Junk.

So I’ve been in a funk.  A food funk.  Where seriously nothing sounds good to me.  Every night last week, I made dinner, then gagged at the sight/smell of it once it was finished.  I choked them down, but never felt satisfied.  The only meal I was able to eat and feel “good” after was lunch at a Chinese restaurant on Friday.  My lack of food happy has been affecting my attitude.  It’s not been great.  (The snow we woke up to this morning didn’t help either).  So….with all of my yuck, there has been little that I’ve actually enjoyed (foodwise..everything else has been fine and dandy).  Last night, I was in a real rut.  I needed something baked and chocolatey, but I didn’t think I had anything.  Until I discovered cake mix cookies.  Did you know that you can add 1/2 c. vegetable oil and two eggs to a cake mix (and any sort of add in you want—chocolate chips, fruit, nuts) and bake at 350 for 8 minutes and end up with a yummy cookie?  I didn’t have any mix-ins…just a devil’s food cake mix that was set to expire in a few weeks and it turned out FANTASTIC.  It was so good!  Then today, I ran to Wal-Mart to get some bobby pins, hair ties, milk and something for lunch this week….and came home with all sorts of crap.  It was a nightmare—I can’t believe it myself.  I’ve never checked out with suck a foul cart in my life.  I totally grocery cart judged myself.  I’m waiting for Andy to see the cupboards and make fun of me…..here’s what I came home with:

-Cake mix

-Almond Joy Coffee Creamer

-Milk, cheese

-Pepperoni

-Chocolate chip teddy grahams

-Super Pretzels

-Strawberries

-Oranges

-Caesar salad kit

-Potato salad

-Granola bars

And a few random other things.  Who knows if any of them will end up tasting good when I go to eat them, but at least I have some new options (crap and all).

The Nursery: Rough Progress Shots

So here’s the nursery as it stands today.  It’s definitely not pretty, but it’s a start.  These images are pretty raw, and very true life “process” shots.  I didn’t pick anything up or move anything out.  There is literally a rugful of stuff to go to the Goodwill, just sitting on the rug.  So what you see here is not the final product, I promise.  It’s just a peak into the beginnings of the room as it starts to take shape.

First up, the crib sheet that makes the world go round.  I found this, and it tied the whole room together in my head.  I love this sheet.  Best 12.99 I ever spent.  I need to bring in the greens and oranges a bit more, and I have some plans for that—which you’ll see in the final shots in a few weeks :)

Next, my other favorite parts—the refinished floor and the fluffy white rug.  The floor looks about a million times better since Andy finished it.  Andy, Oliver and I have spent several hours just lying on this rug looking around the room this week.  I think it will be great for playing blocks and trucks and snuggling up for a story.  It’s so soft and cozy. 

A corner of the room—with the chair, the ottoman, and one set of shelves.  The shelves obviously aren’t finished.  See the gorilla on the top shelf?  That’s the gorilla Oliver is obsessed with.  I caught him trying to climb the chair to get on the shelves to get to it the other day.  That top picture frame is going to be white, and lots more will be added here.

The dresser/changing table (it will get a changing pad, obviously) and the other shelf (which is even less decorated than the first one)

Shelf, closet (those wires will be cut), book slings

Better view of the book slings—I love these things :)  (And the dog in the very bottom of the shot)

Just keeping it real here….the crib and the major mess.  Did I mention that our house is only like 1100 square feet, and that this room has primarily been a storage space for the last three years?  Yeah….things are a big mess all over this house right now as we figure out new homes for stuff (and what to toss/donate).

And the cute little swing that came in the mail—a present from Andy’s parents :)  I love how nicely it fits in the corner.

