Wooden growth chart

My mom has always been crafty.  When I was growing up she would always make our Valentines or May Day baskets.  She would sew my Halloween costumes and everyone would rave about her craftiness. My mom has always worked full-time as she had to work.  My parents divorced when I was three years old and she needed to support two young daughters.  My mom built her financial planning business and in 2009 retired to become a full-time grandma and hand over the business to the rest of our family.

Since retiring she has taken her love for crafting and creating to a whole new level.  First up was my brother's wedding where she planned a beautiful rehearsal dinner at the Pabst tasting room in Milwaukee.  She made every table covering, every centerpiece and place card for the evening.  Not to mention welcomed here grand children in the same year.

Next up was my little sister's wedding this past October in Boston.
She made everything for the big day.  Seriously everything.
 After this event we dubbed her Martha Stewart.  

When our family got together to celebrate Christmas this year she wrote each of us girls a note in our stockings telling us there was a present for us in the basement.  We all headed to the basement and there was a handmade gift for each of us.  For my little sister was two shelves made from pallets for her bathroom.  She made my sister-in-law jewelry holders on wood planks with doorknobs and for my older sister and I, wooden growth charts.  I was over the moon.  I've wanted one for our home for a long time but the ones I've looked at have always been so expensive.  This piece is beautiful and will be in our home forever.  I also love that when we move we can take it with us.  

We brought it home and decided to hang it in our entry way.  We measured each of our kiddos and thankfully Kate made it on the chart!  My mom used a 1x10 piece of wood and free hand painted the numbers.  

I hung a frame next to the growth chart with a picture of each of the kids when they were just babes and a current picture.  My thought is to keep changing the current picture of the children.  I love having pieces in our home that are handmade by people that we love.  I still look back at my grandma's pictures frames and Santa's or the hall tree my grandpa built and smile just knowing that a part of them is in our home. 

I'm so envious of the gift of craftiness my mom was blessed with.  I would love to be able to create and sew as she can.  I am bound to one day learn to at least sew on a button.  

Finishing the basement

  When we purchased our home back in 2010 we had every intention of finishing our basement. We had other projects we first took on like knocking out the kitchen wall and building the island. We started our basement renovation in September of 2010, and Brendan started spraying the trim last weekend. I am honestly brought to tears with how close we are to being done. We have done 95% of the work ourselves. Brendan used to build homes in his previous life so he's pretty darn handy. The one job we did hire out was finishing the sheet rock. Brendan absolutely loathes finishing it and I was a million weeks pregnant with Kate when we were finishing it so we sucked it up and paid for it to be done. One project that we didn't anticipate that we would have to take on when finishing the basement was a leaky foundation...This past spring there was a lovely little stream of water that was running on the floor of the basement when it would rain really hard. We wanted to seal the foundation before the ground froze and before we put carpet and hardwood down. This past October we rented a bobcat and dug a 9 foot hole next to our house ::cue panic on my end:: again I say we lightly. Brendan jumped up in the bobcat and dug the hole next to Kate's window and then sealed the crack. 

   These were taken when Brendan was in the process of digging the large the hole.  After he had the hole dug, he then had to dig some by hand.  At one point he said to me " come check on me every so often to make sure the hole doesn't cave in."  I felt so uplifted by the comment... Drew however loved that there was a BIG tractor at his house for the day!

Thankfully we were able to get the crack sealed and running lots and lots of water over the foundation we are confident that our new basement will be free of leaks, in that spot anyway.

This basement renovation has not been easy, or stress free, but I am so thankful that my husband has been able to the majority of the work himself.  We will love having this extra space to spread out and enjoy.  Hopefully just a few short weeks and we will be down there with CARPET!

 






  

Peanut's nursery

As I've mentioned here before this time around I went with a much different feel than Drew's nursery. I fell in love with a color scheme rather than a theme. From there everything just kind of came together.



We first started out by painting the walls a light gray called Poetic, it's a color from our local hardware store.

