Labor Day: a brief review

taken from Goodreads.com

I finished the last book I read, Someone Like You, in the middle of the night, and clearly needed to decide right that second what book I would read next. Since I'd already bought Labor Day a little while ago and it was just sitting waiting for me on my Kindle, it seemed like a logical choice. And here we are.

Joyce Maynard's Labor Day was written in 2009 but really made a splash this past spring and summer when it became a movie starring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. (I only first heard of this book, actually, when it showed up on a Books Turning to Movies list back at the beginning of the year and thought the plot looked good; I made my own little list of books I want to read before I see the movies and this one made the cut.) Young teenage Henry lives with his reclusive mother after his father left them for a new family that lives across town. Henry's mother has been beaten down by the experiences in her life and has developed a fear of everything outside of their home. They make trips to town every couple of months to stock up on frozen and nonperishable foods, and it's during one of those trips that they cross paths with Frank. Recently escaped from prison and in need of medical attention, Frank asks for a ride home and soon finds himself the house guest of Henry and his mother for the entire Labor Day weekend. Henry has a front row seat to the transformations in his mother as she opens up and softens in the presence of Frank, their instant romance defying typical reasoning. The longer Frank stays in their home, the more complicated Henry's feelings towards him become as he sees the danger in letting him stay as well as the incredible impact he has made in the lives of both Henry and his mother.

I've been excited to read this one for a long time, but it just kept getting pushed farther down the road. I tried to put it on hold from the library a couple of times but was never able to get it read when it would actually appear on my Kindle so it kept disappearing. I finally just broke down and bought it (I think it was like $4) and it sat waiting for me. Along the way I heard many positive reviews from friends who had read it, and my excitement for the day I would finally read it kept building. All of that being said: here are my thoughts. It's honestly a little bit off-putting, the way Frank and Adele instantly fall in love. I'm not someone who can really point too many fingers (married within seven months of meeting each other? Yeah, that's us) but with these guys it's from the very first scene in the department store. Once you get past that small detail, though, I have to say that this book is wonderful. Beautifully written, Maynard weaves the reader through so many character elements in a mere 250 pages it's almost hard to emotionally digest it all. Such simple characters upon first impression, all three provide so many opportunities for social commentary and discussion. Henry's struggles with identity as a high school boy without much of a relationship with his father is my favorite; it's heartbreaking to read his deeply honest thoughts and confessions about everything he is missing out on by not having that male role in his life to talk through his tumultuous time of life. As a small disclaimer I must say that there is a shocking amount of sex in this book (shocking because I wasn't really expecting any at all for whatever reason), but it doesn't actually go into graphic details. Just comments on the fact that it's happening. I would definitely recommend this book, though, and can't wait to see the movie at some point.

Crib Skirt

It's kind of funny...I started working on the nursery as soon as we announced our pregnancy at week 12. I was so amped to get to work at that point that I figured I'd finish it all within a month. It seems that, if you let it, getting a nursery decorated can be similar to planning a wedding: everything takes more time than you expect, and there's way more than your list makes it seem. I suppose DIYing almost everything didn't help too much with that either. But eventually that list does end, and ours did about three minutes ago. That's right, people: the nursery to-do list is completely done! (The pre-baby list, I must confess, still has two items on it, but hopefully those will get done today since baby could theoretically come at any time and since...well...I'll just say that I feel like go time will be really soon.)

This isn't usually my style (it isn't ever my style) but I'm 9 months pregnant and my alarm went off at 5:45 this morning to get ready for a sunrise maternity shoot and Baby is literally trying to get out of me currently, so I'm not doing my own tutorial on how I made this crib skirt for the nursery. I didn't take pictures along the way and I'm giving no explanation. This is half because of all the reasons I just mentioned, and half because the tutorial I used was perfect and there's just no point in trying to recreate my own. I mean, Young House Love is as great as they are for a reason: they make some pretty great tutorials all on their own. So here's the link to the specific blog post I used as my step-by-step:

http://www.younghouselove.com/2010/03/nursery-progress-skirting-the-issue/  

And here's my finished product:

The crib skirt was designed to cover the ugly hinges and hardware of the under-the-crib storage drawer.

