In a word - awesome. In 34 words - the hardest freaking thing I've ever done that is making me a better person, drawing me closer to God and my husband, and making me grateful for my sweet boy, in all my life. 

Often throughout my pregnancy, I would think "I'm ready to be a mom. This is why we waited five years to have kids, because I wanted to wait until I was ready to be a mom. I'm ready now." I was tired of the quiet house that I worked in every day, I was ready for some chaos. I was bored with my day to day routine, I was ready for some change. Lover and I had enjoyed five happily married years , and now I was ready to add to our happy two-some. 

I was really sick throughout my pregnancy but God and Lover helped me through it. Labor and delivery went fairly well, with the exception of a tense final hour and a half where little man's heart rate was climbing and being born not breathing. and before I knew it I was holding a tiny bundle in my arms, meeting my son for the first time. 

Just a couple of days later the hospital sent us home, and that first night at home was terrifying. I was completely overwhelmed with the responsibility (and the hormones!) and could not believe that trained medical staff just allows you to take home a helpless infant without some sort of parental aptitude test. 

But we survived that night, and the first few sleepless weeks after that. And in those first few weeks I got a glimpse of what it would be like to be Javi's mom for the rest of my life. In a word - amazing. In 18 words, an amazingly challenging experience that would continue God's refining work in me for the rest of my life.  

I'm not as sleep deprived anymore (although I have some great stories from those blurry weeks!) and boy am I thankful for more sleep. But those really hard months are teaching me that God multiplies our love, patience, endurance, grace and even our sleep when we ask him to. There are so many days when I think  "I cannot make it through this day without losing it" and when I remember to turn to God and beg for his help, he graciously grants it. 

I've never before experienced the power of God in me on such a daily basis. When I am resting in him and letting him carry my burdens, my heart soars. I'm amazed that he entrusted me with such a wonderful little guy. 

I'm so thankful that God blessed us with such a happy healthy boy.  He's perfectly healthy - perfect and thriving as his doctor says. He discovers something new every day and his tenacity to grow and develop new skills amazes me every day. At five months old  he is teaching me about pursuing your desires wholeheartedly without fear. I'm so thankful to be Xavier's mom. I'm thankful for the joy he brings to my life, for the fun he adds to our family, and for the lessons that I will be learning as his mom for the rest of my life. 

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I wanted a simple, fun room for our little munchkin. When I started planning the room we hadn't found out if we were having a boy or a girl, but I knew that either way I wanted the room to be a fun, functional place for a baby, without being gender specific. 

So I decided on a color scheme of soft, sunny yellow, deep blues and pops of happy red. I also wanted a very loose circus/ animal scheme. Nothing like this room, 

which I thought might be a little over the top, but just some fun, simple touches. :-) Plus when I showed Lover this picture, his eyes kind of glazed and he muttered something under his breath which sounded a lot like "not on your life" :-)  I also found this quilt online and sent an email to my quilting expert mom asking her how hard it would be to reproduce this for the baby's room. 

I have a thing for pennants, they are just so happy and fun, and I liked how they tied into the circus theme very subtly. My mom responded that she would be happy to make the quilt for Baby K - awesome! So I set to work finding the right fabrics to make a fun, primary colored quilt for baby K. And not long after, I found this super fun elephant fabric:

It was perfect for the nursery - primary colors? Check! Slight circus theme? Check! Elephants? Check! Throughout the course of my pregnancy and pulling Javi's room together I became mildly obsessed with elephants. They are just so adorable to me! 

But back to the quilt - I picked out a bunch of complementary fabrics, and after snipping off a few pieces for another project, I shipped them off to my mom to work her quilting magic on them. The resulting quilt is beautiful and fun, and I need to do a separate post on it to really do it justice. 

Next up I made a "sprocket pillow" out of the fabrics from the quilt. 

I used this tutorial, and it went really quickly. I use the pillow every night to nurse Javi. It's the perfect thickness and size to support my arm on the armrest. And it's so happy with all those fun fabrics! 

