Curtains have been purchased, or the one where I'm reminded that I am my mother.

Today I had a really enlightening conversation with my dad. He was telling me about my mom (after I told him how I scheme and dream all day about what I want to do to my house to optimize every room) and how she gets this look in her eye then says something like, "you know, I've been thinking, and we really have to do something about _____." Something of course that to my dad looks perfectly fine as it is, but to my mom needs to be tweaked. Then she'll sprinkle it into conversation however she can and do her best to convince my dad that the only two options are to do what she wants to do, or do something expensive and hard. (In this case, move a chandelier to be centered over the table, or move the table to be centered under the chandelier, which would require the purchase of a hutch to balance out the room.) Keeping things as they are is never an option.

I just read this back and have an awareness that my story isn't going to be funny to you at all, but as he was telling me all this, I was laughing. Hard. Laughing with my head thrown back, tears stinging my eyes...because I am totally my mom. It happened a long time ago, and one in a while I'm reminded. (I can't think of a better person to turn into.)

After agonizing over curtains for the master bedroom, I finally just bought these at Z Gallerie. I wish they had them in black, but gray will work. It will. If I need to embellish these with a little black ribbon along the seams...well then...we will see. This was a major accomplishment for me, because it means one less first-world problem I have to jabber to my husband about incessantly. Now to find a curtain rod...

Powder Room Facelift

Yesterday during two nap times, I made over the downstairs powder room. Thank you nap time! I have been wanting to do this forever.

I had previously painted the walls and trim white. When we took possession of the house, the powder room was tan. Kind of a dark, blah tan (like the rest of the house). I could tell by looking behind the toilet while we were tiling that it had also been yellow and blue in past lives.

Anyway. I painted it white and had always planned on painting wide horizontal stripes and replacing the meh mirror.

I bought the mirror a while ago during one of my more successful Home Goods trips (huge and $19.99!) It was white, but a little banged up, and not in a good way. I painted it a tannish gray color and planned to paint the cabinets in there to match, but after getting the gray stripes up on the walls yesterday (using Frog Tape, the love of my painting life), I decided the mirror needed a glossy black finish instead. I'll do the cabinets glossy black as well, and bring in a few pops of color. I think it will have more of a Hollywood Regency look to it once I'm done. I also painted the ceiling, which I've never done. This one needed it, and I think that will be part of my painting routine from now on. Recently I've been forcing myself to paint the trim white every time I paint a room. I just keep adding more and more work for myself!

I'm also going the Hollywood Regency route with our bedroom, which is coming along, slowly but surely. So far I have painted the walls and bought some of our bedding. Mark also bought an amazing wing back chair at a garage sale that I'm going to re-cover and put in there. But more on that later. Here's our tiny powder room. Very hard to photograph:

I'm so in love with this mirror, black. It was made to be black...don't you think?

Right now as art, I have some Thomas Paul Aviary fabric framed.

View looking into the room. I like how the gray stripe acts as a kind of backsplash. I'll be painting those cabinets black shortly. Going to use the Glidden door and trim paint that supposedly leaves no brush strokes...anyone tried it?

Little house update.

Since my house is somewhat clean, I thought I would take a few blurry, poorly-lit photos to document our progress in the adventures in decorating (and a few of the baby, too).

We've done a little more in the kitchen - added hardware to the cabinets, installed a butcher block top on our island, and made new curtains. We also painted our kitchen chairs black and stripped the tabletop back to wood. We still want to replace the rest of the counter tops and are debating on what to do with the table. I'm not quite happy with it yet:

In the family room, we brought in a bookshelf and made some new throw pillows. You can see that I'm bringing a little red, which I like. I like that the family room is the most colorful room on the main level. I think it makes it more casual. Please note the cardboard deer head. I also have plans to paint the cabinet white to coalesce better with the shelf:

And in the living room, we bought a piano and a side table for the entry way. We also hung a large mirror and some black and white family photos. I wish I could photograph this whole room at once, because I'm liking it a lot more lately.

I like this little vignette. Isn't the elephant tea pot cute?

