Busy Busy Busy!

So, I have been working hard to get ready for this baby. I think my nesting instinct is the worst with this pregnancy. My Mom has been in town for a couple of weeks and has been working at her house, and my house helping me get projects done.

Sarah and her threw me a "sprinkle", where the idea is to just get together and have fun. The gifts should be along the lines of diapers, wipes, soaps and lotions. Well, it was a total surprise and the gifts the baby and I received were above and beyond! I am very thankful for it all.

Together, my mom and I have cleaned the attic, scrubbed the kitchen down including cleaning out the cupboards and moving all the large appliances, shampooed my living room carpet and furniture, did lots of baby laundry, hung new shower curtains, and lots more random cleaning.

Nate has defrosted our deep freezer, painted our kitchen table and chairs, and has been doing lots of man tasks that I have been thinking up. :)

Trent has been helping me with Brooke, getting me drinks, snacks, pillows, carrying laundry up and down the stairs, and small cleaning jobs.

Brooke has loved looking at all the cute baby stuff I have been washing up. She has been arranging and rearranging the nursery. Oh, and she even tested a diaper out on one of her baby's so we know it will work for her little brother.

I am very lucky to have all the help that I have had this whole pregnancy. I have been feeling good and energetic during the day, but by 4pm I am very tired and grouchy and I have very little patience. So Nate gets to come home to that almost every evening.

Today marks 14 days until delivery!!!!!! (If not sooner, but I hope not)

We are getting new carpet in the baby's room, our room and the stairs hopefully next week. When that comes, and we get the nursery back together I will be ready for little Jack to get here.

Ok, well that is the update for now. I will post pictures of the little projects I have been working on later.

Latest Sewing Projects

Ok, I am knocking things off of my sewing list! I have not posted that list, but at least I am working on it.

I finished sweet William's quilt, but I did not get a picture of it before I gave it away. It works our even better, I will post a picture with him on it instead!

I wanted to make some organizational bags to go into my diaper bag. I am hoping that gives me motivation to keep things orderly. One bag is for clean clothes, one for dirty, one for snacks, and one for extras like lotion, baby wash, clippers stuff like that. I wanted the dirty clothes bag to have a mesh back, so if (when) I forget about yucky clothes for a day they might not be as bad.

I used an old pet net for my netting and Krista was over and helped me figure out how to make it with just one layer on the back. I could only figure out how to do it with two layers. Thanks Krista!

Here they are!







I also did some practice quilting on three leftover blocks from Jack's quilt. I really like how they turned out. I am going to stitch in the ditch on the colored fabric, and stipple quilt the white areas. It is a bit time consuming, but I think he is worth it.



Today I made a changing pad that holds a wipes container and diapers. I needed about a half yard of fabric for the front and the back each. I didn't have enough for the front, so I choose to piece all my scraps to make it. I pieced these 7 inch blocks on paper squares then trimmed the edges and ripped the paper off the back. I think the pattern turned out neat looking. It feels good to use up all those scraps too!

First Swim of the Year!

We got to swim at Aunt Darlene's on Sunday and Monday this weekend. It was sooo nice! When I was in the water I did not feel pregnant! What a relief and break that was. Here are a couple of cute monkeys having a blast!

Adventures in Babysitting

I watched the girls one morning last week. I got some really cute pictures I thought I would share. Brooke and Grace played and got along better than they ever have before. These little girls are growing up.

Most of the time they were pretending they were cows!

This lasted about 5 minutes!

Trent was finishing a writing project, but wanted to be playing! Poor guy.

Kids Bedroom

A bedroom overhaul for the kids was long overdue! I took the same approach as my downstairs. Everything was dumped and sorted, and then given a new home.

This is sort of fun until the kids start unsorting your piles! Actually, I have to say that Trent was a true help during this job. It took us about 5 hours with Dad helping us finish during the last hour. He was my night in shining armor because my back had enough of sitting on the floor and picking things up.

I did not put a couple of Brooke's magnetic doll sets back on the shelf because I wanted to make her drawstring bags for those sets. It is hard for her to put them back easily into the divided wood boxes they came in.

So I just went upstairs to put things away and found them scattered all over the nursery floor. I asked her why she didn't put them away when she was done, and her response was that since it isn't her room she doesn't have to pick them up! LOL Poor Jack, his sister is already messing his room up and claiming that she does not have to pick it up. I explained that she would still need to put them away. Do you like her grumpy face.

