projects galore!

We have been super busy over here... and it is exciting... let me tell you! We have my in-laws in town helping us with spud room projects, projects galore. Matt and his dad are working on wood/handy man projects while matt's mom, sister, and I are working on sewing projects. 

You've probably seen this clip from "What About Bob" before- "I'm sailing!!!!!"

 Hilarious.

Well that's me over here except... I'm quilting!!!!! Yep, that's right, I'm actually quilting for the very first time. I was very hesitant at first, but with the nudge from matt's mom, her expertise, and her wonderfully fancy sewing machine I am successfully quilting. I will go into details later... but here is a few snap shots from our busy week. It involves greens, turquoises, and grays--full of quilting, painting, new fixtures, a changing table, and a dutch door. I can't wait to have time to tell you all about them!

I hope you all are enjoying this week after christmas as much as we are. But I hope yours is much more relaxing! I will be back to post about the details of our projects Friday and maybe even a belated bump picture.

merry christmas!!

Merry Christmas! 

Today we will be sleeping in, eating scrumptious foods, and opening our gifts and stockings with the dogs. Just the 5 of us (2 humans, 3 dogs) all warm and snugly... next christmas will be very different and we won't be dreaming of days with spud we will be living it. Oh how glorious that will be. So for now... we sleep in on christmas.

And... can we all just hope for a white Idaho christmas?! Thanks.

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday...

a spud name.

Our little spud will be named Cora Elm. 

We decided on the name Cora before we were even definitive about when to have a baby. Something about it is so sweet, quite unique, and an old soul name that's simply beautiful. The name dates back to 1850 in my family, but never again resurfaced... until now. We also decided that our children (if that is 1, 2, or 3) will all have earthy but not too hippy middle names. Middle names are not real big in our families, so we thought we could have fun with it and she probably will never even use it. So, elm it is. Strong and beautiful like the tree, our little girl. We kind of like it all lowercase though...a touch more girly. We also had a heck of a time trying to match a name to our last name. We are quite pleased with the result.

As you can see I doodle her name everywhere just like a 5th grader.

 It makes me happy.

She is very much a Cora to us, already.

paint chips & pinterest wednesday

[pinterest paint chips]

So I mentioned a few posts ago (here) that I wouldn't make christmas cards this year. Well, we didn't really but I did make three of them. And I loved making each one. We had a bunch of paint chips laying around for the spud room inspiration colors, so I decided to make a trendy christmas card out of them. Pinterest, as you know, is full of paint chip crafts. Super cute. Well I made this one up myself...I am sure its out there somewhere but I feel original in thinking up my own creation.

[christmas cards]

We used elfster this year as I talked about before...so I also made some little paint chip tree gift tags for our secret santa gifts. Super fun.

[gift tags]

Also with my paint chips I cut out inspiration colors for the spud room for my journal. I carry this journal around with me everywhere. So it was only appropriate for me to find paint chips that matched the room colors and our intended accent colors to take shopping with me.

[top two colors are the wall colors almost spot on]

Here is some of the other fun journal planning I do...

[the changing table nook]

[spud room color ideas]

[spud room bookshelf and room layout]

[week 22]

22 weeks! Matt can feel the spud kicks a little more now which is wildly fascinating to us both. Emma (akita-malamute dog) even put her head on my belly the other day... do you think she knows I am growing a little human?! She must. Spud kicks are getting a little higher in my belly and I think she may be kicking my stomach too. It's a funny feeling. I also laugh right now when I have back pain at work... I laugh to myself... what a crazy thing this pregnancy is... back pain?! So painful and strange that our sweet little human is doing this to me. Oh, 22 wonderful weeks.

So lets talk about cravings for a second... because after all they are on my mind about every other second. seriously.

