The Baby's Dresser!

Early in my pregnancy, my sister sent me a link to one of her friend's blogs who had refinished an old dresser for her nursery. I was inspired and spent months scouring ads on ksl for the perfect baby dresser. After months of searching, I was worried that we wouldn't be able to find one that was just right and in our price range (cheap!), but we did! We picked up this beauty for $30.


And we (with the amazing help of my awesome family!) transformed it into the most beautiful, most perfect baby dresser ever!

It turned out so great, it is really making me wish we had a nursery to put it in. Until we do have a nursery, it and the baby will be in our room, and I can gaze lovingly at it whenever I want.

On Nesting...

I am generally not a huge planner, and I don't tend to worry too much about future events, particularly those that I can't control. But holy moly, pregnancy hormones are kicking in! Every now and then, I find myself feeling really stressed about having things ready for the baby. It's ridiculous because I still have plenty of time left, but I am starting to feel this drive to get things done. Garrett and I have been going full steam ahead on our baby dresser refinishing project (halfway done!), and we even set up the Pack n' Play bassinet in our bedroom. Garrett's been great at humoring me because really, who needs a bassinet set up at 27 weeks? Me, apparently, and fortunately Garrett's willing to do it for me just so I can rest a little easier at night. Sometimes I think I'm going a little crazy... and sometimes Garrett agrees.

P.S. Speaking of Pack n' Plays, Garrett really hates the phrase "Pack n' Play." Don't ask me why because I totally don't get it. Anyway, the entire time we were setting it up and even now, he's decided that our new word for the Pack n' Play is Marv. Yes, Marv is all set up in our bedroom. Sometimes I think Garrett's a little crazy too.

Great deals on baby stuff

So, now that the bar exam is over, I've been doing a lot of sleeping, cleaning, job searching and baby stuff. Because the baby stuff is by far the most fun, I wanted to tell you all about a couple of my very favorite baby deals websites.

The first is Babysteals.com. This website posts one deal a day (like woot) on really cute baby stuff. I've bought things from them in the past for baby shower gifts, and now that I'm expecting my own baby soon, it's been very difficult waiting until after baby showers to buy some of these cute things. If you miss a day and they haven't sold out, you can always buy past steals on their archive page. And for those of you with older kids or who love scrapbooking, they also have Kidsteals.com and Scrapbooksteals.com. The really dangerous thing about these great websites is that their warehouse is in Salt Lake, so you can choose local pick-up and not have to pay any shipping! My favorite steal that they've had so far are my diapers. As many of you know, Garrett and I will be using gDiapers to cloth diaper our baby. While I certainly don't have all the diapers I'll be needing, I was able to snag some at a great price thanks to Babysteals!


My other favorite website is Mamabargains.com. Much like Babysteals, Mamabargains has one deal listed on their page at a time, but unlike Babysteals, as soon as that deal sells out, they put up a new deal (like a woot-off all the time!). The age ranges for the deals on this page vary quite a bit, so you can find both kid and baby stuff as well as the occasional maternity/nursing stuff. Lanna is the proud owner of a fabulous pair of red hightops we bought from this website. She loves them so much, she wears them every day. And my very favorite deal from Mamabargains is the one really big baby purchase we've made, a stroller! We bought a beautiful Easywalker QTRO stroller, complete with the carry cot, from Mamabargains for $325. That's half off the retail price of $650. And because Mamabargains also has their warehouse located in Salt Lake, we didn't have to pay for shipping. This stroller is super nice, has all the features I could ever want and looks really cozy. So cozy that we have to keep kicking the cat out of the carry cot.And finally, I also wanted to mention Greenbabybargains.com. Like Babysteals, they have one deal a day, but unlike Babysteals, their featured items are always environmentally friendly. I haven't yet bought anything from them, but they have also had some really cute stuff. Unfortunately, they don't have a warehouse in Salt Lake, so no local pick-up. :(

With such fun bargain sites, it really is a wonder I don't have all the baby stuff anyone could ever need, but I keep telling myself I have to wait until after baby showers. Hopefully the weeks go by fast because baby things are just so darn cute! It makes me really glad that we chose not to find out the sex of the baby because then I'm not tempted by all the gender specific stuff.

Chickens and Farmers

If any of you Bountiful-dwellers haven't been to the farmers' market this year, GO! I just got back, and I loved it. I remember the first time I went to the Bountiful Farmers' Market with my grandma. It was in a parking lot, there were only a handful of vendors and they all sold produce. Each year it seems to get bigger and bigger. Now it's held at the U of U Bountiful extension (or Stoker Elementary for you native Bountiful folks), and it is awesome. There were so many people there even though it was really hot (though that might have just been me), and there were a lot of vendors. They sold eggs, beef, strawberries, melons, corn, gourds, greens, onions, beets, honey, popcorn, bread, cheese, preserves, a lot of beautiful crafts and jewelry, Scentsy, essential oils, homemade goat soap, plants and lots of yummy food (funnel cakes, tamales, and so much more). I brought home a bag full of yummy things! I love buying things from local growers. Their food is higher quality than the grocery store, can be cheaper than the grocery store and is often much healthier than the grocery store. If you want pesticide-free food, or free range chicken eggs, or really fresh (rather than artificially ripened) produce, this is the place to find it.

