Astrology anyone?

While I don't know how much I believe in Astrology, I find it incredibly interesting. One year for my birthday I asked for "The Secret Language of Birthdays" which provides profiles for people born on each day of the year. It is surprisingly accurate and very entertaining.

So naturally, when talking about inducing I turned to my birthday book. Over the last few months, I have been worried about inducing too early because currently my induction date is set for Oct 17th (my due date is the 26th). I would feel better if either a) baby came on their own or b) induce the week of my due date instead of before.But if I have to pick a date, I figured I'd do some astrological research.

Oct 17th people-

• Strengths- Self-confident, resilient, daring
• Weaknesses- Overconfident, reckless and stubborn
• Also born on this day? Evil Knievel 
• People born on this day are risk-takers and attracted to life-threatening risks/activities. 
• Their mistakes are usually large ones and costly ones when it comes to health and finance 
• Their temper can explode when their authority is threatened or intentions brought into question
• STDs are a common threat because that requires careful precaution

Now, that is a summary of the two pages of information... there wasn't a whole lot of great attributes for people born on this day

Oct 24th people-

• Strengths- magnetic, perfectinist, dramatic
• Weaknesses- jealous, claiming, overstressed
• People on this day have two themes: dramatic revelations and discoveries as well as painstaking attention to details
• They take their work very seriously
• Their personal magnetism aids in getting people interested in what they do
• Rarely do they comment or act on matters which they know little about
• They despise phoniness and are capable of recognizing pretense and dubious information a mile away
• They have stress related difficulties.
• Others born on this day?? Antoine van Leeuenhoek. That's right, the inventor of the first microscope. That nerdy little bit of information sealed the deal for me.

Oct 17th has personality traits that come genetically on my side of the family- I really don't need the stars to align those traits in addition to the genetics. Oct 24th people resemble Stephen and myself a little bit more- harder workers, attention to detail, magnetic (har har). Granted, I would hope baby comes on their own, but if I have to pick a date you better believe I am going to turn to my astrology book for some sort of guidance! 

Paper Mache Letters

So, I am at a crossroads with some decorating stuff but I can't complain too much because I did it to myself by not wanting to find out the gender.

I originally wanted to decoupage the baby's entire name but, because I'm not finding out gender, I would have to do both names. Elizabeth + Barrett = 16 letters > than what I want to spend on wooden letters. Next, I figured I would purchase a large letter E and letter B and go from there. Large letters are also very expensive and not as easy to come by (unless I wanted to spend money to ship something to the house). Also, I have yet to find a neat font for larger letters.

So, I turned to my old friend, Google and found this tutorial from Green Zebra Crafts on how to make your own paper mache letters. What caught my eye is she used a really interesting font for a letter that I'd like to make.

Isn't it pretty? This allows me the freedom to make a letter as large as I would like with a font that I would like. And the best part it, the project is essentially free! So if I wanted to spell out names I could or I could just make two large letters... or whatever!

Baby room officially painted!

The baby room is officially painted and it looks REALLY good. I don't hate it at all at this point. I put one of our ornate, mahogany dining chairs in there and the mahogany looks really pretty against the gray so that makes me feel a little more comfortable with our nursery furniture choices.

Below are pictures of the accent wall. Considering it is night time and two of the overhead lights are out it looks really gloomy but it isn't in person- don't let the lighting fool you!

The rest of the room is the light color you see off to the sides.

The pictures don't do the room justice, maybe its because I used my camera phone. I'm sure once we get lamps in there and put the ceiling fan on a dimmer it will look much better.





We also picked out our fabric to reupholster our nursery chair. It was $26 a yard but we had a coupon for 40% off so that REALLY helped with the price. It isn't what I had initially set out for but I think it will look good once it is finished.

It's difficult to take a good picture of it:

This is with the flash on, it made it looks strange but you can see the pattern really well.


















Here it is draped over the chair.. the pattern doesn't look so severe at a distance. I think we will do a dark brown pipping with brown buttons to give it a little pop.


