1 Month to go and the Nursery is Nearly Done

Were on the home stretch both with the pregnancy and with completing the nursery, good thing, huh :) So I'll just label pictures and let them speak for themselves.


These need a little straightening up but these shelving units/cabinets were in our kitchen originally. We kept them and then refinished them and painted them white to match the nursery. I think they came out pretty cute and they were really cheap stable hardwood bookshelves.

Here is the nursery as you are looking in from the doorway.

Here is the far wall and we are pretty much done filling the dresser for now, thank goodness we got a decent sized one!

Here is our beloved recliner/glider and the adorable owl pillow my friend Kim gave me at my shower last weekend.

The crib wall with a little decal saying above the crib "Dream on, Dream on, Dream until your Dream comes true."

This is the owl mobile that was my DIY project for the nursery. The little owls are made from socks. I then used an embroidery hoop and wrapped it in ribbon, and used the pink ribbon to attach the owls and attach the mobile to a ceiling hook (basically like a plant hook).

Shower #1 and the Nursery

Now its been nearly two weeks, but I had my first shower with mostly my family and several of the family friends we have known over the years. It was great seeing everyone and having our little girl blessed with a lot of people excited to meet her and clothe her :)

You know how everyone knows the "hometown" cake maker in small towns, well one of my aunts knew one, and that cake was delicious.

I'm sure her Daddy was happy that this onesie first of all wasn't pink and that she can wear her gear to cheer on the Boiler basketball team this year. I'm sure there will be bonding time with Daddy, watching games, Mommy will just have to make sure Daddy doesn't get too excited with special cargo in his arms :) I'm not even mentioning football b/c that might require we make it to a Bowl game and... um... yeah that isn't happening.

She did get plenty of "girlie" things including a bunch of adorable dresses one of my aunts found.

And this was all the shower goodies spread out on the nursery floor to try and organize after we got home. As you can tell this kid is really going to be doing without, especially in the clothing department!

And now for the Nursery, taaadaaa it actually looks like one!!! (please ignore the glass cabinet doors on the floor, that is for another project in another part of the house) Adam surprised me this weekend by going and picking up the crib and having it put together by the time I arrived home on Sunday, bonus points for Daddy.

And here is looking from the other side of the room, the crib is a little bare right now but I think everything is going to come together really well. We obviously have bedding to put in, a changer for the top of the chest of drawers, some decorative things for the walls, a couple bookshelves, and curtains to hang. And just in case anyone was wondering that recliner/glider is definitely suitable for naps, I tried it out for a few minutes on Sunday :)

And here is all that stuff that was on the floor in the previous picture actually organized in a closet. We got this organizer from Ikea and it really maximizes the space. We have a few more shelves and stuff to get up but its functional for now. We also need to get the doors painted and hung, I guess the list never ends, does it??

No Pictures....but hey at least I'm updating

Just realized if I didn't update this blog soon, I will have gone a month without an update. So what has been going on around the Phillips home well after our Ikea trip we have done the following:

1. I can't remember exactly when but we finished all but a couple of like 4 x 12 inch spaces of the wood floor in the dining and kitchen, I think Adam has mentally blocked that there is any more of that to do :)

2. We set-up our dining room table and chairs that had only been the boxes probably close to a year, and installed the light fixture above the dining room table.

3. We built the Ikea bookshelf for the office and started putting some stuff on it, but then I figured out I have way more decorative stuff (or crap as Adam would probably refer to it) than I thought so I kind of stopped that process until we are ready to actually hang pictures and do the fine detail decorating.

4. We finished the horizontal stripes in the nursery, we have a few places to touch up but no one else would probably even notice them, so I don't see that at the top of the priority list.

5. We got all of the plastic up off the floor and nursery clear of non-nursery items so that we could start filling it with the stuff Baby P actually could use.

6. One night Adam and our friend Cory cleaned everything up and built our closet organizer system (again from Ikea) and moved our recliner/glider into the nursery.

