McCarty Adventures

Hey there Ezra.

This is Ezra.

He is the new love around our house. He's tiny, adorable, semi-loud and perfectly healthy.

What is not to love? Oh… and he looks like an adorable old man.

He's precious and wanted and from the very beginning has been a sanctifying dart to my heart.

Odd thing to say about an adorable innocent baby right?

It's not his fault I'm a sinner and it wasn't his fault that God decided to teach me that some things I thought were certain or went a certain way couldn't go another way.

People always tell you the cliche phrase to not put God in a box but often times we put ourselves in a box and say, "This is my little box. This is how things are. I am this way. This happens this way. Get over it."

I loved my little box. It was cute. I'm sure it was made of wood and I stained it beautifully with painted words and all the pizazz… it was probably a fantastic box.

Well, you know Ezra wasn't exactly on our radar…

and you probably thought like us he would be a girl…

Yea no and we are done trying so we'll just adopt a girl later. Once our sanity returns…
Although… a family of just boys is still pretty epic.

So, the only thing I did know and was certain of… was how he was going to come out.

Yep. Both of my boys were planned inductions with an epidural and they progressively got better.

Elliot, sort of a nightmare birth… but he is the first one so that was normal.

Ethan, WAY better… awesome quick recovery. Fantastic!

Ezra… he was going to be a breeze! I'd go in and have them break my water since I was always told mine wouldn't break on it's own, I'd get my pitocin and epidural and have a baby in under six hours.

Awesomeness. I got that.

Oh how the Lord laughs at my feeble attempts to be in control of my life…

Hospitals in Texas are run much differently then hospitals in Louisiana. While my doc was a big fan of inductions, the hospital didn't always have room. You'd have to call on a certain day and hope that you were early enough on the list to get in as long as there weren't other women ahead of you with emergencies or who had gone into labor… yea it was an odd crapshoot and you often lost.

Like I did on my first Induction Date: Sept 24th. Fail.

Now that was the beginning of my 39th week. I had a whole week until my due date and for once with a pregnancy I was ok. He could cook more. He was perfectly safe, I was pretty comfy… we could wait and see what happens. Maybe I could go into labor on my own (hahahaha…) and maybe I would get my next induction date, Sept 30th.

Everything would be fine and I truly believed it. Babies can't stay in you forever.
They have to come out.

Except there were these stupid random contractions that kept coming…
Since I was always induced I never really experienced real contractions. I was crazy super blessed so these little monsters that started to come became so annoying that we finally went to the hospital on Thursday at around 3 on September 25th. If I was 4cm they might keep me and induce me into labor.

Forgive me for being a pessimist but I've had four false labors between my other two kids. I automatically feel like a waste of a nurses time when I come in, they check me, I'm obviously NOT in labor and they send me home. Yet, Bryan really wanted me to be checked so I sucked up my fears and followed him into the hospital. I still couldn't stop myself for apologizing to the nurse before she even had a chance to check me.

Nurse: "Oh honey you might be in labor!"

Uh huh…

No. I wasn't even close. I was like 2cm. So, they told me to go walk around the hospital.

I told her politely that wasn't going to work… we'd tried everything that was safe and normal to try when wanting to jumpstart labor with Elliot and Ethan to get them to come out and neither ever did.

Walking definitely was not going to work for me.

We walked for an hour in a really tiny hospital that didn't have much to see or do. My husband was trying to do his part by thinking I could obviously laugh my way into labor from the constant jokes and stories he was telling me… If anything at least it was a charming hilarious date with me in a really ugly medical gown. My contractions had gotten down to five minutes apart but weren't always painful each time. This was progress! We went back in to get checked. I was excited! We could have a baby today!!

2 cm.

Oh now I was mad. I was having these painful contractions every once and awhile and they weren't even doing anything?! I grumbled unhappily all the way out of the hospital and my little "false contractions" as the nurse had called them followed me.

I grumbled until my "false contractions" suddenly started hitting me no matter what I was doing: sitting, standing, laying down, ect… and they were apparently offended someone had called them false because they were mean.

As we got the boys ready for bed I began to prep Bryan with a contingency plan.

If the contractions progressed we could bring the boys with us to the hospital, my parents could pick them up… no biggie, they sleep anywhere.

Bryan wasn't super convinced we'd be going back to the hospital so he was just trying to get in bed to go to sleep. We both hadn't slept all week thinking I was going to be induced any day.

At 12:30am it became apparent I would be useless to help Bryan get the kids in the car, into a stroller and through a hospital. Bryan was asleep so he couldn't agree with my thought on that…

I called my parents: "You should come over. Now."

