Blessed

I am so incredibly blessed.  This pregnancy has taught me to wait patiently for God because he has a plan and he is taking care of us.  I had been having a lot of stress and anxiety about all the things that the baby was going to need right away.  Whenever I saw a sale on something we needed, I wanted to run right out and get it so I could be sure we got a good deal on it, even though it was something on our registry and I hadn't had a shower yet.

Adam one day just looked at me and said, you are not allowed to buy anything for the baby until after the shower.  Good advice, but stressful for me.  What if we didn't get something we really needed and then there were no good deals on it and we had to pay an arm and a leg for it.  I should have just taken a deep breath and waited on God.  He had a plan to provide and I just didn't see it.

In the last few weeks, gifts from family and friends started showing up at our door, and then last weekend one of my best friends threw me an amazing shower.  (You can see photos from the shower here on her blog).  It was an amazing event and I was so incredibly blessed by all the ladies who came from church and gave me such generous gifts.  I was overwhelmed by their love, affection, and advice.  God provided a loving and giving church family to shower me with gifts and support.  I am so blessed that we moved here to be a part of the CrossWay family.  It has been such a blessing already and God is providing a loving family for us to be a part of right here in Nashua.  How amazing!

After the shower, I got in super planning mode.  God provided someone who had a crib, almost brand new, that they were giving away!  He also provided a cheap changing table on craigslist.  I was just in awe as I saw God take care of everything.  We were able to get lots of things the baby would need with the gift cards that we were given and we only have one thing to purchase.  We are so blessed.  Sometimes it is hard to wait on God, but when you do, he will show you his amazing provisions.

Advent should be another season of sitting and waiting.  Adam and I have been doing an advent devotional (by Ann Voskamp) and these ideas of advent really stood out to me.

•  Advent comes from the Latin which means "coming".  Throughout the month of advent we are waiting for God to come. 
• An infinite God becomes infant.
• The Giver becomes the Gift.
• Wait for the coming of the God in the manger who makes Himself bread for us near starved.

We should be actively waiting for God to show up during advent.  Oftentimes my waiting becomes saturated in the gifts and the flash of Christmas.  But Christ coming to Earth was a simple, beautiful gift. 

During this month I have been thinking a lot about Christmas and how to focus on the gift that it is.  I'm taking a deep breath, and I am waiting to see what God is going to do.  I am being intentional in waiting for the baby in the manger.  And I know that in my waiting I will see God show up in amazing ways and with beautiful blessings.

Here is a link to a song that has been on my mind during this season.  I hope you enjoy it.

DIY Alphabet Wall

If you do a Google or Pinterest search for a nursery alphabet wall, you will find so many cute ideas.

In my search for ways to decorate the nursery, I stumbled across this and was inspired.  I just loved all the cute ideas for an alphabet wall.  I did not realize however, until a few days ago, how expensive it would be to do.

The problem is not finding the wooden letters.  Many craft stores sell a variety of unfinished wooden letters in various fonts that are perfect for this, but they're just so expensive.  Going into it I thought I could just buy an alphabet pack of letters and go from there.  It was nearly impossible to find anything like that.  Almost everywhere I looked, in stores, and online, made you buy the letters individually.  Then, depending on the size you wanted for each letter, they could range from $1.50 to $5 each.  That shocked me.  I never thought they would be so expensive! 

After realizing I would not be able to do the project as I originally had intended I decided to try and figure out a different way to achieve the same outcome.  So here for you, is my DIY version of an alphabet wall.  And all I spent was $4.

Supplies
Cardboard
Scissors
Sharpie
Pencil
Paper
Crayons
Paint
Paint brushes

Luckily I have been getting lots of baby goodies so I had tons of cardboard boxes piled up.  The first thing that I did was cut up 26 cardboard squares.  I chose to make mine different sizes, but you could just as easily make them all the same size.

 

Next, I brainstormed what I wanted my letters to look like.  You can make just plain letters in various fonts, but I decided it would be fun to make the letters look like something that started with that letter (for example: A for Alligator).

 

Next, I sketched the letters out on the cardboard in pencil, and then outlined in sharpie. 

 

Then I painted all of the letters.  This was time consuming and space consuming because I did it one color at a time.  I didn't worry too much about staying inside the lines because after the painting was finished, I went back over the letters with a sharpie getting all the edges and details to stand out.

The last, and hardest part of the project was cutting the letters out.  Especially if there were a lot of little details to cut out.  These Octopus legs were a challenge.  Luckily, my wonderful husband offered to help.  So I cut out the big chunks with scissors and he did the more challenging parts with an exacto knife.  We finally got it finished, even though by the end our hands were very sore.  Then, I got to have the joy of hanging them on the wall and seeing the finished product.  I just used 3M to hang them. 

 

 

Another Nursery DIY Project

Adam and I knew that we needed another dresser or bookshelf for the nursery, but we didn't want to buy one.  So, here is how I repurposed a piece of furniture for the nursery for only $10.

This is our old entertainment center

 

We have been keeping it in the nursery and storing some things in it, but I thought it would make a good bookshelf or toy chest for the babies things.  So the first thing I did was paint it all one color.  You can't tell very well in the picture, but it is a soft green.

 

Then I sketched out some painting that I wanted to do on it, keeping with the forest thing and I painted it using acrylic paints.  This is the finished product.  I am really happy with it.  I also covered the glass much like I did with my plastic storage DIY.

 

And here it is in it's place in the nursery

 

Later today check out the pictures of our nursery progress!

 



Nursery DIY

This pregnancy was a surprise to Adam and I, which means that we are not as financially prepared as we would have hoped to be.  This is becoming a challenge because I want to start getting the nursery ready and things like that, but everything that I do has to be done with minimal spending.  So here’s a nursery DIY that cost me $10.  Recently I have been working on getting the nursery ready by purging all of the stuff out of it.  Since we moved into this apartment the second bedroom has been a catch-all storage room, and it is nowhere near ready to have a baby in it, so I have been going through things, reorganizing and getting rid of some thing.  Some of our things have been stored in plastic drawer storage containers.  After my cleaning I had two empty ones that would be perfect to store diapers and things in, but they were so boring, so I decided to change them up.

 

All I needed was scrapbook paper, scissors, and clear adhesive.

First, I made these cute little forest animals out of scrapbook paper.  (The nursery theme that we have picked is forest animals). 

 

Second, I measured out the scrapbook paper to fit in the drawer.  Then I attached the animal to it and taped it with double sided scrapbooking tape to the inside of the bin.  And that was it!  Here’s the finished product.

 

I’m pretty excited about how they turned out.  I think they are super cute. 

Do you have any cheap nursery DIYs?