It's finally time to spill the beans!!  We are extremely excited to announce that we are expecting TWINS!  Our due date is actually in July but for a variety of reasons we expect the babies to arrive in June.  We've been a bit coy about sharing this news, partially out of superstition and partially because we've been down a very, very long road of trying repeatedly to have children and have suffered many losses along the way.  I can't tell you how ecstatic we are to be able to finally tell the world at large that not only do we have one little one on the way, but TWO! 

That being said, it means a LOT of home projects in not a lot of time.  The impending arrival of the babies is one of the reasons we've been on a furniture buying binge recently.  In addition to the furnishings we posted about last time, we have also purchased two beautiful Chippendale chairs from a custom fabricator, and a sectional and a few other things for our family room.  Yes, the mysterious family room which has never been photographed, LOL!  Speaking of furniture, by the way, we got a real surprise this week:  the pieces we ordered on January 1st from Ethan Allen are already ready!  They'll be arriving Thursday, so we will try to take pics in the daylight next weekend. 

Naturally in addition to madly rushing to finish up the common rooms of the house, we're also preparing the babies' room, and with that comes some special projects unique to an old house.

Our current punch list includes the following (and I'm sure I'm forgetting some things!):

1) Remove any and all traces of lead paint on all doors & frames upstairs.  Not sure why we've procrastinated on this for the past three years, but there you  have it: now we absolutely have to get it done!  We're going to do this work ourselves, albeit carefully, and will mostly do it in the basement to avoid any stray lead dust anywhere near the babies.

2) A small closet removal/addition project in the family room.  This is basically to help facilitate the laundry-doing, which I am sure will get out of control quickly with twins.  Right now, our laundry chute goes from the master bedroom down to a closet in the family room directly below, and then I need to haul the clothes from there around a long wall and into the hallway immediately behind the family room.  That's stupid and a waste of effort, so we're just reversing the opening of the closet so that it can open from the closet near the washer & dryer instead.  This will also give us room to put our new sectional where we'd like to have it situated.

3) Finish painting in babies' bathroom (mostly interiors of cabinets), and paint the babies' bedroom.  For the bedroom, we're using a lovely warmish neutral yellow called "Good Vibrations", from Benjamin Moore of course.  This will blend beautifully with the sage and butter color scheme we're using.  The furnishings for the babies will be antique white, and it's pretty much all coming from Pottery Barn Kids. Pictures below!

4) Myriad other projects, mostly small, but all time-consuming.  They include mentally preparing for baby-proofing, as well as actual tangible stuff we need to get done before we dive into parenthood. 

But anyway, back to the fun stuff!!  Baby furniture, woo hoo!  Here's the crib style we're using:

And we'll also have room for a nice loveseat in there, which will make feedings easier.  This is the one we're using, but ours will be in their "Butter" color:

Here's the Butter color, just for reference:

And here's the changing table:

Since the babies' room is the former master bedroom, it's plenty big enough for the two kids and all their attendant paraphernalia, at least until they reach an age where we'll give them separate bedrooms.  Not exactly sure what age that should be (we believe it's a boy and a girl) but hopefully we have at least a couple of years to worry about it!