Being schooled in the subject of rock. But not the Jack Black kind...

Welcome back to your regularly scheduled blogger.

I thought pairing down our technology and getting rid of our laptops and going to one computer would be a good idea. But now that I see what it's done for our hacking ability on each other's accounts I am starting to question Paul's motives for the new computer.

I took the plunge today and bought another piece of furniture. The piece of furniture that I have been sweating and loosing sleep over since June. It's been purchased.

Remember my post about the furniture for the baby's room? Remember the rocking chair saga? Well it got worse.

This was the chair. It had disappeared on me shortly after finding it on Urban Outfitters website, but it quickly came back and had more reviews than just the one I had seen originally.

We we're off to Dallas for all of our furniture only to find the UO store we hit up did not have the chair in. They didn't even have a display model. But it was an overall great shopping trip, our car was packed and I don't know how we would have squeezed it in to the back of our Highlander anyways. I just figured we'd order it online when we got home.

I got home, opened up the laptop and there was the chair. In all of it's glory and with an additional $100.00 price tag that had not been there before. I shut the laptop and debated whether it was still worth it. Some of the newer reviews had not been so praiseworthy and I was back to questioning the choice.

Every time I got serious about buying it, I'd back out. Something about it didn't feel right. I wasn't sold. And the "stone" colored cushions were now being deemed "taupe" which was exactly what I didn't want.

So we sat around on our duffs week after week thinking about and doing better and other things. Except the "you don't have a chair for the room yet!" bug was screaming in the back of my brain.

The bug got bigger last Sunday when I realized we we're looking at 9 weeks before the kiddo was due to arrive and I was no closer to finding a chair I wanted than I had been when we we're only 9 weeks pregnant.

We started our search again and this time, everything was fair game. Upholstered, non upholstered, big, small, cheap, ugly. The molded plastic arm chair was a front runner along with the UO chair still but no serious decisions could be made. I/we just couldn't commit to anything.

Until last Monday when I confirmed my ever so handy designer discount with Herman Miller. I could get the Eames molded plastic arm chair for $100 cheaper than I could buy it anywhere else and I'd only be spending $45.00 more (after tax and shipping) for it than I would the chair from UO.

The UO chair couldn't compete. So we picked the finish we wanted from our Herman Miller chip cards and I signed the quote, and our chair got ordered.

We purchased the chair in white because the first gray, Sparrow, was too taupe-y and the second, Greystone, was too blue. The lime green couldn't sit in any other room of our house in the future and the other colors clashed with the blue on the wall. White was a good, reusable color.

So in 5-6 weeks we'll be rocking away. Paul and I don't plan to do a lot of rocking so the chair didn't have to be plush as long as it was comfortable. And when rocking for more than just a little bit is necessary we still have the La-Z-Boy hiding in our bedroom corner away from public view.

Paul

My husband is an evil genius.  Now that we have a combined computer, he has more opportunities to log into my accounts and write things like:

I LOVE CHRISTA! 

She's already a fantastic wife and she's going to be the best mom ever!

2010

art for the kiddo's room

In college, one of my professors taught us about decorating in one of our classes and how it relates to fashion. Shirts/pants are the basics of the room, paint, sets tone of the entire space, etc. Jewelry was the artwork and the pizazz.

Gag.

But seriously about the artwork thing...if there's one thing I am not fabulous at, it's artwork and/or jewelry respective to their elements.

So artwork for baby has been sort of stressful. Hours have been spent on Etsy.com and perusing Spearmint Baby in hopes of being inspired.

It was hard, but I've done it. I've successfully decided on what goes up in this new room. Nothing too childish, nothing too adult. Enough education, enough color. All without having a hippo with a letter "H" plastered all over it in primary reds and blues.

First, I bought this alphabet poster from Etsy seller, Bibitty:

A designer/blogger that I follow (via the web) had a child a little over a year ago and put this poster in her daughter's new bedroom as well and I'd always loved it. I hadn't settled on anything else and still thought it was adorable so purchased it got. We framed it in an IKEA Ribba white frame and since the art itself is 16" x 20", it's sort of the "big piece" in the room and on our big art wall.

I then found a seller on Etsy who sold wooden cut out letters. We're not talking Hobby Lobby curly-Q letters here, we're talking modern typefaces in 1/2" thicknesses, stained, not painted or hodge podged or whatever else people are doing these days. I was in love. But I didn't want to pay $35.00 for something Paul and I could easily do ourselves. I opened my AutoCAD at work and sketched out the exact typeface for the letter "A" I wanted and printed it to scale. We purchased a 1/2" sheet of birch and I traced the letter onto the board from the stencil I made in AutoCAD and Paul went to work. After we got the letter cut out using the jig saw, we sanded it down with our power sander, applied a wood conditioner to it and then a coat of stain. And for $15.00 I got myself my letter A and I only had to wait for Paul to get motivated to cut it out, not shipping. Just kidding.

Paul slaving away over my "lets be cheap" antics and the finished product.

To finish off the wall above the dresser where the French alphabet poster and letter A are to go I decided to go with something more local. Although, you really don't get any more local than your own front porch and a jig saw, but by local, I mean Oklahoma City.

There is an Etsy seller, DeweyandWest, that is based out of Oklahoma City. I'd fallen on their Etsy site almost a year ago by mistake, liked their work and favorited their shop but never did anything else with it. A few months ago, we hit up the Plaza Arts Festival with some friends and as we were walking around, Paul mentioned briefly to me that he liked the art work sitting on the very end of one of the tables. I turned to look at it, and sure enough it was a Dewey and West print. When they're shop popped up on my Etsy a few days ago, I knew their work would be the perfect thing to tie the room together. So after a few conversations back and forth we got a custom listing set up and I got these beauties:

They sold me just the linen print, they didn't apply it to the wood block frame.

We're going to frame them in the same white IKEA Ribba frames (but square) to match the frame for the alphabet poster. Fabulous.

Oh and I went ahead and did this too. My frame isn't as sculpted as hers but when I found a frame at the RINK for $4.00, I couldn't pass it up. Ours is painted coral pink from a tester I got at Home Depot and then I covered in a coat of clear gloss spray paint.

