When our house was being built, we opted for just some ceiling fan pre-wires in all of the upstairs rooms. Any additional lighting was ridiculously up priced and we figured if we wanted to eventually do recessed lights upstairs, we had access to our attic. Fast forward 2 years (ah, it will be 2 years since we closed in just 2 weeks!) and we’re now ready to use a spare bedroom as a nursery. And this is our light fixture….

I wanted a clean, modern light fixture in here. I’ve expressed my love for drum pendants before, but somehow I have not put a single one in our house yet! I figured I’d start with the nursery, especially since our first nursery purchase were some Jonathan Adler giraffe sconces which come with white shades.

(via Macys)

I have a gift card to the Land of Nod and I remembered that they had some affordable pendants, the Hangin’ Around Lamp.

(via Land of Nod)

The pendant comes in a variety of colors, including white, gray, brown, hot pink, lime green, navy and orange. So many of those would work in our room. After thinking about it a little, I decided white would be best. Then I decided that $99 (even with a gift card) was too much to spend for a plain white light. Back to the drawing board it was! And by drawing board, I mean google…

I googled a bit and then discovered this…

It’s a 15″ white drum pendant lamp on sale at Target for $23.99… and it comes with a lightbulb. Perfect size, nice, cheap and I got free shipping and 10% for using my Target card. Needless to say, it took me about 20 seconds to click the buy button. Unfortunately, this was over a week ago and it’s no longer available for me to link for you guys 🙁

Tonight we finally got around to hanging it. I would post a how to install lighting, but I was holding the light most of the time and Mike said it’s simple enough… screw in your metal bracket, cut the wire of the fixture to your desired length with pliers, strip the wires, match the colored wires of your fixture to the colored wires coming out of your ceiling, twist ’em together, tape them with electrical tape, screw cap on and I think that was it? I couldn’t see beyond the giant shade I was holding. Plus my calves kept getting cramps from keeping my balance. Standing is hard when you’re super pregnant…

Here are some night time pictures of our new friend.

It looks so nice and classy against the paneled wall.

And the sky blue ceiling.

One downside to the inexpensive option is that it does not come with a diffuser. The lightbulb is extremely bright and an eyesore (in multiple ways). I started googling around for solutions and I think we’ll try a silver tipped light bulb first. The bulb hangs low and I’m a little nervous to put any sort of material on the bottom of the shade. Though I found this Apartment Therapy post which says that a CFL lightbulb emits much less heat than a standard bulb, so creating a diffuser shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll probably try picking up a different bulb first.

I am dedicating this weekend to finishing up the paint job in the nursery. I just saw that we installed the paneled wall back in the beginning of February and March has been super busy for us. I am looking forward to having a full weekend to put into the room, especially since I need to take multiple breaks (and naps!) while working on projects these days. I have to accept that what I used to be able to do in 2 hours now takes me 4 and plan ahead for that additional time. Wish me luck 🙂

It’s that time again, time for Young House Love and Bower Power‘s Pinterest challenge! For the last two Pinterest challenges, I made paintings… one was the landscapes I hung in our dining room and the other was a pencil eraser monogram. I really had no clue what to make this time since we’re still in the middle of painting the nursery and not quite ready for any other projects in there. I also did not want to tackle any other large projects on our to-do list, since the nursery is our primary focus these days (considering we only have 8 weeks, eek!) I was honestly thinking I’d sit this one out when Mike reminded me that we picked up some things from Ikea a while back to organize our gift wrap. He’s a keeper.

Cue the Pinspiration!

(from BHG via Pinterest)

Up until this point, I’ve stored gift wrap in one of those Rubbermaid gift wrap containers. Problem was it didn’t really accomodate my ribbon collection or taller wrapping paper. Our wrapping paper has been hanging out in our guest room and this year I decided to use the Rubbermaid container exclusively for Christmas wrapping stuff. Considering the guest room looks like this as of our baby shower this weekend, this challenge could not have come at a better time….

This is only the smaller gifts… the larger ones are downstairs. Once the baby’s closet is all painted and done, we can move this stuff out of here. All the way in the corner was my wrapping paper collection, I rescued it from the sea of baby.

I decided to use another organizing method I found on Pinterest, this one from A Brooklyn Limestone.

(from A Brooklyn Limestone via Pinterest)

We picked up supplies to tackle this back when we were on a new office kick. We literally dropped everything to work on the nursery once February rolled around, so this got put on the back burner. We pretty much bought exactly the same supplies as the inspiration picture, with a few modifications….

3 Bygel rails

1 Bygel wire basket

1 pack of Dignitet curtain clips

4 Gruntal cutlery caddies

I didn’t take any in progress pictures except for this one, please excuse the mess all over the place. This room was our clutter and sawing area while working on the nursery.

