Nesting

One post a month. Pretty meager effort going into this blog. Sorry. My main energy has been exerted on creating a human and man oh man, am I tired! I have 9 days until my due date and it feels as though I've been pregnant for forever. I guess that's what happens when you get pregnant at the very beginning of summer and are pregnant through all of fall, winter and are due the beginning of spring. That almost feels like an entire year. We are really looking forward to the arrival of this baby girl and for the visitors that will come when she makes her appearance.

Since I'm fairly close to my due date we have been getting prepared for her imminent arrival by doing some nesting. First off, back in late January I went to our local Volunteers of America (my go-to place for furniture to makeover) and I got this dresser for a whopping $60. It sat in our garage for a month or so before I busted out the orbital sander and stripped it of its honey stained glory.

After multiple trips to Hobby Lobby to find some knobs that would modernize the dresser, lots of sanding, help from my amazingly helpful sister who helped get it out of the garage and into the basement, 3 coats of stain, two coats of paint, lots of buffing and grief over where to place the handles (because I plugged up the old holes and the new knobs didn't cover them), it all came together to make this two-toned beauty.

Another project we tackled was painting Ethan's old room. Natalie drove up from DC for President's Day weekend to help with this project (amazing, I know). We couldn't stand letting our little lady sleep in a room with such masculine colors so we finally cracked down and painted it a neutral gray. Since the trim was a cream color and had dings, we primed and painted it white. The result is a room that looks so much more clean and modern. While we were at it we took off the door knobs on this door and a couple other doors that had been painted over and stripped them in a crock pot full of water and laundry detergent for 12 hours. All the knobs look so much better and I can't believe we didn't do it sooner.

Another fun project I undertook was spray painting these $1 animals from Michael's to look like ceramic. We have the tiger and giraffe in Ethan and Eleanor's room and the elephant is in the baby's room.

When we painted Eleanor's room we temporarily put Ethan in Eleanor's room to avoid the paint fumes. He slept in there for a couple days and when the fumes subsided we asked him if he wanted to move back into his own room until the baby came. He told us that he wanted to stay in Eleanor's room so we decided to finally order a big boy bed for him and move Eleanor into his toddler bed. The bunk bed came on a Friday and we spent Saturday morning building the bunk bed, rearranging furniture, washing new sheets, taking down the crib (we'll put it back up in the nursery when the baby moves out of our room) and getting the kids settled in their new shared space. The kids were really excited about the bunk bed and couldn't resist coming up every now and then to see the progress.

We were planning on having Ethan sleep on the bottom bunk until Eleanor outgrew the toddler bed and he could then move up top. Unfortunately, Ethan decided to climb up top and realized how much better the view is from up there and refused to sleep on the bottom. The first few times he was up there he'd bounce and accidentally hit his head on the ceiling, but he's learned that if he continues to do it he'll end up having to sleep on the bottom bunk. Eleanor loves her "princess bed" and after we had set up everything she actually asked to take a nap in it. Eleanor hasn't taken a nap in her crib or a bed for about a month or so, so it was pretty funny.

 So now we're ready for our visitors to come and sleep in the baby's room. And oh yeah, I guess we're ready for the baby to come too! The countdown is on...