Beauty Has Arrived

Today...I was...let's just say...emotional. I am 36 week 2 days pregnant. Just a mere 17 days away from csection day. It is Monday...we are moving on Friday. While my husband has been renovating the new home full time, I have been packing up our old home full time. Sorting, throwing away, boxing up, marking for garage sale. What I do all day long in my head? Make lists. I am constantly thinking in lists. What do I have yet to buy? What have I bought that I can cross off my list? What rooms should I tackle first at the new house? What will I want who to do on moving day? Who will we have for help on moving day? Who will take care of our kids when baby comes? What will my plan of attack be if I go into labor BEFORE Friday??????

SO....MANY....THINGS...GOING...THROUGH...MY MIND....ALL DAY...ALL NIGHT!!!

On top of that, nerves are sensitive around here. We are all overworked and underpaid right now. The renovation has taken about a month longer than originally estimated. Our budget is currently running 65% over budget than originally calculated...that is right 65%!!!!! Yeow! We are not talking a couple thousand over budget...we are talking tens of thousands. Somehow it will all work out in the end. Until then...there are tears flowing. I am not usually a cryer. When not pregnant...I can supress my feeling like the best of 'em. Shove them down and just be pissed and not let it out and cry. When I am pregnant....especially now with all of the above happening...oh boy...the tears flow fast, hard, and furious! My poor husband.

So emotionally I am a mess. Physically?? Well...I am doing better now than I did my last pregnancy. As mentioned previously I am 36 wks 2 days along now. Delivery set for 39 weeks on Friday, May 13th. I had my last babe at 35 weeks 6 days due to extreme quick onset of swelling due to pre-eclampsia. So far...blood pressure has been up every once in a while...but not all the time. Swelling has been extremely minimal. How much weight have I gained? Well...I guess I will tell you...since I revealed my weight to the world back in November of 2009. Lets see...at that point I was 243.6 when I did the big reveal. As of September of 2010 I had gotten down to 217. I then found out I was pregnant...and worried because I was considered high risk ...I stopped all excercise cold turkey. At my first doctor appointment...5 weeks after finding out I was pregnant..I weighed in at 225 at the doctor office. As of my last appointment 2 weeks ago I weighed in at 251. So I have gained 26 pounds. Not bad for weight gain. But when you consider I am 5'2"...251 pounds is extremely hard on a little body. My husband & I did an experiment. I got on the scale...and he attempted to lift my belly...to see how much my belly weighs. My belly this time seems so much larger than either of my 2 previous pregnancies. Our experiment showed that my belly weighs 15 pounds!!!! Then...just for fun...I know...this is crazy crazy....but heck...seriously...I then wondered...how much do my boobs weigh? So we did the experiment the same way. ;o) They weigh approximately 8 pounds. SOOOO...if you take a belt, and attach 23 pounds of weights to the front of your body...you tell me how long you can walk around before you feel like dropping to the ground from back pain. And sometimes...I seriously think about dropping to the ground..but then I would have to figure out how to get back up.

Anyways...when I started this blogpost I was really just wanting to tell you that my fabric arrived. Oh Lordy how I got off track.

So here I was emotional and grumpy when my hero the UPS man arrives with my package. In it was my fabric for my wall art project for the new house!

I will do a collage on my large wall with a combination of framing some of these fabrics in various sized white frames.....and stretched some of the others over canvas'. I will have more than enough fabric leftover to make pillows AND to reupholster my dining room chairs! I am so excited to show you more of this!

Inspiration AND Direction found!!!!

Remember my last post I did late last night? Go back and read the original post first...then you will understand my whole concept. I think I have narrowed my fabric choices down to these...AND I am thinking about doing a cluster of different size frames with ALL 7 of these fabrics instead of just 3 fabrics on 3 large canvas'. I really want to pull in the greys, yellows, and turquoise colors of the room. Have I mentioned I LOVE fabric?!?!?!!?

  



Inspiration Found, Direction Needed

I have an inspiration in mind, but I could use a little help with the direction. In the new house I have this HUGE long wall in our 600 square feet great room. Here is the wall:

Ok, so that is the wall. We have dark brown leather furniture.

And this gaggle of pillows I purchased from Pier 1 Imports. I am in love with turquoise. I am thinking this:

Taking 3 large canvas' or 3 large frames...and displaying fabric in them as art. I LOVE fabric! And there are so many beautiful ones to choose from anymore! The trouble is...which fabrics to choose. The whole room is painted Pewter Cast grey. I need your help. What do you think? Do I choose 3 different fabrics? Or 2 fabrics and stagger them?? Which 3 fabrics catch your eye. They ALL catch my eyes!!! Which is the problem...I just can't decide. Ultimately, I will go with what I want, but I love to hear others input. I am going to number each fabric...and in the comments if you could reference the fabrics by their number...that would really help!



