Branding the baby's room

The mural! Based on the tree I used as the grounding graphic force for our wedding, I created a super adorable baby room mural. I mean, I spent $75 for a very talented gal on Etsy to develop my wedding invites and this tree and really, I'm just trying to get the most bang for my buck by making this tree our family logo. (Our family also has a few favorite fonts that fit our "brand," too in case you were wondering. I'm clearly that bizarre.)

I mentioned before that painting this wasn't too bad, even for an art dunce like myself. A nice projector, a sharp pencil and a steady hand is all it took to create:

Ooooooo!

Ahhhhhh!

For those of you curious, Hubs is the green bird, I'm the yellow bird and Baby BBB is the teal bird. Hubs (bless his heart!) originally asked to be painted with the markings of a sun conure. After perusing the paint selections, though, he realized he didn't want to upstage the kiddo's bird and also, he did not want his wife/artiste to have a conniption fit trying to replicate nature's beautiful bounty. Hubs is a wise, wise man.

I did two coats, but there are still lots of great brush strokes, which only add to the tree-ness of it all. I can't wait to camp out in here every night and stare at this sucker while I'm in a sleep deprived zombie state.

Now that this is done, the baby's room work is on hold for a few days while we finish the bathroom. Then, the floors need to get refinished (barf). That's on the calendar for next weekend. I can only imagine how excited you all are to read about the whole sand, buff, seal thang. I'll make it fun, I promise.

Bathroom Bumpup: Toilet Toils

Once the bathroom floor was all set, we were in a frenzied rush to install the new toilet that resulted in a potentially ripped and corroded pipe behind the wall, requiring not one, but two "Holy shit, what time does Home Depot close on New Year's Eve?" (answer: 5:00 p.m.) and "CRAP! What about Menard's?" (8:00 p.m., bless their discount-hardware-sellin' hearts) moments. Sadly, at 9:00 (after all hardware stores closed to ring in the new year), we realized we were one pipe short of a working toilet.

The horror.

And so, we set about living toilet-less for a third night, confident that our troubles would be gone by 9:00 the next morning when Home Depot reopened.

The short-lived (foreshadowing!) joy. 

I woke up on New Year's Day to the most glorious sound known to DIYers of a one bathroom home: the sound of a toilet flushing, because Hubs got up early and exchanged the short pipe for a full-length one, thus ending my reign as Queen of the Throne-less.

A cat in a fresh-out-of-the-box toilet.

Sadly, this joy was only temporary. After two days of bliss, we noticed a small leak. Upon trying to fix the leak, we realized how horrendously old and nasty the phlange (the piece that connects floor to toilet) was.  A quick call to our back-up emergency plumber revealed that because the pipe was original to the house, it might not be fixable without (brace yourself) going at it through our basement ceiling. You know the one - it's the ceiling we spent hours crippling ourselves over as we rebuilt it just two years ago.

Now, we were potty-less for a fourth night. We laughed, we cried, we binged on Jimmy John's.

Ken, our plumber, came to inspect the toilet yesterday. Lo and behold, his original diagnosis was worst-case scenario and it's actually a really easy fix. Stranger things have happened, right? This old heap of bricks sometimes magically cures itself.

AND SO.

We have a functioning toilet again. I hope my dainty and ladylike musings on this subject haven't turned you off my blog forever. I just felt compelled to share the trials and truths of this harrowing tale with you all. And really, what you don't know about those four dark nights is saving my dignity.

After all, a true lady doesn't kpiss and tell.

Bathroom Bumpup: Ain't No Grout About It

Once the floor tiles in the bathroom were set, it was time to grout so that we could install the new toilet and end the madness and generally unladylike atmosphere that not having a toilet in your own home brings. Luckily, grouting is really, really, brain-meltingly easy. 

Swipe some grout over the tiles.

 Let it sit.

 Sponge off the haze twice.

Ba da bing, ba da boom. You got a new floor.

In which I resolve

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. It just seems kind of arbitrary, so I usually prefer to make goals and deadlines based on how my year roles, not the calendar.

Maybe it's the fact that 2013 is going to be so obviously loaded with change and goodness that has me a little more resolved. Maybe I'm old and weak and more susceptible to media hype. I can't really tell, but here are my resolutions for 2013:

1. Grow, birth and love a healthy, happy baby. Obviously. Is it too much to ask that I have fun while doing these things? I like to think not: Party on, Sober-30th-Birthday! Rock out, Active Labor! Whooooooo hooo, Fourth Trimester!
2. Participate in the Des Moines Half Marathon (which should be about six months post-baby). I don't need to run the whole thing and if I finish totally dead stinkin' last (Less-Than-Fun-Fact: I was the second to last woman in my age group to finish the Drake Relays Half last spring. What I'm saying is: I know the bitter taste of almost-losing.), I won't even care. I just want to try. I miss running my guts out every Saturday morning and working toward a big goal. Also, I miss thighs that aren't a fire hazard in corduroys. 
3. Knit before it gets too hot. I have to finish remaking Hubs' Christmas stocking, make the newbie one and finally make Hubs a scarf that I promised him way back when he first gifted me with the knitting class that got all this started (cough, cough two years ago).
4. Slow down. Things are about to get real up in here and I'd like to take more time to stop, look around and be all "Holy crap, how did I get so damn lucky?" every now and again. Not really measurable, but these are New Year's Resolutions, not a marketing plan.

What about you guys? Link to your "goal posts" in the comments! (Like how I got all sporty right at the end, there?)

Pregnant in Paint Clothes

While Hubs was dutifully demo-ing and rebuilding the bathroom, I was in the next room over, getting the baby room all ready for some artistry. I wore my respirator and cracked the windows (despite seriously freezing temps), plus took breaks after each wall to keep baby seven kinds of safe. 

This second picture shows the true color much better than the first. It's Behr's Natural Gray. In dimmer lights, it seems a little purple-y, but once we get some art on the walls and furniture in, it should be less noticeable. But, if we're being honest here, I love the purpleness and don't think it will be much of a problem because I'm pretty sure real man-babies lives in sorta purple rooms.

With the walls gray and the trim nice and white, it was time for me to tap into my inner artiste. Long-time readers may remember our wedding logo, which I plastered on everything like the good little branding nerd that I am. That same logo is being revived in mural form for the kiddo's room. The one change? Obviously, we're adding a third bird to the mix, which means homeslice is about to freestyle and leave the safe confines of tracing. 

I borrowed a projector, traced out the swirly swoops of the tree branches, moved and resized the birds and then, took a big deep breath and got to painting.

The first few swipes were terrifying. I'm not a gal known for my artistic prowess, but here I was, doing my best to not eff up my first-born's room.

(Side note: Isn't the best part of Christmas break NEVER wearing real pants? I went jeans-free for nine full days, minus a short break to meet Brittney and her dudes for brunch.)

The whole tracing and first coat took me just about two-hours and was fueled by one decaf frappucino and the Nappy Roots station on Pandora. Stay tuned for the reveal of the full tree in all her majestic glory. This single act of semi-art is also sure to leave me in a puddle of tears when the time comes to sell this little spit of land, though I think if I can get enough traction on Pinterest, it may add value. Right? That's a valid sales strategy, isn't it?

Spoiler alert: I amazed myself and this mural is the bomb dot com, y'all. Once the baby sees this, he's going to expect a much higher level of craft-i-tude than I normally posses.

Bathroom Bump Up: One frap, two fraps, three faps FLOOR

Happy Almost-New Year! Hope your holidays have been super fun. I spent the first part of the week down south, celebrating with these good looking jammie models:

Once we returned to the north on Thursday, it was all business. The bathroom got its day in the sun, literally. Here is Hubs hauling our 60-year old toilet to the curb. I'm pretty sure angels sang as we put it out of its misery.

Then, it was time to pull up the linoleum (which is harder than we thought, but luckily, our bathroom is small so there wasn't too much swearing going on) and lay fresh backerboard to support the new tiles.

With the backerboard down, Hubs was able to start laying and cutting tile. We were lucky enough to borrow a wet tile saw from a friend, so we saved the rental fee. All we needed to do was buy a nice new blade so our porcelain floor tiles and marble countertop would have good cuts.

We went with over-sized subway tiles in a dark gray for the floor. While Hubs did the hard work, I photographed and did frap runs. I learned that Starbucks DOES make decaf frappucinos, which has probably revolutionized the rest of this pregnancy.

Obviously, with no toilet and freshly-laid tiles, the bathroom (again, our one and only) was out of commission. Since I wasn't helping, I thought running to the gym for a shower would be a great idea. After a particularly sweaty treadmill session, the joke was on me because the showers were all closed for a weekly deep clean. 

This, combined with my super fun respirator made for one heckuva Saturday night.

It took just about three hours for Hubs to cut and lay all these glorious floor tiles.

The thinset needs to dry for 24 hours and then it's grout time! Then, obviously, it is shower time. Thank goodness for face wipes and dry shampoo.

This is normal, right?

Yesterday, we got hit with a blizzard. Fourteen inches of heavy, wet snow (that poor Hubs shoveled solo - and was bad ass enough to refuse the help of kindly strangers who offered to let him borrow their snow blower. Hubs is an ox.) fell overnight and it made for one curious kitten.

You may remember Niles, our adorable trash-eating rescue cat. He has a thirst for adventure that knows no bounds.

So, when we caught him staring wistfully out the sliding doors at all that snow, we knew what he wanted. That little weirdo wanted to get out and play in it.

That's normal, right? Most cats really want to get sopping wet and cold, frolicking in the snow, yeah?

 Did you get blizzard-ed? How'd you entertain yourself?