The pillow and quilt rest on the chair that used to reside in the living room. It's a super comfortable, rocking armchair, and I made a slipcover for it out of bleached dropcloth. The fabric is super durable and it made a tired old chair look much much better! I've logged a lot of hours in that chair in the last five months, and I am so glad I chose something so comfortable! :-) 

The cradle is the one that my brothers and I used when we were babies. Turns out before we moved to Spain my mom asked my aunt to store it for her, and it's been in storage for the last fifteen years. It's none the worse for the wear - and I love that it's a family heirloom. And look- there's another elephant! :-) 

Above the cradle is a sweet paper pennant banner that my sister in law made for my shower. It says Baby Javi and it is just the perfect bit of color for this side of the room. Javi noticed it really early on, and loved looking at all the paper patterns. 

Here's the other side of the room. My craft supplies still fill up those two cupboards on the side for now. Once the munchkin is bigger and requires more room I'll have to move it all out of there. we converted the desk area into a changing station and it's working out famously. The curtained off area hides extra diapers and wipes, and the humidifier. The two drawers hold all sorts of baby goodies, and the little blue caddy on the desktop holds diapers, wipes and kleenex. I made the curtain and the changing cover from a striped flat sheet from Walmart. $5 for a ton of fabric! I made a mobile to hang over the changing pad, and Lover built a shelf to hang above to hold more little baby items. I then commandeered the shelf to display cute baby stuff, including another elephant! :-) 

I wanted something fun and different for the mobile, and it took me a while to land on this design. I found the instructions for these paper ornaments, and just strung them all up together to form a mobile. Because they are so light they move in the slightest breeze, which is really neat. 

Baby's view is pretty neat! :-) 

The shelf above holds a framed verse, two little picture frames and my favorite little shoes that Javi's worn so far. A few other decorative items round out this shelf for now, and I love it. Here you can also see the little wooden animals that we put on the wall - they were each 69 cents from Hobby Lobby, and Javi's current favorite thing to do is try to pull them off the wall! :-) 

These frame cubes were a shower gift, and they've got a few more decorative doo dads. That ceramic elephant planter was a gift from my grandma, and of course we have a Green Bay Packers monster truck so Javi will grow up to be a good fan. :-) I bought the sign at Goodwill a few years ago and it worked perfectly in here! 

The curtains are just simple white sailcloth curtains from Target that I added a yellow ribbon stripe to. The little table is also from Goodwill - four bucks! 

I made a muslin curtain for the closet and trimmed it out with some of that sheet fabric. All of Javi's teeny tiny little clothes, blankets, etc hang out in there, in a somewhat orderly fashion. :-) 

In that picture you can also see the blue ribbon that Lover added to the light pull chain. It is super functional - at night I can walk in with hand outstretched and immediately find the light. Plus, Javi's new favorite thing is to turn it on and off himself (while we're holding him of course). Its super cute to see him reach his hand out when we walk in the room, and he is incredibly proud of himself when he manages to yank the ribbon hard enough to turn on the light! 

We bought the rug on eBay after searching all of our local stores for something that would work in our price range. Lover found it and I love it. The blue ottoman is from Walmart and holds a bunch of toys.  

Lastly, we replaced the door trim with the style that matches the rest of the house. We'll slowly be doing this in each room upstairs, but Javi's is the first to get the fancy treatment! 

So that's it! A fun little room for our awesome little man. I think my favorite part is still the mobile. Or maybe the quilt my mom made. Or the elephants! :) What's your favorite?

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I love the final result. It makes me smile every time I am in the room - which is a lot of time between changing diapers, nursing and rocking little man to sleep! :-)

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Underneath the plaster wall was just absolutely crumbling, and it stayed covered up under a curtain until this summer when we started working on the room again.
In that shot you can also see how stained the ceiling was – the roof was only about two years old when we bought the house and obviously had been leaking because there were stains all over the office ceiling.

Apparently it had also been leaking into the eaves, because the lovely cork stretch above the paneling started literally falling down onto my desk over the last couple of years. I would sit down at the desk to edit pictures and crumbled chunks of plaster would be all over my keyboard. This is what it looked like before we put drywall over this whole area.

