We're floored

As previously noted, I invested in carpet tiles from FLOR to use as an area rug in the nursery.

The carpet tiles are environmentally friendly and touted as very easy to use. I watched a segment on Martha Stewart where they showed people scoring the tiles on the back and then snapping them in half and I was hooked. I even created a design that I was really excited about using that would require a lot of cutting, but would be worth it in the end because of the whimsical nature of the design.


However, when the tiles came, I determined very quickly that cutting the tiles was in no way, shape or form as easy as they made it look on TV. The problem is that you have to have a perfectly straight line and it is difficult to get the carpet knife to score flat against the measuring device. If you don't cut in an exact straight line, than they won't line up well and your carpet will have gaps in it...which wouldn't be that big of a deal if you were putting different colors next to each other, but I was planning on putting white next to white in order to make the design above. (PLUS the tiles are all 19.something" square...so you don't even get a nice even measurement to work with.)

So, it was time to rethink my options. I was fortunate that the green tiles came already pre-cut in half, so I at least had some variety to work with.

The first design I tried was based off of the design on the website with wide and thin stripes:

I liked how the stripes worked well with the stripe on the wall, but my husband wasn't a huge fan of it not being symmetrical so I decided to mix up the colors in the middle:

That combination was ok, but was neither pizazzy nor simple/classic. So we decided to change up the outer stripes as well and came up with our final and permanent design:

I like how the longer, thin stripes that set off the sections still evoke the stripe on the wall, yet the carpet seems much more kid-appropriate now. The squares are all replaceable and I have extra squares in case we ever need to do that. Also, they attach to each other and not to the floor, which means when I decide in a week to flip the whole thing around so that the white squares aren't in such a high traffic area, I won't have to undo any of my work.

So, we're getting there...I still don't have a theme and I think that is the way I want to keep it. I figure the room will be filled with toys eventually and the colors won't really matter anymore, but for now, it seems to be working out to be a fairly peaceful place to hang out and be a baby.

Crib notes

We ordered our crib over the weekend from Pottery Barn Kids. We were attracted to the two tone wood and the fact that the drawers under the crib are actual drawers and not just a place for stuff to get dusty in something that seems like a drawer but is actually a dust magnet under the mattress.

I was hesitant to get a crib where the side didn't lower, but we are both tall, so once I tried out putting something in a crib and easily not using the side gate, I figured we would be ok. We did not go for the toddler bed conversion kit because for all intents and purposes, once the kid is able to climb out of the crib, we'll just move him to a big-boy bed and reserve the crib for baby #2.

It was definitely more than we wanted to spend, but we decided we wanted to be sure that the crib would last through two (or more*) kids, and that it was well manufactured and an actual piece of furniture...rather than some particle board with slats.

All in all, I think it will be a great addition to the nursery and I am super glad that we found something that we both like and will last for a long time.

*The plan really is for two...but you never know.

Now what?

For the past year I have been involved with my own personal iPod project. I have 6525 songs on my iPod some of which I had never heard. I blame my BMG and Columbia House addictions from the early '90's for that.

So, in order to assure that I had listened to every song I had, I started listening to every song in alphabetical order sometime last Spring.

And yesterday, I finally finished.

I guess I'll go hit shuffle now.

The sweetest gift

So one of the crazy things about being pregnant is that I can actually convince myself that I am totally faking it and not really pregnant.

I know.

In fact, the only thing that keeps me from completely convincing myself most days is that I haven't had a period since early October and I figure no matter how mentally unstable I clearly must be, I can't really fake that.

Of course, when I mentioned this to my husband a couple of months ago he looked at me like he was about to call the authorities. That was before he had been to any of my appointments, so for all he knew I really WAS making the whole thing up.

Once my first trimester was over and I started to feel better, this ridiculous fear really started taking over because I wasn't showing and I really was convinced that I had been lying about feeling awful for three months.

Last Friday we both went to the Drs office for my second trimester ultrasound and we found out a few wonderful things.

First, our baby is healthy.

No holes in the head for the brains to escape, no holes in the diaphram for the organs to shift around (lest you think I am completely neurotic, those two things happened to dear friends of ours and they discovered it at the second trimester ultrasound so I was particularly nervous). They were even able to see that the baby doesn't have a cleft lip, it has all ten toes and fingers and it has a healthy, four chambered heart. Also, all the screening tests came back reading that we were at low risk. And lastly, we found out it was a boy.

When we got home, there was a package waiting for us and my husband insisted that even though it was my Valentines present, he thought I should open it right away. That, of course, made me think it was perishable, but instead it was the sweetest gift I have ever gotten.

He got me an at-home doppler kit** so that I can listen to the baby's heartbeat whenever I get convinced that I'm not pregnant.

Of course, in the past couple of weeks I have actually started showing and that combined with all the information we received at the ultrasound has kept me on this side of sane, but still...it was such a sweet gesture.

What did you get for Valentines Day?

**Now, before you get all clinical on me, we are both aware the the at-home systems aren't foolproof and that they can lead to anxiety if you don't get a reading, so we have promised ourselves not to freak out if we don't hear what we want to hear.

Line!?

Originally I had wanted to paint a mural on the wall of the nursery in the corner of the room...perhaps a tree or a pattern of leaves and flowers...but in the end I deemed that way too ambitious of a project to go after when I wasn't even sure if I would like the outcome.

I was a little bored by everything being one color on the walls though, so instead of a mural I painted a 12" stripe around the room two shades lighter than the wall color.

The hardest part was getting the tape on the wall in a straight line. At first I tried my husband's stick-to-the-wall laser level. But it turns out that since our walls are not exactly flat, the line was warped. So I got out the 4 foot standard level and started penciling in lines and then putting down the tape.


I think the final result is pretty cool and definitely exactly what I was going for.

One tip for those attempting this at home...make sure your tape is just above or below the pencil line you have made. There are a few places on our wall where I was just at the line and the paint didn't cover the pencil and now it won't erase from the wall...but it is too close to the line to try and fix it without making a mess. (you can see an example of that below).

So have any of you attempted any paint tricks in your home? Do share!