dining room re do

We do not have enough images of the amount of wallpaper I peeled! I let the chair rail live... though the living room chair rail did not meet such a pleasant end... but the wallpaper HAD TO GO!

We bought our dining room table and chairs for only $199 at a thrift shoppe near our birth center! Even on craigslist we couldn't find anything this low priced or with this much personality... (the end chairs have a little more personality than I prefer... chair slipcovers are officially added to the list of things to make!)

We started our painting... grey above and grey below... an Ani Difranco line comes to mind.. the sky is grey the sand is grey and the ocean is grey... not sure which is which but I'm happy thinking of any... the names of the paint we found were "intellectual grey" and "annonymous"
I HATE sherwin williams' paint names the same colors in behr were: "Elephant skin" and "toasted walnut"
Come on!

In all of these images you are supposed to not see the boxes in the bookshelf behind the couch... or the big piles of plastic drop cloths and cardboard from painting/moving... hopefully they will be out of our lives very soon! :)

family room re do!

Our "blank slate" which had a little too much wallpaper to really qualify as "blank" if you ask me!

Dan working on our second coat of what we were afraid was going to look like FLYERS ORANGE... it turns out it is much more pumpkinny and much less flyery than we feared!

Putting up bookshelves... who knew we had this many books!

Ta-Da!!!! our "not final but getting close enough to put up pictures" living room!

We were originally looking at painting the room the same color as our "Aunt Edith" chair, but decided a camouflage chair is bad taste! :)

a little behind...

... and no, I can never refer to my own as such! Baby is making sure of that! These past two weeks have been a whirlwind! We've been working to get our living areas set up for daily life. We painted our dining room!!!! And as I speak my dear dear husband is hanging a bunch of hooks in our entryway that I found on sale at anthropologie... Since our delightfully old home has a decided lack of closets we need a place to hang our coats... and what cuter way is there to do that than dreamy little hooks in our hall? (I figure we can hide all our coats whenever we have company so they will not have to wear theirs in the house!)


Today was our 4th baby doctor appointment and though we didn't get to see our baby we did get to hear little baby pea's heartbeat. It gets me giggling every time! And of course baby pea takes my laughing as a cue to get some wiggles out and turn all elusive so the midwife has to slime my whole growing belly to find the little heart beat again! What a goofster! Like its parents I guess! Always gets me giggling more... 


I've been working on expanding my pregnancy wardrobe this week in the quiet moments. I haven't finished anything yet but I'll take pictures as soon as I can make things look good enough.


Life is too crazy these days even though I'm spending a good deal of my time working on peeling wallpaper (only one tiny little nursery left to peel!) and trying to get things in livable order... We're both ready to have our evenings free to sit, talk, read together, listen to Christmas music... (ok, that's mostly me, I started mid september -late for me... so I have to catch up!) We'll get there. Our house is beginning to feel like just that - Our HOUSE! Ours!


So... I'll post some pictures of our house in process here in a bit but first...


some belly pictures

late week 21... this is actually like 21+3... I know, unacceptable! sorry! 

22 Weeks! (today)
You can see the color is a bit different from the one above... the first picture is the actual color of our dining room... I had to change today's a bit because of my red, blotchy, just out of the shower face!

Like my shirt? get it? baby was made in China??? ha! I dusted off my screen printing skills and whipped up this little number... I printed it on a onsie too!

Thumbs UP!

After our first ultrasound we got a call back with a bit of scary news... the words "cyst" and "hemorrhage" and though they also said the words "baby looks perfect", a cyst on the placenta scared us pretty good. We spent some time trying to figure it out on the internet but were extremely relieved to get an appointment at Bryn Mawr hospital this afternoon to get a closer look at things. We only had one day of stress... over what turned out to be totally nothing! No hemorrhage at all and the "cyst" they thought they saw was just a part of the placenta... totally normal. So, all that stress turned out to be just another chance to see our beautiful little baby! We got to see some real thumb sucking and we got the best gift of all... a big thumbs up from the baby, letting us know everything was good in there. (Either that or he really likes the honey nut cheerios I had for breakfast). We feel incredibly relieved and blessed to get a clean bill of health for both baby and mommy. Whew!