I got ready. They were now five minutes apart so in between the times I hit the floor in agony trying to flipping breathe calmly and not scream… I got myself dressed and semi-presentable then I went after my husband.

Me: "Bryan, I need you to get dressed baby."

Bryan: "Why was the blow dryer on?"

Me: "I fixed my hair. Get up come on."

Bryan: "Why were you fixing your hair? It's 1am."

Me: "I'm in labor. Having a baby. Keep up."

Bryan: "What?"

By the time we made it to the hospital, sans children because my parents made it to my house, it was 2:20am.

I made it all the way to the nurses station before I hit the floor again.

These contractions were super mean!

I mean Eve really screwed us all over… I needed an epidural and needed one now!

A nurse bent beside me and took my hand.

Nurse: "Which pregnancy is this for you?"

Me: "It's my third."

Nurse: "Ok, I'm taking her to 1224."

She got me off the ground and half-carried me down the hall.

Another Nurse: "You don't want to check her?"

Nurse: "Nope, she is in labor."

I better have been.

They set me up, checked me out and at this point I told them if I was still 2 cm they needed to just knock my butt out. They looked confused but Bryan only smiled. After seven years together he doesn't hide the fact that he enjoys the craziness that flies out of my mouth.

6cm!

BABY TIME!

Holy cow, I went into labor on my own… I didn't even need pitocin or anything. Awesome!

I told them I'd love an epidural and they probably would have to break my water. They nodded politely and just kept getting me ready with an IV, a million hospital bracelets and a random assortment of questions.

Nurse: "All right I'm going to go get the anesthesiologist."

My contractions were now a steady four minutes apart and they lasted about a minute. They felt like a belt of pain around my hips that hit me in the front and back and escalated up, peaked then slowly deflated back down and I could breathe again. Bryan would help by holding my hand, whispering how proud he was of me and massaging my back as they hit.

I love being constantly reminded how I can't live without that man…

After each contraction I kept telling myself, "It's ok, just one more and then you will have an epidural. It will be ok."

After ten minutes the nurse came back with a stricken look on her face.

Nurse: "I am so sorry but they had an emergency C-section and we only have one anesthesiologist but he is going to come here immediately after."

OK. Who is going to argue with that? Sure, I'm in pain but I'm sure people have MUCH worse contractions than me and getting cut open super deserves drugs. Period.

Then it hit me…

Me: "Will I have time to get an epidural?"

Nurse: "Oh… yea I'm sure. Twenty minutes tops…"

She did not say that with confidence.

Me: "Bryan… I'm not one of those women who need to have a natural birth. I like drugs. I will not be super crazy proud of myself if I do this naturally."

Bryan: "I know baby, it's ok. Don't worry."

Twenty Minutes passed.

Forty minutes passed and I was beginning to panic.

I was going to have this baby naturally. Uh… would breathing calmly REALLY get me through that?!

I mean we took the lamaze class but the lady had freaked me out with envisioning a happy place and feel yourself floating and…. I COULD NOT ENVISION A HAPPY PLACE RIGHT NOW!

Suddenly the door flew open and in flooded the anesthesiologist and nurse.

Nurse: "Got him! Dragged him right from the OR."

By this time I was 8cm but this guy… shoot he was like an epidural pro. I mean he literally gave me an epidural in five minutes. Thank you Lord!

The pain started to fade, they were trying to get me to rest and my mom arrived.
This labor had taken an awesome turn for the better.

At my next check they told me my water had already broken on it's own.

Well, what do you know?

Ten minutes later I had a squirming, wrinkly, beautiful baby on my chest with the loudest set of lungs yet of all my children.

Sure… nine months ago I cried like a baby when I found out I was pregnant because it wasn't in "my plan" or "my timing".

Four months ago I cried again when I found out it wouldn't be a girl…

Yet, about forty minutes ago I cried because I couldn't believe this perfectly small bundle that was so beautiful and so healthy… was mine.

Am I terrified to have three children under four?
Yes. So very much.

Am I overwhelmed all the time with the daunting task of raising three Godly men who will one day grow up to lead families of their own?
Pretty much every minute…

But am I ever alone? Never. Not since the second I took my first cry in a hospital myself.

It's going to be crazy and I will constantly make mistakes but the security in knowing that God had this planned for me from the moment I was knit together in my mother's womb is a huge comfort.

God knows what He is doing and He lovingly keeps working on me. He has already planned out each of my children's steps just like he planned out mine. When I take a moment to truly remember that I'm able to get a hold of my crazy head and breathe.

