Jude 1 Month

Happy 1 Month Birthday Jude!

I can’t believe my baby boy is already one month old!  On one hand it seems like he has always been here and it is very strange to think back on our life without him and on the other hand time has gone by so fast that I am amazed that it has even been a month. 

Things are going well and I think I am fairly adjusted to Mommyhood and the lack of sleep that comes with it J.  Jude is growing and changing so much every day; at his two appointment he was up to 8 pounds, 9 ounces (his birth weight was 8 lbs, 7 oz, and he was down to 7 lbs 15 oz when we left the hospital). 

He is getting more awake and alert by the day, he definitely recognizes Josiah and I’s voice, even though he can only see us if we are a few inches from his face, and he loves being social and interacting with people while he is awake.

The blanket in the pictures is his baby blanket I made for him (with some help from Marmie to get the binding finished).  I found the tutorial for the rag quilt here, I have looked through their blog and they have lots of good DIY ideas.

My sister-in-law was gracious enough to do a photo shoot of Jude while she was here at Christmas. Here are some of my favorites from that; these were taken when he was one week old. 

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This is a short synopsis of some of Jude’s major events in his first month.

This is Jude with Dr. Clark when he was just a few hours old.
Dr. Clark is the family doctor, and delivered Josiah and all of his siblings.
There is a picture in Josiah's baby book of him and Dr. Clark right after he was
born, so we thought it would be fun to get a picture of Jude and Dr. Clark.

Jude getting ready to come home from the hospital.

His First Christmas and first picture with Santa (aka Grandpa Ben)

His First (Oregon) Christmas tree. His onsie says "My First Christmas"

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!  

                                                                                       

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.

Sew-A-Thon

On the21-22^nd of October I enjoyed an extremely productive time of sewing (sorry for it taking so long for me to get it posted L, I kept forgetting to take pictures of my projects).  There was a trap shoot in one of the pastures for all the guys at church.  They all went out to shoot trap, play cards and sleep in a tent.  Needless to say, Cindy and I had no intention of interfering with their male bonding session, so we decided to sew. 

Cindy was working on Christmas pillow cases for all the beds in their house, since she just happened to have some nice Christmas-type fabric sitting around J.  For those of you who don’t know, Cindy is way into Christmas; so the fact that she decided to make pillow cases just for that occasion is not surprising at all. Cindy also has LOTS of fabric, so that she would have fabric appropriate for Christmas already on hand is not surprising either.  

I on the other hand was working on completing some projects that have been on my to do list for a while.  I completed a dress for my sister, which is going to be her birthday present, and completed curtains for our basement.

I learned some new sewing techniques with these projects, which is always fun.  I did my first regular zipper (I have done an invisible zipper before) and have decided that I will avoid regular zippers at all costs!  For those who may not know an invisible zipper is MUCH easier to install. 

I also learned about some basic altering (I had made the dress to the size on the pattern according my sisters measurements, when I went to Oregon I fitted it and it was 3-4 inches too large!), which wasn’t as hard as I expected it to be.  Luckily I had not put in the zipper in before I fitted it to her, because that made it way easier to alter!  With the curtains I learned a very simple way to make a standard pocket curtain/valence, which was a lot of fun.  The curtains were a much easier and took significantly less time than I thought they would.  If I had known they would be so easy I would have finishes them a long time ago J!

All in all it was a wonderful weekend and I am so relieved to have these projects done!  Especially since I had a deadline for Elise’s dress and we were in desperate need of curtains in the basement.  We had a lovely time visiting and working on our projects together.