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Diary of a Mama Wannabe

“Conceiving, Pregnancy and Baby Oh my!”

Monthly Archives: March 2011

24/03/11 Decal Love

Painting. Some people love to paint. Some people don’t love to paint. Some people hate to paint. My husband hates to paint. I dislike painting. Therefore between the two of us, there will be no painting. Although I adore murals and eventually one day want to create a Dr. Seuss Mural in my child’s playroom, for now we shall skip this task. Instead I have decided to use wall decals-which is basically my new obsession. There are so many choices out there among websites, stores, ebay, etc. that you won’t have trouble finding what you are looking for. And it’s fun because if you change your mind, or screw up, you can just peel the decal off and start over! Some are pricey and some are very affordable, just depends on what look you are going for. What I found also was that a lot of expensive decals can be found on ebay or amazon for much cheaper. While my husband and I are pretty site on having a rock and roll theme in our boys room with rock and roll themed decals, here are some more ideas that I fell in love with.

This beautiful and sweet decal above was found at DecalDelight for $66. It’s so cute and would be perfect for a simple, classy nursery! For a girly girl’s room the decal below is adorable for $16! I love that they put the decals on the dresser but you wouldn’t need to do that if you didn’t want to! Having girly words like those posted along the walls would be appropriate too!

On HomeSweetWalls I found decals below that you can customize with names and colors of your choice.  The price range for these are normally anywhere from $20-$50.

Also fun? A Star Wars themed room with fun decals like the ones below! These were only $24! How awesome. My husband would love this!

Although a little more expensive at $60, the bubble decal below is AWESOME! I absolutely love it! I think I would separate the bubbles, placing them all around the room. Although it may seem like $60 is a lot, it really would be all the room needs! You can find this at LewasDesigns.

Another idea I like is to have the alphabet around  my child’s room, whether it be their bedroom or playroom. Remember I’m an educator so I like these things. My idea is to have the letters be the border in the room. I found some cute and cheap letter decals at DecalStickers that are shown below. ($29 for the alphabet! Not bad price for a border around the room!)

A site that I found called VinylDisorder is REALLY cool. Here I found some really unique decals, like the Beatles’ signatures which you can stick around the room if you are doing a Beatles themed or rock and roll themed room like my husband and I are. This site is also super cool because you can customize your decal. It can be however big you want it to be, whatever color you want and it can be made into a wall decal or a window/car decal! For example the picture below, the customer is making this decal into a bumper sticker, and those are the colors he could choose for the font color.

Lastly here’s a cool site that sells video game decals! You can get Donkey Kong, old school Mario or new Mario! Although I don’t really want to expose my kid to video games RIGHT away this is a really cute idea! Click here to see more.

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21/03/11 Rock on Baby!

As I sit here and ponder the amazement of the human reproductive system, I have to wonder what my husband and I have created. Although it’s early in my pregnancy, my baby already has an assigned eye color, skin tone, hair color and GENDER! It is truly amazing. And I am not one of those people who can wait. As soon as I am able to know what sex my baby is, I will. I know that in the good ol days when my mother had me and my brothers she wasn’t able to find out the sex of her future children and had to prepare for a baby, not prepare for a gender. Although I know that is normal, I just can’t wrap my head around it. How can I not find out? I don’t know if I have that kind of patience, or if I even want to be that patient. With the cute things out there nowadays I just cannot wait to shop! Not only shop, but decorate my baby’s room! My husband and I already have a slight (okay, HUGE) idea that if we have a boy we are going to go with a “rock” room. This may consist of having pictures of various rock bands, famous guitarists and drummers (my husband himself is a drummer in a band) framed in the nursery or be covered with The Beatles. I found some awesome ideas out there that I had to share!

