Kalia's clothes

I know an entire post dedicated to my unborn childs clothes may seem a bit excessive, but let me tell you...this girl has some CLOTHES!!  Half of my project time this weekend was spent sorting through her hand me downs from friends that we had already washed, and then washing and sorting all of her clothes she got at my baby shower a few weeks back.  We had already gone through and washed all of her hand me down clothes, but they were just sitting in her bassinet in our closet until we finished up her dresser.

This weekend I sorted out her clothes by age group.  It became real obvious really quickly that putting all of her clothes in the dresser and on hangers just wasn't going to be practical.  And I'm all about practical...especially when it comes to trying to make anything easier with Kalia!

I decided to keep out her 6 month and under clothing, and then put up the rest of the clothes she has in her closet in cute gift bags that I had received from my shower.

Here's Kalia's dedicated drawer for her onesies :

And here's Kalia's dedicated drawer for her pants, shorts, bloomers, sleepers, and swaddlers.

Keep in mind these clothes are from newborn to 6 months old.  Which means they're tiny.  And these are the the two large drawers.

In all honesty, I don't know that she'll fit in most of her newborn clothes for very long, if at all.  I had an ultrasound on Monday, and at 32 weeks, she's weighing in at a whopping 4 lbs and 11 ounces.  With 8 weeks left to go, she easily could exceed the 5-8 lb weight range that newborn clothes (and diapers for that matter!) boast.  Oiy!

We have one of her smaller drawers dedicated to burp cloths and a few bibs:

And then her other two small drawers will be dedicated to diapers / wipes / etc..  We are using this for a changing table too after all!

So, that's just her folded clothes.  Her closet is looking quite full too!

The top row is newborn and 0-3 month clothing.

The middle row is 3 month clothing

And the bottom row is 6 month clothing.

We dedicated the top of the closet to clothes that she'll grow into.  I sorted out the age groups of clothes, and then put them in individual bags based on size.

6-12 months

6-9 months

9-12 months

12 months

18 months +

I actually used the gift tags on the bag to label the clothing size too.

That way, when she's outgrown these clothes, we can do a swap!  I like that the gift bags are pretty up there too...pretty, practical, and functional...right up my Engineering self's ally!

We've dedicated two of Kalia's baskets from her closet already too.

One has hats, beanies, headbands, and leggings :

And the other has socks and mittens.

I've already been forewarned by Chris that he will more than likely put socks on her hands at some point.  He was so cute doing all of this with me this weekend...I had to explain to him what the headbands and mittens were for, and how the swaddles and sleepers worked.  He's going to make such a good Daddy!

It was a lot of work sorting through and folding her clothes, but it was exciting and fun work!  These little tiny outfits are so adorable, and I can't wait to have a little tiny body to put in them!!  Less than eight weeks to go!!  Woot!

Hope everyone is having a great Wednesday!

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Nursery Room - Finished Dresser

I'm so happy to say, Kalia's dresser is finally finished!  It took us a few solid weekends to build it, and it took lots of days and nights in the garage to get it finished paint wise, but it's done!  Painting was about a billion step process...so get ready for an overloaded picture post!

First up, we taped and primed the dresser and the drawers.  We used Kilz water based primer...I don't really prefer this over other primers in general, but I need to use water based because of Kalia, so it gets the job done.

Next up, we painted the dresser with two coats of the same blue from Kalia's closet.  I think this picture is just the first coat, so just picture the second coat with a little bit deeper of a color!

Here's where the fun part came in, and Chris exited stage right.  Well, here's where the creative part came in anyways!  I didn't exactly know what I wanted the finished product of this to look like.  I wanted to tie in all of the exisiting pieces in Kalia's nursery...the crib, the daybed, the alphabet wall, the bookshelves, and her closet system.

First I attempted to dry brush on some grey paint and followed that up with more dry brushing of a mix of white and the same blue that her dresser is painted, and distressed the edges of the drawers.

It wasn't bad, but it wasn't the look I was going for.  And replicating this on the entire dresser was going to be a pain in my rear.

Next, I painted over a different drawer front with the grey color from her walls...

And then when that dried, I sanded both drawer faces down to see if I liked either one of those looks.  I didn't worry about getting an even coat of the grey above because I knew I planned on sanding to allow the blue to show back through.

Hmph.  Both of these are sort of cool in their own rights, but still not the look I was going for.  Third time was a charm though!  I decided I wanted something a bit more subtle, but that still added depth and dimension to the piece, so I mixed up a 'white wash' (really a grey/blue wash) of 8 parts water, 3/4 parts grey and 1/4 part blue.

I didn't worry too much about the paint brush getting fully dry.  I made sure I wasn't slopping water around everywhere, and then wiped this on the drawer front.

Then I took a soft rag and wiped off the excess in the direction of the wood.

To end up with this :

Which I finally liked!  After I repainted over my other two experiment drawers with the blue again, I applied this white wash to all of the drawers and the entire dresser.  I actually had to have Chris do the white wash to the bottom shelf because I couldn't handle squatting or lying down with my new large and in charge body I'm carrying around these days.  I tried to just roll with whatever outcome happened...worst case, we can go back and refinish this dresser later!

Next up, I wanted to add glaze.  I wanted sort of a modern vintage feel, and I debated about going back and taking my sander to the edges of everything, but decided since we had done such a nice job at avoiding drips and painting those edges, I'd just add the glaze for now, and perhaps go back and distress later.  You know, in case I'm bored and need something else to do ... ha!

I added glaze to the entire drawer, and wiped off the glaze from the front, but left the glaze concentrated around the edges.

I wanted to leave a thick glaze border around the edges, but didn't want a clean line of glaze, so I used an old tee-shirt, and pushed the glaze to the edges of the drawer fronts until I had something I was happy with.

