I’m being held hostage by a baby!

*Warning: if you don’t like things like babies and cuteness and sweetness, don’t read this post.*

Guess who decided to blog today? Yeah, Kenley is as surprised as you are.

But it goes without saying that when you and your heart are being held hostage by the most angelic doll of a baby you have ever seen, you neglect your blog for many, many weeks. And it’s totally okay.

You know what else is totally okay? A duck hat.

But come on! Who wants to blog when these rosy little cheeks are in the same house and just demanding to be smooched?

That little duck and her cheekers will be two months old in just one week. Where does time go? She doesn’t look like this anymore when she sleeps, a fact that already makes my new mommy heart ache.

But growing up also means we’ve now met her early baby smiles, which of course makes my mommy heart melt.

I am now actively resisting the urge to shamelessly drown you in a sea of my favorite Kenley pictures from her first 7.5 weeks of life.

I said I was actively resisting. I didn’t say I was succeeding. Hey, you were warned.

If you’re sitting there thinking that all I do is dress her up and take pictures all day, you’re of course totally wrong. I mean, right. Totally right.

You know what else is totally right? A bear suit.

Don’t pretend you weren’t thinking like the same exact thing.

So duck hats + cheekers + bear suits = I might be back to blogging, I might not.

Don’t question the math.

I do have projects I could share, sadly none of which involve a bear suit. But we’ll see. (We’ll see about sharing those projects, not we’ll see about creating a project that involves a bear suit. Although now that you mention it.)

I hope all 3.8 of you who are still visiting my slice of the Internet have been well! Again, don’t question the math.

:) Happy Thursday!

Introducing Miss Kenley

At 2:59pm on Saturday, October 12th, I became a mommy.

Kenley Grace made her big debut around 24 hours after we arrived at the hospital on Friday afternoon, and just two days before her due date of October 14th.

She ended up coming home on her due date, the day we’d marked “K-Day” ever since we picked out her name.

She weighed in at a healthy 7 pounds, 12 ounces and measured 22 inches long.

And she gave my mama the best birthday present ever. I think someday she’ll think it’s pretty cool to share a birthday with her Grammy.

The fact that she grew beneath my heart for nine months is an amazing miracle to me, and I’m completely overwhelmed with joy and gratitude that she is here and that she is healthy.

I just can’t believe this beautiful little girl is mine.

And although it doesn’t seem possible, I love her even more today than I did yesterday.

I’ll share her whole birth story someday, but right now, the product of that birth is sleeping snuggled up against my chest and all I want to do is love on her and memorize every little bit of her sweetness.

Yes, at 2:59pm on Saturday, October 12th, I became a mommy. And life now is better than it has ever, ever been.

Our Baby Girl’s Mint and Coral Nursery {Revealed}

Two posts in two weeks. Somebody stop me. On second thought, given my track record, I can probably take care of stopping myself. You’re dismissed.

On Sunday we put the finishing touches on our baby girl’s mint and coral nursery. This means that all we need now is, well, a baby girl to put in it.

This also means that I will now show you one nursery picture for every 528 I plan on taking of our baby in her first minute week of life. First, the dresser/changing table that got a makeover….and an evil trick. An evil trick in the form of a DIY wooden monogram that gives you a hint about our baby’s first name but is evil because that’s where this story ends. Anyone care to take a guess? ;)

I traced the tricky K onto a piece of leftover plywood and Rick cut it out, then painted it with Benjamin Moore’s Peach Pink.

I sewed that giant pouf myself (using this fabric) and stuffed it with about 9 gazillion plastic bags and packing peanuts. It was, to say the least, going to be much smaller in my head. And I may or may not get around to a tutorial, but there are plenty of others around the web if you absolutely need a basically useless but totally cute pouf of your own.

The crib is this one from Walmart. The little mint pail is from World Market. Closet curtain fabric is from Joann. Window curtain fabric discussed here.

The rocking chair was in my nursery as a baby and used to be white. It was a bit yellowed from its age so I gave it a fresh coat of the same Pink Peach from the ‘K’ mixed with Simply White to tone it down a bit. That sweet little art behind the rocking chair is a free printable I found here. Bonus: you can color it in with whatever colors coordinate with your room. So I obviously did.

The chandy mobile is from Urban Outfitters forever ago and finally has a nice place to live in our home, unless you count the back of a dark closet as being nice. We took off one of the layers to make it lighter and shorter.

The gallery wall is one of my favorite things and helps make the randomly placed light fixture blend in a little better instead of screaming HEY LOOK AT ME I AM A RANDOMLY PLACED LIGHT FIXTURE. The “art” in the frames is made from pages out of a 25 cent book that I picked at a yard sale. It was really a pretty lame storyline so I didn’t feel bad ripping it apart.

Oh, and that carpet you see? That’s our new wall-to-wall. It’s Shaw Flooring, Conquest in Limestone and it was the best call ever for our upstairs. I like that it is neutral and soft underfoot but adds some visual texture to the floor.

Aaaand because I’m told no reveal post would be complete without a couple before and afters:

See the in-between stages here.

