Nursery To Do # 15

Ironically, after posting my nursery to do list earlier this week, I finally found the perfect chest to use as a changing table!  

I have been watching Craigslist for a long time and just haven't seen the perfect piece for the right price in a location that I was willing to go to until yesterday.  

And, even more ironically, or not really at all if you know us, I emailed the Craigslist listing to Emily to see what she thought and before it reached her, she had sent me the same Craigslist listing to see what I thought!  That's how we work.  It's really not surprising at all at this point!

Anyways, here is the dresser.  It is a 6 drawer French Provincial style dresser with beautiful curved lines and frilly hardware!  I think it will be so sweet and girly in the nursery! 

I am not sure yet whether I will leave it as is or try to paint it.  It will all depend on how the entire room comes together.  

I love the curved mirror too! I will definitely hang it on the wall instead of mounting it to the dresser.  I think it might look good gold leafed or painted gold to go along with my gold crib and gold frame in the room but who knows...time will tell once the bedding and everything else comes together.

Nursery To Do List

I made myself a list of just a few things that we have left to do on the nursery.  It's not overwhelming at all, right?  Can you think of anything else that needs to be added?

 

1. Iron Crib - on order

 

2. Buy crib mattress

 

3. Pick nursery fabric

 

4. Shop for eyelet ruffle / trim

 

5. Have bedding made

 

6. Paint chandelier

 

7. Hang chandelier

 

8. Add dimmer switch

 

9. Finish painting trim & doors; paint ceiling

 

10. Pick & paint wall color

 

11. Buy & install glass door knobs

 

12. Consider curtains

 

13. Clean glider

 

14. Have glider cushion recovered

 

15. Buy chest / changing table

 

16. Buy floor & desk lamp

 

17. Shop for bookshelf

 

18. Buy / make mobile

 

19. Select nursery art

 

20. Find side table to go beside glider

When I asked Brad if I left anything off, he said, "Have the baby!"  Good thing that I can say I am working on that every day!

Then he followed that email up with the most wonderful email a husband can send.  

"Which of these can I help with or do?  At first glance, I was thinking numbers 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11.

Remember you are not alone - we are a team and I want to help!!!"

Good thing I have the day off today to run around town working on my list!  Wish me luck!  I hope I make some progress.

The Beach...Last Post

I almost forgot completely to post these pictures from the beach!  

Here is a list of characters in pictures!

The Hubby!  One of the few shots I have of him from the week.

Emily! I love this shot!  This one was part of our photo shoot with Mom.

Elizabeth and her fiance Alex!

Jeffrey!  What a stud!  He is now taller than I am by a couple of inches and much stronger, obviously!  

Here is the entire group including Mom (who I don't have an individual picture of) and minus Brad since he was already back in Birmingham.

Dad went to The Farm in Blount County all week to work on the cabin and the new barn!  Here are a few of the pictures he sent during the week.  We missed you Daddy!

Look how good its looking!  I can't wait til its done!

The Barn

Mulberry River

New wall board (horizontal board) on the walls in the timber frame cabin!

23 Weeks

Here is my baby bump at 23 weeks!  

(I am now 24 weeks as of yesterday) 

This week has been fun because even most strangers can tell that I am pregnant!  

I had to reschedule my doctors appointment for this week so no doctor update yet.

Sadly, the nursery fabric was no longer available from the store I ordered it from.  The company has discontinued it.  UGH!  So, now I am going to call all of the stores who carry the line of New Arrivals Inc. fabric to see if they have any in stock.  If this doesn't work, then I will have to officially give up and create a new vision.  

Here is the fabric swatch called "Cabbage Rose."  It is a vintage-like floral on a white background with light and dark pink, light green, sage, and turquoise blue colors!  I love it!

Photography 101 at the Beach

One of my goals while at the beach was to refresh my memory on long forgotten photography lessons.  I took photography classes in high school and college and loved them!  Unfortunately, I don't remember much.  My Mom is an excellent photographer so I wanted to learn from her while we were together! Also, the beach is one of the best places that I can think of to practice photography!

I am not going to include the outtakes since I have so many pictures to post, but I practiced "bracketing" which is taking the same picture in manual mode while changing the settings to see how each setting effects the picture.

The Basic Terms:

Aperture
F22 Smallest aperture, least light, longest depth of field
F4 Largest aperture, most light, shortest depth of field


Shutter Speed

1/30 Slowest, need very stable hand or tripod

1/250 Standard, fast shutter speed

1/4000 Super fast for action shot

Film Speed Without Flash

ISO 100: Outdoor lighting, good sun

ISO 200: Lower light, general use

ISO 400: Lower light, general use

ISO 800: Shaded area

ISO 1600: Shaded area, will give grainier look

Sunny 16

Sunny 16

Sunny16

While shooting in manual mode, here are some reliable standard rules to follow to achieve the perfect exposure depending on the type of weather that you are shooting in.

