I cannot  believe the precious little one is 5 weeks already?!

Life these days involves long hours at the new 'job'.  Motherhood has definitely been a full on roller-coaster of a ride thus far.  It has been hard but is so very special and the most rewarding job I have ever had.

I have traded the old office equipment (lap top, printer, fax and photocopier) for change table, nursing chair and washing machine. I have traded the endless meetings and phone calls for 24/7 cleaning and feeding.

Luckily I am completely smitten with my new 'work' colleague and we get to have lots of cuddles and kisses on the job!

xox

So Souvie is a girl! Who knew!  It was lovely to have a surprise on her birthday.

Introducing Rose Florence our beautiful daughter.  We feel so lucky to have been blessed with such a healthy baby. She is such a calm baby, which we are grateful for too!  The above image was taken in hospital she is 5 days old. Very alert as you can see,  but then she was over due.


As Stevie Wonder wrote and sang:

Isn't she lovely
Isn't she wonderful
Isn't she precious
Less than one minute old
I never thought through love we'd be
Making one as lovely as she
But isn't she lovely made from love

Isn't she pretty
Truly the angel's best
Boy, I'm so happy
We have been heaven blessed
I can't believe what God has done
Through us he's given life to one
But isn't she lovely made from love

xox

I thought I would share the little space we have created for Souvie, while we continue to wait for his or her arrival.

We originally thought we would have Souvie in the corner of our room. A simple little space with a cot, chest of drawers/change table. The chest of drawers we found and reworked turned out to be impracticable to use as a change table, too high and narrow. So we ended up purchasing a change table. Soon I had put pretty paper in frames and sourced some vintage finds like a rocking chair and before we knew it we were in the corner of our room and Souvie's Nest was where we used to be!!!

Souvie's Nest.

I guess it is another example of how,  even before Souvie is here, Souvie is influencing our lives and changing our priorities and letting us know in subtle and not so subtle ways that life is going to change. Big Time!!!


As I have previously shared we decided on a cot from Ikea with the Cocoonababy  for Souvie's bed rather than a bassinet.

Some little friends to keep Souvie company while it is in the Cocoonababy and the cream blanket given to my Husband by his Nan when he was a baby. The red stripe blanket under the Coconababy is a beautiful blanket which I will reverse when Souvie is out of the Cooconababy made by Cherish.

Above the Cot we hung some frames I filled with pretty wrapping paper, a print we made and two plates by Chik. The yellow 'you are loved' decal is from Wanderlust. We also hung a floating shelf we purchased from a hardware store to place some old teddies of my sisters and a frame with a lovely print by Nicoletta Ceccoli. All to watch over Souvie.

  

I sourced a rocking chair from an op shop which will be useful for reading time. The Doily mat is from Henna's Boutique.  The cushion from Freedom Furniture and the stuffed toy is a gorgeous Dotty Dog.

The Change table we settled on was the Stokke Care System. The quality of it has been disappointing for such an expensive brand. Hopefully it will be practical and we will get good use out of it.

The chest of drawers I have shared previously. On top is a cute puppy dog vintage bookend I sourced locally. The grey elephant is a souvenir which we purchased from Artisans d'Angkor while in Cambodia last year. The cute paper clouds are from Concrete and Honey. The Cloud mirror is one of my vintage mirrors. The fun letter press blocks are from the Drill Hall Emporium.

We think it is a lovely little space for our Souvie, the tones are very calming. We just need Souvie to hurry up!!! xox

Today I thought I would share another project that we worked on recently.  An old chest of drawers that was 'repaired' to become a serviceable storage space for Souvie.


The thing probably should have been thrown out, Mr replaced the back and all but one of the drawer bottoms...

Here is what it looked like before (please excuse the bad image)

After much sanding,  painting (Antique white USA Dulux on the frame and legs) and our own mix (a 1/4 of a sample pot of French Grey Dulux and a touch of Antique White USA for the drawers) add new handles it is good to go.

The thing about a chest of drawers is the top is a ready made space for some lovely baby clutter.

I think it is cute, Mr did good. What do you think?

xox

So I thought I would take some of this 'waiting for Souvie' downtime to share with you some of the projects we have been working on around here.

You might recall I purchased some gorgeous fabrics from Cabbages & Roses last year with a few projects in mind. As Cabbages & Roses have recently released a new international website, I thought it would be timely to share another project, this time using the Jolly Red Stripe fabric that we purchased.


This is the seat before we did any work on it.

Pretty rough and tired looking. We liked the delicate details of the wood frame and shape of the legs. We also loved the red.  We did not like the stain of the wood frame or the tired velvet fabric.


So with these things in mind, Mr set about removing all the upholstery off the seat (and I mean all of it back to a wooden frame!). The seat had about a gazillion staples from the velvet fabric and old style upholstery nails from the original fabric that we found under the red velvet (I did take photos of these stages however cannot find them for the life of me today!).

We (Mr) then also sanded back the wooden frame and it revealed this lovely orange/rose hue to the wood. We decided to leave some parts with the darker stain and not to fuss to much with the sanding. I loved the different shades this created to the wooden frame in the end.

We applied a wood oil only to the wooden frame, no stain, as we were happy with the colour of the natural wood were we had sanded it right back. Finally we bustled it off to a local upholster with our gorgeous Cabbages & Roses fabric and instructions to rebuild the seat.

We are very happy with the end result.

Sorry for that temporary break in transmission. Last posted back in March. March!!! Good grief.


The lovely Annelise left a message recently asking if Souvie was here yet. I wish!

Souvie is doing great, 37 weeks and 3 kgs (oh my god!). We remind little Souvie each night we are ready (even though we are not!) as we would like a little newborn cuddle like yesterday!!! We are sick of looking at the empty cot.


Finished up work last Friday, and to be honest, have been so slack this week. Had loads of things on the old 'to do list' for this week. Oh well...


Will share Souvie's little space soon. I thought I would pop in to say hello and to also mention this lovely product we have chosen to use for Souvie's nest.


The Cocoonababy.

image from here

As I mentioned previously, we are having a cot instead of a bassinet for the little one's bed, however we have purchased the Cocoonababy to put in the cot for the early months.

The lovely Marie from PacifiCare has all the details on this product here.  Such a wonderful pressie for an expectant mummy. We loved the idea it was developed by doctors in France and it is such a cosy little place for a newborn. The fitted sheet is so soft (organic cotton) you can also purchase the super soft sleeping bags (we have one of those for Souvie too).  The basic idea of the concept is that the newborns are coocooned like they were in the womb, so they settle and sleep, well, like a baby! Here is hoping that Souvie does just that.


Anyway back to the nesting xox

So this little one visited; 7 weeks new and such a happy little man xox