Light Fixture Makeover

So... this is the giant piece of ugly that's been hanging from our kitchen ceiling for the past who-knows-how-many years. I just ignored it for the most part since it just blended in with the stupid popcorn ceiling that I make a habit of pretending doesn't exist anyway, but it is something that always irritated Josh(surprise surprise, he actually has an opinion haha!) White with black speckles... beautiful, right? Well, a good cleaning and a $4 can of a hammer-textured metallic spraypaint later, and voila, a much-needed facelift!

Campfire!!

Josh's dad invited us all over last night for a campfire FHE and it was fun! I actually was trying to do this a little too spontaneously on Sunday night, when it turned out we had no stuff for s'mores(what's a campfire with no s'mores?)! So we went for a hike on Sunday instead, and then came over for this campfire with everyone last night. The weather was just perfect, hardly any bugs, it wasn't humid yet, couldn't have asked for a better night.

We brought a few of a our puppies over for the kids to hold which was fun too. Kyler wasn't terribly interested in the fire or s'mores, just the tractor and slides as usual haha. And yes, I'm huge now, 30 weeks along already!

A waterfight broke out towards the end with some of the girls and Steph... I stayed behind the camera and stayed dry ;)

hahahaha!

I found these on our camera when I uploaded pictures this morning and couldn't stop laughing.... thought I'd share a little laughter with everyone else :) apparently Kyler knows how to use the camera!

Easter and Puppies!

Easter comes 3 times for us, once at Josh's Aunt Cindy's house, once at Josh's parent's house, and of course, Easter morning at ours :) Lots of family and cousins to enjoy, here are some Easter pics!

Hunting eggs went great, but of course, just like last year, once he found his Easter basket at our house... the matchbox cars had to come out of the boxes and he wanted nothing else to do with Easter for the rest of the day. Josh and I had to pick up the rest of the eggs ourselves, and it took days for him to even look at the rest of his Easter basket. Needless to say, this child does not have ADD haha.

Hunting eggs outside at Josh's parent's in the not-freezing weather was great, and Kyler enjoyed just playing outside too(he would live outside if he could). Kyler loves the slide and playset, and he especially loves having a friend to play with... I think this is the only picture in existence of both Kyler and his cousin Isaac smiling at the camera, at the same time haha.

Then below, we've had a crazy week at our house - including two litters of puppies! After several sleepless nights and two deliveries later, we only ended up with 8 puppies! For some reason the litters were just really small, but we love the pups and as you can tell, Kyler really loves them too :) Maybe it would have been a little too much for us to have 20 puppies right now, and the Lord was keeping an eye out for us, who knows. Kyler is so careful and gentle with the new puppies, I'm thinking it's good practice for baby...?

And yes.... a SNEAK PEEK at our nursery painting project(it was blue before)... lots and lots of sewing to do before I get more pictures posted...

Some Slight Craftiness...

I've been working on these fabric Modge-Podge'd canvases for Kyler's room for a while now(most of the time just in my head haha), and am so glad to finally have them DONE! Here is a mini-tutorial of how I did it, there may be easier ways for other people.

First, I drew a rough-draft of the picture that I wanted on paper to get it all figured out(top pic). Then I bought cheap posterboard at the $1 store and traced the canvas size onto them and cut it out so I knew what size I was working with, and re-drew the pictures on them in the size they would be(the use of a projection machine would have been nice if I had access to one, but I was stuck re-drawing them).

Then, in the below picture, I cut out the outlined shapes on the posterboard, and labeled each by the color of fabric I wanted it to be(the hardest part of the whole thing was just deciding what colors to put where!). Using those pieces as templates, I put them face-down on the right-side-down fabric and traced, then cut them out.

The canvases needed to be recovered with the background fabric, which I just did with a staplegun as if I were recovering a chair. Then using the original drawing on regular paper, I put the pieces back together and modge-podge'd them on! (using a matte modge-podge and no, I did not modge-podge the entire background fabric)

Okay, I LOVE how the school bus turned out, and the truck. The train, not so much. Pretty much I hate it. But whatever, it's done, I'll re-do it "someday." Kyler's favorite things are trains... so it's going to have to stay up. He really likes them all, and I think it's so sweet that he refers to them as "mommy bus... mommy train... & mommy truck!" I keep trying to tell him that no, they're KyKy's - but I think this is his way of recognizing that I made them for him :) what a cutie!

