Last night, we focused our attention on a very important corner of the room — what I like to call “Momma’s Command Centre.”

It’s that special little corner where our new glider resides and where baby and I will reside for many, many, many hours each day.

Many of my “Momma friends” told me to a) buy a comfy glider (CHECK!) and b) make sure you have a table next to it to hold your drink, iPhone, miscellaneous “Mom gear” (I’m sure I’ll learn more about that quite quickly once baby arrives) and snacks. Specifically, make sure the table you buy has a drawer for snacks. NOTED!

Ikea’s Hemnes Nightstand was the perfect candidate — the right size, the right price (it’s on sale now!) and it has the much spoken about drawer. I also like the shelf on the bottom to house the white noise machine and other baby-related gear.

Since the room is oh-so-tiny, having a bookshelf is out of the question. I had to get creative and work with the space at hand. My solution? Shelves! Three of them on the wall behind the glider. We chose the Ekby Jarpen/Ekby Bjarnum combination from Ikea.

Ted spaced the shelves about 12″ apart and I’m pleased to report that there was very minimal swearing involved!

At this point, it was getting late, I was falling asleep in my glider, but we had one more piece of my “Momma’s Command Centre” to install — a wall sconce.

Again, with the room being so small, I didn’t want to clutter any free surface with a lamp. A swing-arm wall-mounted lamp seemed like the best option and I found this one from Lowes and fell in love with it.

Unlike the shelves, this lamp gave Ted the case of “The Swears”…

Totally worth it though because the final product of my little slice of heaven is complete. I’m so happy with how it turned out!

All that’s left to do is stock my snack drawer and arrange books and other fun things for the little one on the shelves, like her shiny new piggy bank from a very dear friend (hi Heather!)

What do you think? To the Moms and Dads out there — is my “Momma’s Command Centre” missing anything else? Mini fridge perhaps? If only I had the space!

It arrived last night.

Two weeks ahead of schedule.

Seriously. Ahh-mazing.

My husband? Gotta love him. After having to deal with the tears, complaints, demands and my overall sucky mood all week, Ted happily hopped into the car after a full day of work, drove to Stoney Creek to get the glider and brought it home.

I feel kinda ridiculous for having a material object make me happy, but whatever — I’m going with it.

Seeing this in the baby’s room makes me HAPPY! And, EXCITED! Kinda the same way that chocolate makes me feel.

You’ll have to pardon the poor quality photos. It was late when I removed my aching, pregnant body from my Snoogle pillow to come check out the glider in the room.

It fits perfectly! With the room being as small as it is, we had to find a chair that was compact, yet comfortable. The Thonet rocking chair, which has been in my family for many years, was always our first choice, but it was too big for the room. It will remain at Grandpa’s house and I’m sure we’ll make good use of it there.

Also, being the taller folks that Ted and I both are, we needed a chair that fit us right. A lot of chairs that we test drove were too low in the back, meaning no head support. And, hey — if we are going to be clocking many miles in this chair for the next fews years, we want to be comfortable, right?

We ended up choosing Dutailier’s 180 Serial in a grey fabric with a courser weave — it’s surprisingly very soft to the touch. We had the option of choosing a contrasting fabric for the piping, but we opted to keep the chair all one fabric/colour since it will likely transition to our basement living room down the road. Best of all, we snagged it during a Boxing Week sale, so it was within our budget.

Overall, we are thrilled with the glider and are happy to support another Canadian company. I can’t wait to snuggle baby girl in this chair. Only 7ish more weeks until we get to meet her!

To all you Moms and Dads out there — did you buy a glider for your baby? Do you love or regret this choice? At first, we didn’t feel the need to purchase a glider, but after talking with experienced Moms and Dads, they all said it was worth the investment. Thoughts?

Thankfully, our crib and dresser arrived over the weekend a whole four weeks sooner than promised!

The dresser arrived in one piece, so it went right up next to the window.

The crib, on the other hand, required assembly.

No problem right?

Wrong.

I don’t know if it was first-time parent nerves (“Oh my goodness, are we putting this together right? What if the crib collapses with the baby in it?”) or unclear instructions, but this thing was a pain in the rear to assemble! I may or may not have broken down at one point. I blame my raging pregnancy hormones and the lack of chocolate in the house. Ted’s excuse? The lack of beer in the house.