Just for future reference, if you need chicken wire, it doesn't exist anymore. It's now called "Poultry Fencing". I want to know who felt it was necessary to change the name to keep the rest of the foul being corraled from getting upset and wanting to sue. I mean, those turkeys, they want to make sure they aren't grouped in the same category with chickens, I guess. There must be some serious political unrest going on with those birds.

Hopefully there will be more to come soon. Since things are starting to get crazy around here just getting the projects done is my number one priority. Blogging about them? Not so much, but I'll try.

elevator talk

Last week I needed to run up to the fifth floor to help a co-worker with a project. A year ago, I would have taken the stairs but these days I move too slow to go up three floors, so I made my way to the elevator lobby instead.

[Side note: The building I work in consists of a few other businesses but floors 1-5 are primarily my company. Anyone on my floor is an employee of the company I work for. We also all wear badges.]

Standing in the elevator lobby was a guy I had seen maybe once or twice before, he was wearing his Benham badge but I had no idea what his name was or what he did at our company. But by the way he was dressed, I was guessing some part of obscure management or someone who had at least been with our company for awhile. He had selected the down button.

Seeing as I had to go up, I pushed the other button and then we both just stood there in complete silence, waiting. All the while, he had never looked up from his Blackberry. (This is where that new "Really?" cell phone TV ad would have come into play well).

The elevator dinged, I looked up for the indicator and the elevator was going up. I hopped on and he started to follow me, still looking at his Blackberry.

I wanted to inform him that the elevator was going up and that if he didn't mind riding up a few floors first, then he could go down to one. But it didn't come at as informational, or helpful or even remotely cordial.

Christa: "I'm going up, do you mind?"

Unknown co-worker: "Geez, sorry." He hops off, the doors shut immediately and I'm left standing there with my mouth open feeling like a class A witch.

I meant, "I'm going up, do you mind riding up to the fifth floor first? Ya know, before it takes you down to one?" But no. No.

Instead it came out as, "This is my elevator, get off."

Cue mortified face and silent thanksgiving that it wasn't anyone who performs my yearly performance evaluation.

it's time to get serious

First of all, I find it ironic that a word that means "to reduce" is eleven letters long. Shouldn't words like this coordinate with their meanings or does the entire basis of oxymoron theory fall on this?

Secondly, I find it strange that someone felt the need to come up with a different word for cleaning (simplification, purging, etc.) for women who are pregnant. Other than the fact that it really is sort of a phenomenon that the desire to get things in order overtakes you, it's still the same thing: cleaning.

Whatever you call it, it's setting in hard around the Ryckbost house. The actual action has not happened yet, but the desire to start is huge. It's 3:00 on a Wednesday afternoon, things have been semi-rough this week and I really should just want to nap, but all I can think about is going home and breaking out the toilet bowl cleaner and purging my makeup box.

Please don't judge me when what's really going to happen this afternoon/evening is something more like this: I leave my office and head home to lay on the couch watching TV while the frozen pizza is warming up in the oven, the bathroom door in my peripheral vision, but don't worry, I won't be moving that direction because I know I won't have time to get it all done before we leave for church. And really? Why bother if you can't get it all done? 

But no really, I want to de-clutter, clean and purge anything I can get my hands on.

The kitchen? I want to clean out the refrigerator and wipe down every crook and crevice. I want to reorganize drawers and base cabinets and they were all just put together in May of this year when we remodeled.

The office? It doesn't need much purging as I took care of most of that back in September but the dresser needs to be painted and the desk needs to be skirted and on and on and on.

Oh and the bookshelves in the living room! Don't get me started on the bookshelves.

Unfortunately, time is not on our side. With family commitments, holidays, our last big vacation sans baby, church, doctor's and dentist appointments, weddings and showers of all sorts, the next seven weeks are pretty well spoken for. I printed a calendar today and penciled in my to-do items.

Did you read that? I penciled in nesting.

I sent Paul an email talking briefly about simplifying our life and typed the line "because some of the simplifying will involve you." His response back to me was, "You're letting me go? :)"

If I knew he'd be taking half the contents out of our little house with him, maybe.

I kid, I kid.

color: something from nothing or nothing from something?

Color Collective is a blog that I catch every day thanks to the genius of Google Reader. There's never any text, just photos and extracted colors. Photos of art, clothes, landscapes, objects, you name it she can pull colors from it.  

"So what?," you say? "What's the purpose in this?!"

Well, basically, it's like doing what I do, but backwards. Any type of designer or artist has to be able to create something from nothing, from white. To create a color palette that works and works better than what the average Joe-Schmo can come up with. It has to scream at you, it has to pop. People who do this go about it in different ways. Sometimes I have set color palettes before I start a project and then I pull materials and finishes using those colors. Other times I start with a solid white quartz counter that I like and run with it from there and see what I end up with. It's quite genius really. 

(Side note: that's the glitzy part of the job that I only do 15% of the time, after that I sit in meetings and in front of my computer making sure my vision becomes a  reality. And reality in my industry is not what people would consider so glitzy. I always think people would be shocked if they knew what I spent 85% of my time doing).  

Back to the glitz though. And why I love what this blogger does.

She takes something that someone has created and shows you why it works. She shows you what about the art, outfit or room that makes it flow and graphically stimulating. I know people probably think it's as easy as grabbing a color dropper in Photo Shop and clicking on colors, but I know it's not. I know it's more than that.

Everyday, I scroll through my reader and take a look. Some days I like the palette more than others but everyday I'm looking for something that reminds me of something I've done or maybe something I want to make work somewhere. And today I found it.

 

via Color Collective

The photo didn't quite catch my attention as much as the color palette did at first. Those are the colors of our baby girl's new room. Well, very close to them. I looked at the photo again and realized the style of her clothes, the scenery, everything about it worked too. The bright colors in an eclectic, feminine, somewhat European and whimsical combination without looking too childish way is what I want. It works. I love it. I mean, I still love it. Granted, the room is turning out a little more "vintage" shabby chic than I'd like right now but I think if I curb it now with some other purchases I'll be able to make it work.

