The Great Home Improvement Post

Just one year ago, Zach and I moved into our Downton Blabby home. You can see what it looked like here: and we've worked on some things over the last year. Especially in the last few months! I'm not an interior designer by any stretch of the imagination, so choosing colors and picking things to put together was not easy. We're really happy with how things have turned out! We still have projects (the mantra of home owners I guess) but for now, we are set. I personally LOVE before and after photos, so I'll post mine here. :-)

Front Yard

Changes:

• Landscaping
• Lights
• Park bench

Future projects:

• Install lights to shine on the house itself

It doesn't look a lot different, but we spent a lot of time on the flower beds adding flowers, plants and also planting fescue grass in bare spots. My favorite part of the front yard is that park bench. We sit on it drinking our coffee and watching Ellie chase squirrels.

Formal living room

Changes

• Furniture and some decor from my Grandma Sara and my Wilder grandparents
• Console from Jena Miller
• Rug
• Chairs from World Market
• Table handmade from a Craigslist vendor
• Candles from Pier 1.
• Decor
• Reupholstered wingback chairs from Grandma Sara

Future projects

• Reupholster sofa
• Window treatments

These rooms took a while to put together, but we really like how they have turned out. I dreamed of having a big enough table for dinner parties, and now we've got one! I love the teal pops of color. We'll eventually reupholster the sofa in a cleanable grey... it's white silk right now and nearly impossible to clean. You can't see the console by the door, but we love that too. :-)

Office

Changes

• Matching office suite by Restoration Hardware (Craigslist for the win!) refinished by Jena Miller

Future projects

• Hang Ikea picture ledge shelves with my cover photo art / Zach's art

This room has been in working order for a while (hey, we both work from home--necessity!) but we still haven't put the photos up on the walls. We'll get there. For now, we have matching desks and file cabinets on opposite sides of the room.

Foyer

Changes

• Added crosses, books from my Papa Wilder and vases from Pier 1. Sticks/feathers from Michael's.

Future projects

• I have one more picture to hang up on the right wall. by the front door.

Powder Room

Changes

• Wallpaper removed
• Walls textured and repainted off white and grey
• faucet and toilet paper roll replaced with nickel
• New light fixture
• Decor

Future projects

• Clean up baseboard paint

This was one of the "biggies" Zach took on this fall. Wallpaper is a jerk to get off! His uncle helped us with plumbing and a lot of other things, but the wall paper and painting was done by Zach and his mom and it was a long process. We love the cooler color in here!

Living Room

Changes

• Decor on walls, furniture
• Stools from Target
• Small table from friends
• Hung TV mounted on wall 
• Coffee table from Jena Miller
• Blinds

Future projects

• Photo collage on wall
• More decor over bedroom doors

We spend a lot of time in here. Zach and his uncle did a really good job mounting the tv on the wall -- it can pull out and swivel and everything!

Utility room

Changes

• Blinds
• Washer/dryer
• Table from my mom's store
• Storage cabinet
• Fresh paint

Future projects

• Replace knobs
• Reorganize area over washer/dryer

I love that we haver the washer and dryer up on pedestals. And the table is special--it was in my mom's store for many years, and now it's perfect for folding clothes in our home.

Master Closet

Changes

• Replaced flourescent light with can lights
• Resurfaced and repainted walls
• Installed Elfa shelving
• Removed carpet and replaced with ceramic wood tile
• Repainted cabinets
• Replaced brass knobs with nickel knobs
• Added a stool and runner rug from target

Future projects

• Add additional shelving in one section on right

This was a major project this summer with Zach's uncle. Our closet is spacious, but the shelving was falling off the walls, didn't use the wall space well and the fluorescant light was like a disco. Now it's WONDERFUL. Holds our clothes in a way more organized way and it was really the start of using grey in the house. Love the closet now!

Master Bathroom

Changes

• Removed wallpaper
• Textured walls and repainted off white
• Painted cabinets grey
• Replaced all brass fixtures with nickel (faucets, lights, showerhead, tub faucet, knobs, toilet paper holder, towel rods)
• Added shower head fixture to tub
• Added white and teal towels
• Stenciled rugs
• Removed one panel of mirror and added a medicine cabinet and shelf (teal)
• Painted over toilet cabinet teal
• Plantation shutters by tub (not shown)
• Decor from Pier 1
• Replaced ceiling lights with LED can lights

Future projects

• Replace brass shower stall with nickel
• Hang decor/framed photos

This was our last project and by far the most labor intensive. Zach's uncle did plumbing, lighting and helped with wallpaper. Zach and his mom painted everything and I helped paint cabinets, picked up towels and stenciled the rugs. My one hope for this house pre-baby was to get the tub faucet replaced because it broke around December last year. I can now take wonderful baths again!! We are so happy with how this room turned out!