The glazing was the biggest pain in the rear part of this whole project.  I know this look isn't for everyone, but it definitely gave me the look I was going for.  I did this for all five drawer faces...here's the three small ones finished :

I feel like the glaze makes the blue pop against it.  After these were done, I glazed around the edges of the entire dresser.  Holy lots of work!!  Chris had to do the bottom shelf again, so he's learned a bit of painting technique.  I think he's on par with building, but his patience hasn't quite mastered the finishing work just yet!

At this point I stopped taking step by step pictures.  We had to move the dresser indoors because the AC people needed the garage, and I was just so ready to get this thing DONE!  We painted three coats of polycrilic on the top of the dresser and the drawer faces, and everywhere else got two coats.  I sanded with 220 grit sandpaper inbetween each coat.

On Saturday night, we installed the handles on the dresser, and I can't explain how happy I was to finally move the finished product into Kalia's nursery!

Ready to see how it turned out?!

TADA!!!!

Pottery Barn had sent me a $25 off $50 coupon, so I ordered three different sets of handles, but decided these ones tied in best with her room.  They give the straight lined dresser a little bit more of a feminine feel and tie in nicely with her crib.

I also like that they fit the 'feel' of the dresser and compliment the glazing really well.

I added two of the baskets that I had gotten from my baby shower to the bottom of the dresser, and then put up these two picture frames I picked up a little while back from Z-Gallerie.  I'll put pictures in there before too long.

The diapers in the basket on the right are from the diaper cake I also received at my baby shower.  Diaper cakes are so fun as decoration, but man oh man, unrolling a million newborn sized diapers sure is a lot of work!

Here's the view when you first walk in Kalia's room:

And here's how the the dresser ties in with the crib :

Here's how it ties in with the daybed and alphabet wall :

And here's an attempted shot at how the three tie in together.  It's not the best, but you get the idea!

Next up for the nursery...adding wall decor above this dresser!  Hopefully I can work on most of that project without causing too much stress on my back.  I started my 8 month of pregnancy today...time is a tickin'!

So what do you think?  Do you like the final outcome of the dresser?!  Every time we walk into her room, we love it more and more.  This nursery sure has been a labor of love!

One reminder ... here's where we started with this wall :

Whew!  I'm exhausted just looking at how far we've come!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  Happy Monday!

To see all things nursery related, click here.  To see the paint colors I used, click here and scroll to the bottom.

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Finally! Finished Pool Deck

I'm so happy to say that our pool deck area is finally finished!!!  You know, for now...  It's done enough that we could finally put all of our furniture back on it this week, and it's at a point where it's checked off our "to-do" list before Kalia gets here.  Yes, I said it was almost finished back in October...I know.  Some things just take awhile!

Since October, we had a pool screen guy come and replace the entire screen.  Because of first trimester woes, planning a baby shower, our babymoon, and working on Kalia's nursery, finishing up the pool deck got put on the back burner for quite some time.

This past weekend though, Chris and I put two coats of sealer on the deck.  Thank goodness too because it was a wet wet week!  I tried to get decent pictures of the pool deck all week, but this is what the back of my back yard looked like this morning from the all week pouring down rains that we got :

Last weekend was beautiful though.  Here's Chris pouring the sealer into our round-up sprayer :

Because I'll start my 8 month of pregnancy on Monday, Chris is really weary about me lifting too much.  So, we came up with a good game plan to seal the pool deck.

Chris carried around the back pack and pumped while I sprayed.  Chris back rolled the areas that I sprayed to make sure that we got a nice even coat.

I know, my husbands work clothes are H.O.T!

Yes, that meant that I couldn't get any further away than about 2 feet from Chris.  It was quite comical, but quite efficient.

We weren't so lucky with the second coat.  The sprayer broke, and we were too anxious to get the job done to make a trip down to any home improvement stores before finishing.  We just put the sealer in a paint tray and Chris rolled the deck that way while I scooted around on my rear and painted all of the edges with a paint brush.  Not exactly fun, but hey...it worked!

Besides Florida rain leading to mold / mildew issues, another big reason we insisted on sealing the pool deck is so that when Kodi decides to walk on it looking like this :

We can just spray off the dirt and not worry about staining the pavers.  And because I'm clumsy...but we can just blame that on Kodi.

Lets go back and show you where we started :

And here's where we are today :

One of my favorite features of this house is that the sliders to the living room open all the way up.  It's great for entertaining!

We painted the pool deck ledge, the house, and the trim.

As well as the pool deck ceiling.

We painted the outside area of the house too and the trim, and then spray painted the outside lights blue to tie in with the inside blue ceiling.

It's so much more relaxing and fun outside now!  Pretty in pink pool deck is GONE!  Woo Hoo!

We actually removed the old 1x2's at the bottom of the screen and had the paver guys install the pavers all of the way to the edge of the existing pool deck.  Then when the screen guys came, we had them install the 1x2's over top of the pavers to give it a new pool look.  It was a lot more work (getting up the 1x2's), but it was most definitely worth it!

Even Kodi approves of the 1x2's being on top of the pavers!

The thing I've missed most about not using our pool deck for the past 4ish months...

Sitting right here with Chris on the weekend mornings and drinking our coffee before getting our day started.  This weekend, this habit will resume!

Tip for anyone going through the whole pool / screen remodel...don't let the contractors take your old aluminum.  We took our old 1x2's from the bottom of the screen enclosure and made an extra $50.

Oh, and wanna know what else was going on this week?!

We got a complete new AC system installed...so next winter, we'll have heat!!  Woo Hoo!!

We want to repaint the patio furniture, and eventually add some cushions or something to brighten it up out there, but like I said...it's good enough for now!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!  TGIF!

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