So if you need some inspiration, check out her blog every now and again. You may just find the color combo that speaks to you.   

the "p" card, i try to use it sparingly

I wrote this about a month ago, I thought it got posted...alas, it did not. Why not post it now? PS - Paul brought me a cheeseburger and cheddar bites in the middle of that afternoon, he almost went with the French Toast Sticks too but he was trying to keep me from having a heart attack. Good man.

I slept for four hours last night and today all I want to eat for dinner is french toast with a side of cheeseburger, an order of cheddar bites and some sweet and sour chicken.

Don't judge, or I'll pull out the card. You know what card I'm talking about.

Bri, Jenn and Ava come to visit!

This past weekend Paul's brother Brian, his wife Jenn and their 14 month old daughter came to visit us in Oklahoma City for the first time.

Paul's five years older than Brian and was off to college by the time Brian was able to really hang out and do things. By the time Brian started college, Paul was off to grad school and then moved to OKC shortly after graduating. They have a lot in common, they're good friends but we've never just hung out for long periods of time together, until this weekend.

We had such a good time hanging around our house, driving them around to a couple of "must sees" and "must eats" and playing with our niece. We sat on the porch and blew bubbles, played puzzles and sang songs and danced. You basically can't get any more adorable than this:

I took this right after I downloaded "InstaGram" onto my phone and I feel like I need to print it out and write a caption on the back like my grandma used to do. "Ava, 14 months, Paul & Christa's porch, October 2010". I'm a little obsessed with that app now so if all my pictures look straight out of the 70's for awhile, you will know why.

It was weird having a baby around the house but we loved it. It was a good way for Paul and I to see what our house is going to look like, what we're going to have to move to higher shelves, what must go and what we are willing to let get slobbered on.

They left this morning and I'm a little sad to go home tonight and not see them and have dinner with them.

We only have a few months before we're in the mitten of Michigan again so it's not the last time we'll see them in years, but still.

earthquakes, mascara-less and frozen pudding

Today I felt an earthquake. A big earthquake. Well, not California 7.0 big, but OKC 4.3 big. That's big. I was sitting at my desk and the building shook and shifted and my desk moved and it was a little intense.

Does it make me stupid for just realizing in the last 3 months that people say "OKC" because it's the airport code? You know, like how people call Atlanta, ATL?

30 minutes later the power went out in our building. It came back on but talk about some weird stuff going down on the Broadway Extension.

I also determined 15 minutes ago that I forgot to put on mascara and eye liner today.

No, I am not tired. No, I am not sick. OK, well, I am tired and that's why I forgot to put on the black junk.

Have you ever had frozen pudding?

Don't.

It was an accident and the texture was a bit nauseating.

I'm having a hard time getting motivated to work. Well that's not true, there are lots of things I want to do and tasks I want to be making progress on. I am having a hard time getting motivated to work at my JOB. WHERE I AM PAID TO WORK. What is my problem?!

the new safari in our house

Rug shopping is serious business for me.

Living in a house with no carpet and 90+ year old wood floors provides plenty of charm but plenty of cold feet too.

Having rugs is necessary.

I, however, despise paying for rugs.

Currently the rug inventory in our house is in sad shape. They consist of Bed, Bath and Beyond, 5x7 solid colored CHEAP rugs, free tile samples from work that I have turned into rugs, two small 3 x 5 Pottery Barn rugs (both bought on clearance) and a 5 X 7 crewel rug from a previous job that is much too thin for my tastes but works in the space and was basically free.

The cost of nice rugs is out of control, and it makes me miss having carpet because there's no associated "extra" flooring cost with it.

When we decided to do the baby's room and do it up right, I knew I wanted a new rug. The one in the room currently, leaves a little something to be desired in the color and style department. It worked fine when it was a TV room and covered with a coffee table but knowing how much food I alone dropped on the thing makes me want to clean it, roll it up and store for another day, possibly. I mean, we only paid like $80 bucks for it almost 5 years ago, I can't say I'd be terribly heartbroken to see it go. Plus, the pink nail polish stain on it that was so conveniently hidden by the futon has been glaring at me for the past few days. 

I started searching for rugs and quickly decided I wanted a zebra rug for her room. 

Don't get me wrong, I know it's been done. I'm aware that this is not my most creative moment of all time. But I knew with everything else that I was planning to do, a gray and white zebra (hide shaped) rug would be perfect. 

And I guess to say it's been done before is almost an understatement:

But I obviously don't care.

The search was on but I only found one gray and white, zebra shaped rug. I couldn't afford Thomas Paul and since his sold so fast or were discontinued the one I had found would have to do. Except, it turns out it was an outdoor rug and was not quite the soft, plush, infant friendly rug I was hoping for.

I went home somewhat disapointed from work and walked into the living room to find my new Fall 2010 West Elm catalog sitting on the coffee table. Fresh from the mailbox. I've sort of lost interest in West Elm lately and almost didn't pick it up but I'm glad I did because inside I found something similar enough:

Ok, so it wasn't a hide-shaped rug, which was a make or break deal with me, but it was $100.00 cheaper and actual tufted wool, softer and a little more appropriate for the application. 

While we were in Dallas last weekend, we hit up the West Elm Store, which is a really well done store. They have the right font, the right flooring, the right materials, the right fixtures, all of it works for them really, really well. It sort of made me a fan again, everything about the store was fun, besides the rotting wood floor piece I almost stepped in when I wasn't paying attention. But other than that, seriously, a fan.  

We checked out the Safari Rug, liked it, and bought it. The 8 foot roll was added to the heap of furniture boxes, bags and luggage in the back of the Highlander ten minutes later and we were on our way!

18 weeks to go for...wait for it....

Things are supposed to be settling down right about...now.

We've had in-laws, gone on a weekend trip with friends, had office deadlines, visited my parents two weekends in a row and have been all over Dallas (on OU/Texas weekend mind you) shopping for furniture.

So, settling down now would be good because we only have 18 weeks before our baby girl arrives! We've picked her name and we're not much for keeping secrets especially with 14 other people out there having babies (not that we're staking a claim here, anyone can name their child whatever they want. We don't mind duplicates but we just don't want other people to be disappointed or angry, so we're going ahead and putting it out there).

Addison Cole. No special meaning, no family namesake, nothing totally crazy. We just liked it, and then loved it.

