Hudson's Woodland Themed Nursery

Hudson's Woodland Themed Nursery

Our sweet baby boy finally has a nursery set up! My mom and Grana helped me SO much to get everything ready and perfect for baby Hudson. I was really overwhelmed after the baby shower because there was a ton of stuff and our furniture hadn't come in yet... so it was just all over the place. (WE ARE SO GRATEFUL FOR ALL OF THE STUFF!!!)

When our furniture finally came in ... we were able to start the nursery and get everything organized. It looks better than I could ever imagine.

Our tree bookshelf - HUGE THANKS to my mom and Steve! (Honey and Pop!!) - To see how we made it, check out this blog post!

Our AMAZINGLY comfy glider! - Thanks to Wanda and Steve! (Grams and Poppy!!)

Thanks so much to all of the hostesses for our changing dresser! We're so grateful and it looks amazing in our nursery! We love that we were able to incorporate so much of the stuff from the shower into the room, like the banners and the wall decals.

The books that everyone got us are so sweet. We loved reading each of the messages and can't wait to read to sweet baby Hudson.

Our baby's closet is JAM PACKED! Our awesome Small Group at North Highlands Baptist Church held a shower for us and loaded us up with diapers. We filled up the whole top of our closet. We're so grateful! We also got TONS of clothing from everyone! Little man will be stylish and will probably only get to wear each outfit once because he has so many! Great problem to have!!

We have so many stuffed animals for sweet baby Hudson. A lot of them were given to us by my mom after the baby shower because she used them as decorations. Others were gifts. One really special one is the monkey that is in the crib that our nephew Reid made for baby Hudson at Build-A-Bear. The little monkey is wearing an Alabama jersey. So sweet!

Bump Updates: Weeks 22-34

Alright, so I dropped the ball on doing the bump updates. My bad!!! We had so much going on with renovations to the house, trying to get everything set up for little Hudson's nursery and dealing with pregnancy. But, I decided I would do an overall update to catch everyone up.

Pregnancy overall for me has been pretty difficult. I have had my fair share of ups and downs, so I am really looking forward to the end. We had a scare around 34 weeks and ended up being sent to labor and delivery to be monitored... but everything is okay and the doctor told me I just need to take it easy. I was having sporadic contractions - and a few other weird things going on... but anyways, they were able to confirm that baby was doing fine after many hours of monitoring and an ultrasound. Unfortunately, we found out he is still breech. He has been breech for almost the entire pregnancy. So, we are praying that he will flip by next Monday at our 36 week appointment. I'm really nervous that I may end up with a c-section, but I will do whatever is best for my little man.

We finally finished our nursery!!! I'll post about it in a separate blog post, so make sure to check it out!

The last few months have been full of fun stuff... here are some pictures to catch up! My last blog post was January 2016... so I figured it would be best to put the highlights from each month since then...

February 2016

Bump Photos

 

23 Weeks: We started building an additional closet in our house, so that we could turn my "dressing room" into Hudson's nursery and I would still have a place to sit and get ready and have all my stuff. We ended up putting mirror doors on the outside and we LOVE the way that it turned out. Two of my uncles, Jerry and Larry, along with Andy worked really hard to make the closet perfect for me. I'm so grateful for all of their help! 

24 Weeks

 

25 Weeks: These photos are from Valentine's Day. Andy and I went out to celebrate at the Melting Pot in Birmingham. We had so much fun. Andy surprised me with roses on our table and chocolate covered strawberries, (one of my favorite desserts!). I love spending time with my amazing husband and celebrating our love. This was our first Valentine's Day as a MARRIED couple! <3 (and our last without needing to find a babysitter!!) 

27 weeks: We were about to paint the nursery a light mint color (called sliced cucumber) so I wanted to take a picture in front of my bright yellow walls!!!) I had my dressing room painted this color so that when I went in it to get ready it would be bright light the sunshine. I truly loved it - but I have to say, I'm loving my baby's room much more!

March 2016

Bump Photos

28 Weeks: Got the nursery painted!! 

30 Weeks: set up our crib! - Still waiting on the rest of our furniture to come in though,

31 Weeks: Our baby shower was on this day!! (see below!)

Baby Shower 3/26/16

Our baby shower for sweet baby boy was SO awesome. We are so grateful for all of the gifts that we received from our family and friends. My mom did such a wonderful job at decorating her home and making everything woodland themed - just like Hudson's nursery. We were actually able to incorporate a lot of the stuff from the shower into his nursery after!

April 2016

Bump Photos

32 Weeks - had to take a picture in front of my favorite type of tree in the spring - Wisteria trees! I always just called them "purple trees!" -- Starting to really feel this bump and getting more tired.

33 Weeks - our azalea bushes were blooming, so we wanted to capture a picture while they looked so pretty. They make the perfect backdrop for that big bump!

34 Weeks - We finally have our sweet baby boy's nursery set up! I was waiting to reveal it because we (my step-dad, mom, Andy, Grana and I) were building the tree bookshelf! What a fun project that was!! The tree was a gift from my mom and my step-dad. They worked SO hard on it for 4 days. My stepdad took his whole vacation to work on it and make it perfect for us. Andy and I are so grateful!!! (Andy, Grana and I helped however/whenever we could!!)

I'll try and keep everyone updated as we go forward! Make sure to check out the next blog post to see what Hudson's nursery looks like! 

Building Hudson's Tree Bookshelf

Building the Tree Bookshelf

My awesome step-dad Steve took his whole vacation to help us build an amazing tree bookshelf for our little man's nursery. Andy helped to cut out one of trees from the wood, nail it together and sand it all down. I helped to trace them out, sand and stain and my mom and Steve worked on the tree all day for 4 days - tracing, cutting, sanding, staining -- doing it all!! My sweet Grana even came over to help sand and stain the tree. I'm so grateful for everyone helping out and making my dream become a reality. 

We started off by printing off the template found on: this website. 

We needed the tree to be 4x6 to fit on the plywood that we had... but for some reason when we followed their template, it came out much bigger. So, we rearranged it a bit, changed up a few little parts and customized it to make the template perfect for us. Our final template was traced onto some thick foam board so we could trace it onto 4 additional sheets of 4x6 plywood.

After we traced it onto the plywood, Steve (and Andy!) spent several days cutting the trees out of the plywood to make sure they matched perfectly.

After all of the plywood was cut out, the 4 pieces were glued together using liquid nails and then nailed together with a finishing gun. We then filled in any of the nail holes with wood putty and then sanded the entire tree so it was smooth on the top and the edges.

After all of the sanding was done, Mom, Grana and I were able to stain it a dark expresso color to match the wood on the glider that we have in Hudson's nursery.

The tree bookshelf turned out even better than I imagined!!