That’s right – as everyone who reads this blog already knows – Ryan and I are having a little baby girl come early May this year.
Meet Itty BittyIt's a girl!
This morning we picked out a daycare for September and I had my gender check ultrasound (we knew in December at that ultrasound that it was most likely a girl – but this one verified it). She’s very active and everything is on track. Her head is measuring on the large size (thanks to her daddy) which may be a concern for me come May 🙂
Now we just need to build a nursery for our little Itty Bitty baby Girl!
I think being sick means I’m in the mood to stitch finally. I continued working on the Royalty ABC banner by Jeannette Douglas, getting the first page completely done (of 4).
Page one done
I’m only making minor modifications here and there. The crowns for example, while they’re all different, I didn’t like that hte one on the right had a queen stitch on top and the left one didn’t so I had them both have queen stitches and made them the same color too. I did keep the styling different but I’m not completely sold on that either. I like symmetry.
And Fitz ripped the head off of his xmas snake stuffed animal – too funny. He’s finally gotten to destroying some of his toys (including is favorite orange squeaky ball) so I bought him a tough chew squeaky ball instead and we’ll see how long the stuffed animals last. It does take a while for him to rip them (the snake has been a favorite since he got it because it has LOTS of squeakies).
Well – it wasn’t allergies – I got another cold this winter! No house progress yesterday, instead we went to the mall to get some quick shopping done. Then we snuggled in to relax for the day re-watching season 1 of Downton Abbey (since it starts up again next week!). I actually got some stitching done (that was as much as I could handle).
I decided to work from home today, I feel up to working (now anyway, we’ll see if a headache gets worse or not being on the computer all day), but I wasn’t up to the drive and I had to sleep in a bit since I got very little sleep last night (I hate sleeping sitting up but it had to be done to get any sleep at all).
As for stitching, I worked on my Royalty ABC pattern by Jeannette Douglas, a piece I did in a Celebrations class a few years ago, I haven’t touched it since the class but got 3 bands almost done (the basket is almost done).
It’s a new year – and how did we spend New Year’s Eve? Well working on the house of course!
We determined that the upstairs diningroom/master bathroom floor had way too much movement to hold a new bathroom at some point. Just Fitz walking across made it sway (not good for grout). So today we worked on the floor. First Ryan and his dad took up the wood floor (we saved almost all of it). We’ll re-lay it for the hallway but the bathroom will be tiled. Then we de-nailed all the boards to save them and I cleaned up the subfloor.
Upstairs diningroom floor - gone! (see it piled on the right, that's most of it)A farther back view - we still need to reframe what will be the entry to the hallway but at least there's a doorway.A different view (toward the bathroom)And back toward the stairway hallwayA view of the old chimney way - we're waiting to close off this hole in the floor until we know what we need to run to the attic through here.
Ryan and his dad then worked on supporting the floor joists from below – using 1/2″ plywood on each side of every joist after jacking up the floor a bit. We have to wait 5 days for the adhesive to dry fully before we take down the jacks and see if the floor feels more secure (it feels very secure with the jacks under it) 🙂
Jacks holding up the floor joists for extra support temporarilyThe supported floor joists - 1/2 inch plywood on each side, glued, nailed and screwed inThe other half of the roomAnd a different view
Suzanne made a potato, bacon soup for the guys for lunch that Ryan has been enjoying the leftovers from today as well. We ended the evening with a night out at Chunky’s to see the new Sherlock Holmes – love sitting in comfy seats and getting to eat while watching a movie! Unfortunately probably due to the dust, I was starting to feel like I was getting a cold/sinus infection by the evening and didn’t wake up feeling much better today. But a day of relaxing certainly helped (as did tylenol for the headache). I also think the high pressure system we had passed through which was not helping. By tonight I was feeling much better and got the house vacuumed to remove the dust pretty thoroughly.
The holidays are over and the house work begins! That’s how we like to bring in the new year. Ryan didn’t get to take the week off so while I was home by myself Tuesday and Thursday I worked on emptying out the upstairs diningroom and cleaning the house (Wednesday was a stitch day with the girls).