Of all the things I thought I would grow up to be…

I'm glad being Bryan's wife and their mom won out. It's the best job I've ever had and ever will.

God bless and Much Love,

Jessica

DIY Display Bow Tie Storage

My Bestie Dannette came in to help me nest this last week.

She has come in my last trimester for about a week for each of my three pregnancies.
She comes probably because she knows I'm losing my mind trying to get everything ready.

She also comes to pamper me like crazy and words will never express how sweet it is to be loved by her! She came. She cleaned. She pampered and… she crafted. A lot.

It was kind of like crafting boot camp as I tried to cram all of my last minute projects plus all the ones I've been wanting to do for her into the few days she was here.

We accomplished a crazy amount of things.

While I should probably show you all of them and be a good blogger like that…
I'll just show you the one that we had to really think out of the box for.

Bryan and I went with a "Little Gentleman" theme with our third bambino's room and I have had the best time designing it and figuring it out. Here is a sneak peek!

Big shout out to my friend Sarah who made that wooden mustache sign for me. It is absolutely flawless and I feel so loved by it since she use to come to ME for wood sign advice!! She's a mad pro now.

Back to the Room - One thing I wanted was to have some little man bow ties.
One of the first projects Dannette and I did was make about ten little bow ties that would be spread out between our four boys. Five of which we made infant size.

I wanted to incorporate the bow ties in my design scheme for the room.
And after working like half a day on them I wanted those puppies displayed for sure!

I knew I was going to put them on wood. (Of course… I mean really, did you think anything else from me?)

I cut a 28 inch board and stained it to my liking. Yet, the tricky part was figuring out how could I attach the bow ties to the board and be able to remove them anytime I wanted to use one?

We bought some cup hooks… yet that was a fail because the hooks were curved and you couldn't curve the bow tie middle around it and keep it on.

As we were thinking about it we were discussing how we could get some clips to help make the toddler bow ties for the other boys. I pulled out some old hair prong clips from some of my first projects and I'm not sure which genius (My husband or Dannette) said it first but the clip suddenly became our answer.

What if we hot glued a hair clip to the wood and used that to slide the bow ties on and off on?!

Yep. That simple.

After sadly dropping Dannette off to the airport today, I ran to a Sally's Beauty Supply and picked up some hair prong clips for $1.67. These looked so good they might also even work for the bigger bow ties we made for our older little guys. Maybe. I'll have to let you know. :)

I grabbed my glue gun, my tape measure and my bow ties and went to work!

It awesomely took about five minutes. While I tried to measure them perfectly out, that lasted for about a minute and then I just did it by sight.

Here is a photo of how the bow ties slide on and off of the prong clips. I did not glue the bow ties to the prong clips. I glued the bottom half of the prong clip to the wood and made sure the top half could still open and close.

This is the piece of wood with just the prongs attached to it.

Then with all the colorful bow ties! Instant awesome functional decor!

It's adorables! Plus they slide off so smooth!!

I am super excited about it and can't wait to try each of those little bow ties on our new little boy.
Only six weeks left!

Still have some stuff I'd like to get done but NOTHING that if I didn't get it done would make us not ready for Ezra! Whew… I can breathe. :)

Hope to share some more with you real soon!

God bless and Much Love,

Jessica

Our Map Wall Reveal!

Remember when I did that Herringbone Stripe Wall back in January and the fun insanity that led to me even doing that in my laundry room?

It may have taken me six months but I got some more work done on it!
The Lord has been so kind to teach my "I need to get this done now so I don't lose my brain" mind to chill and it is totally fine if projects take months.

Living life in between finishing projects is totally worth it.

As well as having an awesome loving husband who cares about my mental sanity so makes time to help me finish said projects.

For some reason I have poured a lot of decorating into one of the smallest rooms in our house:
The Laundry Room.

I mean, I like laundry. I love to wear clothes, definitely wouldn't make it in a nudest colony. It doesn't bother me to do laundry… it's just I forget that I started to do laundry so I'll go to do another load and find one already sitting in the machine from who knows when. Oops…

So, logically… if I made the room beautiful it would help me stay on top of laundry!

I know. I laughed out loud at that absurd thought too. Oh silly me…

But seriously what is the harm of making a room for chores into something beautiful? Yea, nothing.

First I painted the entire room BRIGHT WHITE. We are taking white out white. I'm not great at picking whites and I picked this one white thinking I would use it to paint all the rooms in the boy's wing.

