Notes From Our Nest

It’s been a long, but incredible week. I can’t believe that last week at this time I was driving into Chicago to meet the moving guys at our storage unit. Here’s a recap of last week:

Monday: We drove into Arlington and stayed with the fabulous Foster Family.

Tuesday: We closed on our new house! We immediately drove over our U-Haul and started unloading (well, Kabe did). This was another 96 degree day. Poor guy!

Wednesday: I drove downtown first thing in the morning to meet the moving crew from Midway Moving. We had a start time of 7:30am. They showed up at 8:15. Somehow we were charged for a 7:45 start, though. Ugh!! After a long morning of pointing and directing furniture, we wrapped up and I started unpacking the kitchen. My mom and Art arrived around 9:00 pm after their trip to Seattle and Vancouver. They went straight to work helping me wash dishes and unpack more of the kitchen. It was great!

Thursday: Mom and Art have a minivan, so we put it to use! We picked up the kitchen table and the GRILL today. They also washed cabinets, stemware, and dishes. Art moved a ton of boxes. They are my heroes! I can’t thank them enough for ending their vacation on a hard-working note. Hopefully they have recovered. I could use more help! Only kidding, Mom.

Friday: JAIME IS IN TOWN! Ok…I’m not complaining, but it took me 2.5 hours to drive to Midway to pick her up. Then, we drove another 2 hours to Kim’s house in Tinley Park for our girls’ weekend. We saw NKOTB on Friday! I was protesting because I felt a little silly being at a New Kids concert at the age of 29, but it was actually pretty entertaining. My only wish is that Jon would have sang. He’s so cute now! However, Joey Mac (that’s what they are calling him) did perform “Popsicle,” which was always my favorite song.

Saturday: Jaime and Kim came to see our house. And, Kim brought Baby Zach (He’s 7 months old already). I tested out some of the baby stuff we have with him. He seemed to like it all!!

Sunday: I can’t even remember what I did on Sunday, but we were going nonstop all day long. It involved something like 3 trips to Home Depot and a missed BBQ with our friends. Sorry, Sarah and Jereme!

Monday: I crashed.

Tuesday: I started painting ceilings and bathrooms. The weather was so perfect to have the windows open! Don’t worry, I discovered a low VOC paint at Lowe’s. Did you know that regular old Olympic Paint is lower in VOCs that other typical paints?

Whew! What a crazy week. I’m so glad we are in our new house so I can start doing all of these projects I’ve been thinking about since we bought the place at the end of April.

Peace,
M

Today we put into motion the first part of our master moving plan. We packed up our belongings from and loaded them into a U-Haul in South Beloit. No one quite understand’s the extent of my dear hubby’s anal-retentive packing habits, so I thought I’d document it for everyone…

Tomorrow, we embark on Phase Two of the Journey. We take ourselves and our U-Haul to the burbs. We also have…the final walkthrough of the NEW HOUSE!

Love,
M

P.S. Moms…please don’t worry, I barely lifted a finger all day. I gave myself the jobs like getting K cold drinks and fetching the packing tape tape.

The best $10 we've ever spent (the dolly)

He makes it look so easy!

Perfectly stacked boxes

I wonder if I annoyed him...taking pics as he did all of the work?

All loaded and ready to go!

I am so proud of my project! I refinished and painted these adorable chairs for our kitchen.

They were formerly off-white and faux-finished with a crackling and peeling paint. I loved them, but I wanted some color in our lives!

Robin's Egg Blue Chair

We’re looking for a dark wood, round pedestal table that is between 36 and 42 inches to go with our chairs…

Here are some possibilities:

Option 1: C&B Allegro (kind of big, though)

Option 2: C&B Avalon Table (too big?)

Option 3: WE Round Table with Cutout Legs

Option 4: Target American Simplicity

Any thoughts?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have found the perfect baby bedding! It’s cute and the price was right.

The price was so right, in fact, that I decided it was ok to hack apart the bumper and make it into artwork for the baby’s room. Take a look!

First, I cut out sections of the argyle print:

The Argyle Bumper with sections removed

Next, I used 3M Super 77 Spray Adhesive to attach sections of the fabric to heavy paper:

Gluing the fabric to the backing

Then, I took the matting out of the frame (from Michael’s):

Cute Square frames from Michael's

I cleaned the glass–both sides!

Cleaning the Glass

You can’t see it very well, but I just centered the pattern and taped the fabric (on the paper backing) to the mat:

Taping the fabric to the mat

And…Viola! I put the fabric and the mat into the frame. It looks pretty good, if I don’t say so myself!

The finished product

Here are all three of the pieces that we’re going to hang above the crib. Kabe has assured me that he can secure them to the wall so that they won’t fall down on our little one! I’m so happy with the finished project! I packed it up with the piles of baby stuff that is ready to move into the new house.

Argyle Artwork

The next bumper project is going to be turning the other side of the bumper into valances for the windows!

Soon-to-be-Valances

Not unlike the search for the perfect bedding, our search for the perfect crib took hours and hours and hours as well. The problem with this was that I had always pictured a simple white crib for our baby. K wanted a larger dark crib. Take a look at the photo and you can see who the big winner is…

The Hudson Lifestyle Crib from Bonavita

Our Nursery Bedding arrived on Friday! This is a big deal considering the fact that I spent hours and hours and hours searching for the “perfect” bedding for our baby boy’s nursery. I wanted to find something that was not baby blue or themed. It seems like about 95% of boy’s rooms use this shade of blue with some sort of cutsie theme. I know! It’s adorable. But, I just wanted something a little different.

I searched everywhere from high-end stores like Pottery Barn Kids and Land of Nod to the less-pricey Target and Babies R Us. I looked into custom bedding and I considered making it myself. Basically, the problem to me was that the only things I needed were the crib sheet and the skirt. Did you know that you can’t put the bumper or the comforter in the crib? They are just for looks. In the end,  just couldn’t fathom spending $40o+ on things that I am not going to use.

Imagine my excitement when I stumbled upon a post on Ohdeedoh that showed cute bedding from…Walmart!

So, I ordered this adorable Aqua and Pistachio Argyle Bedding Set for…$90 (including shipping)!

Cute argyle crib bedding

We’re thinking of painting the walls the blue shade from the comforter. It’ll look more blue than this sample shows:

#618 Robin's Nest from Benjamin Moore

I’m hoping to capture the happy feeling of Megan’s daughter, Paige’s Room. I LOVE this room! The paint color in Paige’s room is the same as the above sample, so you can see how it would be a perfect match for our argyle room.

Wee's Gorgeous Nursery

I’d love to find a recliner like the one in this post. If anyone has something I could recover (in chocolate with the white piping), let me know!

love,

m