So…give me two or three more weeks, and I can get you the updated version of this room.  My goal is to have it completely ready to go by the start of May.  So I have a month and a week :)

Liam Update

I had a checkup yesterday (I have them every other week right now, so it’s not a huge deal).  But yesterday’s checkup was fun.  First, we talked about my glucose screening numbers.  They were perfect—no signs of gestational diabetes.  I actually had to take the three hour test because I failed the original one hour.  I learned a valuable lesson that day.  When the doctor is going to be testing your blood sugar at your early afternoon appointment, drinking a glass of Cran-Grape juice with your lunch might not be advisable.  Andy is still laughing over that one.  I felt a little better when a sweet friend told me that she had just eaten a Blizzard before her test….we’re first time moms, we’ll figure these things out :)

Next, I got my OB PREP information.  I get to make our appointment to go tour the hospital and see the L&D floor and do all of our preregistering.  They gave me a book about the first weeks of your child’s life and all the changes that happen to your body.  Can I just say that I want to scan in every page and put it on an overhead for high school girls?  Like….okay, here’s how your body gets whack WHILE you’re pregnant—but then, once it’s over, there’s a whole new slew of crazy to contend with.  Best birth control ever.

As for Mr. L himself, he’s sounding fine and dandy.  His heartrate is good, she was watching him move around in my belly, and she said he’s appearing pretty healthy.  He was measuring a little on the large side (he measured at 33 weeks, and I’ll be 32 tomorrow) so she said we’ll watch that.  It was definitely all him…I hadn’t gained any weight since my last appointment.  And that’s about it.  I go back in two weeks.  We will have had our first childbirth class by then, and we’ll go tour the hospital sometime soon.

Another Memory to Remember: Oliver and the Crib

For nearly the past year, Oliver has been the baby in this house.  He sleeps in bed, he snuggles wherever he wants (sometimes on the covers, sometimes under), he gets to toss all of his toys across the living room floor and never has to pick them up.  He’s a bit spoiled.  But he’s awfully sweet.  Seriously….our dog is crazy affectionate.  And hilarious.  Between he and Andy, I can’t make it through a day without laughing—and I kind of love that.  Because what’s life without a little laughter?

Oliver is very interested in the developments taking place in Liam’s room.  I’m really interested and kind of anxious to see how our fur boy handles having a brother.  So far, he is most interested in the crib.  Not really in trying to get into the crib (he’s never tried that) but in the things inside the crib.  So here are a few Ollie and the crib stories:

-Last Friday night, at 1 AM I heard Ollie barking like mad.  I was dead asleep.  Andy had been moving furniture out of Liam’s room so he could refinish the floors the next morning.  I realized that I heard the gorilla toy that Mike and Beth had given Andy for Christmas.  Oliver has had a love/hate relationship with that thing.  It has a banana you put in it’s mouth, and when you take it out it cries until you “feed the monkey.”  Oliver barks like a madman at it every time he sees it and he tries to beat it up when it cries.  We had hidden it in the crib under some stuff so he wouldn’t get it a few weeks ago (we kept finding him busting into that room trying to get the gorilla).  For the life of me, I could not figure out why my husband was playing with the gorilla at 1 in the morning.  I called out for him, and got no answer.  The entire time, the monkey kept crying and Ollie kept spazzing out.  Finally, I got out of bed, and realized that Andy wasn’t even home.  He had taken my car to fill it with gas, and Oliver was reaching into the side of the crib to make the gorilla cry himself.  He would bark at it, and when it stopped crying, he’d hit it again.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  I left him there until Andy got back so he could see it.

-Tuesday night after Ollie and I got back from Indy, Andy and I were moving the crib back into Liam’s room (it’s super light—no worries).  We got it placed just right, and I stepped back to look at it.  I thought I saw something move between the slats, and I asked Andy where Oliver was.  I put a crib skirt on it awhile back, so we can’t easily see under the bottom.  Andy called for Ollie, and we heard crying coming from the crib.  Andy got down and moved the crib skirt, and Oliver was underneath the crib.  It’s too low to the ground for him to get out on his own, so he put his little paw and nose out to touch Andy.  So we had to pick the crib back up and let the dog out from underneath it.

