A Visit with Kelli and Peter

Kelli and Peter came out for a visit the last weekend of October.  We had a pretty relaxed weekend consisting mostly of hanging out, sewing, and movie-watching.  Clay and Peter got a quick project in as well! 

They rode the train out from Chicago arriving Friday late morning and then left late Sunday night.  It was really nice to get to spend some time with family and show them around our home and area.

First up, Clay and Peter's project: building a frame for the full-length mirror in our bedroom.  The mirror actually came with the house attached to the former bedroom closet door.  I had seen a project on pinterest showing how to add a frame to a cheap mirror and luckily the project ended up being pretty accurate to how long and difficult the tutorial said it would be.

Unfortunately, I don't have a finished picture yet of the mirror up in our bedroom, but know that it looks great!  Thanks Peter for all the help on that!

While the boys were working on the mirror, Kelli and I were inside sewing!  She helped me make a mobile for the nursery out of the fabric from the quilt in the baby's room.  Again, I picked out a mobile I had seen on pinterest and we just kind of made up our pattern from there.

 

Peter helped out with planning how the mobile would hang:

A close-up of the mobile: two clouds with raindrops!   



I need to add some pictures of our nursery now - showing the mobile hanging and also our recently added light! 

Thanks Kelli and Peter for coming out!  We always look forward to visitors and really appreciate you giving up a weekend to come visit! 

Two preggers sisters :)

the belly grows..

I haven't posted belly pictures in quite a while - so here they are!  This really has been an enjoyable pregnancy for me..especially from what I hear from others sometimes.

I don't think I've had too many crazy cravings.  Early on it was anything comfort and starchy: baked potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and pizza.  Toward the middle I gravitated toward anything with cheese!  Not just greasy melted cheese but also cream cheese and cottage cheese.  I have gone through numerous tubs of cottage cheese and Clay won't even look at the stuff..he doesn't realize what he's missing out on.  I don't think I crave a whole lot now..except maybe chocolate milk :).  My sweet tooth has picked back up some as early on I really would have rather eaten nachos than brownies (gasp!).  I can safely say now that brownies, ice-cream, and chocolate chip cookies are back on the list where they belong.

20 weeks is where I left off last time!

21.5 weeks

23 weeks

28ish weeks

30 weeks

31 weeks

33 weeks (and a nice view of our new kitchen area!)

34.5 weeks

..and finally a little Halloween treat!  This shirt was a gift from a friend and I will probably continue to wear it as it is one of the few lounge shirts I have left that stretches well over the belly.  I passed out Halloween candy in it and got several comments..it was fun :)

34.5 weeks



Kitchen Renovation Part 3 and a Little Nursery

Our kitchen is almost at the point where we can call it finished!!!  Woohoo!!  We had four weekends in a row of traveling and visitors and the kitchen was a great way to finish it all off!

Mom and Dad came out for a long weekend to help get the kitchen wrapped up before the arrival of the little baby.  Although we still didn't take them to do anything overly tourist-y, it wasn't as much of a non-stop weekend as it usually is. 

The cabinets and countertop are now attached and the beadboard is in place over the unfinished sides of the cabinets:

Mom and me outside painting trim to go along the bottom of the cabinets: 

Clay and Dad putting up the open shelving in the kitchen:

Dad cutting various trim boards while Mom and Clay paint doors.  This was probably when I got tired and let all of them keeping working :).  Once again, delegation is a strong point of mine: 

Before I show a fairly finished view of the kitchen, let's revisit what the kitchen has looked like over the past couple phases:

Yay!  We are just so pleased with how everything has turned out!  It's weird to think back to when we first walked through the house with the realtor and how much of an eye-sore the kitchen was.  Now we feel like the kitchen has some great character!  I'll post a picture sometime soon when we have the shelves decorated and the countertops all cleaned off and neat!

Well, since we do in fact have a baby coming (as I type this we have only 4 weeks to go!), we figured we should try to get the nursery a little more finished!  Although it isn't completely finished, I now feel like if a baby showed up, we have a nice place to let him or her sleep, I know where the diapers/wipes/onesies are, and we have a room dedicated to this little one's well-being.

Sometimes I get rather frustrated with myself for choosing to not know if the baby is a boy or a girl, but we've just had to make some decisions and go with it!  These are the times when I have to remind myself that most nurseries do not in fact look like they jumped off of pinterest and into real-life.  Also, our baby girl will be ok with blue-ish walls and our baby boy will be just fine with a light airy room.