Again, it isn't what I originally had envisioned but I think the pattern will hide stains and it will look good in every other room in my house if we ever wanted to take it out of the nursery.






Earlier today we moved the chair into the baby room and we are having to rethink out ENTIRE layout of the room.. but I think we have it figured out.

We will have to purchase the taller dresser instead of the longer changing table dresser for the sake of space.

I am okay with this because I can do more with something taller since the baby will have a harder time climbing on top of it.

I am glad we took measurements this weekend because we are purchasing the furniture next weekend. It would have REALLY sucked to get the dresser only to realize it won't work. Or, if we did keep it, we would probably stub our toes or run into when we first walked in the room. 




The last thing I found for the baby's room is this fabric for the valance and possible for my mobile redo:

I found it at Spoonflower and thought it would fit wonderfully in my Snoopy themed room. I originally wanted to do the valance in a gender specific color so lighten up the gray color in the room but Stephen and I kinda would like the baby room to be as finished as possible when the baby gets here. The last thing I think we want to do is make a valance. So we decided on the gray and we could easily add pink and blue ribbons to it later.

That's all I have for today- lots of decorating decisions took place today and I am worn out!

Almost painted

I am posting because if I don't do something I might fall asleep and considering its only 8:30 if I sleep now, I'll most likely wake up around midnight and stay up till 4 or something ridiculous. Stephen is painting the accent color in the baby room- I think it is turning out okay!

Here you can see the light gray and the "test stripe" for the accent wall.














And here you can kinda get an idea of what the room will look like with the main color.


I think the gray looks better in person than in these photos.


Right above the closet door, I plan on hanging the fabric embroidery hoops (mentioned here).





I started hunting on ebay and got a great deal a set of hoops. I think I paid $16? dollars for 9 wooden hoops. Considering the larger ones can be $5 on their own, I think it was a decent price (not a steal, by any means... but a good deal)

They came in the other day:

I think I have a can of black spray paint somewhere... if not, I'll get some and paint these a dark gray/black color. I plan on putting pink fabrics on one side and blue fabrics on the other and strategically place them above the closet door. Then when baby gets here- they will be flipped to the appropriate color and viola!










Next week we get our carpet and that weekend we will order our baby furniture. I doubt the furniture will come in before school starts back up, which kinda sucks because I'd like to get the baby room as finished as possible before I go back to work. Oh well, it is what it is.

OH! I remembered I had this book on one of our bookcases. It is one of my childhood favorites! For our baby shower, I think we are going to ask for childrens books in lieu of a card so we can fill the cloth hanging book holders I plan on making.

Which reminds me! We have narrowed down the date for our baby shower- Sept 24th at our house. I am so excited!


I don't think I have much more to blabber on about... that killed about 30 minutes. I guess I could check on Stephen's painting progress or look and fill my baby registry with random stuff to keep me awake.

I found my chair!

I have been worried about finding a rocking chair for my nursery that I like for a good price. Because if you recall the chair I wanted I could only find at Pottery Barn and would cost around $1500 - $1800. JcPenny had upholstered chairs that were really cute but all the reviews said they were made for people shorter than 5'7.. considering I'm 5'9 and Stephen is 6 foot their $500 chairs would be uncomfortable to use and a waste of money. I don't like the gliders they have at Babies R' Us... sooooooo my hamster wheels started to spin.

First thought- I could get a comfortable club chair from craigslist, spend $170 on the hardware to convert it to a rocking chair and then upholster it. So, for $400 - $600 I could get a chair I really love. Realistically, it would be closer to the $600 end which is more than I'd like to spend.

So, I hopped on Craigslist to see what was out there and I found this chair for $100 in Frisco. EDIT: I wanted to edit my post to mention how awesome my friend Megan is. She went with me to Frisco and carried the chair down a flight of chairs. (I had no idea stairs were involved!). I couldn't have done it with out her- thanks Megan!


Not only is the shape and style beautiful, it already rocks and swivels! So now I don't have to worry about attaching hardware to make it rock.

