StrungByColor: On Hold :)

On January 25th at 2:34am, Matt and I were blessed with a new love of our life...

Quincy Adrian Boling

7 lbs 15 oz

21 inches long

We are overwhelmed by how awesome he is, and all-consumed in learning about him, parenthood adjustments, the sleep/eat schedule and just the overall life change.

If I am doing anything artistic in the near future...it will probably just be taking photos of our little man. And the only "decorating" I see myself doing is hanging the last 4 photos in the nursery that I keep meaning to do and just can't seem to get around to. :)

When I can, I'll be back with StrungByColor blogging + crafting fun. But for now...I'm focusing on keeping Quincy alive, loved and comfortable and soaking up all these special moments.

Cheers,

A little place to call home.

With the exception of a few final touches, the nursery is pretty much complete and ready for Baby B. We've gradually washed clothes and blankets, organized clothes by size, folded goodies in drawers/bins and hung the rest in the closet, bought a small collection of used books to get us started, hung photos, made frames, painted a trash can...lots of little things. So now all we need is a glider. And a baby. :)

My favorite part about the nursery is the little gallery wall of framed quotes. One of my friends at work is an ohsotalented graphic designer and after a quick re-cap of the colors and look I was going for...POOF! She came up with these little masterpieces and I couldn't be happier with how they turned out.

I chose a collection of quotes from different places, gave her my Goodwill frame sizes, and she went to town...

Dr. Seuss

Christopher Robin

From the book "On the Night You Were Born"

Bible scripture that I've always loved.

Classic Proverb about little boys.

Classic Quote

The dresser will be the changing table, and I'm going to wait to hang anything around this space to see what our needs are in terms of readily-available changing goodies. Not sure how this is all going to go down and what we'll need quick on hand, so we'll live with it a little before I adjust anything.

The bookshelf is from my parent's basement and a perfect fit behind the closet door, and the hanging shelf is something I think my mom gave me a few years ago that we finally have use for. It was a dark, cherry wood, so with a little white spray paint...it's now perfect for the nursery! I have some name blocks, to be reveled when he's born, that will be added to the hanging shelf as well.

I found some tote bins at Target and used a gift card we got at one of my baby showers...seemed to be a good way to organize and splash some more of the redness in the room. And I can't help but stare at all the little hanging clothes every time I'm in the room...it's hysterical to me how small they are and that we're going to have a little person who actually fits in these!

I have a few more frames to hang, but am holding off until the glider comes in until deciding where these will fit best.

Curly Girl is a favorite, whimsical artist of mine and she has two adorable little cards in the baby theme that I knew I wanted to frame. 

Then I did some Mod Podge scrapbook paper crafting to old Goodwill frames and stuck a couple fans from our Preggo Photoshoot in them.

And finally, even though I don't have the "before" photo available at the moment, here is my Mod-Podged Goodwill trash can. I'll do a quick, separate post with the Before-and-After since those are always fun to see side-by-side. But for now, in the spirit of a complete blog post about all the new, little things in this room, I'll include the finished piece.

I mean...how exciting can a trash can be?

I'm pretty darn excited about it.

Matt has been my decoration cheerleader, and also helping in important areas like winterizing the windows (this room is fa-fa-fa-freezing), drilling holes and setting-up the video monitor. It's funny how much detail we've put into this room and how, someday if/when baby #2 comes along, I'm sure we'll just wash a few things and be done with it. I hope these fun moments won't all be old news by then.

Let the nesting continue until our little man makes his grand entrance... :)

Share the Love :: Baby Ellie's Headband

My co-worker bought some StrungByColor goodies for holiday gifts, and one of the models liked it so much she used it in her photoshoot! :) Look how cute little Ellie is in her headbands...

Photos by Christy Nelson Photography

Merry Christmas!

From our family to yours...

Kitchen Up-Do :: Part III

We're getting there!