After inspecting every drawing and reading the instructions (at varying speeds and volumes) about a hundred times, we finally got the crib put together.

Here she is in all her curvy glory in place opposite the dresser. L-O-V-E!

Plans are underway for the crib skirt, as well as some throw cushions to spice up the room even more. Our crib sheets should also arrive any day now and our glider should be ready for pick-up in a few weeks. Everything is coming together and we couldn’t be more excited!

It all started with my simple request for a dimmer switch in the room. An easy request, considering Ted has swapped out most of the light switches in our home with dimmer switches.

Well, what can I say — living in an older home comes with surprises. Like old wiring that literally crumbled in Ted’s fingers as he was installing the new switch. Yep, crumbled. All the way up into the wall behind the box. Lovely.

But, that wasn’t all. After some investigating, we noticed that a 2×6 was notched out to fit the shallower than normal electrical box. Comical! What the house builder was thinking is beyond us!

Since our electrical panel is in our basement, we thought that the wiring would snake itself downstairs. But, after further investigation, we found that it actually went up into the attic. Talk about a detour!

Stupid? Yes. But, awesome all the same! By going up through the attic, Ted had easy access to the wire, which he was able to extend back down into the box.

At this point, the sun was going down and he was running out of light. Chiseling out the 2×6 to accommodate the new, full-size box in the dark was not fun. There may or may not have been a few swears.

The result?

Happiness!

And, light!

Way to go, Daddy!

Let the crib assembling commence!

The furniture fairies must have read this post and granted me a wish!

Once the crib is assembled, I can start work on my next sewing project: a crib skirt!

A few months ago, I was window shopping in Pottery Barn Kids and spotted this crib skirt and fell in love with it, but not the $75 price tag.

Yet again, Tonic Living came to my rescue with the perfect grey and white chevron fabric. I ordered two yards of the fabric, which should be more than enough to make my crib skirt and maybe a throw cushion or two. Much more economical than PBK!

Like my inspiration above, I plan to sew a pleated crib skirt for some added appeal. To keep things easy for washing and any future adjustments when we drop the crib to a lower height as the little miss grows, I’m going to attach the skirt to the crib frame using good old fashion velcro. I also see some more blind hemming stitches in my future for a more professional finish.

And, just to refresh your memory, here is a snap shot of our fabric selections for the room.

From left to right: “Varenna, Coral”: curtains (these bad boys are D-O-N-E!), “Emilio Cosmo”: throw cushions, “Flatiron, Grey”: crib skirt/throw cushions — all from Tonic Living. The Orange Dot and Khaki Dot fabric samples are from Land of Nod.

After waiting about a month or so, Land of Nod finally had a free shipping offer on all bedding, plus I was able to use a special promo code I received in the mail, which is great because I have a hard time paying full price for anything. Hopefully the sheets will be waiting for us at our US mailbox on our next trip down to Niagara Falls, New York.

Is anyone else getting cozy with their sewing machine this weekend? If so, what are you working on?

In my last update, all I had left to do was line, sew, grommet and hang the curtains. No biggie, right? WELL! After a few hiccups with the sewing machine (it was in “a mood” for about a week — as in, it would not stop binding up), I got them finished!

I opted to line the curtains with dim out fabric to help block out any extra light that our horizontal blinds don’t block out…

…and then I simply measured, cut and installed grommets at the top of the fabric to easily slide back and forth on the drapery rod.

I will say that math is NOT my forte and that it took me many more hours (yes, HOURS) than I’d like to admit to figure out the exact spacing of the grommets. After some swear words, a nap and a tall glass of gingerale with lots of ice (and maybe another nap thrown in), I figured out the spacing. The actual cutting out of the grommet holes and the installation of the grommets was easy — phew!

And, here they are in all their glory! Pressed, hung and absolutely just as I hoped!

Totally, 100% worth all of the hard work, swearing, sweat, maybe a tear or two and savings by DIY-ing them myself. Oh yea, and the satisfaction of being able to tell my girl everyday for the rest of her life that, “Mommy made you these curtains.” Poor kid is going to be burdened with these curtains for the rest of her life. I hope her future husband likes them.

As for the rest of the room? I have nothing to show you. NOTHING. ZILCH. NADA. WE DON’T EVEN HAVE ELECTRICITY IN THIS ROOM! But, that’s a story for another time….