The process was pretty simple and self explanatory. Some important things to note though, the bars do not come with screws. Also, if you go with the Grundtal cups, they screws they give you (or at least they gave us) were too short. So keep some spare screws nearby 🙂

Here’s our finished product (with crappy night photos because I got home from work late)

I know, the quality of that picture makes me cringe too. I tried 8 million times to take a better one but the room just has poor lighting at night. Anyway! We decided to put our wrapping paper up top since our door is super narrow and we had to work around the door knob.

Next, we put 3 cups with some Sharpies, bows and paint brushes for now. Once we fully move the office upstairs I will have tons more crafty things to put in these.

On the bottom we put a flat wire rack with ribbon in it and another cup full of colored tissue paper.

All in all, it was a super easy and cheap way to be able to see all of my pretty stuff. Plus it holds way more wrapping paper than I thought it would.

And the best part? It hides away nicely behind a door 🙂

Be sure to check out Sherry’s (Young House Love) and Katie’s (Bower Power) projects tomorrow. Plus, this time around they’ve teamed up with Cassie from Hi Sugarplum and Erin from The Great Indoors, so check out their projects as well. I shall be in all 4 places tomorrow 🙂

ps- maybe i can update this with better daylight pictures tomorrow!

On Saturday, our families threw us a baby shower. It took place at the same local bed & breakfast where we got married almost 2.5 years ago.

It was sort of rainbow themed, though my mom, mother-in-law and sister-in-law Jen kept the decorations to a minimum to not take away from the classic house.

My sister-in-law ordered these adorable invites and thank you cards and set them up on the entryway table with favors and candle holders made out of tissue paper.

Yes I blurred out my last name. Not that I necessarily care if you know it, but it just seemed wrong to blantantly post it you know?

On the other side of the entryway were some adorable centerpieces my mother-in-law made with crayons and baby pictures of Mike and I.

I forgot how big the house was. There was no formal seating during the shower and just seating throughout the many rooms of the house (probably about 5 large rooms downstairs?). I opened gifts in this large living room area.

And that seriously ends where Mike took pictures. We were so busy making the rounds that we didn’t get pictures of a lot of things, including the rainbow cupcakes, food, a shot of me actually standing and a shot of us together. Thankfully I did ask a friend to take some pictures while I opened gifts. We received so many amazing things, which was even more apparent when I went through these pictures and realized I am smiling ridiculously huge in most of them.

That’s a puppy cat hat. I’m not sure if it’s a puppy or a cat. I think I decided it’s a chihuahua.

My sister in law painted this wipe case with my favorite, Puss in Boots. It has our last name on the right side so of course I blurred it out, but I couldn’t resist posting my Puss in Boots impression (learned from Darwin)…

We also got loads of baskets full of goodies, which I love (and are generally my gift giving choice when I go to baby showers :)) I wish I had before pictures of how adorable they all looked.

Of course, no baby shower is complete without a poop reference.

The blog wasn’t forgotten at the shower either. My mother-in-law gave me this bib…

I caught Macky wearing it already….

I always love reading about baby gear on blogs and I got a lot of ideas for what to register for by reading blogs. I like seeing what sort of baby stuff people with a similar style to mine find, so I figured I’d share some of our choices that we received on Saturday. Maybe it will help a fellow pregnant lady out? 🙂

1. bumGenius Elemental Cloth Diapers– Mike and are planning to use cloth diapers most of the time. It seems to be one of those topics that fascinate people like how we don’t eat meat…we’re crazy, what can I say? The truth is we try to do the best we can with what we have. We’re not trying to fit into any label or group, but we do what we feel is best for us. We went with the all-in-ones because we think it would be easiest for us. We are thinking of picking up some bumGenius 4.0s also to try while we figure out what we like best. We know it will be a learning process (I mean, what won’t be!?) but we’re confident in our decision.

2. Chicco KeyFit 30 Infant Car Seat in Romantic– I did the usual research, determined this one was safe, easy to carry and a nice classy fabric. SOLD!

3. babyGap Convertible Printed Bundler– Not only does this have an adorable gender neutral star pattern, but it’s super soft and converts from a bundler to a one piece with pants!

4. JJ Cole Diaper & Wipes Pod in Mixed Leaf– I love all things JJ Cole. They’ve managed to make baby gear look super chic. The pattern on this won me over and I thought it would add a nice pop of fun to my solid gray diaper bag (I also got the matching pacifier and bottle holders)

5. Fisher Price Space Saver High Chair– This pattern is sold exclusively at Target and for some reason I love the childish numbers on it. We went with this as opposed to a traditional stand alone high chair because we don’t have a lot of room in our eat in kitchen and we didn’t want an extra giant thing hanging around. Plus we like the idea of taking this anywhere with us, but it still functions exactly like a regular high chair. It even turns into a booster for older kids!

