Father's Day Weekend

This weekend was a pretty eventful one for us.  We're starting to get away from the we-have-a-newborn-so-we-sit-at-home-all-of-the-time kind of weekend and actually go do stuff.  Friday night, Ben and I went on a date and left our baby for the first time.  We left her with my sister and only for two hours so it wasn't much of a stretch, but it was nice to go out to dinner and get some one-on-one time without having to keep an eye on the baby or stress when she's crying in public.

Saturday, I hung out at my parent's house and worked on some Father's day gifts for Ben.  For one of the gifts, I painted "daddy's little goobie" on a plain onesie.  Goobie is Cora's little nickname when we're being goofy.  I used acrylic paint and fabric medium.  For the word 'little' I used a gold paint pen.  Here are pics of the onesie:

front

back

On Sunday, I brought Cora over to my parent's for a Father's day lunch with my siblings.  I hung out there for a while then we went home and just relaxed the rest of the night and Ben opened his gifts.  Here are some pictures of Cora in her outfit with her daddy:

she loves sleeping like this

I have a journal for Cora where I put some pictures and notes to her after her birth and plan on slowly filling it in the future.  I thought I would make one for Ben with pictures, hand/footprints, and notes from me, the puppy, and Cora.  I filled a couple pages and look forward to filling it up with Cora's pictures, notes, and drawings in the holidays to come.  Here are a couple pictures of the less personal pages:

my page (my note is in the envelope)

Clove's page (see attempt at getting paw print)

We stayed up way too late cuddling with baby Cora and now it is one of those Mondays... worth it!

DIY Fabric Wrapped Frame

I got this idea from Under the Sycamore.  Ashley wraps a little house with fabric and I liked the look so I thought I would try it out on a frame.  I used a cheapo frame and some of my African fabric that I used here, here, and here.  This only took me about 30-45 tv watching minutes so it probably would take less time if I was just focusing on the project.

Needed:
+fabric
+frame
+glue (I used Elmer's, but hot glue gun would probably be best)

1. cut strips of fabric about 1 inch wide
2. remove glass and begin gluing fabric onto the frame
3. wrap fabric around the frame (make sure to glue fabric into the indentations so the glass will still fit in the frame)

One Month

I'm about two weeks late on sharing this... probably because I was extremely unsuccessful during this 'photo shoot'.  Like most mothers these days, I wanted to try and do monthly pictures.  I wanted to use a similar background or do the same kind of thing every month.  Unfortunately, we weren't having a particularly photogenic day when I got around to setting everything up.  The following is about the cutest picture I took that day:

For the rest of the shoot she either was cross-eyed or looked like this:

(Yes, I picked her up and comforted her when she was crying.)  

At least I get to look back and remember her one month 'photo shoot' with some hilariously cute crying and cross-eyed pictures.  Here's to hoping we have better luck at her two month shoot.  A couple days later, my mom managed to capture this moment that I'm in love with:

Nursery

We finally have the nursery area semi-finished and got some pictures!  When you walk into the bedroom, you see the gradient dresser/changing table across from the door on the baby's side of the room.  On top of the dresser we have a mirror that my grandma covered in fabric (also matches this chair).  We plan on hanging the mirror at some point.  It would also be nice to get a couple small floating shelves above the changing pad... that or hang a couple pictures.

On the other side of the nursery, we have the crib, a shelving unit, and some artsy stuff.  The poms are from one of the baby showers.  There were a lot more hanging up, but our technique for hanging them wasn't very effective (Update: see what they look like now here).  We will hang the rest of them up whenever we get a chance.  The castle painting was a present from Jazz.  The bookshelf is the perfect spot for it because we will have many fairy tales filling the shelves in the future.

My mom and I made these Rustic Owl paintings at Cheers to Art about two weeks before I had Cora.  We coordinated the colors and the direction they look so we could hang them together.  My mom's painting is on the left and mine is on the right.

We moved my bookshelf against the wall and gave away a bunch of my books to make room for baby books and storage.  We have a cube for her books and added this cute lamb stuffed animal that my grandpa brought to Cora in the hospital.  Underneath the baby book cube, we put a storage cube from Target that we use for the baby's dirty laundry.

Everything with the nursery just happened to coordinate and the whole area just fell together perfectly.

The night before we went to the hospital to deliver Cora we took a couple pictures of me in front of the crib.  Here is the only picture that wasn't really creepy (I can't believe I was that big):

Zoo Trip

Cora and I met up with my sister again and went to the zoo.  I decided to go ahead and get a zoo pass since I figured I would go a couple times this year.  I ended up going twice that week :)

Park Trip

My sister is a nanny for our cousin so we had a lot of opportunities to hang out while I was on maternity leave.  We met up at Ault park for Cora's first walk in her new stroller.  It was nice walking around, checking out the flowers, and watching my little cousin run around.

Gradient Dresser

Living in such a small apartment, we really needed some more storage.  Margaret and I set out one Saturday to find a dresser for the baby and would double as a changing table.  We hit up a garage sale, my aunt and uncle's house, and our favorite thrift store for furniture, St. Vincent de Paul (where I got my desk).  We found a dresser we liked, but took me a while to commit since we weren't sure how we would lift it into the car and if we wanted to spend all day painting it.  I decided to buy it and was lucky enough to be loading it into the car at the same time a couple strong men were outside waiting for their purchase.  Problem solved.

We took a stop at home depot and decided to do a gray gradient (ombre) dresser with a white outside.  I thought about going more bold with blues or yellows, but ultimately decided on a safer gray gradient that would be more neutral.  I'm having DAAP flashbacks to our first year gradient project.

Got home and prepped and painted (don't worry, I had a heavy-duty mask on) while enjoying the nice weather outside.  I let it sit in the garage and dry overnight then moved it up into the apt the next day.  Found some black, gray, and white damask contact paper my sister gave me 6 months ago that was perfect for lining the drawers.

Finally settled on white knobs (Ben's suggestion).  Purchased from Hobby Lobby, installed, and the dresser is finished!

We've filled it with a bunch of diapers/wipes, toys, toiletries, and all of the clothes we have for her first year and there is still room for more.