Another update...

I've been able to crank out a bunch more projects this past week.

Starting with (re) painting Anna Jean's room.  Remember the dark brown/army green-ish "flax" color I talked about in this post?  It's gone now.  In its place is another RH color called "latte".  Latte is such an improvement - and truly the color I had in mind all the time!  

The annoying thing was that it took A LOT of paint to cover up such a dark color, but a full gallon and three quarters later ... I was done.  Pretty, huh?

Tim long ago veto'd painting the entire room pink and said I could do pink accents only.  This Thursday, after a rocking Holy Yoga class, I put Lubby down for what turned out to be a very long nap and got to work on one striped wall.

I read lots of how-to's on this.  Step one was measuring the wall and determining the spacing of the stripes.  After consulting with my trusty style advisory board via text message, we decided on 12 inch widths.  The wall is just about 11 feet exactly, so it worked out great to have an odd number of stripes.  Now, I know that horizontal stripes are more current these days, but the bedding I'm going to use has some vertical stripes in it so I felt compelled to go with vertical - and even if they may not be as current - they are still so very cute!  Measuring, leveling, and then taping took some time.  I can honestly say, trying to tape all the way to the ceiling made me wish for the first time in my life I owned scaffolding.  I am getting HUGE and weeble, wobbling up stools for this little adventure wasn't too fun!!

Step 2: I painted the base color over the inside of the tape line where the pink was to go to "seal" the tape (on left), and then when it was dry-ish, began cutting in the pink along the baseboard and ceiling, and then rolling it on.

After the pink was on, I carefully removed the tape so as to not mess up all this hard work.  From there it was a little touch up and voila!

My good friend, Tara, is going to help me create a wall decal/monogram like this to go in the center of this wall over the crib.  Won't that be fun?  :-)

And... in other news, my cousin Lisa came over today to help me with another project in our front room.  I've been working on collecting old family photos for a black and white family history wall.  Lisa and her sister had some great ones of our grandparents from the 40's and 50's and I thought the idea was so rich.  Today (much to Caleb's annoyance), we worked on laying out the wood frames I had in mind for it.  We moved the bookshelf from the center of the room to over the corner to fill in this space and make room for the wall collage.

And, after the bookshelf was setup it looked like this (Lisa is pretty great at bookshelves!)

And the wood frames awaiting really old photos were laid out and hung here.  Granted, I am pretty long on photo collages now, but I have so many frames I already ON HAND that it made for an obvious no cost decor solution.  This is just my wood colored frame collection - and not counting the ones I hung in Caleb's room!  I am super excited to get all these photos assembled from our respective family trees.  Some of the ones I've already come across are absolutely priceless.  I pray it will be a great way to help us become and feel more connected to our family heritage.  Jared had a sweet time this afternoon perusing old old photos 40's and 50's today of my Dja Dja (who is turning 95 next month) and Babcia who passed away three days before he was born. 

Here is the view from the dining table, to the right of the buffet is an old violin mounted in a gold-ish case that I recognized from pictures from my maternal grandparents home years before I was born.  Having never met them, it makes me happy to have it hanging in my home now.  I have no idea if there is history to this violin beyond the fact that it hung in their house when my natural mother was a little girl, but that alone is enough for me. :-)

My cousin Lisa is great.  Will was happy to see her and remembered making cookies with her over the holidays.  And, not only does she have a great eye for decor, she almost always comes bearing gifts.  Today, she brought some blue dyed/painted/rhinestone-y eggs for my Easter decor and some colored bubbles for the boys.  Judging by the fact they both needed showers after playing with those bubbles, I'd say they were a hit!!

I'm so happy to be making some more progress!  I'm midway through my 33rd week and just ordered the crib and dresser for Anna Jean's room today too.  I'm praying it gets here soon so I can setup the bedding and start going through the clothes my sweet friends have passed on to me!  I'm now on the hunt for the perfect large beige/cream trellis rug for under $200 to complete my before baby purchases and stay under budget.  Wish me luck finding it!

Tim came home on Monday night at midnight from his guys' group to find me editing, crossing off, and revamping "the list" of stuff to do before baby.  He asked, "Is it getting any shorter YET?"  Can you blame him?  :-)