Scallop Wall Tutorial!

Hello!!

This is the long awaited tutorial for the scallop wall in my daughter's nursery! I've back dated this post so it will show up immediately after the reveal post, but am actually writing this a year and a half later... hope my memory's not too foggy! But truthfully, this process was not terribly complicated. Just time consuming and tedious.

This is where we started... Boooring. At the time, this was the color of all but one wall in our house, and I hate it. 

I. Love. Color. So when it came time to create a masterpiece for the nursery, I had to go a little crazy!

This super pink. LOVE it, and it covers three walls in the nursery.

This is the lighter of the two blues. The night before the big project, we went ahead and painted the pink walls, and we painted the entire accent wall this lighter blue.

...and this is what it looked like in the morning! Honestly, I would have been happy with it just like this, and my mom, who did most of the painting, tried her hardest to convince me. BUT I had a mermaid nursery to create, and there was no stopping me!

After painting the walls, we went to work on the template. I happened to have a big box in the attic from a TV we got several years back. we cut one side and unfolded the box to make one long strip. We made one scallop the size I wanted by using a pin, some string and a pencil. Stuck the pin, tied the string around it and the pencil and then drew a half circle. Then we used an xacto knife to cut it out! We used that template to draw the scallops across the long strip of cardboard as seen in the photo below, leaving about two inches between the point of the scallop and the top of the cardboard. Sorry for the quality! Had to grab this one from instagram...

Then, again, we used the knife to cut the long strip of scallops.

A couple of friends came over the next morning for the hard part. TRACING. This was definitely the hardest part. Especially because I did NOT want the scallops to begin in the corner right at their point... I don't know, I'm weird... Anyway, much harder than it sounds, they held the template and traced around it LIGHTLY with a pencil, and they just moved down the wall. 

And here they are! All traced on, and you can see where we had to make some adjustments... That's due to my weirdness with the points not starting in the corner.

And the painting began!! I'm guessing we did the x's so we wouldn't paint the wrong scallops, but can't totally remember. This is my sweet friend Angie who brought her tiny paint brushes over to take care of the those tiny points. We used a bigger brush for the rest of the outline, but not too much bigger, as you can see in this photo.

This is my sweet friend Sara with the tiny roller. I guess it was four inches or so, but it really made quick work of the inside of the scallops! Like I said, the tracing was the hardest part! The outlining in paint wasn't so much hard as it was tedious and slow, the rest was easy peasy!

These wonderful ladies working hard!!

The rolling went sooo quickly, so then we were all able to help with the outlines, but we left the points to Angie and she did an amazing job!

And here it is!! The finished wall!

I think what helped the most in the process was deciding at the last minute to paint the entire wall the lighter blue the night before. I can't even imagine how much longer this would have taken if we hadn't done that! 

A LOT of work... But was it worth it??

7 weeks

OH yes!!

2 months

What do YOU think??

1 year

7 weeks - 6 months - 9 months - 1 year - 18 months

Mercy's Mermaid Wonderland

I am very excited about this post! I've been dying to get some good photos of Mercy's nursery, I have had SO. MUCH. FUN planning it and decorating it! So I'm very excited to share it here!

Before I get to that, I'll give you an update on our Mercy girl. We had a doctor's appointment today and were able to talk about apnea, weight gain, nursing, vaccinations, etc... It was a good visit. Yesterday Mercy had another episode of apnea, she wasn't breathing and her alarm went off. This time she was sleeping on Chris and he was right there to startle her into breathing again and all was well. Get ready for a post about how grateful I am for that heart monitor! So we decided to go up on her caffeine, from .55ml to .6ml. Yes, .05ml is enough to make a difference! Hard to believe, like how 5 calories per feeding is enough to make a difference in her weight gain... so funny. BUT that extra 5 calories sure is making a difference! Mercy is three pounds and one ounce heavier than her birth weight, weighing in today at 5lb 6oz! She's also 4 inches longer, today she was 19 inches! It's hard for me to even remember her being that tiny, she is growing so fast! God is good. Period.

Pinterest is my friend and where my original inspiration for this room came from. A close friend found this wall on Pinterest and said it looks like a mermaid fin:

http://pinterest.com/pin/279504720595177079/

...it does, and I wanted a mermaid themed room, so that is where we began... with Mercy's mermaid wonderwall:

Amazing mermaid wonderwall credit goes to Angie Lofton, Sara Clark and my mom. I was super pregnant and super sick, and I think I did an awesome job supervising! (here's the tutorial post on the scalloped wall if you're interested!)

 ...and of course, the other three walls had to be super pink, otherwise this wouldn't be Anna Kathryn Ellzey's daughter's nursery... right?

