Chalk painting dining chairs

While we were living in Sweden I developed an obsession with painted furniture, specifically chalk paint with dark wax.  I love the look and couldn't wait to transform some of our many brown pieces of furniture.  My friend Debora let me use her chalk paint, wax, and brushes while we were home for a visit, and I was hooked.  When we moved back to the States one of the first places I found was my local Annie Sloan (ASCP) stockist, but I didn't buy any right away.  While we were renting I mulled and planned and thought about different colors and furniture pieces.  It wasn't until we bought a house that I could actually visualize a plan for wall color and furniture.  And until we move all I can work on is furniture.  Back in our previous house (before Sweden) we used our dining room as an office, so we sold our dining table and chairs.  I'm happy that we'll have a central (read: utilized) dining room in the new house, especially since it gave me an excuse to scour Craigslist for dining furniture.  I scored this set of eight shield-back chairs and a table, marking the first time I was truly thankful for getting a minivan.

Our full garage at the rental house

And when we had a warm day February 1st I was excited to get outside and paint!  Rather than add brown furniture to our brown dining area I wanted to paint them a color that would look good with both fall tones and beachy blues.  Green is my favorite color, but the Annie Sloan greens didn't look like what I had in mind, so I gathered green things from around the house and matched them to colors on a fan deck.

And then I had a very helpful conversation with Debora, where she sent me this picture of her chair painted ASCP Olive (with Primer Red accents, for the record). 

This looked much better there than on the paint chip or even the sample on the wall at the stockist (although I love it with the peacock-y Aubusson Blue).

Debora reminded me that chalk painting is a heckofalot easier than traditional sand/prime/latex painting.  So I bought a can of Olive and got to work.  Bowen (age 4) was so tickled to watch me paint.  He kept saying things like, "Mom, you're so GOOD at this!"  It was the encouragement I needed; bless him.

70 degrees a week after a foot of snow

And I loved it!  But then I had to decide if I'm going to wax or use another type of topcoat.  Wax gets into the porous surface of the chalk paint, creating a durable bond.  I have read a lot in the past year, including complaints about getting a consistent finish (too much, too little), showing fingerprints, having to be rewaxed.  But I also like the look of dark wax in the recesses, giving an antique looking patina.  (I'm aware of the irony of painting antique chairs to look antique, kinda like blow-straightening hair before curling it).  I decided to try General Finishes High Performance water-based top coat because I could just brush it on and be done, and we finally live in a location where I can just drive to Woodcraft to buy it (joy!).  But it goes on drippy and after two coats the satin was a little shinier than I was going for, so I took the plunge and bought the Annie Sloan wax and brush.  Even if you're dark waxing you apply clear wax first, so after we moved into the house we bought (!) I spent the first mild weekend doing nothing but painting and then waxing the remaining chairs.  After all, we had company coming and I needed those chairs.  Waxing was okay, not awesome but not that difficult.  I worked in the sunshine so that kept it soft and workable.  I was going to buff them later to give a little more sheen, but never got around to it.  I'm happy with how they turned out.  Here they are in our dining room at night, so it's not even obvious that they are green.  So much for having a pop of color.  Apparently I really like neutrals.

The far chair on the left side of the table is the one with poly

We actually eat dinner in this room every night, which makes me happy since I didn't want to have a room that was only used a few times a year.  I also wanted comfortable seating at the table, so these seats have new 3" foam pieces wrapped in batting and covered faux leather (read: wipeable).

Yes, yes I did buy brown and olive chairs and spent countless hours transforming them into brown and olive chairs.  But I like them so much better this way.  Whatever keeps me off the streets, right?

Water fun

After unsuccessfully looking for a water table at yard sales this summer, I found one on clearance at Wegmans.  Olivia loves it!  A theme to her patio play this summer has been moving water from one container to another... 

Fill the watering can, pour it into the sand pail, then into the dump truck.

And now the supply chain includes dumping that into the water table.  Good, clean fun.  Sometimes she paints with water and an old paintbrush on the sidewalk.  No cleanup.  We haven't even been to the local pool this season, mostly because it's only open in the afternoons (naptime), but also because we have found enough fun here at home.  Our friends Sarah and Catie visited us last week, and the girls played in the sprinkler. 

Note the grass and leaves, indicative of how hot and dry it has been.  It has been great to have thunderstorms rolling through this week to cool things off and give our plants a drink.  I'm ready for fall!

Olivia...