Honestly, the crib would have been fine if I hadn't made the crib skirt at all. At first those metal hinges really bothered me but over the course of the last 10 or 11 months since we bought the crib they've become much less of an eyesore to me. Some of that has definitely been born from a lack of any kind of desire to actually make the crib skirt, I can't lie. But I'd already bought the hem tape and the fabric, so I did finally feel like it was time to suck it up and just get it done. 

I'm not sure why I get so intimidated by new and strange DIY-related things, but I do. Sherry from Young House Love promised that hem tape was super easy and super wonderful for the non-sewers such as herself, but I remained a little unconvinced. Aka: I was scared of the most ridiculously easy DIY project in the history of the world. Pretty ridiculous, now that I've done it and see how simple - and awesome! - it is. Hem tape is officially my new favorite thing. (For details on what the heck I'm talking about, click on the tutorial link above.)

I had such a hard time picking fabric the day I bought this, because there were SO many beautiful patterns that would have looked awesome as a crib skirt if there wasn't that super busy and crazy rug taking up the whole room. (I went through similar heartache when I was looking for new curtain fabric.) But in the end, I'm really happy with this fabric. It does have that subtle pattern on it so it's not a solid sheet above a solid skirt, but it's so subtle it doesn't compete with the rug below. I think it turned out perfectly. 

So the nursery is done! Completely and 100% done, folks. I can't even begin to tell you how that feels. As part of the maternity shoot today, we got a lot of detail shots throughout the whole nursery so when I get those I'll post a whole, finished overview of the final product. Everything DIY has been shared on here already, obviously, but there are a lot of details that haven't been documented and I can't wait to show you how it all came together. Also, it should be said that we are besides ourselves with excitement for Baby to finally be able to come live in his or her new room. 

Here's the finished nursery to-do list, with links to all the individual projects. It's been super fun and I've loved it all, but I'm also kind of ready to take a DIY break for a little while. 

• 1 Samuel 1:27-28 chalkboard
• quote for inside side table frame
• hang all pictures 
• turn green bottle into a lamp
• recover lamp shade? new lamp shade?
• prime dressers
• paint dressers white
• paint side table white
• paint cube organizer
• make mobile for over crib
• paint metal pail for books
• clean out closet and closet drawers
• clean out dresser drawers
• line dresser drawers with contact paper
• basket(s) for cube organizer
• get small lamp for changing table
• metal trash can for diapers
• basket with liner for hamper
• hang large frame for showers
• set up baby monitor
• make clothing dividers
• make crib skirt
• buy new blackout curtains

Yep, that's a pretty exciting completed list. Stay tuned for nursery detail photos sometime soon!

Dining Room Wall Makeover

Friends and family: I haven't been this excited about a blog post in a very long time. A very long time. We were able to cross not one but two things off my list for the dining room this weekend, and both of them were items I have been extremely excited to get done.

This is our dining room.

We have had some plans for this room for a long time, but none of them are very emergent and since everything that has come up in the house over the course of the last year and a half has actually been emergent (and expensive, because it seems all unplanned house issues are), the dining room hasn't been a huge priority. The plans involve a big farmhouse table we're going to make, a new (centered) light fixture, and a buffet of some kind for that back wall; the buffet is probably the easiest item on that list to tackle since it's just a matter of buying one, but we don't buy too many things brand new from stock stores which meant we just had to keep our eyes peeled and wait for the right time when our budget and thrifting fortunes intersected. That happened this week, when I was checking out some of the shops in downtown Berryville with a friend and found this beauty.

