Miss Quinn's Nursery - the furniture

While Ryan worked on the ceiling, I wasn't just supervising.  I had projects of my own that I was working on.

These dressers were given to us by Ryan's parents.  They used to be in the guest room of Ryan's grandparents' home.  When his grandparents moved into a nursing home, their home was rented out so all of the furniture needed to be moved out of the house.  We had two empty guest rooms at the time (years before we had babies or even considered having babies!) so the furniture came to stay with us.  His grandparents have now passed away so we asked for Ryan's dad's blessing to paint them for our little girl's room.

The tall dresser has a total of 5 drawers.  Sneaky.  It looks like way more than that!

Both dressers have these fun details at the bottom:

And cool fully functioning casters as the feet.  Makes them super easy to move around to clean underneath or to rearrange the room.

The short dresser also has brackets that hold a HEAVY mirror.  The glass is a little mottled in the corners, very cool.  Hopefully Quinn will get to use it one day.  In the meantime, this short dresser is perfect for a changing table with just a pad on top.  I already started removing the hardware on this one.  Oops.

 This dresser actually has 6 drawers.

I also had this vanity that I wanted to incorporate into the room.  I bought it on Craigslist at least 3 years ago.  It was only $20 and it sat in my garage for all of those years.  Needless to say, Ryan was not happy it sat there for that long!  In my defense, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with it.

The finish was in bad shape, so I just had to go with it.  Peeling veneer, cracks in the wood, but structurally, it's sound.  It also has cool details like the keyhole and the casters.

 

 

So after a lot of wood filling, sanding, priming, painting and polyurethaning the dressers now look like this:

I found the new pulls on Ebay for $2 each.

And the vanity, with new glassy-looking knobs from Hobby Lobby, looks like this: 

I bought the crib at Wal-Mart for $75.  It was originally $89.99 but since it had a teensy scratch that was visible through the box, they gave me 20% off.  Score!

The chair and ottoman were repurposed from Tyson's nursery, which by the way I just realized I never posted his finished room.  I'll get on that.

So there you have it.  All of the furniture for our baby girl's room.  Stay tuned for more room details!

Miss Quinn's Nursery - The Ceiling

The ceiling in Quinn's nursery, like all of the ceilings in our house, are this heavily textured business.   Ugh.  I really dislike them, but not enough to spend the time or money to deal with the hassle (and mess!) of scraping them all down, repairing the ceilings and then painting.   Maybe someday.

When we did our first crown molding installation (in Tyson's nursery), we quickly figured out how to scrape the ceilings so the crown would sit flush or close enough to flush to the ceilings. Since I knew I wanted beadboard on the ceiling in this nursery, scraping down the texture in the entire room was inevitable. Gah. So.much.work.  And so messy.  We couldn't work on it as often as we would have liked, so the scraping process took us a few weeks of working on it intermittently.  I don't have any pictures because I didn't want to ruin my camera with all of the dust and mess!

After the scraping was done, the next step was the beadboard. We were all set to use the big sheets of beadboard that you can buy at Lowes and HD. We had even calculated out how many sheets we needed to buy, but hadn't pulled the trigger yet.

One weekend while browsing the Sunday newspaper ads, I found packages beadboard panels on sale at Menards. After doing the quick math, we found out that these packs would be cheaper than the big panels and Ryan thought they would be much easier to work with. So we went with these instead and I must say, it worked out wonderfully!

We didn't have much to work around with the ceiling and the room was easy, since it's really just a large rectangle. We, er, Ryan, only had to cut around the vent, the light fixture and the hardwired smoke detector.

Here goes...the first panels are up!

Ryan works so hard!

You can see the size of each beadboard panel in this photo:

Once all of the panels were up, Ryan went through the tedious process of filling all of the nail holes, caulking the joints between the panels and painting the ceiling.  We painted it the same semi-gloss antique white color of the rest of the trim in our house.

The final step of the ceiling project was to hang the chandelier.  It cost us nothing since it was originally hanging in the dining room of our house when we bought it.  It was bright and shiny brass and I spray painted it white. 

I wasn't even sure if the light would still work.  It had sat in our basement for 4 years and survived a flood.  I had to give it a good scrubbing before I could even attempt to paint it.  That thing was a gross, dusty, cobweb-y mess. 

After installing the fixture, I painted the walls.  That was my big contribution to the room.  :)

I painted the entire room in the evenings one week while Ryan was out of town.  

The ceiling is complete, walls painted and the chandelier hung.  The only thing left to do is to install the crown molding.

The ceiling was by far the biggest project of the room, but I LOVE how it turned out! 



There are LOTS more details to come, stay tuned!

Miss Quinn's Nursery

I think I'll probably do this in several posts--and I can't believe I haven't already done it yet--but here goes!

Quinn's nursery started out with this nursery that I saw online before I even knew if we were having a boy or a girl.  I loved the color scheme, the freshness of it and just how simply beautiful everything looked.  So, I stashed it away (aka, saved it to my favorites) and hoped for a girl.  :)  I also had plenty of ideas lined up for a baby boy, too.

I also knew that regardless of the sex of our baby, we were doing a beadboard ceiling in the room.  Ryan thought I was crazy, as he usually does with most things I suggest, but after browsing a few online photos he was on board.

