It took way longer than I expected, but I'm excited to finally show off Owen's travel-themed nursery! Hot air balloons and airplanes don the walls, floor and blankets. Fresh white trim against the gray walls looks clean and modern while accents of blue, green and orange brighten the room. This is a huge difference from the floral wallpaper and dated green carpet that decked the room when we bought the house a year ago. Lucas doubted my design plans but admitted it looks great now that it's complete. I had a lot of fun picking out all the pieces and am excited to make many memories in this room including 3am feedings, diaper changes, outfit changes, reading books and rocking away. However, I can't take credit for the Star Wars shelf... that was all Lucas.
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Week 30 Recap
Lucas got the nursery painted! Since he won't let me paint, I'm at his mercy to get it done on his time. He removed the wallpaper two weeks ago, and I'm thankful he finally got the walls painted. Next up - the trim. I'm optimistic Lucas all tackle that this weekend. With only nine weeks to go, nothing seems to be moving fast enough. I originally thought the nursery would be around Christmas - so we're just a little behind schedule. After the trim, we can put together the crib and decorate, which is the part I'm most excited about. This past week I started experiencing indigestion. I have never had it before in my life, and it's terribly uncomfortable. Considering this is the only symptom I've had recently, I shouldn't complain. My pregnancy could be a lot harder. Week 31 Preview As part of our prenatal class at Mercy Medical Center, we will tour the maternity floor this week. We also need to figure out who's health insurance Spud is going on so I can turn in my pre-admission form to the hospital. Pre-admission forms are a great idea because that way the hospital has all of your information on file before you arrive in a world of pain ready to push out a baby. Baby Bump I don't think I've grown much since last week. I think every two weeks I have a growth spurt. Ever since I graduated college, I've wanted a matching bedroom set. I never had one as a kid and have always thought they looked so nice. Years after college, I finally got my wish. I had been scouring Homemakers and Craigslist for a steal of a deal for months. Earlier this week, I found this lovely queen bedroom matching set PLUS mattress and box spring PLUS delivery on Craigslist. Lucas gave me his blessing, and I put in an offer. The seller countered, and we made a deal. Our room now looks like a hotel room than a hodge podge college dorm (with nice bedding and a sweet diamond accent wall).
Go figure - in the same week I found two awesome coffee tables on Craigslist. Once again, I haggled the price down to get a really good deal on two solid wood tables. It's hard not having a coffee table in the living room - so this has been on my radar for a while, as well. I knew if we didn't buy this stuff before the baby came, we probably never would. It sure is nice to be all grown up now! Finally, my kitchen has a fresh coat of paint. A month ago, Lucas and I tackled removing the not-so-lovely red wallpaper. After being too busy the past 34 days, we set aside today to paint. Honestly, I didn't do much painting. Apparently being 23 weeks pregnant and paint fumes don't mix well together. We still need to put the window and cabinet trim back up, but I shouldn't complain. I spent the last 34 days with bare walls covered with spackling. I wanted a light-medium greige (gray/beige) color. After hanging paint chips in the kitchen for several weeks, I thought I had the best color chosen. Well, it turned out lighter than I hoped. I think once we hang new curtains and some decor, it'll look very nice. The room feels much bigger, brighter and fresher compared to when it had the red wallpaper. After the wallpaper came down, we had some minor nicks and dings we had to repair. A quick spackling job on the problem areas did the trick. However, the walls were already somewhat textured and Lucas was afraid the newly smoothed areas would stick out. We decided to texturize the walls to even them out. We purchased three bottles of spray-on wall texture by Homax. At $18 a pop, it isn't the cheapest stuff, but it was very easy to use. It took Lucas less than an hour to texturize all the walls. It's water-based so it was easy to clean up accidentally misfires. The texture looks great and we're glad we took the extra time and money to do this step.
Last year, Lucas and I spent our first Christmas as a married couple in the condo we were renting. It was a wonderful Christmas complete with a Charlie Brown-type tree and festive decorations. It will always be a special Christmas.
This year, it's our first Christmas in our first home. We got a real tree, hung our stockings, set up the nativity and placed our Charlie Brown tree in the dining room. It's easy to get swept up in needing a bunch of decorations, and we're trying not to do that. You'll notice we are missing a tree topper; we plan to shop the after-Christmas sales for a great deal. This year, it's our last Christmas as just the two of us. As many of you know, we're expecting our first baby in April. I'm so excited to make many Christmas memories in this home in the years to come, but I also don't want to rush through this Christmas as just the two of us. Lucas and I knew the day we put an offer on our home, we'd update the kitchen. We have a dream kitchen plan that's about 10 years down the road. However, the red wallpaper was never destined to last that long. Now that I'm officially in nesting mode, today became the day to tackle this project. Lucas was thrilled (wink, wink)! Our kitchen isn't huge so the project took 3.5 hours from prep to clean up. Not bad at all - especially considering there were two layers of wallpaper plastered on there!
