As promised...

Our 2012 F-S family Christmas tree pic!

I'm 35 and a 1/2 weeks pregnant and feeling every day of it, but immensely grateful :).  Happy holidays from us and ours to you and yours!

Christmas tree shopping

Andy and I went Christmas tree shopping last weekend.  Usually we head out to Honeypot Hill Orchard in Stow where you get to choose a tree as Christmas music is piped in while sipping free hot apple cider, followed by roasting marshmallows over an open fire and a visit to goats, pigs, chickens and bunnies.  This year we had so much Sprout-preparing to do that we decided to just go to Allandale Farm down the road instead of making the hour drive each way to Stow.  Allandale is a very nice farm, coined "the oldest working farm in Boston" (although technically I think it's now in Brookline) and to be fair, they did have an open fire and a pair of oxen, but no marshmallows, free cider or music.  Alas... 

We went to Allandale one other year for our tree and for some reason decided to buy a white pine that reminded us of "Cousin It."  That will go down as the worst tree we have or will ever bring into our home.  It didn't smell like a Christmas tree, the wispy needles didn't hold ornaments... It just sucked.  The only redeeming value was that it very light- Andy was a fan of that feature :).  This year we steered away from the pines (and felt badly for the families that looked at them and thought "this could be a fun new type of tree!") and after much perusing, got a good old-fashioned balsam fir.  We haven't yet taken our annual F-S family Christmas tree photo (I'll post it when we do) but here are a few of us shopping:

The last shot shows Andy holding our tree.  We knew it was a good one because when he picked it up, a woman walked by and said "what a beautiful tree!" and I subsequently saw multiple families eying our tree to see if we would leave it behind so they could scoop it up.  No such luck suckers! :)  It's funny how Christmas tree shopping can make me feel so competitive...  The tree is now up and decorated in our living room and looks beautiful, unlike our dearly departed Cousin It tree. May you all learn a lesson today- white pines are interesting to look at, but you're in for a world of disappointment if you try to make one your Christmas tree.

In other news, I'm 35 weeks pregnant today and still doing well!  Sleep (or lack thereof) is probably my biggest problem currently, but what can you do.  Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season!

Works in progress

Last weekend Andy and I were busy at work once again making preparations.  I have been stressing about getting an old dresser to use as a changing table and finally found one on Craigslist this weekend.  The gentleman who was selling it agreed to deliver it within an hour and finally, one big piece of furniture was crossed off the list!  But, not so fast...  I really wanted a white dresser and this one was polished wood.  Andy seemed excited about the possibility of painting furniture and went to work researching the best way to do it.  When the dresser arrived, it looked like this:

Please excuse the mess in the background- part of the purpose of getting this darn dresser is having somewhere to put all Sprout's stuff!

Andy assembled the needed supplies and went to work.  We decided to use the leftover semi-gloss white paint that my mom had used to paint the birch trees with a few weeks ago.  Very frugal! :)

First, Andy removed the drawers and lightly sanded the dresser down so the paint would stick.  You get a nice sneak peak at the nursery mural in the background in this one!

He then applied a first coat of paint, all the while with a smile on this face. :)  Unfortunately, this is where the progress ended as we got to the end of the weekend and there is somehow some brown streaking coming through the paint on the top of the dresser... We still have to figure out how to address that one...  In any case, I'm sure it's going to turn out great!

Meanwhile, I've been working on my quilt since October.  It is also still a work in progress, but below I've included a few pics along the way.  First, I ironed out all 12 "fat quarters" I picked out for the project:

Then I cut the each quarter into ten 4.5" squares per using a template (this was more than I needed but it took me a while to decide how big I wanted this quilt to be).

I assembled all my materials and my much-neglected Pfaff sewing machine (that I got for my birthday from Andy years ago and has been intimidating me from the back room ever since) on the dining room table, which became "project central."  Nice to finally put some mileage on that baby!

I sewed the squares into 10 rows of 8, and then sewed those rows together to make the finished quilt top.

I knew I would be stuck here if I didn't get this done in time for my Aunt Anne's visit for Thanksgiving as I had no idea how to finish the quilt and she is a quilter extraordinaire!  I've made only one other quilt in my life and Anne helped me back that one as well.  So, I busted my hump to get the top finished by Thanksgiving.  With a lot of help from Anne, my mom and lovely future sister-in-law Kelly, we got the quilt all pinned up and ready for finishing!

Andy and Zuzu were hard at work here... ;)

 I spent the weekend working hard to finish sewing the backing onto the quilt but I still have a good bit left to do.  It is slow-going, fairly tedious work but I'm actually enjoying it.  I had Andy take some pics of me working on it this weekend but I can't in good conscience post any of them as I look, well, not-so-fabulous (understatement of the year here).  Instead, I'll include a pic of me from Thanksgiving that hopefully won't make small children run away in horror:

So, nothing is finished, but we continue to work hard to get all our DIY projects done.  This gets harder as I get more and more tired- week 32 (that started at Thanksgiving) was the onset of my 3rd trimester fatigue and boy, am I fatigable!  Other than the fatigue, various aches and pains and insomnia (a lot of qualifiers here...), we are doing well.  Sprout was HEAD DOWN (yay!) at our last ultrasound a week or so ago and growing like gangbusters, thankfully.  Hope everyone is enjoying a wonderful holiday season!