Creating a Functional Nursery, with Hot Air Balloons!

I never planned to have a theme for our baby girl's nursery, but when I found a hot air balloon nursery in my online perusing, I fell in love.  Her room also required some furniture and closet makeovers.  Here's what we did!

We were given some old furniture, a matching dresser and vanity, from Hubby's family that was nice, solid wood but needed a serious face lift.  Here's the vanity before:

I decided to paint them both antique white (Behr Antique White), and then distress them slightly by buffing up the edges. To do this:

-Sand your furniture reasonably well with a medium grain sand paper.  It doesn't need to be entirely stripped if you're just painting, like it does if you were restaining it.  

- Wipe it down with a damp cloth to remove all the dust and allow to dry.

- I found using a small roller to paint the majority of the furniture to have much better results than using a brush.  I only used a brush on edges and corners.

- Allow to dry and then do another coat. You may want to do a very fine sanding with fine sandpaper in between coats. Wipe off dust.

- Allow to dry then take your sandpaper and rub edges and corners until the wood shows through.  You can go a little nuts or be fairly conservative.  It's up to you!  

- Protect your paint with a top coat.  If you use a light color paint, like I did, use something like Minwax Finishing Paste.  If you have a darker color, you can opt to use Polyurethane.  (It can give a yellow tint to light colors as I learned with an earlier piece I did.)  

- Now, I know it's hard, because it's so pretty now, but then allow your furniture to sit unused for several days to let everything cure nicely.  

- Replace hardware.  I took the old wooden knobs and painted them my accent colors with acrylic paint for the dresser.  Some old metal knobs also showed up with my in-laws and they looked perfect on the newly white vanity!

Here's the finished products:

The vanity is perfect for a changing table now and will serve her well as a vanity or desk as she grows!

Colorful knobs are so fun

I wanted a neutral, soothing color on her walls.  The color I chose is Behr Mortar (ok, not a soothing name, but it's pretty!).  It's a gray with just a touch of blue in it.  I have always loved hot air balloons and flying in one is on my bucket list.  I also wanted to avoid excessive amounts of pink so I chose orange and turquoise accents, with some sunny yellow thrown in, to brighten her room.  I was thinking a playful sky and sunset colors.

Regrettably, I don't have a before picture of her closet.  Imagine bulky wooden folding doors and a single rusty metal shelf and rod across the middle.  I'm an organizer, and the nursery is a fairly small room, so I wanted to make the closet more functional. Here's how we changed it:

We removed the old shelf and bar and the closet doors.  We ended up painting the inside of the closet the same color as the walls in the nursery.  Then we put in a ClosetMaid storage system from Home Depot with baskets from Hobby Lobby.  We replaced the doors with washable cotton curtains.  I love it.  I want to do this to all of our closets.

Now for a couple of fun crafty things I did for her hot air balloon theme!  I happened to have a hot air balloon PUZZLE!  I totally love it.  So whimsical with the balloons all floating over this lovely little village with a castle in the mountains; sort of Swiss looking which makes me love it even more.  I put the puzzle together, then used plain old Mod Podge on the front and back to save it.  Then, I'm cheap, so I just used an X-Acto knife to cut out a piece of cardboard from a box the same size as the puzzle.  I used more Mod Podge to glue the puzzle to the board.  Seriously, you need Mod Podge in your box of crafty things because it comes in handy for all sorts of things.  Then I nailed it to the wall, which is the part that needs some work since the nails are wanting to pop out.  I'll let you know if I come up with a better plan of attack for that.

Then I made hot air balloons with paper lanterns!  My mom and I made the baskets using cheap, cardboard party favor boxes.  We used Mod Podge (of course!) to secure burlap around them.  We attached them to the lanterns with jute string and hot glue.  The clouds were used at my baby shower and it looks like my friends made them with felt, stuffing, and craft glue.  The animals are little finger puppets that were also from a baby shower.  I hung it all up with fishing wire.  So cute!

Finally, not in the theme, but I have to share these.  My awesomely talented and artistic friend over at May We Fly custom made these prints for me after I sent her photos of our pets! She even threw in some turquoise and orange.  She's launching her own business with her crafty delights, so please check her out! I can't wait for the moment baby girl figures out her pets are the cartoons on her wall.  Sooo fun.

My Testimony: April 16th and Faith Sharing

So yesterday was September 11th, which always sneaks up on me and I'm sad to say doesn't have quite the impact on me that it should.  Not like April 16th.  I'm always acutely aware of the anniversary of April 16th approaching.  Only those of you who know what a Hokie is will understand. Those of you who know what a Hokie is and were present as a student or teacher or other Blacksburg resident at Virginia Tech on April 16th, 2007 know that that was the day that evil got personal for us. That was the day that Seung-Hui Cho took the lives of 32 of us with his guns and chains and hatred.  September 11th, 2001 was the day I really understood that true evil existed in the world, but on April 16th, 2007, it became personal.  That was the day that I became acutely aware of life and death, of heaven and hell.  All of us will have that day in our lives, many of us will have more than one of those days, because that's the fallen world we live in.  