Above is an awesome Beatles Yellow Submarine themed room that I absolutely love. Ever since my hippie high school days when I would watch The Yellow Submarine in the dark, not exactly sober, I always imagined what it would be like to step into Pepperland and this room sends you right there. Notice the little boy is included in the mural “Beatle-lized” in between Jeremy the Nowhere Man and the Beatles.

Here’s another neat idea if you don’t want to go too crazy with painting! Here the bathroom is transformed into the Submarine (I think they should have painted it yellow but the blue looks nice too) and have the Beatles poking their heads out of the windows. Cute idea!

This mural above and below which is in the Empik Cafe in Ursus, Warsaw is way more intricate and much harder but wow would the effort and hard work be worth it! I love this mural and would love it! What a great way to expose your baby to good music and artists from the start!

Below is a picture from The Decemberist’s album in tribute to Led Zeppelin and since it is my husband’s favorite band of all time I thought it would be only appropriate to pay homage to them by having some kind of cool mural in the baby’s room! I don’t think in reality we would really ever do this mural, but I still think it’s awesome! Maybe someday.

Of course one of the problems people run into is that they rent and do not own and when you rent you can’t paint! That’s not an issue either! I found some awesome wall decals that you can buy that you can stick on your walls, peel off easily and reuse! This way you not only have to do the work of painting but it’s foolproof and reuseable!

This drum set chalkboard wall decal is super cool because, well obviously your kid (or you) can write on it! I think that’s pretty neat and I don’t know who hasn’t wanted to put their writing on the wall! I think it would be neat to get this and write the lyrics to a song or some songs that you enjoy across the drum set. You can find this product here.

You can also find decals more like the above that are more “childish.” You can customize it to say Tobey’s Band, Alex’s Band, or whatever your child’s name is. This could be really cute and of course you don’t have to put all the sticker decals on one wall like in the picture above. You can put something on each wall and put “Rock it!” over the door frame or the window. You can find this at Create-A-Mural.com.

If you want a more simple look you can always have decals like the set above which features a guitarist, bass player, singer and drummer. Get this here.

Another idea that my husband and I have is to make “collage” walls with either stickers, record covers, and.or posters. Above are decal stickers of various punk rock groups. My husband has a large collection of records as well as posters of his favorite bands Led Zeppelin, Motley Crue, etc. that we could frame on the wall. Here are some ideas of cool collage walls. As you can see we jacked this idea from going out to eat at TGI Friday’s! Haha, but hey, it’s a great idea!

 

 

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20/03/11 The First Time Crazies

I started becoming legitimately crazy once I found out I was pregnant. I researched my tap water. I tossed out everything in my fridge that was over 4 days old. I started practically burning all my food to make sure it was cooked fully. I ran out to get 7 pregnancy books (okay I’ll admit, my crazy ass had some of the books before I even conceived-I like to be prepared, don’t judge). This is only the beginning and I know it will only get worse.

Yes. These are all mine.

There are other forms of crazies that I am experiencing too. Like the other night when my husband and I were playing a wonderful game of Scrabble. I was laughing hysterically about his lack of skills, when my husband told me I couldn’t use “pi” while we were playing Scrabble and I went into a crazed frenzy, resulting in me telling him to “shut the f— up,” or more precisely “SHUT THE F— UP!!!! and shaking the table) then him saying “f— you” and then me bawling claiming he was the meanest husband in the whole world. That was a fun night. I was on birth control for at least 6 years before we started trying to get pregnant, so I never had mood swings. I didn’t get PMS and I barely even got a period. So all of a sudden to get so worked up over a game of Scrabble, seriously was a very scary moment for me. I cried and cried. Sobs. Tears running down my face. Snot dripping out of my nose. Paper towels (we had no Kleenex) soaked with my tears. After scaring the living shit out of my husband he apologized profusely for using profanities against me and told me he would never argue with me again during the length of my pregnancy. Good husband, I guess he isn’t the meanest husband in the whole world after all.