{cravings by weeks}

weeks 5-11:

• eating all the time to maintain homeostasis in the gut
• biscuits, animal crackers, stoned wheat thins... anything bland
• potato chips
• nothing meat
• sour raspberry, sour lemon, peppermint
• orange juice and lemonade

weeks 11-18:

• pancakes, french toast, waffles... daily if I could have pulled it off
• fruit
• milk, helped with indigestion
• orange juice
• nothing chicken

weeks 18- now:

• sweets... cookies, brownies, cinnamon rolls, cake, donuts, chocolate... you get the idea. EVERYTHING sweet. Currently thinking I must have a nutritional deficit/disorder because this is not natural nor cost efficient
• eggnog latte at starbucks (a tall...and just one, big bummer because I feel like I could live on them)
• orange juice
• bagels with cream cheese... actually just cream cheese on everything
• dubliner cheese, sharp cheddar cheese, havarti cheese, cream cheese, goat cheese, mozzarella cheese, mexican blend cheese... 
• and nothing chicken still

something has to give...

oh, christmas colby...

So, we have been busy over here in homegrown-spud-land. Our minds are planning for spud about a mile a minute and it's glorious. I have also been sick with just a cold... that I can't kick. My midwife said my immune system is a little low due to being pregnant... so it lingers. I realized this winter break that something has to give. And this year, it's christmas cards. I am so bummed. I blame it mostly on our sucky winter of no snow. What the heck, global warming?! Lame. So we we have no snow to take wintry pictures or frolic in, we even got a christmas tree at Home Depot. I have to say it is lovelier than any charlie brown tree we have seen in nature. I feel awful saying that, but it's full and green and beautiful and smells amazing. So there go two of our christmas traditions, that we will surely start up again next year with our daughter (daughter... now that's just crazy... these things are just sinking in slowly you see).

We did decorate our Home Depot tree in all of its tiny glory though. We hung our wedding string lights on it...which we hadn't even thought of this use until now. It's beautiful. (We have had great use from the string lights outside in our backyard, my parents use them as house christmas lights, two friends have used them at their weddings, and at our wedding...not too shabby target string lights)

We also had a very sweet friend give us an ornament this christmas.... is that not perfect?! I couldn't have picked out a better ornament to signify this christmas time of being pregnant expecting our spud. She even has my hairstyle! Thanks Bryna and Nick!

And we have a rather large present under next to the christmas tree (the big purple one above). It's from my parents or shall I say grandparents. First package to have spud's real name on it. Yes, we have spud's name picked out already...I will save that for a post soon!

I also just found out that my preceptorship next semester will be in a Labor and Delivery unit... how unbelievable is that?! I'm super stoked. I am hoping to be a Labor and Delivery nurse this summer upon graduation so this should help me gain skills to be a better nurse and further my career... or help me to decide real quick that it's not for me. And regardless it will be a blast to feel like a "real nurse" and learn a ton of information for our pending delivery. So this break I will be studying up on all things maternity from my nursing books... pretty fun. Oh yeah, and starting my resume and cover letter... not as much fun.

And that's about our christmas break so far... being only day two of real winter break after finals. We have some house projects to do and goals to reach this winter break which I will post about soon... super exciting! Do you have any fun things planned for winter break?... perhaps baby planning?!

[week 21]

Yay! A brand new week! I've felt like I have been in limbo having two "20 weeks." It even feels like everyone pregnant at work is catching up to me and I, however, will be pregnant forever. So with this new 21 number it means things really are chugging along!

I officially feel huge. I know, I know I will be getting bigger but still... I feel as though I am bumping into things with my belly, falling off balance, and just adjusting to my growing size. It also never helps in the winter time to be turning pasty-white. These weeks I should be gaining about 1 pound a week...and I am! It's been really fun that patients at work and people in public are starting to ask if I am pregnant. I love it. I was worried that society these days wouldn't ask a big-bellied female, like myself, if she was pregnant... worried about being too PC. But, they are asking and I love it. I just hope the touching of the belly from strangers doesn't happen.