Next we (and by 'we' I mean my mom, while I, again, supervised awesomely) refinished this old chest of drawers which was once Mercy's Granddaddy's!

Love it! Oh, and the lamp, that was Mercy's first room decoration, a gift from our dear friends the Ballays! Isn't it fantastic??

Here are some shots of the finished product:

 I made the bedding, I might redo the skirt one day for something a little louder... it'll do for now! The frames came from thrift shops and were spray painted white and the graphics I did on Illustrator. 

We love her. 

 I made the drapes from the same fabric inside the bumper pads. So. Simple. Just hemmed them and used rings with clips to hang them! I actually didn't even hem the bottom, I decided I liked them pooled on the carpet like that.

The quilt was made by a good friend who volunteers where I worked before Mercy came into the world (facebook.com/samcenfoodbank). It matches the drapes and bedding as well! ...and I made the pillows with leftover fabric. I did most of the artwork and sewing in the room, I was determined to create an awesome space on a very small budget, and I'm crafty anyways so it was fun!

Gotta keep the pink Clemson hat and socks displayed!

 The beginning of Mercy's cross wall! That cross in the middle was a wood cross from Hobby Lobby that I modpodged with tissue paper from the weekly gifts we received in the mail from one of Chris's neighbors! 

Our snuggle spot. I'm in love with this chair, so comfy! 

 Some of our favorite photos from our time in the NICU, and that's our first valentine from Mercy, one of her sweet nurses made it!

I just love that lamp. 

...and he is my favorite part of the room, Mr. Whale Hamper! Look how he watches over everything!

Here's a collage of the room that the amazing Melissa Breedlove (http://www.melissabreedlove.com/#) put together from our homecoming photoshoot:

Pretty awesome, right??

So that's it, Mercy's Mermaid Wonderland, best room in the house! Hope you enjoyed touring it as much as I enjoyed creating it! Now... if I could make our other rooms look as awesome as this one...

Feelin like a bad momma...

Mercy's heart monitor has eight or so different lights on it. The lights across the bottom just tell us if it's on, plugged in, low battery, that type of thing. The three lights above those are the one's that blink to tell us she's breathing and her heart is beating, and they SCREAM when something is wrong. 

The normal scenario is this: the band that wraps around Mercy's chest holding the leads shifts around because she's such a wiggle worm and they stop picking up her heart beat. The alarm goes off telling us she has a low heart rate... she doesn't really, the monitor is confused because the leads are funky. The only alarm that has ever gone off is the low heart rate alarm, and only on two or three occasions have we actually thought she was having an episode of bradycardia. 

So today, I put her in a precious dress and we celebrated Easter at home while Chris went to church. His family just got to town and were meeting him at church then coming to our house for an Easter crawfish boil. So when they were on their way home I decided to take the monitor off for photos when they got here. No big deal, it almost never goes off and we would be right with her to notice if her color was changing or her heart slowed down. It didn't, and she did fine... 

So, we headed out back for the crawfish and decided to leave Mercy just inside the door with her audio/video monitor on her. Last minute decision, I was a little uneasy about being outside while she was inside by herself, so I put her heart monitor back on and we headed out.

Not two minutes after we sat down, the alarm began screaming. Didn't worry me too much, and I got inside to make sure she was fine after about ten or fifteen seconds. By then it had stopped alarming and she looked peaceful and asleep. I reached down to the monitor to hit the reset button and saw something that I had not seen before...

It was not the low heart rate alarm... it was the breathing alarm. She had briefly stopped breathing... the alarm doesn't go off unless she hasn't taken a breath for 20 seconds and it went off for at least five or ten before it stopped. She was fine and she was breathing again, but the problem is... she hadn't taken a breath for over twenty seconds, and she was by herself inside. I wasn't there... I should have been there.

How can I make sure I don't let her forget to breathe for twenty seconds ever again? How can I make sure I'm there everytime she needs me? How can I keep her from making mistakes and getting hurt? How can I......?

Gotta face a tough reality.... I can't.

...and somehow I have to be ok with that.

WHAT??? I'm not sure that seems even remotely possible!

I'm really struggling with this today. I know that's not my role... and thank God it isn't! I could never protect her well enough, and I would fail as her protector.

So thankful for her Heavenly Father, Who promises never to leave or forsake His children. So grateful that while she rests in my physical arms, she rests in His perfect and protective heavenly arms. SO. GRATEFUL. that whatever the outcome of her life is, HE. IS. GOOD. and has not, will not, forsake us.

Have to remember to trust Him when I can't be there, when my head tells me to forget it and take control of the situation, when I'm scared, fearful, anxious, when it's just plain hard to trust Him... trust Him. He is GOOD! 

