Wrenn’s Baby Quilt

I got started on Wrenn girl’s baby quilt over the weekend. I was able to get the whole thing cut out and a design created, and then I ran out of steam and needed a nap. But at least it’s a start! 10.5 weeks to go ’til she gets here and I need it done.

Of course I went with chevron, because it’s my favorite. And honestly, because that’s what this fabric called for. I tried a few other options, but this was just too pretty not to stick with this tried and true friend of a pattern.

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Don’t forget, I have another little chevron quilt available in the shop.

Cute as a Button Baby Shower

My blog is acting funny – I posted this earlier this week, but for some reason you couldn’t click on the link or comment… so I’m posting it again. Sorry to my email subscribers who are probably tired of seeing this – thanks for your patience!

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Last weekend my sisters and mom hosted a “cute as a button” baby shower for little Wrenn. And let me tell you, they gave Martha Stewart a run for her money – I’ve never seen such cute decorations!

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They used antique family quilts, along with sewing supplies, as decorations. It was the absolute perfect theme for me.

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This hand-made bunting will be making another appearance in her nursery soon. Thanks Aunt Sarah!

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A photo with my mom and two sisters – such amazing hostesses!

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Mr. Right made an appearance at the end… such a cutie. And for the record – I didn’t realize how big that baby belly of mine had gotten until I saw this picture – WOWZERS!

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My mother-in-law and Mr. Right’s aunt…

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A dear sorority sister from Baylor…

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Thanks to everyone who came out to bless little Wrenn Olivia!

Chevron Baby Stroller Quilt

I know I’ve told several people I wouldn’t be making any more baby quilts for the time being (except for Wrenn girl’s quilt, which I started on Saturday), but a few weeks ago I had a burst of energy and some leftover scraps from my mom’s mullet quilt. And so I whipped up this little guy in just a few hours.
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It’s a 29 inch x 29 inch stroller or car seat quilt – no batting so that it’s nice and thin and folds up to fit in your baby bag

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And of course, since gray and yellow are some of my very favorite colors, I had to go with the yellow backing. I just love all of these fabrics together – modern and sleek but also playful.

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This beautiful little quilt is available in the shop now – I hope she finds a good home! And, unless I get another wild hair, this will probably be the last baby quilt in the shop until after baby girl gets here. Probably.

Look at us, we started the nursery!

Folks, we have a nursery! After a few months of putting it off, then brainstorming, then putting it off some more, we finally cleaned out Mr. Right’s office/guest room (what a great guy), taped everything off, and got the thing painted, all in 24 hours.

A special thanks to my awesome sister who came over and painted the nursery for us! Talk about a servant’s heart. She knew that my doctor said no painting for me, and Mr. Right is crazy swamped with finals (oh, how we’re all counting down the minutes until grad school is OVER), so she just decided to do it for us. It was such a blessing.

You should have seen Mr. Right and I prepping the night before she came to get the room ready. I was in my work dress (because dresses are so much more comfortable than anything else right now), on my hands and knees taping off the baseboards while Mr. Right was on a ladder caulking holes and removing blinds. I’m not very graceful under typical circumstances, but I’m like a clumsy beast at this point, so I’m sure the neighbors got an eye full through our blind-less windows at 9:30 at night. And I’m just pregnant enough to not really care.

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The next morning Mr. Right assembled our crib, and suddenly the room felt like a nursery. He has since moved in other furniture (an armoire for storage and a dresser that we’ll use as a changing table – pics to come), and slowly but surely we’re moving closer to being baby-ready.

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The nursery will be mostly neutrals – grays and whites – with pops of color in our accents. This fabric, which is part of the quilt I’m making for her, is the inspiration for those pops of color – lot’s of tangerine-oranges, turquoises, and a few other random colors here and there.

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And here’s the rest of the fabric for her quilt. We’ll be using the leftovers for pillows, possibly a bedskirt, etc. You know, whatever I get inspired to sew. Don’t be surprised if you don’t find some leftovers in my Etsy shop in the form of baby quilts or pillows.

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And, finally, we’re thinking about using this picture for above the crib. Mr. Right and I have a real love for internationals (especially our ESL students!), and we also love to travel, so we think this is the perfect picture to go above our tiny sleeping baby. Plus, it reminds me of a quilt.

Stay tuned for more pictures as we make progress on the nursery. I’m 29 weeks along, so not too much longer until she’s here with us napping in this very room!

The Pregnant Girl Patchwork Quilt

Have I mentioned that I’m feeling better? To all of you dear friends and readers who have prayed for me and encouraged me through SIX LONG MONTHS OF ROUND THE CLOCK MORNING SICKNESS (bleh), I am pleased to announce that I have been (almost) completely nausea free FOR FOUR WHOLE WEEKS!

