Baby Bag Dilemma - Solved!

I ended up getting this baby bag!!! My MIL was nice enough to hit the Myrtle Beach outlets while she was on vacation this week and found a great deal on this one. I am so excited, I can not wait for her to come home with it! It feels good to have that decision made, now I can pack it up for delivery day!!!





Take care,

Diaper Shower

Have I mentioned lately how wonderful my neighbors are? I always talk about how much I love living where I do and this is just another reason. My neighbors threw me a diaper shower tonight and they were beyond generous. The shower was hosted by my neighbor Laura who always is such a wonderful hostess. We have so many diapers of all different sizes, this child is set for the first two years of her life!!! I am so grateful to be surrounded by so many wonderful people in our neighborhood.

We also had our crib and dresser delivered today!!!! I haven't had a chance to really get things organized yet between work today and the diaper shower, but hoping to tackle it this weekend!!!! I can't wait to show you all pictures, hopefully I will try to post them soon.

Me posing with an adorable outfit from Darci, don't you just love Laura's adorable breakfast nook and cafe curtains?


Group picture with Laura's tree. I feel so behind after seeing all of her holiday decor, I barely just put away our Halloween decorations!


Laura and Missy having fun:

Diaper Bag Dilema

Jillian is going to be here before I know it and I am still struggling with what kind of diaper bag I should get. There are so many options out there, the whole decision process is a bit overwhelming!!!!! Here are a few of my choices that I have narrowed down from all ends of the diaper bag specturm. I would love to hear from you Mom's. I really value your input. Do you love your diaper bag? Wish you would have/ wouldn't have splurged on yours? Is there another one that a Mommy friend has that you wish you would have purchased? Any input is welcome, I am trying to find a stylish, yet functional bag.

I love this from Coach, they had it at our outlet but in brown, I would prefer black:



This one is cute from JP Lizzie. I love the bow on the front and all of the little compartments inside:



This diaper bag from Skip Hop received great reviews on diaperbags.com:



This one from Kate Spade is just adorable but it's in brown, I want black:



An adorable Kate Spade bag in black:



I have also heard a lot about the Petunia Picklebottoms bags.



Thanks for all of your help, I greatly appreciate it!!!

Take care,

Our Wal-Mart Canopy Bed is Finally Here!

So our bed arrived on Friday and what a site we came home to. Jeff and I took a half day off of work that day and all morning I kept receiving texts from my neighbors saying that we had some insanely huge boxes waiting on our front porch. I would have to agree with them! They were huge!

Jeff had to take apart the boxes outside because there was no way he could lift those inside by himself. Fortunatly for us, we had the help of a friendly neighbor to help us lift the massive headboard and footboard inside the house and up the stairs.



The head board waiting to be set up:



It is done!



My review so far of the Canopy line at Wal-Mart is exceptional quality and value. The bed looks beautiful!!!!! If I didn't share my little secret with you, would you have guessed that this was purchased from Wal-Mart? So to answer my own question, the bed is as nice as it looks on-line and in pictures. I would recommend this set to anyone trying to save a few dollars and want a nice looking master bedroom.

Next steps for our bedroom are to order the matching dressers. It will be so nice to have a finished master bedroom!!!! We also found out this weekend that Jillian's furniture is due to be delivered next week!!! I am so excited!!!! It will be such a great feeling to have her room set up and ready to go.

Take care,

Stafford Stories Miracle

Hello all, I just wanted to share with you a story that warmed my heart so much this week. Sweet Melissa, over at Stafford Stories, just announced her pregnancy after dealing with a two year journey with infertility. After several failed IUI's and a failed IVF with ICSI, she and her husband were able to conceive on their own after their doctor gave them only a 5% success rate. It truly is a miracle from God. I will never take for granted what God has given to us and truly believe every baby is a gift from God. I hope this story gives all women praying for a baby hope.