First, pick the aperture based on the weather.

Then, take note of your ISO (film speed) (let's call it "X").  Now set your shutter speed to 1/X.  So at ISO 100, you would use a shutter speed of 1/100 seconds.

You may want to use different shutter speeds or apertures depending on the effect you are trying to achieve.  You can adjust either one as long as you adjust the other accordingly.  Opening up by one full aperture (f-number) requires cutting your shutter speed in half (and visa versa).
Full F-Stops
f/1 – f/1.4 – f/2 – f/2.8 – f/4 – f/5.6 – f/8 – f/11 – f/16 – f/22 – f/32 – f/45

Sunny 16 Rule

F/16

ISO 100

Shutter Speed 1/100

Slight Overcast F/11 Rule

F/11

ISO 100

Shutter Speed 1/100

F/8

ISO 100

Shutter Speed 1/100

Heavy Overcast 5.6 Rule

F/5.6

ISO 100

Shutter Speed 1/100

Sunset 4 Rule

F/4

ISO100

Shutter Speed 100

Overcast 8 Rule

Sunny 16

To freeze action, increase your shutter speed.

The water picture below shows soft, undefined water.

F/16

ISO 100

Shutter Speed 1/00

The water picture below shows highly detailed, frozen water droplets. 

F/5.6 (I wasn't worried about having a long depth of field and needed to let in more light to accommodate for faster shutter speed)

ISO 800 (Not sure if I meant to change this but it let it more light and I like it)

Shutter Speed 1/4000

Blurry Background

 Increase the size of your aperture to achieve a blurry background.   Move from higher aperture number (F/16) which gives a long depth of field to a smaller aperture number (F5.6) which shortens the depth of field.

If you are increasing your aperture and need to keep the same exposure, then you have to change the shutter speed by equal steps that you changed the aperture.

Stops                         0             -1           -2

                                  ISO                               100           100         100                                      

Aperture                     F/11           F/8           F/5.6 

Shutter Speed               1/250        1/500      1/1000

F/5.6 (Let in more light and gave blurry background)
ISO 400 (Light was decreasing fast as the sun was setting)
 Shutter Speed 1/200 (Standard)

F/4 (For blurry background)
ISO 100 (Bright sun)
1/250 (Standard)

Portrait Pictures

F/5.6 will provide a fairly blurry background with subject in focus

F/11 will provide two rows of people in focus

F/4
ISO 800 (Much higher than necessary and let in too much light)
1/4000 (Not necessary here to record any action)

Overexposed Shot

I let in too much light with the shot above, but I ended up liking it better than the "perfectly exposed" shot below.

Sunny 16

Slow-Sync Flash
If you are out to eat with friends at night in a restaurant, setting your flash to "auto-slow" will allow all of the available ambient light to be let in and light your background.

Silhouettes
Waited till sun was setting and the sun was as directly behind me (the subject) as possible.  Point lens directly towards sun.  This is my amateur silhouettes lesson...I am sure there is much more to this!

I know that I have a ton more to learn, especially how to adjust the white balance, but this was a good start!  I am really enjoying getting to know my camera!

22 Weeks

I've been away for a while.  We went to the beach for Spring Break and I just returned yesterday!  

I, unfortunately, missed taking a belly picture during week 21.  Things just got too busy trying to get out of town.   But, while we were at the beach, we took some belly shots during week 22!   

So, here I am at 22 1/2 weeks!

I am now 23 weeks so I will hopefully be back later this week with another belly shot to keep me on track.  My belly is getting bigger everyday!

Everything is still going well so far.  I go back to the doctor this week for another check-up.  My only complaint is still the hip pain when I sleep.  My friend Sabrina let me borrow her Snoogle maternity pillow which has certainly helped, but it did not relieve the pain completely.

Also, we have a first name picked out for our sweet baby girl but are still working on the middle name.  I will post her full name once we decide!

As for the nursery, I ordered my crib and the main nursery fabric before I left for the beach!  The crib will take 12-15 weeks to get here, but once I get a few more details worked out, I will do a preliminary post on the nursery design.  I hope my vision comes together!

Girly Girl

Last week I went consignment shopping with my friend Jessica at the Lil Lambs Consignment Sale at Trinity Methodist Church.  

We were some of the first people in so I had good luck!  I got lots of girly girl outfits that are 9 and 12 months for this time next year!

I love the fish smocking and matching bloomers!

Came with matching bloomers!

Kissy Kissy smocked bubble!

I love the scalloped stitching on the bottom of this dress!

