It was this or cut it off

I had a very frumpy day yesterday.  I know it's a phase and it's hormonal and I'm pregnant and I just have to power through but I hate having ugly/bad hair days.  It's just no fun.  So I had to do something fast because I was thisclose to going to Martin and having him cut all my hair off just like a mad pregnant woman.  If Kesha hadn't picked up the phone and talked me off the ledge I'd be posting pictures of my new chin-length bob this morning.  No lie.  Thisclose y'all.


Curly hair, while wonderful, is kind of a lot of maintenance.  If I don't put in twists every night, it gets rattier and rattier until I have no choice but to wash it again and this time resolve to twist it every night.  Well, I can't do it.  I can't be bothered and I just want to sleep.  So last night I got home, took a long hot shower and did my best to shave my legs and the rest of my hairy body - between me and Drew, we're totally having a little gorilla baby.


Then I gave in and straightened my hair.  It was this or shave my head because I'm over it.

Another blurry pic from the bathroom.  I pulled out my heels 

because there's nothing that a pair of sexy boots can't fix.

25w6d

It's weird looking at myself with straight hair but it had to be done.

I'm holding on to my sexy by any means necessary.

I feel better in more form-fitting clothes and thankfully the gods are still smiling on me and I haven't really changed anywhere but my hips, boobs and belly. Please pregnancy gods, don't jinx me.  I'm still drinking water like crazy and wearing my fancy compression hose all day so the cankles and pregnant-face have still eluded me.

And so far, I still have my hair.  For now.

From the ground up

So, I was going to post first thing this morning then my job was all nooo, you must do work!  They sucked me in and made me earn my paycheck!  The gall!  Plus, I ran out of time again because we had our hospital tour last night and didn't get home until 8:30 or as I like to call it, way past my bedtime.  However, I did take some pictures and that's all that matters!


As I very quickly learned, taking pictures of a room without a wide angle lens at nine at night is quite difficult.  I really hope you get the feel for the room because I love it so much and I hope you like it too.  First, the green chair.

I'm interrupting myself because I just came back through to spell-check this post.  What if we layered the rugs, making them asymmetrical?  Either laying them both the same direction, just offsetting them, or get super crazy with it and lay them at opposing angles?  You know, make it obvious that it's two rugs?  Drew's gonna kill me - it was a bitch getting that bed out of the way.  I may need y'all to back me up.

I hijacked the other pillow for our bed - we're using six pillows, isn't that ridiculous?  We need new pillows anyway.  Until the baby is mobile, I see the chair closer to the bed with a tray on the seat to serve as a nightstand of sorts because the seat is the perfect height. 

Drew has had these cube thingies since forever - they're a set of three and I think he got them at Target.  I haven't decided if I want to paint them white, paint just the insides or get something else for that space.  I know I want her to have books in her room and we're trying to repurpose things we already have.  These did live in the living room but the etagere has taken its place. 

We moved the dresser to this wall after trying it in the crib's original spot.  Thankfully, it's not deep so it fits just about anywhere.  Drew was cleaning yesterday and everything remotely baby related found its way to the top of the dresser but the vase totally works and it will stay.  The sconces are going and I may just leave the space between the wall and the door blank once I put up the curtains.  We have a hamper that's going to end up living just to the left of the dresser, as this is going to serve as her changing table.  The blinds on the door are going and I'm thinking about a roman shade for the door.  It does open to Drew's office so I may frost the door so light can come through because I'm thinking four sets of full curtains might be too much.

The crib is now at the foot of the bed and the third cube thingie is now a drink stand.  Again, to paint or not to paint?  And I know, against the wall the chair looks super blue so it's going to need help blending with the room.  It works with the rug and the vase but I have to tie it to the wall with a pillow and throw.  Usually, with blue accents the wall looks bluer, but here it looks more gray.  This is also the big-ass wall where the mural will go but as we sat in the room (again) last night, Drew suggested I paint the mural on the wall where the green chair is and make it look more like a poem than long strings of words.  But then we have to put something else on the big-ass wall.  A tree wall sticker maybe?

Image courtesy The Decorologist

 If I could find this in a light tan?

Image courtesy Apartment Therapy

The big-ass wall also needs a shelf.  Or shelves.  I'm not sure.  But definitely white, since I want to match all the trim.

I like how thick these are.

Image courtesy West Elm

And of course all this has to tie in to the curtains.  The curtains!  The curtains!!  I will find the perfect curtains for this room if it's the last thing I do.  Now I'm thinking they need to be solid since the rug is patterned and the chairs are so dramatic.  I don't want there to be too much going on in here, it's a baby's room for pete's sake.  We need calm, peace, quiet, as little crying as possible.

