Making Room for Baby & Shop Stuff

That's a bit of what I've been up to recently. Since we live in a loft, the open concept requires a bit more planning for a baby and we've been racking our brains on how to divide up the space. Right now we only have these curtains as a room divider.
I am leaning towards enclosing our bedroom to keep the cats out - where baby will sleep for the first year, most likely - but whatever we put up has to still let light in, be relatively lightweight but sturdy, be easy to install and affordable! Yeah, wishful thinking. Matt wants to build shoji screen sliding doors himself - I took out the book below from the library for him - but without a proper workshop and tools, I'm wondering how easy this diy project will be. Those of course would be ideal (except who knows how they would hold up with the cats loving to scratch wood?). We've got less than 4 months to come up with a solution.

{Oh yeah, we found out it's going to be a girl!

I've kind of just been savouring the news and telling a handful of people so far. We'll see if the results hold up, since I've already had my share of surprises with the pregnancy so far}

We've been making room for our new addition in there over the past several months and finally acquired a lovely new dresser for all of us on our last trip to Ikea.


Most of my clothes have made their way onto the other side of our bedroom and I am badly wanting to finish my walk-in closet plan for them, since it is kind of a sight for sore eyes at the moment.

The Stolmen system from Ikea is what I have in mind for our personal clothing and also for my shop stock, as it works well in places with high ceilings. So I'm on craigslist daily searching for that and numerous other Ikea pieces at reasonable prices.


And speaking of making room for baby, unintentionally, this past week we had to throw out almost everything we had stored in our building's basement storage locker, due to our own and someone else's ignorance. Apparently every time it rains - and this summer has been a wet one for sure - the basement in our building tends to flood. We only found this out recently. Well, combine that with someone not speaking up about a broken pipe in her storage locker and our choice to store stuff in cardboard boxes, and you get damaged goods. Plus, since we didn't try to salvage things right away, mold started accumulating and for our safety and our baby's safety, we - well, Matt mostly because I shouldn't be moving heavy things right now - had to toss out everything that we thought had been contaminated and wasn't utterly important.

That included all of his childhood mementos, albums, artwork and his most prized toy, a stuffed rabbit - his mom had gathered it all to give to him when she and his dad moved out east several years back. For me, I had to let go of a box full of old journals and sketchbooks, which had me a bit ill at ease. I don't want to imagine someone else reading those or going through my personal things. But oh well, if that stuff had meant such a great deal to us, we probably wouldn't have put them down in storage. That's what I've tried to tell myself.

As well as rearranging stuff in our home, I tried out the new rearrange shop feature on etsy the other day and colour coded all my items. I don't know why, but I tend to do that with things. My clothes are like that and when I had my own section for clothing in stores, I would do that. Our bookshelves are like that too.

Right now, red is on the first page. I will change that up probably every so often. At least you can still change the view to select "most recently listed".


Other than that, I've been pretty busy screen printing for others and getting together my own Fall stock to send out to various shops. This is one of the images I printed, which is also one of my favourite new ones available through Oddbird Designs.


I'm also working on a new design featuring an owl - yes, not just a puttytat! - and will hopefully have it ready to unveil and print in a week or so. And I've got a new custom portrait keeping me busy too, which I'll post about another day. So all in all, pretty busy and happy for it.

This month's giveaway will be another good one, with 3 different winners chosen, so be sure to check back on the 15th!

Missing in Action

Baby bump at 17.5 weeks

Oh, Blog! How I've neglected you.
You could say I went AWOL.
(This post should make up for it. Beware, it's a big long-winded)

But I had good reason to these past several weeks.

Various projects have been keeping me busy. A graphic design job - my first big design job really - has been taking up most of my time. It's been fun and a good learning experience, but reminds me that I'm not creating my own things. So I'm looking forward to when I finally finish everything and can get back into creating for myself.

I also had a few wholesale/custom orders to fulfill. And some shops to restock.

But most significantly, Matt and I had a rather unnerving development with the pregnancy the other week...when I got a phone call from my doctor's office. You know how they tell you no news is good news? Well, to put it mildly, I was not too happy to have received that call.

I had gone for my 3rd prenatal visit mid-month and since I was around 15 weeks, I was due for some genetic screening. This is optional, but I didn't know that until after doing some reading on the internet. My doctor seemed to have thought my results would be normal. But 4 days after I had my blood taken, I got a call asking me to go in to speak with my doctor about the results. No other explanation really and since it was the end of the day he had already left. It was not a good night for us. Matt and I both had sinking feelings.

So the next day I got in touch with him to find out more. I was partly glad I did, but also a sobbing mess after I had. The gist of it was that my blood test indicated I was at a higher risk for a baby with a chromosomal disorder, specifically Down Syndrome. It didn't mean it was definitely true, but it certainly wasn't good news to us.

To hear this after months of carrying this little growing miracle inside me, after months of trying to get pregnant, after years of trying not to, was just a little devastating. We all hope for healthy babies and to be told that yours may not be is a big blow. You wonder if you could have done anything different? You wonder "Why us"? You pray (even though you're not religious) that things will turn out alright.

After a night of soul-searching and deep discussion, Matt and I decided that we would continue with the pregnancy, and we would love our baby no matter what. And we opted not to have an amniocentesis - the invasive procedure involving a needle going into my amniotic sac - even if it would tell us one way or the other whether our baby was healthy. The slight risk of miscarriage was not worth it to us.

I know the thought of terminating a pregnancy wouldn't ever cross some people's minds, even if they knew their baby had some kind of deficiency. But I have to be honest and say that it did cross mine. I may be getting myself into some sticky territory here by admitting that, but becoming a parent is scary enough to me. To think that we'd have to raise a child who was born with a disadvantage terrified me. I didn't think I could handle it. But I know it was just my fear getting to me. Plus I couldn't imagine ever going through with that.

The next day, Matt and I were able to see my doctor in person and he went over my results again, and explained that the next thing to do would be to get an amniocentesis, if we wanted. He said that most people who had the procedure and did find out that their baby had Downs decided to terminate. Since we'd already decided against one, the appointment was more of a formality. The doctor just wanted us to be aware of our options.

Anyways, we took our time getting home from the doctor's. When we finally did get back, there happened to be a message from him. Another phone call! What could have happened in the few hours that I had seen him? I called him back immediately and was floored by what he told me. Apparently he was faxed new blood test results and this time the news was much better... like 250% better!

The weird thing is that I never had any more blood taken. So where was this coming from? And why had they done the test again? Or was it not my results that they initially gave me? Matt and I were pretty confused but a lot relieved. The doctor told me not to worry anymore and well, I'm trying not to. It's all really a waiting game now. And I'll find out more in a few weeks' time at my next checkup.

So, now for the winner of my second blog giveaway! Matt picked the name again and the lucky winner is Kim! Although there were only 4 comments on the blog post, other ways to enter the draw including buying something from my shop and also being one of my Happy Customers on flickr. Kim sent me a photo of herself in one of my mustache kitty tees a while back, so earned an entry into the draw. I'm not sure what this month's giveaway will entail yet, but I promise it will be another good one.

That's all for now. Happy (Long) Weekend (to my fellow Maple Leafs)!