I Have a Problem

My husband took 3 days off of work this week to do the following:

• Finish our taxes (eh hem, start and finish our taxes)
• Work in the yard
• Paint the nursery
• Possibly paint sections of the dining room. Remember? This dining room that we were supposed to paint the bottom section of back in JULY of 2011? Yeah, we never got back to that...

The good news: The taxes are done. 

Moving on to my problem. Hops can work in the yard all he wants, he has the supplies to do that. He cannot paint the nursery, though, until I give him paint colors to work with. I'm stumped. I've been going back and forth and back and forth and can't seem to make up my mind. We're not artsy types (I can hardly draw a stick figure person in Draw Something) so we're not going to go with stripes or anything like that on the walls. I want just plain simply painted walls. At first I thought we would go with seafoam. Then, I really started liking the look of a bold coral color. The problem with the coral is it is so in-your-face that I don't think we can do all of the walls in that color.

Here's what will be the nursery looked like a few weeks ago (there haven't been enough updates to post new pictures yet). The wall to the right of the window will be our accent (coral) wall and will have the crib up against it. The rest of the walls will be some other color.

Coral wall will be behind where the bookshelf is now.

So, here's my dilemma. We paint the one focus wall coral and paint the rest of the walls.....what? I've been probably bugging everyone who follows my Pinterest boards with color dumps today. Here are some of the color ideas I have been looking at. We're still on the chocolate, seafoam and coral color combo idea. So, now it's just a decision of what to put on those other walls. Yellow? Tan? Or go crazy and do seafoam? I don't know if I'm that crazy...... 

I pulled all of these boards from design-seeds.com. Not all of these corals are what I am going for but they work to show contrast to a shade close enough. The Stork coral color (6 down from top) is what I'm leaning towards.

 Tan or Cream?

 Tan?

Peach? 

 Light seafoam (color on the far left)? It's a bit blue for what I'm looking for but I might be able to find something like it in a shade that is green rather than blue. I like the lightness of it.

 Yellow?

 Again with the tan...although that purpley color isn't bad (far left)

 Tan again.

Peach

As I was putting this together, I came across this picture. Could we actually go crazy and do something like this?

Second color over plus:

Second to last color.

So...what do you think? Go basic and do a tan, cream or white on the walls other than the accent walls or do a seafoam on the other walls? Please my friends, help a girl who isn't very coordinated with colors out. 

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An Amateur Maternity Shoot with a Friend

This weekend, Hops and I went down to one of my favorite towns in the whole world, Southport, NC. My parents live down there and I like to visit them as often as possible because of the beauty of the area. It's just down the road from the beach (Caswell Beach, Oak Island) and it has a beautiful waterfront. Friday afternoon we packed up the car and headed down. I received a couple of texts from my friend Meg who I was meeting up with that afternoon. The weather wasn't looking good. It had been pouring all day and we were supposed to take pictures of one another that afternoon. We decided to play it by ear and by the time Hops and I pulled into my parents neighborhood, the sun was out and the clouds were parting. It turned out to be a lovely late afternoon.

I dropped Hops off with my Dad at the house and picked up my Mom. We drove to the downtown area and met up with Meg and her Mom. Meg and I both have nice cameras and we both love trying to learn new things with them. Even better - Meg is 23 weeks pregnant with a baby girl of her own!! We decided to take some fun pictures of one another downtown. The sun was super bright and I probably made a bunch of rookie mistakes (like taking too many photos in direct sunlight) but we had fun with it!! I must say, after looking at all of the photos online, I had to edit all of the pictures that I took while the ones Meg took were great right out of the camera!

Meg did a great job capturing my large hump and I got the super fun job of shooting her tiny little baby bump.

I think it definitely helps to have such a great model. Isn't she beautiful??

A few of my favorites that Meg took:

 We both looked at this next one and were both thinking - what wood wall did we stand up against? Then we realized it was the bench. :)

Keep an eye out on Meg's Blog for a post of her own about our photo shoot. 

We really did have a lot of fun. I feel so lucky that we were able to meet up and do this. We spent time chatting and taking pictures and our Moms (who are also friends) spent the time carrying our bags for us. I am pretty happy that I took these at 31 weeks. I think I'm big enough and not just a complete fat hog yet. My weight gain has been pretty hefty recently so I'm hoping I can really moderate that in my last two months. 

Can you believe it? Just two months to go!!! Since we're talking about that, I'll give you a quick status update:

How far along?:  31 Weeks

Total weight gain/loss: 32lbs. I don't mind sharing that. I think it's important to know that every woman carries her pregnancy differently. 

The Bump: Large and in charge. The other day, my husband stood behind me, then beside me and laughed at how amazing it is that from behind, I'm still Jill. From the side, I have a huge bump!

What I’m excited about/looking forward to: Feeling the baby move. Every time I feel her move around in there, I get the biggest kick out of it. Sometimes she slides a body part across my abdomen and I can actually see it popping out through my belly. It really is an amazing sight.

Maternity Clothes: Almost all. I have one drawstring skirt I can still wear and I am wearing Hops' shirts around the house when I don't feel like getting dressed. All of my maternity pants have the low panel band. I cannot stand the feeling of the maternity band coming up and over my belly. Some people have told me I'm nuts but to me, it's just itchy.

Symptoms: Feeling great. Have some groin pain and round ligament pain here or there but overall, things are going really well.

Belly Button in or out?:  It's still in! It does not look like it will be making an appearance as an outie, which I am very happy about. I do have a very faint linea nigra line showing up, though.

Food Cravings/Aversions: No aversions (woohoo!) Cravings: carbs and fruit. Probably the reasons for my weight gain. Oh well.

Milestones:  Enormous weight gain? Is that a milestone? :) Also, we're in a bit of a safety zone now. If BGH were born today, she would have a long hospital stay but she would be okay. I love knowing that. That being said, keep cookin' baby!

Nicknames: BGH (Baby Girl Hopkins)....or Bovine Growth Hormone, depends on who you ask and Lady Bird Hopkins.