7. I had my first shower last weekend so once I got home I went through everything and started filling her closet and organizing everything else into piles based on where it should go (i.e. chest of drawers, kitchen, bathroom, car, etc)

8. This week we unpacked the chest of drawers from the boxes and assembled it, other than putting on the knobs it is done and ready to be loaded.

It's so fun, her nursery is really starting to look like a nursery, I know pictures would be nice and I will have to take some and post them soon. We still need to paint and hang the closet doors, finish sanding and then paint the bookcases, pick-up the crib and put it together (hopefully our task for next week), and then eventually I need to get window treatments and hang things on the wall. So really not that much, I feel like we might actually be ready to bring this baby home sometime soon.

As for the rest of the house, it is honestly a bunch of little stuff that once the nursery is done we can hopefully check off the list pretty fast.

This weekend is what Adam is calling our last free weekend EVER! I think that might be a little dramatic, but I'm going with 6 of my good friends to stay in a cabin in Brown County from Friday until Sunday and Adam is doing.....well I'm not sure....but I will assume it will have a lot to do with watching football and weather dependent maybe visiting a state park and doing some outside activities.

Other than that we are just staying busy with Birthing classes and showers, and I'm very thankful that the sciatic nerve issues I was having a week or so ago have disappeared. I think I have a very obedient child or God had mercy on me, b/c after pleading that she please reposition herself somewhere besides the left side of my sciatic nerve she miraculously moved last Friday night and I was overjoyed to be able to walk and move like a normal person by Saturday morning, just in time for my shower. I'll be 32 weeks next week, so not much longer before she is no longer able to cause Mommy any pain, at least not from the inside :)

A once in a long while shopping trip....

That is hopefully what a trip to Ikea will be for us, because if we went and spent what we spent today, very often, we would be living in the cardboard they use to pack your stuff.

So our adventure started with a trip to Cincy to visit the closest Ikea we have and we had planned out what we were getting. I had a list, and with their handy-dandy website, I was even able to note the aisle and bin where the merchandise could be found.

Items on our List:

Hermnes 8 drawer white dresser for the Nursery
Expedit bookshelf and some of the storage containers for the office
Antonius closet storage system for the Nursery closet

Items we ended up taking home that were not on our list:

A glass front kitchen cabinet (Lindingo style with glass)to put above our kitchen cart, we planned to put a cabinet up there but we were going to either DIY or pay someone to replace the solid doors with glass fronts, now we don't have that project anymore!

A really cute and very soft golden retriever stuffed animal for Baby Girl

A little farm set for our niece for Christmas, she is obsessed with Horses and Cows right now and the set had both of those.

Very cool chair pads for all the dining room chairs and the 2 bar stools

2 drawer sets for the Expedit shelf system

A little kids table and chair set, we figured the other little ones in our life can use it now and our little girl will also be able to use in a good year or so.

There was also just a plain mirror to put on the back of my closet door, but in the process of removing stuff from the cart, the clumsy pregnant girl, knocked it out of the cart and it went crashing down to the floor. We were too worn out to go get another one, so I guess I just left with 7 years of bad luck and no mirror.

A nice surprise of the day was that our good friends Kim and Eugene had already planned to travel to the same Ikea today, so we ended up finding each other in the store. We had lunch with them in the quite yummy yet very inexpensive cafeteria area. Eugene also offered to help Adam load the truck with all the stuff, what a blessing that was, I am no help these days, and some of those boxes were pretty heavy. It was funny b/c before running into Parks we actually ran into another couple from our church, I guess it was Indy Common Grounders travel to Ikea day!

As if that wasn't enough damage done to our bank account, Adam thought it would be a fine idea to stop at L. Fish on the way home just to see if they had any glider or rocker recliners we might like. We actually did find one that we agreed was aesthetically pleasing, wasn't huge and would be to scale in the nursery, and most of all it was super comfortable. So that was our final purchase of the day.

