Summer camp, already!

I'm all about giving back, so a few years ago I started working with the local SPCA as their humane educator. I go and talk to kiddos in the community about proper ways to meet/greet dogs, how to be a good pet-parent, what are signs of animal abuse- all very important topics to bring up (so, if your not in my neighborhood and can't come to one of my presentations but want information, email me!)

Anyway, one of my big give-back initiatives with the SPCA is running their summer camp. We started it last year and for an entire week we talked about animals to kiddos, younger kids in the am, older ones in the pm. It was amazing to see their little minds figuring things out and making crafts for the animals and just learning as much as they could about animal care.

This year I'm doing it again, although not running both the am and pm groups (just the am- pretty sure Mr.Pricklepants wouldn't appreciate me being gone all day...) and guess what? After a year of planning, its coming up next week!

I'm so excited!

Starting point...

When we found out we were pregnant lots of things went through my mind. Obvious things like how thankful I was that we were actually pregnant. More random things like, how exciting it will be to take a little one on my trips to Home Depot (yay for orange!). Very important things like, when can we plan our first trip to Disney World? (How tall do you have to be for Space Mountain?)

But one thing I didn't have to think about AT ALL was the nursery design. You see, hubs and I, we are planners. Specifically me for things like say, a nursery. I've been dreaming of having my own baby since I was, er, a baby myself...(for real, my siblings would torture my baby dolls just to get their jollies. Evil I tell you!! But, enough of that...)

So many, many, many months before we got pregnant, I already had a folder set aside on my desk containing the selections for the nursery. At one point I had made so many selections, I had to put together a spread sheet to contain everything (pricing, where I found it...) I'm pretty sure it was after I made the spread sheet I realized, "I'm not even pregnant yet. I really need to stop." So, I deleted the spread sheet, tucked the folder away (just to the back of the folder stacker- not in the bin...) and went about the rest of my life until that day when I got our positive!

That's when it all changed. Things got kicked into high gear. Suddenly nine months didn't seem that long (especially since we were already three months into this when we told the family!) Six months to take all my plans and make them reality. (You know how they say it takes more than a year to plan a wedding...which really, a wedding is like, what ONE day and then done. How is it fair that you only get NINE months to plan for something that will change your entire LIFE? Just sayin'...)

One thing we didn't have to worry about was the dressers for the nursery. You see, when we got married, we inherited my husband's childhood furniture, which was his mother's childhood furniture. (And I know what you might be thinking "oh, probably looked sad and dated!"- but here's the thing, it wasn't!) You wanna talk about furniture with TIMELESS style...and not just like, "timeless Traditional" or "timeless Neo Classical" no, I just mean like, 100% timeless. See...

The only thing that needed to happen before putting them in the nursery was staining them. So...we (and of course, when I refer to "we" here on out, I'm talking about the hubs and his dad- because of course, I was pregnant and therefore couldn't "help" because of the "fumes" and "dust" and something about not wanting our child to have six toes on one foot or something. They started to sand them....

 I couldn't get over how GORGEOUS the wood was underneath all that original stain!!

 Lil topsy turvey...

 Grandpa adding the stain (check out our awesome riding lawn mower in the background!)

And, in the end the dressers came out beautiful...the only hiccup was the stain smell lingered for SOOO long. Honestly, we left them in the garage (with the door open during the day) for like two weeks and when we moved them into the nursery, we still had to leave the window open...but it was worth it...

Now, before you start yelling...YES, that beautiful dresser is inside the closet. Why? Because there just wasn't enough room for it in the room itself...and quiet honestly I love putting a dresser in the closet...especially when I knew nothing of the babies would be long enough to take up all that space!

You wanna see more pictures, don't cha? Well guess what...you just have to wait! I'll do a big ol' reveal here in a little while, but, as the title implies, this was just the starting point :)