27 Weeks

Don't I look happy? haha, I hate taking these pictures, but here's the 27 week belly pic(they are usually in church clothes because my "weeks" start on Sundays, since I'm due on a Sunday). Not quite a blimp yet, but definitely on my way. I'm now entering my 3rd trimester! Yay! Except most of the time I still don't really feel like there's an actual baby in there, or like we're going to be having another baby in our family in such a short amount of time. I want to be all excited and think about it nonstop, but things are just different this time around. More "other life" going on I guess. Part of me does feel guilty about that. Need to work on the nursery or buy baby things and maybe it'll start sinking in. Lots to do!

Baby size: average baby weight at this stage is almost 2lbs!
Weight gain: honesty is always the best policy I guess.... 20lbs so far
Baby movement: he/she is definitely moving a lot, and I am thinking this one is going to have a little spunky side, because they will be totally not moving at all for hours, and then just wildly freak out out of nowhere! It catches me off-guard, and really makes me jump haha. Josh was able to actually sort of grab onto an arm or foot or leg or something the other night that baby was poking out at us. It was a first time for that so far.
Contractions: yes. of course. getting more used to them now. still about 3-4 a day, sometimes none and sometimes as many as 10. sometimes they're short, most of the time they're long, and only in the lower half or so of my uterus(from my belly-button down). I'm also having more rib pain and other cramps and stuff too.
Cravings?: ummm... on bad days, chocolate. I don't really know if it's actually pregnancy-related(but it's certainly a good excuse, right?)
Doctor's Appointments: going well - I passed my glucose test! No gestational diabetis! I failed it with Kyler and barely passed the second one, and he was so big that I was really nervous this time around. I am a little anemic now and need to take iron, but hey I'm fine with that! Anyway, I'm now starting to have my appointments every 2 weeks, so we're getting closer :) Just wish there were ultrasounds at every visit like with Kyler. I'm thinking that may be part of why it doesn't seem as real or exciting this time around....?


Other than all that, keeping up with things around here as usual. Having emotional days and then superwoman days, and I've started to just let myself have whatever kind of day that comes and trying not to get upset about not getting this or that done. Hopefully it all evens out in the end. Having a hardworking and supportive husband always helps of course. Josh's been really great about getting things done around the house, even if it always seems to feel like we're behind. So that's the update! Definitely going to be exploding in size from here on out...!

Nursery plan re-do...

Okay, so here are the "new" nursery fabrics... sorry the pictures are sorta blurry. My original plan with the pretty aquamarine was thwarted when JoAnns no longer had my fabric available! ahh! So, not to be trodden down by one speedbump, I started again and found this. And I only need to buy a few more yards of the brown polka dot(which Hobby Lobby assures me they will NOT discontinue anytime soon), and I'll have all I need! No more worries! Now I need to make curtains and a crib skirt out of the brown polka dot.
Then, "girl" bumpers out of the flower print and brown polka dot, and get a pink crib sheet. And "boy" bumpers out of the multicolored stripe and brown polka dot(and I'm considering appliqueing some airplane silouettes on them too), and purchase either a blue or green crib sheet. Once baby is born and we know what it is, I'll add a wide satin ribbon(at some point) across the bottom of the curtains and crib skirt, in either pink or blue to finish it off and tie it together. Whew!

We're hoping to paint the nursery this weekend, so I'll update pics as we do stuff. Not totally certain what we're doing, this is sort of a figure-it-out-as-we-go project, but hopefully it'll come out okay. I'm getting to be not so picky anymore, just want it done!

Spring Break

For spring break this year(which is sort of meaningless to us, since we have no kids in school...) we did a mini version of the usual Chapman-family-indoor-waterpark trip. There was a new one that opened up right here in Des Moines and Josh's parents booked a night for all of us(except Ang and her kids were in Texas this year), and we went bowling before we checked in. Don't be fooled by Kyler's smile in the picture, it was only fun for about 5 minutes until he realized that it wasn't always "kyky's turn" like he wanted...

Then we went to the waterpark, Kyler was horrible at the restaurant because he could see the waterpark and giant pirate ship from the window of the restaurant - bad idea. But, the water was freezing cold so once he got to play, he didn't want to do anything that would get him very wet. So he walked laps around the boat in the shallow water, and luckily Josh had the patience to walk with him for those 30 laps or so. After getting hotel soap in his eyes in the shower and peeing on mommy, we bundled up in jammies and had Isaac and Leah come play in our room and watch movies and eat candy while we played "Cashflow" with Jake and Jenn... our new favorite board game :) So, even though Kyler seems to be going through some sort of difficult stage right now, and things rarely run smoothly with a 2-year-old anyway, it was still a fun little break from the everyday.

Then the above picture is from the St. Patty's Day parade in downtown Des Moines that Kyler and I went to with Jenn and the kids. Kyler loved seeing the "cycles" and the trucks, but it was definitely a little too freezing cold to be super enjoyable!