I’m so happy right now.  The dresser/changing table is IN THE NURSERY and it is gorgeous! I mean this dresser is the coolest piece I’ve ever owned, and my amazing, beautiful husband worked so hard to refinish it just the way I wanted.  Yeah, it took some time (2 months I believe), but good things come to those who wait.  There were little mistakes made along the way that had to be fixed.  There was 95% humidity and 100 degrees weather making it near impossible for stripper and stain to work right.  It was quite a task.  But in the end, it is PERFECT and, did I say, GORGEOUS!

The dresser was originally in the Hayden household as Josh was growing up.  I think it was purchased about 27 years ago.  Josh’s dad bought it “unfinished” and stained it to use in their daughter, Natalie’s, room.  It eventually got passed down to Josh and then Adam at some point.  When Josh went to college, he used it in his apartment.  It then followed him up to Indiana for graduate school.  Finally, when we got married, we used it in our bedroom.  It remained in its original condition through all those years.  Here is a picture of it “before”.  A few of the drawers were taken out before I snapped the picture, and as you can see the cats were busy exploring what was inside.

When we moved to Baton Rouge, we decided to use the dresser in Jonah’s nursery as storage/a changing table.  I think it will be so neat that Jonah has a piece that his daddy used growing up.  Josh and I wanted to give it a new life before we used it in Jonah’s room.  We went with a dark wood stain, a painted white top, and ceramic white hardware.  Here is the amazing “after”:

Isn’t it just beautiful!!  The process was long and involved, but it was done right.  I can’t even count how many steps there were in taking off 25+ years of stain, sanding down everything til it felt like butter, re-staining, applying multiple coats of polyurethane, and painting the top with primer and a white semi-gloss paint.  WHEW!

I am happy to say that this dresser will look beautiful for another 25 years.  Thanks again to my wonderful husband and a special thanks to PaPa Hayden who gave lots of over-the-phone advice and even came out and helped with the stripping/sanding process.

Now that the dresser is done, the nursery finally feels like a room with a purpose (instead of a storage closet).  The crib is all set up and ready to go.  I made the skirt for it last week, and I think it turned out really great with the teal blue sheets and dark wood.

All we have left to do is accessorize and organize…my favorite parts!  I can’t wait to show you the finished room.  Hopefully, that post will come before Jonah decides to.  We shall see!

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In other, way more exciting news, we have a new niece!!! We are so thrilled to announce the addition of Eleanor Landry to our growing family.  She is a perfect and beautiful little girl.  I’m so glad Jonah will have a cousin close to his age! I hope they will be the best of friends growing up.

Jonah’s crib came in last week, and Angela had an idea (inspired by a blog she reads) for documenting the process.  Enjoy!

(MUSIC: Jimmy Eat World — My Best Theory [edited], © 2010 Interscope Records)

So, the room is coming along, but there is still a lot of work to be done.  Stay tuned …

The past two weekends Jonah and I (and Josh indirectly) were spoiled rotten at two different baby showers held by our family and friends.  We were given so many amazing gifts and had a great time playing games, eating, and talking about the excitement of a new baby.  The first shower was in Baton Rouge and was hosted by my lovely mother, sister, and cousin.  A lot of my aunts and other cousins helped out too.  This shower had an alphabet theme with blue and orange colors.  There was a diaper cake, alphabet block display, and alphabet block-shaped favors.  Notice the wall-E robot on top of the diaper cake.  We will hopefully be incorporating some robots in Jonah’s nursery, so that is why he is at the top of the cake.  Oh, and the whale- I’ll let you figure out that connection. 

__________________

I think we counted about 40 ladies at this shower!  It was definitely a full house, but it was so much fun having everyone there.  Here are a few shots of my mom, sister, and cousin.  I also included a picture of my fellow preggo sister-in-law who is due a month before me.  I’m pretty sure her belly is beating mine out!

_________

The second shower was in Mandeville and was hosted by Josh’s mom, sister, and a group of his mom’s friends.  The theme of this shower was “It’s a Boy” and had a lot of blue and yellow. There were so many personal touches and Jonah’s name was all over the place: on balloons, blocks, a book, and a blanket.  It was really a beautiful shower.

______________________ _____

One of my favorite things everyone did at this shower was to write a little note to me and Josh on a newborn diaper.  That way when one of us is up at 3am changing Jonah, we will get to read a cute or funny message.  It was such a great idea, and I am actually looking forward to those diaper changes!

