PJ Refashion: Part I

So, as you can imagine, I’ve been slowly putting together a hospital bag of sorts.  While I’m sure that looking like a fashionista super-mom will be the furthest thing from my brain after pushing out the two chicklets, I do want to be comfy.  Well, while enlisting the advice of my friend Jenn on hospital garb, she told me she bought and wore a nursing pj set during her stay.  So, off I went to secure for myself a set of my very own.  That’s when I stumbled upon this number going through some hand-me-down maternity clothes the next day:

It has a great, stretchy neckline that I’m sure will be perfect for nursing and was probably made for that very reason since it is maternity, except the top was still a little too big for my small upper frame (notice upper is emphasized…the middle however, well, it’s snug at the moment).  So, to save some money and brush up on my sewing skills, I’ll pulled out the ‘ole machine and took an inch and a half off the top area.

I also decided to shorten the pants since it is summertime and sweltering down here in the humid South (and because they were borderline short on my miles of legs).  So, some measuring, marking, pinning, and sewing got me this:

I only hope I’m this happy wearing it to bed in the sterilized room that will become our temporary home in the next few weeks…

Stay tuned for Part II during one of my next taking-a-load-offs…

Twins: 34 Weeks

I like big bellies and I cannot lie…

So the girls had their last ultrasound today – no pictures to show for it though, ‘twas all business  – and it revealed that Twin A weighs 5 lbs. 11 oz. and her sidekick, Twin B, weighs 5 lbs. 10 oz.  Yes, combined that’s a total of 11 lbs. 5 oz…HOLY COW!!!!  So much for thinking early on they’d weigh around 5 lbs. each at birth!  Three things I know for sure, a) they’re gonna be feisty – they were both awake and alert during their photo op and were kicking so much so that the tech had to keep repositioning the wand to get the info she was after, b) I am truly going to know what “light as a feather” feels like right after these two are born as I’ll drop close to 20 lbs. in a matter of minutes with everything that’s stuffed inside my uterus, and c) ‘Legs of Steel’ has nothing on the workout my legs are getting each and every day…and neither does Jillian Michaels, the self-professed “I don’t ever want to be pregnant because of what it does to a woman’s body”.  Whatever lady.

Saturday Post…Wha?

Well, Saturday has come and almost gone and I’ve been mulling all day over the fact that I have yet to whip up my normal Saturday post.  The twin belly has given me some quite uncomfortable nights so my brain is not quite up and running so the thought of writing a detailed post sounds as exciting as eating dirt right now.  However, I’ve got progress I’d be happy to show. 

And that’s it.  :)

I’ve actually spent most of today washing baby clothes…lots and lots of baby clothes.  Next up to hit the machine – burp cloths, cloth diapers (which need to be washed four times before their first use – goodness gracious), towels, and blankets.  Maybe after that all of our girls stuff will be ready for them to get here…just like me.  :)

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Twins: 33 Weeks

As you can see…or if you can see…we seriously need to someday soon invest in a tripod of some sort because I apparently don’t have the steady hand I thought I had.  I’m not sure if the blurry nature of my photos makes me look bigger or not, but who really cares.  The fact has to be faced….I’m BIG!  BIG as in my belly at this very moment is measuring no shorter than 42 inches!  Scarlett O’Hara would pass out at the very mention of this very matter.  Funny though, I don’t feel as big as pictures portray.  My legs and back have apparently profited from painting rooms upon rooms and pretty much everything else as they’re carrying all of this extra weigh without much of a complaint.  :) 

Hung Up

FINALLY!  The new (new as in we bought it brand new over a year ago and it’s been sitting in a bedroom closet since) over-the-range microwave is up! 

Here’s how we did it:

Since we didn’t have the somewhat “required” upper cabinet to attach the microwave to, we had to improvise.  (We actually used to have one there but it hung too low, making any microwave we attached to it lower and closer to the stove than it was supposed to be – the stove top should be at least 16 inches from the bottom of the microwave.)  After searching the internet on how to hang a microwave without an upper cabinet, all we came up with was the option of buying this ‘hanging kit’ that supposedly existed but that we couldn’t find anywhere.  In came Anthony’s great idea to build a shelf that would basically be a built-in cabinet of sorts only without the doors.  We could’ve had doors made to fit or tried to somehow cut ours down to fit but we kinda liked the idea of having an open shelf to store cookbooks and such, not to mention that custom doors would’ve been expensive and over our budget and cutting up our own, risky.  So, a shelf it would be.

So, after we took out the old cabinet (our cabinets were built in place so that’s why there are two notched-out lines in the sides of both side cabinets), I primed and painted the area during my kitchen painting spree a few months ago.  The gaping hole in the wall is where the old electrical wiring for the hood vent came through.  Since neither that, nor the old cabinet notches were going to be seen sans microwave installation, we didn’t bother to fill them in.  Lazy?  Maybe.  Aware of the unnecessary?  Definitely.

Next, Anthony shortened the back of the old cabinet a tad more so that he could use the old vent hood wiring to put in a new outlet for the microwave.

Then, up went the new shelf.    

The actual ‘shelf’ is a 3/4 inch piece of plywood that was cut-to-size and then screwed on top of two pieces of 2 x 4.  The two pieces of 2 x 4 were firmly attached to each neighboring cabinet and then a two-inch wide piece of wood was attached to the front to make the shelf look built-in.  For added support for the shelf, Anthony also installed a scrap plank of wood behind the front piece of wood but under the shelf.   Get it?  Hopefully the picture helps explain.

After all that, we filled in the screw beds and went to town priming and painting.

The next thing to go up was the wall support that came with the microwave… 

…followed by the microwave itself.Meanwhile I went ‘house-hunting’, grabbing things from different places in our house to temporarily fill up the shelf until I find some colorful cookbooks to take up the space.

It’s definitely a far cry from where we started circa 2009:

Next thing to go up?  The subway tile backsplash.  At the rate we’re going, we’ll be done with that right before the twins first birthday.  :)  However, we may or may not be planning to start on it tomorrow.  I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.