Pinterest and Projects

So yes, I have been sucked into pinterest and sometimes spend too much time there but I love having a place to keep all my ideas and projects together online.  I say "my" ideas but lets be honest, I get most of my ideas from other people's projects, pictures and creativity.  I especially love getting ideas for recipes, preschool things to do at home, and home decor projects.
During the Christmas break we didn't travel at all and I was in nesting mode.  It was perfect since Matthew could be home to help with projects.  It ended up being a fabulous and very productive holiday break.  We got so much done in preparation for little baby girl to come.  I really kept Matthew busy with moving furniture, redoing all our bedroom furniture hardware, moving and putting up pictures and things on walls and helping me find and dig out all our newborn stuff.  So I just wanted to post a few of the projects we were able to get done.

Table and Chairs
I have been wanted to get Austin his own table and chair set for a long time.  He finally got a set for Christmas from Matthew's parents.  It's perfect except it didn't really match our house so we stained the wood and covered the chairs with fabric.  I love how it turned out!

before

After

Growth Chart

I "pinned" this project awhile ago and loved the idea.  It's looks like a giant ruler on a piece of wood that you can use at a growth chart but then as we are still moving around and not settled, we can take it with us.  I got the idea here. This is their picture:

Recipes
These are all the recipes I have recently pinned, made and loved!
-Cheesy Veggie Chowder
-Healthy Breakfast Smoothie
-Shrimp with Avocado-Mango Salsa
-Poppy Seed Chicken  
- Pizza Balls
-Creamy Parmesan Orzo
-BLT Pasta Salad

Outside Porch
We have a back porch that up until now has mostly been used for storage, garbage and collecting dust. But with this great weather we have been having I really wanted the space to be useful.  Matthew cleaned up and dusted the whole porch, turned a spare piece of wood into a table, and got a play rug for the ground and now we have a whole new play area for Austin. He loves being outside and loves to drive his cars on something other than the ground so this was so perfect!

Matthew also sanded these blocks we got from Austin's great grandpa.  We have a ton of them and Austin loves building with them. In the picture he is making houses for his cars.

Little Girl Things
And of course I have been working on some things for our little girl coming soon! I pinned and followed this tutorial to make some felt flowers for headbands. I also made some girly burp cloths for those not so girly spit up messes.