectionist self that our crib is white and our wardrobe is natural wood as this dresser brings it all together. And, we really ended up loving the color of the wood hiding underneath all that white paint - it's mahogany (or so we've been told - I'm not at all good with identifying woods) and has a beautiful red-ish tint which is perfect as we will also have hints of red in the room.
And above is the second piece. Can you believe the ugly brown color that someone had painted this? Awful! But, for only $125, it was a steal and will provide plenty of space for all of those baby socks, hats, undershirts, etc.
And here is the piece after. Roger decided to strip and stain the side and front and paint the drawers on this piece - so opposite of the other dresser. The natural wood isn't as beautiful on this one - not even sure what it is. Oak, maybe? But I still think it looks fun and child like. :)
The weekend isn't the only thing that has come to a finish. We are also finished 'striping' the nursery walls. More of a work-out than I had imagined. I was actually sore all day Sunday. Guess this tells you how out of shape I am. :) We did 7" stripes around all walls of the room and boy did this involve A LOT of taping. We used 3 entire rolls of Frog tape. Which meant there was a lot of getting up and down (hence the soreness). I feel like I've done hundreds of squats. :)
The taping alone took over 4 hours, but the painting was rather simple and only took about 1.5 hours. While Roger painted, I followed behind and removed the tape. And boy, the Frog tape worked. So worth the additional $1-$2 extra per roll. No seepage - at all. Yay for the Frog!
I love the room. :) And not only did we finish painting the walls this weekend we also found two dressers for the room. Both were bargains at our local downtown Indy antique store. Although both are solid pieces of furniture - bargains at antique stores usually mean more work and both of the pieces do need some tender loving care. Guess I know what I'll be doing the next few weekends - sanding and re-painting two dressers. The fun never ends. :) Stay tuned for more photos ...
Soon after Roger and I were married I discovered that I inherited hundreds and hundreds of books and musical scores. Now, our tiny little house didn't have enough room to hold all of this 'stuff' so Roger decided to build built in floating book shelves near the ceiling of our office.
Not only are these shelves beautiful, they've also performed remarkably well by holding all of this 'clutter' since 2006. So, when we first discussed nursery plans, we of course had very little room in the nursery too. Since I knew how labor intensive the shelves were to build, I didn't dare mention to Roger that perhaps he also needed to build similar shelves for the nursery to hold books, stuffed animals, etc. But, since Roger evidently likes to torture himself with home improvement projects he brought up that maybe he could create the shelves again. Of course I jumped for joy. Many weeks later, after thinking about how much time they took to create and how much money they would add to the already ballooning budget for the nursery, I gave him the opportunity to bail. He did not. So we went full swing ahead for planning for floating shelves in the nursery.
This is what the nursery originally started out as - a sitting/TV room. The stenciling above actually is 3D. Boy, it took some work. I was so sad when Roger had to scrape it down so the walls could be painted. I was originally 'kind of excited' about getting rid of the TV in this room, but now that it is gone I realize how much I miss this room as a TV room. It was just super cozy and right next to our bedroom (so convenient for late night TV watching - we don't have a TV in our bedroom).
Anyway, while we had painters come in to paint our staircase a few weeks ago (we usually don't pay painters (I usually torture myself), but the staircase walls are super tall - too tall for us to paint) the painters also agreed to paint the nursery (for practically nothing) so we took them up on the offer. We chose a lime-ish green color. It's a bit brighter than I expected - I seem to have a problem for picking too bright of colors - they never quite look like the paint sample. :)
Last week was Roger's fall break so he got to work on creating the floating shelves. (I helped out when I could too, but I couldn't do much.) He started out by creating wooden cleats and drilling them into the walls. Then he cut the boards for the shelves (pictured against the wall).
Then the boards were sandwiched onto and screwed onto the cleats.
Then decorative molding was glued onto the edge of the shelving - it's hard to tell from the pictures, but the molding is quite ornate and really dresses up the shelves.