It's amazing what a name does for the whole experience. We still refer to her as "the baby" or "her" a lot and probably will continue to do so, but knowing she has a name makes it all very...well I don't know how to explain it really, it's just different.

On that note, 18 weeks to go for Addison Cole!

o·c·t·o·b·e·r

I should be working. I have a deadline. Today.

Which means that for the last two weeks my chest has been tight, my teeth have been clenched, my legs have been bouncing and I have struggled to focus on any one task for more than three seconds at a time. Yea, these things are fun. So, with today being the big day to issue a package of construction documents to the contractor, I should be working.

But it’s October 1st. And what's better is, I'm done at 8:38 am.

The month of October has a special little place in my heart. It is my birthday month and in a fully self righteous and narcissistic way that makes it special. I’m not the kind of person that celebrates my birthday for more than the day it’s on, and even on the day, I don’t make too big of a deal of it. The day doesn’t roll around for another 16 days but starting October 1st, things get good around my neck of the woods. There’s something about October 1st that means newness for me. Most people find spring to be the season that does that for them, but I wasn’t born in spring and therefore, spring means nothing more than green grass and come this time of year, I’ve seen plenty of green grass and I don’t mind the brown so much.

October is when everything started and every year I feel like it’s starting again. I know that that feeling is something I’ve put into my own head and that I don’t remember it being October and cold when I was an infant. But over the last 24 years I think I’ve convinced myself mentally that I do remember it and that’s why it’s so special.

But besides all of that mumbo jumbo, it's October which means celebrating tons of other people's birthday's too, going for walks outside because it's so freaking nice, driving with the windows down, apple crisp (which Paul made last night and I ate for breakfast today), and cardigans. CARDIGANS people.

I'll be heading out of work early today, just because I can and I may spend my free time outside, just sitting. Still too warm for a cardigan, but nicer than it was a month ago.

photo from Etsy seller integrity studio.

an intro to furniture, of sorts...

Paul and I are ... interesting ... when it comes to furniture. We know what we don't like (style wise) but have pretty eclectic tastes and like all sorts of things. So our furniture tends to fall in a "hodge podge but it totally works" kind of situation. We both like all types of wood finishes depending on what piece it's on so when we started deciding what to do for the nursery it was sort of a free for all.

After much debate (not between Paul and I but the debate in my head) we settled on white. Which was a shock to most people, but it's what worked best for our current house and will work fine in any house we put it in later for future kids. So then it was on to style. We both like modern, transitional and traditional. But we got our crib (as a wonderful present) before we knew what we were having, so that set the tone for the rest of the pieces in the room.

Our crib is from PB Kids and for the price, the quality was well worth it. Every other place I looked, you spent an outrageous amount on a "modern" crib and the quality wasn't always that good. And I've bought furniture from Pottery Barn before so I knew what I was getting into. Plus, this kept us from going too modern or too traditional, which was perfect for the rest of our house.

We then settled on a dresser and bookshelf from IKEA. I've seen a lot of people use this dresser in their nurseries and I've been told, drawers, drawers, drawers. We'll use it as our changing table too. I plan to switch out the knobs for a more decorative style so it's a little different than everyone else's.

The bookshelf will hold a few metal locker storage baskets that will hold books, toys and blankets and the rest of the shelves I am sure will get filled up quickly as we're already accumulating wonderful gifts!



Finding a rocking chair though proved to be, for a lack of a better and more eloquent phrase, total crap. Everything I was finding was either quadruple my budget, ugly or didn't rock. I guess the "ugly" statement isn't completely fair. Some of them weren't ugly, they just were not right for our house, our style or our nursery. I really wanted a vintage mid century danish style rocker but all the ones I could find were in worse shape than I cared to care for. Things were looking down. So far down in fact, I almost gave up and was going to either A) shell out $1000 for a fully upholstered piece or B) move the recliner back into the room (and I was dreading both options). I'd almost made my decision when I stumbled upon this baby:

I about lost it and bought it on the spot. Urban Outfitters? Really? I was going to buy furniture from UO? There was only 1 review and I decided I had plenty of time to purchase it if it was what I really wanted. And then it disappeared. Story of my life.

And I about lost it again, but for a totally different and unrealistic reason. It was just a chair. You would have thought someone would have needed to walk me back off the edge of a cliff. It wasn't really the story of my life, my life's been great, I'm never the "always screwed over type". So I was back to settling between option A and B when it reappeared with more fabrics then ever and tons of reviews!

It was settled, it was the chair.

This weekend, Paul and I are heading to Dallas to pick all this lovely stuff up. With another set of family coming to visit in possibly two weeks, work commitments on weekends, 4 baby showers on the other weekends and the holidays just around the corner we figured now was as good as time as any!

"So long sweet summer, I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays."

Today is officially the first day of fall which means I need a pair of these:

Hello gorgeous. It also means that I am dying my hair back to my natural color, so it will be fake "real" for a while but will be my natural dark, fall and winter hair color. Oh and I'm getting a new pair of glasses and I am debating between a brown frame and a tortoise shell frame and I'm extremely giddy about it. Oh fall, how I love you.

Although it is still in the 80's here in Oklahoma City and will feel like summer for probably another few weeks, the calendars/meteorologists say it's now fall and therefore I am celebrating.

But for as much as I love fall every time it comes around, I am terribly sorry to see this summer go. This is the summer that we made major progress on our house, that we celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary, found out we were having a baby and a baby girl at that.

Some old school Dashboard Confessional came up on my Pandora station this morning and Age Six Racer made my morning (and this blog post):

"So long sweet summer, I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays.
So long sweet slumber. I fell into you, now you're gracefully falling away.

Hey thanks, thanks for that summer. It is cold where your going, I hope that your hearts always warm. I gave you the best, gave you the best that I had. You passed on my letters & passed on the best that I had."

Weekending in Tahlequah and a minor fit

This past weekend Paul and I and 7 other couples from our church class packed up and headed to the Illinois river for the weekend.

It started off as a disaster for yours truly.

