We have officially moved into our house! We've been there for several days, in fact, and it's been so nice to finally be out of that hotel room! (We lived in a hotel for an entire month...) We don't have any of our stuff, yet, but it should arrive by the end of the month. The biggest downside to being in the house is that we have no internet. There are a few places we can go to get free wifi, but it's just not the same. Haha Hopefully it won't be too very long before internet gets hooked up in our house.
As far as our house goes, I think we got really lucky! It was actually the first (and only) house that we looked at. I saw the house online about 2 hours after it was posted, and we were the first people to tour it. It's in the village of Steinwenden, and is only about 10 minutes from base. We live on a dead end street, and at the end of the street is a horse ranch and a walking trail (which has some fruit growing next to it!). The house has solar panels which heat our water, and a filter system to catch rain water to flush the toilets.
Since I'm using my phone to post this, I can't post any pictures right now. Here's a tour of the house to tide you over! (Sorry for my bad camera work...)
So, I haven't posted on the blog in quite a while. It wasn't intentional, we've just had a lot going on! Where to start...
We found out at the beginning of May that we are expecting Baby #2! Baby #2 is due on January 8 (yep, the day before my birthday!). Part of my lack of posting has been due to the wonderful morning sickness that has accompanied this pregnancy. Ha! Here I am, 16 weeks along, and I'm still having to take vitamins to fight it. (With Natalie, I was done with morning sickness by week 15, and never needed to take anything to fight it.) We have another appointment in just a couple of days, and are praying that all is going well with Baby 2! We don't know the gender yet, but hopefully will find out soon.
Here's a video of Baby 2 moving around. This was taken when I was 10.5 weeks.
In addition to the exciting new addition and morning sickness, we have also been moving! To Germany! Travis is now the euphonium player for the US Air Forces in Europe Band, which is stationed here. We have actually been in Germany for nearly 3 weeks, now, and things are starting to settle down a bit. The last month or so in CA was a crazy one! Family flew out to visit us and help us with the move. What a blessing they all were! Hopefully in the near future I will be able to post about some of the things we did right before the move.
I am aware that the title of this blog needs to change. haha! I'll get around to it, don't worry. I will hopefully start posting more often, now that things are calming down. In the mean time, here are a couple of pictures from our first day in Germany.
Travis' first German beer in Germany - a Hefeweizen
Our sweet, jet-lagged baby.
The next morning (jet-lagged, of course), we had this pretty view from our hotel window.
We currently live in a rental house. We are moving in just a few months, and it will not be the last time. I wanted a way to measure Natalie as she grows, but we obviously can't just pick a wall to mark her heights. I have seen a few different big measuring sticks on Pinterest, so I decided to make my own. This is what I ended up with!
I strategically started this project while Randy (my little brother) was in town so he could help me! I bought a .75"x7.25"x6' plank of pine (it cost about $15). We sanded the edges, then Randy stained the wood.
After the stain was dry, I set to work drawing the lines. How do you like my make-shift T-square? I drew them in pencil, then traced them with a black Sharpie marker.
I bought some 2" stencils and used those to trace the numbers in pencil. Then I used black paint to paint in the numbers. I finished it off by spraying several coats of polyurethane.
I nailed picture hangers into the back, and hung it 6" from the ground. There you go!
I finally finished the nursery! I finished my last project last night, 3 days before my due date. I'm still kind of shocked that I'm done. I was convinced that I'd never get all the sewing done. I'm still new at sewing and pretty slow... BUT I finished. :) Yay!
I've known for a long time that her nursery would be in peacock colors. I took the following picture last year at the San Francisco Zoo and it has been the inspiration for my plans.
So I'll show you the room in general, then go into details about what all I did.
From the doorway.
From the closet. **Updated on 7.10.13 so that you can see her initial!**
Standing by the crib. (Yes, there is a big coffee stain on the Winnie the Pooh book. My dad did that a long time ago. haha)
The first thing I finished was arranging the peacock feathers in the vase. I bought the feathers at Michael's.
I love peacock feathers!
My first sewing project was the lamp shade. I found this one on Pinterest. She used pre-ruffled ribbon. I wasn't going to find anything in the colors I wanted, so I made my own ruffles.... LOTS of cutting, pressing, hemming, and ruffling. I then glued the strips onto the lamp shade (with Travis' help).
I also found curtain inspiration on Pinterest. I found several cute curtain ideas, but this one was my favorite. She makes it sound super easy and like it was whipped together, but it took me FOREVER. Again, LOTS of cutting, pressing, hemming, and ruffling. I eventually finished it.