At least I can now say that we have virtually everything we need for house and nursery (with the exception of the crib which I'm ordering this weekend). Anyone really good at assembly??? We have more items to assemble then I think we are going to care to assemble :)

I guess next up will be pictures of all these things in their proper place in the house.

Hello 3rd Tri and Nursery Sneak Peek

I have officially entered my 3rd trimester, this little girl is making her arrival in hopefully no more than 3 months :) I have heard the comments "Ok, now I can really tell you are pregnant" or "I can finally tell you are pregnant" a lot the last couple of weeks. I didn't think this bump was hiding anywhere for awhile, but I guess I finally hit the large enough to not confuse weight gain with pregnancy spot?

Here is the honorary belly picture:



We've also made some headway on our little girl's bedroom. Adam got done with the insulation, drywalling, and drywall finishing on Friday and then my parents came up and helped get the nursery to a point to paint. On Sunday we did some paint sampling with the little samples you can get at Lowes (what a lovely little invention) and determined our initial wall paint was too dark so we decided on something a bit lighter and then tried out our idea for the horizontal stripes. Adam then went to town and painted the whole rest of the nursery walls last night. We have some touch ups to do and then need to put the stripes on the wall. After that we will put up all the mouldings (window, door, and baseboard). Then it will be time to actually get the real stuff into the nursery.

A blank slate:



Our little horizontal stripe project:



Nursery nearly completely painted:

Finally a house update...Bath #2 and Laundry Room

We haven't just been sitting around watching my belly grow, we actually have been trying to get this house done so that when the Little Miss comes along there aren't anymore projects (or at least big ones) to complete.

After finishing the pantry (our last house post), we took some old kitchen cabinets and sanded them down then painted them white and put new hardware on them. We then put them up over the washer and dryer for storage and added a clothes bar for easier hanging up of clothes as we take them out of the dryer.

For old times sake here is the original laundry area when we moved in, we had the gorgeous wallpaper, lovely carpet, and even the occupants paint and kitty litter.

And here is our handy work.....

The bathroom was a much bigger project. We had to virtually rip everything out, reframe the room and rerun plumbing and electrical since we were going from a tiny half bath to a slightly larger 3 piece bathroom.

Again here was the loveliness we got to start off with:

After Adam had ripped everything out and before the rebuild started:

And our final product.....it really did end up being a nice bathroom, but it is really hard to take pictures of a long skinny room so just use your imagination on where everything is :)

The only thing we are waiting to complete is getting a shower door ordered and put in, but other that we are done with this little area!!!!

We have since started getting the nursery to a place where I can do my Mommy duties and make it look like a nursery. Dad (Adam) is doing the manly stuff right now like blowing insulation into the walls and finishing some drywalling. The insulation is done and the drywalling just needs to be taped, mudded, and sanded and then we will be ready for me to do the decorating, wooohoo!!

Happy Wife....Happy Life

Isn't that how the saying goes? That is what I said to Adam at about 11:00 pm on the night he finished the pantry and I was finished unloading our lovely plastic tote of food into the blessed little pantry.

I then realized I had lived for over a year and half with all of our food either in this large plastic tote seen below or on our counters. If you know me I might be disorganized in other ways but a messy kitchen drives me nutso, so how I lived this long without organization in my kitchen I don't know.

I think Adam was a little surprised at my cat like reflexes (from a 5 month pregnant woman at 10:00 pm) to unload that tote and some of our cabinets into the newly finished pantry closet.

It has been so nice to see what food we actually have and to not be afraid of spilling an entire box of spaghetti into the monster tote while looking for a can of salsa! I think all in all I'm an easy wife to please if all you have to do is put a few shelves in a closet and call it a pantry!!!