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Paint Colors Chosen

I thought I would give you a sneak peek at the color palette chosen for the new house.

All of our paint was purchased from Sherwin Williams. The color chip photos on this post are from their website.

Our first color is "Kestrel White". This is the color of all of our trim through the entire house, as well as our doors and our closets. It looks like a dirty white in this picture, but really is a very crisp clean white in person.

 "Dhurri Beige" is the color for all the walls and the bathroom in our basement. Frankly, I spent so much time on the upstairs colors, that I got to basement and said "James...you pick". It is a very nice color though.

 These 3 colors are the main color palette of the home.

The lightest shade is "On The Rocks". This is the color of all of our hallways and our entry way.

The second shade of grey is "Knitting Needles". This is the color of our Kitchen and Dining Room. With an exception of 1 accent wall in our Dining room. We did the fireplace wall in the 3rd shade of grey.

The 3rd shade of grey is "Pewter Cast". This is the color for our great room, and the accent wall of our dining room.

 "Plum Dandy" is the color of our guest bathroom right off of our entry way. My husband thinks this color is hideous. His description is..."It looks like Barney sat on the toilet and..." um yeah...that. I was going to change the color, but I am actually starting to like it. When I chose the color for this room I wanted to choose something bold and girlie. I was a good girl and chose neutral tones through out the rest of the home since I am surrounded by all boys. I think I accomplished bold and girlie. :)

 "Pool House" is the color for the little boys' room. I wanted a shade of blue that wasn't too dark...and wasn't too baby blue. It is actually a lot darker on the walls than I had imagined. It still looks nice though.

"Smokey Blue" is the color for Xavier's bedroom. I did mean for this to be a darker shade of blue, since he is 12. I chose this shade because the paint chip looks like it has quite a bit of grey to it. However...suprisingly..."Smokey Blue" looks lighter on the walls than the above "Pool House". Xavier is actually not happy about the turnout at all. He proclaims it is too girlie of a color. At this point...we have a lot of time and money wrapped in the painting. I really wish we could do it over for him so that he would be happy, but it just isn't realistic at this moment.

Our bedroom is an "Aqua Tint". We took in a pillow from our new bedding set and had them match it. Then we had them take the color down to 50% of the matched color. So...the color in our master bedroom and bathroom is 50% of the blue in this bedding. The bedding is from Bed, Bath, & Beyond.

My 2 favorite colors in this house are "Pewter Cast" and the "Aqua Tint" that we created. I love how everything flows so nicely.

A couple of renovation tips. No matter how professional you believe your painter is...be sure to go through the home with them and insist that everything is written down. Check in on them frequently, don't hesitate to go over the colors again. If you don't do this...you might show up one day and find them painting your entry way this color:

Although "Rustic Adobe" is a nice color...it is definitely NOT what I had chosen for the front entry way. Whew! Boy was a glad I walked in at the right time!

Another mishap that occured just today...my husband called to ask what color I had chosen for the laundry room. I told him it was supposed to be the same "Aqua Tint" color that is in our bedroom. What the paint store sent was more of a Aqua Marine.

Good thing it is still a fresh clean color and will fit quite nicely in a laundry room. No time for redo's..we are going with it.

Thanks for stopping in!

From Gross to GREAT Room!

I am sincerely sorry for leaving you all hanging with updates on our home renovation. Things are moving along...and we are shooting for move in of Easter weekend! I have been slightly overwhelmed with being very pregnant, keeping up with my toddler and my tween, solely taking responsibility of packing out our current home, and making random trips to Des Moines for odds & ends for the house. So much going on...so overwhelmed. It is all good in the end...and at least the end is near in sight. I will be 35 weeks pregnant this Saturday. My last baby was born at 35 weeks 6 days from blowing up like a balloon with pre-eclampsia at the end of my pregnancy. My blood pressure has slowly but surely been rising in the last week. I even spent a day in the hospital last week with high bp...of course shortly after getting to the hospital my bp went back to normal...but they kept me for about 6 hours for observation. Right now we are scheduled for csection on Friday, May 13th at 11:30AM. Only 28 days from now!!

Back to the renovation. Here is a quick progression of photos of our great room from GROSS to GREAT!