around here as I have been tapping into my motherly nesting instinct! Granted I'm only 24 weeks pregnant, so I have a while until Baby Avery will be here, but it sure has been fun planning, crafting, and preparing her nursery. As you can see, she's growing right along. Her "food size" this week is an eggplant, and all of my baby Apps seem to be telling me that my uterus is now the size of a soccer ball! Wow! I've been feeling great and truly enjoying feeling her kick and move around, as it has been increasing in frequency and strength in the last week or so.Since she's grown so much lately, I feel like I'm moving into "phase 2" so to speak, in mat
ernity clothes. About two weeks ago, I was still able to fit into a few pre-pregnancy shirts, but those days are done and now nearly all I wear are maternity shirts, which is fine with me...it just feels funny to have practically my entire wardrobe down in storage. Thank goodness for Target and Motherhood Maternity for helping me to replenish my dwindling clothing options at this point!
ernity clothes. About two weeks ago, I was still able to fit into a few pre-pregnancy shirts, but those days are done and now nearly all I wear are maternity shirts, which is fine with me...it just feels funny to have practically my entire wardrobe down in storage. Thank goodness for Target and Motherhood Maternity for helping me to replenish my dwindling clothing options at this point! Well, enough about me...let's move onto the nursery! Sorry greenies who just want some smoothie recipes or green tips, I promise I'll be posting some soon. Nursery and baby ideas have preoccupied my mind (and blog) as you can tell at the moment, but I have many green posts brewing on the back burner that I will post in the next few weeks when I have more free time during my Christmas Break from school.
So the last time I posted, I told you guys all about the tree my mom 
and I painted in Avery's room and it wasn't long before we were onto our next two projects: designing some way to display her name in the room and painting some large flowers to go up next to the mirror above her dresser. Here are the completed projects to the left, and now I'll break down the details as to how we did each one.
and I painted in Avery's room and it wasn't long before we were onto our next two projects: designing some way to display her name in the room and painting some large flowers to go up next to the mirror above her dresser. Here are the completed projects to the left, and now I'll break down the details as to how we did each one. So the first one we worked on was the hanging name letters. After some Googling, I found these cool letters (to the right)
and from there my mom and I brainstormed how we could make these ourselves and tweak the design a little bit. Step 1: Purchased 5 thin wooden circles from a local craft supply store, along with ribbon, and flowers. We decided on fake flowers, instead of cut-outs like the website.
and from there my mom and I brainstormed how we could make these ourselves and tweak the design a little bit. Step 1: Purchased 5 thin wooden circles from a local craft supply store, along with ribbon, and flowers. We decided on fake flowers, instead of cut-outs like the website.Step 2: With the help of an overhead projector, we typed up Avery's name, shined it onto some cardboard and made templates that we would later trace onto the wooden circles. We also made a template for the dots that we were planning on using on the circles.
Step 3: Paint the circles. We used the same paint from the cherry blossom tree (there was tons left). We began with the bottom color being light pink, then we traced on the dots and letters, next we painted the dots dark pink and the letters dark brown.
Step 4: Assembly...yikes! This is the part that we didn't think would take long, but oh boy it did! We had to prepare the ribbon, cut the fake pink flowers, and then glue them all on with a hot glue gun. Here's my mom trying to get the measurements exact...not a fun job!Step 5: Put them on the wall...even bigger YIKES! This step took us quite awhile because we had to hot glue a small hanging hook
onto the back of the ribbon so they would stay on the wall, and then we had to try and get them all to look nice, straight, and even. Eventually we got them up and they looked great. My mom and I were both very happy that Avery only has 5 letters in her name...any more and we might have just bought the ones we saw originally online! LOL ( :
onto the back of the ribbon so they would stay on the wall, and then we had to try and get them all to look nice, straight, and even. Eventually we got them up and they looked great. My mom and I were both very happy that Avery only has 5 letters in her name...any more and we might have just bought the ones we saw originally online! LOL ( :
Here I am with the finished product, I love how it turned out! Below is this storage shelf I got from Land of Nod, which I put together all by myself- thank you very much! I usually leave this task up to Brandon, but what can I say...nesting instincts and being impatient do not mix well, so I got it put together all by myself! Yeah yeah! it helped that Land of Nod has video assembly instructions on their website- he he! I also filled it with 4 canvas storage containers that match the room, also from Land of Nod. The next project my mom and I worked on was some decorative flowers to go on both s
ides of a mirror I got from Lowes that's hanging above her dresser. We found these funky 3-D flowers at our local craft supply store when we were looking for supplies to make the hanging name letters, and we knew we just had to have them! I forgot to take a pic of them when we first got them, but they were pretty busy with teal, pink, and lime green stripes, dots, and squiggles. Since this did not match the nursery in any way, we knew we had to do some painting on them to make them match the room more closely. Here's how we did it:Step 1: Painted them white to give us a blank canvas to work with! Here's one to the
right, after many coats of primer!
right, after many coats of primer!Step 2: Once we got all the cluttery-design cleared off we brainstormed what we wanted these flowers to look like. We knew we wanted to incorporate the pinks, green, and brown of the room but we weren't sure how. So my mom took a paper template of the flowers home that night and drew up a few possibilities...one of which I fell in love with!!!!! Here is the final product with dark pink metal petals, a light pink base with brown dots, a brown center with a cool quote (two of my favorite inspirational words are: Peace and Love, so this was an easy choice!) as well as a light green leaf (which is painted onto the wall). 
Step 3: Now that we had our design, it was time to paint, I took on painting the curvy metal petals, and my mom tackled the detail work like adding the dots, and writing the letters. Thank you for your steady hand mom!
Step 4: Time to hang them! Unfortunately there was no type of hanging apparatus to these flowers, so we had to get creative and make our own, simple right- get hanging brackets from the store, screw them on, and put it on the wall. Well, it wasn't quite that easy. To make a long story short, we finally got them up on the wall in the correct place, even, and secure...it just took us a little longer than expected. But they were worth the work, because they are one of my favorite features of the room now! I think they really bring life to that boring wall that just had a mirror. 
Here's a pic of the them up on the wall, next to the mirror so you can get the full effect. You might recognize those paper pom poms, which I used to decorate at the Gender Reveal Party we had awhile back. Aside from bringing some fun texture into the room, they also have some special meaning to us as well. I got them off Amazon.com.
So that about wraps up the nursery room projects my mom and I have been working on (sorry to bore any of you with the million details, it's just that I always seem to find fun decor ideas on blogs or websites, but nobody explains how they did it...so hopefully someone may get some use out this!). The next area we plan on working on is the nook with the recliner by the window, which you can see looking oh so boring in this post. We already have a few small projects done in this area, but we hope to work on the window treatment this week, so wish us luck!