Hopefully I'll have some pictures of the bathroom and laundry room to put in the blog soon, they are nearly done. We have actually been refinishing and painting some cabinets that were in the old kitchen for the laundry area, that process has been much easier than I thought it would be. Adam's answer to that was that sanding and painting cabinets are things normal people do in their normal home updates, not our normal crazy shanangins, he's right!

Sprouting a Sweet Potato...18 weeks

This week our baby is approximately the size of a sweet potato, about 5.5 to 6 inches long and about 6.7 ounces. This is what Baby P is busy doing this week, passing the hours yawning, hiccuping, rolling, twisting, kicking, punching, sucking and swallowing. The baby can now hear external sounds, especially mama's voice and may even be stimulated or respond to certain voices that are familiar. Wonder if this will make Adam start talking to my belly, or maybe I will start requiring it so his voice will also soothe the baby at 2 a.m.!! Everything I read says I may start to feel movement. I have occasionally felt "something" but when you don't really know what you are supposed to be feeling its hard to identify what is what. I read something that said the baby's feet are about 1 inch long, so they are definitely not real identifiable kicks yet.

At the Phillips home we are also sprouting zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and green beans. Our garden has really taken off the last few weeks and we should actually have edible food here in a couple of weeks.

Last but not least, we have made some substantial headway on the laundry room and 2nd bathroom area. We nearly have everything painted and Adam plans to start tiling in the next few days. Thanks to Mom and Dad and Michelle and Steve for their help painting this weekend, I was feeling a little useless because I was banished from the area, but we couldn't have gotten it all done so quickly without them. Adam also got one window replaced in the nursery so there is one more to go and we will have replaced every single window in our house. Our remaining items are to get the fixtures into the 2nd bathroom once the tiling is finished, finish drywalling the closet in the nursery, blow insulation into the walls in the nursery, some finishing things on the cabinets in the kitchen (mouldings and such) and installing the hardwoods in the kitchen and dining room. That might seem like a bit of stuff, but compared to the list I made at the beginning of this year, seeing less then 10 items left on the list for the interior of the house to be finished makes for a very happy me!!

Other things under construction.....

Wow it has been forever since I posted anything here. I really do need to update some pictures of the house, but thought I would update any blog readers still out there on some other news. We have a little Phillips under construction and scheduled to be completed around December 1st. We are super excited and relieved to have made it this far in this pregnancy after experiencing a miscarriage last fall. We are very thankful for a healthy pregnancy and baby so far, and pray that things continue in that direction.

This news does affect the house, in that there is a definite deadline for completion and it isn't waiting until November 30th, that might result in a really grumpy pregnant lady that would not be fun for her sweet husband. We hope to have most things wrapped up by mid-summer. If we have some random things like crown molding or something like that to do, I don't care, but the big things will be done.

Thanks if you still follow this neglected blog and I will try to be more faithful about updating it, but you might not just get house updates in the future :O)

We finally slept in our room!

So after a year and a few weeks of living in our house we are finally in what was always meant to be our bedroom. I ended up staying in yesterday since our road didn't get plowed until sometime between 10:00 last night and 7:30 this morning, so I actually moved the bed from the other bedroom, and then when Adam got home from work (mind you he leaves so early in the morning we got another like 4 inches after he left) we moved the chest of drawers and armoire. I'll post more pics of the room fully furnished and stuff, but since I hadn't posted in awhile just thought I would get his update on here. You will notice the one item that remains unfinished is the crown moulding, we figured that was not necessary in order to peacefully sleep in our room so we went ahead and moved in and will finish that at a later date.

A staining we will go......

In reality our closets are basically finished but since I am way behind on blogging this was the project that consumed most of the extra time we had over the Christmas/New Years time.




Below is the old closet once we tore all the drywall down, we had contemplated just making 2 openings for the room I am standing in and having a standard closet, and closing off where you see the purple door. But as I posted previously the contractor that did the framing and my husband decided to have a happy surprise for me and make my side a walk-in closet.