More crazies? I can’t even cough without checking my underwear to see if I have bled out an embryo. Seriously everything I do, everything I eat, everything I breathe, I have to go online to see if it is safe or if I have just killed my pending child. After I went to the doctor to have my pregnancy confirmed, I still went home and took 2 pregnancy tests. Just to be sure. I have never been such a looney toon before! I used to think I was crazy but now I see that I was just an anal retentive girl before. Now I am a certified lunatic.

However, I am the happiest insane person you could ever meet (unless you challenge me in Scrabble apparently). I am so gloriously happy that I am pregnant and every day I get out of bed smiling and eager. This baby’s mama might be crazy but she’s crazy for her babe. Bring on the emotional roller coaster, stretch marks, weight gain, acne, all of it…I will take it all to bring this little baby into this world! LET’S DO THIS!

Current status: 5 weeks, 1 day. Baby is the size of a sesame seed!

 

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13/03/11 The Belly Book

One of my favorite things is to journal and blog. As you can see, I love to write and I do it mostly to 1. remember things and 2. to reflect on my experiences. So I was thrilled when I stumbled across the pregnancy journal “The Belly Book; A nine-month journal for you and your growing belly” by Amy K at Barnes and Noble. This is like no journal I have seen yet. It is traditional in the sense that it documents your pregnancy and has spots for you to pop in pictures, but its unconventional in the sense that the questions are hilarious, it’s cute, simple and doesn’t include tips, suggestions and reminders (which are great in their own right, but this is a great journal just to write and be able to reflect and look back at years from now, as well as share with others).

See my Week by Week Pregnancy book in the background? Hehe.

I love this book because it is divided into trimesters, which is really neat with little tabs and each trimester there is a page to jot down your cravings AND aversions for each month. There is also a page for every single week of your pregnancy to include a photo as well as what your symptoms are, what your mood is like, and other funny random things. Not any 2 weeks asks you the same questions. One of the funny questions I like is at Week 6: My energy level has been: ___ relatively normal ___ a big sluggish ___ can’t even complete a senten
Haha! Too cute.

Of course there are also pages to record each prenatal visit and ultrasound as well. I also like that at each different trimester they have different topic pages. Like for example the page above is only relative to the first trimester. (Duh.) For the first trimester they have pages to write about the home pregnancy test and morning sickness, while the second trimester has pages to record hearing the baby’s heartbeat for the first time, kicks, and the gender, and the third trimester has pages for your name lists, your baby shower, etc. You get the point, there are many many places within this journal to record every amazing experience in your pregnancy! What I find convenient is there is also a spot in the book to list what all your friends, family and coworkers got you and your baby for gifts. I love knowing that one day when my baby is chewing on his favorite teething toy that I can look up in my book and see who got it for him to give them another thank you for their wonderful purchase. I also found it amusing that there is a page called “My Big Fat Public Pregnancy” and you can write about the first time a stranger touched your belly and how you felt! Haha! Love it.

I really think this is a great buy and you can find it at many places. I discovered this wonderful book at Barnes and Noble for $16.99 but bought mine off of Amazon for $10 – including the shipping and handling. Here are some links that go directly to the book: Barnes and Noble, Borders, Amazon, Ebay

What else is really neat is that Amy K, the author of this book also has made other books to go along with this book, including “My Baby Book; A Keepsake Journal for Baby’s First Year,” “The Birthday Book” and others. Very cool!

 

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13/03/11 Are we Positive?

