Thrifting my way to good mental health

Four straight days of nasty weather and a newborn conspired last week to give me a pretty serious case of cabin fever by the time Thursday rolled around. I made my escape to the thrift store (of course) for a much-needed hour of sanity restoration, and while it would have been good anyway just to get out, it was made even better because I found some good junk!


I went looking for a particular item for a project I'm working on for my Sweet & Sinister swap partner and thank the thrifting fairies, I found it! No picture yet because so far it's just a boring picture frame, but I have plans for it that I can hopefully share soon.

I also found two other items for the baby's room that I've been looking for: a crib bumper to match my previously thrifted crib skirt, and this green & blue paper lantern. I had a darling pink & yellow lantern hanging up when it was Maren's room but needed something different for Baby Boy. I looked at World Market but could only find a white lantern and I bought it but once I put it up I realized that it reminds me WAY too much of the fake spider egg sacs that I saw in a Martha Stewart Halloween magazine a few years back. This blue & green lantern is MUCH better! It was new in the package and it is the perfect colors for the baby's bedroom. Maybe I'll actually have that room finished by the time Porter is ready to actually sleep in there!

My other treasures: a bag of sewing notions that included 2 teeny weeny flower frogs and a baggie of covered button blanks, a Scrabble game for the tiles, an apothecary-type jar (which will probably get one of these spooky labels for Halloween), and a mushroom-shaped jar that I'm dying to fill with red & white Jelly Bellies. Not shown are an old Christmas wreath from which I'm hoping to salvage the vintage glass picks and a NWT blue and white seersucker suit from Talbot's Kids that will fit Porter in 4 years.

And speaking of Porter...
Here's the little Munchkin after his first bath last week. I love his crazy hair!

In the words of the ridiculous Rachel Zoe, I DIE.

Pumpkins + Toadstools x the October issue of Martha Stewart Living =
Heidi passes out from CUTE OVERLOAD

I haven't even looked at a single page inside but I don't care if it's all garbage, that cover alone was worth paying full price! Do you see the snail? It KILLS me! Normally I wait until I can use a 40% off coupon at JoAnn's (hey--I'm cheap) but when I saw this at Target this afternoon I HAD TO HAVE IT. Immediately.

And now we are four

Hello friends!
Porter Mackenzie German was born on Thursday, September 17 at 3:25 pm. He was 20.5" long and weighed 7 lbs 15 oz. He has a crop of long, thick dark hair and his daddy's chin. :) We're all home now and doing great!

Here's a time line of my labor/delivery:
8:00 am Arrive at hospital, change into fabulous and oh-so-alluring hospital gown.

8:45 am Doctor breaks my waters, hoping contractions will begin on their own. They don't.

9:45 am Pitocin is administered. That does the trick! Contractions--owie.

11:45 am My new BFF the anesthesiologist arrives to give me the blessed epidural. JOY!

1:00 pm Nurse checks my cervix--I have gone from 5 cm to 9 cm in an hour because I was able to relax. Nurse gets doctor in there in a hurry to check on me. She checks me and says I'm getting close to 10 cm, but realizes that baby is face-up. Whoops! She has me do some pushing while they try to get baby to flip over. Doesn't work, so they let me rest for a while to see if the contractions will get him to flip on his own.

3:00 pm Nurse checks me again--I am now fully dilated, fully effaced. Baby is still sunny-side up but he is *right there* and the contractions are telling me to PUSH so they decide to just proceed anyway.

3:10 pm I begin to push. Epidural keeps me from being in pain but boy, can I ever feel the pressure!

3:25 pm Thanks to a handy vacuum assist and a talented doctor, I only have to push for 15 minutes and baby is born, still face-up. Doctor finds that baby has an extremely short umbilical cord, which is probably why he couldn't flip over to be face-down. This may also explain why I was dilated with no progress for so long, and why he always kicked me in the *same exact place* all pregnancy long. Poor kiddo couldn't move!
Although I was technically in labor for about six hours it seemed like it all went so much faster than that--it really caught me off guard when the nurse came in and said it was time to push already! Better quicker than I anticipated than slower, right?