Not exactly safe for a baby, especially because this wall was the only one that was long enough for any kind of crib or cradle in the room. And I definitely did not want to see my baby covered in plaster chunks like my keyboard! :-)

And then of course the little builtin desk area across the room was still full of cork too, which had been glued onto plywood, which was nailed over the plaster. We tried a variety of ideas to get the cork off the plywood cleanly so we could just paint the plywood, but it was not to be.

We had to tear out the shelves, cork and plywood and repair the plaster wall underneath. Talk about a labor of love for this little baby!
So, we began the tedious process of demolition, putting up drywall, finishing the drywall and painting all of the drywall, paneling, the ceiling, trimwork and the closet. I didn’t take any pictures of this process because I was seven months pregnant and we were just trying to get things finished before the baby popped out, but so many people offered to help us – my friend Yesi let us borrow her SUV to buy the drywall, Jon and Steph came over one evening to help us prime everything, and then Steph came back another evening to help me paint the paneling. They were ridiculously helpful, and I made sure to provide lots of entertainment with my increasingly paint covered baby bump getting in the way. :-)

I spent an evening on the floor removing paint drips and splatters from all over the floor. Apparently the previous owners knew they were putting in carpet, so when painting they just went all willy-nilly with their brushes without regard for the floor. So I spent several hours scraping, pulling out rogue staples, and then cleaning and buffing the floor. The end result isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot better than where we started. But let me tell you, doing that while 7ish months pregnant - boy was I sore the next day! 

We also installed a light in the ceiling, so that there weren't just random wires hanging down as a fire hazard for the baby.  This light box isn't hooked up to a switch, so there's just a pull chain for it. I was worried about the functionality of that with a baby, but it hasn't been a problem. In this shot you can also see that we painted the ceiling. Some Kilz primer and flat ceiling paint and it was as good as new! :-) 

Next up, the after pictures! 

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We took the bunkbed filled, wallpapered, grass green carpeted second bedroom and turned it into a light and bright guest room with lots of contrast and class. Go here to see more before and afters.

We’ve even transformed the landing from this depressingly dark area to a fun and bright space.

Someday, we’ll also renovate the bathroom, but at least it’s not a dark brick filled fluorescent cave anymore.

So all that remained on the second floor in need of our attention was the “office/beer room/future office/eventually became the nursery” room. It’s a tiny room that was in okay shape structurally and had a lot of really functional built-ins, but like every other part of Wendhurst Castle, cosmetically it was a wreck. The only thing this room had going for it when we bought it was some nice Berber carpet, but we tore that out along with all the carpet in the first few weeks because living with someone else’s pet stained carpet is gross. :)  Oh and btw, the hardwood floors underneath were the most paint speckled, abused and ruined floors in the house. Except for maybe the guest room. Or the dining room. :-) 
Here’s what it looked like on our first walk through. Immediately on your left was the little closet.

It, like all of the walls not clad in cork or paneling, was painted a lovely shade of highlighter blue. A neon, bright, hurts-my-eyes to look at it shade of blue.

The back wall sported one window, a paneling clad wall, and above the paneling, where the ceiling slants a bit, a lovely stretch of cork. (Exactly like the cork in the living room)

The south wall was clad in more paneling, a funky builtin shelf, and the second window. I need to mention here that both windows are “custom made” windows that desperately need to be replaced. When we had a window guy out to quote us on new windows, he politely said “I’ve have never seen such… interesting, custom windows.” The back window does not open unless you unscrew the entire frame and literally pull it out of the wall. It’s genius I tell ya.

The west wall is entirely taken up by a builtin desk and cupboard. They are very functional, but again, more paneling, and more cork. And last up, the crème de la crème.