I love blue and turquoise for little girls!

As soon as I saw this little outfit, it reminded me of ones Emily and I wore when we were little!  Can you stand it?  (I'm the one of the left facing the camera.)

I don't think there will be any shortage of flowers, ruffles, and pink in our house!

Homemade Frozen Yogurt

So, my friend Jackie from college and I just discovered each other's blogs!  As I was reading through hers, I found this great reciepe for heathly, homemade frozen yogurt!  Thanks for sharing Jackie!  Now I just need to find a Cuisinart and give it a try!

Here's what Jackie said:

So, you can imagine my excitement when I saw one of my favorite bloggers Healthy Tipping Point make a reference to a post titled "This Post Will Change Your Life" written by one of her favorite bloggers, Choosing Raw.

Why will that post change your life, you might wonder? Because it is a recipe for healthy ice cream/frozen yogurt. And it couldn't be more simple!

Start with some bananas (I've been doing three - I don't think it matters how many, but one of those posts says doing just one doesn't work very well).

Peel them, cut them into chunks, put them in a plastic baggie or tupperware, and put them in the freezer to freeze thoroughly (like, overnight freeze).

Once frozen, put all the chunks in your food processor. (You should note that the food processor is pretty necessary for this because a blender's motor isn't designed to run for 5 minutes straight.)

Set a timer for five minutes, just because when you're mixing, it seems like you're doing it longer than you actually are. Five minutes is maybe slightly generous - but you don't want to give up until you've reached the full fluff potential, so having a reference time is good.

And then just mix them for about 5 minutes, stopping occasionally to scrape stuff down with your spatula. The original recipe doesn't call for anything other than bananas, but I've found that after maybe a minute or so, a pretty thick, clumpy ball of banana forms like this.

At this point, I usually add a little bit of vanilla soymilk to help break it up. This is not called for in the original recipe, but I also like that it adds a little vanilla flavor to the mixture.

So after around 5 minutes, you'll noticed the mixture has about tripled in size, and what you have is this.

It's basically the exact texture of frozen yogurt. Only it's 100x more filling because it's a banana and has all that fiber.

If you love frozen yogurt, try this! It's such an interesting idea, I think. I've also been thinking of all the cool things you could do to it... You could throw in a few pieces of other frozen fruit to mix up the flavor. You could throw in some spices like cinnamon or nutmeg. You could mix stuff in after it's been made (like maybe nuts or chocolate chips). You could top it with chocolate syrup/caramel sauce/melted peanut butter/etc. The possibilities are endless! I'm wondering what would happen if you froze some Greek yogurt in an ice cube tray and tossed a couple of those in... (One small disclosure, this is never as awesome the next day. Even if you set it out to warm up a little, the texture is really at its peak fresh out of the Cuisinart. I would imagine you could re-food process the frozen mixture the next day [but really, I hate cleaning the cuisinart as is, so I just deal with the fact that it isn't as froyo-ie the next day.])

20 Weeks

Here is my belly shot at 20 Weeks (a little blurry)!!  Halfway there!!  I think it grew between yesterday and today!

In honor of the halfway mark, here is a progression of my belly shots so far starting with week 11, the first week I took a belly picture, up to last week!  Apparently, I didn't take a belly pic during week 12.  This line up makes it very easy to see the growth!  

As you can see, there is a big difference between weeks 18 and 19 since my belly barely fits in the picture!! 

Thank you Kat for making these line-ups for me...I couldn't have done it without you!!  

  

I have had another good week and am so thankful for the way I feel!  I feel like I am at full-speed and will run with it as long as it lasts!   I have been back to the gym twice (a big step!) and have been walking a lot!  Baby Girl is very active and moves around all the time which I love! 

It seems that my sweet tooth has kicked in this past week.  I have had TCBY, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and chocolate ice cream!!  Oops!  And I have been craving honey mustard.  I made grilled chicken salad with honey mustard dressing twice, honey mustard pork tenderloin, and have put honey mustard on my turkey sandwiches.

I am working on the nursery but don't have anything picked for sure yet.  We also have a first name for our baby girl but are still working on the middle name!  I will post her full name once we have it figured out!

In other news, I made Easy Crock-Pot Beef Stroganoff from her blog this week!  It was delicious and Brad said I should add it to the regular rotation!  Any recipes you love?  I love blog inspiration for dinner!

Project Paint Update

This weekend, we finished painting, scraping, and cleaning all 11 windows!!

Once the windows were finished, it meant we were ready for shutters.  Yesterday, they were installed  and they look beautiful!!  Thank you Tom & Joanne for buying them for us!!

We have also put two coats on the trim in Brad's office which means we are done in that room except for the 2 doors.  Now, onto the other trim...