Speaking of free range chicken eggs, last weekend Heather and I dragged our husbands to Salt Lake's Tour de Coops to tour a bunch of urban backyard chicken coops. There were lots of coops that we liked, but these two pictures are of our very favorite. We loved this backyard. It wasn't large, it was shady and verdant, and it had a seriously good looking chicken coop. It was the kind of backyard we would both LOVE to have. Some of you might think we're a little nuts for wanting to keep chickens when we get a house, especially when eggs are so cheap at the grocery store. One big reason to me is that they taste so much better than the ones at the store. Last summer I bought a carton of free range eggs from the farmers' market at the U. On the label, it said that the eggs were from "galavanting chickens." When I was watching Lanna that night, I asked her if she wanted a galavanting chicken egg. She loved it and said it tasted really good. When I told her that Heather and I were going to look at chickens, she said we should get galavanting chickens. She thinks galavanting chickens are a particular breed of chicken that make really good eggs, when really they're just happy, normal chickens.

As you can see from the pictures, chickens are fairly easy to care for. They don't take up a lot of room, they don't make a lot of noise (excluding roosters, of course), and are a great way to teach kids about responsibility, self sufficiency and where their food comes from. One common misconception is that you need a rooster and a hen to get eggs. This isn't true. You do need a hen and a rooster to get a chick, but the eggs that you eat for breakfast are unfertilized eggs. The hens lay them all by themselves without any roosters. Backyard chickens have been growing in popularity, and several nearby cities passed ordinances allowing chickens (though generally NOT roosters). Here's a great article from the U's Daily Chronicle (a.k.a. The Chrony) on urban chickens. I can't wait to have my own backyard so I can have my very own mini flock of galavanting chickens.

Father's Day

This month Garrett officially qualified for celebrating Father's Day. Although I've always bought Garrett a present for Father's Day as the Future Father of our children, I usually did it just because I love any excuse to surprise Garrett with a present. This year he has graduated to Expectant Father, so I decided to surprise him with something to prepare him for that role (along with the dvds I bought him). During our usually one-sided discussions about baby gear (I bet you can guess who does most of the talking), Garrett mentioned that he didn't like the Moby wraps or sling carriers because they look too "girlie." So I showed him a slew of other baby carriers, and he decided he liked the Beco in Panthers the best as a more manly but still fun baby carrier. Before Father's Day, he really enjoyed holding my cousin's little baby, and when I asked him what he was most excited to do with our baby, he said he couldn't wait to hold the baby. That was just so darn cute! So I bought him his beloved baby carrier. He's going to be such a great dad, and I can't wait for him to be able to use his present. I wish I had a picture of Garrett wearing it with one of Lanna's baby dolls in it, but I still haven't unpacked our camera so you'll have to enjoy the stock photo.

It's a BABY!

Today I had my ultrasound! I don't know what I expected to see in there, but I was completely surprised to see a baby. Last night I was thinking about all the possible horrible things they could see on the ultrasound. Maybe the baby would be missing the top of its head, or have pterodactyl wings, or be some sort of weird misshapen lump. I know those are all pretty ridiculous, but I was so relieved and surprised to see this cute busy baby in there. We have officially dubbed the baby "Bob Baby" while it is still in utero. Bob Baby was rolling around and stretching and playing with its hands and knees. It was so surreal! I am so excited.

Just to put your minds at ease (or to drive you crazy), Garrett and I did not find out the gender. We are keeping it a surprise; though if you are really intent on trying to find out, we do have the ultrasound on videotape. Feel free to stop by, watch the video and try to spot the baby's genitalia. Good luck!

Back in Bountiful

Where the people are nice and the mailmen are just a little too helpful! I've really been enjoying living back at my mom's house. My mom and I get to hang out in the evenings, and Mom's a great gym buddy. But there is one hugely annoying problem with being back in Bountiful... the mailman keeps delivering our mail to the wrong places!

As most of you know, I married my neighbor. My mom's house and Garrett's parents' house were on the same street, two houses apart. When we lived at my mom's house the first time, the mailman always delivered our mail to my in-laws house. Rather than delivering the mail to the address on the package, he would always take to my in-laws because we have the same last name.

This time the process has become much more complicated. In the past couple years several things happened: Garrett's brother and his family moved in with my mother and father-in-law, then my mother and father-in-law moved into a new house and Garrett's brother and his wife moved into another home in Bountiful. Confused yet? So was the post office. Now they are delivering our mail to Garrett's brother's house! Garrett called the post office, and I hope we don't have any more problems, but I wouldn't count on it.

The mailman wasn't the only one who messed up though. I'm sure you can imagine the expression on my face when I pulled this movie out of the package:

Mom and I thought it was pretty funny to tease Garrett about his secret love of cheesy romance novel movies. Here's the movie Garrett ordered:

If you haven't seen this movie, I would definitely recommend it. It was really freaky!