While I worked on the curtains, I figured out what to hang on the wall by the dresser. I crocheted a couple of flowers to glue onto her initial (instructions for these flowers can be found here), and glued on a peacock feather. I also printed and framed the following two pictures.
**Update: 7.10.13 - This picture has been added so you can see her initial!**
The last project I had was to sew a crib skirt. I wanted to do a ruffly one similar to the lamp shade, but the way our crib is made, not all of the colors would have shown. So I made up my own crib skirt. I think it turned out pretty well!
From the front.
From the side.
So there you go! What do you think? :) Now all we're waiting for is the baby to decide to show up...
The painting is finished!! Yay!!! :) In case you missed the before pictures, you can see them here. Travis painted every inch of this room except the white trim (I painted the trim while he was out of town). Didn't he do a fantastic job?
Sorry for the poor picture quality. I apparently don't know how to focus my camera anymore. haha! In case you were wondering, we used Valspar paint from Lowe's in Vanilla Steam (top of the room) and Cincinnatian Hotel Nichols Taupe (bottom).
Travis has already put the crib together, but you won't get pictures of that til the dresser makes it up the stairs. haha
We decided a long time ago that whenever we needed a nursery, we would convert what was our office into the baby's room. It's the smallest bedroom in our house, and, honestly, a guest bed just wouldn't fit in there very well (unless that was the only piece of furniture in there). In addition to that, we had received permission to paint that room from the moment we saw the house and signed the lease. When I talked to our landlord about colors (a long time ago), he did say that he preferred beige colors to grey tones (sad day!), but other than that he's been pretty lenient about letting us make minor changes to his house.
We (Travis) rearranged the furniture in the guest bedroom so that our desks would fit in there, and we finally managed to get all of the boxes and trash out of Baby's room. The painting has been started, but Travis is leaving town on tour tomorrow, so I won't be posting "after" pictures for at least a week (probably longer). I thought I'd let you go ahead and see what we were working with, though.
{Standing in the doorway, looking straight ahead. Don't worry, you'll be able to see the awesome stencils close up in another picture!}
{Standing by the closet, looking at the opposite side of the room.}
{From the corner of the room. The doorway is to the left of the picture. This window thing is one of the strangest things I've ever seen in a house! We think that it used to be an open space and someone put this window there to fill in the hole. It looks out onto the downstairs living room.}
{Standing by the windows. Yes, Ranger is wearing a cone around his head..... long story.}
{The stencils close up. There was little to no rhyme or reason behind where they were placed on the walls. I will not miss these! haha!}
The following picture is of the strange space in our dining room...
When we first saw this house, I asked the realtor what that was for. She said, "I don't know, a T.V.?" ..... Ok, we don't have a T.V. that would fit in there, and why would we want one in the dining room, anyway?? So for months and months, our dining room has been the home of boxes and we haven't done anything with the strange shelving unit. I called our landlord right after we moved in to ask permission to redo it. He seemed kinda skeptical, but said that he would trust me to make it look better. To be honest, I'm not sure I could make it look worse! haha So when my parents came to visit us, I took advantage of my dad's skills and had him help me finally turn this thing into something I can use. Drum roll, please.........
Ta-da! My dad tore out the old shelves and measured the space to see what we were dealing with. We painted the inside walls and the edging so that it would look clean and match the white trim around the floor. We purchased new shelves and installed them. Hopefully to my landlord's liking, we installed them so that they can be moved around (just in case someone in the future does want to use it for a T.V.). And finally, here is another picture with stuff in it's place.
I'm already in love with it. :) Now we just need to put up the rest of the things piled in the dining room so that we can put up our table.....
We bought a new grill yesterday! It actually took a lot longer than I thought it would. As it turns out, a grill won't fit into a Toyota Echo... who'd have thought? :-P So we rented a truck from Lowe's for $20 so that we could drive the grill back to our house.
After getting the truck back to the store, we went shopping for the necessary items to grill some STEAK. It was fantastic, by the way! Travis is good with a grill. :)
We were able to watch the Rangers game while we grilled, too. "We" meaning Travis grilled and I watched. I proudly sported my Hamilton jersey in honor of his return to the major leagues last night.
Now, if only the evenings didn't get so cold out here.....
While most of you are getting snow and ice and ridiculously cold weather, those of us that live in northern California haven't been needing to bundle up. In fact, it's been beautiful outside! Lots of sunshine and clear blue skies. This afternoon I decided to venture into the backyard (in a T-shirt) to take pictures of the awesome orange tree we have. I've never had a fruit tree before, so it's a new experience (and a really cool one!).
I love that if I want an orange I can just go into my backyard. :) And I love walking by the oranges at the grocery store knowing that I get my oranges for free. You should come visit us while they're still ripe!
