Merry Christmas from Tennessee

 Merry Christmas from the Tennessee mountains!  We are here for six lovely days spending time with my parents and sister Megan who came all the way from Chicago to be here.  Six days of relaxation, eating yummy food, staying in our jammies until 3 or 4pm, and watching old movies.  Six days of not being at work or working on the house.  Ahhhh, just what we needed!

Enjoy these photos taken today of our Christmas together  :)

Our 2012 Holiday card

pretty Megs

Lucy in her new Christmas jammies

Vegan recipe book that Megan gave to us

Power-washer that my Dad gave to my Mom.  Clearly they were all very excited for her!

Erik and his silly new undies

Erik and sweet baby Lucy

we are now the proud parents of a little baby... Roomba.

little sailor whale I crocheted on the long drive to TN.  pattern here

We are having a wonderful time and I wish we could stay for an entire month!  I feel so lucky to be here surrounded by the ones I love.  Life is good  :)

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the B's!

house progress

Yikes!  How is it almost Christmas already?  I posted that last post on Halloween, like, sometime last week  ;)  The new house has been consuming every spare moment of free time keeping us quite busy, but I have to say our hard work is paying off.  I took all of last week off from my real job, which gave me 9 solid days of working on the house, all day everyday.  Next week we will be in Tennessee staying with my parents for Christmas so we will both have a much needed break from all this work!  Here are some photos of our progress so far:

corner of the guest bath where 1960's vanity once lived (it was actually a sink in the guest bedroom, and the toilet/shower is in a separate area to the right.  people in the 60's did some weird things!)

Erik building new walls in guest room, creating a new bathroom, linen closet and large walk-in closet around where the old vanity once sat.

Walls (partially) built.  Actually this is now complete - mudded, primed and painted but all these photos came from Erik's iPhone and I can't seem to find a more recent one...

I can build work tables.... Or at least pretend...  This is in the master bedroom aka "upstairs workroom!"

  

New master bath shower that Erik is in the process of building.  It started as a tiny square fiberglass shower stall.  He knocked out the back wall, extending it into the bedroom.  Then he built new walls and moved the plumbing.  The photo on the left is the poured "bed"  of the shower and on the right is the floor tile just after it was installed.

Wood-look floor tile for the master bath.  Still needs grout.  I am so in love with this tile...

Step by step plug installation by yours truly.  I also spent a lot of time changing out plugs and switches last week, and only received two electrical shocks, yay.   Also, I am the only person I know of that wears self-crocheted ear warmers while doing electrical work.  What can I say, I was cold!

There are no pictures of it for some reason, but I spent the majority of my time priming and painting the upstairs bedrooms.  I only have the master bed/bath and hallways to go, then I can start working downstairs.  Almost halfway done!!  At the start of this project we thought we might be done in January... Then it became February...  Now our projected move in month is March.  I think this is a pretty realistic goal, but we will see how things go when we start the projects downstairs, which includes the kitchen and a another complete bathroom renovation...

In other news, I found out last week that I was accepted for a fertility study which I had inquired about a few weeks back.  I had actually wanted to participate in it last spring when we first started trying to get pregnant, but I was not yet 30 years old.  This time around, I meet all the criteria so I can join the study.  I have a couple reasons for wanting to participate in it.  First, I have actually always wanted to join a study, and the idea of being a part of research is pretty cool.  Second, the study program provides you with up to 60 free pregnancy tests during the course of the study.  You already know: a.) how expensive those things are and b.) how much I like free things...  And finally, probably the most attractive part of it, is that once you become pregnant, they perform (also at no charge) an early ultrasound around 7 weeks.  I went back and forth on whether or not this was a good idea, but given what happened last time, I decided this would be good for peace of mind.  I know the beginning of the next pregnancy will be full of anxiety as I wait to pass the 10 week mark, and knowing at 7 weeks that things are all good (hopefully), will hopefully alleviate some stress.

So we were planning to start trying again at the end of January as I was pretty sure I would be done with the painting by then.  I don't want to be breathing in all those weird chemicals (even though we are using all zero VOC paint) while pregnant.  However, this whole painting thing is a way bigger job than I thought it would be, and we have decided to postphone trying until the next cycle, which should be the end of February.  Right now, that sounds like a million years away, but I know how fast time is moving right now and it will be here before I know it.  I keep telling myself to enjoy this time of working on the house with Erik, and I am, but the whole baby thing is always on my mind.  There is not a day that has gone by since that day in June that I don't think about it.  And I guess perhaps that is how it will be for a while still.  Anyway...

 Until next time...

boo!

Happy Halloween from our lil' devil!