Then I found this!

Image courtesy High-Heeled Foot in the Door

She took regular IKEA curtains and fabric painted the yellow stripes.  Horizontal stripes are not my thing but vertical stripes!!  Okay, I just went Google Image searching for vertical stripes and couldn't find anything similar to what I'm thinking about.  But I'm thinking I could go to the fabric store and get linen fabric, lay it out and paint it, hanging it just like I did the curtains in the kitchen.  But is flowers and stripes too much?  Both would be subtle but interesting, I think.  Only one way to find out!

And then there's bedding.  I'll need subtle, possibly a solid color or a teeny tiny pattern that reads as a solid color, like the duvet in our bedroom.

Oh yeah, and the most important bedding of all - the crib!  I'm not using a bumper so I have to get the most out of my crib sheet and crib skirt.  Heather sent me links to some awesome baby stuff and I fell in love when I saw the Marlo set.  I can't take pictures from their site but you gotta click over and look at it!  I could totally make a crib skirt like that!  And I love their green crib sheets!

I just want to fill this space with things I love and I think we're on the right track.  Neither of us can leave the room and I can only imagine how it will be when the baby gets here.  Piece by piece it's coming together and I sure do appreciate all your ideas and thoughts.  Sometimes you need a little help getting those creative juices flowing, you know?

I can't wait to check out the fabric store this weekend!

It was the rug all along

I follow a simple philosophy when decorating:  if you don't love it, don't bring it home.  I don't change my decor very often because every piece in my home means something to me or is perfect just where it is and how it is.  That's why I nearly had a nervous breakdown when I moved in with Drew - I lived in my apartment for four years and it had become my sanctuary, filled with things I loved and I couldn't bear to part with them.  Drew flew my mother down to Dallas to help me move out of my apartment because I was such a mess - I wanted to simply lock the door and walk away because I didn't want to go through boxes and decide what goes and what stays - it was too traumatic for me.  It was where I returned to after long nights waiting tables and where I sat at my dining room table many a late night while I put myself through school.  It was where I healed when I lost my first baby.  It was mine.  My apartment was the backdrop for so many life changing events for me and it had taken on a comforting sort of persona - it was my home.


Now I have a new home - one I share with my husband and dog and will soon share with our daughter.  In the year and a half we've been here, this place has become the stage for our life and I love our house.  All of the ups and downs these four walls have seen bring a little smile of nostalgia to my face.  From finding our dining room table to learning how to recover a chair seat, I've spent lots of time making it ours and I love the process.  Each thrift store or craigslist or Target find that simply jumps into my arms and demands to have its place in our home makes me so happy.


So if I can get that mushy over an apartment and a house in general, imagine the mushiness I felt when contemplating decorating the nursery!  The place where I will bring home our daughter, my rainbow baby.  The place where she will sleep, her sanctuary.  And yes, I know that she won't care one bit about her room until she's old enough to hate everything I've picked out and she'll probably force me to wallpaper it with Dora the Explorer or Yo Gabba Gabba or whatever other crap is out there when she gets older.  


The nursery is for me - I understand and freely admit that.  So it had to be perfect - to me.  Nothing could go in that room that I didn't absolutely love and I was determined to find it.


I started with the glider.  I searched high and low, finally finding the glider of my dreams.  Saturday morning I went to Pottery Barn to see it live.  They had both models and I sat in them, gliding back and forth.  I envisioned nursing my new baby in the smaller chair.  I saw Drew rocking her in the larger, Dad-sized chair.  I saw myself one day reading stories to her while I held her baby brother or sister, the three of us cozy in the big chair.  I saw getting a more grown-up slipcover for it and moving it to another spot in the house but keeping the chair forever.  


And before you roll your eyes and go jesus, it's just a chair I know that.  But I'm pregnant and I'm daydreaming about my children, so get off me.


I felt like a hole had been punched in my beautiful fantasy when I asked the lady to price out the big chair with tax, delivery and a second slipcover and the total came out to be way the hell more than the red sale numbers I saw online.  It was already expensive - the final price took it completely out of my reach.  I couldn't stomach paying that much for a chair, knowing that Drew would pop a blood vessel at the mere mention of the price.  After all, we have no baby stuff remember?  Dropping that kind of cash on a chair was just out of the question and I knew that - probably before I walked into the store but I still did it.  I entertained my daydream - it is what it is.


I finished my errands but I was heartbroken and combined with a serious case of pregnant brain, my trip to the grocery store was disastrous.  I forgot so many things, bought unneeded extras, thought they had overcharged me and realized they didn't only after I'd turned around so then I had to turn back around to go home, and I promptly burst into tears as soon as I saw Drew's face.  