It wasn't at all what I had been picturing for a buffet; I had been thinking of something that was much wider end to end and I definitely hadn't been picturing painted wood. But something about this piece spoke to me, and I have found that if something in a thrift store speaks to you then you should bring it home. After sending off a text to the babe, meeting him back at the store that night so he could look at it in person, and then going home to do some measuring, we decided to buy it. We were able to snatch it for $135, which we were pretty pleased with.

 There are some really cool character bits about this guy. The shop owner had painted it red after purchasing it, and the electric blue color underneath shows through in a couple spots that have been scratched. Some would hate that, but we love it.

The wood is solid, there's a shelf inside for great additional storage, and honestly the color alone adds all kinds of quirky character. It did need a few minutes of work to fix a couple of the more undesirable elements of its character, though. For starters, we didn't love the knobs that came with it. I didn't hate them, but the babe did ("they're too blingy") and it was a good opportunity to easily swap them out with ones we liked a lot more.

These were the knobs already on the doors.

We discovered when we went to swap out with the new knobs that the screws that came with them were just not long enough to go through the door. All it took was a little bit of drill work to allow the screws to go farther into the wood and we were good to go.

And here are the new knobs installed. (If you notice that the cabinet is a different shade of red in this picture, it's because this shot was taken as an "oh yeah, I forgot to take an after shot" with my iPhone instead of my camera.)

The other issue that needed to be addressed was that the doors didn't actually stay closed, which you might have noticed in the pictures above. We figured it would be simple enough to buy a couple dollars worth of hardware and fix it, but the shop owner had already bought what we needed and just gave it to us on the house. We used the kind with a metal insert that wedges in between the two rolling pieces...just look at the picture for an actual reference because I clearly have no idea what they're called.

A couple of screws later and the whole buffet was good to go! We do have a couple of ideas for adjustments to be made down the road at some point (we like the wheels the whole cabinet is sitting on but we aren't in love with them and would prefer solid legs, it sits slightly uneven and we need to level it somehow at some point, and we may do some kind of tweaking to the face of the doors someday) but we're not in a rush.

The additional storage the buffet provides will be really nice; when we moved into the house I was blown away with how much storage my kitchen cabinets provided. I didn't think I could ever fill them...they offered so much than our tiny Woodbridge kitchen. Soon they did fill up, though, and I have a couple of spare items that need a home. I have a small collection of place mats, for example, that have a home in one of our kitchen cabinets but the don't exactly fit...so the door doesn't really shut all the way and it drives the babe nutso. Needless to say, they will be moved to the buffet pronto. I've also recently become the proud and deeply honored owner of my grandmother's silver collection after her death in July, and the beautiful wooden box containing the collection will be kept in here as well. 

The other half of the dining room makeover is even more exciting to me than finding the buffet. I came up with a decorative idea this summer while the babe was in Florida; this idea came to me from two different sources of inspiration. The first was a trip to Hobby Lobby, when I noticed the huge variety of letters they have all throughout the store, all made from different materials and at different sizes. I particularly noticed the huge metal M and grimaced at the $30 price tag, feeling like we would have to circle back to him at some point. With those thoughts in the back of my mind, I discovered the show "Fixer Upper" on HGTV this summer. It just started this spring and it features my absolute favorite married couple of all time. I want to be Joanna Gaines, friends. I really, really do. For a million reasons. When I saw their love of all things mixed material letters, and their habit of using them at some point and in some fashion in all of their remodels, my vision for our dining room formed. I would use letters, alright. I would wait until they were 50% off at Hobby Lobby and I would not stop with the big metal one; I would buy them all. All the Ms. And it would be glorious. (Ms because our last name is Moore, which starts with M. Just felt like I needed to make sure that was explained.)