Nightmare

So all night long I was dreaming about my kids and I at different places...the store, a friends house, the doctors office. They were wild, loud, and would not listen. I kept thinking in my dream how in the world am I going to do this with another kid in the mix!!!

Anyway, I woke up at 7am and could hear Brooke sucking her fingers in her room, so I must have dozed back off. Trent always sleeps longer than her so I didn't get up right away.

At 7:20 I was greeted by Trent holding the plastic lid to my 9x13 casserole dish with a banana hot dog and a glass of milk!

He also took the dirty laundry downstairs, put a load in the washer...started it! (he wasn't sure if he put enough soap in it though) He also did his Language Arts worksheets for the day!

Right then I knew that adding a third kid to the mix just might get the bathrooms scrubbed too! LOL just kidding.

What a sweet child! I am so glad the younger two have such a good role model.

By the way if you don't know a banana hot dog is, it is a banana on a roll with peanut butter and jelly!

Here is a picture of the one he made himself after we came downstairs.

Curtain is done!

Woo hoo! One more thing on my list done. I made these curtains from the scraps from Jack's quilt. Just as I was sliding them onto the curtain rod I remembered that I was going to use those scraps to make a scrapy binding for his quilt. Oh well, this curtain will look nice in his blank white room.

I am not allowed to paint since we are renting, so I will have to do it with fabric.

It is going to be gorgeous this weekend, so not much sewing planned except maybe at night.

Have a great weekend.

Fun quick projects!

Okay so here is a picture of my machine Wednesday night when Nate was working on it. It looked so sad, but I trust Nate. He is so mechanical.



First I made some drawstring bags for the kids. There room is the next organization project!





I made Brooke two of the brown bag, and Trent got two of the green bag. The large flowered bag is for all of Brooke's kitchen toys! I love that fabric.

I have some robot fabric for Trent that I will probably use this afternoon. I am not sure what I am making with it yet.

This next picture is a fabric basket that I have been wanting to make for a while. The tutorial I used to make it did it in a patchwork layout. I wanted to save time and just use a solid piece of fabric.

Save time my booty! This basket took me just under two hours. That was with the kids in bed too. I think it is totally cute, but it is so small. I wanted to make it to hold some of Brooke's toys on her toy shelf.

I will be trying it again in a bigger size. Hopefully, I can convert the measurements.



Oh, I almost forgot. I made Brooke this zippered pouch for all her hair ties and brush.

Opperation Organization

A few before photo's!!!








Scary Huh!!!!

Here are a few during photo's







Okay, finally a few after photos!!







Oh, and I had to stop right in the middle of all the sorting to make a new basket liner. I sewed it on the table that was full of stuff!


Before:



After:



I also made a curtain to go on the back side of our pantry shelves. I didn't measure as I did it, so I need Nate to lower the curtain rod! LOL Anyhow, when that gets lowered I will take a picture of that and share it with you.

All of this organizing led me to the sewing projects I did yesterday. I will make a new post about yesterday's insane day of sewing. Well it was really only a few hours in the afternoon, and during a movie after the kids went to bed.

Do you think I am nesting?

We are alive!

Hello I have been meaning to get back to posting some of our adventures. I have been swamped with getting our school year wrapped up. We are on the downhill slide!!!! Today Trent will be done with his school day today at noon. What a nice way to start the weekend.

Our last day of school will be on Friday next week. We are heading to Clarion when Nate gets off work, and we will be camping at my parents. I bought the biggest marshmallows I have ever seen in my life. I am so excited to use them!

Brooke has been a busy little bug. She is learning how to read and having a lot of fun with it. Trent uses a program called Reading Eggs. It is so good that we bought Brooke a 6 month subscription. I am sure she will be reading like her Aunt Emmy in no time!

I have been doing a lot of sewing and organizing to get ready for "Baby Jack". I broke my sewing machine while sewing William's quilt on Sunday. Nate spent 3hrs putting a replacement part and servicing my machine Wednesday night! What a man.

So, of course I had to try it out yesterday...I think I may have gone a bit overboard. I will post about that next and share some pictures of the end result.

I can't quilt because I need to order a new darning foot today online. The one I had was for my model machine, but it is what caused my machine to break. I will get that in the mail next week and finish quilting. Until then back to regular sewing projects.

I have a big list of things I want to sew or get done before July. I will post those so I have an extra motivator to plow through them. First on that list was organize the downstairs. It was picked up, but there were things shoved in drawers, basket, and on shelves. Wait till you see the pictures!

Okay, well I hope you all enjoy seeing what we have been up to. I will work on getting pictures up throughout the day!