By Friday, Ryan was off from work, his dad and suzanne were out and we were ready to work on demolition. And demolition they did! The upstairs diningroom (that will become the master bathroom some day and a hallway) was emptied out and all taken to the dump (3 trips). It was a long and very productive day!
The new hallway entrance (well this will get reframed out but this is what was uncovered when they took out the built-in)
The wall toward the master bedroomThe door toward the hallway of the bathroom (this door frame is now gone too)The wall that adjoins the small upstairs bathroom - they have a double wall so the plumbing is hiddenAnd the demolished diningroom - to be master bath!
A great day! We ended the day watching Sherlock Holmes – the original one, we’ll go out to see the new one tomorrow night at Chunky’s!
Getting close to Christmas! Shopping is almost done (just need a trip to Joann’s now!) and I got my sewing projects done last night! This was just a quick project that my sister-in-law gave me the idea for because she said my nieces both want hooded towels so I jumped at the idea. I purchases regular sized towels with matching hand towels at target and some fleece at Joann’s earlier this month.
I cut the hand towels in half and made them into hoods, then attached them and cut out the girls’ names from the fleece, appliqueing that on with a blanket stitch on the machine (that was a first and it came out okay. I hope the girls like them. I wanted to add flowers applique’d on too, however I realized while doing the names how hard it was to go ‘around’ instead of in straight lines so it didn’t happen last night.
One for Emily 🙂 - The towel is actually light pink, not white as the picture shows.And one for Finley!
Can’t wait for the girls to get them on Saturday! I had high hopes of making embroidered burp cloths for my nephew HOWEVER the universe conspired against me. I couldn’t find the burp cloths (gerber cloth diapers) ANYWHERE – babysrus only had their brand which were gauze and gerber ones that were already decorated. Target only had the gauze ones! Failure!
What a wonderful weekend we had! On Saturday my sister-in-law brought my nieces up for a visit and we relaxed and caught up and played with the girls. The girls helped me make chocolate with white chip cookies and we ended the evening going out to a nice dinner. It was very relaxing and just what I needed to recuperate from travel last week!
Today I continued with Christmas cookies, making up gingersnaps, gingerbread (with icing decoration) and butterscotchies! It took all day but I was able to make up plates for the neighbors and have plenty of left over for work on Tuesday (lunch pot luck).
Plates for the neighbors!And the extra gingerbread cookies ready for work. (The rest were drop cookies so I put them in baggies to save till Tuesday).
This was a first with the piped icing for me but I got to break out all my fun decorating supplies and whip up some frosting. It took all afternoon (from about 1pm-5pm) but that’s not too bad and I had Christmas movies and then music going in the kitchen while I baked!
I ended the evening doing Christmas cards after delivering the cookies to neighbors (well half, 2 of them weren’t home tonight so I’ll try tomorrow night). We’re almost done shopping for Christmas, just a couple quick trips maybe tomorrow evening and then a little bit of sewing and we’ll be all set to go!
Christmas came early to this Williams’ family. The main reason was that I wanted Ryan to get to use his main christmas present before christmas AND I wanted to give him all his gifts (since they all went with the main gift) at once. So ryan set my big gift up for the same day and on Saturday we had our mini-christmas.
We started out the morning with presents on Saturday, first Fitzy got http://groudasfamily.com/wordpress/wp-admin/post.php?post=2270&action=edit&message=6some gifts:
New toys for Fitzy-boy
While he played (he also got a new bed a couple of days ago) with his new toys and bone Ryan opened his main gift piece by piece:
New router table with accessories
I don’t have a picture of my main gift because you can’t really see it – my car got a remote starter! And I can start it from either a fob, or from my cell phone with an app (from anywhere), I can also track my car with GPS from the same app. (In case it gets stolen?). Very cool! I also got a Kindle Touch which I was up late Saturday night playing with (it has games unlike my second generation kindle which will go to Ryan now). I love how small it is and perfect for traveling next week with.