I can't even tell you how excited I was when I shared this vision with the babe and he loved it. There's always that risk that he won't, you know. But he did, and we made it happen. I had all those beautiful Ms waiting for him, and then he had the nerve to go and wreck his motorcycle on his way home from Florida and set my to-do list back by about a month. Rude, right? But it finally happened yesterday, and I sat in the dining room chair watching him hanging the Ms one by one, giggling and freaking out like an idiot. I am crazy in love with this wall, guys.

But let's back up. There was some level of arranging and rearranging that happened on the floor before they were ever hung on the wall.

I had this layout first, and I liked it quite a bit. When the babe questioned it, though, and said that he had pictured a layout that was slightly more narrow and taller instead, I did some tweaking and came up with this. 

 
I made a conscious effort to randomize and spread out all the different materials and sizes. I knew the obvious plan would be to put that big beautiful metal M (which of course was the first one in my cart on shopping day) right smack dab in the middle and then arrange the rest around it, but I wanted to avoid that as much as possible. From there, I just tried to kind of stand back and randomize the bigger ones, the metal ones, the wood/cork ones, as well as paying attention to colors. After the layout was set, it was a matter of hanging them all. This was the nightmare the babe had been dreading, and I must say I don't blame him. All but two of the Ms came with hanging hardware already installed, which was nice; it was easy enough to add some to the remaining two. The tricky part was just all the measuring and accommodating for all the holes that needed to be drilled and nails that needed to be placed, all while fighting with the level. But in the end, it was truly wonderful.

I'm really happy with the final layout. I think the variety of colors, textures, depths that they all stick out from the wall all provides a lot to look at and take in. I also love that the grey M in the middle that features white buttons and yellow flowers is from our wedding; it sat on one of the tables in the entryway in the middle of various pictures and art pieces I made specifically for that day. I love that I was able to bring it off the bookshelves and incorporate it so seamlessly.

So now the whole wall, with both the buffet and the M collage, looks like this.

That basket was from one of our baby showers, gifted to me from my aunt and cousins. It had been overflowing (quite literally) with baby bath products and when we lifted it out of the car the handle broke off. Bummer for the handle, but I still love the basket and have been looking for a way to use it in the house since. I've also been looking for a way to get my cookbooks out of the small cabinet above the stove that doubles as my spice cabinet, because my spices are taking over and it's been kind of annoying having to rearrange everything every time. So I grabbed the basket, filled it with all the cookbooks, and stuck it on top of the buffet.

It adds some visual interest as well as some great function for me. I'm not too concerned about the cookbooks being so far from the stove, by the way; I thought about it and did acknowledge that it could be an issue but honestly, it's like ten steps away. I think I can handle that.

I just could not be more happy with this transformation. Just a couple of fairly minor additions, but they made such a difference in the whole feel of the room. I love how the variety of materials present in the M collage work so well with the funky red buffet, and I love how much spunk and interest the whole wall now creates right in the middle of our house. I was already feeling antsy to get that dining room table built this winter...now I feel like I'm going to start being pretty obnoxious about it here soon...

Someone Like You: a brief review

I've really enjoyed getting back into the habit of reading again, and after I finished Boy 21 a handful of days ago I realized that I had been neglecting my 94 book challenge quite a bit. So I grabbed one off the shelves that would work for the challenge but also give me a pretty easy and quick read. Guys, I'm gonna be honest with you: some of the books on the 94 book challenge just aren't really all that great. I've picked them up from the Green Valley Book Fair and impulse sale purchases that seemed like fun reads, and now in hindsight I'm kind of annoyed that they're on my shelves. Not because I'm above fun beach reads, but because I just have SO. MANY. books that I want to read that are better quality, better writing, and have better messages than some of these. So even though they're convenient because I can zoom through them in a relatively shorter time, they're just not that exciting for me. I'm obviously saying all of this because the Sarah Dessen books on my shelves fit into this category for me...but all of that being said, this one was a slight grade above the only other one of Dessen's books I've read, That Summer.

