Thought this photo would make you guys laugh!

{And no I am not smuggling any pumpkins under my shirt!}

Mr. vB and I headed to the pumpkin patch last weekend to pick out our pumpkin for my brother’s Pumpkin carving party.

Once we Mr.vB found the perfect pumpkin, we he got busy creating a design.

Then he jumped right in with little Travers and Aunt Keri carving said pumpkin.

But in true vB style he brought a power tool with him.

Nothing like a Dremel tool to carve a pumpkin properly.

The little guys were in L-O-V-E…

Here’s a photo of the whole pumpkin carving gang.

Maddy and Philip

Travers

Here’s our finished product! A little moldy from the hot and damp weather this week, but still looking good for the big night.

And here is the gang before they headed out for Trick-or-Treating.

Maddy- Cinderella, Gus- Santa, Philip- a pumpkin, and Travers- Spiderman

Happy Halloween to All!

Last but not least, I am back with the deets on how to make your own lamp shade cover.

I had done it before in the past, but decided I could use a refresher on the details in case I might have forgotten something.

Again I just googled “DIY lamp shade cover” and found this great tutorial.

Here’s the play by play in photos…

The plain-jane shade before…

First we traced a template…

Then we cut out the template…

Next we pinned the template onto the fabric…

And then we made our final cut!

What I didn’t take photos of was spraying the fabric with the spray adhesive and then attaching it to the shade.  It took both set of hands {me and my mums} to make sure we pulled it taught with no wrinkles!  So no hands left to snap the photos- sorry!

And here’s the finished look!

It was very easy and actually took only about 20 mins to complete!  And doesn’t the lamp look so much cuter with the polka dots vs. the basic white shade?

Here’s the scoop on the cool bulletin board that I “constructed” last weekend..

The frame started its life looking like this.

Ikea- Ung Drill… $29.99

I found it several months ago at Ikea.  {And I remember seeing it on some other blogs in the past, but I believe they used it as a chalk board frame.} It was originally intended for one of the walls in my ladies lounge, but never actually made it onto the wall.  Guess that ended up being a good thing!

It must have been when I was cleaning out the room that has become the nursery, that a light bulb went off.  I could finally use the frame and make it into a bulletin board for van’s room.  I then debated leaving it black or painting it a color.  Painting it a color won… but I had to leave that to Mr. vB to accomplish.

I picked the same yellow paint that we painted the nightstand, but knew it would be a headache to paint with a brush.  Luckily Mr. vB could use his air compressor paint gun to spray it on.  That way he could get all the nooks and crannies.

LOVE IT!  Thanks Mr. vB- you did a marvelous job!

Now it was my turn to get to work.  I went on the search for a cork board that would be big/wide enough to fill the opening.  All of the cork board squares I found were the right thickness, but not wide enough to span the distance I needed without having a seam down the middle.  I then figured I probably just needed to get a 24 x 18 bulletin board and cut the oval shape out.  Easier said than done!!

Cutting the board was the messiest thing EVER!  I assumed {incorrectly} that the cork was going to be solid all the way through.  Well it actually was a super thin sheet of cork applied to a pressed wood backing.  When I cut the cork, it tended to tear away from the pressed board.  And then when I flipped it over and tried to cut it from the opposite side I think I made it worse.  The photo above kinda sums it up.  But thankfully once I shoved it into the frame, you couldn’t even see the torn sections.

Ta-Da!

I love how it turned out!  Now I just want to find some really cute push pins to use with it.

What?? It’s all in the details you know!!

PS.  after some quick googling I just saw something about DIY push pins.. hmm… Looks like I know what I will be up to this afternoon.

As promised, I am back with details on how Mr. vB created these awesome drawer dividers for me!

Thankfully the dresser we are using in the nursery can double as clothing storage and a changing table due to its size.  But what bothered me was that the 2 bottom drawers were just wide open, without any dividers.  I could just imagine digging in the middle of the night for a onesie and coming up with a handful of the wrong size because they had gotten all jumbled together. {yes- that would be a TOTAL nightmare for a person with an A+personality- aka moi} So what did I do to remedy the problemo??  Well I googled DIY Drawer Organizers of course!

I found several options, but this one sounded the closest to what I was looking for.  The one thing we modified though was what we made the dividers out of.  Mr. vB had some left over peg board from our other organization project that he decided to use instead.  We figured it would be more sturdy than the cardboard option in the DIY Instructions- especially with the length of drawer we had to span!

So I drew up a little plan for Mr. vB of the layout that I wanted for the dividers. I figured it would be best to divide the drawer into 4 main sections.  The 2 sections on the left would be sub-divided into 3 more sections, while 1 section on the right would be sub-divided into 2 sections, and the last would be left wide open.  {did any of that make sense?!} That way the different size clothes would each have their own cubby, plus there would be sections for burp cloths, sheets, blankets, etc.

