Steelers fever

Football season has begun! This means of course that I lose my husband to the television yet again until football and hockey season ends. He warns me each year before football season begins to get as much TV watching in as I can because come September, I have to hide myself away in the bedroom to watch any shows I might want to see.

My husband and his family are HUGE Steelers fans. I don't think I ever knew what a "fan" was until I met my husband. His love for the Steelers means when they win a game, he's on cloud 9 for the rest of the night which is great for me. But if they lose, I get Grumpy Husband who mopes around the house for the rest of the day and then goes to bed at a rediculously early hour because he's in a bad mood. Good thing they won the Super Bowl 2 years ago or he might have secluded himself in the house forever.

For his birthday this past year, Pat's family got him a Steelers jersey. Haley got one recently too, thanks to an awesome garage sale find courtesy of my mother-in-law :)


With my husband's love of the Steelers and the discovery that Baby #2 is a boy, I knew I had no choice but to make Connor a Steelers-themed baby room. I bought 7+ yards of Steelers print fabric on top of some gold fabric and other materials and set out to make matching Steelers stuff for Connor's Steelers/football baby room, including bumpers, bed sheets, a dust ruffle, and a Boppy cover. I might also throw in a blanket if I'm not feeling completely worn out by the entire ordeal.

Knowing this was going to take some time, I began with the bumpers and I'm proud to say I finished them in about a week's worth of sewing after Haley's gone down for naps and bedtime. I used Sew 4 Home's crib bumpers tutorial and they turned out great!!



The back of the bumpers is gold like the piping on the top. I'll have to get better pictures once I finish everything and can actually put it all on the crib. The actual sewing part of the bumpers wasn't difficult, but the measuring and cutting part was what took the longest. I'm extremely happy with the result though, I'd recommend this tutorial to anyone who would like to make their own bumpers (and at a fraction of the cost I might add.)

More baby room decoration updates as I continue to finish the projects!

A(nother) life for the valance

Remember the valance turned into hanging pockets that I made for Haley before she was born? Well, it recently got a new life. Or should I say, another new life.

Haley has gotten into a habit of waking up at an unreasonable hour, i.e. any time before 7:00am. We'll be sleeping peacefully and all of the sudden hear little squeals of annoyance coming from her room as she whines to be let out of her crib at 6am. Little does she know that as you get older there's this thing called "school" that she'll have to go to which will make her get up even earlier and actually miss the days she was allowed to sleep in until 7am. I tried to sit down with her and explain that it would be great if she would let Mommy and Daddy sleep until 7 on work days. She just stared at me then toddled off to watch Fresh Beat Band. There's no reasoning with 17-month-olds.

Anyway, I needed something to distract her so we could get in just a few more minutes of sleep, and I thought about the hanging pockets I had made. I originally made the valance into hanging pockets and hung them with curtain rods from the wall because the room Haley was in as a newborn didn't have much storage space and I needed something to keep odds and ends in for easy access. Since we moved, her room is now much bigger and the hanging pockets have been sitting unused in her closet for the past year. The pockets seemed like the perfect solution to keep Haley entertained for awhile. By snipping some of the pockets to make larger pockets and adding straps and Velcro, the valance became a hanging crib bag!




Haley loves having some of her favorite toys at arm's reach each morning and evening. She reads her board books and plays with her stuffed animals, and Mommy and Daddy get some much-needed rest! That, my friends, is what we call priceless.

The only problem I've found though is that while I thought Velcro would be strong enough to hold everything, I didn't take into account the little toddler who likes to take everything apart. Haley quickly figured out that she could tear the crib bag off of her crib, so part of my morning and night routine has been to reattach the bag.

I'll be giving the valance yet another makeover soon by adding some snaps in place of the velcro.

Sleeping like a king

Let me introduce you to my new baby....

Ok, so it's not the baby you were probably thinking of, but I'm still excited!! My husband and I are both sprawlers when we sleep, so that means someone inevitably gets kneed in the back or kicked in the leg night after night. (Patrick will tell you that it's all my doing, but I seem to remember a certain someone having a dream about a giant spider and kicking me in the back in his sleep.) Needless to say, our queen bed was just not doing it for us anymore. We are tall people! We need our space, especially since I'm only going to be getting bigger over the next 5 months. So on the weekend of July 4th, we decided it was time to get a king bed.

The guy at Mattress Firm saw that we were desperate was a great salesman. The bed we were looking at was already marked down $200 due to the holiday, but he offered us more money off the mattress, a free mattress cover, money off the frame, 2 year no interest financing, and same day delivery if we bought the mattress that day. A night without being kicked? Deal!

Our brand spankin' new king mattress was delivered last Monday and my back and I have never been happier. Oh and Patrick has yet to claim that I'm on his side kicking him relentlessly through the night. My favorite part other than the good night's sleep? Buying the new comforter and matching pillows in my favorite color combination!! Hmm, should I be getting this excited about bedding? I suppose this is one of those "adult moments" I never understood when I was younger.

Now, I just need to find a good tutorial for making a headboard. Any suggestions??