A few days before we were going to leave, there seemed to be some confusion in the plan on how we were all getting there. Paul and I had thought we we're settled with a few other couples on carpooling but it seemed it had changed or morphed or grown and everyone was confused. I asked the boy to look into it which resulted in a lack of handling (the way I would have handled it). I threw a hissy fit because I didn't want to drive after an 8 hour day of work when I needed to get up and move around every 30 minutes to keep comfortable. Driving more than 45 minutes has started to get miserable because I can't shift a lot. Yet it was 6:30 Friday evening and I found myself in the driver seat of the Highlander packed with girls from our class.

Instead of just going with it, the husband decided to be smooth (it was a little late for that) and after more shuffling and a few quiet curse words to myself and an almost full on scene of water works we were on our way, me not driving but very, very furious.

After we got there everything was great and everyone had a really great time. It was just getting there that was the problem.

I struggled over the weekend a lot with what my friend Lauren would call "super insecure junior high Christa" syndrome and I felt like I was back at summer camp when I was twelve and my best friend Vanessa had ditched me for much cooler friends with cooler clothes and jewelry. I also for the first time did not like being pregnant.

My doctor is easy going. No rules really. There was no packet, there was no list of do's and don'ts but the only thing she has flat out told me not to do was float in the Illinios river because of the bacteria. So 15 out of 16 people would be floating and Christa would not be one of them.

So while they went to float, I picked up breakfast for us for the next morning, got my eyebrows waxed and also grabbed our lunch for Saturday from Subway.

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out, eating and playing games. The guys? A nice game of Mexican Train. The girls? Well, the girls played a ridiculously scandalous game of "Say Anything". I don’t think I’ve ever blushed so much in my life and if you know me, you know it takes quite a bit to shame me.

stupid people make me feel crazy

I'll leave it at that or i'll get myself in trouble.


Enjoy that post did ya?

the felt bird

Yesterday, Paul and I took off work and did a little tour of parts of Oklahoma we had never seen before with Paul's mom and dad.

We went up to a small town called Kingfisher, stopped in at a local (small-town) museum and then skipped (well not literally) across the street to a former governor's mansion. It was built in 1892, I didn't take photos, but you know me. I love those old houses so much I thought about hiding in one of the corners and just living there quietly during the day so no one would notice and then living it up at night. Huge front doors, trim and crown molding in perfect condition everywhere, parlor rooms and wood parquet flooring. I should move on or we could be on this house all day long.

After our museum and mansion tour we went up to Enid, Oklahoma to have some lunch and look around.

Lunch was at a place called PaneVino and was really delicious and fun. We we're shocked for a town like Enid to have such a cute, legitamite wine bar/restuarant. I had the Italiano panini off their lunch menu and would order it again, and again and again. If you're ever in Enid, whatever you might be hanging out around there for, it's a good place to eat!

We also hit up a store called B Hip Kids (super cute and we spent lots of time in there) and The Felt Bird.

The Felt Bird is a lot like Collected Thread here in OKC but had a little larger shop with a little more variety. It's run by Riley, Estela and their dog Dexter who was super sweet and just followed my mother in law around watching her look at stuff. They have clothing, jewelry, homewares, gifts, TOMS and a lot of other really cool things.

We bought our first gift for our little girl, it's their Owl Snuggly pillow seen above but ours has small red and pink apples on the front. They also had a big collection of sock monkeys and I'm wishing i'd grabbed her the classic gray and red one too but she's not even here yet, seriously, how many stuffed things does a kid need?

"it's a baby...GIRL!", "I'm sorry, did you just say "girl?"

Five weeks ago my doctor scheduled my mid-pregnancy ultrasound and I felt like I was going to have to wait an eternity to see our child again. The five weeks flew by though because we kept ourselves busy at work and with the house and before I knew it, it was the Sunday night before my appointment.

All of a sudden I was terrified of going to the doctor. I was nervous something was wrong or maybe nothing was wrong but I'd really have to see it again and it'd all be so very real all over again.

That night I had a dream that Paul and I decided that our 1:00 appointment was not convenient and so we skipped it. We skipped our ultrasound. THE ultrasound. We instead decided to show up at 4:45, unannounced, to which my doctor showed her great disgust and told me I couldn't be pregnant anymore. That was that.

I woke up Monday morning and planned my entire day around that 1:00 appointment. I couldn't miss it, we couldn't be late. We couldn't not be pregnant anymore, that wasn't an option. Yes, we'd still go to the 1:00.

I felt ridiculous all morning. It was all I could think about. I wasn't even remotely concerned about the sex of the baby, but I couldn't figure out what it was I was nervous about. I was sweating like a pig and drinking water like I was dying of thirst. I kept telling myself over and over again that my bladder had to be full and so I'd down 20 ounces of water only to have to pee oh, 5 minutes later. I did this all morning. Water, bathroom, water, bathroom, snack, water, bathroom. And the sweat. I was still sweating. So bad that I pulled my extra deodorant out of my desk drawer, hid in the corner of the finish library and reapplied it TWICE.

I gave Paul a last minute call and asked him to bring me a sweater and a brush because I was a mess with pit stains and my doctor was going to think I had lost it.

The ultrasound tech got us in and we got started and then I cried. I cried and I cried. The baby was there and perfect and the nose was the right length, there were two arms and two legs, I saw it's bones and it's heart beating with all four chambers. I saw it's spine flexing and moving and I watched it kick me with it's ridiculously long legs and watched it pull and play with the cord. I cried some more. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. No, seriously, you don't understand, even if you've seen it, you don't understand. It was just unbelievably cool. 

No really, stop pretending like you understand. You've just never seen anything as cool as Paul and I did Monday afternoon.

[I've been looking for a YouTube video all morning of Jim and Ryan (from The Office) talking about New York City. Ryan keeps telling Jim how awesome it is to live in the City and to be there and to be surrounded by everything going on. Jim keeps saying how much he loves visiting and how he agrees that it is an awesome place but Ryan keeps telling him he just doesn't understand even though he totally did. Yea, if I had found that video, it's clip would have been right here.]

Well, everything was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

And then we found out we were having a baby...girl. Cue the "are you sure?" questions. We were thrilled about it being a girl, but we sort of had a feeling it was a boy. Everyone did. Everyone I talked to (besides my mom) thought it was a boy and I'd sort of nestled into that mind set too. Again, we knew we'd be thrilled either way but we we're sort of in shock. She checked and checked again but there was nothing there. Well there was stuff there, just not the boy parts.