I then started looking for bedding. I couldn't find very much that I was crazy about, or in the price range I wanted, so my mom volunteered to make a bumper. We went to a local fabric store and found the damask fabric you can see as the bumper and then added the sunshine yellow ribbon.



I then tried to find a crib skirt that would go well and I found one at Pottery Barn Kids. I go to order it and it's back ordered until May. Boo, hiss!!! So once again my mom, Martha Stewart Junior made the crib skirt and added the yellow ribbon.



We then moved on to the rocker and wall hangings. First, the rocker, It just so happened that my older sister was looking to get rid of her yellow and white rocker and go for a more neutral colored rocker. We were in luck, we simply traded rockers, our cream colored rocker for her yellow and white rocker.



I found all of the wall hangings and pillow on Etsy. The pillow can be found at Modernality2. This pillow is just as adorable as it looks in pictures, it came very quickly and it washed up well, I ironed it and we were good to go.

Next was what in the world do we hang on the walls? I started searching the web and again came to Etsy. I found these 4 prints for above the crib from Zeppi Prints. Again, the seller was a pleasure to work with and even brightened the chevron stripes a bit for me. I then found the frames at Target.



The prints are 5x7 and the frames are 8x10 with no matte.
It was now on to the other 3 wall spaces. I found this 8x10 print again on Etsy from Fancy Prints.




The seller was so kind to work with and even included this next print.



On the other space, which happens to be behind the door I took scrapbook paper and put it in 8x8 frames.



The gray paper actually has small white dots on it, but it didn't show up in the pic.

Lastly, was the curtain conundrum. Again, I couldn't find anything I really loved so my momma stepped up again and took plain white curtains from Target and used the left over fabric from the bumper and made this fab curtains.






Thankfully it's now all put together and just awaits Peanut's arrival!


Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Drew's big boy room

A few months ago we started the transformation of our guest room into Drew's big boy room. My original inspiration was a gray paint from our local hardware store called poetic. Other than that, I had nada, zip, zilch. The one thing we did have was Drew's twin bed my grandpa built him. My grandpa has built each of the great grand kids their first twin bed. We decided to finish the bed black. One weekend Brendan painted the bed black and we moved Drew in to his new bed.





I found his new bedding online Amazon. his bedding can be found here. We were very nervous moving him from his toddler bed AKA crib to his twin bed, but he did amazingly well. We took him to pick out his own sheets and he chose tractors, and my light bulb went on, I was going with a vintage tractor look for his room. Everything else kind of morphed from there.

Next up was the dresser and curtains. Drew had red curtains in his nursery so I moved those over and purchased longer red curtains to replace the closet doors.





His red chair went with his room perfectly and we are just waiting on the bookshelf my father in law built him to complete this corner.

Brendan then painted a dresser we had in our basement that was just collecting dust. We replaced the hardware and went from there.





We hung his red coat rack, added his favorite Suzy the sheep pillow and a sheep rocker to go along with the vintage tractor/ farm theme. Above the dresser we hung a long frame with pictures of barns and goats by my friend Amy Doerring.





We then hung his D-R-E-W letters from his nursery on the wall next to the dresser.





We completed our wall hangings with two pictures of red vintage tractors again by my friend Amy.





We completed the "look" of his room with a few of Brendan's old tractors, a simple lamp, his piggy bank and an Elmo sign from his birthday party(he's in love with his sign and it matches).

Drew has now been in his room for over 2 months and he loves it. He'll go in and sit in his chair, read his books and be completely content. He loves his big boy bed and is happy to show any visitor that comes by our house his bed.

Overall, we're very happy with how everything turned out. To see Drew's joy of being in his room is well worth all the painting and moving!

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Keepin it real DIY style

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time you know Brendan and I are big DIYers. As we await the arrival of Peanut we haven't stopped doing it ourselves when it comes to house projects. As we now have 8 weeks until the scheduled arrival, I look around our house, shake my head and think "what in the world were we thinking"! We have a to do list a mile long, a week we'll be MIA due to a vacation and I'm only getting slower by the day... Now, don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to soaking my feet in the ocean and enjoying some R&R, I just think we're pretty well CRAZY for doing all of this before Peanut arrives. With that said, we will get it done, hopefully with our sanity in tact.