I certainly don't have it figured out, I'm still getting wispy when I picture that red light next to the illustration of lungs on her monitor, when I think about her little body not breathing in any oxygen for more than 20 seconds, when I remember not being there for her. Still feeling like a bad momma for not being there when she needed me. Still worrying about her and still praying for trust.

Pray with me?

What a gift she is... Look at her today, all dressed up for our Easter celebration and smiling for the camera:

This was our Easter sermon today: http://www.radical.net/media/series/view/17/adoption-an-easter-story/audio?filter=book&book=40
We still can't go to church, so we listened to an old Easter service from Church at Brook Hills and were so blessed by David Platt's sermon on adoption into the family of God. You should listen, it's good stuff!

Thank you for reading and thank you for praying. Today we are asking God for increased trust as I continue to be her momma by daily laying her in His protective arms.

Big Girl Bathtime

Look how she's sitting up and looking right at the camera! My five pound baby girl is GROWING. UP.

Life without CaringBridge was different yesterday, it felt funny not sitting down at midnight to write something... Glad I have this outlet and get to continue to share Mercy's and my growth! Tomorrow, however, I'm declaring a computer fast... it's Good Friday, I'm going spend the day thinking about that, making a couple pillows for the nursery, vacuuming and doing laundry... and of course, snuggling with my little one as much as possible!

Today was a big day, actually... Chris and I had decided that when Mercy hit five pounds, we would take the sling out of her little bath tub and give her a big girl bath! We could have been doing that all along, her umbilical cord fell off long ago in the NICU (http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/mercyellzey/journal/19 ...see 'Poopy Diapers and Bellybuttons' toward the bottom), but she's so tiny, we've just been a little scared and nervous about trying.

So bathtime is hard for Mercy, we believe that being clean is very traumatic for her. She's a serious screamer during diaper changes and baths... so I was a little nervous and interested to see how she would handle her big girl bath.

Well... She handled it like a champ! I was so proud of her, I cried a little! She let out just a few quick screams, but for the most part, she just looked around wide eyed and let me bathe her... then she screamed when I pulled her out like she wanted to stay in! So funny...

Got me thinking... about the things I whine and scream about (maybe one day I'll write about my pumping trials!) Really, what in the world do I have to whine about in my life right now? How blessed we have been over the last 2 1/2 months! God has been so good to us, and what would be fitting is for me to live each day of my life in solid gratitude to Him. And that's all.

But is that the case? Of course not. I'm just not quite there yet, and if you're honest, you probably aren't either. Hmm... maybe we need big girl baths ourselves!

Sometimes when I ask God to change my heart about whatever I'm whining about that particular moment, what I'm asking for is somewhat of a sponge bath... just a little dab here and there, while I'm not actually changing my actions at all, still griping along the way... when what my heart actually needs is FULL submersion, clean this girl up, cleanse my thoughts, purge them of negativity and sinfulness. God is GREAT, and faithful to do that. Maybe that's how to turn my whining and moaning into singing and dancing to His glory!

I think it's time for a big girl bath! What about you?


"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
By his wounds you have been healed."
1 Peter 2:24
Yes, thinking about that tomorrow... awesome! Enjoy salvation, my friends, let's live our live in gratitude for it!

Everyday Mercies

I've tried blogging before.
                        ...and I've failed.

I feel like it's different this time... I feel like I have more to write about and I'm excited about that! For those of you who linked here from CaringBridge or Facebook, you know the journey we've been on. For everyone else, we delivered our daughter 10 weeks early on January 18, spent 7 weeks in the NICU, and today is our due date. Our baby girl Mercy is such a blessing to us. Maybe one day I'll upload our CaringBridge posts to this blog, for now if you want to catch up on our incredible journey, you can read about it here: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/mercyellzey

Throughout our journey, I have become amazingly aware of the mercies God showers on us everyday through everyday occurrences. How, if we pay attention, each little piece of our day reveals truths about our Creator and how He is visible in EVERYTHING. 

That's what this blog is about... His everyday mercies! It is certainly a work in progress, and I won't write everyday, but I hope you'll join me as I seek to learn more of Him and His incredible works!

You'll notice this clearly isn't my first post. Awhile back when this was a different blog, I uploaded a multitude of emails I've been sending to friends and family for years. They are a journey through the last 9 years of my life... They see me finish college, move to Tennessee, experience great loss and awesome healing, move back to Georgia, get married, move to Louisiana and finally our emergency c-section that brought little Mercy into the world. Feel free to explore... A lot of growth has happened over the last 9 years!