In case any of you other pregnant ladies are wondering... I was 170 lbs pre-pregnancy (according to my scale at home, I don't want to discuss the OB's scale) and I am realistically 6 feet tall. I say realistically because in most circumstances I would say 5'11... but I am really 5 feet 11.75 inches... which in this situation and all BMI situations I think I'd like to round up to 6'0 :) So, for the whole first trimester I only gained about 5 pounds...which was incredible, I thought. I was gaining right where I should be, and for not really throwing up, just feeling extremely nauseated I didn't over-eat. Now, it's a different story. I eat all the time. I was 180 lbs at 18 weeks...and today I am 184. 14 lbs for 21 weeks.... not bad! According to babycenter I should be gaining about 25-35 lbs this pregnancy. I don't really care about my weight, I just think it's a fun thing to monitor to see how spud is growing. And, my blood pressure is great and all else is healthy (besides the back pain)... pretty fantastic! Oh, but I do wear compression stockings (TED hose) at work to reduce the leg swelling, being on my feet for 12 hour shifts. They are amazing. I haven't had true swelling but I am noticing my sock lines & stitching becoming more apparent. Sexy, I know. I am wondering at what week my wedding ring may not fit.... soon?!

so.freaking.cute.

[etsy beanie]

[pretty sweet beanie I found on pinterest]

[carters PJs]

[another carter's one, too cheap and cute to pass up!]

so.freaking.cute. 

I have been extremely good at minimizing the dreaming of baby items. Which is very unlike me. I've tried to be reasonable...focus on the non-materialistic side of having a child (ie. loving little spud to pieces, how she will impact our routines, going camping together as a family, interacting the babe with the dogs, what joy a child will bring into our lives, etc.) But seriously. Now that I know spud is a girl... I can't stop thinking about all of the cute & simple clothing. I am even impressed that matt likes some of the things I have picked. I like the gender neutral, color neutral, non-kid-esq type of clothing, accessories, and decor. It's really fun. It's hard to be on a budget, but maybe that makes the searching even more fun. I have to 100% like an item to spend the money on it.

But I have no concept of how many onesies we need in each size or how many burp cloths would be appropriate to sew, or how many sweet little footed-elephant-PJs do we need? It kind of feels a lot like planning for our wedding though. We didn't have a ton of money to spend right before the wedding, but we could spend a little money over the months leading up to it for diy projects and such. So, once maternity leave hits I think I need to be at home and not spending money...but these months leading up to spud arrival I could be making some smart purchases...right?! Please?!

Umm... yes. So we have bought two adorable little PJs with footies. One is actually a "boy" one. It has bears and is turquoise...and the other is very girly and pretty much anti-anything I thought I wanted. It's hot pink, purple, and loud. I love it. It's precious. I love that they don't have any writing on them, and one is 6 months and one is 12 months, perfect for next winter (I have no idea really on sizing). Perhaps they look familiar...it's from Costco, Carter's brand for only $7 each. Ridiculous. Oh, just picturing our sweet little sleepy spud in these PJs is fantastic.

coconut cookies & apple dumplings

What kind of post follows a "It's a Girl!!" post?! Not sure. Probably something sugary and sweet and nice. So here we go...

These cookies are fantastic, so I thought I would share it with you all. It's like macaroon cookies with chocolate chips...on crack. Pure heaven. Perfect for enjoying on a very cold autumn day.

{Chewy Coconut Chocolate Cookies}

adapted from allrecipes.com recipe

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups flaked coconut
• 1.5 cups chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C.) Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, cream the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg and vanilla until light and fluffy. Gradually blend in the flour mixture, then mix in the coconut and chocolate. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until lightly toasted. Cool on wire racks

-AND-

Have you ever made apple dumplings?! Oh my, I am sure you have... based on the fact that 50,000 people like the recipe on allrecipes.com I feel like I might be the last person to find out 

about them. But just in case you haven't, I feel like it's my duty to share them with you too. They are pretty unbelievably good. I think I may have used a swear word or two upon first bite. Can you tell what I've been craving during my pregnancy? Crazy. It's basically uncontrollable.