2 weeks ago the penny round tile back splash was installed. I wasn't sure of the back splash look to go with until I asked my friend Christie and she introduced me to penny rounds. LOVE them! So we marched over to The Tile Shop and picked out a color. Milk. Neutral, yes, but allowing for accents in other areas of the room...

Pendulum lights from World Market to replace the wood valance + florescent lighting previously in that space.

I am in LOVE with our under mount sink. So much easier for counter-cleaning!

I didn't show enough of the space above the back splash here, but I'm playing around with different decor and leaning towards a couple floating shelves with small plates...

Speaking of other accents in other areas of the room...I also found funky knobs at World Market that I couldn't resist. I've eyed the selection at Anthropology for months, and was willing to splurge on some for color and fun, but not on all 16 that needed to be replaced in the kitchen. Thank goodness World Market has the same-ish types for 1/3 of the price!

We still have shiny, brass gold handles that need to be replaced, but I think I'm just going to spray-paint those.

The butcher block island was installed this morning, and tomorrow Matt and I are plowing through the rest of the finishing details: window treatment, paint touch-ups, wall-hangings and overall cleaning. Then it'll feel complete and I won't have to apologize about the state of our kitchen before people come over. :)

Preggo Photoshoot

On November 20th, just shy of 32 weeks, our friend Katie Sullivan took us out for a little maternity photoshoot. The goal was to capture Christmas Card 2011, but it turns out there were some other good ones in the bunch that I thought we'd share. And we had a blast-of-a-morning with Katie. Of the almost 100 she snapped, here are some of our favs. And it's only fair that I credit Pintrest for some of the creative ideas and props!

l o v e

...and a mighty fine one, I might add.

Matt is a former player + coach, so naturally this was the right thing to do.

Do you hear what I hear?

Our first child.

Party of 3, please.

As you can see, Katie is an extremely talented and creative photographer. If you're local and looking for someone to capture some of your moments on camera...I highly recommend this little lady for the job. Fan. Tas. TIC!!!

...to a nursery near you.

The Green Thing

I don't usually share or forward these types of things when I come across them, as I'm more of the mindset that if I lead by an environmentally conscious example and show others, through my lifestyle, just how easy it is to take more care + concern for our earth, that that will be more powerful than actually preaching it. But sometimes, some things come across me that strike a cord. A friend sent this to me and I feel called to share it for no other reason than to hopefully trigger a moment of reflection and perhaps a small change...

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

I'm not saying I don't use a dryer to dry my clothes or electric mixer to make my Thanksgiving mashed potatoes. Because I do. But it is a good reminder that there are things we use now out of convenience and a crutch that could be reduced or even eliminated from time to time. This was certainly a good reminder for me in several areas of how I live.

 

Nursery Dresser Make-Over

Aaaaaand...complete.

This was the dresser my Dad had in his room as a kid, then me, then brother Jeff. So when my mom offered it to Baby Boling, we took her up on it! She painted it back in the day, and did an EXCELLENT job, I might add. And I love the robin's egg blue color, but with the blue rug that we have in the nursery, I worried it would be too matchy-matchy. Because it would have been. So we took some basic tools + paint gear to it and POOF! A new dresser came out!

Matt was nice enough to do all the initial sanding...and did a mighty fine job if you ask me. Face mask and all (per my request - he's probably angry I posted this photo of him).

As the project carried on, thank GOODness we had the supervision of Ike and my parent's puppy, Bella. What would we have done without the running around the wet paint, making us nervous, and constantly bringing sticks over to the painting tarp to chew them into shreds...as if they didn't have an entire yard and driveway to build a chewed-stick bonfire!

Double Trouble, these two.

I followed Matt's sanding with the first coat of white paint. I wanted the sanding to be enough so the paint would stick well, but not so much that the blue was all gone.

Because after *t h r e e* coats of white paint, I took sand paper to it and wanted some of that blue to poke through.

And I was happy that it did in some parts...

Not sure what will go above - maybe a floating shelf or basket? Any ideas?

Another check off the ole' list.