fall...

beautiful leaves

jackets and scarves

space heaters

all in september

we're not in mississippi anymore

kindergarteners

i think teaching kindergarten with a baby on the way is going to be lots of fun.

one girl already told me they'll probably have to slice me open to get the baby out, complete with a hand motions all the way across my belly. ouch.

girl 1 - "mrs. kent, your belly SURE is getting big"
girl 2 - "i guess it's just that baby in there"
girl 3 - "i sure HOPE it's that baby in there making her so big"

another boy said "your belly is getting so big, you're going to need to get some ETERNITY clothes real soon!"

here's to hoping i don't need clothes as big as eternity by the end of this...

happy sunday

You created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

All the days ordained for me

were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139

thoughts on baby

source

* surprised? so were we.

* famous last words - "there's NO way we could move 1000 miles across the country from everyone we know, start a new job / doctoral program, and have a baby.

* it still doesn't seem quite real yet, but words can't even describe how excited we are

* after having to wait 13 loooong weeks for a doctor's appointment, i was a bit excited. james really appreciated it when i started the count down from 72 hours.

* hearing the heartbeat and watching that little baby flip over and over was amazing. and weird. but mostly amazing.

* i always thought it would be detrimental to give up diet coke when i got pregnant. like forking over my arm - my right arm at that - but thanks to a couple months of nausea, all i want to drink is water and milk (really, milk? i've never wanted to drink cups of milk before) oh well, problem solved.

* i have a whole new compassion for those who are sick while pregnant. so, so thankful it stopped right before my kids started school. so thankful.

and last -

*i found my first gray hair.

a little surprise...

exploring

now that we're finally settled in and school's off to a good start, it's about time i start working on some projects. i figured there had to be someplace better than hobby lobby for fabric, so i goodled 'fabric in chicagoland'

and this huge store kept popping up. yea, it looks a little sketch, but it had over a hundred good reviews. i was also prepared to dig and sweat because that was in the reviews too...

so on labor day, i drove the 40 minutes into the city and found it.
it was impressive. rooms and rooms of fabric. for cheap. like under $10 a yard. sweeet.

plus notions galore.

tons and tons of buttons

any color zipper you could think of.

piping

and all colored lace

tons of shelves of ribbons

and tassels

plus rows and rows of fabric, plus piles and piles on top of that.

sadly, i didn't find the amazing fabric i was dreaming of to recover some craigslited chairs, but i didn't leave empty handed. and it was a great little exploration.

happy day

oh yea

we're now official illinois-ians

but have no fear - one of my kindergarteners today asked me why i kept saying ya'll. im clinging to those southern roots.

ikea's rast makeover

somehow, in all the moving, we didn't make it up with with our bedside tables.

problem 1 - i put a lot in the big, 3 drawers of my old table, besides the lamp on top and all.
problem 2 - there were about a million other things i wanted to get for our new place besides bedside tables.

so on our first trip to ikea, we picked up these unfinished Rast chests for about $30 each.



if you google 'ikea's rast makeovers' you'll get a ton of awesome ways people have finished these chests, but the most popular, by far, is some version of *this* makeover, based on one originally found in Style at Home magazine. I needed something quick and easy, so we went ahead and copied it as well.

after we put them together, james hauled all the pieces down to the parking lot for me. i primed and painted the drawers with benjamin moore's chantilly lace and stained the outside piece. now this wood isn't exactly the highest quality, prettiest wood, so i'm glad we just stained the outside piece.

i tried to make the cheap little knobs look pretty, but there was no helping them, so i ordered these knobs from *here* for a serious steal. unfortunately, when we got them, i realized i bought the wrong kind to fit into the pre-drilled holes in the drawers. to fix it, i ended up tossing the back piece and just using the square pulls.



and the finished product -



i'm super pleased with how they turned out and - even better - love all the great storage in all those drawers.

happy day

cherishing this promise today