ta da...

Have I ever told you how much I love Adobe and all of their products; like Photoshop and Acrobat Pro? Just in case I haven't told you, I freaking love them! After a couple of weeks of brainstorming and "un-rusting" myself in Photoshop, I finally have the baby book done, and it's even compiled into a PDF book. Awesome. Now, let me preface all of this by saying that this book is no original idea... I compiled all of the pages and prompts with the help of a couple of pre-made baby books and with some Googling of what other people have done. But I will say all of the pages were originally created by me... and many, many, MANY hours went into creating all 65 of those pages. But it's finally finished. Here's the Baby Book (all 65 individual pages) in a Picasa album; to save loading time, I decided to save each photo in very low quality, since it's not going to stay a digital album and I'll post more progress pictures as I actually get the pages printed and in the scrapbook. But just for your viewing pleasure, here are a few goodies for ya...

 

I'm so excited to start getting these pages printed, filled out, in the scrapbook, embellished... there's so much to keep me busy, YAY!

baby book...

I've started a new project: baby book. I originally bought this really, really cute Carter's baby book, but as I've been flipping through it, looking at what all is in it, I'm seeing that pre-printed books like this are nice for the convenience factor, but let's face it, I like to get my hand dirty and do things like this myself. Hence my growing scrapbooking and card making obsession?? So that's what I decided to do. I already know that this baby is going to have one stellar scrapbook, I've even been thinking about starting on it now, just so I would have something to keep my hands busy for a while, since I can't really get down on the floor anymore, which leads me to postpone the painting of the paneling in the family room. Anyways, I digress. I figured that if the Bug is already going to have a scrapbook which sort of catalogs all the "big" happenings in his little baby life, why not just sort of combine his scrapbook and baby book all into one giant thing? Yes. That's the winner right there! And that's exactly what I've been working on the past couple of nights. I'm just sort of playing around with it for now, trying to feel out the best way to go about this. I've googled it and read other peoples' blogs about it, and most just print pages of text out in Word or something of that nature, and just paste on/in their scrapbook pages... I think I'm going to take a similar route, but I'm using Photoshop instead, and I may end up just printing the pages onto my actual scrapbook paper - like, feed my 12x12s through the printer so the text looks like it was pre-printed! Good idea, eh? I think so.

So for now, things are looking kind of like this:

 Which, even though it's just blah, unfinished, white space right now, will eventually look something like this:

except with more text (I didn't feel like copying all of the stuff on the page) and not with a busy paper like that (it was just the first digital paper I clicked on in the folder). I'm thinking the pages with text like this will either have to be solid-ish papers (so that the ones with pictures and stuff can be fun and patterend and embellished), or maybe a patterned one like this, but tweaked so the pattern doesn't seem so "bold" and distract you from the words you actually want to read. Needless to say, it's definitely a work-in-progress... but a fun one, at that.

time to hang it up...

Despite feeling like I've been hit by a semi, I finished the mobile today, and it looks fantastic! After hours of cutting out circles, a few more hours of using a straight pin to poke tiny little holes in said circles, and more hours of trial-and-error guessing at how far apart the circles should be on each strand, I finally nailed it. And then after many more hours of lazily laying in bed, drinking hot tea for my throat, and listening to the sound of chainsaws and falling tree branches (don't worry, we had some guys out today to cut down some trees), every single dot was strung and all 9 strands were on the top piece.

Baby's view from below

Obviously, as he gets bigger I'll raise it up higher - the string that suspends it from the ceiling is pretty long right now. And of course, the balloons from the baby shower won't be there either.

But for something that I threw together after seeing a couple pictures of something similar, I think it turned out waaayyyy better than I expected. Looking back at the whole process, once I finally figured out the best way to string and knot each circle, it was actually a pretty quick process. Most of my wasted time was spent cutting out far too many circles; I was originally going to mix the solids and the patterns that I used in the name letters, but after seeing a test string of those, it just didn't look right. So now that I know just about how many each strand needs and how far apart to knot them (two finger widths, by the way) I could probably crank another one out in a couple hours.