Halley and Scarlett have been best friends since middle school when Scarlett moved in across the street. They both experience the hardest time of their lives when Scarlett's summer boyfriend dies in a motorcycle accident right before junior year starts. Things become much more complicated, though, when Scarlett finds out she's pregnant. The girls form a deeper bond while working together through morning sickness, heartburn, and food cravings...but Halley is also discovering a whole new and different life with a boy from P.E. class, Macon. Macon is mysterious and dangerous and has a trail of rumors following him. Halley has never rebelled against her parents or her own personal morals, but she finds herself very easily swayed by Macon's charms.

I mentioned that this book was slightly better quality than my only other Dessen experience; that's really just because of the plot. The writing is simplistic and fairly obvious, but at least some of the content of this one gets deeper. Both Scarlett's pregnancy and Halley's relationship with Macon provide a wealth of lessons learned and great conversations for teenage readers. There's still a fair amount of details that aren't quite completely realistic (at least not for your typical teen) but for the most part, Dessen manages to stay within the realm of easy to relate to: far too many girls really do get pregnant in high school after a relatively short relationship, and far too many girls really do fall for the whims and charms of a dangerous "bad boy" who leads them down all kinds of tempting paths. I would say that many high school girls (especially girls who don't love reading more dense and complicated books) would really enjoy this book and would even get some good morals out of it. For me personally, though, it was a moderately okay read.

Nursery Clothing Dividers

Today was a really productive day for the "before baby comes" to-do list. I was able to finish a small project that I had started a couple days ago, get the car ready, pack about 2/3 of the hospital bag, and make these clothing dividers for the nursery's closet. Not too shabby considering I felt a little comatose the whole time.

I'm not going to claim any credit at all for this project; I ripped it right off of the blog I Heart Organizing. Jen had a guest post last month in which a woman shared the clothing dividers she made for her own nursery, and they were just too perfect to pass up. Or attempt to change at all. I followed her directions pretty much exactly (I even bought the same wooden Os from Hobby Lobby) but for the sake of me posting some pictures and actually writing somewhat of a blog post, I'll do some explaining too.

We started out by buying those wooden Os, which conveniently came in a 2-pack, so we ended up with four. The babe held them up to the hanging bar in the nursery closet and measured how wide of a chunk he needed to cut out (to slide them over and onto the bar). He used a hand saw to cut the wood and then sanded off the edges a little so they would be smooth. Unfortunately, I did a pretty terrible job of taking any pictures up until this point. Just picture what look like four wooden Cs.

My next step was to pick out scrapbook paper to make the little dividers a little bit more pretty. I decided to use four different patterns, none of which too gender specific and mixing it up quite a bit between them all for some variety. I thought about making them all the same, but then decided I wanted them all different instead. No particular reason, just what struck me.

I traced the dividers on each piece of scrapbook paper (twice for each piece, for a front and a back).

I cut them out...and then decided I wanted to deviate slightly from the inspiration blog post. I was a little concerned about the bare wood showing on the edges of the dividers; it would work in some cases but considering the loud scrapbook paper I'd chosen I thought it would just look unfinished. So I grabbed some paint, mixed up a green color, and painted the dividers. Like a dummy, I didn't bother to take any pictures during this phase either (although I have already mentioned that I was basically asleep doing all of this, so...). But after the paint dried, I cut out strips of the scrapbook paper that I had already cut and Modge Podged it to both the fronts and backs of all the dividers.

Once again, no pictures. I'm not sure why I even bothered to have my camera out of the bag today. But after the Modge Podge dried, I applied the appropriate sizing stickers (0-3 months, 3-6 months, 6-9 months) and left one blank because I didn't think it was necessary to use all the letter stickers required to write "Sleep Sacks," and stuck 'em in the closet. Thankfully, I had the clarity of mind to take pictures of the finished product, at least.