Master Bedroom

Changes

• Blinds
• Bed from Restoration Hardware (Purchased from friends - thanks Stacy and Jason!!)
• bedding from Bed, Bath & Beyond
• Bookshelves 
• Oak furniture from my mom's house
• Glider from Buy Buy Baby
• Table from Grandma Sara
• Decor

Future projects

• Window treatments

I love how our bedroom turned out. It took a long time for me to figure out the colors I'd like to have in here, but neutrals + teal and more recently a bit of purple, worked out great. Love the bed and the glider--we just got the glider and it's already my favorite seat in the whole house.

Kitchen

Changes

• Replaced non-working can lights and fluorescent light with LED can lights
• Replaced dishwasher
• Decor

Future projects

• More baby-friendly table and chairs

The kitchen is white and black--colors that at first, didn't seem to match the rest of the house. But we ended up going with those colors and a splash of yellow (thanks to a great picture from a friend) and it now has a French bistro vibe going on. Love!

Upstairs living area

Changes

• Furniture (thanks Stacy and Jason!)
• Decor
• Hung our rug from Istanbul
• Blinds

Future project

• Eventually we'll have more kid stuff in here.

For now, this is a nice sitting room for guests and a good place for me to do my yoga videos at home. Probably we'll have some toys and such later on. :-)

Workout room (upstairs)

Changes

Blinds

Exercise equipment

Future projects

none at the moment

I use this room almost every day. I love to workout at home--have everything I need right here. We bought the house with it having indoor/outdoor carpet, mirrors and even a TV stand already set up in here, so we've been using it for working out ever since!

Guest bedroom (upstairs)

Changes 

• Blinds
• Furniture
• Decor

Future projects

• Window treatments

This furniture was Zach's before we got married and it was our master bedroom before we moved to this house. The bedding was also ours, and it works really well in here, especially since the living area just outside the door also has dark wood and red accents.

Guest bathroom (upstairs)

Changes

• Removed wallpaper 
• Textured and painted walls off white
• Painted cabinets grey
• Replaced brass faucet, shower faucet and knobs with nickel
• Painted grey and installed over toilet cabinet
• Replaced lights
• Decor

Future projects

• None at the moment!

This was the *very* last major project we undertook. Zach's uncle did the plumbing and Zach and his mom did the rest--I did the decor. :-) I love the grey with black and white and red--this was what we had in our master bathroom before we moved into this house. I like how upstairs has a lot of the red throughout. And we have a working shower head!!

This weekend we're tackling the nursery! It used to be a guest room... now it's in the middle of transforming to be Baby Wilder's room. Can't wait to share photos!

35 weeks!

You know you're getting close when milk has a sell-by date on your due date! This is from THREE WEEKS ago. Yikes!

I just looked at my last post, and man that was a long time ago! Let's see if I can recap. :-)

Bump watch:

Baby Wilder has done some GROWING! It's crazy to see how much over the last few months. I definitely feel it some days, but I still feel really good. It's hard to get up in the morning... as in, physically challenging to untangle myself from pillows and pets and get upright. But I do have to share the greatest invention for pregnant women since nutella:

The Snoogle

Don't laugh--this thing is awesome. It's like 5 pillows in one, and it sets you up to sleep on the left side like you're supposed to. It's also impossible to move to any other side with--or get out of bed. But I sleep really well with it and i haven't had any trouble sleeping all night!

We took a babymoon back at 25 weeks with some of our friends. We went to a resort in Cabo San Lucas. It was WONDERFUL to get to relax, swim, sit on the beach and eat amazing food. We even got to snorkel!

We traveled a lot in August. After the trip to Mexico, we went to Oklahoma to visit my brother and his wife -- a "sibling weekend"

Zach and I also went to New Mexico and Colorado for two stories. We stopped at the CS Cattle Co. in Cimarron, NM, and spent the night in Red River. Then we headed up to Colorado for a Campdraft event in Kiowa. Lots o' driving, but we had a good time.

That trip wore me out--we drove more than 1,000 miles in less than a week, and we were outside all day every day for 5 days. But it was worth it!

Since then, we've had two showers from our sweet families. We have one more tomorrow, so I'll cover all of those together in another post. It's been such a blessing to be surrounded with supportive friends and family. As we count down to when Wilder makes his arrival, I'm just blown away by people's care and generosity.

