Nursery Beginnings

I’m about a week late on this post but I didn’t want to overwhelm “my readers” by posting more than one blog in a week…not so much my style.
The weekend after my birthday, I went to my first “pinterest party” where everyone chooses a fun craft or project from pinterest and you get together and try it out. We did a couple projects but the big one was making wooden signs by transferring ink from printed paper to wood. I got ambitious and put a scripture on 3 pieces of wood for the nursery. If you’re interested, we used this tutorial and it worked well when the letters were printed in bold with a new ink cartridge. We also ended up painting back over the letters with diluted black paint to make them a little darker- here’s the finished product.


The big news happened when I got home from my pinterest party. I walked in the house and heard William call me from upstairs. His mom and stepdad were also in town and he told me they were looking at some of the baby gifts in our future nursery room. When I walked in, the room that had contained nothing but a pile of clothes to be donated and few baby gifts had been turned into the beginnings of an amazing nursery!! William had been coordinating this for awhile as a birthday surprise and I could not have been more thrilled at what I found. The crib was in place (an early shower gift from his mom and stepdad) and we had a glider and ottoman (birthday gift from hubby and baby gift from his dad), AND he had worked with friends to build the “barn door” crib backdrop that I wanted (originally inspired by this pic on pinterest). I felt so relieved to have some of the big stuff knocked out for the nursery!!



The "W" stands for William as the official name of our little man is William Becton Spencer. He will go by Becton, but had to give a nod to daddy's little namesake...

I LOVED the barn door backdrop but we wanted it to look a little more "rustic" and like we used aged wood. We were going to try and find a stain that we could apply to give us this look but after trying a few things, we still weren't getting that "old wood" look. I found this tutorial on pinterest on how to make old wood new...the results are below and it really worked! If you ever want to create something "aged" looking, I highly recommend this process.





Our final project of the weekend was refinishing the dresser for little man’s room. I was pretty proud of us for making this so cute! Below are the before and after pics of our project…. I also found some cute hardware I liked at Anthropologie, but it was about $14 per handle so I bought some cheap ones at Lowe’s and created the look myself by wrapping them in twine. I think it turned out great!

Dresser Before


Dresser After


Handles Before



Handles After


So- after our SUPER crafty and pinterest project filled weekend, I am feeling much better about the progress of our nursery for baby Becton! There is still work to do so I will post some final nursery photos down the road...

The countdown is on...only six weeks until our little man makes his entrance into the world...We can't wait...or breathe...or sleep...or eat without getting heartburn...

32 weeks…and 28 years

I’m not even going to acknowledge the fact that I haven’t posted in two months. So, this is me, officially NOT acknowledging the lack of posting.

Last week marked a couple milestones in our lives. I hit the 32 week mark of my pregnancy- which officially means we have 8 WEEKS left until our little man makes his debut in the world. I have so many different and conflicting emotions about this fact that I don’t think I know how to put them all into words. I’m excited to meet my son, see who he looks like, cuddle the cuteness that I know he will be, feel that feeling they say you can only experience with the birth of your first child…scared that labor and delivery will be horrendous, that he won’t eat, that he won’t sleep, that he might not be healthy…this second list is being committed to prayer DAILY and I’m reading lots of scripture where God tells us not to be anxious/scared/fearful. I trust Him. This baby is in His hands. So that’s an inside look at my daily thoughts right now :)

I’m also feeling some other emotions, mainly related to my size. Words to describe these feelings include large, huge, big, swollen, puffy, gigantic, waddle-y, mega-sized etc. You get the picture. I don’t feel as bad about it until I see a picture of myself and realize that even my face looks different…but such is pregnancy and a small price to pay for the blessing of children (so I keep reminding myself). Here’s a picture at 32 weeks so you can see what I’m talking about.



ALSO- my 28th birthday was last week!! This is the first time since I moved to Dallas that I have not been out of town for work on my birthday so it was nice to get to spend it with William and celebrate with a few friends. The actual day was Wednesday and William sent me some awesome flowers and took me to eat at our favorite Mexican food restaurant in Richardson (Frankie’s…you should go there). Friday night, we celebrated with a small gathering of friends with dinner at La Duni. I’ve been craving their Quattro Leches Cake since I had some at a party in early December. Let me just tell you, it did not disappoint! Some of my favorite pics from the night are below.

Celebrating with great friends!


John& Julia

Adam & Chelsea got a sitter and spent their first night out since baby O was born with us... unfortunately this is the only picture that William captured.


