First two weeks of the Curtis summer and NURSERY!

The Hamilton baby shower at the beginning of June was a great kick-off to the start of an amazing summer for us!  It's hard to believe that was two weeks ago because the time has flown by!

The week after the shower, I had professional development at work, then spent the rest of the week transitioning the office aka junk room aka "the pit" into a room fit to be a nursery.  It was a lot of work basically getting rid of a room, but it really forced us to go through piles and boxes that have just been accumulating ever since we moved in four years ago.  The time-intensive work paid off, though, because it felt great to get everything in that room sorted through and in a logical place.  I love when things are in their place.  :-)  Steven spent that time getting our new fence ready, working at a friend's landscaping business (sort of) for some extra money, and redoing parts of the deck, which seems pretty simple, but is also very time-intensive.  He's about half way done with it now since we've been working on getting the nursery ready.  Luckily, we did find a couple hours to just put our feet up and enjoy the beautiful weather.

That weekend, I went to brunch with my good friend, Aiman, who I had not seen in FOREVER!  She's getting married this summer, and I'm just so excited for her.  Side note:  We went to eat at Cafe Patachou...has anyone ever been here??  Oh my goodness gracious...Heaven!  I think the super delicious croissant french toast with sugared pecans and powdered sugar topping might be the single reason why I almost didn't pass my glucose test two days later!



The entire second week of summer, I was at work for professional development.  Woo.  Hoo.  My evenings looked like any other evening, along with extra grad work since I was in the last week of my accelerated summer course.  One night we went to dinner with Dad for Steven's really late birthday dinner (his bday is April 3rd...), and again the weather was perfect for it!  While I was at work, Steven continued his routine of helping his friend with the landscaping work, redoing the deck, and now painting the nursery.  Thursday, 6/14, was our FOUR YEAR ANNIVERSARY, so we grilled out and enjoyed another beautiful dinner outside.  Can't believe it's already been four years, and we've got a baby girl almost here!

Speaking of baby girl, her nursery is completely painted!  Once we got it cleaned out,

Steven painted the room a soft gray to start with.

Steven is so talented at bringing my visions to life:  the next thing he did was paint a very soft green horizontal stripe around the whole nursery.

Then came the fun part!  During my week at professional development, I was also working during my lunches and evenings to create a stencil to overlay on the green stripe using the design and color from Lily's bedding set.  I took a close-up detail picture of her comforter, blew it up on my projector at work to trace the stencil, and then cut it out.

Let the stenciling begin!  I sponged a beautiful plum color in random patterns along the green stripe.

After seven hours of stenciling the stripe, I was beyond ready for the big reveal!  The final product is so gorgeous and as Steven said, "Awesome!" in person.

The nursery is far from done, but we are so pleased with the way it's coming along.  The next projects, just within the nursery, are first rigging up the electrical to put a fan in as well as constructing the closet design.  I've spent a couple weeks designing and polishing my vision for the closet, and I can't wait to see Steven put it all together!  He really is the muscle of this operation.  :-)

Stay tuned as our next two weeks are certain to be just as productive and exciting as the last two!