This is me doing a happy dance. Which is actually pretty disturbing considering the giant belly bouncing around.

So anyway, now that I’m feeling like a normal person these days (a ginormous normal person with a bowling ball sitting on her lap and a baby whose favorite position is bear hugging her bladder), I have been back to doing things I love. Like quilting. And eating. Lot’s and lot’s of eating, to the shagrin of my OB who all but wagged her finger when she saw that the scale reflected my newfound love of food (did you know food actually TASTES GOOD? I had forgotten.).

But enough of this rambling… I have quilt pictures to share. So back to the point, now that I’m feeling better I was able to reunite with my beloved sewing machine and whip out a new quilt top – not for any specific purpose other than it made me happy and I’ve been hankering to try this pattern.

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This is called a 9-patch pattern – if you look closely, you can see that even though all the scraps run together, they’re sewn into blocks of nine, and then those blocks are combined to make bigger blocks. I used a moda jelly roll so cutting the squares was super fast (you can also do this pattern by sewing strips and then cutting them, but I was feeling all organic and wanted to do the entire thing from scratch).

This is the perfect pregnant girl quilt pattern, because there IS no pattern. I wanted the overall look to be scrappy and cluttered looking – there’s something comforting in the craziness and unpredictability. Plus, since there’s no pattern, there wasn’t a lot of that obligatory getting up and down off the floor to lay out my pattern over and over as I sew. The only time I laid it out was at the very beginning to figure out how many patches I needed, and at the very end to pin on the border.

9patch2 I love this picture because you can see my new view as Wrenn girl grows.9patch1And there’s the final version. It still needs to be quilted, but since it’s for me, it’s going to have to wait until after sweet Wrenn’s quilt is finished. Which I have 11 weeks left to complete (assuming she’s on time). Oh my word, where has the time gone?

Stay tuned for more on her quilt – and her nursery – this week. And pics of our first baby shower. And baby bump pics. It’s going to be a busy week.

Easter weekend… & baby girl has a name!

  • Ate my weight the baby’s weight in peach cobbler and chocolate cupcakes and chocolate pie.
  • Caught up with loved ones on both sides of the family.
  • Visited a dear friend in her brand-new house.
  • Wore sundresses and flip-flops and LOVED it.
  • Held hands with my man as we sang worship songs at church.
  • Chased some bad guys in my car. Err, I mean called 911 to report a suspicious vehicle, then hunted them down when they moved one street over and called again. (I watch Law & Order – I know how these things work.)
  • Attended a birthday for a friend. Everybody there had little kids running around. It was like a glimpse into our future, and I kind of dug it.
  • Took naps.
  • Registered for baby gear while lying in bed. God bless the Internet.
  • Baked and cooked and pretended to be domestic again.
  • Watched my little toes swell up like Vienna sausages. (isn’t it too soon for that?!?)
  • Found an old box of treasures from my childhood. Was highly entertained by third grade journal entries and my “Men of Mansfield High” calendar. I’m embarrassed – or proud – of how many of those boys I dated.
  • Oh, and we named our baby girl.
Story behind the name to come later.

Christmas is coming early, and some bump pictures

This year it feels like Christmas is coming early. Well, not Christmas, actually – but our due date. At my 22-week doctor appointment a few days ago, my doctor informed me that it was in fact my 24-week appointment. I’ve been skipped a grade. Or two weeks, thanks to a few ultrasounds that showed baby is much further along than they previously thought (and which better follows my original math for the due date). My new due date is July 12.

I was so happy I almost hugged her.

Two weeks closer to holding baby girl. Two weeks closer to not being pregnant. And two fewer weeks of BEING PREGNANT IN TEXAS IN JULY. Praise Jesus, this mama won’t be seeing August 1 with a baby in her belly.

And, for your entertainment, here’s some more belly pictures. I found out this week that my uterus is now the size of a soccer ball (is that TMI?), which explains why my belly is now the size of a soccer ball.

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I’m so happy for maxi dress season – this one is a “regular” non-maternity one from my closet, that still fits… for now. 24 Weeks.

A front view of my new favorite dress, a hand-me-down from my sister-in-law. 24 Weeks.

A side view of that same dress, worn to a western-themed work party Friday night. I almost didn’t go, because I was feeling nauseous, but plugged through and ended up winning an award for “Board Member of the Year” for The Cowtown Marathon. What a wonderful surprise and honor from one of my favorite organizations. 24 Weeks.

