Happy Christmastime!

I hope you are having a wonderful Christmas season! Hopefully it is not too busy, so that you can enjoy spending time with friends and family and celebrating Christ birth, the reason for the season!

Our Christmas season has been very enjoyable, and is going by so quickly! We finished off November by buying our Christmas tree (a REAL live fir tree, actually grown in Oregon!), and celebrating our 2^nd anniversary. 

I can’t believe it has been two years already, time has gone by so fast! To bring in December we have put up our decorations, and started into the traditional Leis family holiday food already (homemade chex mix and chocolate covered pretzels, yum!!!!). 

We also entered the world of smartphones! That has been to play with our new phones and figure out all that they can do, already we have used them lots for navigation and pictures. I have a feeling it not take that long before we wonder what we ever did without themJ. Unfortunately due to Josiah catching a bad cold we did miss the Denver Festival of Lights Parade that we were planning to go to last weekend L. This weekend made up for it though; we ran errands yesterday, basically finishing up our Christmas shopping  and attending a white elephant gift exchange and dinner at one of Josiah’s friend’s house in Denver. That was a wonderful time to get to celebrate with friends, laugh at all the goofy gifts and eat some really good food!

Now we are counting down the days until Christmas, and until J.R. arrives, 14, in case you haven’t been looking at the calendar J. That is for Christmas at least, for J.R. plus or minus a few depending on when he decides to arrive (at this point I’m definitely hoping for minus a few J). Hopefully soon I will get an entry done on all the things I’ve been accomplishing in the nursery.

37 weeks pregnant. The Dr says everything is going just the way it should, and JR can come whenever he wants to (hopefully soon!)! YAY! Sorry for not a more recent picture because I'm actually 38 weeks now.

Have a happy Christmastime and hopefully soon we will get to announce the arrival of a new addition to our family!

31 Weeks

I am now just over 31 weeks pregnant, only nine more weeks to go!  So far everything is going just the way it should, the baby is growing right on schedule and I am doing fine too.  He is moving quite a bit now, it is really funny to watch and see my stomach twitch when he kicks or moves around.

Though I have not made much progress on the nursery, I have gotten a few things done.  In August, when my parents came to visit, my dad painted the room.  It was blue and now it is a nice soft beige.

This gives you an idea of the new wall color. The pieces of paper taped to the wall are my way of trying to figure out where I want to put pictures, and shelves. 

 I modified the curtains I had already made for the room, so they would not draw so much attention; all I did was take off the pinkish-red strip at the bottom and it really changed the look of them in comparison to how they blended with the rest of the room.

Before. This also shows the previous wall color.

After

I also made size dividers for the closet to help keep all those baby clothes organized!  They were super easy and fun to make, it took me just a couple of hours to make all of them from start to finish.  I found the tutorial for them here.

We are so excited for our little one to get here (I will be even more excited once the room is more put together and actually ready for a little person to live in there J), it will be so fun to meet him when he finally arrives!

On a side note, in case you haven’t been watching the national weather section of the news; on Monday it was 80 degrees here, yesterday probably high 60s, and today by 10am there was three inches of snow!  

                                                                                       

A Quick Update

Here is a quick update of things that have happened since June 2^nd:

1. I am now 17 weeks pregnant. Things so far are going great; the morning sickness is all but gone, which is quite a relief, and other than that I am feeling good. In a couple of weeks we will get to find out the sex of the baby, we are both very excited to be able to find out what it is, as are many other family members I know J.

I'm starting to show, just a little bit.

2. The chickens are almost full grown and, thanks to my father-in-law, they now have a pest free/proof home to roam around in. We should start getting some eggs around August sometime; I can’t wait to have farm fresh eggs!

Dan did a great job covering all the holes so other animals can't make themselves at home.

This shows our "rare exotic" chicken which did turn out to be a Dominque. Also, the black one
in the middle is a Banty, basically a miniature chicken ( you can see in comparison to the
others how small she is). The Banty looked exactly the same as the other black ones,
except she just never grew very big

3. We now have a lawn! Yah!!!!! I am enjoying this new feature of our house quite a lot. They also put in a sprinkler system on a timer, so I don’t even have to water! It has changed the look of our house definitely for the better; I especially enjoy the ability to walk around the yard barefoot. I can’t wait until next summer when we have a little one to crawl around on the grass. It will be so much fun spending summer evenings in yard; I know I have many fond memories from growing up of summer evenings spent on the front porch or running through the sprinklers.  Now all we need are some house numbers and railing around the porch.

Cody made sure he got in the picture too.

Hopefully I will be a bit better about updating more frequently, but at least this gives you an idea of what has been exciting in our lives lately.

Curtains...FINISHED!

Now every room in the house has curtains!

A couple of weeks ago I got the spare bedroom curtains finished, and I have to say that I am really pleased with how they turned out. I used another fabric my mom got at IKEA for me. It was originally white in the background, but I wanted a little bit of a softer look so I tea dyed the fabric. I added the redish color at the bottom to help to tie it in with a rocking chair that is in the room.