So. A baby-less nursery. We tried really hard to believe my water broke yesterday morning but, spoiler alert, it turned out I just wet myself. Apparently incontinence is acceptable at 39 weeks gestation. Here I am telling Baby K in my scariest voice that she needs to stop making me pee my pants being so cozy in there and come out already.

I’m feeling well enough, but her Uncle Brendan goes back to Phoenix on Friday and it would be really great if he got to meet her, don’t you think? Say yes.

Psst…I’ve added a super fun raindrop accent wall since this post! Check it out here!

Um, hello. {An absence explanation of sorts, but not really.}

Oh hey. Remember me? Nothing says “Happy Friday” like a blogger not blogging for five weeks and then randomly showing up on a random Friday to share random things, am I right?

Just go with it.

You’d think that with my long, unexplained absence I’d at least have the decency to have solved some global crisis or had my baby by now, but no such luck on either count. I’ll be 39 weeks on Monday and am obviously not at ALL anxious to meet this little girl. The fact that I’m not in labor, though, basically is a global crisis at this point and I honestly cry without cause or warning just thinking about the fact that she isn’t here yet, or because I can’t find a cami I need to wear, or because it’s 6:28 on a Thursday evening and really, there’s no better time to freeze in your tracks and begin sobbing. Rick looks on in utter bewilderment, marveling at The Strange and Mysterious Creature Known as Woman.

Seriously, though, maybe if she realized how cute she will look in these headbands that I made for her she would figure out that it is decidedly less cozy in my uterus than out and be all like, “Hey world, here I come”?

So if I haven’t been busy having a baby, then what exactly have I been doing for five weeks? Well, making headbands, for one. Adjusting to the start of the school year for another, and the fatigue that accompanies that. I’ll be working right up until the baby comes,which means a handful of my students past and present are freaked out by my belly and frequently ask what will happen if I go into labor at school. I think they expect the baby to spontaneously swan dive onto the floor in a pool of goo right in the middle of a lesson on personification. I told them to bring a mop. I am nothing if not supportive of their innermost fears and anxieties.

We’ve also had plenty of projects going on, but I just haven’t taken the time to blog about them. Take the nursery for example. Someday I will get around to sharing it. Like maybe when my baby goes to college. In case it’s that far away, here’s a peek at where we currently stand:

I’ve also been taking pictures. Of people. (Who knew that would be way more fun than taking pictures of projects and rooms?) It started with a random sisterly photo shoot to try out my new lens (fixed Nikon 50mm, f/1.8)…

…and turned into something that I actually love doing.

Taking a million photos of other peoples’ children has been helping take my mind off of the fact that a certain child I know isn’t here yet.

Aaaand I’m obviously still learning a lot, but it’s been tons of fun practicing on all of these willing participants, young and old alike.

So that’s me in a five-week nutshell. The next five-week nutshell will include something about a baby being born. And maybe a real global crisis, solved. And maybe a nursery reveal or an upstairs carpet reveal. (Carpeting=best decision ever for the upstairs.) What have you been up to for the past 5 weeks? I’ve tried to stay caught up on blogs but every time I open Bloglovin and it informs me that I have like half a million posts to read, I cry a little.

Oh wait. I was crying already.

Farewell, Fleshy Walls and Gangrenous Trim. {Spare Bedroom Progress}

In the continuing saga of “Frantic Nesting at Erin and Rick’s House,” I present to you the latest installment of upstairs progress: the formerly fleshy and gangrenous spare bedroom.

When we first moved in, we non-affectionately referred to this room as the Rope Room because A) the previous owners had decorated with thick rope all around the perimeter and trim and B) we are clever. In case you ever decide to glue rope to your house, the method they used involved giant staples AND glue—you know, in case the staples got lazy and decided to take the day off.

In the name of all things original plaster and trim, please do not glue rope to your house. Thank you.

They also should have gotten a refund for that color match paint job there. It’s like when you put on sunscreen and miss a spot and get burned there and only there.

Soooo the following is a list of tasks completed in this room in the past 2.5 years:

1. Rip down rope.
2. Install mess and weird light fixture.
3. …that’s it.

But NO MORE. Because a few weeks ago, the poor, neglected spare bedroom became the final victim in our Get the Upstairs Ready for Carpet scheme. Just like the nursery, the original plaster walls were pockmarked and rough, and the trim was gangrenous gross and bumpy and peeling. So just like the nursery, the room got the skim coat treatment along with sanded and painted trim. Carpet was also removed.

Also just like the nursery, the walls are Benjamin Moore’s Gray Owl mixed at 50% lighter, and the trim and ceiling are Benjamin Moore’s Simply White. The same-old same-old color choices go along with my plan to not spend so much time making little house decisions. I knew both of those were tried and true so I just went with it.

The closet also got some love.

This room will eventually become somebody’s “big kid” room, but for now, we’re just going to try not to let miscellaneous junk take a dump in there. Other than that, we have no plan for it.

Hope everyone is having a good week! This pregnant lady begins school in a week. Time flies when you are turning your house upside-down…or watching somebody else do it for you. (To be fair, I did don a mask and do some painting through all of this.)

Psst…want to see the rest of our upstairs progress? Check out the newly drywalled common room, the closet Rick and relatives built, the herringbone accent wall, and the nursery curtains and paint!