-And last night.  I finally figured out how to design the mobile I want for Liam’s room.  It will be enormous and all Chinese paper lanterns that will be hung above the crib.  I have three white ones that I ordered a long time ago, and I had them opened and laying in the room.  Oliver figured out that if you punch a paper lantern it kind of bounces back.  So he tried doing that.  So there are small tears in all three of the white paper lanterns I have in that room (I’m hoping once they are up, you won’t notice).  I put them in the crib to keep him from further destroying them.  Last night as Andy was putting the dresser together, Ollie figured out that the lanterns were in the crib, and started reaching his paw through the slats to punch the paper lanterns.  He did get in trouble for that one…I definitely don’t want him to think he can reach inside the crib and hit things.  I’m hoping once we get the mattress inside, it will be high enough he won’t bother anything.

So there’s the story of Ollie adjusting to having a crib in the house.

Why I love being married to a graphic designer

So there are a lot of times that I love my husband’s job.  I love that he can develop websites, make pictures pretty, and pretty much design anything I could dream up.  And I do tend to dream ;)  Recently Andy started a blog of his own called No Fail Graphics.  He only has a few posts up, and the first several were sort of technical and beyond my understanding.  But this one, this one I like :)  Because it’s one of the projects he has done for me!  Two weekends ago I found Leo Reynolds Flickr photostream and came up with an idea for some artwork in our house.  If you go here, you can see what Andy made for our hallway (he says it’s for Liam’s room…but it’s actually the hall, I just must not have communicated that well…I will probably have him make one with Liam’s birthday later on).

Spring Breakin….woohoo

It’s spring break week, and it’s been lovely.  I was actually away from home for a large part of the week.  Andy wanted to refinish the floor in Liam’s room before we put it together (the room, not the floor) and we agreed that it wasn’t probably a good idea for Ollie or for me to be here for that.  All the dust and polyurethane seemed like a bad idea for baby mamas and baby dogs.  So Ollie and I went to Indianapolis.  And I can assure you that I will not often be driving long distance with Ollie by myself.  He makes me a basket case….more of one than I normally am while driving.

We spent Saturday-Tuesday at Andy’s parents house.  We had a great time.  Ollie got to play with Keegan, their Welsh terrier.  He got a new toy and some new food (no more puppy food for our boy…he’s on to adult food now).  Andy’s mom and I went shopping for Liam—he has all sorts of new clothes that are just so sweet.  I figured out how to work their new scanner, so Andy’s mom got to scan in old family photos for her genealogy site, and I read a book.  We got cupcakes at Gigi’s cupcakes (so good…but so rich…I think I would much rather share one with someone than eat a whole one myself).  We just had ourselves a nice little time away.  And we got to come home to a super beautiful hardwood floor.  Only now that I’ve seen the one refinished, it’s really hard to look at the other two—they look so bad!!  It’s so nice to be back.  I missed Andy.  I missed being in my own house….I had fun away, but it was sure nice to get home.

We have some big plans for the rest of the week too.  We’re going to buy a crib mattress.  We’re making returns at Lowes.  I have a doctor’s appointment.  I have lunch plans for Friday.  We’re piecing together Liam’s room (I think that it will be in good shape by the time I go back to work on Monday).  We’re catching up on laundry, getting some groceries, and cleaning house.  I’m purging and trying to reconfigure storage for the house (I have lots of things with no home right now).  And I think some serious napping and tv watching will be in order as well.  I find that I have very little attention span right now…I keep flitting from one thing to the next.  So I’m going with it.  I’m trying to give a solid fifteen minutes to each project, then allowing myself to move on and come back later.  It’s not efficient, but it works.  Sort of. 

Also.  When I go back on Monday, I only have 30 teaching days left until my maternity leave begins.  That’s like really insane to me.