First up, the crib!  It got delivered to our door where Clay began opening it:

He did so good putting it together all by himself!  We were all doing other things so he was left to crib duty:

Our crib with the quilt and some onesies hanging out on it:

We painted the dresser for the nursery a while back, but now there is a changing pad in place as well as baskets on the wall to hold our diapering essentials:

Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures of Mom and Dad visiting :(.  I guess we got a little too caught up in the kitchen shelving and door hanging (yes, just about all of our interior doors have now been replaced!).

Lots of changes here in the Lindner home..and I think soon there will be many more!

Mums and Things

We have landscaping that I'm not embarassed of anymore!!! 

Patty and Stu came for a quick visit this past weekend.  We were hoping they were going to be able to come and help us with a few things before the baby came, and they pulled through!  I have to say, I was rather exhausted going into the weekend.  Clay came down with a nasty flu bug of some kind and was completely wiped out for almost 3 days.  I didn't think motherhood was starting for a few more weeks (gosh..can it be that close already?!?!), but I feel like I have been officially inducted into motherhood now. 

In all seriousness, the Lord has a way of reminding me that things are not about me.  As my belly grows and my body gets tired, I still have a responsibilty to serve my husband..our little family of two (and a half).  Although I have no desire to go through that flu bug again, I am thankful for the Lord's reminder that even this time in my life is not about me. 

So back to Patty and Stu - it was nice to have some extra help as Clay finished recovering.  Not only did the house get disinfected, but our landscaping got planted!  Here are some pictures:

You'll notice I am not in the pictures..I am really good at delegating and managing.

If only I could remember what all the plants are called!  Also, about a month ago, we had a friend from church come help take the big tree bushes out.  We really like how open the front of our house is now!

Here is a picture of when we bought the house:

And here is a (kind of dark) picture of our house now with our new landscaping:

We're still not sure what we're going to do with the random front walkway...  Aside from the yard, Patty also helped get some things in the nursery settled!  We are now confident that the baby's things will not be covered in dust after sitting in the dresser :).

Thanks for the visit!  We are so appreciative of your time and energy!

Shower for the Baby

Clay and I got to spend Labor Day week in Illinois visiting family.  My sisters were super sweet and threw me a wonderful baby shower and we got to spend a lot of time just being together.

I'll start with the shower..

Kari, Kelli, and Mom did all of the planning for the shower.  Kelli hosted and Kari planned the games and ran the shower.  It was fun getting to help with some of the decorations and favors since I was in town the few days before the actual shower date.  I really enjoyed getting to spend that time with my mom and sisters. 

Baby Lindner bunting:

Another banner on the other side of the room (I loved them..so festive!):

The cake that Kelli and Peter made!  It was a lemon cake with a super tasty lemon filling..so good!  The outside is real marshmallow fondant.  I know this sounds cheesy, but Peter especially went through a lot of work to get this cake looking nice and I felt very special :).  That's Kari in the background because I realized I didn't get any pictures with my mom or sisters!!!

Kelli and Peter have a nice open layout in their home; this is from the kitchen area where the food was all set out:

A different angle of the food..everything was so nice:

We had a veggies tray, cheese and crackers, almond cream cheese filled strawberries, chocolate cookies, lemon cake, and bacon wrapped water chestnuts:

Some of the sweet ladies at the shower..all of them have I known since grade school or earlier:

 The other sweet ladies at the shower:

The sneaky tray game where you think the questions are about the tray, but they're actually about the mom to be:

Opening presents:

Everyone was so generous at the shower!  Kari practically bought out WalMart of all of their baby supplies :) and Kelli made me this quilt.  She surprised me by making the one that I had picked out on Etsy.  This is the quilt that we've pretty much planned the colors of the room around:

The favor stand full of cupcakes!  Mom worked hard on baking enough cupcakes for the ladies to take home to their families as well :).  I had fun helping frost and decorate and even Clay helped tie on some tags:

A close-up of a cute little elephant cupcake:

 Overall the shower was so nice and relaxing and such a good time of fellowship with Christian women that have had a part in my life growing up.  Thank you especially to my sisters and mom for all they did to make me and Clay and our growing little baby feel special and celebrated! 

So what else did we spend our time doing while in Illinois?  You can't visit in the Fall and not have a trip to Tanner's!  Clay and I actually went to Tanner's the first time he came out to visit me in Illinois and meet my family so I have especially fond memories of going there :).  Here are some pictures of our short trip to Tanner's.

Feeding the goats:

Mom and me :)

Kari and me :) 

 Mom and Dad being cute:

Clay and I comparing my belly to his pumpkin: 

I guess we didn't do so well taking many pictures on the visit.  It was nice to have time to do things like go shopping with my mom or clean out my bedroom closet on this visit home.  The shower was fun and relaxing and such a nice celebration to have mid-way through the pregnancy.  Going home is always a reminder of the blessings the Lord has put in our life!