Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Tree is done!

And as an added bonus, I am in the pic for my latest belly pic...enjoy!

Monday, July 20, 2009

This stuff isn't easy! Part 2: The Tree

Ok, here was my big project - which was a bigger headache than I would have thought.

First, an overview of how it's done:
1. Tape together the two peices the mural comes in:

2. Tape carbon paper to the back - of course, there was only enough for one side at a time...we wouldn't want this to be over quickly now, would we?


3. Decide where you want the tree to go and tape it to the wall (this is where I thought I wanted the tree to go - see how I lined the bottom of the tree up with the floor - it seemed like a good idea at the time...)

4. Trace the tree pattern with a ball-point pen so the design copies onto the wall

Can you see it? Well, trust me, there's the outline of a tree there. I untapped everything and put it all back in the shipping tube to store for another day. It was at this point I said to myself...."huh, that looks low...." Then I got out the dimentions of the crib and saw that the top of the crib would be about halfway up the branches - this is NOT what I wanted!!! Oh S#$%! I just spent nearly 2 hours tracing the tree TOO LOW. After literally beating myself up (if you've ever been a witness to an official Kathy breakdown, it's not pretty). I got out the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser and thankfully was able to pretty easily erase the lines. Of course, if you've ever worked with one of those things you know they take off a good layer of paint with them. So after scrubbing the wall I had to give it another coat of paint.

While the paint dried I finished putting the grass up and touching up the baseboard paint - so the afternoon wasn't a total loss. I'll put pics up of all that fun at the end (that project actually went really well). Anyway, the tree - take 2! This time we put the mural up at the TOP of the wall - you may notice that small piece of tape indicating where the crib will be to make sure I didn't screw it up again :P
I made sure to keep the original bottom of the tree unerased so I could just match up the trunks - you know to avoid the "tree floating in mid-air" look. So I did all that other crap I did the first time and was able to be all traced and done by the end of Saturday - whew!


On Sunday I painted in the trunk of the tree and branches with a lovely chocolate brown:


I started work on the leaves, which will be a more artistically challenging job, but nice none the less - here's a sneak peek:
Since I'm having trouble adding the grass pics to this entry (probably too many pics already) I'll add them to the picket fence one.

This stuff isn't easy! - Part 1: The Picket Fence

Hi all! We had a very productive weekend. First of all, let's show you Dan's project: The Picket Fence!

Doesn't it look great?! He's happy I let him buy the nail gun - I told him it was an early birthday gift. It sure made faster work nailing all those individual peices to the wall! It was quite noisey though and the times I was in there with him, it kind of made the baby jump a few times, which was cool. Since it's a pain to put pics up in these blogs, I'm making a separate entry for the tree project.
But before I leave, here is a look at the grass:

Bonnie got herself in this one. She was looking at the camera all nice but just as I was taking the picture she moves faster than the speed of light to scratch her back - why do dogs always do that?

Sunday, July 12, 2009

We've registered!

Hello everyone! It's been another productive week at constant baby stuff central. I started putting up the grass on the nusery walls this week. Here's a sneak peak. It will eventually go all the way around the room. the picture doesn't quite do it justice. It looks really neat. I'll be touching up the paint on the baseboards this week. Dan's working on putting up the picket fence this weekend. Hopefully he'll get that done by next weekend. Next weekend I plan on staring work on the tree mural for the family tree backdrop. It will probably be a frustratingly big job so I'll be sure to take plenty of progress pictures. We also picked up our nursery bedding today. We were originally going to register for it and hope someone buys it for a shower gift but then Babies R' Us put it on clearance so I was both worried it would no longer be available and if we bought the stuff now we could save quite a bit of money so we went ahead and got it. It's so cute, I can't wait to put it up...of course the room has to be finished and the furniture has to be here first...but I'm excited none the less. We also registered yesterday. Our registry ID is: 98413752 or you can search by my name. Thinking about what we'll need and all the stuff is really making this real (not that it wasn't already real, but you know what I mean).

It's been a while since I've posted a belly pic. I'll be 24 weeks tomorrow - what we call on the board "V-day" or viability day - basically if he were to be born now he would have a fighting chance surviving outside the womb although it would be a VERY hard road so I'm glad he seems perfectly content staying in me for the duration. Anyway, Bonnie felt left out of the pictures so she's joining me on this weeks shot:

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Great 4th of July weekend!

Sorry, it's been a while since I've updated! Not much to add, I guess. The baby is kicking more and more and on Sunday, Dan finally got to feel one!


This weekend my parents came down to spend 4th of July weekend with us. We had a really nice visit. They brought their dog with them and he had a lot of fun playing with Bonnie. I think she's still a bit worn out from all the action...she slept most of yesterday. We did some shopping on Friday and picked out our nursery furniture! We ordered our crib, dresser and glider :-)


The crib looks like this:

Isn't it pretty? I can't wait for it to come in! I hope we have the walls all done by then and we can set it up right away. I'll be working on the nursery a bit during the week and hopefully Dan makes some good progress this weekend while I'm at work. Between the kicks and the progress I'm really feeling good about this pregnancy and am starting to relax and get excited about having this baby. I didn't take a belly picture this week, but maybe next week....I think I hit another plataeu anyway.

We had fun at our neighbor's picnic for the fourth. He has a smoker and made brisket and hot links and chicken wings and it was really good. There were so many fireworks. They started at like 7 and were still going off at around midnight. They sure know how to have a good time.

Well, I think that's it for now...time to go to the Home Depot....again...