Then he primed and painted the shelves in white. And voila - they were done. It ONLY took him an entire 4 days to complete - he worked his entire fall break creating these babies for our baby. I love them. They will provide the perfect amount of decorative storage for books, small toys, stuffed animals, etc. that we really don't have much floor or closet space for.
Roger also assembled the baby crib last weekend. Yay! And, I found the perfect white lamp with a black and white damask shade (for only $29 at TJ Maxx) for the room. So, after much debating, I am going with black and white hounds tooth and black and white damask accent patterns for the room.
Announcing ... our new Pinwhirl Parties blog. It's been a long time coming; I think I mentioned something about a new blog and design earlier this summer. Sorry to keep you waiting. Although it was actually designed this summer (didn't MyDreamWeb design do a great job?!), unfortunately the time got away from me and until now I just wasn't able to publish my first official blog at the site. I wanted to wait until I could post a really great blog about a really great amazing product/idea and I believe the post is perfect. (You'll have to visit the post yourself to see! The above pinwheel invite is highlighted.) It is my hope that with this new blog I'll be able to showcase some great pinwheel products - not just my own, but integrate others as well. I also hope to highlight how other's have used my pinwheels in the past. So, if you are a previous client and you've forwarded photos in the past and haven't seen them posted yet, don't worry - I hope to get around to this soon.
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I do plan to keep this current site active; however, in the future most of my updates will occur on the new site. So be sure to 'favorite' me there as well. :)
Even though I'm only 14 weeks along (almost 15) Roger and I have already made some major baby purchases. Guess I just couldn't wait to decorate the nursery. The nursery is small, only about 10x10 so we need lots of items that don't take up much space. When we found the above crib, we thought it was perfect as not only does it have lots of drawers for storage (something we'll be lacking) the changing table is also attached. It also converts into a toddler bed.
Since we aren't finding out whether baby Dreher is a boy or a girl, we needed neutral nursery colors. And since I'm not a huge fan of the traditional pastel yellows and greens used for neutral nurseries, we've decided to go with not quite lime-ish green striped walls and black/white and cherry red accents throughout the room. We purchased the above glider from Wal-Mart (of all places) - their free ship to store feature is the best!. It's the perfect look and very comfy looking. Although I've still not gotten to try it out - it's being kept in it's plastic sheeting until the nursery is all painted, etc.
And while making a quick trip to TJ Maxx (to look for my sister's bday gift last Friday after work), I found the perfect ottoman to go with the chair (although I didn't walk out with a bday gift). It's shaped like the above, but has the below houndstooth fabric. I'd been debating on what black and white fabrics/designs to use in the room and finding the houndstooth ottoman sealed the deal on using houndstooth throughout the room. And the best feature of this ottoman, it was on $25. Don't you just love TJ Maxx???!!! The worst part about the ottoman, I was shopping at our Downtown Indy TJ Maxx store since it's closest to my work. After purchasing it I had to walk 15 minutes through the mall carrying it and another 5 minute outside walk to my car in the parking garage. I think my arms shook for half an hour afterwards.
I've also purchased houndstooth crib sheets - which took forever to find. Damask seems to be prevalent in nurseries, but not houndstooth. Which leaves me with a quandry. I know that I want to mix some other black and white design/pattern with the houndstooth, but since my house has so much damask and toile already, I was initially very hesitant to use it in the nursery too. But, after searching for weeks I've not found many other black and white alternatives other than toile or damask. Sure, some high end baby boutiques have $300-$600 sets that offer other varieties, but I'm a bargain shopper and those prices just won't do. Plus, I've heard so much lately about how baby bumpers are not to be used with babies so seems like kind of a waste to purchase one of these sets and not even use one of the most expensive components. Anyway, I digress, I think I may just have to give into the damask pattern as it goes so very well with the houndstooth, plus I think damask curtains w/red piping would just look so gorgeous up against the green striped walls. Thoughts?