When I was a student at Virginia Tech, I joined a Christian group called Campus Crusade for Christ, now officially known as "Cru."  In high school I had come to believe that God and His Son were real and true and important to my life, though I didn't understand how.  Cru taught me about the bible, how to read it and study it and use it in my daily life.  Cru taught me how to pray and worship with others.  Cru taught me what God means to me: everything!  Cru taught me something else that I wasn't crazy about at the time - how to talk to others about Him.  Ugh, how I hated being challenged to share my faith, it terrified me and I was honestly bitter about it.  I was sure that just by being a good person around others they would somehow come to faith, right?!

My junior year I had a discipler, or a mentor, who was a Cru staff member.  Cynthia loved to push me out of my comfort zone in this area.  She brought me to go door to door in the dorms, looking for anyone who might be willing to talk to us.  (Admittedly, to this day, this is still not my favorite method of faith sharing.  And yes, when Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door, I feel annoyed.  Told you I'd be honest.) Unsurprisingly, pretty much no one ever wanted to talk to us for the whole first semester and most of the second.  Then one day, we were invited into a dorm! We were able to share the gospel with this freshman girl. I could tell she was one of those beautiful inside and out people, and I instantly liked her. She was someone I could have easily been friends with if I had ever met up with her again, hopefully at a future Cru meeting.  It was a good day.

About two or three weeks later, the shooting happened.  That day and the first couple of days immediately afterwards were a complete horror.  We gathered together as a group the evening of the 16th, frantically searching for our nearest and dearest friends, silently making mental notes of everyone that we saw alive and well, not yet knowing who we had lost or who might be injured.  The day that they released the names of those who had lost their lives, I sat in my room and pulled up the list on the website that had been quickly created. I knew that my closest friends were safe, but I scrolled through the names and faces searching for others who might be familiar.   Then I saw HER name, the girl I had talked to only weeks before.  I called Cynthia to make sure she had seen it. She had, but I don't think we said much.  Those days there wasn't really anything to say, there was just lots of silence and tears.  

Virginia Tech - We Remember

In the end, a couple of others who had been killed were close friends of my friends.  One student came regularly by my station that I worked at in the dining hall, to get a smoothie and chat with a coworker.  Others who had been killed were coworkers in my dining hall, but I hadn't known them well.  They were people that I had met, and I'd had a tiny window of opportunity to make a difference in their lives.

I write this as much for me as for you.  The thing is, I'm still really bad at sharing my faith. I still ignore the push sometimes (ok, most of the time) and hope that a smile and nod or an occasional "have a blessed day!" will suffice.  But who am I kidding?  God asks for so much more from us.  We must believe the truth, speak the truth, and then act it out! Faith without works is dead, but so is faith without words of truth.  This is something that I need to remind myself of over and over again. Not one us is guaranteed one shred of time on this earth.  Every moment is a gift.  Because we shared the truth with that girl, I have hope that one day I can meet her again.  I can tell her that her life and death had a huge impact on my life, that when I think of her I feel an urgency to share the good news with others.   Evil exists, but God has defeated it with his Son on the cross!  The joys of this life are nothing compared to what He has in store for those who love Him.  The evils of this life will be nothing but a memory.

Live with purpose.  Live with passion.  Live in the present, and for eternity.  Live for the One who made you and loves you and sacrificed for you.  
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Romans 6:23 ~ The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:9-11 ~ You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

James 4:13-14 ~ Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

Colossians 4:5-6 ~ Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

 1 Peter 3:14-16 ~ But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

Back Again

I'm back! Last November I returned to my blog and wrote about my crazy year.   Since then, I apologize for my disappearance from blogospace....again. Maybe I'll stick around for a little while longer this time.    I left out a key detail about our crazy year: I was also pregnant! We discovered this the day after my Papa passed on to glory.  In June I gave birth to our beautiful baby girl, whom we named Eleanor after a beloved aunt of my Papa.  Her name means "shining light" and she has truly been my ray of sunshine this year!

I also took my dreaded certification exam to become a full-fledged COTA - and PASSED!  I was able to work in the area of pediatrics for six months before our little one came along.  Eventually I will go back to work part time so as not to waste this license that I worked so hard for, but I absolutely love being home with baby girl right now and don't feel overly eager to return just yet.  I did have a great time with my kiddos for those six months though! I had a blast finding the perfect OT crafts and activities that can be graded for kids at various levels of ability.  "Grading" is our fancy term that simply means it can be made harder or easier to find a level that is "just right" for that child.  Activities should be challenging, yet attainable.  That is your OT tidbit for the day.

Being off the last few months has given me a chance to get crafty again, when the baby is sleeping of course...which I'm lucky to say she does a lot of.  I feel like a real Pinterest mom this week, returning to my blog, decorating for the fall, and cooking! I even cooked!! I'm still working on getting back into that one, but fall is always inspiring for me because I'm slightly obsessed with cooler weather foods, and holiday foods, and pumpkin...

All that to say, I'm back, and life is crazy and beautiful and I love it!