The rest of the day was strange and was a very out of body experience for me. I could now call it a she. I could refer to her by her name if I wanted to. I knew what direction to start taking the nursery. It just got weird.

We bought some stuff while we were out and about running around all of Oklahoma yesterday and it started to make everything more real. Pink tights with a dress with little owls all over it and little gray shoes will make it more real. Here's hoping my shopping bug stays on the down low for a while.

the in-laws have arrived

My in-laws are visiting this week!

They took a long road trip over the last week and a half and are finishing out with a visit to us. They arrived on Friday night and after a quick tour of the house changes we hopped in the car and headed for dinner. We ate prosciutto wrapped pears and artisan pizza out on a patio with Christmas lights overhead while we talked about their trip and the things they did and saw all over the west.

It was good to have them here again. They normally make the trip down to us once a year (typically in November around Bill and Paul's birthday) but this September weekend worked better. It's the first time they've probably seen our grass green.

Saturday we slept in, and then lazily laid around the house drinking coffee and having breakfast before heading to the mall for a few errands and some shopping. After spending some money and a few hours clothes shopping we headed to RePUBlic OKC for lunch and the Michigan vs Notre Dame game.

For those of you that don't live in OKC, you are missing out on some of the most fabulous food. We ate and ate and ate and ate. There's nothing on the menu there that isn't delicious and since we knew we'd be there so long we had the biggest meal we could fit. We shared a scotch egg, truffle potato skins, coconut shrimp and a pub pretzel for an appetizer and then of course I had the Classen burger which, let me just say, will knock your socks off if you don't have gall bladder problems from all the other things you ate first. The game was fun to watch and Michigan won, so Paul was happy, Bill not so much.

We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging, watching more football and taking naps before we ended the evening with some Orange Leaf for dinner.

They're here until Thursday and we plan to take a mini road trip throughout Oklahoma tomorrow. And then Paul and I will be back to the office while they finish resting up before heading home.

Oh Hermine, I thought we could have been friends...

Today, it is raining cats and dogs in Oklahoma City.

It started raining early this morning and hasn't stopped. Sometimes it's light rain, sometimes "not so light" isn't even appropriate enough.

For example, a few of us went to lunch with an old co-worker (which we were 40 minutes late to and that's an entirely different story) and when we got done with lunch it was POURING buckets of water from the sky. I'd left my rain coat on the back of my chair because it was only drizzling when we left and I had my umbrella with me so I was fine. Who was I kidding? The three of us had to R-U-N to the car after lunch. The rain was coming down sideways and we we're goners.

Here's how I described the scene to Paul in an email shortly after the incident:

"It’s time to leave and it’s raining harder than I have ever seen it rain. And that parking lot sucked. It took us 30 seconds to get to the car but we were RUNNING and let me just say, I’m wearing four inch heels, skinny jeans that are now suctioned to my body but at the time wouldn’t stay up while I was running, a baby bump that was jiggling all while I was holding onto my purse and running with the umbrella in front of my face because really, that's where the rain was coming from."

Guys, we're talking about so soaking wet, I might as well have jumped into a swimming pool fully clothed, hopped out, picked up my purse and hopped in her Land Rover ready to go back to work. I could squeeze water out of my pants.

Tonight I will A) not be able to get out of these jeans and Paul will have to cut them off of me and/or B) will have a cold.

Thanks Hermine.

The Fun Stuff : Nursery Planning

So, having a newbie joining our family means lots of shifting and sorting and purging. For example, the office I posted about earlier was technically up first. It's still up, in the process, but so are a thousand other projects around our little house.

In fact, our bedroom was on the list to freshen up and has somehow far surpassed the progress in the nursery or the office. It got a fresh coat a lighter paint, new drapery panels, a new bed, new bedding, updated photos and new art.

We've also re-carpeted the three closets in the house. The brown, old, dirty shag just gave me the creeps when I thought about my kid crawling into one of the closets or the amount of dirt that I wouldn't be able to get out no matter how hard I tried. So one of my carpet product representatives quickly ordered me up 9 square yards of some commercial grade, high quality carpet and Paul and I went to work. For future reference, if you need carpeting work done, call a professional installer. It sucked.

But the really fun room, the room I've been thinking about for weeks now is what this is all about.

Erika Powell said it best when she was pregnant with her first, "And you know, when you are a designer the baby's name is secondary to the nursery. If I had a dime for every time someone asked about the nursery I'd be on in island somewhere in a hammock, drinking a virgin pina colada."

Well, we don't find out for another week whether our little human is a girl or a boy but knowing how insane our schedule is going to be over the next 5 months, we chose to start planning early. Plus, we're planners. Super, ridiculous planners.

I fell in love with a paint color while at Home Depot that is in the new Martha Stewart Living Collection called Seaglass. I knew it was the color for the room no matter what the sex of the baby turned out to be. So it got purchased and with the help of my dad and Paul, it started going up along with a fresh white trim paint on all of the baseboards, door trim and window sills.

*Side note about Martha Stewart paints: If you have fallen head over heels for Behr's Premium Primer and Paint in One, expect to be poorly disappointed in this Martha Stewart product. It's sold in the same freaking store but goes to show that not all paint is created equal. The color was/is perfect and in the mornings and late in the evenings is blue but during the day with the windows open it brings out all the green. But talk about watery. And forget getting it on in one coat. From now on, I'll just have them color match the color chip of any product (including the ones they sell) to the Behr.

My parents came up to help us around the house a couple of weekends ago and my dad and Paul made some serious progress on the room. Paul and I need to cut in the blue one last time, do probably another coat on the trim and then we'll call it good.

This nursery has been a bit of funny subject for me. I know that there are a lot of children that are brought home to nurseries that are not so quite done being finished, or need a few tweaks, or haven't even been started for that matter. But for some reason, in my head, I feel like this is important. I know the kid will sleep in our room for the first little bit but I want to bring him or her home for the first time, take him or her in a fully finished room and say, "This, this is yours."

I also don't want to be tweaking anything once that baby is here. I want to sleep when it's sleeping and feed and play with it when it's not and enjoy every possible second I have at home before I have to go back to work.