I don't currently have any 6-9 month clothes, so that's why you see one of the dividers way on the end of the rod. But the rest are all set and will be added to tremendously once the baby grows. For now, it's just one more thing crossed off the list, though, which is pretty awesome. There's literally only one project left in the nursery, and even though it should be incredibly easy I'm pretty intimidated by it. I've actually put it off this long because of how intimidated I am by it, but this week is the time. It's time to make a crib skirt, people. Anxiously await my blog post.

Here's the nursery to-do list now:

• 1 Samuel 1:27-28 chalkboard
• quote for inside side table frame
• hang all pictures 
• turn green bottle into a lamp
• recover lamp shade? new lamp shade?
• prime dressers
• sand side table
• sand cube organizer
• paint dressers white
• paint side table white
• paint side table drawer pull silver
• paint cube organizer
• make mobile for over crib
• paint metal pail for books
• clean out closet and closet drawers
• clean out dresser drawers
• line dresser drawers with contact paper
• organizers for inside of dresser drawers
• storage system and bins
• basket(s) for cube organizer
• get small lamp for changing table
• metal trash can for diapers
• basket with liner for hamper
• shelf over storage system?
• new overhead light?
• art piece above changing table
• hang large frame for showers
• set up baby monitor
• make crib skirt
• buy new blackout curtains

Yep, there's three things on that list and I said there's only one project left. Since the babe is hanging that frame and he needs to help me set up the baby monitor, I'm not counting them as things on my personal to-do list. And technically they're not projects anyway. They're items. So there.

There's only two blog posts left in the nursery, though: the dreaded crib skirt, and then I'll do a big detailed look at the finished nursery as a whole, talking about some of the little details and things that haven't been mentioned on here already. And soon...there will be an actual baby on this blog! Crazy. We couldn't be more ready.

Boy21: a brief review

This book was recommended to me by a friend, and it got written down on all my various lists to remember for a different day. When I saw it at the Green Valley Book Fair in July I snatched it up for a mere $3.75. It's been a rough couple of months for my reading interests (between vacation in Florida and then the babe's motorcycle accident and recovery), but cruising through Baby Wise last week helped me remember a little bit about what it was like to actually read a book and I snatched this one up figuring a shorter, easier read would be even more helpful in getting me back into the habit. (A quick thought: isn't it crazy how easy it is to get out of the habit of reading? I have found that how I spend my free minutes cycles between TV and books; when I'm in the habit of filling dead time with Netflix or an SVU marathon on the TV it's what I fill all my free time with and forget that books exist. But when I get in the habit of keeping my book by my side and grabbing it to fill free time, I discover how much free time I have to read little snippets at a time and the TV or iPad or even my phone don't seem as tempting. So this is me trying to get back into that mindset, because books will probably always be more healthy than the TV. Even really good TV.)

Matthew Quick's Boy 21 is a little strange. I'm not going to lie to you. I enjoyed it a lot, but the basic plot is pretty odd and takes a while to really get into. Finley (or White Rabbit, as his friends and teammates call him) is about to start his senior year of high school in a very racially divided, rundown city that there seems to be no escape from. His only source of happiness and satisfaction come from his basketball skills, and he spends all his time in the off-season preparing to be the best. When his coach shows up at his house the night before school starts and asks him to befriend a new kid in school who has gone through a hard time, Finley does what is asked of him. Little could prepare him, though, for the friendship that would be formed with this new kid who preferred to be called Boy21 and who claims to be an alien from a different planet, sent to study Earthlings. In many ways, Finley and Boy21 are the perfect pair, and learn a lot from each other over the course of the basketball season.

Like I said, a little bit of a goofy concept - he thinks he's a what?! - but it grows on you and it does all start to make more sense as the book progresses. The picture of friendship is pretty interesting as well, and even though Finley isn't a perfect character he does really shine in a lot of areas; his patience and understanding with Boy21 is impressive. I wouldn't say that this is the most profound or incredible book I've ever read, but it does have some twists and shocking moments, and it also shows a truly heartfelt picture of friendship even in less than ideal circumstances.