Also, today marks 20 weeks, our halfway point! Here are some belly pictures for ya'll!

20 weeks!

First glimpse of baby pea!

Sweet baby pea!!!

Another adorable profile

This was the tail end of some thumb sucking! This is a baby after my own heart!

Look close and you can see the little toes of two little feet...  right next to each other!

Uh, this shot is a little more, uh, alienish... but what can you do?

This is Dan's favorite! You can see the nose (and nostrils) and mouth and the little fingers at baby's chin!

 Just as I suspected Little Pea was exhausted from his busy day of waking me up early and then dancing all day in excitement. When we got to the place baby was a bit tired and uncooperative. I had to do some wiggly dance moves to get baby into good picture taking places. Go figure baby is moving around now! It was amazing to see the little movements I've been feeling and to see that this alien-looking thing inside me looks amazingly human too! It was amazing to see. Next time we see you Baby Pea, you'll be in our arms!

Ultrasound today!!! But, no we're not...

This morning I woke around 3:30am to a swift kick to the bladder. Our little baby pea has been moving around for a while but lately (Usually when dan is close) the baby kicks... not the sweet little rumblings, soft movings, adorable flutters... but swift and surprising. It's not hard enough that it causes me pain... well... it is a pain to have to get up and go to the bathroom when all three Petersons should be sleeping.
After my bathroom trip I was ready to get back to sleep but baby pea was WIDE AWAKE and rolling around - throwing a little party in there! I stayed awake with baby, looking at the moonlight streaming into our bedroom and feeling baby dance.
Dan first felt baby pea move about 2 weeks ago but the past 2 nights he's REALLY felt baby move. It's pretty amazing how baby moves the most when he's close. Even now expecting dan home any minute baby is dancing.
We're extremely excited to see this little baby for the first time. Since we chose to go with a birth center with midwives they tend to do less testing, which we support. If all is well, this will be our only time seeing the baby until he or she is in our arms. We'll post pictures of baby pea as soon as we get them! They may be a bit boring since I'm pretty sure there's a good chance baby got the time wrong and did all its tricks throughout the day today - starting around 3:30 am! :)

Pumpkinny Walls...

19 weeks

So, Dan's fab stepdad came this morning to help us make this home a bit more ours looking! He worked hard transforming our pink ceiling into a white one... (I know, tell me about it! Who has a PINK CEILING??? NOT US!:)  He also turned our pink and formerly wallpapered walls into a perfectly pumpkinny orange. After only the first coat they are a little funny but after he- the professional he is- finishes coat 2 they will be a dream! Makes me want to make some spiced cider!




 Also, today baby is 19 weeks! The size of a large mango! Im able to feel our mango rolling and kicking more everyday. Dan has even felt a little kick or two! This whole baby thing is beginning to feel real! 

little pea

16+ weeks

So, our little one is growing and growing and growing, and unfortunately we are terrible at keeping up with taking pictures. In an effort to document some of our internet free past I'm putting up this picture of little Pea(better than little Peterson, little P, or of course little Pee - though don't be fooled, here little pea is about the size of an avocado, not a real pea!)

New Side Table

So, even though we have to wait to really get our place set up until we're done painting, (we're picking up baby friendly paint at the store this afternoon!!!) I couldn't help pulling over when I passed by a perfectly good end table sitting in someone's trash. Dan helped me (somewhat begrudgingly) carry the table to our car. It took him a bit longer to see what I see in this particular item- unparalleled personality. The table was not, however, allowed to come into the house that night. It needed to "air out" and get thoroughly cleaned before it was to be accepted as a part of our living space. After a thorough cleaning I fell even more in love with my trash picked endtable, and Dan, well... he's warming up.

more images of home