Hubs and me- he put this whole thing together


The Girls (minus Julia and Chelsea)


Me, Katie and Lindsay- this photo was supposed to show the baby bumps but for some reason William decided to only take our faces...someone send me the bump pic if your husband understood the concept and got the bellies in the picture.


Teaser- William surprised me by knocking out some major nursery progress for my birthday. I’ll post some pics and details in the next few days.

23 Weeks

This past weekend, we had a wedding to attend, which of course meant dressing in something other than maternity jeans or yoga pants. I haven't really purchased any "maternity dresses" so far as I've been able to make some of my looser fitting/shift style dresses work with the growing belly. I had thought about what I was going to wear in advance, but Saturday morning I got out the dress I thought would be perfect (empire waist, winter-y black dress) and decided to try it on.

I was able to get it on and with William's help, it even zipped!! I thought I'd found the perfect attire for the evening until I went upstairs to take it off. It was a little tight in the top but after about 5 minutes of trying to get the side zipper undone myself, I had to call in reinforcements. It took William about 10 minutes to get me out of the dress, and at some point during that fun I decided I would not be putting that dress on again. I went back to a tried and true loose fitting shift that I had worn to another wedding a few weeks earlier- luckily it still fit but I think we are nearing it's limit for maternity wear as it keeps getting shorter and shorter in the front :)

So, since I was all dressed up, I decided to actually take a "belly" picture to send to my parents. Here I am at 23 weeks.

Nursery Lust

Since I have officially known that baby Spencer is of the male persuasion for a week now, I have of course come across some baby boy items that I'm dying to have for him and his nursery. You've seen my nursery inspiration from the previous post- I'm obsessed with the "vintage farm/modern design" of this room and am thinking I want to go with that theme.

These are a few of my favorite things...


This crib... doesn't it look just like the one in my dream nursery...AND, plus of all pluses- it's from Walmart and SUPER reasonably priced. That never happens to me. I usually fall in love with something that's a ridiculous designer name brand and I could never afford (and even if I could afford it, I could never justify spending that kind of money on that thing, whatever that thing is).



I found this on pinterest but it's from an etsy store. I love the blue and orange AND the owls are not only super in style right now, but a nod to my days as a Chi Omega (often referred to as "hooters") at Baylor. Side note- I went to Baylor homecoming last weekend and I'm always surprised at how much I miss those days. Nostalgia was everywhere...



This obviously will not fit my little guy this Thanksgiving but I think it's awesome and I really need to find it for next year. How cute are the tail feathers in the back?? For your favorite little turkey :)


My parents brought me an old dresser to re-do for the baby's room. I'd like to make it look kind of like this...now I just have to figure out how to do that exactly. If you have any tips- send them my way.

Also, if you get the urge to go ahead and buy me any of these things, that'd be nice too. I'm trying to wait until after Christmas to start going nuts on my nursery/baby prep. We'll see how that works out.

It's A...

BOY!!!!!!!!It's official!! It's a boy!!

Noonday

I follow quite a few friend's blogs and really enjoy keeping up with what everyone is doing. A few months ago, I was exploring my friend Renee's blog and discovered Noonday Collections. She is a Noonday Ambassador and basically it's an organization that works with women in third world countries to create unique jewelry, home goods and accessories. The women who make the goods actually receive the proceeds when you buy things so it's a win-win for everyone.

Last week, I entered a giveaway on Renee's blog for a $50 Noonday Collections gift card and I WON!! I just placed my order and am super excited to get my trellis cuff and cubist cuff (in silver)! You should definitely check out Noonday here http://www.reneedubose.noondaycollection.com/ambassador-reneedubose.html and while you're at it, go read Renee's blog http://theduboseframe.blogspot.com/! She's super fashionable and stylish and writes great blogs!!

Thanks Renee for my fun new accessories!!

Blog Resuscitation

My blog has been more than just abandoned lately, I think it has been in a coma. I’m going to try and bring it back to life over the next few days but it’s going to take something big…

Something bigger than pics of my poor little Huck back in the cone and on kennel confinement after surgery number 2 to remove the screws and pins he had put in during surgery number one…

Something bigger than anecdotes about the hail storm that killed my beautiful yard…

Something bigger than my first ever FALL porch decorations or preparations for Baylor homecoming and a Kvasnicka baby shower…

But what could top all of that?
This is what…


An official announcement on an internet forum that there’s a baby Spencer expected to arrive March 27, 2012.

Tune in Thursday when we find out if we’ll need pink or blue soccer balls to start training for World Cup 2030.