Here are the steps we went through and some helpful advice for those looking to take on wallpaper removal. 1) Remove the trim. The wallpaper was applied behind the trim of the paneling and cabinets. We decided if we're going to do this project, we're going to do it right. It wasn't too hard for Lucas to carefully pry the trim off the paneling and cabinetry. This will also allow for a better paint job. 2) Score the walls. The last time I removed wallpaper was few years old at my parents' house. I used a round wallpaper scorer. This made the cuts so little that you couldn't peel off the paper in large chunks. Today, we used about a 5x5 inch diamond pattern. This worked very well. Also, score all the walls before you start if you are using a wallpaper steamer, like we did. We did not score all the walls, and then got stuck wasting steam (no on/off switch) as we moved to a new location and had to score it. 3) Tape on a drop cloth. If you use a steamer, you need to protect any wood and carpeting. We taped a drop cloth above the paneling to keep the hot water and steam from damaging the wood and to catch all the wallpaper debris. Our floor is vinyl, so we weren't too worried about getting it wet. 4) Wear shoes, long sleeves and gloves. I was in socks; Lucas was in his slippers. Well, when you toss the wet wallpaper to the ground, you're bound to step on some. It's like paper machete and easily sticks to your feet. You don't want to run wallpaper through the wash on your socks or have to scrape it off your house slippers. Also, steamers will drip water, which did hit Lucas in the arm and me in the hand several times. That shit is hot. Wear long sleeves and gloves. 5) Use a wallpaper steamer. When I last stripped wallpaper, I used a round scorer and wallpaper solution. This did not work well. Fortunately, our friends let us borrow a wallpaper steamer. It took about 10 minutes to get the hang of it, but once we did, it worked very well. The directions say to hold the steamer for 10 seconds, move on to a new section and scrape off the wet part from the first section. As one person, you'd have to be really talented to do that. Four hands worked great. Lucas and I found a good rhythm and switched off between who was steaming and who was scraping. Once the paper was well-steamed (sometimes it took a second time), it came off super easily. Stay tuned as we clean up the walls and paint them! Hopefully, that will happen within the week. This may sound like no big deal, but raking your own leaves for the first time is a lot different than raking your parents' leaves for the umpteenth time. Lucas did all the prep work getting the leaves in piles. I came home just in time to help scoop them into the bags. Our 77-year-old neighbor let us borrow these awesome yellow plastic bear paws to help pick up the leaves. Wow, these things are amazing! How have I never heard of them before? They are so much more efficient than using your bare hands or trying to scoop with the rake.
As we scooped, trick or treaters started making their way around the neighborhood. Since it was the first Beggars Night in our home, we didn't know how many kids would stop by. Overall, we passed out candy to about 25 kids. Almost all of them had a joke prepared; some were pretty bad and some were pretty good. If you've never heard of Beggars Night or the tradition of telling a joke in order to get your candy, check out this article on the history of Des Moines' Beggars Night. Being a homeowner is fun, right? You have four walls all to yourself, a driveway, a yard and all the responsibilities to keep it running. Besides replacing our roof, which we knew we'd have to do, we recently had our first test as homeowners: a clogged kitchen sink. Discovery Family weekend at the Wardenburg's ended with a big home-cooked meal and some potato skins down the garbage disposal. My mom even commented how great it is that our disposal could handle potato peels. Well, the disposal handled them fine, but we now think they were the straw that broke the camel's back. Instead of water backing up into the kitchen sink, we found out that the pipe that hooked up to an old dishwasher is still tied into the sink line but not capped up on the other end. This allowed water to back up into this pipe and spill onto our basement floor. Awesome. Home warranty The house came with a one-year HSA home warranty so we decided to give the warranty folks a call to see if this would be covered. They wouldn't know if they would cover it until the cause of the clog was determined by a professional - of their choosing. They sent over The Plumbing Company to diagnosis the problem. He cut our pipe and tried to use his hand-held snake to plow through the clog. To no avail, he suggested we might have a caved-in pipe and could possibly need to jack hammer up the basement floor to replace that part of the pipe. The home warranty folks said they may be able to cover that if the cave-in was in such and such place so only so far underground. Bullshit. A second opinion