We also went to the state fair with my brother Jonathan and Holly. We tried a smorgasbord of fried food-- and it was *mostly* all delicious. :-)

Fried Kind Ranch Chicken Casserole (YUM), Fried Cuban Roll (pretty good), Fried Spaghetti and Meatballs (gross) and Fried Nutella (good). Not pictured: Fried Red Velvet Cupcake (AMAZING)

My fave: Fried Autumn Pumpkin Pie

Please note--fried food is usually not in our normal diet. Can't handle it! But the State Fair is the exception. You HAVE to have fried food at the fair.

We also had some maternity photos taken at 32 weeks with the oh-so-talented Jena Miller.

What else has been going on... I've been taking prenatal yoga, started prenatal chiropractic adjustments and we've been attending Birth Boot Camp - a natural childbirth class. I'm starting to feel more prepared and I think Zach is too... but I know we can never TOTALLY be prepared. :-)

Other things... I've been working on my freelance assignments a lot. I have a few more to turn in if I want to take November and December off, so the pressure is on.

We've also been doing a lot of improvements around the house. I'll write about that in another post. :-) But we've got just over a month to go before Wilder's due date! Crazy crazy.

Thanks for listening to my rambling!!

Information overload

Me two weeks ago :-)

We're trucking along at 23 weeks this week--almost six months along! The countdown says we have like 120 days to go... which is kind of terrifying, to be honest. I'm feeling good. I took a few weeks off from working out, but I'm back to doing my cardio and strength training the last two weeks and I've done yoga twice this week while we were in San Antonio. I'm amazed at how much weaker I have gotten in what feels like a short time. Planks are hard for me now--something I've always been really good at! I'm also a little worried about doing exercises that wouldn't be good while I'm pregnant--such as certain ab exercises or whatever. Which is why I really like prenatal yoga--the instructor makes sure you're working on the poses that will help you and steers clear of the ones that aren't so good! Zach used his personal trainer skills and put together a program for me though, so now I can do prego-safe workouts and I feel better about it. I tried swimming, and I do like that a lot too, so I hope to do more of that.

fourth of july!

Being in the water is actually awesome this summer. It's been years since I've been so excited to just go to a pool! It just feels so nice. :-)

We found a birth boot camp class in our area and we start attending in August. The instructor is also a doula, so I'm hoping we can talk to her about using her for the birth. I think I've finally found a yoga place in Fort Worth, and now I'm looking for a chiropractor. Little by little we are going through the to-do list! Which brings me to...

Every store should have a parking spot like this!

Figuring out what stuff we need for Baby Wilder is completely overwhelming. For example, today, Zach and I finally decided what color convertible crib we want. It's been a week of hemming and hawing (mostly on my part). And the decor is the EASY stuff! We've been blessed with some items people have given us, which makes things easier, but I'm still way over my head with registry/deciding what things we would like to get for the baby. I feel like with wedding registry, I had a list from The Knot and we walked around the store and scanned stuff--followed up with some things online. DONE. We walked around Buy Buy Baby last week doing the same thing except a lot of things (strollers, diapers, playards, tub stuff, breast pumps) I felt like I needed to research and we just got overwhelmed. One week later I looked at our registry online, and out of 69 items, 45 were "unavailable." So it was a total waste of time walking around the store that way. Except... we did find a glider and the crib. But the glider is only available in the store and you can't even look at it online. And the crib is only available in the store too!

Anyway. So the rest of the registry stuff I am just doing online. Which is good and bad. Good because you have a million options and tons of reviews. Bad... because you have a million options and tons of reviews! I'll think to myself ok, time to pick a stroller. 20 minutes later... I'm just swimming in options. I feel like eventually we'll get there in picking things, but my mind is so full right now. Does anyone have any good suggestions of how to choose items? Like... is there a method to the madness? Should I just go and pick randomly or or start in one room or one store or... what? I know there are basics we need, but even the basics have tons of options!

In other news, we renovated our closet! My before photo doesn't really show the stuff we changed. It doesn't look like it, but the space wasn't well-utilized with the shelves we had, and those shelves were wired together with coat hangers and falling off the walls when we moved in. I had plastic drawers and cloth hanging shelves in there--it looked messy the second I organized my stuff. I really didn't like how everything looked, even though its a huge room. And the worst was the lighting--it was a fluorescent light that flickered and literally made me sick to my stomach every time I turned it on. It was like a disco... only not fun. So we purchased an Elfa closet system from The Container Store and Zach's uncle tore down the old shelves and that wood shelf thing you see above. He also filled in the dry wall, painted and tore up the carpet (which was all wonky without the wood shelf). He installed ceramic wood looking tile for us, which I LOVE. We have ceramic wood tile in the office, and it looks really nice. He also replaced the track lights by the mirror with new lights and tore out the fluorescent light, replacing it with three LED can lights. YAY! No more flickering!

