My projects

Since I'm stuck at home (and I'm procrastinating like crazy on deciding if I'm finishing my Ph.D. or not) I decided I needed a new way to be productive during the day. There is only so much laundry and cleaning that needs to be done. What better way than to make stuff for our little man that will be arriving in a few months. So a few weeks ago I went out and purchased a sewing machine and searched online for some easy do-it-yourself baby projects.

I started off with a very easy project, making burp cloths. Basically you only need two things, Gerber cloth diapers and a few colorful swatches of fabric. You do some cutting down to size, some folding in the edges, sew then together and wala! Pretty, inexpensive, & unique burp cloths. Here is a sample of what I've made so far. I've actually made quite a few, since you can never have enough clean cloths lying around when you have a newborn.

Minus the initial investment of the sewing machine, they cost around $1.50 each to make. They are also multi-functional. They can be used as burp cloths, changing pads, or just cleaning cloths.

After I accumulated enough burp cloths, and was a little more confident in my sewing ability, I moved on to something slightly more complicated and made a swaddling blanket. It was still pretty simple though. Just get two yards of coordinating fabric (I used flannel), cut them down to equal size, and sew them together. Here's the first one I made.

I thought the monkeys are super cute. And it will be nice and warm, since our little guy will be arriving in the fall. It can also be used as a blanket to lay on the floor for "tummy time". With the fabric that I used the cost of this was only $6. I plan on making a few more with different fabric. And perhaps matching burp cloths if I am so inspired and I have enough left over fabric (I still have a few cloth diapers that I have to do something with).

So then after this project I got a little bit more adventurous. For the first few months we're going to have the baby in a bassinet in our room for a number of reasons (1) we'll be moving soon after and so it's impractical to set up a whole nursery, and we'll need to second bedroom for guests anyway (2) I'll be breastfeeding (3) since we'll have guests I do not want certain people who shall remain nameless to take over, so having the baby in our room will hopefully prevent that.

Anyway, finding cute bedding is hard, since I hate all the hokey ones with animals and trucks. It's even harder finding smaller bedding for cradles and bassinets. So I decided to make a quilt. Now mind you I have never made one in my life, so I had to go online to even figure out how to make one. Chances are it's not going to be the best quilt in the world, but I'm sure the baby wont even notice.

So that's what I started today, and I got pretty far. I cut out all the squares and basically got the top panel finished. I think it looks pretty good for my first attempt.

The picture sucks because I took it with my iPhone. So in-real-life the colors are much more vibrant (like that yellow is actually orange and the blues and much darker than they look in the picture). But oh well. You get the idea. I'm happy with it and my other half liked it, so I guess that's all that matters. Next week hopefully I will finish it, and it will be good enough to actually use.

Other projects I've been thinking about include changing pads, bibs, wall-art, and a mobile. I've got plenty of fabric left over from the quilt to make a matching mobile, but I really have no idea how to make one. I'm sure there's something on the Internet that will tell me how :-) And not to worry, I am not totally baby obsessed. I have also been making things for the apartment, like the living room curtains and trow pillows for all the rooms. Aren't I just becoming little Suzie homemaker!

Shopping Spree

Up until last week I had not purchased anything for our little man. I wasn't waiting until we found out the gender or anything, since I like gender neutral clothing. But my dear husband is so against buying stuff until the 3rd trimester. Well after the ultrasound I convinced him to let me buy a few outfits at the Carters outlet. And today I found some cute things at Kohls. And then this afternoon I found this site that had cute stuff for Indian-American babies, so I ordered two onesies.

Too freakin cute right? Thought it was appropriate since this baby was conceived in India. I also got one that said "Got Doohd?", which means "got milk?" in Hindi. And these are the other things we have so far.
The last time I was home my Grandma gave me these two body suits.
I think this is enough for now. I need to stop buying things or it's going to get out of control :-) The outfits are just so cute!!!

It's a BOY!!!!

Yup! Our little baby is all boy. He was not modest at all at this mornings ultrasound. He flashed the tech more than a few times. The tech also said it's one of the more active babies she's ever seen. It put on quite a show for us, kicking, punching, bouncing, and flipping a few times. At one point it had the hiccups. So cute.

We are so ecstatic. Everything looks great so far, but the doctors should get back to us sometime next week with the results. But he's measuring right on time at 14oz and his heartbeat is strong, around 150.

I'm so excited that I'll get to meet our little boy in a mere 20 weeks. I wont say I can't wait to meet him, because I WANT to wait those 20 weeks so he can grow nice and big (but not too big, ok little man?).

