Kayleigh - One Month

It's hard to believe Kayleigh is already a month old! It definitely doesn't feel like she came home only four weeks ago.

At the last doctor's appointment (her two week check up - she was about 2.5 weeks old at the time) she surpassed her birth weight by 1lb! I'm sure shes around 7lbs now. Still in premie diapers and can't fit into half of her newborn clothes, though, but at least its because shes too small instead of too big so they will get used eventually!

She is just starting to smile a little but they're few and far in between and will make cooing noises when she is content. 

Garage Sale Loot

Saturday my friend, Rachel, and I decided to go garage saleing! Of course the little miss came along as well chilling out in the moby wrap while we walked around.
For the most part it was a bust. I did see this awesome antique egg basket for $15 that I am kicking myself for not buying. I did get some pretty good finds, though!

5 baby blankets for $3 

(I'm quickly learned you can never have enough blankets...)

Two 12-month outfits for $2

5 Glass Insulators for $9.50, Ball Mason Jar for $.75 and "Milk of Magnesia" bottle for $.75

Total spent - $16

 Passed out tired and almost naked? Priceless.

(in the three hours we were shopping she blew through all the spare outfits I had on me!)

Between naptimes

Thank you all for your comments on the announcement of Kayleigh's arrival! Having a newborn around is definitely something that I am still adjusting too but I and getting into the swing of things and have been able to get a few things done between naps (but I have still yet to finish most of them!)

My sister commissioned me for a family sign for a wedding present for her friend. As you can see, extra love went into it. Can't do anything without one cat laying on top of it at some point.

 

I'm still finishing up Kayleigh's room. The big thing to work on is the bookcase we're building and the painted sign for behind her crib. So far I have the wood for the sign stained and we are 80% finished building the bookcase but it still needs to be primed and painted.

This was a mirror I got at Goodwill sometime last year that I wanted to use in the nursery but not knowing if we were having a boy or a girl I didn't want to use it right away since it definitely was more girly.

 Once Kayleigh came I just painted it blue with some craft paint I had on hand. Three coats later and some hot glue to reattach the mirror it looked awesome.

The hallway is also getting a much needed update - I'm painting it finally!! (Silver Drop color matched to Glidden) I have also slowly been adding photos to the frames.

 The trim is looking much nicer painted white instead of the dingy tan. 

I've also gotten around to replanting my succlent. It's been sitting in it's original pot for over a year and was starting to outgrow it. I split it up between two candle-jar-turned-planters.

I think I have been more productive these two weeks with Kayleigh than I have all year!! Lets hope I keep this up :)

Kayleigh Mae

For those who don't follow me on Instagram (mylittlemess) you probably don't know I had a bit of a surprise Tuesday morning.

Kayleigh Mae came rushing into the world at 6:45am on May 14 weighing a tiny 5lbs 14oz.

 Charlie and I are, of course, completely and utterly in love.

Nothing can make you love your husband more than seeing him hold his child

Tiny baby feet with long monkey toes!

I'm going to try and keep up with monthly photos for her (hopefully do a better job than I did with my bump photos haha) 

I tried two different ways and couldn't decide which one I liked more so I'm going to do both for the time being.

Charlie and I are using the down time (or at least as much down time you get with a newborn) to finish up a few things so hopefully in this upcoming week I will have a couple of projects finished!

Nursery update - Paint

Last week Charlie and I finished painting the baby's room! We had two delays, one being the previous owners did a VERY bad patch job in one of the corners of the room so we had to sand their patch down, mud it, then sand the new mud down, and repeat. Charlie was nervous but he did an excellent job - you can't even tell its there! The other was that weather has been sucking so we waiting until warm days so we could open the window while we paint.

I decided on Silver Drop by Behr color matched to Glidden for the walls. Although I do like Behr's paint, I feel like Glidden gets better coverage. We didn't use any primer and only had to use two coats. We could have gotten by with just one coat but Charlie missed a few spots with the roller the first time around so we just put another coat on. The room is so small it took us less than an hour per coat so we didn't mind..

The color match was very close! Behr had more of a yellow-ish undertone while Glidden gave it a blue undertone, which I actually like much better! (I have a weird thing about having yellow on the walls...)

Next to get painted was the trim. The entire house's trim is painted this lovely tanish-cream color that makes it look dingy. I perked it up in this room with a nice glossy white (just Glidden's eggshell in white - no specific color was used) It made everything look so much better!

The closet is a hot mess right now because I need to buy some storage before I can put anything away. The dresser is the same one that use to be in the office. The changing pad I bought is half an inch too big to fit on top of the dresser so we need to cut some wood for it to sit on.

I have a lot of things I need to finish in the next three weeks and I didn't want to add even more to my to-do list so after much deliberation I decided to order a mobile from Etsy instead of making one myself. I bought Owl Mobile from Machooka Handmade

Image from Machooka Handmade

Might I say Oh. My. GOSH is it cute!! I probably never would have bought something that expensive normally but I though, heck, you only have a first child once so why not? I can't wait to hang it!

