Roadside changing table {part II}.

Onto part II of the riveting changing table re-do. If you haven’t read part I, check it out. After painting the wood bright orange, I painted the shelf pieces white and reinstalled ‘em…

I hada sheet on top of the shelf to see if I wanted to use fabric to cover the shelves. Nah, not the look I’m going for…

I went to Hobby Lobby and found some really bright and colorful scrapbook paper – $0.59 a piece, and an additional 40% off. Less than five bucks later, I was at home with a challenge to decoupage the shelves with some pretty floral…

I knew there would be seams on where the papers touched, but with such a busy pattern I didn’t think it’d be really noticeable. Plus, I knew the shelves would be covered with a changing pad, baskets, etc..

I added some mod podge and used a foam paintbrush to spread a thin layer down first, added the paper, and then followed with a few more layers of mod podge on top of that {letting each layer dry before starting on the next}.

The seams are pretty noticeable here, but not once you’re more than a foot away…

I struggled with some bubbles at the beginning as you can see below. {I’m no mod podge expert.} But by the last top coat, the bubbles were virtually nonexistent.

And here it is in all it’s glory…

I love how it pulls the colors from my DIY mobile…

Oh, and here are some new cloth diapers I bought that are just as bright and beautiful as the floral shelves! {More on that later.}

See, the seams and the tiny bubbles are hardly noticeable…

I like the sheen that the mod podge adds to the shelves…

And, it wouldn’t be a true re-do post without a before & after photo comparison…

So, what do you think? Like the bold, or is it too much color for ya? {I actually really like how it turned out!}

Roadside changing table {part I}.

I’ve mentioned my changing table quite a bit, but I’ve never given you all the details. About a year and a half ago, I was taking the pup on his daily walks because we were living in a condo without a fenced area for him. On our walk, I noticed a wooden classic-style changing table sitting by the curb, waiting for the garbage truck to come. I wasn’t pregnant, not trying, but I was really craving a renovation-type of project because I wasn’t allowed to paint or do hardly any remodeling in our rented condo. I figured the free changing table would be a good outlet to release my weird desire to prett-ify {is that a G.W. Bush-ism?} something. So I rushed back to the condo, drove back to the treasure site, and threw the freebie in my car.

It had thick cardboard shelves that I removed.

I sanded the beast and failed to even consider priming it. Or maybe I was just too lazy and didn’t care.

And from almost two years ago, I knew if I ever had a nursery, I wanted it to have bright orange in it…so here’s the blindly bright orange I picked. It’s a Disney brand color, but I don’t know exactly what it’s called. {Sorry.}

Many coats on our tiny condo balcony later…

And months and months later, here it is in the in-progress nursery sans shelves…

Okay, part II tomorrow will be about the shelves. Sounds riveting, huh. Well, let’s just say there’s a colorful twist added. ;)

Twenty-four weeks.

This week marks 24 weeks in my pregnancy. It’s a weird point right now, seems like I’ve been waiting so long and come so far still, yet it seems like I have an eternity to wait still…all the while still seems like she’ll be here in a blink. Really bizarre.

I look really gross in this picture. I tend to take these photos when I’ve been at work for 11 hours, am exhausted and look worn out, and when the kitchen has no natural light. Eh, oh well; I keep it real on here. :)

My mom took me clothes shopping this weekend, and generously bought me 3 new pairs of dress pants and some cute new shirts – all for pretty darn good deals. It’s really nice to be able to look at my closet and not have to get super creative to find clothes I could pair, look professional, and also fit into! My nice dress pants below were just $25 at JCP and the cardi was $10 at Motherhood {Thanks, Mom!}

I want to remember all these little details of this pregnancy, plus I also want to share it all with my sister who is in another state, so feel free to skip to the end if you’re not a detail-lovin’ person. But it’s all stuff I’d like to record for my sake. Okay? Thanks.

Here are some of the questions my friends/family regularly ask me…

So, how’s it going?

At 24 weeks I’m feeling much better now. I only feel nauseous when I’m extremely tired, or when the little one is moving like crazy. Speaking of which, my daughter much prefers rolling over rather than kicking. She only kicks when there’s music playing {i.e. during church worship}, but oh my she loves to roll over! It’s quite intense…you can see the movement in my stomach at times, Eugene can most certainly feel it and certain body parts pushing out {that sounds gross}, and – believe it or not – I have heard her moving around. Most days, I only notice her moving in the early morning when I first wake up, when I get to work after music in the car, and mostly when I finally sit down at home after work. Lots of rolling over then! It’s amazing really. The whole thing.

{image source}

Any weird cravings?

So far all the foods I’ve listed on the chalkboards as “cravings” have really been more of a food item that I found actually doesn’t taste disgusting to me, so I consider it a craving. Some of those items are real cravings, but most are just things that taste good to me now. The popsicles {p.s. I spelled it wrong on the board…I knew it looked weird!} however, were a craving in every sense of the word. I was shocked to find myself ripping the popsicle box open right after I checked out at the grocery store, before even walking to my car. It was 30 degrees out, my nose was running from being so cold walking to my car, yet I devoured a popsicle and loved every second of it on my way home. I then proceeded to eat 3 more that evening. Weird? Yes, I’m fully aware of that.

What are you going to name her?

Everyone’s asking us if we’ve picked out a name for our little girl. While we’re still sticking to our guns about not revealing our name choice until she’s here, we’re willing to answer general questions about it. So the answer is, NO. We had two solid names already settled on for a boy {and no, we won’t share either still…sorry}, but we had zero girl name ideas. Since then, we have two possibilities, but neither of us are completely sold on either option yet. {Suggestions still welcome.}

How are you dealing with the leftover emotions from your previous miscarriage?