I hope the Bug loves to look at it as much as I do, it kind of wiggles if a breeze hits it... it's kind of cute.

glide away with me...

Shut the front door. I am trying really hard not to scream right now because.... THE GLIDER IS HERE!! AND THE OTTOMAN!! AND THEY ARE OFFICIALLY AT HOME IN THE NURSERY!! Okay, I'm screaming now! And happy dancing! I'm so freaking excited because this means that the baby's room is almost done! Okay, enough screaming-dancing-freaking-out-exclamation-usage.

Don't mind the weird look to the fabric, this was before I got the vacuum out and cleaned it up a bit.

And just for hilarity, yes, I did capture Bibbs in mid-leap up to check out the new glider. =]

The little "mommy nook" next to the crib... I have a feeling I'm going to be spending a lot of time here.

The view from the glider; I finally got a changing pad up on the changing table and found some cute little baskets and a matching hamper.

Now the question is, where are we going to put the Bug when he gets here? =D

So. It's officially official. The Bug's room is almost finished. We've got all the big stuff done and out of the way; the painting, the crib, the combo unit, the glider, that's all finished. Now it's on to the little details, such as the mobile, the bookshelves, the toy storage, the wall art. Well, I've already started on the mobile... last night (and the night before, who am I kidding?) I sat in front of the television with my momma's Cricut machine and cut out a billion about 300 two-inch circles for my mobile. And then tonight I parked in front of the TV, yet again, and worked on the top piece, which consists of a paper-covered 9" chipboard circle. Truthfully, I've been kind of winging it with this whole mobile project, so I haven't been very good about taking pictures as I go. But here are my "in-between" pictures, one of my top piece with some of the fishing line run through, and the other of my ginormous stacks o' circles:

Here's the top piece with the "leveling" lines run through and knotted together; the "hanging" line (to suspend it from the ceiling) will be attached last...  I think.

My billions tons of circles - solids on the left, patterns on the right

Obviously, my 9 inch top piece is not going to have room for all of those circles, both solid and patterned, but it gives me lots of room to play and experiment with how I want them arranged. At first I was just going to use solid colors, but the more I looked at my scrap pile from making his name banner and pennant, the more I realized it would be more fun to incorporate the patterns I've already used elsewhere in the room. Pretty smart thinking, eh?

As you may have noticed in some of the pictures above, the crib is currently stuffed full of blankets and baskets of toys and books and other stuff and junk. But now that the futon is outta there and we have the glider in place, I can see where I want my bookshelves, and now it's just a matter of making it all happen! I originally saw these bright green boxes that I love, but I had trouble finding a tutorial on how to actually make them. Until I remembered that the Petersiks over at Young House Love built some for their daughter's nursery. And then I showed the Hubs, and he liked 'em, so he's going to build them!

aforementioned bright green shelves

aforementioned Petersik shelves

I suppose once we get bookshelves made and up on the wall, that will free up some baskets and tubs to put the Bug's toys in. Or maybe I'll look for some sort of stack of drawers, maybe with canvas bins or something of the sort. Who knows. All I know for sure as of now is that my little "mommy nook" looks fantastic and now I need to buy/find/make some sort of side table thing for my "mommy nook" so I have somewhere to put a book or glass of water during all those late night feedings. And now it's time for bed.

let there be light...

I was really hoping to have more things done in the nursery by today, but we decided to just chill this weekend. But the Hubs was productive! We ran out to Lowes yesterday and picked up the semi-mount pendant light that I've been eyeballing for the Bug's room. I love love LOVE all of the Allen + Roth lighting at Lowes and this baby was only 59 bucks, and came with the CFL bulb, too. Even though I really wish I had gotten more done in the room this weekend, I keep turning on the light and staring at it every time I walk by. So maybe I'll get more accomplished this week, or maybe I'll paint the paneling in the family room. Or maybe I just won't do anything... we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?