Maren is besotted with her baby brother and has already been a fantastic little helper. My mom was here before the birth and my dad was able to fly in the next night, and I'm thrilled that they were able to spend a few days with us getting to know Porter before they had to head home. The Mister gets paternity leave from work so he is home all this week and I'm so thankful to have him here. I feel pretty darn good and am so thankful to be able to bend over again. Oh, I missed having a waist! LOL Baby Porter is sweet and smells delicious, like all newborns do. Last night he even slept a bit between ravenous feedings, for which I am thankful.

Hope to be back later with some better photos!

Cute diaper cake gift

So...I'm still here, still pregnant, despite the fact that I've been at 4-5 cm since Friday night, if you can believe that. I feel just fine--actually more comfortable than I have in a while, but the mental strain of wondering if I'm going to go into labor at any moment is making me crazy! Thankfully, my OB doctor is a merciful woman and offered to induce me tomorrow morning, so I happily agreed! Tomorrow is my actual due date and is also my grandma's birthday, and I know she's been pulling all along for me to have the baby that particular day, so it looks like she'll get her wish!
Before I go all incommunicado, I wanted to show you this cute diaper cake that one of the ladies in The Mister's office made for us. It's a little bit different than the other diaper cakes I've seen in that it is diapers on the inside and then it was wrapped in baby blankets and wash cloths on the outside. She pinned little toys to the blankets and tucked all sorts of little baby accoutrements inside the layers with the diapers.
I was just tickled to receive such a thoughtful gift and thought it was so creative of her!

Wardrobe Refashioning, round 2

Last week I taught my class at the church on Clothing Refashioning (the one I made the corsage t-shirt for) and I think it went really well! I had a great attendance and the ladies seemed to really enjoy themselves. It was a little tricky as I can't actually try on any of the shirts I made, so I'm not entirely sure how good they actually look on a body!
This was a $10 shirt from Target. To embellish it, I simply made three fabric yo-yos. I actually had never made a yo-yo before (even though I've always meant to learn) so I used Heather Bailey's tutorial. They were easy but if I was planning to make a whole bunch of them I'd definitely invest in a little yo-yo maker gadget. Three for a shirt wasn't bad, and to fancy them up a bit I sewed a coordinating pearl bead in the center of each before tacking them to the shirt.

I haven't washed it yet so I don't know how well they'll hold up in the laundry but they were so easy that I can reattach (or ultimately remove) them as needed.The next shirt was a $5 hoodie from Old Navy. For this one I raided my stash of vintage covered button blanks that I've been slowly collecting, one thrifted bag of sewing notions at a time. I used some fat quarters I had on hand from some other project and made buttons in a variety of sizes. Those little covered buttons are addicting! I love how smooth and perfect they turn out and can't wait to make more--I'll be on the lookout for these while thrifting for sure.
To embellish the shirt I laid out the buttons in a pattern I liked and sewed each one to the shirt. That part was actually harder than I anticipated, as I didn't have a good way to mark on the fabric where each button should go. My tailor's chalk just doesn't work and since the shirt is black a disappearing ink marker wasn't an option. I ended up taking a photo of the button layout and printing it to use as reference, then just eyeballing it but I think my arrangement suffered a bit as a result. I also think this would work better on a garment with a little more heft to the fabric; the knit is very thin and the weight of the buttons causes them to lay a bit funny. The good thing is that I can easily snip off the buttons and resew them on a different shirt or sweater--heck, I can even change out the fabric if I want!
This last shirt I made to show how you can doodle with a Clorox Bleach gel pen. I don't totally love how it turned out but at least it gave people the idea of what you can do. The shirt was less than $5 on clearance at Target so no big loss if I can't salvage it.

