The “Erin & Ricky Should Get Married” Club {Sentimental Gallery Wall Update}

I was going through a folder of some sentimental gooey stuff the other day and re-discovered these clever notes that had been sent by some official members of the “Erin and Ricky Should Get Married” Club. I mean, by Erin and Bicky.

This club had precisely two official members. These two official members were six and seven respectively when the club was founded. These two official members also plotted to play chicken ice hockey at our wedding reception and went so far as to put their flip-flops in the freezer in preparation. This was, perhaps, in celebration of the fact that their club succeeded in its mission.

Today, those two club members are still our baby sisters but have since learned the difference between a “B” and an “R.” They also no longer take an active interest in frozen poultry athletics. But since their notes still make me smile, and turned out to be prophetic in a way, it only seemed fitting to scan and print them and make them a part of our bedroom gallery wall.

It’s especially fitting because tomorrow, June 28th, marks the five-year anniversary of Erin and Bicky being married.

Time flies when life together brings new jobs, new smiles, new places to live. Time flies when your husband is your best friend. Time flies when you find yourself, five years later, carrying the child that you created with the man who makes each day complete, and knowing that the moment you see him holding your daughter for the first time will be one of the best moments of your entire life.

So Happy 5th Anniversary, Rick. I love you! (And seriously--can I start calling you Bicky now? It has a certain ring to it.) ;)

Psst…you can see more specifics of our bedroom gallery wall here.

Navy & White Herringbone Accent Wall Reveal

Okay. I’ve stepped outside of my comfort zone big time with our recent accent wall project. Like I am maybe even in a new country if my previous comfort zone was the United States. Like maybe, I don’t know, my new comfort zone is in Guatemala or something.

I wonder how the Guatemalan locals feel about navy and white herringbone walls.

I felt terrified of them. (Herringbone walls, not Guatemalan locals.) I am a vanilla sort of decorator. Safe, safe. But we plunged ahead and there is no going back now. I like that it’s quirky but just a little less modern than its cousin Chevron.

Rick has also put up new trim AND gorgeous crown moulding in the entire room. He is my hero and seriously deserves an award for all of the work he is doing around the house. He also deserves an award for the most vocabulary learned in one project. He learned the word herringbone. I learned no new vocabulary.

Creating the herringbone pattern itself took us approximately six hours from start to finish, with obvious breaks for food eating and cat petting.

As for how we did it: I started typing up the tutorial and anticipate that writing it will also take at least six hours of my time, for two main reasons.

1. The whole thing initially made my brain hurt like I’d just swallowed a gallon of ice cream in 4.7 seconds time, and I need to figure out a way to explain the process without inflicting physical harm on anyone who reads about it. I am in no position to be sued for damages. And, actually, I am in Guatemala…so good luck finding me to deliver the subpoena. Full speed ahead with a mind-numbing tutorial. (I am all about getting people to come back to my blog.)
2. We finished the wall over a month ago and these days I’m doing this new trick where I say “Hey Rick” and then by the time he says “What” I have forgotten the pressing matter with which I began the conversation. So basically I will work on summoning my month-old memories and post the full step-by-step tutorial later this week, complete with pictures and diagrams.

There are only a few herringbone tutorials out there, and because of the tape we used, the process we personally ended up with is (I think) a little less complicated than the tutorials I looked at. We shall see.

What’s your favorite pattern these days? Do you have any accent walls in your home? Who’s ready to have their mind numbed?

Update: here’s the full tutorial!

Baby’s First Furniture {Dresser Makeover}

I know I keep saying how great Rick has been with this whole Prep the House for Baby and Hello We Have a Deadline Thing and Blah Blah Blah. But come on. I am basically more useless than a  sirloin steak at a PETA convention…and Rick has been amazingly motivated to pick up my slack and do helpful things like make sure our baby’s clothes aren’t still stored in a cardboard box four months from now.

See? I plan on keeping him around.