Living Room Finished

I finally "finished" the living room. By this I mean I made curtains and put them up and also did some homemade artwork to put up on the walls. I still think it has an unfinished look because we can't paint the walls, but at least it looks a little better with some color. I know I'm doing one more art project to hang on the opposite (left) wall. And maybe make some throw pillows and get a colorful blanket. But it's fine for now. (ignore the folding table... DH uses it for his puzzles).

Here's the other side of the living room, which is technically a dinning room. But we decided to forgo getting a table and chairs for two reasons (1) we never sit at a table to eat, we're always on the couch watching TV and (2) once the baby gets here we're going to want some floor space for baby stuff like a playpen and "tummy time". So instead we got a few large pieces to organize all our papers. It also holds our printer and some books. I made another piece of artwork and we got chairs for the bar. We're not doing anything to this space because again, we want it open. In the future this is where the playpen will go. And also perhaps the air mattress if we have more than one person here visiting when the baby gets here.

Our bedroom is almost finished. We got the curtains up and I made the artwork for above the bed. We have to get a few more colorful things up on the wall and some throw pillows. But no more furniture. The current dresser will go in that empty corner, and then the corner I'm standing in will be devoted to the baby (changing table, rocker, etc). We decided to just get a bassinet rather than do up a whole nursery, since we may be moving 3 months after the babe is born. I would like to get a bed (headboard), but it's not high on the priority list right now).


Now we just have to:
(1) Get the guest room ready. Basically buy a bed and a dresser and get something up on the walls. I want to get this done by the end of June.
(2) Buy a changer/dresser, a glider, and a bassinet. We'll probably do this early July.

But God do I wish I could paint the walls. I'm so sick of white! :-)

In other news, I get my big ultrasound on Friday. My doctor typically waits until 28 weeks. However I was a demanding patient and asked him to order one sooner. I'm just anxious to see that it's healthy and everything is growing as it should. So perhaps the next post I will write will reveal the gender (yay!) and have a few cool ultrasound shots.

Bling and Baby Clothes

So on Friday we traveled to MA to moved more of our stuff into a new storage unit. I love going back to MA. We've been gone almost a year, but it still feels like home. I got a cheese sandwich from my favorite deli. I've been craving that sandwich for weeks. Apoorva got me two new beads for my Troll Beads Bracelet that he gave me on our wedding day (the two beads to the right of the elephant). The silver ones all have different meanings, and the one I chose means "unity", which I thought was appropriate with the baby on the way.

After we finished up in MA we drove to VT to meet up with my parents, grandparents, and my brother. It was my brother's graduation weekend, and he was also commissioning into the army as a 2nd lieutenant. I was so sad that he's now in the Army, and most likely will be deployed to Afghanistan soon. But I'm so incredibly proud of him. Here he is taking his oath.


And then since it was mother's day weekend, Apoorva took me to a little baby clothing store in VT and I got to pick out an outfit for our little one. We have not purchased anything yet for the baby, so I was so excited. I decided on a colorful little polka-dot onsie with matching pants and hat. Too freakin cute :-)


Everything was great until we started making our way home. We dropped off the rental car in Burlington and they overcharged us. Our flight to Cleavland was uneventful and on time. However our connection was delayed by two hours so we didn't get home until after midnight last night. The flight was also turbulent. What was funny though was every time there was really bad turbulance (which I hate) my heart would race and then the baby would move around a lot and I felt the first big kick. Apparently (s)he wanted to know what was going on out here that was making me so anxious.

Today I'm exhausted. I only got 4 hours of sleep so i think I'm going to go back to bed for a few hours.

Photography

I have always loved taking pictures. I remember getting my first camera for Christmas when I was 7 or 8. Granted, it was a pink kiddie Polaroid camera, but my parents soon bought me a "real" camera with film.

While I'm not great (yet) I think that I want to use this time of "forced" unemployment to get better, maybe turning it into a great hobby or even something more down the road. Here are some of my favorite pictures I've taken recently.

This is my kitty Fidget. She actually loves to pose for the camera and she's really photogenic. If she hears my taking pictures in the living room she'll come running from wherever she's hiding and sit down in front of me, waiting to have her picture taken.

Here's one of my other kitty, Widget. She's not as photogenic, nor as excited about getting her picture taken. I usually have to sneak up on her.

This was a photo that I took on one of our trips in India.
And as weird as this is, I have a bunch of photos of My Little Pony on our various trips and I love them. I know... I'm weird.


I have to go to the nearest city tomorrow and find a book on photography. I need to get serious about something, or else I'm just going to waste away on this damn couch....