Our nursery started out looking like this:

And now looks like this:

I'll be back with the details of the room!

A big boy bed.

Tyson fell out of his crib one evening last week, so we (Ryan) decided it was time to convert his crib to a toddler bed.  I have to admit, I was terrified.  I have read and heard many horror stories from my mom friends, so I was not optimistic in the least. 

We're keeping our fingers crossed, but the transition went well through the first night and first nap. After crying for 12 minutes, yes we counted, he slept all night in his bed.  I have to admit I shed a few tears too.  My little baby is growing up.

We heard him chatting this morning and when we went into get him, we found him sitting in the chair in his room reading a book.  The first nap didn't go quite as well.  We found him sleeping on the floor, right behind the door, during his nap. At this point, if it's sleep, we'll take it!  I'm just hoping it continues to go well.

He was pretty proud of himself after waking up the first morning in his big boy bed!

We're so proud of you, buddy!

Bumbo Seat. Then and Now

Do We Look Alike? Month 2

Quinn - 2 Months!

Age: 2 months

Weight: 10 lbs and a half ounce (25%) 

Height: 23 inches (75%)

Size: Can still wear some NB size clothes, but mostly moving into 0-3m stuff for length.  Finishing up our last box of Newborn diapers. 

Hair: Dark and cray-zay, as evidenced below. :) 

Teeth: None.

Sleeping:  I dare not to jinx it, but she's sleeping through the night!  We feed her for the last time between 10 and 11pm and she sleeps until 6 or 7am.  Woot.  Naps are getting a bit more consistent.  She naps anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours after she eats and plays for a bit.

Eating: As much as it saddens me, I'm currently weaning.  We found out last month after a lot of testing on our sweet baby that Quinn has a milk protein allergy.  Since over half of babies with an allergy to milk protein also have an allergy to soy protein, I gave up all dairy and soy for 3 weeks. But, each time we gave her any substantial amount of breastmilk, her belly got distended with gas (again), her skin started to break out and she spit up a LOT.  I think she may have another allergy.  Boo.  She does so much better on the Alimentum so we're sticking with that until her GI doctor gives us the go-ahead to start challenging the allergies.  Our fingers are crossed that she grows out of it.

She's taking 4oz every 2.5-3 hours during the day, roughly 6 feedings per day.

Movement: She's holding her head up really well and will bear weight on her legs if you stand her upright.  Still wiggly, but no rolling yet.

Milestones:  Took her first trip to Bloomington, went to her first wedding, happily plays in her activity gym, started smiling (yay!) and started making some cooing sounds. 

Favorite toys/activities: Riding in the car or stroller, playing in her activity gym, being held, baths.

Dislikes: Burps, gas, being hot or cold, diaper changes, waiting for food.

Words: Just some adorable cooing sounds!

Happy 4th of July!

Our Little Firecrackers:

Tyson: 26 Months

Age: 26 months and a few days :)

Weight: Not sure, but he was 32+ lbs at 2 years and I'm sure he weighs more than that now.

Height: Again, not sure, but I know he's grown since he was measured at 35.5 inches at 2 years.

Size: 2T clothes, size 5 diaper, size 7 shoe. He outgrew his shoes overnight. I'm not even joking. One day his shoes fit and the very next morning, they no longer fit him. How does a child grow a shoe size OVERNIGHT?

Hair: Blonde and cute. Mostly tame right now since it seems to be the perfect length.

Teeth: 18! I've confirmed that 2 of his 2 year molars have finally popped through. I think the other 2 are on their way because he is drooling and chewing on his hands constantly.

Sleeping: As good as always. In bed by 8pm, wakes up somewhere after 7am. He's taking one good nap each day, roughly 2 hours. Sometimes more, sometimes a bit less.

Eating: Grr. Eating remains a struggle with him. Sometimes he skips meals altogether, sometimes he eats a ton. He's decided he likes apples and right now he loves yogurt.

Movement: Nothing really new, but he still loves to run, jump and play. He's constantly on the go.

Milestones: Took his second trip to the zoo (Ft. Wayne this time), fed his baby sister, with some help from mama, celebrated his third 4th of July. We had planned to let him stay up for the fireworks, but he freaked out after hearing some fireworks being let off during the day so we opted to wait until next year.

Favorite toys/activities: Riding in mama's car, riding in grandpa's boat, playing outside, going down his slide (and then climbing back up again), playing in the sprinkler. Still loves his trains and cars. Loves to hear mama sing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". He asks for "twinkle star" :) He still loves to watch the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

Dislikes: Transitioning from one activity or person to the next, bedtime and naptime, rinsing his hair in the bathtub, timeouts.

Words: Everyday he says longer and longer sentences. It just blows me away to see so much improvement from one day to the next. He is consistently saying 4 and 5 word sentences that we can understand. Rarely does he say something that we have no idea what he's talking about. He's started saying "me" or "I" in sentences as opposed to always speaking in the third person. He can sing most of "Twinkle Star", can count from 1-9 and knows a few higher numbers, knows shapes (the regular ones like squares and triangles and more complicated shape concepts like cones and cylinders).

Brushing the goats at the Fort Wayne Zoo:

Eating popsicles:

Riding in pa's boat:

Feeding baby sister: