Busy Weekend

The wallpaper stripping in the baby's room was time consuming, but really wasn't too bad. Now we have the paper stripped, the walls painted, and the room cleared out. This weekend it really hit us that the baby will be here sooner than later, and we really are running out of time. I'm not sure what did it, whether it was the enormous stack of baby shower gifts in the hall, or the fact that the due date was a month from last Thursday, but Chris and I both became very motivated.

On Saturday, my lifelong friend & garage sale buddy, Mindy threw us a beautiful baby shower. She put a lot of thought and work into it, even moving her living room furniture out into her garage. We had a big crowd of friends and family, and we got a lot of very nice baby things. A big thank you to all of you! There's nothing like a crowd of women to make you feel really loved. After much fun, great food, giggling, and lots of hugs, the party ended and the work began. For Mindy, it was putting her house back in order, for Chris and I, it was getting started putting a house in order. We cleared out the clutter and extra junk in the baby's room, cleaned up the leftover wallpaper pieces and Chris assembled the baby bed. Oh, another thing - Mindy was getting ready for the baby shower when she drove past a garage sale that had a round pedestal table like I've been looking for. She called me, I jumped out of bed & threw on something that fit (she'd been up for hours, her crew gets up at the crack of dawn) and scrambled over to the yard sale. For $10, I got a solid wood, pedestal table that will be perfect for our "blue room" as a breakfast table. I have looked for one of those all this garage sale season with no luck. Another big "thank you" to Mindy!

But why stop there? After that, we started working on the office downstairs. It has been a packed-full mess since we moved there with barely enough foot space to feed the turtle and get to the printer. I hadn't even touched my computer in...months. This week, we will build some simple, but sturdy desks so that we both have a spot to work and play on the computers. Remember, the family that plays together...

There is still quite a bit to do in the baby's room, but it's feeling much more manageable. And we're both feeling a bit of relief after my doctor's appointment today, when the doctor said "well, no baby this week!"
That will give us a little more time to:

1. finish the baby bedding - bumpers, dust ruffle & canopy
2. make & hang the curtains
3. paint the harlequin design on the wall behind the bed
4. paint the rocking chair, chest of drawers, lamp table & shelves to match the bed
5. install some shelves for storage baskets
6. deep clean the pendant light, floor & windows
   

Stripping Wallpaper

Finally, we started stripping the wallpaper in the baby's room. I had hoped we would start it and say "See, that's not so bad! Why did we put it off for so long?" But, wallpaper that's been on the walls longer than our parents have been alive is not going to come off without a struggle. I think we've got a technique down now though, so it is going a lot faster and more smoothly. The walls beneath are in great shape, turns out they are drywall (albeit primitive) and not plaster. So no worries about patching crumbly plaster. Above left - wallpaper pattern, Above right - 3 hours of stripping.

Molly the Cat's new haircut