I placed a large piece of cardboard inside the shirt before I started so that the bleach wouldn't go through to the back, then free-handed a design with the bleach pen. Using the bleach pen takes a little bit of practice to get a nice, even line without smearing or blotting. I let the design sit for about 20 minutes and then I carefully folded the shirt in half with the bleached side out and put it in my laundry sink that was filled with cold water. I let that sit for a while until the bleach gel washed off and then I threw the whole thing in the washing machine. I still got a ghosting effect from the design in some places-- I'm not quite sure how that happened, but I don't like how it looks so that's why I'm not happy with how this shirt turned out. However, this could definitely be a fun way to salvage a shirt that got splashed with bleach: it's ruined anyway so even if you don't like how the bleach doodles turn out, you're really no worse off, right?

The other technique I showed in my class was freezer paper stenciling, which was so fun and just as addicting as everyone says! I'll show those shirts in another post.

Weekend garage sale finds

It's so nice to have friends who know what you like, isn't it? On Friday morning I returned home to find a message on my answering machine from a sweet friend, alerting me to a garage sale in the neighborhood that she thought I'd like! I grabbed my purse and raced over there, only to find my friend still there shopping. :) She was right--I found plenty that I liked! Here are my purchases:These two cute pillows made from old chenille. The pink & blue one matches Maren's new bedspread just perfectly! The other doesn't match anything yet but was just too darn cute to leave behind; in addition to the chenille it has old yo-yos, buttons and cute vintage fabric.
The cherry fabric is a pair of curtain valances; they aren't vintage but they're definitely vintage-inspired and I think they'll fit over my kitchen window. The pretty shabby pink frame will also go in Maren's new room. The metal thing--well, I'm not sure exactly what it is (a mail holder?) but what I do know is that it 1) has chippy pale aqua paint and 2) was only $1, so that was enough for me!

One of the ladies holding this sale is a big fan of shabby/vintage style decorating and was doing some purging, hence all the goodies. She said whatever didn't sell by last Saturday would be moved over to another sale this coming weekend, and she said she had barely scratched the surface of things she needed to sell. We encouraged her to "get scratching" and my friend took down her address so we can be sure to hit her next sale--hopefully I'll have more goodies to show next week!

Saturday morning I went and had my hair highlighted and trimmed. Add that to my recent pedicure and brow wax, and I'm almost ready for those post-birth hospital photos--just need a quick trip to Target for some new jammies! :) After my hair appointment I started having contractions, which continued all night long. They weren't really hard but they were frequent and they were enough to scare me good and bring back the memories of my labor with Maren. The contractions stopped Sunday morning and I haven't had any since. I actually feel much like I did when I was first pregnant: zero energy, upset tummy and no appetite--funny that it has come full circle that way! I go in to the OB tomorrow for my next checkup. Mostly I'm just trying to take it really easy. Maybe my exhaustion is my body's way of telling me to cool it and conserve my energy for the big task ahead. Plus I need to conserve my strength for Round #2 of that garage sale this weekend. :)

Taking measure

I was wandering through the local Cost Plus World Market recently and found these cute decorative items made with wooden rulers:

Wooden ruler frame

Wooden ruler box

Wooden ruler chest

I especially love the little chest but I think the price is outrageous for the size & quality of the item. Maybe they'll go on clearance, right?

They reminded me of this very cool table project featured in the September 2009 Country Living:

I LOVE this! The designer used a small table and simply cut and nailed old yardsticks to the top. What a fun, innovative way to dress up a junk store table, especially if the top was damaged. I have no place to put another little table around here but I still want to make one! Seeing this photo made me wish I hadn't passed up the brightly colored yardsticks that were going cheap from one vendor at the Old Glory fair earlier this June. Rats! I knew I'd regret that.

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In pregnancy news, today I am officially 38 weeks! I can't believe it's almost time. I visited the OB yesterday and according to her there is some 'progress' happening down below. That could be significant, but it also could mean nothing--the uncertainty makes me slightly crazy. It was a good wake-up call for me that maybe we should quit procrastinating and 1) choose a name for this baby and 2) get his room at least started before he decides to show up! He'll be sleeping in the cradle by my bed for the first few months so I'm not feeling the need to get his room all put together in the next two weeks, but it still might be nice to not be tripping over boxes every time I go into his bedroom to change a diaper. Maybe our big goal this holiday weekend will be to get the crib put together!