“Are we positive that it’s a positive?” After three home pregnancy tests, the answer is YES WE ARE POSITIVE! YES WE ARE PREGNANT! YES YES YES!! This morning I woke up as usual, thinking “Oh. Today I can test.” Sigh. “Should I even test? It’ll just be negative anyways.” But like always I decided to test because I am addicted to peeing on sticks. So I did my first test on an generic Early Pregnancy Test (EPT) from Target and for whatever reason I felt weird…as if there was actually a chance. I decided to go upstairs to go to the other bathroom to find my EPT digital test that my sister in law had given me a couple months back, while the EPT test was doing it’s magic. I strolled back downstairs to check the test and I stared at it. there was the faintest, and I mean faintest line I had ever seen in the test circle. “What the hell.” I wasn’t quite sure what to think. I had never had a line before, faint or not, never ever a line. So that was the good part, but the bad part? It was SO FAINT. So then I had to do the digital test. I went to the kitchen to take my daily prenatal and folic acid (which I have been taking for 5 months now) and went back to the bathroom. There it was. The magic word: Pregnant. PREGNANT!? Holy crow! My husband and I were ecstatic but being as pessimist’s from our past experience we decided to go about our day and not think about it much again until we decided for the heck of it to test again tonight. And there it was, another positive! And another great confirmation? My period which usually comes like flipping clockwork did not come at all! We are pregnant. We actually are. Smiles smiles smiles.

The tests from this morning.

Today marks a new chapter in my life, one leading into motherhood! I couldn’t be happier and I love sharing with all of you, since as most newly pregnant women know, you can’t really share it with everyone just yet! Now I have to endure the next 8 weeks with all my fingers, toes and limbs crossed that my baby develops healthy and doesn’t miscarry. I am so flipping happy! Now I don’t feel crazy talking about babies, nurseries and mommy things anymore! I am a mommy in the making! As my husband and I are in the process of moving I had to go into my box of books that I had already packed away and found my week to week pregnancy books and I have to say I cannot put them down! I just can’t believe I can actually read them now! Lol. I bought so many pregnancy books when we first started trying to conceive and I didn’t even get the chance to read them before packing them away and now that I actually get to read them, I’m thrilled. I’m only allowing myself to read it one week at a time to thoroughly enjoy this amazing process!

My current state? 4 Weeks, my baby is the size of a poppy seed and I couldn’t be happier!!

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08/03/11 In Celebration of Dr. Seuss!

It seems only natural that a few days after Dr. Seuss’ would have been 107th birthday I began obsessing about him. After I went to Ikea and was inspired for a Seuss themed bedroom for my future baby I decided that it was time for me to freshen up on my Seuss. Last night I read over a dozen Seuss books, including my very favorites, The ‘Lorax’, ‘Yertle the Turtle’, ‘The Sneetches’, and ‘Horton Hears a Who’. I absolutely love Seuss…his unique illustrations, bold color choices, politic and moral messages, perfect rhymes and crazy imaginative creatures and architecture, what’s not to adore? After rereading my favorite Seuss tales I decided my baby HAS to have a Seuss themed room. So online I went to find inspirations and boy did I find them! It’s hard to know exactly what I will do since I don’t know yet if I’m going to be blessed with a boy or girl and I may want to do the earlier watercolor Seuss theme or ‘Oh, The Places You’ll Go’ in the bedroom if it is a girl instead of the bold, like ‘Cat in the Hat’ colors that we are used to. But I collected amazing ideas and inspirational pictures here to share with anyone else wanting to have a little piece of Seuss in their own home. Enjoy!

What I found was that in order to do murals you may need to either A. Be an excellent freehand drawer or B. Get a projector so that you can enlarge the pictures you want onto the walls and then trace/outline the drawing or C. A little of both. I love the mural above which I found at this site which also includes a few other photos from this particular bedroom. And also here is a link to Noah’s Room, an AMAZING blog where they show you step by step how to use the projector to trace/draw your pictures. There is also steps on how to paint this red and white Seuss border, which I love (shown in top picture).

Here is one that isn’t quite as intricate, but still very impressive. It includes some of my favorite Seuss characters, the Lorax, Ba-ba-loot bears and the Sneetches. While this one is still great, I am hoping to be able to create something more like the pictures below, no matter how hard the work may be!

I am SUPER impressed by the couple that created the mural above. They created this nursery for their son using both the projector and freehand. The drawings look perfect don’t they?! Like Dr. Seuss drew them himself! For more click here.