So yea, I've started a little early but don't have major plans on taking the room anywhere for a little while. Once we know what we're having, I'll start planning more, but for now, the paint is up and I love it.

Urban Picnic-ing

This guy makes me smile. A lot. I mean gut wrenching smiling where it makes my rib cage sore.

 

This afternoon after watching Michigan pummel the University of Connecticut, we hopped in the car, picked up some chicken, potato salad, sodas and a couple of choice desserts and spent the evening Paul style. We took the two minute drive to downtown and had dinner in an "urban park". It was beautiful outside and we spent the next hours walking up and down the streets and driving around with our windows open. We spent as much time as possible outside before we headed back to the house.

And here I am, in all of my new skinny jean glory. Never in my life have I owned a pair of skinny jeans. Never. I have never liked the way I looked in them. Until today of all days. I hated the idea of buying maternity clothes today. It was like shopping for a wig. I don't do it, so I couldn't tell you even where to start. I was not a big fan of trying to figure out what size jeans I wore and asking for help was not an option. But I grabbed a couple pairs of jeans, went in the dressing room and came out in these puppies. Paul loved them and so they got purchased. Why I want to wear them now of all times, when I am rounder and plumper than ever is beyond me but I like them. And it'll make boot season a lot easier to handle. Jamming jeans down into boots was always a pain in the butt. So if that saves that trouble alone, maybe they were worth it. 

And we'll make this my first official maternity, pregnancy photo. We haven't been taken them weekly, because we're busy and to be quite frank, I don't love the way I look yet. The stomach has made its debut but I like it better from certain angles and am waiting for it to round itself out. But, this being the end of my 17th week and with the big ultrasound right around the corner, I thought it wouldn't hurt to show it off.

Do Fun Stuff Vol. 1 & my trigger happy purchase finger

Well, for a week now our baby has been able to hear things and I'm doing that weird, play music for the baby thing. Turns out, quite a bit of my music isn't really kid friendly, and some of it even drives me nuts so I don't blame the kid for not loving it and punching me in the stomach when I turn it on because I've started feeling that now too. So I started looking for kid music that didn't make me feel crazy but that the kid could listen to for years to come. Mainly, because jamming out to Sesame Street and Alvin and the Chipmunks in our new super sweet Mazda 6 makes me want to barf.

I've been reading Pacing The Panic Room for awhile (courtesy of Kathleen) and love what this guy writes about and he's also an incredibly talented photographer and artist. He compiled this charity album to help benefit an organizations that researches SMS, a disease which his wife's son has. I searched for it last week and iTunes released it early, without all the needed band info, but I bought it before I knew that. And after congratulating him on the release via Twitter (because apparently I "tweet" now) I had to keep it quiet for awhile. But it has now been officially released and is for sale on iTunes.

So, basically I was the first person to purchase this album. He thinks so himself. I'm amazing. I guess? And since I've been listening to it for almost a week, I'll let you know, the music is good. My favorites? Morton the Caterpillar, Ladybug, Nothing, Biscuits and Sleep. Oh and the Potty song about made me pee in my pants I was laughing so hard. But according to the song, you don't pee in your pants, you do it in the potty. Glad I got that one figured out. So go buy it. No need to thank me, he did all the work. 

16 down, 24 to go

Well, a few people have asked me what I've been looking like these days and there is most definitely a bump going on but I haven't had the right picture taken yet to advertise to the world. We'll work on that.

My parents came last week and helped us around the house, I will have an entire post about that later.
I picked the nursery paint color, whether boy or girl, and the room has been painted so we don't have to worry about it later. More on this to come too.

Work in the office/new guest room is underway.

Seriously though, have I mentioned I'm showing, and feeling the baby move and it's all a little weird and surreal?

The only thing that really has sounded good to me, because I've been incredibly indifferent about food this pregnancy, has been some Cherry Lambic Sorbet from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. Well, Jeni's is in Columbus, OH and that's a little far to go. I mentioned them here. And the closest place to purchase their pints is 7.5 hours away. AND, we looked into shipping six pints to our house but that would cost $100 and as much as it sounds delicious, we cannot afford pints of sorbet that cost $16.67 each.

So we've been mentioning to Jeni on Twitter to get her stuff to some local specialty grocers. I'm hoping she does, that they love it and want to carry it and will purchase cases of the Cherry Lambic just for me. But this is all wishful thinking.

Today, Paul and I went to the Y to get in some exercise and after we were finished he mentioned that we had to meet his co-worker in the alley behind his office to pick something up from her. A gift of sorts. A gift?! We don't know what we're having yet, why is she buying us gifts? So we go to the alley and meet up with her and all the while I have no idea what's going on. To anyone watching, it more than likely looked shady. Because she did not pull out a pink or blue bag with tissue paper in it.

Instead, Heather pulled out an ice chest holding...wait for it...some Jeni's ice cream! Her husband is working in Texas right now and she went down there for the weekend to visit him. Paul sent her a message on Facebox (oh Conan, I miss you) and asked her to stop at a store in Houston and pick some up for me. They didn't have the sorbet but had plenty of other flavors. Tonight we snacked sparingly on the goat cheese and cherries and gravel road. When I say sparingly, I mean sparingly.

Seriously, what a husband.


I've even got him on board for making another batch of the Cherry Lambic since Jeni shared her recipe with Food and Wine. Sorry, sorry. I know my obsession is a little out of control.

the office, and by office, i totally mean junk room

We have decided that it is time to re-do our office, also known now as, the junk room.

We thought we were done with the house changing/work for awhile, I mean, everything was fine, but I changed our minds now that a third human being will be living in this little house with us.

When I was in school and had homework and projects and needed tons of space to work, this room was perfect. I had a drafting table, a table to lay things out on, the printer close by, another table to put together boards and even a dresser full of supplies including everything from my Prisma markers to rolls of trash paper and 3M's mighty glue (Super 77). However, since I graduated, rather since my friend Betsy graduated, this room has lost its need for homework requirements and has become the room that our cats' litter box and food is in. It is also the room that gets the brunt force of "I don't know where to put it, put it in the office." It's a disaster.

View of the office in 2007 before I got a rug, but at its height of usefulness and lack of crap.

Taken around the same time but it shows the wall color more acurately.