One to remember

As I enter the single digit weeks, I want to remember the things that happen on a day-t0-day basis.  I realize that a big chapter in our life is about to change, and that this will be our only first child (besides Oliver, of course…but preparing for Oliver to arrive involved a trip to the store to buy a leash, collar, some food, bowls, and toys).  I recognize that my memory is failing these days (seriously) and I want to record some of the things that are happening and going on.  So I may end up posting multiple stories a day, and some may be completely dumb, but they are all things I want to remember from right now.  Here’s the first.

Yesterday we had a tornado drill at school.  As we got back inside the classroom, I got a serious cramp in the arch of my right foot.  I must have leaned forward with a look of pain on my face because the next thing I realized through the pain was that my class was completely silent.  My class is never completely silent…especially after returning from any sort of drill.  I looked up, and saw 18 panic stricken ninth graders staring at me.  One finally ventured a question.

“Um, Mrs. Cook, are you okay?”

“I…have…a..cramp…in…my…foot!” I managed.

It was like someone had popped a hot air balloon.  The rush of breath released was audible and the entire class adopted one large look of relief.

Someone finally said it.  They saw me wince in pain and every one of them thought I was going into labor right there in the classroom.  It was their worst nightmare and probably my own.  Once I got the cramp worked out of my foot, we all had a good laugh about it.

Sushi in OUR town

Something happened this week that has put a sweet little spring in my (admittedly very slow moving) step.  A new restaurant opened in the downtown portion of our tiny little town, population –4.  And that restaurant IS A SUSHI BAR.  And it's a fantastic one to boot! 

 

The restaurant, Sakka Blue, opened Tuesday night.  Andy heard about it Wednesday from some co-workers, and we went last it.  It was stinking awesome.  Totally on par with everything we've had in the Louisville Metro area (and WAY better than some sort of eh experiences in Indy).  I didn't have anything raw, for obvious reasons, but everything I had tasted crazy fresh and great—which is sometimes difficult in a cooked roll.  Andy said that his rolls were beyond.incredible.  He declared his rainbow roll "the best he had ever eaten." 

 

We were both thrilled with the depth of the menu—they had SO MANY roll options…especially for such a new (and tiny) operation.  There were a ton of rolls that were totally pregnancy safe—it took me forever and a day to choose what I wanted.  I felt like a lot of the other restaurants we frequent had maybe 3-4 cooked/veggie options that were appealing—they were WELL over a dozen good looking options last night.  I ended up settling on two (and I loved both).  I had an Indy Roll, which was a spicy crabmeat roll topped with avocado and Unagi sauce and a Thai roll, which had shrimp tempura and avocado on the inside and spicy crab on top.  I don't even know what Andy had.  I was too busy stuffing my face.  Both of my rolls were really awesome.  I cannot wait until I can try the "real" stuff (Andy's words) in a few months J

 

Needless to say, our little town grew in our opinion by quite a bit this week.

10 weeks left

This is our last double digit week before parenthood.  That’s kind of a big deal.  In the spirit of that milestone, my poor brain is working on overload trying to figure out everything we need to accomplish before Liam arrives.  Some of it is directly related to Liam, some is stuff that we need to get done and it makes more sense to do it BL (Before Liam).  I have about four lists going…so I’m going to give you a sample from a few of them.

Here’s the overarching “BEFORE LIAM ARRIVES” big stuff list:

-Switch over savings accounts (not really Liam related…but we get crazy better interest rates in one compared to the other and I want my “big” money in the account with better interest.

-Payoff Pontiac (I did this Friday—it felt awesome….I paid off our loan 10 months early…and it was only a 2 year loan!)  We are officially debt free (minus mortgage) again

-HO/Life/Auto Insurance—check on better rates (our homeowners is kind of ridic…and they aren’t together…and we don’t have life insurance…so we’re going to check with a broker and see if we can save some scrizzle here)

-Establish with Dr. M—check to see if the doctor will take our boy upon birth

-Financial Advisor—getting our retirement stuff in one place, rolling over everything, making a plan (because there’s nothing like parenthood to make you realize it’s time to be an adult)

