Nesting: Christmas Edition

So our front room sat empty for a few months, but we've been able to furnish it over the last few weeks, just in time to make it cozy for the holidays. This has been very satisfying for someone who is 8-months pregnant and nesting (you should see how I act around baby clothes). It's still a work in progress - the furniture isn't laid out quite right, I'd like to get an area rug, and the chairs (not pictured) don't match anything and are too big. But I'm not going to worry about that stuff for awhile... I'm not going to worry about a lot of things for awhile. Except I may indulge in a little alarm at some spreading stretch marks.

Anyway, here are some results of my nesting instincts:


I really like how the fireplace turned out. I went with sparkly silver things for the mantle (and check out the cute baby socks in the middle! Those are from my friend Amy Jo, and they look so cute compared to the giant stockings. See? Baby clothes get me every time).





I was lucky enough to inherit the family piano that I grew up playing:


It arrived just before the first snowfall back in November. I don't think I realized quite how much it meant to me until it came here and I started playing again and years of my life growing up came flooding back to me. Years of listening to my older sisters playing (Nikki, once I tape-recorded you when you came home from college playing the piano for like an hour and I'd listen to that tape over and over for years after that), and years of playing myself, especially in high school when music, playing, and singing were like the biggest things in my life. My hands found the old familiar positions nestled in the keys and after a rocky first hour I was playing all the old songs that I played growing up, and all on the same instrument that was there for me in three different houses and what felt like three different lives. It's completely out of tune, but I really don't care, we'll tune it eventually, and for now I just have my old friend back. Michael has been really sweet about it, too, encouraging me to play and telling me that he likes it when I do, and even singing along sometimes (Michael has an awesome singing voice. There, I've said it and the secret is out and all of you should make him sing more because he is really good). Sometimes when I start playing and singing the baby joins in with some fun pokes and wiggles, too.

Are we all overwhelmed with nesting hormones yet? I'll keep going.

Last year or the year before I found this treasure online (the gold thing on the right):


Have you seen these? You light up the little candles on the bottom, and the heat rises and hits the propeller/fan thing, and it starts to spin and the little angels hit the bells and it makes this soft ting, ting, ting, ting sound. When I saw this, I realized that we had something like this when I was very little at Christmas, and I remember being amazed at how the heat made it turn and loving the little bell sound. I love bells at Christmas. It was all I could do to stop myself from buying this expensive thing at Costco that played Christmas songs on a silver bell system a few weeks ago. Instead I just walked in slow, pregnant-waddling circles around the area and listened to the bells for like 10 minutes.

Anyway, back to the chimes. When I saw them online I bought them instantly (and at a deal for like $10), and I love love love them. Probably less than half of my Christmas decorations actually made it out of their boxes this year, but this was a must.

Ok, what else? We have a little TV set up in the front room, and Dad you'll notice the little mice have emigrated to a safe place for Christmas:


Also we got a little couch and coffee table, which are off-center for the holidays while the tree takes up some room.


Oh and speaking of the tree, here you go:


So there's our last hurrah for a Christmas front room that is definitely not baby-safe. On Christmas Eve I'll have just 6 more weeks to go. Everyone keeps insisting that I'm "almost done" - whatever that means. I don't know what you're all talking about. But I should definitely have gotten work somewhere playing Mary for the holidays, huh? Michael and I walked into church on Sunday and pretty much every last seat was taken, and I just looked at him with my hand on my belly and said, "Well, there's no room at the inn."
(by the way, back in July I went horseback riding, and I was mildly worried about riding while pregnant. But then I thought, "Hey, I saw Mary in that Nativity video, and she was totally riding a donkey.")
Food for Christmas thought.

I'll try to do a post on the baby's room sometime before she comes. Merry Christmas everybody!