The wall mounted builtin beer fridge. Yep, you read that right. One of those small beer fridges was screwed into the wall with a lovely little builtin table below it. For setting your beer on, of course.
Funny story, after removing this fridge from the wall, we used it for a little bit and then decided to sell it. I put it on Craigslist for $40, and a guy emailed me about it within a couple of hours. He came with his family to pick it up, and told me he was going to put it in his garage to be, wait for it, his beer fridge! :-) No lie.
Anyways, so that’s where we started in this room. Initially this room was going to be my office/craft room, but renovating it got pushed to the back burner until I got pregnant, and then the need for a craft room was much less urgent  than the need for a safe, comfortable place for a baby. :-) Next up I’ll show you how we fixed up this room and made it into a cute, fun little room for our little man.

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At first I had the sari fabric gathered with a tassel,

I tweaked the tab tops on the gold curtains and painted the rods to freshen them up, 

Then I decided that I was tired of tweaking these curtains and just went ahead and replaced them with something simple and crisp – cream panels.

Lover really liked the gold/blue curtains, so I really tried to make them work – for almost four years. I really like the way the new curtains make this side of the room look lighter and brighter, but they are a little plain compared to the previous ones.

I liked the sparkle and shine that the previous ones had. So now I am stuck. Do I leave the cream panels? Dress them up a little? Go back to the blue ones? Do something else entirely? Am I asking too many questions? :)  No seriously, I’d love to hear your opinions – I obviously need the help!

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Well I moved it. :)  Up until now it has hung in the dining room, over the built-in desk. But I removed the desk last year (and never showed you! Bad blogger!) and it just looked lonely hanging over top of nothing. :) And I always worried that whatever we were serving on the buffet would somehow damage the painting right above it. And I just don't need any added stress in my life, ya know? 

Plus, I wanted to create a little area in the living room to display some pictures of the little monster that joined our family a few months ago. So I did a switcheroo.
This is what the area over the piano looked like last time I showed you.

It’s basically stayed that way, with a few minor tweaks here and there, mostly because I am incapable of leaving things completely alone. :) But here's what it looks like now. 

I replaced the big picture with the painting, and replaced all the pictures in the skinny frame with pics of the little man.
On the piano itself are a few more frames – one we received from our wedding that’s filled with pics of Lover and I, a picture of my parents with Javi, and my Willow Tree figurines. I was so touched to receive the little family one for Christmas from my sister in law. She knew that I really wanted it, and I cried when I opened it! :) Thanks Steph!

So now this area is our little photo corner, and I am trying to keep it semi-updated. Not an easy task when your four month old is growing by leaps and bounds. Did I mention that he is in all his six month clothes, and he’s really pushing the length of some of those outfits? We’re hoping it means he’ll be tall. :)

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I was so grateful because I needed everything and all of my money was going towards a car. :)  I used that nightstand for all of my single years, at our apartment, and in our master bedroom of this house up until last summer. You can sort of see it in this picture. 

Last summer I found a set of matching nightstands on Craigslist for a steal, so I scooped them up for the master bedroom. Which meant that I now had an extra nightstand without a home.
At the same time, I was trolling Craigslist for a skinny little nightstand for the guest room. I had the white curvy one in there already, but whoever slept on the opposite side of the bed was both lamp and nightstand-less. So I was on a mission to find a little table for that spot.
You see where this is going, don’t you? :) Yep, I put on my thinking cap and realized that I had the perfect piece sitting in the attic. So I hauled it down to the porch and got started making it over to work in the guest room.

I had a free quart of satin black paint that I used to paint the whole nightstand. Then I used a gallon of white paint we also already had to paint the drawer. It took me an hour or so on a summery afternoon, and I left both pieces outside to dry in the sun.

Then the wind started up and literally threw my drawer and nightstand twenty feet across the porch! So I repainted. :) And let them cure again, this time on a non windy day.

Hobby Lobby has a great selection of interesting knobs, much like Anthropologie but without the ridiculous price tag. I took a drive out there to select the perfect knob for my freshly painted table, and came home with a fun geometric looking one. In black and white of course!

So here is the finished product. Normally it sits nice and straight in the corner, but our bed is currently out on loan so you got the nice and pretty angled shot. :)

I let the paint cure for a million years before setting that lamp on it, so hopefully it will keep its nice painted finish for a long time. I also want to point out what a nice black this paint was. It's really rich and beautiful.  