-Health Insurance…I’ll explain this one later…like in a few weeks or so

-Redo bedroom floor (all of the original wood floors are kind of foul and Andy wants to do Liam’s before he arrives…we’ll probably do the other two next spring) (I think this is happening next weekend and Oliver and I are going to Indy for a few days to stay with Andy’s parents…I would totally go to my parents…but it’s an extra hour drive and I don’t think I am mentally prepared for that)

-Get Liam’s room ready (just as soon as Andy lets me back on that floor…I’m chomping at the bit on this one—the vision is so clear in my head and I am SO READY to make it a reality)

-Establish budget…I’ll explain that one when I explain health insurance

-OB Prep—Hospital visit (this should happen sometime in April)

-Childbirth class (every Tuesday in April)

-Remove PMI from house (just something I’ve been meaning to do)

My “LIAM STUFF” list

-Check registry, see if I need to add/delete before showers

-Soon after showers, figure out what we still need, purchase

-Install carseat

-Figure out gear

-Learn how to open the stroller myself

-Wash diapers/clothes and put away

This one will get larger as I figure things out

My “HOUSE STUFF” list

-Get plants figured out

-Spring planting

-Hang the ding-dang picture frames that have been on the floor since December

-Get house cleaned/dusted/ready for new arrival

-Get Ollie’s new toy for day when L comes home…also: shots, grooming, heartworm and anything else I will forget about for O

-Figure out baby storage

There will obviously be more…..I’ve added to this list nearly every day for the last few weeks…but that’s where I’m at right now.

After the weekend

So I basically used all of yesterday to recover from Friday and Saturday.  I have reached the point in pregnancy where I am just flat exhausted.  I feel like I can't focus my eyes and I keep getting distracted.  My students have been teasing me all day—apparently I will be laughing about something and then my face just gets really serious.  I'm not transitioning well.  I also did about twelve dumb/weird things before 8 AM this morning because my brain is just so foggy right now.  It almost feels like it's a bad idea to be driving because I'm just so goofy and off.

 

While I used the day to recover and sleep and snuggle with Oliver on the sofa, Andy worked a seven hour day.  He had a lot of stuff that needed to get done at work and really couldn't be done with other people there (he had to disassemble and reassemble the whole computer network for the office), so he did it all yesterday.  And he had about twice his normal Monday load (whjch is generally ridic anyway…just more so today) waiting for him when he arrived today.  So it's safe to say that he's pretty exhausted too.  We may end up falling asleep before 8 again tonight if things keep up.

 

After his crazy day, he still found the motivation to install the cabinet in the kitchen that I had purchased Saturday.  It turns out that I hadn't measured it and it was too big for the wall we intended to put it on.  Major oops.  But it worked out.  We just put it on the same wall as the other cabinet, and it works just fine there.  Now I just have to get our kitchen resorted and organized.  And then I can do some decorating and I think our kitchen will be "finished."  It's exciting to get a room to a place that I would call it finished.  The living room is pretty much there too.  And I know what needs to be done in the bathroom and Liam's rooms to get them to that place.  I think that (bold projection here) by the end of 2011 our house will be the way that I want it.  It'll really be "our house."  And then I'll just need to maintain.  It's an exciting time. 

 