Aside from the curtains, the rest of the room sits empty…and I keep sitting cross-legged willing this baby not to make an early appearance because we are not ready for her arrival. Yes, the crib and dresser are on order and we even broke down and bought a glider for the room (more on that later). I hope that everything arrives in the next four weeks, leaving me 5ish weeks to get everything started and finished.

Plenty of time, right? And, who am I kidding….does the baby really care about ANY of this?! I’m thinking no. Phew, the pressure is off!

Source list for this project:
Fabric: Varenna Coral from Tonic Living
Lining: Dim Out from Tonic Living
Grommets: Dritz 1-9/16-Inch Inner Diameter Curtain Grommets, 8-Pack, Pewter from Amazon.com
Drapery Rod: Allen + Roth Metal Single Curtain Rod, Pewter from Lowes

Resources:
I came across this great tutorial on Pinterest to help refresh my memory on how to sew lined curtains with grommets. I highly recommend anyone wanting to tackle DIY curtains to visit Ginger Freckle and read her tutorial.

Being seven months pregnant and tackling a project like this is no joke. Part way through cutting the fabric for the curtains, I had to stop and take a shower. The whole process made me break out in a sweat! I felt like I just completed an hour long hot yoga class followed by a 5km race. It was not a pretty sight!

The curtains, on the other hand, are coming together beautifully! I’m in no rush to finish them, so I’ve been plugging away a little bit here and there. Netflix has been entertaining me while I iron all my hems.

This weekend, I managed to get the hems of both panels ironed and pinned. I am now ready for the next step — inserting the dim-out lining in behind each panel, which means more cutting, bending, kneeling, squatting and complaining (oh, my aching back!)

I’m anxious to get behind the sewing machine and start piecing these curtains together. I want nice finished edges, so I took some time over the holidays to practice blind hemming stitches on my machine using some scrap fabric. The result? Perfection! I wish I used this technique on my living/dining room curtains last year, but I didn’t realize I had the right foot for the job until now. Ah well, live and learn!

Am I regretting not having these curtains custom sewn for me? Not yet. So far I have been enjoying the entire process and the money saved by sewing them myself has allowed us the ability to allocate our “baby room dollars” to other items — more on that later! Plus, I’m enjoying working on this project knowing that it’s going to be enjoyed by someone really special.

Curtain fabric: Varenna, Coral from Tonic Living

The verdict: DIY!

Why? Well, as much as the lazy, pregnant girl inside of me would love to have the folks at Tonic Living sew the curtains for me, the practical, can-do girl inside of me is saying to suck it up and sew! Also, the budget-loving, money-saving girl inside of me remembered that we still need to find a rug for the room to help dampen any hardwood floor squeaks and noises. The money saved on custom sewing can go towards the rug budget. Practicality wins again. Sigh…

So, it looks like my Christmas break (bearing that the fabric arrives before Christmas…fingers crossed!) will be spent doing this…

This…

And a more of this…

Wish me luck!

After looking at a few cribs and dressers (and giving each one a good, solid shake to test for durability — all new parents do this, right?), we zoned in on this crib and dresser from a Canadian company called College Woodwork.

The furniture comes in a variety of finishes with the choice of hardware. We opted for white, which will contrast nicely with the dark hardwood floors, and oval pulls on the dresser. We really like the curves on this furniture — it should go nicely with the graphic elements in our fabric selections.

With it being the holidays, we won’t receive the furniture for another 8-10 weeks. Hopefully it all arrives on time! We have 14-ish more weeks to go and this Momma is anxious to get every lil onesie and cloth diaper washed and folded away. I think the full-blown nesting has started to settle in, no?

I love pulling out all of our decorations — some new, some handed down from my parents — and covering the house in Christmas cheer. Each year, I start plotting our decor on November 1st.

This year was no exception.

Without further ado, I bring to you Christmas…

The Merry Christmas banner is my favourite craft thus far. To make it, I simply cut the letters out of seasonal scrapbook paper using my Silhouette Cameo and strung each letter together using red and white twine. I even made a few extra and gave them to friends and family to help spread some Christmas cheer.

Slow down and enjoy this last week before Christmas. It’ll all be over in a flash!

]]> http://the236.net/2012/12/17/scenes-of-christmas/feed/ 9 the236blog