And while we are talking about this little corner, I found the lamp at Goodwill, put a fresh white shade on it, and also hung up some black and white postcards I bought years ago in Paris. They were just the right touch for this room.

I’ve also gone back and forth for some time now on painting those reddish brown floors white - this IS the black and white guest room after all! And the floors in here are in really bad shape. But that’s a project for another day. Today’s project was the nightstand, and it’s all done! Yay me! :)

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By working on the wall a little at a time, it forced me to take a much more organic, laid back approach to hanging everything. I didn’t plan the whole wall out in advance, I just worked on about 4-6 frames at a time. This helped spread out the cost (although I did catch a killer $1/frame sale at AC Moore) and ensured that things didn’t look too planned.

That’s why you see a few funny little holes and spaces throughout the wall. They don’t bother me though, some I’ve filled in with tiny little pieces, and others are just empty. And I am surprisingly okay with it!

I was able to include some postcards from our travels, original watercolors (some by me, some by pros) pictures of family and friends, cards we received when we bought the house, pictures I’ve taken, some of the pictures that used to be on the stairs themselves, cards Lover has given me or I’ve given him, quotes we love, information about the places we grew up, and most recently, some pictures from my pregnancy and a picture of little Javi’s feet.

The end result is a lot like us. Eclectic, a mishmash of our travels, a lot about our relationship, a little bit of our baby, all mixed in with our loved ones. The pictures have already evolved a bit since I finished hanging everything up, and there is still plenty of space to keep adding on to the wall.

All of the frames are those simple black plastic ones that the glass clips into. I hung the vast majority of them with command hooks and strips because they are so light. They’re actually really secure there on the wall, we’ve yet to lose any and only the ones hanging from screws get crooked. I may even switch those to strips so that everything stays in place. And it is really easy to just pop out the glass on any of the frames to put up a new picture.

I love the final look. I love that it is personal, doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it’s not overly planned out. It always makes me smile when we have guests over, and they stop on their way up the stairs to look at all the pictures and artwork. That’s the greatest compliment in my opinion!

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 When we replaced the door over Father’s Day weekend a few years ago we put up new trim on the inside and out, painting the outdoor trim and finishing the indoor trim to match the existing woodwork. I’m still inordinately proud of the stain matching that I accomplished in there.

Then, the next summer, we hung up a new light in the entryway, painted the ceiling with a fresh coat of white, and put a light gray blue on the sliver of wall above all the doorways. (The same blue that is on the back of the door and in the staircase.) My intention was always to do something decorative above the doorways, but it took me a while to figure out what to do.

Finally, this summer it hit me. I settled on a simple Greek key design in a metallic gold paint. I’m going to guess that I completed this project in May or June, because it wasn’t very hot, and I wasn’t very pregnant yet. Which was a good thing because I spent about eight hours up on a stepladder, staring at the ceiling.

I bought a stencil blank at the craft store. It’s basically just a piece of clear plastic. I printed out the design I wanted and traced it onto the plastic, and then cut it out with an x-acto knife. I used repositionable spray adhesive on the back of the stencil, which really helped make things go much more smoothly. I had measured an even amount down from the ceiling all around, so I just made sure to line up my stencil top with those marks every time.

Then it was just a matter of stenciling little by little, moving the stencil over a few feet and repeating the process. I ended up doing two coats because I liked the coverage better.

A few things I learned:

• I would buy a longer stencil next time. I think mine was about 18in long, which meant I had to reposition it constantly. This meant I needed more spray adhesive, which ultimately made the stencil really gummy and difficult to work with.
• Stencil paint dries incredibly fast. I liked the coverage of two coats but made it more difficult on myself by going all around the walls twice, moving the stencil each time. It would have been much easier to simply wait a couple of minutes and add another coat before moving the stencil.

In the end, I really like the finished product. It adds a little bit of interest and shimmer above the doorways, and it only took a day to complete.
What do you think?

P.S. I waited to take pictures of this project until after I had the baby because I knew one of the shots required me laying on the floor, and it would be too much effort to get down on the floor and then get back up again. How terrible is that? ;-) 

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