This week in casa de B&A we are having the drywall finished in the basement. This is our huge project right now. Our basement was completely unfinished and we are adding a second living room, bedroom, storage area and office/toy area. Later on we'll add a bathroom. Brendan has done 99% of the work himself, he used to build homes, but when it came to finishing the drywall, he wanted to hire it out. Not be because he didn't know how, he just loathed the thought of having to do it, so we hired it done and it should be done Monday.

This weekend we were able to focus on our projects upstairs. We are currently painting Drew's dresser for his new big boy room. Drew has now transitioned out of the nursery and into the old guest room. He is now in his twin bed and loves it. We now just need to get the dresser painted and wall hangings hung and we'll be good to go! Due to the basement being out of commission this weekend the painting is taking place upstairs in the living room and in the nursery. Thank goodness Brendan is careful. So here's a keepin it real shot for you, behold our kitchen island, that I'll add Brendan built, with the drawers of the dresser drying on it.



As I type Brendan is painting the last coat on the drawers. Then it's on to the nursery to paint the actual dresser.



That would be the nursery covered in plastic to keep the paint off the carpet and furniture.

After this project we will be working on the nursery and closets. We have to do some rearranging of closets to accommodate Peanut and his/her belongings. In the nursery we are painting, getting a new rocker, wall art and curtains on the widows and closet doors.

As for the basement, after drywall, it's primer, then trim and doors, paint and finally carpet. Not to mention picking out furniture and a tv to go down there.

That's a ton in 8 weeks..... Makes my palms sweaty just thinking about it. We will get there.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Headboard re-do

On Tuesday night our headboard got a makeover. We recently got new bedding from West Elm, it's the exact same bedding we used to have, just a different color, the new color
Is called Sea Spray. The old material was OK, bit not great so a makeover was in order.

My mom found this material at a local fabric store, text me pictures and that was that. That evening Brendan and I got out our trusty staple gun and went to town. We simply put the new fabric over the old. We are pleased with the outcome.

Now we just need to paint our bedroom. It it currently a lovely beige or latte as Restoration Hardware called it, but far too yellow with our oak trim. We are moving to a lovely gray or Ponder by Sherwin Williams.

































And one picture in keeping it real; this is where Ruby lays daily and yep that's her blanket.







She seems really impressed with the headboard makeover don't ya think?






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

24/25 weeks

I thought I would smash these two weeks together because I'm way behind on my weekly updates and there's honestly not much to update. Over Christmas I surpassed viability day which is an awesome feeling, but knowing the risks of pre-term birth obviously we want Peanut to stay cooking. Peanut's hands and legs are starting to grow to birth weight these two weeks and I have to say I can tell, this child may very well come out ready to hit the soccer field, Peanut has one mean kick.

These past few weeks I feel like I'm starting to slow down a bit, it takes me a little longer to get up from a sitting position and my sleep is more disrupted because I'm uncomfortable. I did expect all of this, just forgot what it really feels like. I also feel like my face, hands and feet have started to swell. This makes me a little nervous as this was the first sign of my heart issues when I was pregnant with Drew. If it gets worse I'll be visiting my cardiologist in a quick minute.

We are also starting to move Drew's room to our guest room, which means we are starting to think about the nursery. I found this beautiful bumper on Etsy, but was not digging the price so my mom is making me one. We went shopping last week and found some material that I think will be awesome! I'm going with gray, white and yellow for the nursery this time around. Drew's nursery was very neutral, I loved it but just wanted a bit of change this time around.

Etsy link

As far as Drew's room, we've decided on a gray color, medium gray is how I would describe it.  Then we'll be doing this plaid bedding I ordered from Amazon with red accents.  We've painted his twin bed black and his dresser is black as well, surprise, surprise more black furniture in our house. 

In other DIY news, our dry wall for the basement is being delivered today.  We're getting closer! I hope everyone had a great weekend.