Here is Adam's side of the closet after it was reframed with nice new wood that was plumb and square (made drywalling much easier). We made his opening wider so that we could put in double bifold doors, I think that makes a shallow closet much more usable.

And below is my side of the closet, which as you can see is about 20 inches deeper than Adam's, he seriously probably has less than half the clothes that I do, so I think the set-up is appropriate.

Once Adam got everything drywalled, which by the way was made a ton easier by borrowing an electronic drywall sander from his co-worker, we needed to decide how we were going to fix all the missing floorboards due to the reframing. We finally settled on using most of the spare pieces from Adam's closet to put down in my closet, so that my whole closet would have the original floor like the rest of the room.

For Adam's side we tried to go and find something close that was pre-finished but that was to no-avail unless we wanted to spend $3-4 sq. ft, which we really didn't for a closet. We ended up getting unfinished hardwoods in white oak from Lumber liquidators for like $1.50 sq ft and then found a stain that matched really well. For the next couple of days I went through the process of staining the floor, and as you can see below it came out pretty darn well. We used a product by Mini-wax called Polyshades, it has the poly and the stain mixed together so you basically eliminate having to poly it after you stain. We used the stain color of Classic Oak and I put it on with a 6 inch stain brush. I did 3 coats and between them I used 000 (fine) steel wool for a sand/buff process to the poly. In the photo the two floors meet right at the doorway but I don't think you can tell much of a difference!

And here is my closet floor (below), Adam pieced back together all the flooring scraps we had to make this look right and I think he did a great job. We polished it up after this picture was taken so it looks a bit cleaner now.

One final staining project that I did, was that I needed a shelf above my top hanging rack in my closet, so since we couldn't' find anything that matched my organizers (of course) we decided to by some precut pine and stain it. This one I did the old fashion way and went through three coats of staining and then let it dry then 2 coats of polyurethane to seal and protect it. For both projects being my first staining experiences I think the results came out well. Of course all I did was follow the instructions.

Next up.....is completed closets and a finished master bedroom. Of course to finish the master we still need to paint, put up crown molding, moldings for doors, windows, & floor, change out the light fixture, hang curtains, and then move all of our stuff from the other room. Hopefully that is all done by the end of the month, but of course I never predict when we are going to have things done anymore.

Man down....Man down

We have officially had our first encounter with medical attention needed due to a house project gone bad! It really wasn't that serious but did require a few stitches and an update on the tetanus shot. If you haven't guessed, it wasn't me it was my beloved husband that had to endure this bit of immediate care madness to get his finger sewn up. If you don't know Adam's history, his childhood and even early college years had many trips to the ER and I think getting stitches is second nature to him at this point.

In our married life we only have had one ER run and that was due to a cat bite at the clinic he worked at for awhile. We felt a bit silly going to the ER for a cat bite, mind you it was a small little tiger I think that bit him or a really ticked off male cat, but the ER doc on call said you should always go to the ER for a cat bite due to all the nasty in their saliva. Your hand or arm can swell up huge in a very short time if not treated properly, who knew? Anyway I'm tangenting, you probably would like to know how this little incident occurred.

The story goes as follows, I was having a fun night out with some of my good friends that I grew up with and we were out to dinner. I knew Adam was going to work on removing a door casing for a portion of a door in the current closet so the door could be drywalled closed. That seems easy right? Not so much when your door casings are metal and you have to do a combo of using the reciprocating saw and a pry bar to get it out. So I look at my phone when I'm leaving the restaurant and I have 3 missed calls from Adam on my cell and 5 missed calls on my blackberry, that is usually not a good sign! I call to see what is going on and I get the following "Looks like I'm going to have to get a few stitches, OK got to go they need to check me in and told me to get off my phone." That is not a nice way to leave your wife when all she knows is that you have been using a saw on metal and your getting stitches.

I got a call back a couple minutes later and he said he was removing the last piece of metal casing and was using the pry, his hand slipped and hit the mangled metal and he looked and saw a hand full of blood. He mostly got his left index finger but a bit of his middle finger as well. On his index he hit the vein so he had to apply pressure quickly.

