Making the Mobile

This is the mobile My Mom and I hung in the baby's room this weekend.


Early on, when we were still brainstorming colors and themes and things of that nature for the nursery, I spent plenty of time looking at the many mobiles you could buy online. But none of them really appealed to me.

And then I found a nursery that I loved on ohdeedoh, and in that nursery there was a handmade mobile that I thought would be perfect with the few things we'd already found for our little one's room.

So I set about cutting out cardstock circles to make the mobile. Then I let the cardstock circles sit for a couple of months gathering dust, until this weekend when My Mom and I finally put the mobile together and got it hung.

It turned out as well as I had hoped. Hopefully the little guy likes it, too!

Turning 29

A week ago Friday, I celebrated a birthday. My 29th birthday, to be exact. The last birthday of my twenties.

It wasn't all that long ago when 30 seemed so old. But now it seems young. Really young.

Maybe I'll be singing a different tune a year from now when I'm actually turning 30, but I'm not at all concerned about leaving the twenties behind. Sure, it's a bit sad, because being a 20-something is pretty awesome. It's college and your first job and so much freedom to travel and do fun things but still be a "grown up" (without having to be too grown up all the time).

But it's not like I'm expecting to wake up in a year and feel drastically different than I do right now (although I'm guessing I'll be considerably more sleep-deprived, and hopefully I'll weigh considerably less—neither of which have to do with my age so much as the little fellow that's going to join our family soon).


Now if I were turning 35, that would be a different story. That's old. Really really old. (Just kidding, certain brothers-in-law that may or may not be around that age. That's really young, too! Conservative Hubby is wearing off on me. I apologize.)

Anyhow.

This year's birthday really snuck up on me. Normally October is all about birthdays (a few of my best friends also have theirs this month, plus My Mom's is the day after mine and My Dad's happens to be TODAY).

But this year October has been all about work, work, work and, more importantly, preparing for another birth day that could be coming up anytime in the next month or so. So it didn't even really hit me that it was my birthday until October 14 rolled around.

I've never been one for big birthday bashes to celebrate, anyway. To me a great birthday involves a good meal and (except for this year) maybe a few cocktails with friends or family. Of course, I've had my share of exciting birthdays. Like the year Conservative Hubby and my friends threw me a surprise party in Des Moines. (It was a big surprise!) Or the year I flew to Boston on my birthday to meet up with my family and surprise My Mom on her birthday. Oh yeah, and then there was that year that Conservative Hubby popped the question. (That was an even bigger surprise!)


But most of them have been pretty low-key, and that's OK with me.

This birthday was no different. In fact, it was even lower-key than usual. Conservative Hubby took me out to dinner at one of my favorite local restaurants, the Harvest Cafe, which is located in a little town outside of L-Town. It was delicious, although there's so little room in my stomach for extraneous items at the moment we didn't even get a birthday dessert. Then we came home, put on sweats, and watched television. I proceeded to fall asleep on the couch before 10 p.m.

Don't tell me I'm lame. That's an awesome birthday for this tired pregnant lady.

Homemade Minestrone

There's nothing quite like a big pot of homemade minestrone—loaded with fresh vegetables from our weekly CSA delivery—to make for a cozy October evening.


In case you're interested in trying it out yourself, I'll be serving leftovers all week.

Red Bear

Remember Teddy, my first bear from childhood?

Recently, he was joined in the nursery by another friendly little bear.

Meet Red Bear, Conservative Hubby's oldest and most loved stuffed animal.


Both of us had really original names for our little stuffed friends.

As you can see, Red Bear is not in quite as good of shape as Teddy. Apparently Conservative Hubby was very devoted to Red Bear as a child.

When I told C.B. I was going to post about his childhood friend, I asked if he wanted to tell all of you anything about his pal.

"Red Bear is awesome," was his response.

So there you have it.