The beautiful part about this re-do is there is going to be very little construction involved. Well, the construction that does need to be done is bigger than I'd like to tackle, so we're going to pay someone to do it for us. Therefore, I consider it very little.

The ceiling in this room has detached itself in one area from the ceiling joists. We were just going to try and screw it back up, tape and mud it but I'd rather fix it the right way and if something is causing it to seperate, I want to find it. So Phil, our new handy dandy fix-it guy, is going to replace it for us.

We're also adding white quarter round to the perimeter of the room, because at some point, someone felt the need to remove it and never replace it.

This room is not only getting a ceiling lift and some trim, but is going to change in function too. Since I'm obviously not putting together color boards until 2 in the morning at home now (I have an office for that...) we need to re-evaluate and purge. This room will become our guest room/work space. Having laptops makes it easy for Paul and I to move wherever we want to but we still need a place for our files and printer.

We also don't entertain a lot of overnight guests, mainly our parents. Well, Paul's parents. My mom is so highly allergic to our cats that the moment she lays down to sleep, she can't breathe. She's fine walking around, having dinner, sitting on the furniture, but the moment she's laying flat, the wheezing and coughing and inhaler start. I hate that they can't sleep in our house but I'd rather her not die. So, that leaves mainly Paul's mom and dad. The number one issue with this space becoming a guest room is that this is the only place we've been able to make our cat litter situation work. 

Our cats are strictly indoor cats and with every room in our house having a very set purpose with no small nook or closet of unknown territory, there just isn't a convienient, out of sight spot for their boxes. We have a back porch that could work, but only if we had it enclosed better. Currently it's a screen door with screened windows and would need a more permanent window system to keep out fleas and other cats that have found their way to our back door. This would also require us to put in a cat door, which just the thought of that makes my eyes roll.

So, we're going to bite the bullet and let the cats keep this as their room too, when guests come, we'll figure out a temporary solution of relocating them but we'll just keep the litter cleaner than ever for now since this has become more of a "living space".

There will be new paint on the walls, trim and ceilings and the window treatments are due for a major overhaul. The current roman shades were already installed when we moved in and were from IKEA and are dingy and needing to be replaced. Oh and there will be a change in wall decor, which will also knock a few things off my life list (thankfully, because I haven't knocked anything off that sucker in awhile).

I'll keep ya posted.

the ugly cry

Last night, it struck again. The “Christa-wont-ever-sleep-a-full-8-hours-again” bug.

I was furious.

I had been reading in hopes that it would make me tired and it had a little bit. As soon as it happened, I felt my eyes drooping and words blurring together, I snapped my book shut and ran into the room to fall asleep. The moment I walked into the room with Paul though my head started swimming with to-do lists and wants and wishes and what-ifs. I laid there in the pitch black darkness for twenty minutes before I decided it wasn’t going to happen and I’d go into the living room and read another chapter of my book.

One chapter didn’t do it. So I went on to read a second, and then a third and then it would have been stupid to not have just finished the last chapter of the book. By this time I was drowsy, the book was finished so I headed back to bed. Where I laid awake for another hour secretly crying because I was terrified something was going to happen to Paul in the next six months and I’d be left alone to raise a child I am all of a sudden terrified of.

Paul could hear me sniffing after a while and I told him it was nothing, I was done crying so I started talking slowly to make sure the fear was gone and then these words came out of my mouth:

“It’s weird; I can’t really explain it to you. I feel different about everything. I think differently about everything. I worry about things I’ve never worried about before, and worries I have had before are a thousand times more scary now that a child is involved. Even stuff that is not worry worthy, like where to buy our freaking rocking chair from seems to be racking my brain for hours on end.”

And the second the last word came out of my mouth I started doing the ugly cry (that’s what Jodi and I call it). You know the one, where you’re heaving and choking and your face is hot and sopping wet, you can’t breathe and you knew if someone was filming you it would most definitely not be cinematic worthy and people would look away because it was so awkward to watch? Yea, that’s the cry I had at 1:00 this morning. I was hysterical. I couldn’t even figure out why I was crying.

I was sitting up in our bed and Paul gently asked what he could do to help and I knew there was nothing. I told him I just had to cry it out. Cry it out? Cry what out?! Why the hell was I crying?! (I get that my pregnant hormones are crazy now but something had to have set me off…).

I started going through the things that I thought might have triggered it but couldn’t find the one in order to rationalize the fit I was now indulging in and so I could try to calm myself down. Instead, every time I thought of something that would have been pregnancy cry worthy, I just sobbed harder knowing it wasn’t the start of my heaving cry but was now in my head and was worth crying about too. Stress at work. I sobbed harder. Fear of losing my job after I come back from maternity leave. Sobbing harder. Dominican Republic. We’re talking hysterical here. It was unbelievable the things my body wanted to get out. I sat there upright in bed for 5 minutes after I was done, thinking about how very tired I was and furious at how hard it was for me to fall asleep. I leaned back and thought for a bit and then stopped remembering anything at all. Finally I was asleep.

These fits can’t happen often. I’ll drive poor Paul loco. Oh, and I’ll make myself fat (you know, with the cheddar bites from Sonic I had today as a consolation prize for being exhausted).

insomnia: 1 christa: 0

Saturday night I was exhausted. I went to bed at 9:00 pm and didn't wake up until 8:00 the next morning.

Then I took a nap in the car on the way back to OKC, about an hour long.

Last night we had dinner with some friends from church at Earl's where I proceeded to scarf down my chopped brisket sandwich, french fries and okra with no problem. Oh and a coke to top it off.

I paid dearly for the fact that I had slept 12 hours and had enough acid producing food to give a rhinoceros heart burn.

At 10:00 last night when Paul was exhausted from his weekend of golf playing and running around in the heat, I wasn't even close to ready for bed. So I read a chapter of Harry Potter hoping it would make my eyes tired and I would tucker out.

Wrong.

Apparently when you're pregnant, you start not sleeping early.

I read and read and read. I stared at the wall in the living room. I stared at the cat laying on my lap. Nothing worked to make me tired. I finally just bit the bullet and crawled into bed at 1:00 and pushed Paul off my side of the bed for another hour before I think I feel asleep.

Today, I'm a little cranky.