• is all better! No more sniffles or coughs.
• likes to sleep on her tummy now. She didn't even like to be on her tummy until just recently. I'll go in and roll her onto her back, and a few minutes later I'll check and she's got her tush stuck up in the air again.
• has hair just long enough to tuck behind her ears. It's also growing over the bald spot on the back of her head.
• is growing out of her 3-6mo clothes. I allowed myself a rare trip to Gymboree today and found tights on clearance, which offset the madras-plaid pants and hat. Even on clearance they were more than I usually pay for my own clothes, but Gymboree has a certain cute quotient that makes it worth it. I did not get the madras espadrilles or sunglasses - huge restraint on my part! And I found a Gymboree dress at the thrift store for $3.50 so I'm going to average that in.
• doesn't like to eat solids. A few weeks ago she'd grunt like she was working on something in her diaper all through the meal. (And every time her diaper was clean - faker!) Now she just clamps her jaw shut. Some days I just skip solids alltogether because I can't be bothered to force-feed her.
• is rolling over... and over... back to front to back, but only in one direction. And she doesn't know how to do it when she needs to; she'll still holler when she gets stuck on her tummy.
  is on her second set of batteries for more than one toy. We went ahead and bought them in bulk.
• is grabbier and scratchier than ever. Why does she always grab painful things like hair or coffee? Her legs are better than they were in like March, but still scaly in places. And she gets spotty, red rashes sometimes, but they're never in conjunction with new food/products/clothes and usually gone by the next day.

Clothing us

I find myself shopping in places I had barely noticed before... Toys R Us (great clearance rack for baby clothes) and the infant departments of my regular stores (Ross, Gabriel Brothers, JC Penney, TJ Maxx, Target, Old Navy, Kohls, thrift & consignment stores). Baby clothes are flippin' adorable and I can't stop buying them, especially when they are so cheap. I have no idea how big this kid is going to be in 6 months, but the outfits! They are so cute! And little! Somebody stop me!

And no, I haven't done any baby laundry yet. So far I have just hung everything up and made a spreadsheet of the inventory. It's easier to shop for things we need now than it will be later. I even put said spreadsheet on my Palm Pilot so I could refer to it at the store, but twice now it has crashed my Palm Pilot while at the store (only to act fine when I get home) so I resorted to a sticky note of the items we still need.

One troubling thought that I keep pushing to the back of my mind is How do I dress this kid? I mean, is a onesie like underwear or a regular shirt? Is a long-sleeved bodysuit and pants going to be enough warmth in February? Does an infant need shoes? Are the pants that snap all along the inseam going to make diaper changing easier or more difficult than the ones you just pull off? How do you get a body suit on the kid when there are no snaps at the neck - pull the crotch end over little Nelson's/Cordelia's head and torso and then somehow fish out the arms? Do they give lessons on this in Labor & Delivery?

I am not so fun to dress these days. One particularly annoying thing I am trying to avoid is maternity outerwear because I think it's a misuse of money to buy a coat for just a few months. AND a prevalent trend is a tie belt on jackets this season - even maternity jackets - and I think it looks awful to combine that with a baby belly. My down coat still zips around the baby and I just got a maternity sweater jacket at Ross for $12, so otherwise I will be wearing my regular coats this season with my belly frugally sticking out.

Update

I'd like to retract my earlier statement about the acne... As Stu would say, you don't mention the no-hitter. By the way, Stuart and Christina just had a beautiful baby girl, Annika. Congrats!

There seems to be no consensus on the foot size issue; everybody is affected differently. So I decided not to go all-out and buy a whole bunch of new shoes, but I did get a couple new pairs so that I can appear in public without my driving moccasins. As I was trying a new pair on, another shopper carrying a baby said that she wore the same ones when she was pregnant. Sold! The best part? They slide on. Now if I could only skip the sock-wrangling.

In general I feel pretty good, although I get out of breath pretty easily and I still have the heart-pounding issue (due to increased blood volume). Singing and eating are getting more difficult as my organs get squished by the baby & entourage. Getting up off the floor or sofa or bed involves a new center of gravity (and pretty pathetic abs) so I'm gladly enlisting the help of anyone standing nearby. But even with all these challenges, pregnant life is still easier than I expected.

Last week I found a Diaper Champ, Gymini play mat, and crib mirror on CraigsList for a fraction of the price of buying them new. Kohls had a great sale going on (what's new?) so I ordered a Lamaze carrier toy, a frog bath toy scoop, and a high chair. And I finally made a decision on a stroller and car seat... The Peg Perego Pliko P3 is last year's model so we got it for half off, plus it folds smaller and weighs much less than any of the Graco travel system strollers, and is more sturdy than a Combi. We got a Graco SafeSeat because of the higher weight limit (30lb) and I like the color, plus it fits into the stroller. With the furniture still piled in the middle of the room from the painter, all this new gear, and the huge pile of shower gifts spilling into the hallway, we've got quite the baby clutter thing going on. We are *still* waiting on the chair rail to be installed, so after that goes in (hopefully later this week) I'm looking forward to getting things put away and organized.