I'm kind of proud of the way we've made this house our own.  I feel like we didn't rush into anything, we kind of let the house grow on us and figured out how we would use things and found the problems we had, and then worked to save and fix.  For instance, it would have been really easy for me to walk into our house and rip out the carpet and awful pink tile in the kitchen, but I don't know if I would have picked a replacement that I would still love now.  Our style has changed and grown up a lot in the last few years, and I'm glad we waited on things.  I love the carpet we picked in the living room, but we would have never been able to afford that carpet right after we bought the house.  By living with the ugly carpet for two years, we were able to save up to buy our dream carpet.  If we had tried to replace the disgusting tile right away, we would have ended up with a laminate and not the hardwood that we both love.  Even the cabinets I got this weekend—I spent well over a year cooking/eating/living with our kitchen before I figured out what sort of storage I needed to make it more functional…and even then, I decided on those cabinets several months before we actually purchased them.  Every decision we make, we make together.  I may have an idea, and I present it to Andy, but if he's not all for it, we don't do it.  It works the other way too.  We are both totally on board with every decision made in our little house.  And it makes for a home that we both love, and both feel comfortable in.  Beyond that, it's a house we are proud of because all the work has been our own.  We haven't hired out for jobs…we've figured out how to do it on our own.  It's really our home—the place we've made our own.  And I have no idea how I started talking about how tired I am and ended up talking about our sweet little house.  Who knows?  It's the way my brain is working these days.

The weekend crazy

So remember the other day when I said that this weekend was going to be crazy in a good way?  Well, for me, the crazy part is over.  Andy is still in some of it.

So here’s our good crazy :)

On Friday night, we had small group.  It was wonderful, as usual.  We love that time…enough that we went on Friday when we needed to leave for Indianapolis that night.  So after small group, we went up to Andy’s parents house.  We were just there last weekend, and hadn’t intended to return so quickly, but after our time last weekend, we had to go back.  Confusing?  Yes.  Absolutely.

Last weekend when we were there, it came up that Andy’s grandpa’s car needed to be sold.  The insurance and registration were coming due, and the family wanted it dealt with.  The car was a 1999 Cadillac Deville with a whopping 30,000 miles on it.  It’s a nice car.  It was fully loaded for 99.  And a lot bigger than my little Saturn.  Can you guess where this is going?  Andy wanted the Caddy.  He’s never loved my car, especially now that Liam is on the way.  He has wanted to replace my car, but we couldn’t afford to upgrade right now.  But the Caddy.  It’s a good car, and it was a good price.  So we asked to be able to buy it.  Andy’s dad had to get the go-ahead from his siblings to sell us the car, and they all agreed, so we had to go back to Indy to transfer the title and plates.

As the week progressed, Andy’s aunts and uncles decided that they didn’t want us to buy the car.  They wanted to give us the car.  It was an incredibly generous offer on their part, and we were blown away.  So yesterday we went to Indy to get our new car.  Since all of this has come up in the last week, Andy already found a buyer for the Saturn.  It’s going to be sold early this week.  It’s kind of crazy how quick everything has come up.  It’s almost a little overwhelming when I think about it.  But as of yesterday, Andy’s Grand Prix is my new car, and the Caddy is his.

In the midst of all this…I already had plans for the weekend.  I had been planning for a few weeks to go IKEA with my Mom and Dad.  They were coming to our house, and we were going to head to Cincinnati.  So that got changed a little….my parents ended up coming to Andy’s parents house and my dad and I followed my mom to Cincinnati so we could get all of the furniture we needed for the house.

That was all the planned crazy…but things got even a little better when Andy’s parents’ basement flooded (for the second time last week) early in the morning.  He ended up spending most of his day with his mom and dad sucking water out of their basement with wet/dry vacs and dumping it down the sump pit.  I think they are going to have to replace the laminate flooring in their basement.

Mom and Dad and I got all of the stuff we needed, and we eventually met Andy (and Ollie) back at our house.  Dad helped Andy put together one of the cabinets….Andy said later that he liked working with my dad a lot more than working with me.  Apparently I’m not a great furniture building helper.  But we got it installed and it looks great.  Dad offered to help more, but Andy and I were both wearing out at that point.  Actually, we were both asleep in the living room before my parents had been gone an hour.  So we have new furniture and a new car and a whole lot of fun!! 

It’s the little things.