This shower was extra special to Josh and I because we were given the cradle Josh’s dad built for us.  It is stunning.  His dad is seriously a wood-working genius, and we can’t thank him enough for this priceless gift.  He has been working on it for the past few months, and it is so nice to finally have it in our home awaiting baby.  I can’t wait for Jonah to sleep in it and to use it for our future kiddos.  Can we say “family heirloom” anyone?!

Well, that is the baby shower wrap-up.  We received everything we needed and more!  These past two weekends have been wonderful.  I am so glad we were able to celebrate and anticipate this new little baby with everyone.  It has made me even more excited as the due date gets closer.  We only have a month and a half left and, as you know from the last post, there is still a lot to do! Look for our nursery progress in the next post! (Hooray!!)

Oh, and for those of you wondering what my belly is looking like these days, here is the black and white version.  The boy is growin’!

We are officially 2 months away from my due date.  Well, we have 55 days left to be exact.  All I can say is “yikes!” and “yippeee!”  The yikes is for the enormous list of things we still have to take care of before Jonah arrives.  The yippeee is, of course, because we are beyond excited to meet our little man.  I mean, seriously, you have no idea how excited we are!

However, if this baby decided to show up tomorrow we would be in BIG trouble.  We have a mess for a nursery.  The nursery that used to be a storage room of Josh and Angela things is now a storage room for all things baby.

Now I am not complaining.  We have been completely blessed by family and friends who have given us so many clothes, baby essentials, furniture, etc.  I even had my first baby shower last weekend where everyone was so generous and gave us way more than we could ever expect.  It is pretty amazing.  The problem now is finding a place for everything, getting organized, and decorating that nursery! I guess that is what they call “nesting”.

The whole “nesting” thing started for me a few weeks ago.  I started finding random boxes or drawers that were a mess, so I cleaned them out and organized them.  I just have this looming feeling that if things aren’t organized and in their place, I would go crazy.  Must be the hormones.  Anyways, I worked all over our house, but for some reason I kept ignoring Jonah’s soon to be room.  I guess it was just too overwhelming to actually get started.

Finally, I have started.  I have all of his 0-3 month clothes washed, sorted, and folded in his closet.

We have our glider (thanks Mom and Dad Hayden) and the crib will be delivered any day now (thanks Mom and Dad Harb).  We also are nearly done refinishing the dresser/changing table.  That has been Josh’s project with a little help from his wood-refinishing master daddy.  I can’t wait to show off the finished product!

There is still ALOT more to do.  I am currently making curtains and buying accessories for the room.  Let’s just say we are going for a modern look in the nursery but not super IKEA catalog or anything.  It will be charming.  It will be for a boy.  Here is a little taste of what the crib looks like and some of our fabric choices:

My goal is to have the nursery complete by the end of August along with all my other “nesting” projects.  And lucky for you, one of my projects is to start blogging weekly, so look forward to reading our updates more than once a month!  Whoohoo!  I still can’t believe we are in the final stretch.  So much has happened these past 7 months, and we have so much to look forward to.  Life is good.  We are so blessed.

We have been pretty busy here lately at the Hayden household getting used to our new schedule and getting ready for baby.  Josh is loving his new job, and I am finally settling into life as a stay-at-home wife.  I have been spending time with family, organizing around the house, and volunteering for VBS at our church.  In all the business, we haven’t realized that it is almost halfway through July!  On the 12th, we will be celebrating our 10 month anniversary and the 6.5 month mark in my pregnancy.  Life is going by fast, and I don’t want to miss recognizing the little moments and celebrating the little accomplishments. So for this post, I will be showing off a little monthiversary gift I made for Josh (and myself actually) and explaining how I did it. Enjoy!

Since our beautiful and personal wedding day, I wanted a way to display and remember the wedding vows that we wrote for one another.  I always thought I would type them out or write them on pretty paper and have them framed, but that didn’t seem special enough.  In my daily blog reading, I came across a post about using www.wordle.net to create word art.  This website basically takes a paragraph or group of words and arranges it in an artistic way.  The size of the words on the art piece corresponds to the frequency of use of that word in your paragraph.  I just typed in our vows one at a time and played around with the different font and style settings until I had the look I wanted.  I clicked “print” and VOILA: a unique and beautiful way to remember our vows.

I love how some words really stand out like love, promise, Christ, and each of our names.  It is so neat to look at all the smaller words and remember how we used them in our vows.  I gave them to Josh, and he absolutely loved them!  It really is the simple, thoughtful, and free things in life that mean so much more than any gift I could have purchased.  I can’t wait to hang these up in a place where I will see them everyday and remember the promise I made to my amazing husband 10 months ago.  I love you, Joshua.  Happy Monthiversary!