To be practical I bought a five gallon bucket of this BRIGHT WHITE cause it was on sale!
My husband was horrified and even more horrified when he saw the color.

Fail. We've used it enough that he hasn't thrown up yet and since the room was really dark the BRIGHT WHITE really brightens it up.

By now you saw my Herringbone Wall that I put in there. It was a ton of fun to do and really added the pop of color it needed.

Next I needed to organize…

It wasn't terrible… it just wasn't neat and kinda looked thrown up there. Which it kinda was.

I wanted some basket storage and found the top two baskets at Goodwill for $4 a piece. Then I got the other smaller baskets at World Market for $7 a piece. They were yellow and the bigger ones were brown so I spray painted them all gray!

Spray painting baskets is a great easy fix and baskets take the color extremely well. If you wanted to try out spray paint for the first time, grab a basket and go nuts. It will be very gratifying.

The yellow tin on top I ordered from Crate & Barrel. Eventually I will paint "SOAP" on it.
One day I'm sure.

The wire basket holding white lint cloths is from the Container Store and the Nellie's White Brightener for whites was from World Market. That stuff works like no body's business. Though White Brite works just as well and is $3 cheaper. When my tin of Nellie's runs out I'm sure I'll just buy White Brite and pour it into it cause the tin is adorable.

The brown crate was something I had rescued from a Fossil Mall Dump. Yes. I went looking for boxes to use for packing and Fossil was getting rid of tons of wooden crates and goodies they had used as display pieces. They even loaded into my van for me. Giant Win.

That happened after I had just complained to a friend that all these bloggers find all this amazing stuff and it is so insane and yea… the Lord is still working on me folks.

People aren't really kidding when they say basket storage makes things look so much better.

Looks so much better doesn't it? It makes me feel accomplished to have a clean space… anywhere… in the house so when I pass this it makes me sigh with a bit of relief.
Not all the world is chaos.

The next step was the one I had waited FOREVER to tackle.

Our Map Wall.

I wanted to do two around the entrance doors. One door leading to the garage and the other door leading into the house. Currently we only got around to one wall. It took us a full day to cut the paper, glue it down to the wall and smooth it out.

But… it is my favorite wall almost ever and I get to see it every time I come home!!

Joy.

If you want a tutorial on it… I would not be the girl to teach it to you. I will tell you that yes, it looks daunting but seriously… it is a giant cut and paste craft. If you have an exacto

knife, a wallpaper sponge, a wallpaper smoother and some Zisser Paste, you my friend have the tools of a wall paper master.

Ok, not really but for our Map Wall that was all we used and all our maps ordered from Papersource.Com. They weren't wall paper but rather thick wrapping paper sheets.
They worked perfectly.

Here is what we started with:

Bryan measured the wall and made a replica of it in Painter's tape on our dining room floor.

We used it to arrange the maps and decide which one went where.

Then we started cutting

and pasting

and on the wall it went!

Thankfully our sweet monsters were a huge help during this process by keeping to themselves…

And it only took us maybe five hours… it would have been faster if the wall had been level and I wasn't married to a perfectionist engineer. But I am and I adore him and he let me use a big paint brush to play with sticky glue. Always fun. :)

And there you have it.

One stunning wall that makes you sigh with happiness every time you walk in.

Well, it does it for me anyway.

It's special to us in the fact that we have actually traveled together to each of those maps pasted on that wall save one: The British Isles. We will get there one day but until then we have had quite some adventures and now we get to be reminded of them every time we come home.

We have a few more projects to do in the laundry room including the other Map wall and all of my wood projects so stay tuned!

You never know what will happen next in the McCarty House.

God bless and Much Love,

Jessica

This is linked up at Motivational Monday, DIY Dreamer & Work it Wednesday!

I Live!

Hi.

Long time no see. ;)

For the last three months I have been swimming in the awesomeness of Vacation Bible School.
I had somehow convinced our Children's Church Coordinator that we should totally write it from scratch and it would be super crazy easy…

It was not super crazy easy. It took an insane amount of planning, work, people and crepe paper.
But it was a blast and a beautiful success. Completely worth it.

And now that VBS is over… it is time for me to Nest.

I think if Nesting was an Olympic Sport I'd be on that team in a heartbeat.

My nesting includes building closet storage, painting four rooms, making bedding from scratch, finishing any project I've left hanging this year (since the baby took me out for two months and then VBS for three) and oh having a baby.

It's so exciting!

Ezra Nathaniel will be here in less then 3 months (seriously longest pregnancy EVER) so it's time to get in gear!