As much as I like the pink and yellow toile, we are going to reupholster it something gender neutral. Then, when baby gets here I can add a toile pillow that is pink or blue.

As much as I'd like an ottoman, I can live w/o one for the time being. Worse case, I'll get a cheap one somewhere and make a slip cover.. or something. I'll cross that bridge when we get there.



The hardest part is deciding the color and pipping to reupholster. Ideally, I would like a cream color fabric, but I know having a baby + cream fabric = stains. But the other color option I have is gray, but that is just too much gray in the room. I really, really, want cream.

At first I thought I would like cream with gray pipping and gray buttons, but I'm not too keen on the chairs I'm finding online that fit that description. I don't know if its because most of the chairs are white and not cream... or if its because the style of chair is so totally different from mine... its hard to get a mental image.  This is what I've found so far:

Thoughts?

Gray paint makes me blue

I am thankful for many things, one being the $3 paint samples at Home Depot. I started to paint the baby's room a gray color called "Creek Bend" (I think?). and while I liked it, Stephen thought it was too dark for the furniture we wanted.

By the way, this is what happens when I have a paint brush instead of a roller- yes, I know, I'm 27 not 13.. don't judge me.


We have to be careful with these paint colors because the baby furniture is dark mahogany not white. If the baby furniture we liked wasn't such an ugly, stark white the wall paint color wouldn't be as big of an issue. Now, I have to worry about the paint color looking okay with the furniture (which has never been a problem in the other 7 rooms we've painted in this house). Ugh. So we ventured to Home Depot to get more paint rollers, tape and something to fix the toilet in the guest bedroom (that's a whole other story).
We looked at various shades of light gray. I don't like light gray. Most light grays look like a dingy white, or a have a blue/green undertone. I had to walk away from the paint swatches before I started to cry (yay hormones). We settled on a color called Cathedral Gray and bought a $3 sample... I'll go mess with that here in a bit. I'm still kinda bummed because I strongly dislike light gray and I don't think what I originally want to do will "pop" against the light gray, or look as good as they would have with the darker gray.

I don't think I want to paint a stripe anymore. I had to talk Stephen into the stripe and it looks like I might have to talk him out of the stripe. I think I would rather do something like this with dark gray instead of white (not the wainscot, just the rectangular trim):

Or make something out of MDF that gives this sort of feel:

I found Design a la Mod did a really neat headboard, and I thought I might be able to mimic it but in boxes to put on the wall above the crib:

I think if I could do something like the above to break up the light gray, I might be happier. Maybe I could paint an accent wall dark gray (one w/o furniture against it).

I'm sure I'll piece it together once I can find a gray I like. I broke away from typing this blog to paint a test box, and it actually doesn't look that icky. Maybe we found a winner?

Random

I don't know why I feel the odds are against me to have a little girl the percentages are approximately 51 boy/49 girl (for whatever reason, statistically it isn't 50/50 even though scientifically is it). Heck, I even think this baby is a little boy even thought it would be really nice to have a little girl =o)
My husbands response to this is "we can always find out" but I enjoy not knowing.

I bought my first set of onesies for the baby. In order to get free shipping for this lamp (for our guest bedroom):

... I had to spend $50 or more. Well, the lamp was $39.99 and the shipping was $9.56 so it made sense to find something for about $10 to get free shipping. Well, it did to me. Anywho, I decided to buy something for baby and I thought these were absolutely adorable:

Oh my goodness- SO CUTE! It's kinda difficult to tell but they have duckies on them (except the striped and polka-dot ones). I figured they were neutral enough to purchase. I can't wait for baby Sturge to get here!

Old Wives Tale

Doctor's visit went well. Baby's heart rate was 137/138 and my blood pressure was normal. My back is killing me- between leaning over to finish my Snoopy latch-hook, doing dishes, organizing, setting up my topsy-turvy tomato plant and general bending over I can barely lean forward at this point.

Side note:
Today I found an online gender prediction test and here are the results:

BUT the Chinese gender calendar predicts I will have a boy.