Master Bath Realities

OK, I am going to be honest here. I love to try to paint my home in a light of cleanliness and order. I turn my nose at clutter and hate dust and dirt. That is how things usually were until I became pregnant. Since then I feel like I am constantly playing catch up with the house work. I was a paranoid freak the first trimester due to our history so I didn't want to over exert myself, I was better the second trimester when my energy returned, but now in the fatigue and heavier times of the third trimester, things are slacking around here again. It's hard to keep the house clean when you are so tired half of the time. I do not have a lot of motivation after a long day of work. On weekends, I find myself getting caught up on baby to-do stuff when I do have the energy. Cleaning is also very hard work when you are almost 9 months pregnant. Things have certainly slipped around here and I just couldn't take it anymore. Warning: if unclean bathrooms gross you out, do not read any further!!! Please tell me I am not the only one!

My master bath has turned into the nastiest room in the house. It's probably the most used and least cleaned. Probably because it takes so darn long to clean and the most energy. Jeff went to the Monday Night Football Browns game tonight so I decided I had to do something about the nastiness that has become our master bath.

The embarrassing before:

After a crazy Monday morning getting ready for work:


Nasty sink, the plunger doesn't even look silver anymore:


Jeff's nasty and cluttered side of the bathroom:


Nasty hairballs (sorry ladies, so gross, I know!):


Nasty soap scum and calcium deposit on the shower doors:


Finally after scrubbing the bathroom for over an hour, normalcy has returned:

My side is finally clean and uncluttered again:


A freshly vaccumed and swiffered floor and base board:


A clean, unclutter sink. A fresh towel hanging from the towel ring:


Clean and sparkling shower doors:

34 Weeks

I feel like I am turning into a weekend blogger lately. Our weekdays have been so busy between work, baby prep classes, and other random outtings that before you know it, another weekend is here. With days flying by like this for us, Miss Jillian is going to be here before we know it!!! As of today, I officially have 40 days left. I can't believe it. So many milestones have been reached this week from a personal and professional perspective. First, I was approved to go part-time once the baby is there! I will be working 3 Nine hour days, I am so excited!!!! I get to have the best of both worlds, a career and will be able to stay at home two days a week with my little girl. The other three days will be split between daycare and Jeff's Mom. I also submitted my FMLA request to HR on Friday!!!!! I am so excited! I am offcially going to be off for 12+ weeks once she arrives. This is going to be a huge change for me, I have been working ever since I graduated from college, um, 13 years ago? Wow. I am really looking forward to this time off with my baby girl. I think I counted only 25 workdays left. So excited!!!!! My co-workers also gave us a wonderful baby shower this week. We are so blessed to work with such wonderful people.

On the Canopy Bed front, we received the side slats this week!!! So I guess Walmart was not playing a cruel joke on my at all. The header and footboard have also been shipped and are hanging out somewhere in Virgina the last time I checked. They have to be huge so I imagine they are going to take a few more days than the slats. I can't wait to post pics of the bed finally put together. Speaking of bedroom furniture, we are still waiting for Jill's furniture to arrive. I expect it will be a few more weeks but I am really itching to finish up her room!!!! My parents surprised us this week by brining over her curtains as an early Christmas present. They are so adorable, I can't wait to hang them.

We have the silk green panels:


with the pink polka dot sheers:



A few more 34 week details:

Total weight gain/loss: 30 lbs. I pretty much reached my limit to where I wanted to end up, and I still have 6 weeks to go. Let's just hope that this is it.


Maternity clothes? Of course, even though there are a few occasional non maternity items I can still get a way with.

Stretch Marks: Still none! Woohoo!

Sleep: Still getting up at least 1-2 nights to pee. It's so funny how I will crawl back into bed and then Jill gets up and thinks it's time to start moving around. It amazes me how my schedule affects her. She is such a little person already. I notice she will even respond to when I am in the shower, drying my hair, or talking to Jeff in the morning. I really wonder how much they hear and pay attention to while they are all snug in there.

Best moment this week: Her hiccups. I was laying in bed one night and I started to feel her move around and kick her feet like she normally does but I also noticed some activity going on where her head is which I never really felt before. I had Jeff feel her and he was the one that realized she was having the hiccups. It made so much sense, she would twich every 30 seconds. There have been a few nights where it has woken me up so I just lay there and rub my belly hoping she is OK. I feel terrible sometimes when she has them really bad. Poor thing!

