Nursery Projects: Decorative Pillows

My wonderful sister-in-law Haven let me borrow her sewing machine this week so I decided I better put those fabrics I mentioned I got from my grandma to good use. I wanted to make a pillow or two to put on this glider we ordered off of Amazon this week. The pillows turned out pretty cute, and taking into consideration that they were totally free, I love them. Please keep in mind that I am an amateur seamstress and am doing good if I can even sew a straight line (you may notice the orange square in the center of the little pillow is definitely NOT straight) so I am pretty proud of my work! 

I had fun playing around with the different textures and colors and I like that I can change up the look by switching the pillows around. I would say I did OK for not having sewn anything on my own like this in quite a while!

Nursery Projects: Safari Animals

The loose theme of my nursery is safari animals, but so far I've only incorporated one project that has safari animals in it.. I am in love with how it turned out though. I got the idea on Pinterest to cut out silhouettes of animals and glue them to unframed canvas. I found some cool, sort of retro-ish fabric at my grandma's (turns out she has collected basically an entire store of fabric in her lifetime and is now more than happy to get rid of it!). We looked up silhouettes of a giraffe, elephant, and lion online, blew them up to the right size for the canvas's, and cut them out of the fabric. Then I mod podged them onto the canvas. All except the lion went on really well-the lion is a little thinner fabric and it bubbled a little. I haven't decided where to hang them yet, but most likely they'll hang above the crib with the giraffe on the left and the elephant and lion on the right. I'm in love with these things and I'm so happy they turned out how I wanted! Shad was especially helpful with this project, which was a very good thing because he tends to be a perfectionist where I tend to get impatient and then not do things so perfect..

Nursery Projects: The Dresser

I have finished my second big project for the nursery-the dresser. It turned out being harder than I thought and doesn't look as good as I hoped because I have this innate inability to follow directions...

The dresser started out looking like this. I removed all the knobs, cleaned off the cobwebs (it's an old dresser from my parents house that hasn't been used in yeeears), and the dust, and some more cobwebs, then got to painting.

 This is the end result! New knobs and a navy paint job.

 I also mod podged orange paper to the bottom inside of the drawers to cover the rough wood and add a little color contrast.

 You will notice that the blue paint looks a bit splotchy, especially on the top. Well, this is where I failed to follow directions.. My talented furniture re-furnisher sister-in-law instructed me to buy paint with primer in it. Well, I couldn't find any at Lowes, where I decided to buy the spray paint, so I figured hey I'll just prime it first then paint it and it's the same, right? No. Well, in this case, no. It actually may have worked, but I didn't prime it well enough. You will notice the primer in the picture below is not fully covering the dresser. This apparently leads to a much less even end result.. OOPS. I considered starting over, but I figure I'll be covering the top of the dresser with a changing pad, lamp, and diaper stuff and you won't see much of the splotchy-ness anyway. Perhaps next time I try a project I will follow instructions!!

I'm now working on safari animal canvas wall art! It's almost done, so I'll post it soon hopefully!

Blanding Baby Shower

My amazing mother-in-law and sisters-in-law threw me a baby shower over the weekend and it was so cute! They played on the safari theme that I'm using a bit in my nursery and I loved it. I can't believe all the work they put into the cute details. I am so lucky to have such great in-laws and I loved being able to see Shad's cousins at the shower. I got such amazing gifts and I'm finally starting to feel somewhat prepared for the baby to come! Thanks to everyone who helped with and came to the shower!

 Amanda, Me, Haven, and Stacey

 Yes, after the shower I most definitely settled down to look through my gifts with a giant bowl of puffy cheetos... Hey if I'm going to get huge and pregnant, I might as well enjoy doing it

 Thank you favors-little baggies of animal crackers

I WANT that giraffe in my nursery! It was on loan from a neighbor, but I was very tempted to sneak it home with me! How cute are all the labels, the sign, and animal-related finger foods (notice the cheetos are 'tiger tails')!