{Country Apple Dumplings}

adapted from allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 2 large Honey Crisp apples, peeled and cored
• 1 (10 ounce) can refrigerated crescent roll dough
• 5 TB butter
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 can of sprite (I thought this would be too much, but it was a grand sugary syrup... so do it)

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). PAM a 9 inch circular baking dish.
2. Cut each apple into 8 wedges and set aside. Separate the crescent roll dough into triangles. Roll each apple wedge in crescent roll dough starting at the smallest end. Pinch to seal and place in the baking dish. I cut up the remaining apple pieces into smaller pieces and nestled them around the dumplings.
3. Melt butter in a small saucepan and stir in the sugar and cinnamon. Pour over the apple dumplings. Pour sprite over the dumplings.
4. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes in the preheated oven, or until golden brown. I served with french vanilla ice cream. amazing.

DIY scratch-off gender reveal cards

Our little spud is a GIRL! 

I knew we wanted to surprise our families with the big news of spud being a boy or girl. They all live in different states, so unfortunately we couldn't tell them in person. We already announced our pregnancy to them over the phone, but we wanted this to be fun and special. So this is our version of a "gender reveal party." I got the idea from here on pinterest on how to do the DIY scratch off card just like a lottery ticket. After reading the comments it sounded like it was a big fail. So with research I found this technique. And it worked beautifully! We thought this would be perfect. Our moms would probably be the first to open the mail, but we didn't want them to read it without our dads there. So the scratch-part made them wait to be there all together for the fun news.

Oh and before hand we knew we couldn't tell them all when the date of the 20 week ultrasound appointment was, otherwise we'd get bombarded with phone calls and rightly so! So we told them the appointment was a week later than it was scheduled to give us time to have the cards mailed to them. (Sorry you guys!) It was torture finding out and not calling them, let me tell you.

Matt and I also crafted these cards ahead of time over thanksgiving, planned it all out, pre-addressed the envelopes, made the card layout on our computer, bought the supplies, and did a little craft-dry-run for fun. We left the boy/girl portion blank until we knew, then we hit print as soon as we found out! We stuck on the contact paper scratchy and sent it off in the mail that day. Also, for fun we attached an idaho quarter to the cards, as their "lucky coin." It was soo exciting, but a touch anti-climatic at the same time.

But yes, the excited phone calls we got this past weekend were fantastic. It was completely worth the wait. Our loved ones agreed too. No tone of resentment at all. They thought it was totally our style and had no idea it was coming. Super fun. Yay Girl Spud!

Supplies to make a DIY scratch-off card:

• metallic acrylic paint (we chose silver)
• dish soap
• clear contact paper
• paint brush
• cardstock
• paper punch

Mix one part dishsoap, two parts metallic paint. Apply one coat of paint/soap to contact paper let it dry and apply another coat. Let dry. Punch out contact paper the size of your scratch area with a scallop paper punch. Apply contact paper scallop over to-be-hidden words. Ta-dah! Scratch-off cards!

[paint I chose to use that I found at michaels]

 [I found that I had to tape down the contact paper sheets so that they wouldn't roll up as I painted. So I just taped them to a thick chipboard, it worked really well]

 [first coat of paint]

 [I used a scrap of contact paper to seal off my soap/paint while I waited in between the two coats...I think I will use this trick in the future to keep paint from drying out]

[I was worried that the metal punch would scrape off the silver paint...but it didn't surprisingly. They were just cute little scalloped circle stickers ready to use]

 [all of the cards cut up, ready to be sewn, kraft paper obviously]

[I sewed the pieces of card stock together... because that's just what I do... wedding invites, thank you cards... anything really I can fit under the sewing foot]

[I had a few paper-source calendar months in the perfect turquoise, so I used that as our background for the cards, some nice up-cycling going on here]

[finished card with spud U/S picture and our lucky Idaho quarter attached... and tah-dah gender reveal cards done!]

[week 20 again]

 Is little spud a ...girl? maybe a...boy? Projects are awaiting...

Week 20? Again?! Shut the front door. We just had week 20, right?! We agree, let me tell you. However, according to our last ultrasound and the 9 week ultrasound spud is measuring a little earlier. So our estimated due date is now April 20th 2012.