6. Lifefactory Glass Baby Bottle 4 pack (in gender neutral colors)– Mike and I stopped using plastics for our hot food probably over a year ago. Something about the thought of leeching creeps me out. We traded in all of our ziploc plastic containers for glass, so it only seemed right to use glass bottles for the baby as well. We went with these because not only is the colorful sleeve adorable, but it helps protect the bottle from breaking. They also come with solid caps to hold snacks or sippy cup lids so that the bottles grow with the baby.

7. giggle Better Basics Striped Cap– Because it’s adorable, organic, striped and a bright color. We also received the matching bibs, mittens and booties!

8. UppaBaby Vista Stroller in Silver/Mica– Some of you spotted this in the box in one of our nursery posts. I could write a whole lengthy post on our stroller decision, but the UppaBaby won out at the last minute. I was set on a Baby Jogger City Select for months, then suddenly changed my mind. I love that the UppaBaby comes standard with a bassinet and we went with a 2011 model (which were cheaper than the newly released 2012 ones). So I was pretty convinced.

One item I meant to include but forgot is the Ergo Baby Organic carrier. I am totally going to be one of those people that walks around with my baby strapped to my chest (how else will I blog?) and I love this carrier. I’m debating whether to get the infant insert for the Ergo we received at the shower, or go with a different carrier for the newborn stage (like a Moby). Any thoughts?

Sorry I went mommy blogger for a few there, but you can open your eyes now 🙂

Anyway, we are very lucky to have super generous family and friends who not only threw a beautiful shower for us, but made sure our baby was set with a bunch of wonderful goodies. I cannot wait to have the room all ready so I can begin to put some of this stuff away!

ps- The plan all week was to paint the nursery on Sunday, but I was drained after all of the excitement so Mike worked on it solo. Maybe it will be done by the end of the week for a reveal 🙂

No that’s not the beginning of a bad joke, that’s how our adventures in finding the perfect shade of gray for the nursery could be described. If you remember, we started off with Olympic’s Gray Beard…

Which was way too light and way too blue for our taste. We rummaged through some of the 8 million swatches we picked up once again and chose another gray.

We pulled out Gray Goose and decided to (wisely) get a tester this time. But we put the color on the walls and it wasn’t what we expected…

It was too brown and had some funky purpley/pink undertones in the room. I scratched my head for a bit trying to think of what color we actually wanted. Gray was too gray, taupe was too brown… was I losing my mind? But then I started to feel like I’ve been down this road before in the search for a perfect neutral. I mean, most of our house is painted in varying shades of gray…

I had all of these shades of gray to look at right on our own walls. I thought our entryway color, the middle color in the top row, might give off the too brown/pinkish tinge in the nursery though it looks normal in the entryway. Then I thought that the first gray in the second row might be perfect. It’s Olympic’s Gray Ghost and we used it for the lighter stripe in our office…

By some sort of miracle, I stumbled upon the swatch while I was getting dressed in our closet on Tuesday morning. I apparently stash swatches everywhere and it was one of the neutrals we considered for our bedroom (which has yet to be painted). I immediately brought it into the nursery and held it up to the wall to see how it worked. I also held it up against the bedding, curtain fabric and my dark gray leggings which represented the glider we’re planning to buy. Everything looked promising, but since we’ve been there, done that (twice!), we wanted to try some paint on the walls. I figured we had to have some left over from the last time we painted but even better, we still had the tester we used a year ago (already!)

Mike put some of it on the wall and sent me pictures while I was at work (since I never make it home before dark)…

There is is on the bottom of the corner, with the Gray Goose above it and the Gray Beard in the background. It’s definitely much better than the other two!

You can see here that it doesn’t have that purpley/pink thing going on that the Gray Goose did.

Nor is it blue, which you can see from this picture where the Gray Ghost is on top of the Gray Beard. The testers only come in satin, hence the sheen in this picture.

After a journey through what felt like any color that Olympic started with the word “gray”, I think we have a winner! We don’t have enough paint leftover from the office to cover the entire nursery, so we have to pick up another can this weekend. Hopefully then the painting will be completed because this little set back has cost us a week of time!

Maybe rather than a bad joke, Beard, Goose and Ghost can make some childhood game. Like duck, duck, goose or rock paper scissors? I want to be a paint color namer when I grow up…

I’ve left the 20s and entered a new leading digit.

I also switched to a maternity shirt this picture, which just fits so much better than the non-stretchy one I was squeezing in before. The next time I do one of these series I’ll be sure to start with a super stretchy shirt as opposed to a baggy shirt with not much stretch.

Now that I finally look super pregnant and the elderly women in the hair salon told me I was cute when I walked in (even without makeup and in baggy sweat pants), I feel a little sad that this is almost over. Though I am well aware and anxious that I will soon have an adorable baby I’m dying to meet, part of me is like holy crap, how am I 3/4 done already?? You wait so long to not feel sick, then to have a normal looking bump and then… it’s almost over.

Here’s to hoping the next 5 weeks treat me well– I get some good nights of sleep, my ankles stay manageable most of the time and I’m able to enjoy my last 1/4 of pregnancy.