Merry Christmas

Update at last!

I have found time to update this blog at last! We are currently on four weeks leave over christmas, one week down already. 
I'm planning to try and have every single thing ready for baby before I go back to work so I can spend my weekends relaxing instead of rushing around getting things done. I have the feeling going to back to work for five weeks will be a little tough on me.

We have loads of projects underway.  I've started the task of pre washing all of my cloth nappies.  They need to go through to wash at least five times to make the absorbant enough so the whole process is taking a few days.  Look how pretty the washing line looks! We have a combination of all in ones and stretchy bamboo prefolds.

I've also started a little project to re-cover a second hand baby bouncer we were gifted. I spent a whole day knitting a cover fo the pole that hangs the toys, and the puppy go hold of it and tore a hole! I think it can be rescued though, fingers cossed!
I'm making three felt stffed toys to hang along the top. So far I have finished this cute owl

I've just gone into the nursery to take a picture of my knitted cover to find yet another great big hole chewed into the side :( Not impressed Rosie! You can see a casualty hanging down by the owl. Now that there are two big holes I will probably have to knit this again. Luckily it's easy, just time consuming.

I also plan to sew a simple crib skirt to help cover up the black hardware that holds up the mattress on the white crib. I found a great fabric that compliments the curtain fabric perfectly! Here are the two, first are the curtains we found for $14 at IKEA and second is the fabric I found at spotlight for the crib skirt. The birds and drawing style are very alike! Love the rockets on the crib skirt.

 

 

And since I'm feeling a bit picture happy today I will add a couple more pics from the nursery. First is my new boppy breastfeeding pillow and my change pad cover I picked up at a second hand market. I love the cowgirl/cowboy print. We found the change table for $20 at a garage sale around the corner. Daniel carried it home and repainted it white to match the crib.

 

 

25 weeks

Baby is the size of a cauliflower!

I started back at work last week which wiped me out so I was too sleepy to update the blog! Next visit to the DR is on Tuesday which is exciting. We also picked up our bigger "family" car today! So exciting :)

 

How far along? 25 weeks

Total weight gain/loss: Not sure anymore

Sleep: Aparently I woke in the night and yelled at Daniel but I don't remember haha

Best moment this week: Visiting the Baby and Kids show, it was like a giant garage sale! I found loads of expensive brands for cheap.

Movement: Lots of wiggles and kicks

Food cravings: Bread and hot chips. yum!

Gender: Unknown

Belly Button in or out? In

What I miss: Cocktails in the sunshine

What I am looking forward to: The cot finally arriving from America

Milestones: Nothing this week



Yellow Chest of Drawers

Yesterday we completed our first project for the nursery. I had my mind set on having a yellow set of drawers and really wanted to have a go at doing it myself.

After spending hours on Gumtree I found the perfect solid set of drawers and we were able to talk to seller down to $80.

I sanded down all of the drawers and Daniel went over the main areas with the sander. We then applied two coats of white primer to prepare the surface. We baught an acrylic yellow paint from Riot Art and Craft, and 250ml stretched for four coats over all of the drawers and the main chest! I used a sponge brush instead of a regular paint brush which was so easy to use and helped to avoid any brush marks.
I chose some new silver knobs from Masters, and here is the finished product! I'm so happy, I finally have somewhere to put all of the little baby clothes that I have been picking up from garage sales.



 

22 WEEKS

Baby is the size of a papaya!

This post is almost a whole week late! We have been really busy moving into our new house and still don't have the internet connected, so please be patient with the blog updates!

How far along? 22 weeks

Total weight gain/loss: Gain 7kg!!

Sleep: I've been sleeping well. Unpacking sure makes me tired

Best moment this week: Meeting my OB at last! I have been to two others, one while I was in Victoria and another in Sydney. This OB will now be my DR until the end.  I really liked him, and he also took a quick look with an ultrasound so I was able to see baby arching it's back and kicking away.

Movement: The kicks are getting stronger, Daniel was able to feel a big one this week

Food cravings: Blue Berries

Gender: Unknown

Belly Button in or out? In

What I miss: Having a Gin and Tonic in the sunshine

What I am looking forward to: Finishing the dresser for the nursery

Milestones: Daniel feeling the baby kick



21 WEEKS

Baby is the size of a pomegranate!

How far along? 21 weeks

Total weight gain/loss: Gain 7kg!!