It's also time to catch up with you! We've pulled our way through a few projects during these last few months and I can't wait to show you them. They aren't done but that's projects for you…

It is a part of the journey! It's ok to be really on top of projects and it's ok to let them fester for a few months to focus on something more important.

Whenever you get them done is whenever they will need to be done.

I'm also blessed to be reading a new book this Summer call The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller.

Let's be honest… marriage is my favorite thing ever and it's something I will never know everything about. I mean it's another person with their own thoughts, feelings, dreams, goals living with you who helps you make little tiny versions of you and him together and it's this crazy awesome ride that is always in need of attention and time.

But it's also one of the two beautiful ways Jesus uses to describe His relationship with us.

Marriage & Adoption are used throughout the Bible to help our feeble minds understand how much the Lord has done for us. How he plucked us out of nothing and made us His own. How Jesus laid down his life for us like He lays down his life for the church.

Doesn't it make you all tingly inside?

No? Not yet? No biggie.

It will one day. :)

So, have a fantastic week and I'll check in again this week with what I have somewhat finished these last few months.

God bless and Much Love,

Jessica

DIY Gold Confetti Curtains

I love curtains.

They help make a room.

When I was in the planning stages of my dining room in my head I knew I needed some statement curtains. I looked for a bit online but knew I wouldn't find what I was looking for…

I needed gold curtains and not solid gold curtains.

The gold would tie in with Bryan's grandparents china that his parents had given us.

It is beautiful china and it needs a great curtain to tie to it.

If you are going to make your own curtains I can not suggest enough starting off with Ikea white curtains. Seriously. They are fantastic. They are thick, beautifully done and under $30 for two.

No joke.

All my curtains in my house are Ikea Curtains that I've embellished in some way. Check it.

For the dining room curtains my first thought was of course stripes. I like stripes and stripe curtains are super doable. I have them in my living room.

Yet, looking around my house… I don't think it needs anymore stripes. Drat.

Then I thought maybe one big accent stripe and I even found fabric and bought it.

But… I just wasn't sold on it… if only there was something new and fresh and fun and…

ooo…. Hello. Gold Confetti. Bet I could put that on a curtain… DING.
But how...?

I'm not a fan of painting curtains. They say it's way easier but… it doesn't look way easier.
So, when I decided to do gold polka dots I thought of cutting out the dots and fusing them onto my curtains with an iron. Yea… cause that is WAY easier.

I was explaining my plan to my husband and I could see him start to pale.

Hubby: "How many circles would you need?"
Me: "Maybe 200?"
Hubby: "You… want to cut out… 200 little circles and then iron them onto curtains?"

Well, when you say it out loud… yea it sounds really stupid and horrifyingly time consuming.
That gold fabric is just going to have to sit in my filing cabinet till one day I can do something with it.

I was stuck now. Couldn't make the circles, wasn't a fan of painting them… I was in a pickle.
Until one day I ran across this lady's blog about the best paint for fabric: screen print paint.
It doesn't dry hard. It holds it's color and STAYS IN PLACE.

I gave it a try on some Wifey T-shirts and let's just say… I'm IN LOVE!!

Off to Hobby Lobby where I bought about five bottles of it and now I was ready to go!

Here is what I needed to get started:

A big flat surface to lay down the curtains.
The Curtains. I bought 118" Ikea Ritva curtains. I needed 3 panels so I bought 2 packs.
Gold paint. I used Simply Screen Print Paint in Gold Dust.
A paintbrush
Something to make my circles.

For all you mason jar lovers out there, as it so happens the mason jar opening is the perfect circle size.

Win.

While I love this paint, it does go through the fabric. No biggie. Just make sure you have something under it. Something as awesome as my put together work space. Yes, those are cardboard boxes and a giant cutting mat. Epic. I know. It works.

Since they are confetti curtains there is no rhyme or reason to the dots. They aren't perfectly spaced so no measuring is required. I do want them to look cohesive so I put two side by side so the dots would trail off around the same spots.

The best way to do this is to make a bunch of circle outlines then go back with your paintbrush and fill them in. You will use a lot of paint but when you put it down, it stays in place. It never bleeds.

Seriously amazing.

Start at the top with more circles. Don't be afraid to overlap. As you head down your curtains just start putting more space between your circles. It's all up to you and how you want it to look.

That's the best part of it.

Once I finished one I moved it over and started on my next one.

My husband jumped in and helped me paint the last two since it is a bit time consuming but if you put on some music during nap time and have some eye candy hubs to look at from time to time…

It goes by super fast. :)