Week 15: Personalized Baby Poster for Nursery

My husband and I chose to not to share the name we had chosen for our son until he was born. But to
tease the masses, we did share the initials with them and told them they had to guess. I collected all of the name suggestions from when we found out we were having a boy until we revealed the name. Some of the names were real suggestions and some were funny, but we kept them all!

I listed them vertically on a page, next to a photo of our newborn, his name and stats. I chose the bright green color because it matched in with the bright color of the Angry Bird nursery. I had it printed using a Groupon for Vistaprint and received an 11x17 glossy print. What I didn't anticipate was the limited frames available with a mat and opening for 11x17. I decided to find a deal on a larger frame (about $20) and had a custom mat made for about $16 with a 60% coupon at Joann's.

All-in-all, I'm really happy with how everything turned out. Love to hear your comments or if you've done something similar. 

Week 12: Hard Copy of Daily Baby Record

As we were packing up our things in the hospital to take our baby boy home, the multiple nurses who came through each mentioned to us that we needed to keep track of how often (and how long) he was nursing,  hen he had a wet diaper, when he had a BM diaper, etc. They each said that the pediatrician would be asking for that information at the first doctor's appointment. 

I had seen a post on Pinterest about great apps for mom's and one of them was Baby Connect ($4.99 for your iPhone). Once you download the app you can track all of these things and more! It's awesome because you can designate others to login to the application (like your spouse, grandparents or other caregivers) so they can input the information into the same place as well. Even though you have to pay the $4.99 for each device the app is used on, you can login for free from any computer. 

Fantastic if all of your caregivers have smart phones or access to a computer 24/7 while watching your little one, but what if they don't? It's still important to me to have that information tracked, so I created a hard copy document that I can print off as I need to. I even put instructions at the top so each new caregiver knows how much to feed (or not feed) the baby and what other expectations you have as far as activities are concerned. You can download an example document here that you can customize to your child's name and criteria. (Simply click Ctrl + S when the preview pops up to download the original word file.)

This may seem like a more manual process, since you'll have to log the information back into the Baby Connect interface yourself, but at least you'll have the information logged and you don't have caregivers trying to remember how many wet diapers there were and how many ounces the little guy or gal has had since early that morning.

Week 10: Hospital Goody Bag for Dad

Once my bag was packed in preparation for going to the hospital, I put together a special bag for my husband based on something I saw on Pinterest. Yes, it's true that once you go into labor you are limited on what you can eat and drink, but I didn't think my husband should be punished and starve because I couldn't eat.

On Pinterest I saw a "Daddy Hospital Survival Kit" filled with some candy, magazines, homemade bread, soda and some magazines. Although the packaging was very nice and included some cute printables, I knew my husband wouldn't really care about how nice it looked. I did package my version like a present (gift bag with tissue paper) so he wouldn't look through it before I went into labor.

I let him open his "Survival Kit" when we arrived at the hospital and were unpacking our hospital bag. My goal was to give him some snacks and something to do during the first night where I anticipated being in labor all night long. Once the baby arrived he would have plenty to do!

Here's what I included in my version of the "Daddy Hospital Survival Kit:"

• Two magazines (fantasy football guide and a guide to phone apps)
• Two Snickers bars (his favorite candy)
• Peanut butter crackers (peanut butter for some energy)
• Mountain Dew (for a lot of energy)
• Angry Birds Cheese Nips (our nursery theme is Angry Birds)

No matter what you put in your "Daddy Hospital Survival Kit," make sure that you pack some snacks for yourself in your regular hospital bag for when you're done delivering your bundle of joy. Daddy will likely be happy with whatever you pack for him, but making it personal will make him feel special as well.

Week Four: Final Pinterest Project

When I saw this alphabet book on Pinterest, I just happened to have an expiring Groupon for Shutterfly that I needed to use. In preparation for the book, I went to Facebook to pull down photos for the book and renamed them by what letter they were going to represent in the book. It was the most efficient way for me to choose photos, but I was having some trouble identifying things for some of the letters. C, I, and Y were difficult for me at the time to identify, but I only spent two nights working on this part of the task.

Once I had the letters identified, I went to Shutterfly and chose the book with pre-loaded alphabet settings, which made this Pinterest project a heck of a lot easier. I did have to move some of the letters around based on the number of photos I wanted to include, but their Customize feature allowed me to easily move the letters around and add embellishments as needed. (Note: make sure you check out any coupons online that you can apply to your order or any special deals they're running. Just search "Shutterfly coupons" in Google and you'll find a plethora of resources. You can do the same for the production site you use, or anything you order online for that matter.)

The focus of our alphabet book is more focused on what our baby can expect from our crazy family. :) I will definitely have a version two when the baby is a little older so I can include photos of him and how it relates to the alphabet.