The Evolving Cloud Mobile

It was probably close to a year ago that I saw this picture on Pinterest and decided I wanted to do something similar in our nursery.

taken from Pinterest.com

Instead of having the cloud and raindrops over the changing table, though, I always envisioned it as the mobile above the crib. My first plan for the mobile - formed more than a year ago when we were pregnant with Sam - was to make it entirely out of cardboard, using boxes we already had in the basement from when we moved to Berryville. I was also going to use white and blue paint that we already had, resulting in a free mobile other than fishing line and hanging hardware. This remained the plan for a long time, since we weren't really working on the nursery for a long time and then since I saved the mobile for (basically) last.

I grabbed some cardboard from the basement and drew out my cloud, using the crib as a loose reference for how big to make it and tweaking a lot as I went.

When I read Young House Love's blog post about making Teddy's mobile, though, Sherry mentioned that she actually laid down in the crib after they had hung the mobile to make sure that it looked interesting from the underside (what would be Teddy's view). I never crawled into our crib, but it did make me rethink the completely flat - although free - cardboard design I'd been planning. The point of the mobile is to give the baby something interesting to look at while he or she falls asleep, after all. So I started thinking again.  

My second plan was to make the cloud out of fabric, filling it with poly fill like a pillow, and to make the raindrops out of blue string that had been decoupaged and allowed to harden around a balloon that was later popped. I decided to use a thick white canvas (purchased from Hobby Lobby, of course), and used the cardboard cloud as a template to cut out my fabric. I contemplated using a friend's sewing machine for a few minutes, but since neither my friend nor I have used a sewing machine since the 7th grade, I decided it wasn't really the time to relearn that skill on such small, tight curves. So I opted to hand sew, and it looked AWESOME...

 
...until I flipped it inside out and stuffed it with poly fill. That didn't look awesome. That looked...that looked awful.

As it turns out, I didn't do such a great job keeping my stitches tight or following the curves of the cloud. There was stuffing sticking outside of holes where there were gaps in my stitching, but the bigger issue was that it didn't even come close to keeping its shape. And I was not a fan of this new shape it had taken on. The real killer is that after I decided to chuck this guy and start over with a different route, I saw a million examples on Pinterest and such that didn't have the fabric turned inside out and instead just left the flat, rough edges. So I probably could have kept it that way and been fine, but once I turned it inside out and stuffed it it was clearly not fine.

So I went back to the drawing board yet again after some Pinteresting for thoughts and inspiration...and ended up in a place similar to where I had originally started out. Here was my inspiration picture:

taken from Pinterest.com

For my third plan, I went back to the cardboard, this time making two clouds that I would fit together origami-style like the clouds in the inspiration picture. 

Once I had two identical clouds (I used the first one as a template to draw the second one), I grabbed some white paint from the basement and painted them. It took several coats, but eventually I had two really pretty white clouds.  

To cut the slits that would fit the clouds together, I used the ruler to find the halfway point from top to bottom, and cut one cloud from the bottom up and the other cloud from the top down. 

It took some wiggling and manhandling to get the pieces to fit together, but eventually they did and I loved how they looked. When the babe came home from Florida, though, his reaction went something like this: "I love this! It looks so good! You know what would make it look even better and last longer? If we made it out of wood instead!" I'll be honest...my first thought was something like this:

But my second thought was that he was definitely right, and that it would be really cool to have him be a part of one of the nursery projects. So...we started again.

Our fourth plan was to make two clouds that would fit together origami-style just like the cardboard ones, but this time out of a very thin plywood we found at Hobby Lobby. Unfortunately, wood is a little bit trickier to cut and deal with than cardboard. The babe used his Dremmel tool to cut out the clouds - after I drew them, using the first cloud as a template for the second once again - and then sanded them all down so all edges would be rounded and smooth.