I cried and cried, convinced that I was going to have to make do with a lesser chair, that I was going to have to settle and I hate settling.  I mourned my daydream because it had to be that chair, not some makeshift ghetto-ass Craigslist chair.  Drew comforted me and put away the groceries while I dried my tears and finished the evening with minimal dramatics.  The chair was out of the question and that was all there was to it.  I understood that but I was still so sad.  


Sunday I got up early, eager to start my mural - that was still within my reach!  Unfortunately, I didn't get to it but it's more than okay because we got so much done for the nursery!  


Drew and I ran errands and on a whim we stopped in World Market.  I love that store and they were having some great Christmas sales so we thought we'd poke around and see what they had.  And that's when I saw it.  Well, Drew actually was the one who saw it.  It.  The rug.  The perfect rug.  It was the perfect combination of colors and design and I knew that it was the one.  And then I lost my mind.

I love this rug so much

We rounded the corner and this time, I saw it.  A chair.  A gorgeous chair in a fabulous color that would be perfect in a baby's room.  It didn't rock but I knew it was the one because I didn't care.  And there were no extras that would drive the price up $400 - this was the price and it was beautiful.

The best chair ever

Then we rounded the corner only to see another chair, completely different but still absolutely fabulous.  I was torn - can we have two chairs in the baby's room?  Is that dumb?  Is it too much? Will they go together?  But I love them both!  What should we do?

We got them both - because that's my other philosophy.  If you love it and you can afford it, get it right then.  It's much easier to get a refund than it is to cry bitter tears of regret when you return to the store and it's no longer on sale or worse, it's discontinued.

We have nothing like it, but it's perfect and I love it.

 It's a fun color that'll be great in the baby's room.

THEN, we found a bookcase/etagere that we both loved.  It was the last one and it was being discontinued - see what I mean?  They only had the floor model left and it was scratched and dinged but that's nothing my little DIY fingers couldn't handle.  It was marked down but since it was scratched up, the manager took off another $50 and that came home with us too.  It turned out to be too big for the baby's room but it has a new home in the living room and it's just perfect.  Am I saying perfect too much?  I don't care - I'm in love, I'm happy and I firmly believe that it was not a coincidence that we walked into World Market yesterday.

We also played around with furniture placement.  Combined with our perfect nursery purchases and your suggestions, I played around with floorplanner.com and found a placement that Drew and I could agree on, while accommodating our new furniture.  Also, the rug turned out to be too small for the room (it's surprisingly big - it doesn't even feel cramped with the crib, dresser, queen size bed and two chairs) so we bought another one and layered it and I love it!  Once we got things situated Drew and I just sat in the room, each of us on a chair.  I couldn't stop smiling and I kept saying I love this rug over and over again - when I wasn't saying I love this chair.

How does it all look in the room?  Well, that's where I plead the fifth.  Or plead life - however you want to call it.  It took forever at World Market, engineering ways to fit the two chairs and rugs and wall stuff in the car, driving home slowly, assembling the chairs, moving the furniture one-handed (I figure if I can pick stuff up one-handed it's not too heavy), laying the rug, realizing it's too small, going back to get the etagere and another rug, returning the pillow I thought would work, tripping out that the leather chairs were practically sold out in the short time we were gone, wedging the etagere in the trunk, driving home slowly, seeing that it didn't work in the baby's room, moving it to the living room, liking that much better, realizing that we're starving, me peeling off to start dinner, AND I had to teach yoga this morning.

I suppose I could have just said we ran out of time.  

I'll have pictures of everything tomorrow, but for now I'll show you what we started with.

The wall where the mural will go - this weekend.

The chandelier that came with the house that's

perfect for a little girl's room.

The two windows that need curtains but it will be much easier

now that we have a rug.

The messy bed, in its old spot.

Maya looks especially puppy-like here - she's so cute.

Laying the rugs - the bed is now on top of them so the seam isn't 

nearly as obvious.

I love how I now have several colors to pull from!

I'm not sure what I did with my camera to make it seem brighter.

I don't have pictures of the chairs and the new placement but that will be tomorrow's post, first thing. Even with furniture, we have a ways to go but I'm so pleased that we have a starting point.  Now I will look for fabric for the curtains and crib skirt that will complement the rug, using the same soft colors.  I still need bedding for the big bed and I'm presently in love with this idea.  I love the texture and simplicity and with some pretty throw pillows, it could be, dare I say...perfect.  I'm not settled on it but I'm very encouraged.  

I still need wall art, shelves and something to replace the blinds over the door.  However, right now I'm super content with our beautiful rug(s) and our fabulous chairs.  I love them and they're perfect!