Movement: All the time now, her feet are always resting to the left of me, if I want to make sure she is OK, I just press on her feet and get a reaction out of her.

Food cravings: Nothing in particular, just a little bit of everything! Ugh, my appetite has really kicked in, lets just hope it is going to her and not me.

Gender: Girl!

Labor Signs: I have had some weird cramping which I think has been Braxton Hicks. Not 100% convinced yet but we will call it that for now.

Belly Button in or out? Still out.

What I miss: this week it's normal fall clothes and tall boots. I have seen so many cute fall styles on women lately that I really wish I can participate!!! I am ready to burn my black patent leather flats that I have been wearing since the summer.

What I am looking forward to: meeting our little girl and holding her in my arms. I can't wait to show her the nursery!

Weekly Wisdom: None I can think of this week!

Milestones: Getting approved for part time work and submitting my FMLA request. Getting approved for part time is just so wonderful for me. It just helps everything that we have been planning that much easier.

Take care,

Waving Hello to my Readers!

Hello everyone! How are you? I couldn't believe it today when I saw that I had 92 followers. Wow, how the heck are you? How did you find my blog? Thank you so much for taking the time to read about our daily lives. I have really enjoyed blogging lately and it's been so nice to receive so many positive comments from you. I have been having such a great time preparing for our little girl and decorating our home. I love documenting how far we have come from our struggles with infertility and loss and all of the changes we have made to our home. All of your support means a lot to me. I just wanted to take a moment to say hello and thank you for following our daily lives. Please leave me a comment and introduce yourself. Please let me know where you found me. I also added a button to the right of my blog, please add it to your blog if you choose to do so. Have a great weekend everyone!

The Wal Mart Canopy Bed Saga

I have been wanting to complete our bedroom set ever since we bought the Wal Mart Canopy nightstands almost a year ago. On line, this set looked fabulous, and all of my friends from the Decorating & Renovating Board on The Nest who have tried this line of furniture have all raved about the quality. So I ordered the nightstands just to see what I thought. We really needed a bedroom set and I really didn't want to spend a lot of money considering we have practically a whole house to furnish. So I ordered the nightstands and we loved them, great quality, great color, an all around good product. And from Wal-Mart!!!
So I decided to order the rest of the set and soon realized the sleigh bed we wanted was out of stock!!!! I kept checking Wal-Mart's website for months to see if it was available! I was really starting to get nervous, what if this was a sign of the bedroom set being discontinued? I started to think of what I should do with the two night stands that we had, should I put them in another room? Use them as end tables? Ugh! I didn't want to start from scratch again and have to look for another bedroom set. This one really fit our needs perfectly and it was beautiful and so reasonably priced! I decided to check Wal-Mart's website again this week just by chance that the bed was back in stock. I really wasn't holding my breath, but did try to check the availability at least once a week. So I checked it on Tuesday and holy lord, it was there!!!! I even sent an email to my sister so she could confirm that I wasn't seeing things. I told Jeff that night that I really think we should order the bed before it went back out of stock again and he gave me the go ahead. The next day, I went on line to order the bed, clicked on the link that I had saved in my favorites, and a big fat red OUT OF STOCK stared at in the face. What the heck? It was only in stock for a day? I was so ticked, I couldn't believe it! Now what was I going to do? Was this really that hot of an item? So I emailed Wal-Mart's customer service and they gave me their basic response that the item would be back in stock eventually but they couldn't commit to a date. Of course. So I tried again the next day just to see what the status was. A beautiful green AVAILABLE! I couldn't believe it, so I ordered the bed immediately. Today I received an email confirming that our bed had already been shipped. Yay!!!!! I can't believe we are finally going to get our bed after months and months of chasing this thing down. Do you realize if you were to check the bed on line just now it is still saying it is out of stock??? I will post pics once we have it, let's pray it arrives in one piece and it is the actual bed that I have been wanting after all these months and that their website is not just playing games with my head!

Take care,