With my direction, Rick stained the outside of the dresser in Minwax Dark Walnut and painted the drawers Benjamin Moore Simply White in semi-gloss. The ceramic knobs I purchased from Joann’s like eight years ago. All six knobs total cost approximately the same amount as a sirloin steak. Maybe. I don’t actually remember. It was eight years ago after all. Plus I can’t say that I’ve ever actually purchased steak.

The dresser used to belong to Rick’s parents. It has been sitting silently in our storage for a while. But after we found out I was pregnant, it spoke to me. It said “I was meant to store the cutest clothing in the world and snuggle up with the cutest poop in the world.” And thus was born the idea of making it a dresser/changing table combo.

Speaking of poop, the middle drawer needs to be fixed…which is why it currently rests without much of a gap on the bottom drawer. But since it is still functional and Rick is busy renovating our entire house while I sit on my growing tush and compare the price of knobs to the price of beef, the drawer will be staying this way temporarily.

While we wait for Rick to finish, let’s all take a moment to squeal in delight over the baby girl clothes that could potentially be stored in this dresser.

Both $1 from yard sales. Both with tags still on. I’d say booyah except nobody says that. Plus I was informed by a student that I was “too old to have swag” and the use of booyah only confirms that.

Despite my alleged lack of swag, I still lead an exciting life:  a couple weeks ago, we started feeling serious Baby movements from the outside. I’d say she’s playing soccer but she happens to be the spawn of the two most non-athletic people on the planet. True fact. (As opposed to a fake fact?) Swagless AND inept at sports. Our child is doomed. At least her mom is photogenic.

Mmmhmmmm.That’s right. Booyah.

Have you inherited any furniture lately? Who wants a steak now? Anyone want to challenge me for the title of Least Athletic Human Being to Ever Briskly Walk the Planet?

*Linking up to Serenity Now!*

Pink Invasion Lies…and Other Nursery Plans & Progress

I hate to break it to you, but I married the best guy in the world. The rest of you ladies will just have to settle for second best. (Sorry.) He opens my car door for me every time we go somewhere, he shuts his alarm off before it rings so that it doesn’t wake me up, he buys my favorite cookies just because, and, among countless other things, most recently surprised me by doing some serious work in our baby girl’s nursery while I was at work on Tuesday: I came home to freshly painted walls and trim.

I had mentioned in passing last week that I wanted the walls to be Benjamin Moore’s Gray Owl mixed to be 50% lighter, and he somehow remembered that and went and bought the exact thing, then told me on the phone on my way home that he’d been working on another room’s crown molding all day. Needless to say, I was totally caught off-guard in the best kind of way.

Despite my last post that suggested we’d have a Pink Explosion Nursery, that isn’t really true. Because in a possibly futile attempt to be practical and save money, we are going gender-neutral on the walls and a few other things. For example, we are totally keeping the brick red floor with splatter-paint treatment. Both boys and girls really go for that sort of thing these days.

We are not totally keeping that floor.

Seriously, though, I really don’t want to paint the walls hot pink or something and then have to re-paint in the event that baby #2 is a boy. Not that I worked too hard at painting for baby #1. But that’s hardly the point.There will, however, be pink in the form of things that are A) inexpensive and B) easy to change out. Like the yard of ombre dot fabric in the middle below. It will be A Really Cute Something in the nursery. So far I have ruled out burp cloth and baby fanny pack. All other options are still up for grabs. And the girly fabric on the right serves as the color palette for the whole room AND the fabric for the doorless closet. The fabric on the left will be curtains and could easily transition to a boy nursery color scheme.

When I left for work Tuesday morning, the room still looked like this, photos courtesy of that same husband from earlier who somehow also remembered that I would want documentation of every angle.

We still obviously have work to do, but the fact that there is progress, and the fact that this progress brings us that much closer to bringing our baby girl home…it makes me smile.

In other exciting news, I have this new trick I do where when I sneeze on a partly-full bladder, I piddle my pants. Which is totally irrelevant to everything I have just discussed.

Have you been surprised in a good way lately? Is anyone disappointed that the nursery won’t be drowning in pink? Who’s going to be the first to mail me Poise adult diapers as a practical joke?