Lovelovelove

We also have purchased wooden hangers and grey/linen baskets to line the upper shelves. It feels so grown up to me to have a fancy closet and matching hangers! Zach took care of all of this while I was working at the World Show and we haven't had much time to put everything away yet since we've been gone, but I'm super excited about our closet. That's one major project out of the way! I just need to find a gray (hopefully quatrefoil or damask pattern) runner rug and a teal storage ottoman so I can sit and put my shoes on and it will be all done.

Lots has been going on, but I feel like I've written enough for now. :-) Mid-June to Mid July has been a crazy month. Seriously can count on one hand how many days I've spent in the house, between us going to Red River for Veritas Life Adventures, me going to a work conference (AHP) in Colorado Springs, the World Show and time spend in San Antonio, photographing a wedding in Victoria... it's been really a lot. I'm ready to be home for a bit!

And seriously... any advice on how to systematically decide what items to pick for our baby would be appreciated. :-)

We're having a...

Yep! We're having a boy! Our long-awaited anatomy scan ultrasound happened on Monday. Within seconds of putting the wand on my belly, the technician told us we were having a boy. He made sure there was NO uncertainty! In that moment, I had flash forwards of the life our little man will have... and it just warmed my heart.

Our technician looked carefully over his little body. I can't get over his long legs and arms.... and TOES! He has little toes! He looks like a person! He's 11 oz. and he was measuring exactly the right size for how far along I am. Thank goodness!

It's surreal to me to know what we're having. I felt all along it was a boy... but this being my first pregnancy, I had nothing to compare it to at all. I even had a dream last week where I held my baby boy in my arms and I could see his face. But that's just crazy pregnancy dreams right? I would be excited either way, but now that we know... it's full steam ahead. We have had a name picked out for seriously two years.... and we've talked about it since before we got married. I'm happy to announce our little boy's name to y'all.

Wilder, of course, is my maiden name and I'm proud of the family it represents. It's a little bit cowboy rough and tumble, a little bit British, which kind of goes along with our last name. I had never thought of using is as a first name until I came across a cutting horse rider named Wilder Jones while reading cutting press releases for work at APHA (probably around 2009 if you can believe it). Once I saw the name... I was convinced. :-) Luckily, Zach agreed. I'm starting to see it crop up in baby name blogs and books like the Baby Name Wizard, but we didn't pick the name based on any trends... however, maybe it'll make the name a little more "acceptable" to people who might think it's weird. We don't really care though... this little one is gonna be wild! Dean is my father-in-law's first name, and I can't think of a better man to honor with our first boy's name than the man that raised Zach into the person he is today. If our boy doesn't want to be called Wilder as an adult, he can always go by Will or Dean... but he'll always be our Wilder.

I've had nursery ideas marinating in my head for a while--probably since before we got pregnant, so as soon as I got the word, I started putting them together. I have some blue and brown wood furniture from when I was a teen and I have always loved it. We're going to swap out a few pieces from one of our guestrooms to add the dresser and armoire that are blue and brown--and later we can get the bed and desk. I think we're going to purchase a convertible crib that can go from a crib all the way to a full size bed. A brilliant invention! We already have a kangaroo skin from Australia and a set of antlers, as well as that set of suitcases (do you recognize them from our announcement photos?). We have several world map prints that we are planning to frame for our house anyway, so I might take one of them and put it in Wilder's room. I really want that verse print... and there are a few other wall prints I'd like to pick out, but there's only so much room, so I'm not sure about that. I love that fake zebra skin rug, but Zach's not crazy about it so I might do a different kind of rug. Maybe fake cow skin. :-) Still need to decide about bedding, curtains and a glider chair, -- and maybe some more decor but these are the ideas I have so far! We want to keep using the room as a guest room for a while (it's the one with purple and grey bedding) so I probably won't convert it to a nursery till late September.

I was 20 weeks on Wednesday. I can't believe we're halfway there! I haven't gained much weight... the nurse keeps telling me I will eventually and the midwife isn't concerned. I've been trying to eat well and stay active, so we'll see how all of that goes. I've felt the baby move a little bit... maybe 3 times, but not regularly.

Two weeks ago we went to Red River, New Mexico with my BIL's group of teenagers. While Grant and the kids went camping, we hiked and walked and shopped around the town. I didn't know what we were having, but I did pick up a onesie because I couldn't resist. :-)