Paintings for my midwife

On my last prenatal appointment, my midwife had moved into a new office within the practice, but had yet to decorate. Being the interior designer at heart, I decided to offer up my painting skills to spruce up his office. I also have to admit I gave him a good time picking on him for the room being so sparse - he only had up a 5x5 calendar on the wall!

With his blessing and knowledge that he started to bring in decorations focused around robots and their robot babies, I went to work and this is the final result:

Maternity Clothes: what not to buy

When I found out I was pregnant I shuttered at the thought of buying maternity clothes, mainly because of the price - I mean you where the clothes for very little amount of time. I've managed to use most of my pre-pregnancy wardrobe (more on how to manage that in another blog post) and picked up only the necessities...

* Maternity pants - 3-4 pairs of pants, with elastic that covers the belly
* Properly fitting bra
* Maternity tanks (black and white)
* A cute maternity shirt that you can take your bump photo in time and time again
* About 5 maternity shirts, mainly ones that will fit in your last two months of your pregnancy
* bathing suit if your bikini does not fit your growing boobs

The rest you can get from your current closet. Think stretchy pants, shirts that already have pleats, dresses, sports bras, t-shirts that were a size too big and so on. I promise you, don't freak out, it is possible to use your existing clothes and find maternity close at bargain prices. More on how to manage within your closet, to come!

Maternity underwear are not necessary. Belly bands sound like a good idea but they can be a bit tight. If you have yoga pants with a soft band, these can fit through pregnancy without needing to by workout pants.

Here is a top I would stay away from buying:

I mean really, if I wanted to look like my belly does not fit in my top shirt, I would have put on a maternity tank and layered my favorite smaller pre-pregnancy shirts over it.

Pinterest Obsession

I received an invitation to Pinterst a couple weeks ago. Since then I find myself inspired. The amount of quality content is amazing! In such a short amount of time, I leave with so many new projects (I say with a big grin on my face and excitement.) I also find myself wanting to share things that I have created or found, so that I can give back to the community.

I am a huge DIY buff - if I see something in a store, my first thought is oh I can make that easily - and I set a priority to craft at least once a week. The last weekend I started creating my boards. I spent a good 2 hours cruising DIY, crafts and kid/baby pictures, which got me so excited that I crafted all weekend.

My latest craft is making my baby shower thank you gifts gorgeous. I have four lovely ladies throwing me a baby shower and I feel really blessed. With that, I want to thank them with charm and make them feel as special as I feel. While I cannot reveal the presents I got for them, just yet. I can share with you the topping of the presents. I was inspired by this Pin:

Source: bleulune.typepad.com via Jen on Pinterest

That I made this flower out of purple and green party streamers:

With two different lengths of purple streamer (outer and inner petals), I shaped them into U like patterns and adhered them to the base using double-sided tape. Then, touched the edges with gold crafter's acrylic paint to give the leaves dimension. The center of the flower is a gold button, glued on using a hot glue gun. It was simple to do, inexpensive and adds elegance to a simple white box (no wrapping paper needed).


What is Pinterest? Pinterest is a membership site that allows you organize and share things on the web. It is a combination of Flickr in that you can post your own pictures, but also a bit of Facebook since you can comment and share pictures that other people have posted (also to mention you log into Pinterest with your Facebook and find other friends on Pinterest.). Pinterest also combines the world of bloggers as you can pin a picture from a blog and upon clicking on the picture it will take you to the source. It's like sharing all your favorite things and being able to find other favorite things in a breeze! For a complete breakdown of the infographics of Pinterest (in case you are a marketing geek like me), read This Is Everything You Need To Know About Pinterest (Infographic) by Jordan Crook.

Happy Valentine's Day new moms and dads

In year's past, my Valentine's Day card said, "To my beautiful wife, best friend, and companion. I love you!" And this year, a smile comes to my face as I read the addition to that "and, mother to our children."

If your baby is not born yet, like mine, rub the belly and send kisses to your little one. Hug those that you have, and give all your love to your significant other for together you have made the greatest gift on earth - your child(ren).

Happy Valentine's Day!

It's not just about a name, but the initials

In finding a name for our baby, we have ideas of things we don't want to put our child through, like being picked on, mispronunciation of her name, and being mistaken for a boy. I guess the list could go on, but those are our biggest concerns. We have a list of names and have thought about initials for first, middle and last name...

I have a confession: I am a data geek or a data rock star (which is why you have seen visualizations like birth trends by month or What's in a name? on my blog). The other day my co-worker suggested that I name my kid so that the initials are CSV. I thought about it, intrigued, but we had not thought of any names that start with the letter C so I swept it under the rug. Until just the other night when we thought of a C name that stuck with us. Well fortunately, and unfortunately, it did not stick with us that long; the next day I went to my co-worker the good news about finding a C name that would fit the initials and that opened a can of worms. Next thing I know my co-worker is adding that now we can call her Dot for a nickname, you know .CSV. I did not like dot as a nickname, but it did not stop there. Another co-worker chimed in, or you could call her "flat files." At that moment, the C name was off the short list! I thanked him for adding his input as I probably would not have thought of that, and as he put it (with sarcasm,) what adolescent girl doesn't want to be called flat files?

There you have it, it's not just the name, but the initials.

My suggestion is to try out a name, hear how it sounds, what emotions does it bring, and can you live with saying it for years - if so, you've got yourself a baby name.

August is the highest birth month for King County, in WA state

According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention, there were more births in September of 2010 than any other month that year, followed by August, June, and July, in that order.

That led me to wondering whether that holds true for Washington State, or King County for that matter.

I did the numbers and it turns out March is the highest birth month for King County, followed by August, September and June for 2010. And overall in 2010 for Washington State, August is the highest birth month followed by September, May and July. Data is based on Washington State Department of Health birth data.

You can check out the numbers, in this visualization I created that shows the trends of births by year and month for Washington State counties from 1980 to 2010.

DIY onesie decorating - embroidery

I was inspired by a amytangerine's camera onesie, that I decided to make one myself.

I was in-search for a pink bodysuit. I've been impressed with how inexpensive you can find onesies at kid's consignment shops, usually 99 cents to $3.99, that I stopped by Paron's Closet, There I found a Nordstrom baby organic cotton onesie for $3.99, which regularly retails at $32!

I decided on a pink onesie as it would be oh so cute with the zebra printed fabric I had picked up from a friend. I borrowed the fabric and embroidery materials, so the only cost to me was my time (approximately 30 minutes) and the cost of the onesie. If I had not been able to borrow from a friend, it would have cost about $15 for all materials, which is not bad considering I could have paid $25 to $40 regularly.  

Here is all you need to know if you want to give it a try...

Materials: five inch embroidery hoop, embroidery needle and thread, tracing paper with a design penciled on, sharp small scissors, and a onesie.

Steps:
1. Draw/trace the design of your choice onto tracing paper
2. Place fabric inside of onesie and tracing paper on top, then sandwich all of this with the embroidery hoop. Tip: make sure the fabric is taught before moving on and that the picture is placed correctly (preferably centered)
3. You are now ready to stitch the design, using the lines drawn on the tracing paper as your guide
4. When finished stitching, pull the tracing paper off - do not take apart the embroidery hoop
5. Using small sharp scissors, cut-out the insides of the camera to expose the fabric
6. Remove the hoop and iron any wrinkles out (optional)
7. Enjoy!