Nesting Mania

Midwife appointment today. I am officially 25 weeks pregnant this week, further along than I thought. And as before, the omnipresent nesting urge gets stronger by the day.

Ryan's parent's are coming tomorrow to help us get the house baby ready.
There are a laundry list of items, but the most important priorities are
1.) getting a dishwasher
2.) getting hot water to our washing machine in the garage (which is currently hooked up ingeniously to the hose by Ryan)
3.) paint the room that will eventually be the baby's room sky blue.

First, the dishwasher. We only have limited space in our kitchen, which is by the way extremely brightly colored and vintagey, so naturally I wanted to get a vintagey dishwasher ala your grandmother's avocado one! The catch is ideally this dishwasher has to be small. There was also talk of getting a smaller refrigerator in interest of cutting a pass through window into the far end of our kitchen into our living room and installing bar stools on the kitchen side, which would warrant something smaller (and hopefully prettier!) than our current monstrosity who's bulk mostly provides extra eaves for potential science fair research projects about the decomposition rates of various foods...
anyway...here is the kitchen...
the picture was actually taken on our in-house set for last year's 48 hour film festival, in which I played the mother to this little girl who later becomes a superhero (because her 1950's sugar and spice perfect mom is abducted before her eyes, which I hope does not ever happen to me or my potential daughter in real life, though the super hero alter ego thing seems likely for a daughter of mine, as does that outfit and purple hair...) anyway, just for fun, here is a shot of me looking the part...
and here is the dishwasher of my dreams...
but alas this is actual vintage and perhaps non functional..and here is the more more modern and functional one by Big Chill that is a whopping 200 bucks above our price point...

Eclectic Dishwashers design by Other Metro bigchillfridge.com

sigh...
and then there is the future baby room...which is currently a multi purpose guest room/tv room/craft room/library, but already has some kid friendly murals of hot pink and yellow ocher clouds
and mint and chartreuse bamboo painted on it (not pictured), and will soon have a sky blue background to set it all off...
something like this maybe?
anyway...the folks come tomorrow so production should start this weekend...
also made some new little felt owls and decorated some onesies..maybe Ryan can help me upload some bad hipstamtic ipad shots tomorrow...
ta ta
-jess

More Crafty Stuff

so I kind of feel like I have a backlog of matireal that I want to post on here...but so as not to go on and on ad naseaum about every little thing I have made lately, which is a lot, I think I will just make a sort of gallery post with pics of a bunch of it, and supplement this later.
so, here are my latest creations:


home-made Vintage Garden Party Theme Baby Shower invitations...you can view my inspiration blog for my upcoming baby shower here...http://pinterest.com/rubytwostep/a-spring-baby-shower/

two patchwork and felt chickens I saw in a dream (and woke up and had to make)





and here is the very first crafty thing I endeavored to make, a (badly) crocheted owl hat I also saw for the first time on Esty



I just took some new pictures today of some little owls I made, a kitty, a fox and three blind mice. And as so as soon as I can figure out how to upload them from the I-pad, or my darling husband does it for me I will post them too.

aux revoire for now!
-jess

The Nesting Bug

yes ma'am I have it bad. I am officially just over four and a half months pregnant and I seem to have developed a new addiction to adorable crafty little things. Suddenly the idea of womanly arts like knitting and crocheting makes me weepy and sentimental, picturing myself listening to Enya and making whimsical yarn creatures. This is especially interesting to me because I have never had interest in either one of these activities, and there was a time when I think you could have chased me with knitting needles. Ah how hormones change anything. Anyway. These are some little felt animals I made our of some felt I bought at Micheal's. Interestingly, this felt, which I bought solely because it was dirt cheap and this was my first try, said that it was made out of 100% recycled disposable drinking water bottles. (So THAT's where they are go!) At any rate it empowered me to just dive on in, and so without a pattern I eyeballed the original that I found on Esty (which is terribly adorable but more than I am willing to pay) here it is,
and here is the link incase you would like to buy the original, and please do. (at least until I get the energy to make another one and sell my own version on Etsy
Esty speaking of my own version, here is the first batch of the animals on the 70's sleeper sofa (currently dominating what will eventually be the baby's room) where they look somehow appropriate.

My darling husband Ryan went out and bought two different girths of dowel (somehow that doesn't sound right)in order to make the "x" that the little guys hang from, and I ordered some vintage multicolored Ric Rac apparently from seller Myluckynumber9 who apparently is headquartered in Malaysia (!) which came in this charming envelope:
addressed to my Esty Shop, the Ruby Aviary...(currently there are only paintings for sale, but SOON I hope to do a major re-haul and sell my little felt and crafty creations on there as well) anyway back to the envelope and my husband...I wish I could show a close up of the lovely dove stamps on the envelope, which appear to be actual paper LICKABLE stamps,which makes it all the more charming, but I seem to have temporarily lost my camera and must rely therefore on the scanner (which I used to upload this image) and my good old Hipstamatic app on the Ipad (which supplied the other image) ok. back to my husband. He went to Home Depot and got me the dowels and after I selected a size, proceeded to hang the little critters, which is now a fully fledged mobile and truly adorable, I must say. Ok that's enough of this innagural post! back to crafting! more very soon -Jess