As a first time homeowner, I couldn't believe this was possible. I wanted a second opinion. Lucas talked to his very handy, capable, smart father for advice while I did the same. Unfortunately neither of their strength's is plumbing. Fortunately, when I called my dad, my uncle was standing right there. He said he knows a guy in Grimes/Madrid who will take good care of us. Lucas called up Kevin at Kevin Evans Plumbing, who said he'd swing by to check it out. Within 30 minutes of using his snake with an electric motor, he had unclogged the so-called "caved-in" pipe. He placed a rubber coupler around the cut in the pipe and said we should be good to go for a long time. Amazing! On top of that, he didn't even charge us! He just said my uncle owed him dinner. We still purchased a restaurant gift card for him because not paying anything at all to not jack hammer our floor is unacceptable. While a gift card isn't justice for his services, he did just earn a new customer for future services and referrals. Diagnosis Kevin didn't deny that was one tough clog. We told him a little old lady had lived here previously and then the house sat empty for nearly four months before we moved in. He said that makes sense because all the grease, food and crap that got stuck over the years had four months to harden and solidify. The potato peels were just too much for the pipe. Takeaways Kevin says don't put potato peels or pasta down the garbage disposal. Everything else is usually fine, even egg shells. Glad to learn that now! In the end, we didn't have to file a claim with the home warranty people. Most of the warranties are pretty limited, and they'll find anyway possible to not cover your claims. Glad the seller paid for it and not us. It’s not often my immediate family comes to visit me in Des Moines since they live in the Chicago suburbs. The drive usually takes five hours, but with a two-year-old and four-month-old, it’s more like six. Alas! We found a weekend my parents, sister, niece, nephew and brother could come. My poor brother-in-law was the only one unable to make the trip. This was also the first time my sister and brother would see our house and the first time we were having a family weekend/sleepover. Since they don’t come here often, I wanted to make the most of their time. Nothing was planned for Friday night as they didn’t reach my home until 10:30pm. My husband and I gave them a tour of our new house, offered them a beer and hung out for a while. Farmers Market Fail While I want my guests to have a good time, waking them up at 8:00am to start checking off the events on the itinerary is not showing them a good time. The number one item on Saturday was to hit up the Downtown Farmers Market. Our home suburb doesn’t have anything like this. The ease and accessibility of many events in Des Moines is one thing I constantly brag about to Chicagoans. You see, many suburbanites have to rely on Chicago to provide entertainment. That means you have to pack up the kids, pay a ton for parking and make a day of it. Not in Des Moines. You can pop down, park, shop and leave in as little as an hour. By the time everyone woke up and got somewhat motivated to leave the house, it was pushing 11:15am. At that point, we scratched it from the To Do List. Maybe next time… Oktoberfest Fun My family may have missed the Oktoberfest celebration on Court Avenue by a week, but they didn’t miss the celebration at Colby Park in Windsor Heights. The much tamer, kids-oriented Oktoberfest was perfect for my two-year-old niece. Inflatable slides, bounce houses, face painting, pumpkin carving, train rides, balloon making, hot dogs and brats, kettle corn, hot chocolate, beer and live music were available for guests. Admission was free but some of the activities cost a buck or two. The only negative to the event was the chilly 50 degree temps and gusting winds. I don’t think any of the kids minded, but I was bundled up in a coat, hat and gloves. Still, we were there for nearly four hours! Noah’s Ark Success After warming up on my couch and maybe slipping in a small cat nap, we were ready for the next item on the agenda: dinner. I suggested a few restaurants to my family like Noah’s Ark, Flying Mango and Django. Choosing between the three wasn’t too hard for them; they were feeling Italian. Noah’s Ark has been on my Places to Eat At List for three-plus years. I was pumped to be going there for the first time. It’s a quaint brick building on Ingersoll – you’d pass it if you didn’t know it was there. We arrived at 7:00pm on a Saturday night. The place was pretty packed. Fortunately, we got a table within about 10 minutes. Holy moly – that’s one heck of a big menu! So many choices and only so much room in my belly. Instead of a basket of bread, they serve you love knots, which are delicious buttery biscuits. My two-year-old niece managed to eat three of them. Between the six adults, we ordered the onion rings, calamari, Joe Bayou margarita pizza, three prime rib specials, steak sandwich, halibut and fettuccine. The food came out a little slowly, but since we had so much of it that was just fine. The steaks were extremely well flavored and the fettuccine alfredo was super creamy. The pizza wasn’t as tremendous as I’d heard, but still very good. The halibut had a great taste, but was a little dry for my parents’ liking. Overall, we were stuffed and satisfied. I’d definitely recommend eating here and look forward to going back. Family Night In
I asked the adults what they wanted to do at night. Options included a Buccaneers hockey game (where my hubby and I met), seeing Chris Tucker at the Funny Bone, Blue Moon piano bar, Up Down video arcade bar or the new Ingersoll Tap. My sister decided not to leave the kiddos behind so we all headed back to my house to spend a family night in. We cozied up on our sectional to look at old family picture albums and had college football playing in the background. We passed around my four-month-old nephew and were entertained by my niece. We had great conversation that is better done in person than over the phone. They left early on Sunday leaving more on the To Do List for next time. Because there will be a next time. |