Cry Baby

Mike and I are in the process of taking McKinley's 3 month pictures. Through LOTS of trial & error, we found that we get the best expressions out of McKinley when she sees her Daddy for the first time after he gets home from work. So each evening, Mike calls when he is about 5 minutes from the house, so I can put McKinley in an outfit and get her set up for the photos. Once Mike gets home, I am ready and waiting with the camera to catch M's expressions as he walks around the corner. Surprisingly, it has worked really great so far. Last night however, Martini got a little jealous and started barking. It scared McKinley and this is the sequence of photos that followed:

Cloth Wipes

If you read our blog, you will know that for the last few years Mike and I have tried to live as green and as organically as possible. We recycle, we use cloth bags at the grocery store instead of plastic, we use cloth napkins instead of paper towels, all of our cleaning products are non-toxic and environmentally safe, and even our toiletry products are organic.

Once I found out I was pregnant I knew that I wanted to try to do the same thing with our little one. We researched and picked a Pediatrician that would support our lifestyle, I chose to breastfeed instead of using formula, and I wanted to use cloth diapers. You can see my post on cloth diapers here.

There is a myriad of reasons we decided to go cloth: Environmentally friendly, cost effective, better for baby. Once I made the decision to use cloth diapers, it never occurred to me to think about what I wanted to use for wipes. I just figured that I was doing great just by using cloth diapers, so throwing away a few wipes each day wasn't a big deal.

When Baby McKinley finally arrived we had to use disposable diapers the first few weeks of her life. It hated watching Mike take a bag of trash out every other day, especially when we are used to setting one bag of trash out each week. Finally the day came when we could start using the cloth diapers. Even though I wasn't necessarily looking forward to doing a little extra laundry, I was just glad that we weren't filling up a trashcan and making emergency runs to the store to get disposable diapers. Besides the cloth diapers a just too cute:)

Thankfully, the cloth diaper routine was easy. After a couple weeks of cloth diapering I started doing research on cloth wipes. It didn't take me long to decide to ditch the disposables. I realized that by using cloth wipes, it wasn't going to add anymore to my work load and it was just one more way to live cleaner & greener for both baby & the environment.

While online I found several sites with instructions on making your own cloth wipes. Most of the cloth wipes are made from fleece and I just happened to have a ton of fleece fabric left over from a sewing project. In an effort to save some money I decided to make our own wipes. I already had the material, now I just needed the time:)

The finished products:

Once I finished sewing the wipes I needed a wipes solution. I found tons of homemade solution recipes online, but I ended up ordering a pre-made solution from Lusa Organics. It is called Baby Wipe Juice and I absolutely LOVE it! It smells so good and it is super concentrated so a little goes a long way. It will take me several months to use up the bottle of solution. I am so impressed with their Baby Wipe Juice, I can't wait to try some of their other products.

Also, the company that I order my cloth diapers from, Jack Be Natural, posted this video that shows how to fold your cloth wipes so when you pull one wipe out of a wipe warmer or bin, the next wipe pops out the top ready to go. It makes the diaper change so much easier.

Baby Makes 3

DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL:

MOMMA'S SWEET BABY:

FINGERS & TOES:

Happy 4th of July

Here are some recent pictures of McKinley that were taken on the Fourth of July. A big thanks to Grammy for the headband!

McKinley Grace Organ

The official birth announcement:

Daddy's Little Girl

We are loving that McKinley has reached the stage where her personality is starting to show. She is smiling, cooing, and making the most adorable faces. We have been trying to figure out who she most resembles. From this picture I think it is pretty safe to say she is definitely Daddy's girl!

See any resemblance?

How about now?

I have a feeling I am going to have my hands full:)

Baby Nursery: Handmade With Love

I realized the other day that I have never posted any pictures of the nursery. McKinley's nursery was definitely a labor of love, but I enjoyed every second of it. As soon as Mike & I found out we were having a girl I started planning the nursery.

When we started shopping for nursery decor I couldn't believe how expensive things were. We had a small budget for the nursery so I tried to come up with creative ways to pinch pennies:

1. Instead of buying a changing table, we used a dresser we already owned, which actually worked out great because it gave us a ton of extra clothes storage.

2. Instead of buying a nursery bedding set, I sewed all the bedding and drapes. I am so glad I did this because not only did it save us money, but I got to use the fabric that I wanted, and I only made the bedding pieces that we needed.

3. I painted the canvas wall art for the room. This was the scariest project I did by far. I do not have one artist bone in my body. The most expensive part of this project was the cost of the canvases, but I waited to buy them until I had 40% coupons at Joanne's. The paint was only a couple of dollars.

4. I made the crib mobile. It is nothing fancy, but it works great and only cost me the price of a dowel rod, which is around 90 cents. I already had the fishing line, hot glue, paint, and most of the tissue paper.

5. Instead of buying lamps, I found Chinese paper lanterns. I bought 2 different size lanterns and hung them in two different corners of the room. Not only was this a very cost effective way to provide soft lighting for the room, but they take up no space on the dresser of bookshelves (which is very limited).

So here are some pictures of the (almost) finished nursery. We still have some pictures to hang on the wall, but for the most part I can check the nursery off the to-do list!

When I first started looking for fabrics for the nursery I wanted something modern and chic. I did not want your typical baby girl nursery colors. I went through tons of fabric samples, and in the end I through out my original vision and picked the traditional pink & green. So much for being modern and chic:)

My sewing projects included the crib bumper pads, crib skirt, and drapes with black out lining. Since these three items are all straight line cuts I didn't use a pattern for any of the projects. I just sketched out the design and figured out the measurements as I went a long. There was a bit of trial and error, but very few set backs. I am very happy with how everything turned out.

I knew I wanted McKinley's initial(s) somewhere in the room. I knew it wasn't in the budget for me to order something custom, but I wasn't sure how to execute something handmade with out it being tacky. Thankfully, I was walking through a craft store and saw a picture that inspired me to create the "M" canvas that now hangs above McKinley's crib.

The "M" canvas matches the stripped fabric used in the nursery. It is simply a painters canvas, a paper mache "M", painters tape, craft paint and some hot glue and velcro to attach the letter to the canvas.

The pom-pom mobile was inspired by decorations used at my baby shower at Otter Creek. I painted and hot glued two dowel rods together and simply stapled fishing line to the middle of the pom-poms before fluffing them. Mike helped me tie and hot glue the pom-poms into place on the dowel rods. We hung the finished mobile from the ceiling using an eye hook and more fishing line. The instructions on how to make the pom-poms can be found here.

In addition to the "M" canvas, I painted two canvases to go above the cubical book shelves. I knew from day one of planning this nursery that I wanted something that reflects our faith somewhere in the room. I found canvases very similar to these online and decided to recreate them as best I could. The nice thing about hand making this wall art is that Mike and I were able to pick and choose what bible verses we wanted displayed.

This was definitely a very time consuming project, but I wouldn't change it for a thing. I had so much fun creating a complete room from scratch. I just hope I will have the same amount of time and energy to do this all over again when the next little one comes along.