Boy, Oh Boy!

We are having a boy!

During the ultrasound yesterday Baby Luke was quite an active little guy. He was rolling and flipping and moving his arms about, and he flashed us several times. I am relieved to finally know the sex and to learn that he is developing normally. I am almost in my twentieth week but Baby Luke is measuring a week or so ahead.

Now that I know he is a he, I can get serious about designing the nursery. I have decided to start over and put the vintage fabrics I have been collecting into storage. If I ever decide to have another baby and it happens to be a girl, I'll pull them out and create the nursery I initially envisioned.

I am still sticking with a woodland theme and I'm also going to keep a color palette that is gender neutral and very colorful. I have found some cute Robert Kaufman fabrics created by designer Ann Kelle that I would like to use and have included pics of them below. I just love the cute owls and the colors.

I love the colors in these fabrics. I really like the turquoise and orange, but that is too close to orange and blue and we are a crimson and white household. I think I'll pull out the turquoise, red, yellow, and brown to feature in the nursery. Pretty much the same colors I was going to use before.



I already found some really cute items on Etsy that are made with these fabrics.



This rag quilt from Humble Pie Originals is just perfect. I love it!



I am just loving the chevron pattern. This is such a cute blanket from Urban Tot.





A boppy cover and mobile from Snowflake Crafts. The mobile is part of a set that includes a quilt, pillow, and crib skirt. I do want to have a crib skirt made...probably out of the chevron fabric. This boppy cover has minky fabric in brown on the reverse side.



Check out this great mega set! Humble Pie Originals makes this as well.



This sensory toy/lovey is made by MB Designs. This is so colorful and it proves that a wide range of fabrics and textures will work wonderfully with these three Robert Kaufman fabrics.

Now I just have to track down the fabrics to purchase them and find someone to sew some stuff for me. That is if I stick with this theme. I'm really loving it right now, though.

Baby Shower Idea

My best friend Jennifer visited me this weekend and was such a big help. She did the aisle-by-aisle thing with me at Babies R Us so Lee wouldn't have to, went with me to Motherhood Maternity to get some more clothes, helped me organize and determine what I still need to add to my baby registries, and she helped me clean out the master bedroom. This last one was a tough chore for me to do by myself, but now that it's done I feel that I can begin to tackle the rest of the house.

Jennifer is also helping to throw one of my baby showers (looks like there might be 3 or 4), and she remembered me telling her way back when about a cool idea I got from a blog...I think it was the Naughty Secretary Club blog. The idea was to have shower attendees help decorate onesies for the baby. Jennifer went ahead and brought me some craft paint and brushes that she had, but she also brought me some canvases in smaller sizes like 8x10 that she also had no need for anymore. The light bulb went off in my head...instead of decorating onesies, my shower guests could help create artwork for the baby's room.

So, I have another item to put on my before-baby-gets-here to-do list. I will come up with a design to put on several of the canvases (I'm thinking of a cohesive grouping of some sort that incorporates woodland critters), draw it on each canvas, and then at my showers my guests will all get to pick up a brush and some paint and contribute to the artwork. I love this idea. I really wanted some activity for my showers, but I'm not that big into the more common shower games, especially the one where chocolate is melted into diapers. I already told some people that if that occurs I'll leave my own shower. Gotta draw the line somewhere.

Now I just have to keep cleaning and organizing the house so I can make a space to start creating the design for the nursery art. And, I need to wait until a week from today when I hopefully find out the sex of the baby before I start getting too carried away with the design plan and artwork...wait, too late for that :)

Hey Jude, I Love Your Room

This is a nursery like no other. It is full of vintage goodness and designer flair. It looks really high-end, but it was done on a $1000 budget and most of the projects were DIY. The colors are so 60's and 70's and it is filled with vintage furniture, but it looks amazingly modern. A job well done to this family.

I found this room this morning on HGTV's Rate My Space. I've been having second thoughts this weekend about the design plan for my baby's nursery, so I decided I'd browse around Rate My Space for some inspiration. Specifically, I'm worried that the vintage fabrics I have been collecting are more on the girly side and may not work as well in a boy's room. I only have a little over a week until we hopefully find out the sex of the baby, so I should just settle down and wait until then to start worrying about the design plan that I've been putting together for over a year. But, I can't help myself.



I love, love, love the wall art. This is totally a project I could start and actually finish. I don't know that this fits in well with my nursery theme, but I'm thinking I could do a project like this for the living room using our last name.



The details and accessories in this room are fabulous, especially the pillow. To see more views of this room go here.

I do wonder how this room will look when it begins to fill up with a hodge-podge of toys and other baby and kid-related items, but I am still totally in awe and will use the great ideas I see in this room as inspiration for other rooms in my house.

Nesting Bug

I've got my appetite back and some energy back and now I'm getting the nesting bug. My desire to nest spans the whole house. It is not confined to the nursery. Right now I'm focused on the living room. I don't really want to clean and organize, which is the main priority right now, but I want to decorate.


This living room seen here.

I always feel at war with my living room. The main problem is space planning. I have a few things in the room that I like but it still needs a lot of work. One thing I'm obsessed with right now is putting things on the walls like photographs and artwork. If you have ever been to my house you may have been surprised by the very blank walls. The only thing on the living room wall currently is a 2010 calendar purchased in Italy that is still on the month of May (Maggio in Italian). Lee and I had beautiful photos of us made recently, but I need to order the prints and figure out how I want to display them.


This room found here. It's a Pottery Barn room.


Another Pottery Barn room seen here.

I like lots of different design styles, but I think I feel most at home with a cottage or country feel. I like a lot of Pottery Barn rooms as well. The rooms in this blog post represent the feel I want in my living room.


A Florida beach house seen here.