Sleep: Sometimes I have problems falling asleep but it's not so bad this week.

Best moment this week: Finally moving the Perth. Not much new with the pregnancy except for my belly getting bigger!

Movement: Less turns this week and lots more little kicks around my belly button.

Food cravings: Hot chips

Gender: Unknown

Belly Button in or out? In

What I miss: Laying on my belly. Today my phone fell under the bed and I couldn't get on my belly to get it out, very annoying!

What I am looking forward to: Setting up the nursery

Milestones: Nothing this week



The Chalkboard Fridge Makeover

Soon I will be moving all the way across the country to join this little pickles daddy in Perth to start setting up our new home.  With a new baby on the way we wanted to make the most out of the things we already have, and anything that we can buy second hand and make over.

Daniel has an old fridge that is currently being used as the beer fridge in the man pad. It was covered in texta drawings and a little shabby but otherwise it works just fine.  Inspiration came to me while browsing Pintrest one day, somebody had painted their fridge with chalk board paint! Fantastic! We did a bit of research and read a few tutorials before Setting out on our own fridge painting adventure. (Well Daniel had the adventure, I just project managed from across the country!)

Here is the tutorial put together by Daniel.

Here is the fridge to start with (with most of the texta and stickers scrubbed off)

 

Here is everything we used to get the job done:



Painters tray
10mm foam roller (2)
Rust Oleum Magnetic Primer
Rust Oleum Chalkboard Paint
Mold and Mildew Cleaner
Painters tape (We used Frog Tape)
Chalk (eventually)
Right Angled Paint brushes or foam brushes

Clean out the inside of your fridge, empty it and leave it to defrost completely (if necessary) and once it's done, dry the interior, getting rid of any condensation or moisture.

Hint: If you only have one fridge you might need to borrow some eskis for the weekend or eat out.

Then move your fridge outside so that it is well ventilated for when you are painting. Set it down on a drop sheet to catch all the spills you WILL make.

Now get to cleaning the outside of your fridge, if you're getting  your fridge of a bunch of boys it will be ancient and have stickers all over it along with some graffiti and profanity haha! Use a wall paper scraper for the stickers and a coarse sponge to pull up any residue that is left there. Once your fridge is scrubbed clean I suggest going over it with mildew and mold cleaner on the outside to make sure you're working with a clean surface.

Sand the surface for about 15-20 minutes all over, to rough up the fridge ready for the primer

Next up, start taping up your fridge where you don't want stuff to be painted over, like the rubber seals, handle and hinges.

 Hint: instead of using 1 long piece of tape to do the seals, use smaller bits, about 20cm long, otherwise you'll notice after the first coat of paint, it will slowly come unstuck, and using smaller strips helps avoid this.

Once you've taped off everything you don't want to get painted you are ready to start with the primer! We used Rust-Oleum Magnetic primer for this

This stuff will help your fridge magnets stick to your fridge once you're finished (because we can't just throw away all the magnets we have collected over the years)

When you're using this stuff, make sure you've got all the appropriate protection gear, gloves goggles etc, you don't want this stuff getting into your eyes.

You'll need to shake the tin up before using it, then you'll need to shake it again and again. Then open it and stir the contents. It will feel like there is sand at the bottom of the paint tin, you just need to mix all that stuff through the liquid that's sitting on the top. I would stir for about 3 minutes, then put the lid on and shake it up again, then repeated that about 5 times before I had a constant texture.

Once that' is all stirred up good you can begin painting your fridge. You want to do at least 2 coats to make sure you get your fridge covered. We did 3. You only need to wait 30 minutes between coats and then we waited 3 hours before going on with the chalkboard paint. The paint will be very coarse if you haven't mixed it properly and you will find that you need to use light strokes on the fridge otherwise you'll put too much primer on the fridge.

After first coat of primer

Once you've applied the final coat of primer you can start on the chalkboard paint about 3 hours later. This stuff will roll on quite easily compared to the primer and you won't need so much on your roller to do so. Now because both of these paints are black it's sometimes hard to tell where you've painted and where you haven't, so use a particular order when painting your fridge so you don't end up missing spots. I went left side, right side, top, front then the inside.

You'll need to wait 4 hours between coats for the chalkboard paint, for a total of 3 coats. Once you've finished, leave it for 3 days then you will have to 'season' your chalkboard fridge. Using the side of a piece of chalk cover your whole fridge, then dust off and you're ready to go making pretty little pictures and lists.