First framed photo

I found this frame for the nursery (on clearance!) at a gifty shop on our babymoon. Rather than using one of the included captions (i.e. "bun in the oven") I printed out Psalm 139:13 in kid font.

This ultrasound shot shows the top of the baby's head to the left, and an arm (marked "Hand") along the bottom. So sweet. And while it's still amazing and cool to feel *all the movement*, it's starting to get just a wee bit annoying, like a fish constantly flopping around in my belly.

Nursery update

On Saturday Steve and I got this wooden table to put by the glider, the same color stain as the crib and dresser. And it was originally $50 but with a couple discounts and a gift card for registering it came out to $23 - score! I'm usually not matchy-matchy about furniture, but I liked that this seemed sturdy enough not to topple over on little Lars when he pulls up on it, and the alternatives at Home Goods were cute but way more expensive.

With the wooden furniture being this dark honey stain and the glider being a warm medium brown, my fudgsicle & aqua color scheme doesn't seem that wonderful any more. So, now my color scheme is muted primary/secondary colors, inspired by the handbag I've been carrying this summer and a striped lumbar pillow I got for the glider. (How is that for color commitment?) So yes, I'm back to the Nantucket red and apple green, but not that bright. I have a butter yellow changing pad cover that somebody gave us, a butter yellow chair, and I'm thinking of doing a crib skirt and window valance in a gingham, red chambray, or ticking stripe. At this rate I will never pick a wall color, but we are on track to get a chair rail to divide up the space and protect the wall from furniture.

The crib skirt - another subject on its own! My experience is limited to bed skirts, something that is a standard size, goes under a mattress, hides under-bed storage boxes, and keeps out dust bunnies. But something new to me is the concept of the adjustable-height crib mattress, something necessary for short moms like me to be able to reach little Olivia before she learns to stand up on her own, and then lower so she doesn't climb out on her own. (We have a fixed-rail crib.) So do I make the skirt for the highest mattress setting, only to have it puddle on the floor when we lower it later? If I make it the shortest length it won't hide the billion diapers we'll have stashed under the crib until the mattress is lowered. So my brilliant idea is to make the crib skirt in three pieces, each concealing a side of the under-crib and having tabs at the top to attach to different spots on the under-mattress springs as the height is adjusted. And my aversion to ruffles is irrelevant because this design would work best with box pleats anyway. Now I just have to make it (usually the biggest hurdle for me).

Score!

Found this on CraigsList today, and the seller called me within 2 minutes of my email. Woot! Steve was all like "Will it fit in the car?" and I was all like, "It's a Pack 'n' Play."

[In his defense, I don't think I mentioned that it took two trips to get the crib. It was bigger than I expected and only about half the pieces fit in my car; I had to go back the next day with Steve's car for the rest.]

I had been debating about how to keep the baby in our room for easier night feedings the first few months. A drawer? A suitcase? Certainly one doesn't need a bassinet or cradle or cosleeper.

Enter the Graco Pack 'n' Play *with bassinet insert* and a bunch of other stuff I'm not sure what to do with yet. After the baby is older we can use it as a play yard so he/she can learn to entertain self and I can get stuff done without having the baby strapped to me papoose-style. (Although in the middle of winter that might be nice).

Craig is my friend

When we moved to Virginia our house was bigger than the one we’d had in Delaware, so we got a bunch of beautiful furniture on the cheap through CraigsList.

Now that it’s time to decorate where I have never decorated before (nursery - the new frontier), I turned to CraigsList to see what I could find. I got a crib, mattress, a contoured changing pad, a Johnny jumper, another bouncy seat, and two shopping cart covers for $100. Score! So much easier than getting up early on Saturdays to try my luck at yard sales.

We have an extra set of bedroom furniture that I used when I was growing up, so the dresser will now serve as the changing table. Last time I was in Delaware I was at Babies R Us with Cheryl to look at cribs, and we wound up also looking at gliders. The sheer comfort combined with non-glider looks and a 20% off sale convinced me to get one. They are also cozy for texting, as C is demonstrating here.

So we've got a lot of the big stuff out of the way. I haven't looked at traveling things, like strollers and car seats. Again, it's a new frontier and I get overloaded pretty easily.