He got busy slicing and dicing with the table saw and before long we had 8 pieces of peg board that were ready to be fit together like a jig saw puzzle.

I think it turned out pretty darn well if I do say so myself!  It did cross my mind to spray paint each section so it would all be a uniform color, but then I scraped that idea.  I’m not that anal. {no comments needed from the peanut gallery} Plus once it is packed with clothes you only see the top section anyways.  These days I need to reserve any extra energy that I may have for the other projects I want to complete before the little dude gets here.

Speaking of the little guy, did I mention that we are 37 weeks along as of yesterday???

So it was a VERY busy weekend working on van’s nursery.  Thankfully I had reinforcements- aka my Mums- to help.

Here’s a quick run down of what we accomplished:

• clipped tags off all the baby clothes, washed them, and then put them into the cool drawer organizers that Mr. vB made me
• cleaned the wooden blinds and window sills in the bay window, where the glider and night stand now reside
• bought all the necessary items to make the crib skirt and the crib bumpers (ie, lining, cording, batting, thread) pending the fabric ever arrived {sore subject}
• got a fabulous and highly needed pedicure
• created a bulletin board with a darn cool frame
• covered existing white lampshade with coordinating crib fabric
• FINALLY steamed wrinkles out of the glider slipcover
• and last but not least, as fabric arrived late Saturday afternoon, started to make the Crib Skirt

Yeah- I think that about covers it.

And it you can believe it, we still have about another weekend’s worth of little projects to complete and THEN the nursery will be finished!!! Hooray!! It’s almost reveal time.  I know you guys are excited.  But I’m ahead of myself.  Here are some photos of the projects from this weekend.

The drawer of pure organization, I mean clean clothing.

The cool new Bulletin Board

Before

After

The Custom Lampshade

Before

After

And most importantly the FABRIC!

{it was a long hard search, but I am really happy with what we finally selected!!}

I’m working on posts now to show the breakdown of how we made the drawer organizers, bulletin board, and lamp shade cover!   They were all pretty easy!  Make sure to check back for the details!

{Thanks again Mums for all your hard work this weekend!! van and his momma really appreciate it!! xoxo}

Happy Anniversary today to the Man of my Dreams.  {yes, I too just gagged a little.}

Hard to believe 3 years has flown by this quick!!

It’s very exciting to think that in just about a month we are going to become a family of three!

You are an amazing husband and I know you are going to be an amazing father too!

love you very much.. Mrs. DvBii

I’ve been on the search for a few new pairs of flats recently and not just because the weather has cooled off.  It’s mainly because my “what use to be petite” size 9 foot is now a whop-ing size 10-10.5 and none of my current shoes fit…thanks to the baby boy in my belly.

I’m hoping praying, begging that post birth, my foot will shrink back to its normal size.  Otherwise I am going to have about 30 pairs of shoes for sale, including one fabulous brand new pair of Frye Boots.  {Let’s hope for my sanity that they do.}

Now for the record, I wasn’t trying to go for the jungle print look. Both styles just really caught my eye.  I think both will look super cute with blue jeans, cords, etc and provide that casual yet “I can still dress them up” look that I so desire.

Merona, Mady Ballet Flats, Zebra…$19.99

And…

Merona, Maudie Flat, Leopard…$24.99

I’m sure you’re not surprised to find that both are from Targae’.  Just know that I had to end up purchasing the zebra ones online.   Sometimes it pays to know where all the Target stores in town are located.  Just not in this case.  Of the FIVE Richmond Targets that I visited, only 1 actually had any in stock. Just none in my new larger size!

I can’t believe it’s almost the weekend again and I haven’t told you guys about our trip to the Rivah with our buddies last weekend!

It was time for our annual group getaway- remember our trip to Green Oaks Farm last year?  This year we changed it up and headed to my Aunt’s Rivah house in Deltaville, VA.

{thanks Aunt T!}

And this year we had 2 new members in tow!

Peliah Purgason

AND…

Edie Monger

The adults had a great time hanging by the pool, hanging in the rivah, eating, drinking and everything in between!

What Dave didn’t know was that he was jumping into a pool of ice cubes!  You can faintly see the terror in his face.

Peliah helped the boys with their putting.

Edie and I hung out on the dock, while her parents took a spin in the #2 Nascar golf-cart.

The boys stood guard on the dock, while we…

took silly photos…

practiced blowing kisses…

and made new furry friends.

And before long it was time for SMORES around the fire pit!!

What a great weekend!  Where we headed next year gang??