After the shower, the whole family went up camping for the night and next day. We had a really fun weekend and are so grateful for mom and dad Webb who always work so hard to make sure we all have a good time! This was probably our last time in Blanding for a long time because Shad's parents are moving up this way sometime in the next couple of months, so we were happy to have a fun last weekend down there. We will miss Blanding, but will be glad not to have to drive 4 hours to get to grandma and grandpa!

Before church on Sunday-it just seems like we hardly ever get pictures of the two of us!

Anniversary

This past Wednesday was our 3 year anniversary. I knew I was going to be at girls camp, so I assigned Shad to be a Priesthood leader that night so I could at least see him on our anniversary! Well, he definitely outdid me because he planned us an overnight getaway for the night I got back from camp! I loved the surprise, it was so sweet!

Shad text me after he left for work Friday morning and said, pack your bags and don't worry about work tomorrow, I planned us an overnight trip! I was so stoked! We stayed at the Little America in Salt Lake. For dinner we walked over to Eva (delicious, definitely recommend!). We also walked through the Grand America-so pretty! Saturday we went over to City Creek and did some shopping. It was Shad's first time there, and I was able to pick up some much needed items that have been on my to-do list for a while. 

We stopped by the food court before we left to grab me a snack and while I was waiting for my food and people watching I was like, Hey, there's Jef. It was Jef from the Bachelorette! I very reluctantly and with a lot of coaxing from Shad, got a picture with him (and another random girl who was too scared to approach him alone). Funny ending to the perfect anniversary :)

 

It's so crazy that we've already been married 3 years, and pretty soon we're going to change everything by adding another tiny member to our family! I love Shad so much and I swear I just love him more and more the longer we're together. Thanks for the amazing anniversary surprise babe!

Girls Camp

Back in the early spring I got called to be an assistant girls camp advisor. This is the biggest calling I've ever had so I was pretty nervous, but am now so grateful I had that experience! This past week we had camp and I think it turned out pretty amazing!

I had some very amazing spiritual experiences and overall I loved bonding with our girls and with the other leaders. I'm happy to be done with the anxiety I had building up over camp, but sad now that it's over because I just grew to love those girls so much!

Funny/crazy story... Our last night at camp I went to bed about 11:30 (being all tired and pregnant) but most the other leaders stayed up a bit later. Well I was woken up at 12:30 because the camp next to us believed they had seen and heard mountain lions and the stake camp leaders wanted us to evacuate! We packed up our entire camp in the middle of the night and drove home from Heber-getting home at 3 am! After a much needed, but very late-night shower, I got about 5 hours of sleep before we had to meet up at the church to clean up and organize all the things we had to frantically pack in the middle of the night. VERY crazy experience, but I'm glad we all made it home safe and that it happened on the last night-I wouldn't have wanted to leave mid-week!

Love these girls! So glad I got to be one of their camp leaders!

July 4th

I ended up having Tuesday-Thursday off this week so we made the most of it and took a quick trip down to Blanding. I dragged two of my brothers down with me, but of course they loved it! I mostly just tagged along or relaxed, but we enjoyed fishing, eating (of course), BBQ, parade, horseshoe tournament, swimming, getting sun, movie night, fireworks, Halo time, and some quality family time! So glad we got to enjoy the festivities in Blanding this year and that I got to relax a little before stressing about girls camp next week, yikes! 

Somehow I only ended up with pictures of the parade and fishing, oh well, too busy having fun, right? 

26 1/2 Weeks

Well, here's the belly! I'm 26 weeks now, just a week and a half away from my 3rd trimester. How I'm feeling: First of all, why didn't anyone tell me your belly isn't the only thing that gets bigger during pregnancy? My tush has about doubled in size (and we all know it wasn't that small to begin with). Hopefully that won't be too hard to work back to normal after this! The hardest thing I've had to deal with lately (and I'm not really complaining because my pregnancy really hasn't been too hard) is a fairly constant and sometimes pretty bad back ache. The doctor recommended prenatal massage or physical therapy-hey how can I turn down a doctor prescribed massage? I love feeling our baby move around in my tummy and still can't believe there is a little human growing inside of me. He kicks around a lot and sometimes I just sit and watch my tummy poke out and and move around where he's stretching. I feel like I love him so much already! Only three months until we are parents for the rest of forever!