necessary “evils”

There have been a few additions to our home lately that I can’t say that I’ve been terribly thrilled with but seeing as they are a required part of the process, I have to deal.

Oh, you think I’m talking about baby stuff…. not so!

I’m talking about these:

a for sale sign in our living room window, 

a lock box on the front door,

  
and fliers on our dining room table.

The condo has been on the market for about a month and so far we’ve gotten no response.  We’ve gotten a fair amount of positive feedback but it’s only been open once and only 3 other people have come by to see it.  It’s kind of nice that the place is basically clean all the time but it’s a pain to keep it that way.

We’re going to take it off the market for a couple of weeks after the baby is born and then hopefully we’ll have better luck in May.

Fingers crossed!

vote – or guess really – now!

Tiny fingers, tiny toes

Boy or girl nobody knows…

So we’re getting near to the end here and everyone has an opinion as to what we’re having.  Time to let your opinion be known.

But first, a few data points for those who like to be a slight bit “scientific” about it.

Here’s a recent picture (it’s from last weekend but close enough, right?)

- Heartbeat has been generally fast.  Like over 150.

- No real heartburn or morning sickness.

- I haven’t had any dreams that might give us a clue.

- Both sides of the family all have oldest girls.  My mom is the oldest, my sister is the oldest, she had a girl first, Will’s sister is the oldest, and all of his dad’s sisters are older as well.

Ok – poll time.  Cast your vote but maybe leave a comment too so that we can see who guessed correctly.

hands & dishes: a completed project for our future kitchen

I know, I know…  We don’t even have our future house with our future kitchen picked out yet. 

Why I am doing things for it already?

Because I’m a dork and weird like that.

This project is actually just a variation on something that we already have and use everyday – our mainstay kitchen towels.

The impetus behind it – my MIL in fact.  Way back before there was even an idea that she would be my MIL, Will told me a story about how when they were growing up, she was particular about keeping the dishtowels used for hands separate from the ones with which they would dry the dishes.  Made sense to me so after I moved into my own place (where we now still live for the time being), I found a local woman who does embroidery out of her home (Regina of It Takes A Stitch – lovely lady to work with) and had 2 sets of hand towels stitched with “Hands” and “Dishes.”

We’ve used them A LOT over the ensuing years for their intended purposes (I’ve actually been told that it makes certain people nervous to use the towels in case they grab the wrong one – ha!) and as such they’re getting pretty grody.  I thought I had taken a picture of them as my “before” but I can’t find it and am too lazy to do it now.

So I decided that I wanted new clean ones for our future place.  And then I went a little nutty and decided that I wanted all different colors that I could mix and match for various seasons and holidays.

Unfortunately, this was not going to be a small or cheap project in the end.

Here’s my list of seasons/holidays and the colors that I thought each one needed:

• Christmas – red, green
• Thanksgiving/Fall – rust, brown
• Easter/Spring – pink, light blue, lavender
• Summer – turquoise, magenta
• Halloween – orange, black
• Valentine’s day – pink, red
• St. Patrick’s day – green
• Patriotic holidays – red, royal blue

I decided that I needed a total of 13 sets (one “Hands” and one “Dishes”) including 2 sets of red for a total of 26 towels.  Well, the Williams Sonoma towels that I started with and like so much come in packs of 4 so I added one more set of neutral khaki to round things out.

Um, that’s SEVEN packs of towels.  Oops.

I got a lot of help from the in-laws on the towels with a birthday giftcard. 

While in the store, I decided to try my hand at the old “it can’t hurt to ask” bit and asked the salesgirl if I could get a discount since I was buying 7 packages of towels. 

It actually worked!!

I got a 10% discount.  Lesson learned: It really doesn’t hurt to ask.

Next step (and really the end of the whole process), meet up with Regina to have the towels embroidered.  It took about a half hour to pick out all the thread shades for each color but then I just had to wait for her to finish them.

Some of the final product:
 
They came out great! 

I’ve packed them away for use in Colorado but I’m super excited to be able to coordinate with the seasons and holidays.

Did I already mention that I’m a dork?

where will baby sleep?

There’s not much space in our little condo and we’re not moving until the baby is about 3 months old so you may be wondering where is the baby going to sleep until we move?

In the cradle, of course.

My dad handmade it out of cherry back over 24 years ago when my sister was pregnant with my niece.  It was intended for all of the family’s grandkids but it’s BIG and too heavy to ship so after if got to New Jersey for my sister’s kids (through the kindness of friends of friends who were moving to NJ), it sadly never managed to make it back to Texas for my brothers’ kids.  We are fortunate to live close enough that we can pick it up from them (and then move it to Colorado with us).

It’s gorgeous and will be parked next to our bed once the baby is born until we pack up to move.

fun with baby stuff

We’ve gotten a few things for the baby so far.

Our first present was from one of Will’s cousins –

so cute!  We’ve had them since before Thanksgiving but they’ll be perfect for next Christmas season.

We’ve also received a baby shower present a little early from one of my high school friends – a Performance Ergo Baby Carrier.  We’re super excited and really hope baby likes it. 

But first… Will had to model it with Snuffles acting in place of the baby.

He looks thrilled, right?

So I mentioned in a previous post that I ordered this:

It arrived!

It’s a little bit more Elmo red than I would have thought from the picture but it’s still adorable.  Snuffles was called in to model yet again.

I was in a weird mood.

whoops…

I realized yesterday in the shower that I’ve lost my toes.

looking straight down – no toes.

oh… there they are.  Had to lean over a little bit to find them though.

Most weeks the weekly Baby Center baby development e-mails include a cartoon (sometimes it’s a dumb joke – I like the cartoons better now that I’ve discovered them)
 
Here’s the one for 30 weeks.  All symptoms accounted for with the exception of the swelling so far.  whew.

day 12 – kylemore abbey

Our next day adventure was to one of my favorite places in Ireland – Kylemore Abbey.

We really kind of felt like we were lost driving through the Connemara Coast (more karst if you were interested) because it was pretty desolate.  Pretty though. 

We did finally get there!

 
Happy couples.

The view back across the lake

Inside the abbey itself:

One of the owners of the castle had a gorgeous gothic church built to honor his dead wife.

 

Walking back toward the Victorian Walled Gardens Dad found a cool stump to inspect.

The gardens were a new experience since they’ve never been open on any previous trips since they’ve been under restoration for many years.  They were worth the wait.  We’d stopped at the gardens cafe for some lunch and ended up finishing up right about the time that the guided tour of the of the gardens began.  It was a good tour.

Because we were on a mission to find another Avoca Handweavers to replace a jar of jam that my dad had bought and then dropped, we took a different route home.  Will even was able to stop and find a cache.

 
He didn’t know that I was taking pictures with the telephoto lens :)

It had turned out to be a long day so we stopped for dinner at the first place we could find before getting back to the B&B.

View Ireland - Day 12 in a larger map

Day 1: Arrival, Adare, Tralee
Day 2: Dingle Peninsula Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Day 3: Kilarney, Muckross House
Day 4: Rock of Cashel
Day 5: Tipperary and Waterford
Day 6: Wexford and Vale of Avoca
Day 7: Dublin Part 1
Day 8: Dublin Part 2
Day 9: Newgrange
Day 10: Mullingar, Belvedere House
Day 11: Aran Islands