There are about 463 things I could be doing right now.  Cleaning my living room.  Doing the dishes.  Writing a Kite Runner quiz for Monday.  Packing for Indy.  Balancing the checkbook.  Taking a quick nap.  All good options, and all things I need to do sometime this weekend.  But I’m not doing any of them.  Because it’s 4:11 on Friday afternoon, and I’m tired.  It was a long week.  We finished finals and started new classes and I have a whole new bunch of students to break in.  I’ve grown enormous in the last two weeks, and the little human living inside me has started to take more energy.  And it was just a whole long week.  So instead of doing the productive things (the nap is forthcoming) I will sit here and type this while eating the yummy chocolate raspberry dessert I made for small group (thank you Margo for reminding me about this) and throwing Oliver his mouse (Dad, don’t let me forget to get him a new one tomorrow—it’s still his best toy).  So here are the silly things that made this long week somewhat more pleasant.

-One of my students wrote the “right to bare arms” on her list of  rights every human should have.  I got tickled at the thought of tank tops and naked arms everywhere.

-Yesterday at WalMart, there was a sample cart, and the first row was donuts, and the next three rows were Slim Fast products.  Oh mercy, I nearly tinkled over that one.

-Oliver’s antics—he has started sticking himself in weird positions so he can snuggle close to me, then he sighs repeatedly to let me know that he’s annoyed with his position and needs me to give him more room.

-Watching Andy try to skip supper to play with his Legos…and Ollie try to play with them too.

-Seeing Liam’s kick through my shirt when I was reading at school today.

-Teaching transitive verbs, and instead of asking which word in the sentence was receiving the action of the verb, accidentally asking what was “getting the action”…which my students promptly turned into getting some action

-And lastly, this little gem from Tom Hanks—this just nearly made me die laughing.  Seriously.  It’s too funny.

Proving to my mom that I really know what I’m looking for this weekend :)

So this weekend is a big weekend.  There’s actually a whole metric ton of stuff that we are going to pack into two short days and one short night.  I’ll elaborate more sometime next week—just know that this weekend is going to be good times for the Cook family.  One of the things that we are packing into this weekend is a trip to IKEA (well…not we exactly…Andy’s not going….he’d like to, but as a part of all that we’re cramming into the weekend, he can’t).  This we is my mom and dad and me.  My dad asked me the other night if I knew what I was getting…so I thought I’d go ahead and make my list.  I’m pretty excited about this trip—I’ve been saving up for it for a few months, and it’ll be nice to finally bring the furniture home.

The Hemnes cabinet will be making it’s grand entrance in our kitchen.  I plan to use it as a pantry space to hold our foodstuffs.  I’m excited to get it home and organized (a trip to the evil empire with the initials WM for some storage containers might be in order for this particular project).

The Bjursta sideboard is one I have been drooling over since July.  Seriously—I showed Mom, Dad,and Lauren this bad boy last July and told them I wanted him to be my lover….he just had to get with my friends.  He’s obviously not thinking it’s too easy, because this hasn’t ended.  Oh Spice Girls.  I have no idea what you were saying…but it sure was catchy.  Me in 96 really thanks you for that gem.

Wait—where was I?  The Bjursta sideboard—perfect for casserole dishes and small appliances.  I can just see the cabinets in our kitchen breathing a sigh of relief.  And look  at the legs on that thing—seriously…I’m in love. 

For the room that will soon be my favorite in the whole house (Liam’s room)….we will be grabbing the Hemnes 3 drawer dresser (in gray…not white…gray is 50 dollars cheaper, but I had the white saved on my computer).  I imagine many a diaper will be changed on this sweet thing.  Our friends Martin and Tara gave it the changing table seal of approval back in December—I love having friends who have kids, they’re just so helpful :)

And then just a few small things.  Like baskets.  I need five baskets to go in a cube storage unit, so I will grab five of whatever the cheapest basket for the Expedit system is.  There are two light fixtures I want to drool over/consider for different rooms in our house (one for the kitchen, one for the bedroom).  I probably won’t buy those….I just need to see them live.  And I want two square vases.  And an AINA pillow cover in a neutral color.

So there’s my list for the weekend packed full o’ crazy fun-ness.