Then of course we got this little guy, who gets more cute and fun everyday, even today, when he got up and said, "get ready suckers, because I'm about to cry for four hours!!!"

This is what 41 weeks looks like.

The little man must have dropped a little, because this was 38 weeks, in which I swear I look bigger:

So either way, let's just call my figure "ample." Can we agree on that term? Even my wrists are beefy. I feel like I'm cutting off my circulation just by putting one of those big ponytail holders around my wrist.

I had the great fortune of renewing my drivers license two weeks ago. Probably got a few eye rolls on the "weight" section of my application. Also, looking at the pictures side by side (my last drivers license photo was taken last year when I legally changed to my married name) is a little comical. My eyes are so much smaller now and so much closer to the middle of my head. Also, suddenly my eyebrows are way too skinny for my face.

This too shall pass?

So a little note on my progress. Without grossing you out too much, nothing has happened in three weeks and we scheduled an induction for Monday. On Wednesday of this week, I started getting strong, regular contractions and they haven't let up yet. Some are stronger than others and some are longer than others, but they're never close enough and/or long enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. So, we stick with our induction plan. Our instruction was to go when contractions are five minutes apart and a minute long. So far, if they're 5 minutes apart, they're 30 seconds long. If they're a minute long, they're 10 minutes apart.

Memo to my body: make up your mind!

If I could jump on a trampoline right now, I would, but I think it would hurt too much, just judging my how painful it is to simply climb into bed or (shudder) roll over in bed.

Last night I woke up six times in eight hours to breath through contractions/go to the bathroom. Six times in eight hours! I have been pretty lucky so far and had a fairly easy pregnancy: no sickness, limited swelling once summer ended, only sporadic heartburn and sciatica, and pretty good skin. I figure at this point I'm just ramping up my weeklong labor, which I believe started on Wednesday.

We can't wait to meet this little guy! A couple weeks ago the doc did a short ultrasound just to check out fluid levels and stuff like that. And don't worry, he is a cute one (and I mean the baby, not the doctor)!

Sweet Song.

I don't know if I'm just pregnant and emotional, or what, but I am so in love with this little song.

I bought the newest Death Cab for Cutie album after going to an expensive-yet-less-than-acoustically-pleasing concert of theirs last month, and my opinion of the band's music has been restored, nay, risen to a new level. To recap my true feelings of their last four albums, since you care and all, it would be:

transatlanticism: like very much

plans: love

narrow stairs: meh

codes and keys: adore

The song is "Stay Young, Go Dancing", and the video looks like a stylish life insurance video, as a DJ I was listening to today described it. I'm pretty excited that they're playing this one on the radio. I think it has the staying power of "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" without the hipster creepiness.

But lest you worry, let me assure you that Ben Gibbard's hipsterness has reached a new level, as you'll notice in the video (which you'll totally watch, I know) as he's now rocking an updated Kurt Cobain look. Kinda carrying the torch since KC can't...or something. You know Kurt would probably have his own brand of hipster if he were still with us today.

But I digress. Here you go:

Here's where we're at.

Not done yet...some change in plans, but overall we like where this is headed!

Ongoing project #1

So, my first ongoing project in the house is painting all the drab yellowish, scuffed, dirty baseboards and trim in nice glossy pure white.

Is this still in style?

I don't care. I think it makes a room look so much better! Here is a phone shot where you can see some comparison:

I'm just realizing how bad this picture is.

See how in the taped section, there is hardly any differentiation between the wall color and trim color? It all blends and looks blah. But in the untaped section to the left, the trim has already been painted. It really makes the wall color pop, and I'm even thinking that once our cabinets are pure white, we might not even need to change the wall color (but of course that's all TBD).

So it might look like a slight improvement, but in person it makes a huge impact! It's making me fall in love with our wall color all over again. It almost makes me want to paint the ceilings.

I am a woman obsessed!

I did the family room tonight while I listened to The Voice.

Do you watch this show? I like it. Except, am I the only one who was once again reminded of how NOT equal Cee Lo is vocally to the other judges during that awkward Queen medly? Oh boy.