Many acrobatics were used. 

Once they were both cut out, we measured again to find the spots to cut the slits...but this time the babe put a lot more thought into it than I did with the cardboard and made sure that slits were cut in a place that would allow the clouds to hang evenly and balanced. That meant that the slits weren't necessarily in the center.  

I forgot to take pictures of the clouds painted white, because at this point I was lucky to remember to take pictures of anything. Several coats were used once again, as well as quite a bit of touching up, but eventually we had pretty white clouds once more. We super glued them together and then used wood putty to fill in any gaps, painting over the wood putty once it dried. 

Next step was the rain drops, which had always been planned but just never had gotten a chance to exist. 

 I mixed up some glue water, covered the string with the mix, and wrapped it randomly around the little balloons the babe blew up for me (fun fact: I lack the skill of blowing up balloons). I'll be honest, even though this had been my plan all along, once I got started on it I wasn't really too sure whether it would work. I wasn't convinced they would look like raindrops once we popped the balloons. And then I wasn't sure the string would dry to a hard enough consistency to maintain shape very well without the balloons. After letting them sit overnight, though, they were plenty hard enough and with some careful wiggling and gentle scootching, the babe was able to pop the balloons and pull them all free from the string. They weren't the most amazing looking things in the world, but they would work just fine.

Next step was to drill very tiny holes along the bottom of the clouds, one for each of the raindrops, so we could tie fishing line through. We also drilled holes at the top of the clouds (two on each cloud, for four contact points total) to string fishing line through to hang the whole mobile. The babe knotted each piece of fishing line after stringing it through the holes and then super glued each knot for added reinforcement (this isn't something we want falling once it's hung). He then super glued each piece of fishing line to a rain drop and they were done! All that was left was the top.

He tied all four pieces of fishing line that had been woven through the top together in a knot, and then super glued it for added reinforcement. We still needed something to hang on the hook we bought for the ceiling, so he tied a second knot, super glued it, and waited for it to dry.

We used this hook - white, to blend into the ceiling a little bit better - and followed the directions for screwing it into the ceiling once we measured the spot that was dead center above the crib and also in a stud (because, once again, we don't want this thing falling on our child). Once that was done, we got to hang it!

I'm not sure that those raindrops were really what I envisioned - even though, to be fair, they're actually exactly what I envisioned - but they do the trick just fine. And, like the babe pointed out last night, they're super glued to the wood so I'm stuck with them. And I'm fairly confident that they look pretty sweet from the crib view (I'm not climbing in to see for myself though). Truth be told, I really do love the mobile. The babe's idea of switching to wood was great; it's sturdier and looks better and will last longer than the cardboard.

There's really not too much left to get done in the nursery now, which is awesome since we are now officially less than a month away from the due date. I can't even tell you how great it feels to cross this guy off the list!

Here's the nursery to-do list now:

• 1 Samuel 1:27-28 chalkboard
• quote for inside side table frame
• hang all pictures 
• turn green bottle into a lamp
• recover lamp shade? new lamp shade?
• prime dressers
• sand side table
• sand cube organizer
• paint dressers white
• paint side table white
• paint side table drawer pull silver
• paint cube organizer
• make mobile for over crib
• paint metal pail for books
• clean out closet and closet drawers
• clean out dresser drawers
• line dresser drawers with contact paper
• organizers for inside of dresser drawers
• storage system and bins
• basket(s) for cube organizer
• get small lamp for changing table
• metal trash can for diapers
• basket with liner for hamper
• shelf over storage system?
• new overhead light?
• art piece above changing table
• hang large frame for showers
• make crib skirt
• buy new blackout curtains

There's a couple other odds and ends that are left, but those last three are the biggies. So ready to get everything crossed off my master "before baby comes" list, but we're getting really close! Only a handful of things left and they will hopefully be knocked out in the next week, leaving the last couple weeks wide open to relax and wait for Baby!