The room above was also created by a couple (such impressive people out there)! This one is a little different because they opted to keep the color scheme a little less vibrant which is nice on the eyes and goes well with their decor. For step to step pictures of how they did this (they drew freehand!) click here.

I am also LOVING this bathroom, especially with the matching tiles/linoleum. This is so cute, yet can transition into an older child’s bathroom as well.

I’m really inspired by this mural above because I LOVE the Truffula trees. I love how they added the black outlines and details in the trees and in the water. It looks fab. I read that for the black lines, since they are rather small, you need to get a paint ‘pen’ since those work much better than the brushes.

You can easily find Dr. Seuss decor and bedspreads when you search online, and this is one that is a bit more “toned down” I’d like to say. The colors are still bright but slightly dulled down…and it is so cute! I think this would look adorable in a boy’s bedroom. You can find this at Pottery Barn.

What’s nice is you can also find a lot of Seuss vinyl quotes and wall stickers to accent your room as well. You can find them online, at Toys R Us and sometimes at home decor stores. Of course you can always paint quotes on yourself, like in the mural below. You will find more murals made by this amazing woman here. Some quotes that I really want on my son/daughter’s walls include:

  • “Don’t give up! I believe in you all! A person’s a person, no matter now small!” -Horton Hears a Who
  • “And the turtles, of course…all the turtles are free. As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be.” -Yertle the Turtle
  • “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” -Happy Birthday to You
  • “I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful, one hundred percent.” -Horton Hatches The Egg
  • “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose.” -Oh, The Places You’ll Go

Below you’ll see a picture of a very bright and bold Seuss room and than pictures of very light Seuss room, which I think would be really cute for a little girls room/nursery. It’s still very Seuss, but the colors are lighter and allow for a more girly feeling.

Find out more about the cute, light room above here.

Here, below is a much more “calm” Seuss room, which could not only be easier on the eyes, but easier on the checkbook and easier on you to create! Find more pictures of this room on HGTV.

And here below, a couple more “calmer” Seuss rooms. What I like about the first picture below is that they have my Mammut Ikea chair that I love that inspired me to do the Seuss decor! Click here to see.

There are a lot more accessories you can get too, or even make to go with your Seuss room, like the things shown below.

You can find this stuff at Amazon, La Baby World and Pottery Barn kids.

For information on how to make this dresser, click on this link to go to Noah’s Room.

Good luck making your own Seuss World! For more ideas as well as information on where to find Seuss decor, go to ThemeRoomIdeas.

 

 

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06/03/11 Ikea Baby Dreams…

One week out of my two week wait has passed and as I begin my next week I cannot help but to daydream about my (hopefully) future pregnancy/baby. For a second there I was thinking that maybe this just wasn’t my time. My husband and I are in the process of moving into our new apartment (moving on May 1st!), I am enrolled in 4 graduate classes, and we have been a little stressed about our unsuccessful months of trying for our baby. Maybe this is all too much for my mind to take, which ultimately tires me out physically. But I still want to be hopeful! And I still would be more than thrilled and blessed to get pregnant right now, even in this hectic time of our lives. I remember a few years ago thinking “Oh I’ll get pregnant during this month so that I can student teach during my last trimester” or “Oh I want my baby to be a Christmas baby!” and so on and so forth. Thank goodness I stopped waiting and started trying because who knows how much longer it would have been until I would get pregnant! Now I could care less when my baby is born as long as I can get pregnant and carry a healthy baby! That’s all that matters to me now!