Now obviously I won't be having a baby, nicknamed spud, on 4/20. Nope, not gonna happen. "Spuuuuud" in stoner voice- no thanks. I'll hold it in for an extra day. Also, statistics are in our favor that only 10% of babes actually arrive on their due date. At first, according to my LMP spud's due date was 4/14, our 9 week ultrasound puts us at 4/20, and most recent ultrasound puts us at 4/24. My midwife is comfortable with a 4/20 due date. I asked her with this iffy 10 day period of due-date-ness ...when would she induce me? She said by April 27th we will have a baby in our arms. Yay!! How exciting is that?!  Super exciting, I'd say. If I'm induced that will change the natural birthing plan idea- but hey, whatever gets us a healthy babe, I'm all for.  So I'm due late April. Super fun.

Here are some spud-in-utero pics at 19ish weeks...I'd have to say that the impact of the ultrasound at 19 weeks was a little diminished by the fact that we saw spud looking about the same at week 15 (here). I wouldn't give back that spud movie for the world though. It was magical.

an adorable profile with a little hand above the mouth and leg curled up on the left
(the front-on-face picture freaked me out a bit, so I'm going to stick with a cute profile)

a cute little blurry foot

a big ol' hand and a nice lookin' humerus

And.... tomorrow I am posting spud's gender once I know our loved ones have received their gender reveal cards! Stay tuned!

3 goonies.

Dogs. Yes, we have three big ones. It has been a little bit of a worry for me with impending baby arrival. I was hoping, back when we were trying to get pregnant, that by the time I actually did maybe one would kick the bucket. It's a horrible thought, but seriously....3 dogs all about knee-height?! Insane. We didn't plan on having three either you see.

I got Colby- the yellow lab- as a pup in college (pre-matt). He was my little buddy. We even moved to Colorado together when I ran off to my own state, knowing not a soul, to do my teaching thing. Then I met Matt. I thought it was wonderful that he loved big dogs. Big dogs have a bit more of a presence about them. Matt had two dogs- Chewy (chewbacca-looking mutt) and Emma (akita-malamute mix). I thought he was the sexiest guy I'd ever seen walking his big ol' dogs in the snow with his big manly hands holding his handmade leashes (fatty ropes with carabiners). Anyways, he had two dogs. And together it made 3.

Before Matt had Emma she was neglected as a pup, therefore she is dog-aggressive. It makes life tricky if we let down our guard. But we have found that if we are smarter than her we can control all situations to have a favorable outcome. She is super sweet with humans though...most loving dog I have ever met. Especially for a big 120 lb girl.

So, Colby is 8, Emma is 9, and Chewy is 12. They are all old, mellow, sleep all the time dogs. They don't require anything but love and food. Oh yeah, and the daily vacuum.  It's fantastic, right now. It's us and the three goonies. But when spud comes... I just hope it all goes perfectly well.

I bought this book to help us socialize the dogs to spud. I really want it to go beautifully. But if it comes down to it, humans trump dogs. I just hope we don't have to make that call. So we will try our damnedest to make it work. We are going to be reading this book over winter break, I can't wait! So I will let you all know what we find out.

christmas cards.

[last years card]

It's December!! I am getting soo very excited for snow... it means winter is getting closer and so are christmas cards. I loved taking our christmas card photos last year (posted about here). We have our tradition of snow shoeing with our three goonies, finding a perfect little tree in our wilderness, cutting it down, taking a photo, and coming home to decorate our beautiful tree to enjoy all season. This card was made from Costco, their deals are just about unbeatable (50 cards for $15 with envelopes?! Just great). But I have been looking around at different photocard sites and finding super cute designs. I wonder if I could just make my own and send it to costco to print? Do you all have sites you like to use?

It's super cold here in Idaho, but we have only had a little dusting of snow up in the hills. So perhaps soon we will get dumped on...and maybe by then I will have a photographable baby bump. But in the meantime we are going to go cut down our tree this weekend. We will bring snowshoes...just in case.Yay!

banner of dreams: tiny prints

etsy card

cup of joe