Our Family Unit - Confessions of a Vintage Homemaker

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September23rd

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Shared Room for our Boy and Baby Girl

Posted in: DIY

When we found out #2 was on the way, Kyle and I had the logistics talk. We ended up deciding that whether the new baby was a boy or a girl, the kids would share a room. Both of us had shared rooms at one time or another growing up and lived to tell about it, and to be honest, we didn’t want to give up our guest room / office. After we found out Fritz was going to be a girl, I started brainstorming decorating ideas.

Kade’s first nursery had a farm theme, which we loved since Kyle and I both grew up on farms and it was very “boyish”. I don’t have a lot of great pictures of the nursery after we moved to NorCal, but here are a few from when it was set up in our LA condo.

This time, since it was going to be for a boy and a girl, I thought a nursery rhyme theme would be cute, sort of a “Jack & Jill Nursery”. Plus I already had a few family pieces that I wanted to incorporated. My grandmother had made a baby quilt for me and it was nursery rhyme themed.

And Kyle’s grandmother had given us a couple of wall cut-outs from the 1950′s that used to hang in her children’s room.

Here is the result. The nursery rhyme illustrations are from my parent’s antique shop and I painted 3 frames that I picked up at the flea market. The bunting is made from the scraps my mom sent out. I had made basket liners and a lamp shade for Kade’s farm nursery, but I modified them to both to fit into this new theme. And the nursery rhyme nesting blocks I picked up on Etsy.

I was glad that the grandparent picture frames still worked in my color scheme, and the farm overalls were a great compliment to the vintage pink dress I’d picked up at the flea market.

My parents gave Fritz her very first doll and below her are the fitted sheets that I made, along with a few pics of the new white eyelet crib bedding.

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September19th

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Fleeting Moments

Posted in: Simple Pleasures

This weekend we moved Kade from his crib/toddler bed into his new Big Boy Bed. To see him tucked into what now looks like a HUGE twin bed for the first time, made me have “a moment” and I came out of his room and collapsed into sobs on Kyle’s shoulder for a good 5 minutes.

Now you can chalk that reaction up to a pregnant woman whose body is raging with hormones or believe that it’s due to a mother being completely in love with her son and sometimes forgetting that he really is going to grow up, whether or not she’s ready for it. Either way, after composing myself, I decided that I needed to come up with a better way of dealing with this particular change and celebrating what an amazing road this precious child has taken us down. So I hope you enjoy my attempt at squeezing 2 years down into a measly 5 minutes (and many many thanks to Kyle who had the patience and expertise to edit the slides whereas I would have just gone with the auto settings).

Note: If you don’t have Quicktime on your computer, you can get it by going here.

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September16th

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Nesting: Prepping the Nursery

Posted in: DIY

So I realize I haven’t been the most faithful blogger in the last few weeks, but it’s because a girl can only handle so many projects at one time. One of the projects was a face-lift to my site. Kyle encouraged me to take a critical look at my background, as well as look into a few different ways to personalize the site. So I’ve been experimenting with colors and hope that the new look stays true to my pink-obsessed self while allowing the blog and pictures to really pop. I also incorporated some green in the site to keep it from being too monochromatic. Nothing is set in stone, so let me know your opinions. (If the changes aren’t showing, make sure to reload the page in your browser.) I’m also trying to learn a bit more about WordPress and the many many options that are available. For instance, my Choice Finds in the sidebar (send me an image if you’d like me to include a link to your website) and the Follow option vie Google Friend Connect. Even though we’ve had the site almost a year, I still feel like such a novice sometimes.

Another project on the list has been to find Kade a “big boy bed”. We were looking for a Captain’s style twin bed: Captain’s style because I knew we would need under-the-bed storage and a twin because the kids will be sharing a room and we wanted to save space. (We opted out of the “toddler bed” to avoid another bed purchase in 2 years). Eventually I found a great deal on Craigslist and convinced Kyle it was worth driving an hour and half to retrieve it.

On a side note, can I just say that it truly irritates me how men respond to women? I keep trying to explain to Kyle what it’s like to walk around this world as a 5’4″ woman vs a 6’5″ man. I’ve learned to be OK with the fact that no one will step out of my way in a grocery aisle or on a sidewalk (even when pregnant), that salesmen at hardware stores won’t answer my questions directly, and that I will be treated like a moron at Best Buy. But the Craigslist guy seriously irked me! When I initially called about the bed I asked for measurements to see if we could bring it home with our SUV or if we’d need to get a truck. When I called back to say that, yes, we would come pick it up, he asked how I was going to get it home. I said we’d use our SUV, we’d put the drawers and headboard inside and the bed and mattress on top. His comment, “Does your SUV even have a rack on top? You know, you just can’t set things on the top of a vehicle” which was followed by, “Do you even have rope?” Are you kidding me??!?! Did he really think that I was just going to toss a bed on top of an SUV and start driving 80 miles an hour down a freeway? I guarantee he would not have said that if he was talking to a male’s voice. I wear pearls, love aprons and can make a mean pot roast, but that does not mean I’m an idiot!

