Terraforming.

My Pemberley shoes from The American Duchess, painted and embellished.

I've slipped into nesting mode as I move into my third trimester. I've been painting and organizing, and fixing things that have been perfectly fine as is up until now. Now, the whole house bugs me, and everything needs to be changed.  We purged YEARS' worth of clutter and had a huge yard sale the weekend before last, made some money and got rid of 8 years of accumulated thingamabobs.  I always feel like I'm being judged by people when they paw through our stuff, but I got a lot of compliments on my good-taste, which was gratifying.  We got rid of some furniture, tons of useless china, linens and cleaned out the entire attic of its contents, all of which were put there when we moved in 2004 and haven't budged since. I figured if we lived without them for as long as we have, we don't need them.

I'm home, on leave from work, and I sit here and think about everything that needs to be fixed before baby comes.  And it's getting close already!  I'm terrified. We still have to attack the baby's room, but that is going to require some major changes, including some new wallboard, new flooring and a heating source. We have less than three months. :::GAAAHHH:::

Baby has been doing well. He's a kickedy little bugger--squirming around inside me like no tomorrow. At this point he weighs a little over two pounds, and in the pictures on babycenter, he looks a lot bigger than he feels inside me. I'm definitely showing now.  I've gone out and furnished myself with a few pairs of maternity jeans and some other clothes. I won't lie, the jeans are a joke, they have this wide elastic band that never stays up, so I spend my whole day walking around holding my pants up.  I find that my yoga pants seem to work better, I may look like I just got out of bed when I'm out in public, but at least I'm not holding the back of my pants up while trying to push a shopping carriage. It's so embarrassing.

I have now experienced the whole edema in the foot thing, and have had my feet looking like cabbage-patch kids feet. I've also gotten to enjoy the new array of soreness and cramping in places I didn't know had muscles to cramp.  Heat rash comes up quite easily and I sleep sometimes for twelve hours straight.  My migraines are tapering, but I still have 'slam' days when I just feel absolutely awful. Some other days, I am okay for most of the day.

So as the review below reveals, we are consolidating our spaces and finding ways to organize our stuff so we can dismantle the second room and empty it for Baby J.  Slowly, my perfect craft and sewing room is vanishing. It's sad, but also exciting.

We have picked a name. Alexander Stephen. Alexander is a name we both love and happens to be Dan's grandfather's name, and Stephen is in honour of my papa. My father's name was Istvan, the Hungarian version of Stephen.

I attended the ORS retreat again this year, and it was really fun.  I wasn't exactly in the most mobile of modes, and didn't do the things I'd hope to do, like try archery or take walks or swim. But I got to hang out with my favourite crowd, and just being around these women was so fortifying.  Here's a video of some photos taken during the event:

Anyway, just a quick update for now. I'll post something more comprehensive sooner or later. Sorry for the slowness... I'm just so damned... pregnant. :)

My Review of Multimedia Library File

Originally submitted at Plow & Hearth

Our retro-style media cabinets will help you get a handle on your collection of music and movies. File away approximately 228 CDs, or 96 DVDs or 48 videocassettes in the 12-Drawer, or 456 CDs, or 192 DVDs or 96 videocassettes in the 24-Drawer, in any combination.

Handcrafted of solid ...

Multimedia Library File

For DVD storage, it may need some mods

By The Hungarican Chick from Welches, Oregon on 8/30/2012

 

4out of 5

Pros: Beautiful Storage Solutio

Cons: Not Exactly As Decribed

Best Uses: Organization

Describe Yourself: Midrange Shopper

Primary use: Personal

Was this a gift?: No

If you want to use this storage unit as a device to hold DVDs you will be required to do a little extra work. It works fine for CD jewel cases and the smaller, shorter Blu-Ray cases, but regular DVD cases are too tall, and after you've wrangled three or four in there, you won't be able to fit any more because the drawers don't open all the way.

For a DVD cabinet, you will have to turn it upside down and look at the bottom back of the drawers. Each drawer has a little dowel keeping it from being pulled out. Yank out the dowel on the bottom row of drawers, pull those out and keep moving upwards until you've pulled all the dowels out. Now your drawers pull all the way out and you can fit each drawer with a stack of DVD cases no problemo. It is only a quick modification and totally worth it, because it's really a gorgeous piece of furniture and it just takes away that cluttered look a shelf full of DVDs can look like.

We also added some small legs to it so it isn't full on the floor and it rises above the baseboard and shoves right up against the wall. We love this piece of furniture, and it's perfect for a small home where space needs to be economized.

(legalese)