Still to do:

• Hang Lack Shelves (They are supposed to arrive next week. Ikea, why aren't you closer to St. Louis?!)
• Buy some baskets for storage
• Find some sort of small bookcase or sweet talk Charlie into making something similar to Ikea's Expedit cubes so it can fit under the window.
• Hang picture frames
• Make roman shade
• Reupholster ottoman in a fun print
• Make crib skirt (Matching print to ottoman?)
• Cut & Paint board for dresser changing pad

Just to give you an idea of the transformation of this room:

Move in day - May 2011

 

August 2012

 

And now! 

It's nice seeing at least one room in the house coming together the way I want it to!!

Cardinal Nation

To prepare for the huge upcoming event I have been trying to get my Mother and Father day presents out of the way. Since we live in St. Louis, of course the Cardinals play a big part to my family (with the exception of Charlie and I - We aren't big sports fans) My dad has slowly been turning the basement into his Man Cave by decking it out in Cardinal memorabilia so when I stumbled across this poster on Etsy one day I knew I had to make him something similar

from Gemini Studios on Etsy

 I used the same sign making method that I used for my family signs - designed it on the computer, printed it out and traced over the print to leave an indention to show where to paint. 

On Instagram I gave a few teasers of my first day of working on the lettering

The size I decided on was 18x33 inches so it's a pretty big size and I didn't think through the fact that 8+ month pregnant belly +  large board = difficulties. But I endured and I am really happy with the outcome!

I love the distressed edged. I was thinking of re-staining where the wood shows through but I think I like it lighter. The dark stained sides with the lighter edges just make it look so much better to me.

The numbers on the bottom is really what was the most pain since they were so small but I'm glad I decided to go with them there. 

 My dad is a really awesome dad, especially lately helping with the baby's room so I wanted to show him how much I appreciate him. I can't wait until Father's day!

Now if I can get the baby room finished, we will be on a roll...

DIY Maternity Photos

T-minus 6 weeks and counting. This is getting real y'all...

We have been having BEAUTIFUL weather lately and while opening the windows in the house I decided to have an impromptu maternity shoot!

 I wish I have a twin reflex camera so this photos but haven't found one to add to my collection yet :(

It was actually very easy - just used my DSLR (Canon Rebel XSi), 50mm lens (nifty fifty which i LOVE) a tripod and wireless remote. I moved the couch out of the way of the living room window (Don't worry - it's on felt strips so it slides very easily. I didn't strain my preggo self!) and left the curtains closed to filter the light.
There was a lot of running back and forth making sure that I had setting and my position correct but it only took me about an hour and a half until I had enough that I was satisfied.

If anyone is interested, I might come back with a tutorial on how to get these types of silhouette photos.

Laziest blogger award goes to me!

Oh, ya know, just another three months have passed since my last post. Yeah, not much has been going on here still - the baby room has yet to be touched, frames are still empty on my walls, all that jazz. Frankly, we have been lazy with lots of night spend laying on the couch watching movies. Winter seems to take all my energy away.

Hopefully we will paint the baby room soon as we are waiting for the weather to warm up so we can open the windows and let the paint fumes air out. My parents gifted me with the crib but since we haven't painted (or even removed the twin bed!) I have been staring longingly at the box every time I visit my parent's house.

I've been slacking on making new things for my etsy shop as well but thats because I have been having fun designing invitations for friends and family instead. Here are a few designs that won't show up in my shop, even though I love them soooo much:

Sunday was my baby shower! It was super fun and my sisters and BFF did an amazing job.

 (Yeah.. I hate taking pictures. Cue the creepy-smile-face haha)

 My sisters (on the ends) and BFF

Toilet paper belly measuring game

Currently all the baby gear is sitting in the middle of our living room due to the aforementioned unfinished room. I fight every day from opening everything to play/mess with it. Yes, I still haven't grown up yet.

It's hard to believe that in less than 10 weeks we will be meeting our little guy/gal.

Something that has been taking up a bit of my time is dealing with a car accident I had three weeks ago when some genius wasn't paying attention and rear ended me at a stop light. If you follow me on Instagram you probably saw this photo:

. Me and the baby are perfectly fine! (the car is even fine, thankfully, but it needs a whole new bumper). Going to the hospital was just a precaution to make sure of that. Since then I have been calling around dealing with police and medical reports because the guy attempted to run but thankfully this happened 2 seconds from my house and I called Charlie to meet me. He pulled up as soon as they guy took off and was able to follow him to his girlfriend's house. He ended up running out the back door so they never caught him. :(

We were able to get a name and all that so we're looking into legal channels to see what we can do.

Murphy's Law, right? 

I do have a few things planned for the oncoming months so I hope it won't be another three months until my next post!