What my colleagues didn’t see was me getting so winded and nauseous walking back to my car with Mr. Right that I had to stop twice, bend over with my hands on my knees, and try my darndest to “get it together” and keep going.  Good thing baby girl that you’re worth it.

The nursery, and how I’ve turned into my mother

I’ve become my mother, y’all. Not that it’s a bad thing – in fact, I think it’s a good thing for our bank account. You see, both of us hate to shop. I’ve been this way for awhile now, but while preparing for Baby Right, the fact has been magnified.

I. Hate. To. Shop.

I don’t browse. I hate to research. I’m like a smash-and-grab robber who kicks the door in, grabs the first thing within reach, and drives off like a bat out of Hades. Only in my case, I walk into a store, point to the first thing I see, and get it. The same works for websites. Evidence:

We bought Baby Girl this gorgeous crib (thanks to some leftover gift cards from our wedding) from Pottery Barn Kids. It’s the very first one that pops up when you search “crib” on the site. It also happened to be on sale AND offered free shipping (aka – another $100 discount).

This glider? It wasn’t the first one I sat in at Buy Buy Baby. But it was right next to the first one I sat in. And since that one didn’t offer the fabric I wanted, we opted for this one. Ours will have similar fabric but it’s much, much lighter gray.

Mr. Right knows this about me, so I took him with me to help pick out our diaper bag (since he’ll be carrying it too) and a stroller. We have mutually agreed that he will research the stroller for us (he loves to read reviews) because we both know that if it’s up to me, I’ll pick out the first one I see. And probably the cheapest. I hate spending money.

There are a few exceptions with my one-and-done shopping style. I love discovering fun new decorations on blogs, and I love looking at catalogues. And, occasionally, I fall in love with something totally frivolous, like these ruffle curtains that I can’t take my eyes off of. I haven’t committed to buying them… yet… but I am imagining these will add a touch of femininity to our more neutral nursery.

As for the rest of our nursery – we also have a beautiful dresser that our in-laws handed down to us, that we’ll use for a changing table. We haven’t decided yet if we’ll leave it as is (a gorgeous, stained dark brown) or paint it. Our goal is to put the nursery together in April. Stay tuned for pictures.

In the meantime, I’m glad I’ve become my mother. It’s perfect for our Dave Ramsey family budget. It saves me a lot of time. And both of us married men who LOVE to shop and who make sure we branch out and hit a mall occasionally. Don’t pity us… come join us.

Now to the important stuff: the nursery

This week I bought the very first item for Baby Right. I’ve been so good about not splurging on little girl items because (1) we’ve already been blessed with some great hand-me-downs, (2) I’m still not feeling well enough to want to go shopping most days, and (3) baby stores intimidate me.

Which is why God invented internet shopping. And blogs. Thanks to the combination of the two, I made my very first purchase for my little girl… crib sheets from Target (click on the picture to be taken to the original source).

Aren’t they cute? I’ve been looking for something really neutral, and these were just calling my name. And they were on sale. And I didn’t have to leave my house to buy them. It was love at first sight.

For those of you wondering about our nursery theme… we don’t really have one. We want it to be calm, relaxing, neutral. We want something that can easily grow with baby girl and give us a lot of freedom to change out accessories. Ironically enough, we don’t want it to scream “girly-girl” (even though I’m a pretty girly-girl myself). These are our inspiration photos (again, click on the picture for the link to the original post – the first photo is from a blog I love to follow).

We’re using grays and whites with pops of bright accent colors – probably orange and turquoise. We’ve been given an old dresser from my in-laws for a changing table that we’re going to paint and then use colorful knobs from Anthropologie (or a cheaper knock-off). And of course I plan to design a custom print for the nursery, along with baby girl’s very first quilt.

Time to get to work! Only 19 weeks to go before she arrives!

Guest post – help me plan my nursery

I know I promised more on the gender reveal. And I have really great intentions, but to be honest I’ve spent most of this week watching TV and going to bed early. The good news is that I feel SO MUCH BETTER. In fact, I haven’t had a Zofran in 20 hours, and I’m still functioning.

This is huge.

So while I celebrate being drug-free today (minus my one full-octane coke of the day, which is my new substitute for coffee), please go over to this blog and see my guest post about creating a nursery. My blog friends were so helpful in the glider vs. stuffed rocker question (someone is giving us a glider – hooray!), and the bed vs. no bed in the nursery debate (it was unanimous – we’re going with no bed). It would absolutely make my day if you would leave any other sage, mom advice over on that blog today so that other women (and I) can enter this nursery-creating phase armed with good information.

Because, let’s face it. I am as clueless as they come.

And don’t worry – more on the gender reveal coming soon. Probably. Unless I get sucked into another Law & Order marathon, and then all bets are off.