Recently made things

After uploading what seems like a zillion pictures on to my laptop in recent days, I realized there have been quite a few crafty things that I have been making that I have forgot to share with you.  So here ya go!

Dim the lights, cue the music, and enjoy the craftiness...

First up, pillows!  The burlap pillow was inspired by some similar projects seen recently in pinterest.  Not one in particular gave me the idea for this project, however I did follow this tutorial on how to make an envelope style pillow.  The bird and "b" were stenciled using fabric paint, and well, a stencil.  Very, very easy.

The mustard yellow crochet pillow seen below was also an idea from pinterest, however I did follow a pattern for it.  Free tutorial found here.  Giant button bought at Jo-Anns.  I am so in love with how it turned out I can't wait to make another one!

I also recently crochet a couple gifts for a coworker who is expecting a baby in November.  I love how this hat turned out!  Free pattern here:  earflap hat.

 Like the little tag attached to the hat?  Oh yea, I made that too...  Inspired by this pin...  Recently I bought some rubber stamps so I can stamp the words instead of writing them out, but I haven't actually made any quite yet.  I will be attaching these to all my hand-made gifts from now on!

The back of the gift tags

This crochet crocodile was a gift for a different baby shower and I loved it so much I had to make another for myself...  Pattern was bought on etsy.

And finally, in the last few days I made a crocheted a Rabbit to coordinate with my Little Veggie Mobile.  If you are interested in making your own Roux the Rabbit, the pattern is for sale in my etsy store.

Hope you enjoyed that crafty photo bomb! You will be happy to know, it has been Bosco approved...

Little Veggie Baby Mobile

After some moderate success with selling my Bees Mobile Pattern on etsy, I decided to write another mobile crochet pattern!  It has taken me about a month to write the pattern, make the mobile, photograph it, and put it on etsy, but I finally finished.  Introducing, the little Veggies:

This pattern features four cute little veggies: Ethel the Eggplant, Carl the Carrot, Piper & Pete the Petite Peas, and Ruby the Radish, as well as Roux the Rabbit all hanging from a lovely wooden hoop.  

If you are interested, the pattern can be purchased here:  Little Veggie Mobile Pattern

As well, you can visit my etsy store and see all my items here:  the bird's & the B's etsy shop

Happy hooking!

Turning 29... again.

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my 29th birthday.  I have decided to stay 29 for a few more years, ha!

Today we are closing on our new house  :D

Such a lovely present for my (second) 29th birthday...

One Year Anniversary

Last week to celebrate our one year wedding anniversary, we took a little trip to the Outer Banks along the beautiful NC coast.  Last year we spent our honeymoon on Hilton Head Island so I guess it's becoming somewhat of a tradition to head to the beach!  Strangely enough, the day of our anniversary (September 10th) is actually the peak of hurricane season (remember, giant weather nerd here)  but fortunately we have been lucky enough to have great weather for both trips.  As well, there was much to celebrate with having survived the first year of marriage and all... ha  ;)

Here are a few photos from our trip:

My favorite picture  ❤

At the end of photo shoots we almost always end with silly pictures!

Sunset from the pier

Jockeys Ridge Sand Dunes

Erik tried (unsuccessfully) to boogie board down the dunes!

I scored this sweet little dress for only $10 at the beach shop next to our hotel.  Apparently everything goes on super clearance at the beach after Labor Day, so needless to say we did a LOT of shopping!

Baywatch style... haha.  Trying out his new boogie board and bathing suit in the cold ocean!

Mimosas on the balcony on the morning of our anniversary

Several weeks before our trip, I had this "great idea" for a photo shoot on the actual day of our anniversary that involved dressing up in our wedding attire and taking a few photos on the beach.  Little did I know the evenings would be much cooler than the days, accompanied by gale force winds.  Ok so I don't exactly know what "gale force winds" even means, but let's just say had it been any worse it would have lifted up my dress and carried me away Mary Poppins style...  Despite the cool weather and blustery conditions, we still managed to have a successful shoot.  Here are a few of my favorites:

The tag was suppose to "dangle" more from our fingers but with the wind and all this was the best we could do!

Yes, in the chilly air and gale force winds (ha) we decided to do the photo I had been looking forward to most of all...  Taking off our clothes and running towards the beach in nothing but our undies!  :D

tiles borrowed from one of our favorite board games...

Along with taking a bunch of photos, we also went to see a band called Perpetual Groove, rode our bikes around Kill Devil Hills, did a lot of shopping, a LOT of eating, lat night hot tubbing, visited the Wright Brothers Memorial, went to the Sand Dunes, and even did a little dancing after our fancy anniversary dinner.  So much fun, we have already discussed which beach we will be heading to next year...

We survived year one, here is to many more to follow...