As this last week has passed and I have been purging my current townhouse and getting ready for (yay!) new things I can’t help but to think about my future baby’s room. Yes, yes I know. I should truly not be getting excited. For all I know I won’t get pregnant for years, and I don’t want to be like Charlotte from ‘Sex and the City’ when she decorates a whole nursery to find out that she is infertile and then has to paint over the baby mural in tears. But I have to say it’s hard! I have baby on the brain, and every where I look I see babies, pregnant bellies, cute baby clothes, adorable baby bassinets and darling decor. I. Am. Losing. My. Mind. It doesn’t help that I nanny a little 10 month old either. I sure can tell you one thing; when you nanny a baby it can either be A. The best birth control you’ve ever been on, or B. Confirmation that you need your own. For me? Most definitely B. Sigh. I’m really hoping for that positive in a week!

Anyways, back to what I was saying about thinking about my pending child’s bedroom…
Tonight my husband and I decided to go to Ikea for date night. Silly, but it’s really fun, especially when redecorating is in your horizon. So as we strolled through the store I instantly when mad with excitement over the baby and children’s room section. As ideas ran through my mind, my impulses started to take over and it took literally all the control I could muster to not start grabbing everything off the shelves and demanding my husband hand over the credit card. As I slowly backed away and realized I was not yet pregnant I started gaining my composure back and decided I could not go into those sections yet. Too many ideas. Too many wants. Too much period. But I had to share some ideas and things I liked on here, because frankly my husband can’t stand to listen to me anymore today.

The very first thing that I quickly became obsessed with was this Mammut line at Ikea that to me really resembles Dr. Seuss’ illustrations. The furniture and decor is very bright and in various colors, and are very round and cartoonish…which I love. While I am not too keen on the idea of doing a theme that may be short lived, because say my 6 year old finds himself way too cool for his Dr. Seuss room, I still wish I could afford it because it’s so cute. I loved that the line had everything from the bed, the tables, chairs, etc. Below I have thumbnails of almost all of the collection but you can also find it all at Ikea’s website. Also, here’s a picture of some of the collection in actual use, although in my daydream I would get a mixture of the colors instead of just one.

I absolutely love the colored picture frames (above in the picture) they sell at Ikea too for 1.99 a piece. What a cute way to display your kid’s artwork! And as you can see the Mammut line also includes shelves and bookcases. Love it! I would get all this stuff and then Dr. Seuss quote stickers for the walls and Cat in the Hat stuffed toys and whatnot. Cute, cute, cute!

I also loved Ikea’s storage options. For example these “step” shelves are so cute and versatile. You could get multicolored tubs or stay with one color, and really use it to store anything! Books, toys, clothes, diapers, really anything! I also liked the bookshelves that you can use as is or with tubs, boxes, crates, baskets, etc. I found an actual room with the shelf in use, and I have to say I need this. If not for my baby, then for me!

Ikea also has really cool art work and rugs that I really want to have in my possession. Of course it’s all kind of modern and funky, and while I used to never think I would go that route, I’m beginning to love it. My husband still needs a little bit of convincing but I’m sure if I became pregnant, mama will win the fight.

The third picture above, are some patterns of fabric they sell there that I fell in love with. Of course I can go to JoAnn Fabrics and find some cool fabric but these just seemed unique to me. I started thinking about throw pillows, or sheets for the crib. Or even taking pieces of these fabrics and framing them for some fun art work on the walls.While the “race track” rug isn’t completely original, it’s fun. If I have a boy I would love to see him use his imagination and play with his cars in his little bedroom.

This picture frame decoration is too cool. If I have a little girl I’m totally putting this in her room. It reminds me of that cute scene in Taylor Swift’s music video, “Mine” where she has pictures hanging from tree branches just like this. Very fun and different!

The lights at Ikea are also really neat, especially these. The flower globe was a huge fan with my husband as I imagined it dangling from my daughter’s room. My husband also liked the fish headlights that I imagined in my son’s room. I had to say I liked them both. I also loved the paper lantern below, as well as the cute cloud light. SO many fun choices!

More things I adored:

Here is also an awesome Ikea room that my husband and I both fell in love with. Ahh, the day I find out I’m pregnant will be a dangerously expensive one!

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