2 day weekends

so this week we reach the 34 week mark... which means that we only have 3 more weeks till the baby is considered full term and 6 weeks until our due date.

this weekend i realized that 2 day weekend just aren't long enough for me to recharge after a long work week.  friday night i basically had a melt down from just being too tired.  JD is the best, doing everything he can to make sure we are ok.  all of my anxieties bubbled to the surface and boom, breakdown.

saturday and sunday JD worked incredibly hard on finishing up the boxes for the living room.  we finished them last night (and by we i mean JD).  tonight i will get to load them and put our living room back in some assemblance of order. they look fantastic and will do wonders for storage in our house and organization.

other weekend highlights included setting up a bit more of the nursery.   we now have the crib mattress and i even put sheets on it.  the room is starting to look so cute.  we need some color along the black wallpaper wall.  i think a mobile over the crib will help and i was thinking of making a super colorful bunting to hang along the wall. 

i have been super hungry for smores, but since we have put a stop to our camping expeditions this year i haven't had the opportunity to enjoy one in quite some time.  so this weekend after a great bite to eat out we came home and i improvised.  i broke up a chocolate bar and put it in the bottom of a oven proof dish... then added ripped up marshmallows and tossed it in the broiler.  (watch closely... the marshmallows can get brown pretty fast).  we then enjoyed the yummy goodness of smores out of the dish spooned onto gram crackers... yum.

other than that i went to my second prenatal yoga class then promptly came home to nap.  it doesn't take much these days to make me tired.  in fact if i could i would crawl under my desk now and sleep. 

xoxo
wren

sweet sweet friday

ahhh i can't tell you guys how happy i am that it is friday.
by the end of the week my back has had enough of sitting in an office and i need the weekend. 

this weekend we have lots of little stuff planned.  i want to get into the nursery and continue to get things set up.  our gardens need lots of love and weeding.  i think i could spend the entire weekend weeding and still not be done. 

also we got two of the boxes for the living room installed last weekend and they look amazing.  this weekend we hope to finish the other two and get them installed... oh how this will dramatically change the feel of our house!

i am too excited.  i promise i will take pictures and share.  as  you can tell by my infrequent postings, by the time i get home the last thing i want to do is sit down at a computer again.  my back is not having it. 

have a nice weekend all... maybe we will even have a bit of sun up here in the pacific northwest.  wouldn't that be novel?

xoxo
wren

The Nursery 2...

The NURSERY

thought i would add the additional items i have posted on to our nursery scheme so you can get the over all effect.

so far this is what we've got going:

1.  wall paper - The Fir Tree - Ferm Living  (this is up on one wall only)
2.  crib - Gulliver - Ikea
3.  rug - Hogan, Teal - Crate & Barrel
4.  animal photos - Sharon Montrose's etsy shop
5.  ugly doll - Moxie - Ugly Dolls
6.  moose hook rack - Sprallig - Ikea
7.  eames rocking chair - design within reach
8.  awesome, cool, pillows by me - see them here
9.  lova, bed canopy - ikea
10. puzzle taxidermy, by me - see them here


not a bad start... more to come.  i plan on taking actual pics of the nursery once it's ready but it isn't quite there yet.  maybe the middle of July.

back to the rat race

hey everyone i'm back.

sorry i didn't have anything set up for when i was gone but that takes more planning than i'm capable of right now.

so i plan on writing about my trip back to PA later, but for now i thought i would share a story about my return.  i can't tell you how happy i was to get off that plane.  i was happy about it... my little in utero bambino was happy about it... we were happy about it.  the best part; seeing JD.  it has been at least 4 years since we have traveled apart and i'm grateful for that.

as i came up the stairs from the airport tram, there he was smiling and cute.  i blushed.  it was wonderful to be back in his arms.  we made our way to the baggage carousel and we stood with his arms around us (the bean and i) waiting for for our bags to magically shoot out on to the belt.

while we were waiting JD told me of our families latest accomplishment.  it seems that while i was gone Mr. Ginkgo learned that he could hunt and very proudly brought his fresh kill, a rat, to the porch to show us his personal victory. that was the good part of the story.  the bad part, is that JD didn't know that Gink had put a rat on the porch and he left the pups out.  before he could get outside to do anything both dogs had rolled in and on the dead rat and munched as much as possible.  needless to say, i was very happy to have missed not only this part of the story but the baths and sick puppies that were a result of the rat find.

the night after my return, right before bed, Ginkgo was making quite a racket in the mud room trying to show me something.  at the time i thought he just wanted a little treat or more food so i dismissed his meowing and went to bed.  at some point in the wee hours of the morning there was quite a disturbance in the house (which at the time we thought was the cat playing).  the disturbance caused both dogs to run, no sprint, from the bedroom barking.  JD shut the whole operation down pretty quickly and directed everyone back to bed.

that night, i don't think Rainier slept from that moment on.  she was continuously walking up and down the hall whining.  oh i was seriously going to kill her.  no matter how much we directed her to lay down, within minutes she was back out to the living room whining.  i even closed the door and that didn't stop the whining.