After last coat of chalk paint

 

I will post a picture of the completed fridge once we have it into our new place in a few weeks and looking good!

***Update to shopping trip post***

I almost forgot one of our other big purchases! The Ergo performance baby carrier.  I had seen this item on many forums under post headings such as "What were your must have items with your newborn". The Ergo gets a lot of praise, so I was excited to come across a stall at the baby show.  We got a demonstration, complete with a scary looking life like baby that was the same weight as a real baby. 

After the demonstration I had a go with the carrier myself. I found it super comfortable and fairly easy to use (although the poor fake baby nearly bit the dust a couple of times).I purchased the performance model because the straps were so comfy, as well as an infant insert for use with a newborn.  Once the baby gets older you can also use the carrier as  backpack which Daniel is excited about.  I'm looking forward to being able to have baby nice and close while still being able to function with both hands :)

 

Shopping trip

Last Friday the Sydney Baby and Toddler show arrived in Darling Harbour and I could not wait to get there and see all of the stalls!  We had heard from friends about picking up some great bargains, so we went cashed up with our baby savings and arrived bright and early to get started. 
At first is was completely overwhelming. Prams and babies taking up every inch of space, and so many new products we didn't know where to start.
My main goal for the day was to check out all of the cloth nappy stalls (thankfully there were many) and get as many pram demo's as we could. They also had a little pram test track for trying the prams out on grass, gravel and dirt as well as down stairs.

Four hours later we stumbled out of the doors and sat down to grab some lunch, arms loaded up with bags full of freebies and purchases and hand tired from entering every competition under the sun.

Here are just a few of my favourite purchases:

The Blooming bath. I love this idea! Baby bath tubs seem big and ugly and in the way, plus you have to get down low to bath baby. I liked the idea of being able to bath baby in the sink, but worried about trying that with a slippery little newborn.  These big flower sponges are a great solution! The fit into the sink, a bucket, the bath, anywhere you need and can be hung out to dry on the line. I can't wait to try it out!

 

 

Our next big purchase was our pram. After much research, several demonstrations and canvasing of parents with prams at the show, we settled on the lovely ICandy Peach in Sweet Pea.  I couldn't take my eyes off the gorgeous bright colours in this pram, we saw some parents pushing around their babies and they just looked great. I was also wanting to steer away from having a black pram in the hot Perth sun. The pram has so many fantastic features and was great value for money. we also got a discount for buying at the show!   Here it is:

 





I got the parasol as an extra because it was way too cute, and added sun protection of course. So far we just have have the main stroller shown in the first picture, and not the new born bassinet attachment for $300..hint hint haha

 

We left that day completely exhausted and laden down with baby things, but we had a fantastic day out.  The only problem was that although I had tried out all of the cloth nappies, we didn't have enough arms to carry them! So that meant another trip to the show in the morning.  This time we ended up with a load of Bambooty nappies and some glass bottles that I had had my eyes on. I will write a separate post on the cloth nappies later on.

 

Here are the bottles. We were able to get two large and two small with extra nipples and a carry bag for 50% off, plus I once again got to choose lovely colours :) We chose yellow and orange for the large and two shades of purple for the small. They are made by an Australian company called Cherub baby and the outer sleeves turn white if the milk inside is too hot for baby.

 

20 Weeks - half way!

Monday will be 20 weeks, the half way point!

 

At 20 week baby is the length of a Banana, about 6 1/2 inches from head to bottom.

How far along? 19 weeks 5 days

Total weight gain/loss: Gain 7kg!!

Sleep: I am having difficulty falling alseep and I keep having early morning dreams where I think the baby is rolling around. Maybe it is but I'm too asleep to know if it's real or a dream!

Best moment this week: This week I had my 19 week anatomy scan. It was so fun to see baby again and all of the different parts of the brain and other organs. It was also a relief to find out that baby is nice and big and healthy :) He was once again very active and was rolling all over the place.

Movement: This week I have been able to feel a big lump of baby moving around. No kicks just yet, just a big lump or some rolls. Usually I lay onto my back when I wake up and baby will travel up to my belly butto to say hello.

Food cravings: None really that i've noticed.

Gender: Unknown!

Belly Button in or out? In

What I miss: Energy

What I am looking forward to: Moving into my new house to set up the nursery

Milestones: Movement,  half way mark!