It is such a relief to have this project completely checked off my list! Oh, and in case you are wondering, I don’t plan to make any more curtains for a VERY long time J

CURTAINS!

Those of you who have ever had to make a decision about them, or go curtain shopping will especially understand the fulfillment of finally completing this type of project.  I fully understand the time spent browsing through internet sites getting ideas, comparing prices, and just when you get it figured out, then you have to decide on how you will hang them and which curtain rods to get!  I know it is quite the involved lengthy, and often times tedious and frustrating process.  I completely sympathize with anyone who decides they want to make no more decisions all together and is just going to hang a sheet over their window.  I have been pretty close to that point myself a few times.  Actually, I have been there, granted it was shirts and jackets not a sheet.   I wasn’t trying to decide what I wanted, I was trying to finish making them, but it’s all the same.

I can’t remember at exactly what point in time I decided this, but I remember deciding that I was going to make our bedroom, basement and spare bedroom curtains.  I decided that since our windows are an odd shape, long and short, that it would be more cost and time effective to make the curtains.  Not to mentions I could make the exact style I wanted instead of having to settle for something that was just close to my ideal.  Well, cost effective, yes, design effective, yes, time efficient, not so much.  But I am proud to announce that now we do in fact have completed bed room curtains!!!!!!!!!!!!

This process turned into more than I was expecting, as far as time and effort.  How it all started was that I found some really cute fabric at IKEA.com.  Only to find out, when I was about to purchase it, that they don’t sell fabric online L, nor is there an IKEA anywhere in Colorado L. The next logical step, see what IKEA stores close to my relatives strung across the states have the fabric I wanted in stock.  First was San Fran, where one of Josiah’s sisters lives, no such luck. Next was Florida, where his other sister was attending culinary school at the time, no luck there either.  My last hope…the store in Portland, not too far from where my parents live, JACKPOT!  They had everything I wanted in stock, well almost.  Since my mom LOVES going to IKEA this request was a definite yes, and since she has such a good since of décor she was able to find a couple of replacements for what they didn’t have in stock.

With the fabric selection down, the next step was the style of curtain that I wanted to make for our bedroom and spare bedroom (I knew what I wanted already for the basement), I was thinking of making the same style, for simplicity sake.  Of all places I got the idea from a women’s restroom at a local restaurant.  Josiah took me there for dinner one night and I fell in love with the curtain style immediately!  It didn’t look too complicated (yet!) and was a simple design, yet elegant and different from what I had seen before.  My mother-in-law works not too far from the restaurant, so she went to look at them also, since she’s the one who was going to help me with them.  One more step complete, all I had left to do what make them! Easier said than done…

This turned into one of those projects that looks and sounds a lot easier than it actually is.  As a result I never really wanted to work on them, which made them take longer to finish, which meant more time of hanging clothes from our bed room windows.  The worst part was in the meantime of procrastinating to get the bedroom curtains finished, I completed the basement curtains in one day!  That shows how long I have been working on them, because the post from the basement curtains was on November 11^th.  Which means it took me about 3 months to get two curtains complete. But they are done now!  YAY!  I finished them completely a few days before Christmas and we got them hung up the very next day.  I don’t think Josiah has been so enthusiastic to hang anything on ours walls as those curtains J, in fact I know he hasn’t.  Let me tell you we have enjoyed these very much, probably more than any of my other sewing projects.

And let’s just say, that I opted to choose a different style of curtains for the spare bedroom, my hope is that it will give me motivation to get them complete a bit faster J.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas...

Thanksgiving has past, so we are now officially into the Christmas season (even though stores have been advertising for Christmas since October J).  I hope that you all had a lovely Thanksgiving spending time and sharing lots of good food with friends and family.  We had a wonderful time here; it was great to be able to spend time with everyone that was able to come out for the occasion.

I am one of those people who won’t put up Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving, so I am just starting to get a few things out.  I got a Christmas countdown set of boxes about a month that has been sitting ready to hang up as a result.  Since it started on December 1^st I decided yesterday that I should get it hung up.  Especially since in each of the boxes there is a little “activity” for us to do.  For example the first one said to plan a Christmas type outing, that is what got me started decorating.

Next was the wreath for over the door.  A lovely LIVE noble fir wreath that smells divine!  I got it from a high school student from church who was selling different greens for a 4-H fundraiser.  I know that will bring up memories for some, remember the demonstration every year in band! I can still see the candle center piece sitting on the piano J.

Since the countdown boxes were up, and the wreath was over the door I decided that it would be a good idea to change my “little house” (I don’t really know what else to call it, and am open for suggestions, especially since I will probably be referring to it every season when the decorations change) from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

At least in my living room it is…Beginning to look like Christmas, everywhere you go…

Enjoy this preparation time for Christmas and take some time to do something special with friends or family, because it will be here and gone before you know it!