The fear I really struggled with the entire first trimester has substantially decreased. I’ve learned a ton from God in this process. I’ve reached a point where I can honestly say that I’m okay if God chooses to have me face another loss. I will hate it and I pray so hard that I don’t have to experience it, but I know that God’s got it. He’s so much bigger than all I’ve faced, that I know I can trust Him with my life and whatever He wants me to walk through. My biggest challenge at this point is with anxiety. I’ve always assumed that I’d be a stay at home mom; however, I’ve really been getting the feeling that God may want me to consider working at my current job part time. It’s not what I want to do at all, but for many reasons I feel like it might be what God wants me to do. So I’m trying to be open and have a good attitude about that possibility, but in all honesty it’s causing me a lot of anxiety.  I’m trying to not be anxious about things {handling all the work, being a good mom, being a good boss, being a good wife, leaving my baby, etc.}, but I’m failing pretty badly. I’ve got no problem trusting that it will all work out, I just get anxious worrying about how.

How’s the little one doing?

She’s doing well, as far as I know. She was projected to be 55% in weight at 20 weeks, and all things tested well…except her ureter. For those who aren’t in the medical field, the ureter is the tube that connects to the kidney. Her ureter is slightly enlarged. Apparently this is a relatively common problem, and often times it will correct itself as the baby grows prior to birth. If it stays enlarged after birth, she will need to be on antibiotics for a while to protect her from UTIs. My doctor said that a while ago, this kind of thing wasn’t ever caught before birth because the ultrasounds weren’t as precise. The poor babies would get many UTIs and finally they would figure out the cause. So it’s really a good thing they caught this. I’m scheduled for another ultrasound in 2 weeks to check to see if it looks more proportional. Other than that…all’s great with our little one! :)

Are you enjoying pregnancy?

Yes. Absolutely. I love feeling her move {even when it makes me feel like I’m going to pee my pants or vomit}. I love being reminded of the huge blessing God’s given us. I feel like I’m walking lottery ticket…except with a “winning” way better than money. I won’t lie though, there are a few things that I’ve realized I took for granted prior to pregnancy – sleeping without my hips throbbing all night {that goes away, right?}, eating COLD lunchmeat on my sandwich, running hard outside when the weather’s nice, eating feta cheese on a salad, taking a steaming hot shower, getting in a hot tub, sleeping more than 3 hours straight, wearing normal pants that don’t have to go up past my stomach and that give me a mom-butt, doing crunches, and sleeping on my back. These are all things I would gladly do for the rest of my life if it was needed to be a mom, but it will be nice to do some of those things and  hold my little girl. :)

All in all, I feel like these past 24 weeks have been great. I know many women who have terrible, awful pregnancy symptoms, and I’ve just had minor inconveniences to deal with. Pretty blessed.

I love this little girl so much already, and in just a few months I {Lord willing} will get to meet her. Oh, I can’t wait!

Half-bath demo.

The little half bath that’s connected to the baby’s room is dire need of a reno. And unfortunately, the first step to the reno is a demo. I know all the TV shows make it seem like demo is so much fun, but I personally really dislike demoing. Really don’t enjoy it a bit. It seems so counterproductive to make something look so much worse and dirtier, but I know it’s just a step in the process.

Here’s a refresher of the little space prior to any demo. Basically the only thing we did when we moved in was to replace the toilet. Well, that and to use it as a storage place for a sink, light, and shelving unit…

The sink and mirror desperately needed to go…

I removed the mirror/medicine cabinet with just a few screws, and removed the sink. Biggest thing to remember about removing the sink was to shut off the hot and cold water pipes. Other than that it was pretty much common sense; just unscrewing a few precise nuts so that it would just pull off. Eugene then ripped out the cabinet.

We used a crow bar and a hammer to wedge into the molding, baseboards, and cardboard “tile” on the walls and rip it off piece by piece.

That’s some pretty nice flooring, huh. {Sarcasm.}

So when we ripped the cardboard tile off the wall, we discovered some interesting things. Not to build this up…it’s not nearly as entertaining as my discovery of the evergreen trees and coyotes in our other bathroom. But for some reason, there were numerous {at least 7} random holes in the drywall behind the “tile.” See this….

We can’t figure it out. Why are these holes here? There’s nothing behind the wall, so no apparent reason. Eh, oh well. We did figure out that two of the holes were old toilet paper roll holders or soap holders…we think. Oh, and we found out that 1 1/2 of the walls were originally ceramic tiles. Somewhere along the way the tiles were removed. A few of the tiles still remain where the pipes from the sink connect to the walls. Nice, huh.

The floor’s coming up okay too. I’ve been using a putty knife to peel the tiles up. It takes some patience, but it works.

We got quite a bit of the demo completed. Nothing quite like using a toilet for a ladder. Hey, whatever works.

And not only does it look like a tornado went through our bathroom, but for a brief moment, our front yard did too!

Yucky, foreclosed sink. Really happy to have it gone!

Bonfire in February.

This weekend, it was actually nice enough to have a bonfire…in February…in Ohio!

I boxed up all the food for the fire and took it outside.

Eugene invited his brother and sisters over, and the pup was in outdoor heaven!

No folks, it’s not late Summer. Hot dogs on the fire, baked beans, chips, fruit, and brownies with whip cream as frosting {my new favorite dessert}, and friends laughing at/with each other…wondrous things, without a doubt!

Springy.

Eugene gave me some beautiful flowers for Valentine’s Day. I displayed them in five Ikea vases {$0.79 per vase} on my make-shift mantle.

Makes me think of Spring, despite the snow falling outside. :)

And it doesn’t hurt that I had my fav. candle {Lemon Lavender} burning.

Oh, and speaking of Valentine’s gifts, I bought Eugene this from Target…

How precious is that!