we awoke the next morning with little to no sleep and quite the grumpy attitude.  as i was putting breakfast together Rainier continued her whining at the front door.  finally JD had, had enough.  he went to her and begged her to show him what all the racket was about.  he began to move the few items we have behind the door out of the corner.  my yoga mats were moved, then the pups chuck-it, and then... it became clear why Rainier was whining.  there in the corner, behind the stuff, was one dead little mouse.  it seems that the racket the night before was our killer Ginkgo getting that little mouse he had been trying to tell me about the night before.  Rainier and all her whining were just trying to alert us to the dead little body hidden in the corner. 

the little mouse made it's way into the trash outside and things returned to normal inside.  it's too bad we didn't figure out our pet's language the night before, we could have gotten more sleep.  but next time let's hope we will know better.

i think Gink was all... "Welcome home mom... here's a little mouse present just for you."  thoughtful don't you think?  ha.

puzzle taxidermy

you all know how i love stags right?

that is a given if you have been reading this blog for any amount of time. i have been wanting one of the many options of wood stag heads for our living room forever but the price has not allowed me to own one.

so when we found out we were having a little boy, i of course wanted to include a stag in one way or another.  so there we were, JD and I out dinking around one day when i found a 3D wood puzzle of a stag.  oh i was so excited.

then the stroke of genius hit me, or maybe it was JD.  what if i put the puzzle together, cut off it's head, and mounted it to the wall.  YES.

so with that in mind i planned a trophy wall for our little boy's room.

1.  step 1 order the puzzles. 

2.  put them together then cut off their heads.

3.  once i had the glued together heads i mounted them to wooden plaques that i had bought at Michael's and sprayed with a black lacquer paint.

wa-laa a trophy wall.

for the little man's wall we bagged a trophy

STAG

MOOSE

WHITE RHINO

and BISON

awesome right?  i know i love them and i think he will too.  my dad told me i'm going to scare the baby...  come on a little puzzle taxidermy hasn't hurt anyone right? 

this weekend

if you live around the seattle area, you know how we haven't been able to escape the rain as of late.

i mean we did have sun on saturday, but one day out of 10 isn't enough for almost the middle of june.  we were so tired of the rain yesterday that JD and i decided to have a PJ day.  we woke up and never, not even for a minute, got out of our pj's. 

we watched movies (3), had breakfast, lunch, and dinner all in our pj's.  the most ambitious thing we did was sort through our books to decided what we could part with for resale.  i even napped for a few hours, cause apparently laying around watching movies wasn't restful enough.

today i could crawl back into my pj's and go for round 2.  one would think that with the amount of lounging we did yesterday that today i would be ready to take on the world.  but again it is raining and grey outside, which makes me want to curl up and nap. 

hopefully this trip to PA later this week will hold the promise of sunshine.  i certainly need some.  hope you had a more productive weekend than we did... if not hope you are feeling restful.

a dress for a wedding / shower

this weekend my goal was to find a dress or dresses that i could wear to my friends wedding and to our first baby shower.

i am headed back to PA to visit family, go to a wedding, and get showered by my friends and family back east.  yep all of that in a whirl wind trip of 5 days.  i didn't want to spend a lot on a dress and i wanted to be able to wear this dress to work for the remainder of the summer. so the brief search was on.

i checked in a few stores and found that most of what i found had to be order online so here's to hoping that they look good once they come in.

for the wedding: ( i ordered 2 dresses maybe i will keep both, maybe one.)

my options are these:

 A.

B.

both of these lovelies come from Target.  they had far more affordable choices than other stores and i didn't want to spend a ton cause who wants to spend a ton on maternity wear?


for the shower i picked up a full length sun dress.  i couldn't find the color i actually bought which is grey and black with the tie dye rings.  (it's shown here in aqua).  it too is from Target.

 i need to hem the long dress.  no surprise there cause i'm so short.  but i hope they work out...and i hope there is some sun shine cause this NW lady needs it.

book review - The Help

so i just finished reading The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

must say i loved it.
i loved the characters, the story line, just all of it.

i really gravitate to books with strong female roles and this one didn't disappoint. i even laughed out loud on several occasions.  it is one of those books i had to leave at home so i wouldn't be tempted to read during lunch or while taking a break.

the book explores several womens' lives, black and white, during the 1960's in Mississippi when racial tensions were high.  it was a beautiful book that will hopefully continue to help people see past racial, social, or religious differences.

so go out and pick it up.  it was a good one.

memorial day weekend

hope you all had a great weekend.  we had a WET, WET weekend here in seattle.  it just wouldn't stop raining.

we made the most of it however, and made a huge push on the nursery... getting things set up and in their place.  it made me feel a whole lot better at the end of the day sunday, when it actually looked like a room.

finally we got a bit of a break from the rain yesterday afternoon and the sun came out.  we threw some meat on the grill, baked up some brownies, and had a few friends over for beers in the yard.  ( i drank water, don't worry).  it was nice to have some sunshine on our faces after so many overcast days. 

hope you all had a nice relaxing memorial day.