After presents (which included taking my car over to get the starter installed, and a trip to 5-guys!), we started working on the drawers for the built-ins. This was pretty intimidating, we bought the drawer slides and hardware a while ago (10 drawers total) but weren’t quite sure how to do the drawers to fit perfectly. We started by putting in some blocks for the slides, so the drawers could open even if the doors aren’t open ALL the way (on one side the door can’t open all the way).
Then we slowly planned it all out, starting with the left cabinet because it was very square and all 3 drawers would be the same sizes. We built one drawer and got it installed and working!
The first drawer installed! With slow close!
On Sunday we were able to get the other 2 drawers done pretty quickly now that we knew what we were doing (it took a while to figure out the drilling template the first time). So we have one cabinet filled with drawers! 3 down, 7 to go!
Slides all installedDrawers have locking mechanisms on the bottom, and cutouts for the slidesDrawers installedUndermounted slides so you don't see it on the sides at all.
All the drawers need are face frames, we haven’t decided how we want those to look (Ryan will probably route them to make them look a little fancy.). The drawers will fit our dvds hidden in the cabinets, at least the right and left most ones will be dvds.
Now it’s time to relax with Fitzy boy before driving him down to stay with Buddy boy for the week.
Nope! But the rooster is gone – I think Fitz misses it, I haven’t cleaned the kennel yet that we kept him in for the last 2 days and Fitz is very interested in the kennel every time he walks by.
Hopefully the rooster is happy in his new home ‘on some farm’. We got a note last Thursday that said the Animal Control guy had picked him up in the morning. I’ve since talked to another neighbor who said that there’s a guy on a nearby road that had a chicken or rooster in his yard (fenced in) and let it loose and claimed it wasn’t his last week. So I’m pretty sure he was getting complaints about the crowing so let it loose – thanks a LOT!
I’m just glad we’ve been having some decently warm weather so the rooster didn’t suffer. Of course I could do without all this rain lately. Luckily Fitz went to daycare yesterday and got tired out so he’s not bugging me for a long walk in the rain today! He’s just giving me ‘the look’ because he’s not in his comfy bed (he’s in my office with a cheap bed instead) 🙂
This weekend was quite productive, starting right out Friday night (I was working late upstairs but Ryan got home and started right in on the built-ins). When I came down later there were SHELVES in the bookcases! They were just plywood to start out but by Saturday morning he had face frame pieces glued and attached to each one so they were completely finished!
Shelves all finished!
Next up he made the side panel for the end of the built-ins. This is all sanded flush now and looks great!
End panel all finished up!
While he worked on this project I was in the basement giving it a good vacuum and organizing it a bit before winter. Just one more item checked off my list!
I have ordered a jig for installing the drawer hardware so we decided to wait on the drawers and instead do the crown molding to make the built-ins look more finished. I think we’ll try to get a start on the drawers over the next 2 weekends. By Saturday night Ryan had made and installed the bottom piece of almost all the molding we plan on doing for now (the rest of the room we are waiting until the steam pipe in one corner can be removed).
Crown molding base piece installed
While Ryan worked on that I stripped the wallpaper from the closet in the tvroom (the only plaster wall we kept in the house so far).
Sunday Ryan put in the last piece of base molding and then put up the crown. It really came out great. All we have left is doors and drawers to finish up then prime and paint!
Crown installed around cabines!
While Ryan continued with molding Sunday I got the durabond mixed up and patched the closet up as best I could. It will get probably 3 skim coats of joint compound but for now I wanted to get the raw plaster edges covered well and smoothed out at the ceiling where it meets the drywall. It’s still not dry (some very thick sections) but it looks 100x better all ready and next weekend I can start skim coating/taping!
Back wall (mostly just the edges of plaster needed sealing here)Side wall - this is where I stripped the wallpaper so the whole wall was in rough shape
That was our weekend, we also managed to relax and watch some movies (Water for Elephants as well as some cheesy xmas movies of course). Next weekend is an early xmas weekend! Plus the built-ins momentum will continue!