After about 2 hours at immediate care and a trip to CVS to get an antibiotic and some vicodin, if he need it, he made it home with a few stitches and his two fingers wrapped in gauze and other stuff. So needless to say I think his home construction duties might be on hold for a few days since he is left handed and probably shouldn't really be applying a ton of pressure to that area of his hand. It's OK he has finals next week and needs to study for those anyways, now he has no home items to distract him. I think he could find an easier ways of getting out of me nagging him to get something done next time :)

What's been going on?

Holy cow that might be the longest break I have ever taken from blogging! We have been doing stuff, I just keep forgetting to take pictures and work is really busy this time of year so I haven't had my few extra minutes at work or in the evenings to post anything.

Things that have happened in the last 6 weeks:

We got the closet framed in the master bedroom, now just waiting for Adam to start drywalling so we can finish that room.

We knocked out the wall in the 2nd bathroom that we will be moving to make the bathroom bigger and able to handle a stand up shower.

Put in some recessed lighting above the fireplace, we felt like our living room was dark and didn't want floor lamps everywhere. I've decided cutting the hole for this is a skill and Adam definitely was better with his circles this time then last, you live you learn.

We got rid of 2 1/2 tons of trash, I'm not exaggerating, it was literally 2 1/2 tons, you have to pay by the ton when you take it to the junkyard. I finally don't feel like the neighborhood blacksheep since there aren't windows, doors, and a bunch of other random stuff all over the place inside and out. Adam actually moved about 6 tons of trash over a 2 day period, ask if you want the full story. Lets just say junkyards aren't open on Saturday afternoons and Sundays and it is a good thing to find this out before loading a moving truck with 2 1/2 tons of trash when it had to be returned by 5:00 that day.

We were wanting to wait until closer to the end of the year to get a dining room set but ended up finding a sweet deal through World Market and they were having friends and family days this weekend so we ended up getting an additional 25% off. Basically it is a table with 2 leafs so if fully extended it can seat 8 people. We ended up getting the table 8 chairs and an 9 x 6 rug for $400 less than it would have cost to get the table and 6 chairs at the normal price. And to make it even better Adam and I both agreed on the table, it has some contemporary aspects that I like but still has classiness about it so that trendiness doesn't outdated it in a few year.

Here is a pic and it even includes the rug I bought, which I didn't realize until we got home and I was looking at it online:

Our house is starting to look normal

As I promised here are some pictures of the "new" and definitely improved living room with the long awaited carpet installed. It isn't fully decorated yet but you get the idea.

Before:

After:

I don't think I have posted the front door and entry way since it was completed. Below are pictures of the front door with the new trim and the finished slate tile entry.

Before:

After (In the picture at the bottomyou can see some more details of the carpet and tell that it has flecks of darker colors in it. I think this is going to be great with having a pet and potential munchkins down the road, you really can't see anything on this carpet as far as dirt goes):

This is the other room we had the carpet installed in the "3rd Bedroom/Office" it is currently holding some stuff that we moved out of the To-Be-Master Bedroom so that we can start working on that.

Another thing we got done this weekend was installing the first of two windows in the Master Bedroom. Of course the old ones were originally installed completely differently then any of the other we have worked on so this ended up being an all day affair to get the window to fit. At least we know now for the next one.

An exciting thing we were able to do this weekend was meet with a contractor to talk about the closet reconfiguration for the Master Bedroom. I had to run to a Baby Shower, but by the time I got back and talked to Adam they had figured out how to make my side a walk-in closet. These must be two men that know how to make a woman happy :) I was then instructed to figure out any custom shelving/design that I wanted, to make sure it would fit the dimensions they had discussed. I was right on that and I think we got that all figured out yesterday evening. Now we just need to reconnect with the contractor and see when he can start the job.