Moving on…here’s a pic of the bed in process.

It’s just particle board covered in a veneer. No matter what bed we got, I wanted it to be white. So I read some tips on painting this kind of pretend wood and got started. We lightly sanded the veneer to help the primer adhere and then I painted 2 coats of primer, followed by 2 coats of white paint and a clear coat. (Don’t worry, Dad! The garage was well ventilated and I always wore a mask.)

These are the drawers with one coat of primer.

Thank goodness Kyle convinced me we should put it up on 5 gallon buckets to paint it! Since we had to BUY the buckets, I thought I could save a few bucks and just leave it on the ground. But after crawling around our garage floor for 4 days sanding and painting and sanding and painting – it was the best $7.50 we’ve ever spent!

Next on the project list was nursery bedding. I was going to need a new set for the crib and twin size bedding for Kade’s new bed. Again, in an effort to save money, I ended up making both. I used a white-on-white eyelet fabric for the crib bedding (bumpers and skirt) and then made four different crib sheets out of some gorgeous fabrics to bring a splash of color. I was shocked at how much cute patterned crib sheets costs (around $40ish) and then shocked again when I found this super simple pattern for making your own. I ended up making 4 sheets for less than the price of one purchased one. Here’s a preview of the crib set.

For Kade’s bed, I cut down our old white duvet cover to fit a twin and then inserted an old blanket rather than an actual duvet (potty training is going well, but I wouldn’t say we’re batting a 1000 just yet!).

With all the white though, I need to start thinking about how to bring color into the room. Leave it to mom to save the day. She sent me a ton of vintage-esque fabrics (top photo) to work with which I’m using to make bunting, curtains, basket liners, and more. I also got a few old nursery rhyme illustrations framed and Kyle is going to make me a quilt rack to hang my Grandma’s nursery rhyme quilt from. I can’t wait to show you how it all comes together.

One of the most fun projects has been getting ready for a little girl to join our family. I went through Kade’s infant toys and got back out all the baby supplies. But the most fun was when a co-worker of Kyle’s gave us 2 boxes of little girl clothes! It was like Christmas as I sorted through mountains of pink and ruffles and lace. Now everything has been washed, folded and carefully put away in it’s spot in the nursery.

Just a few final touches to finish up before Fritz arrives…and I promise I’ll post pics of everything put together as soon as I can.

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September15th

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The Garden: Harvest Update

Posted in: DIY

Since I’ve been baking 2 loaves of zucchini bread every other week for what seems like eternity, I thought I should give you a little update on our garden adventure this summer. I’ll be honest…pregnancy definitely had an affect on the amount of energy I poured into this year’s efforts. However, I have enjoyed this summer’s harvest, maybe even more so than last year.

Last year we threw everything into the ground, including things neither of us like to eat. I’m not exactly sure why, except that a packet of seeds only costs 69 cents and we were curious what we could make grow. But this year we said “NO” to radishes and onions and nature said “NO” to our attempt at corn, yellow squash, and carrots.

However, the things I cared about most (zucchini, tomatoes, and pumpkins) did great! And our salad section produced so much lettuce, arugula and spinach that we couldn’t eat it fast enough. (Although I had impressive intentions of eating salads every day this summer, the pregnancy cravings won over and I opted for a lot more crackers and cheese and the greens eventually went to seed.)

But I still wanted to show how everything progressed over the last few months, so here’s a few before and after photos.

This was the salad section. The lettuce on the far left and arugula on the right eventually grew to about 4′ tall! The spinach was great while it lasted, but it didn’t do to well in the heat.

This little corner is still going gang-busters! The amount of zucchini grown is absolutely staggering. In fact, we eat zucchini bread so often for breakfast that the other morning I gave Kade a slice and he said, “Zucchini bread, of course!” We’ve got 3 tomato plants in the back along the fence that are almost hidden by the zucchini leaves, which we have to cut back often. But they are loaded with fruit and just in the last couple weeks have started to ripen beautifully.

Out of everything, I think the veggies we planted along side the house had the hardest time. Even so, I’ve got 4 or 5 good looking pumpkins that I’ll roast and puree and about 5 butternut squash that will be delicious with a little butter and brown sugar! Our watermelon plant did better than last year, it actually made 2 watermelons. But the birds got to one before we could and the other was a bit sketchy looking and we were afraid to eat it. I’m going to try to convince Kyle next year that we should give up on becoming watermelon farmers.

Overall, I think bragging rights should probably go to Kade. He’s really the one that LOVED watering and if not for him dragging me out of the house to play with the hose, these poor plants may never have gotten a drink. If you could only see my dried up herbs and burned snap-dragons, you would know that it is a miracle we got as big of a harvest as we did. Let me know if you want to come over for a warm slice of zucchini bread…I’ve got plenty.

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