Our New Digs: The Living Room

I've been wanting to share pictures of our new house for awhile now, but wanted to wait until we were finished decorating.  Then I realized that's going to be years, so I might as well show everything while it's in progress.  :)

Here's the living room the day we closed on the house:

Yes, you're going to see a toddler in every single picture.  I actually do try to get pictures without her, but it's kind of a waste of breath.

Here's a month after we moved in.  Pictures on the wall, and all the basic furniture in place:

Another view.  Most everything is the same from our apartment.  The curtains are new, and we bought a second curtain rod since we only had one window in the apartment.  The end table was brought out from our bedroom & the lamp on it is new.  Josh hates the lamp, but it's just temporary anyway.  I plan for it to go in the office.

This week we made a few small changes that yielded big results:

We mounted the TV on the wall (how funny-- seriously, who would have ever thought we'd hang our TV's on the wall?), brought the 2nd end table out from the bedroom, bought 2 lamps, a rug, and a bunch of pillows.

Don't worry, we repositioned the rug after these photos were taken.  My friend Sherry is a designer & gives me advice.  And I follow through about as well as Amelia Bedelia.  It's still at an angle, just the opposite angle, like any sane human would have done from the beginning.  :)  Sherry has to keep me straight on these things.

Fun story about these pillows.  I bought 9 pillows at Ross.  I knew it was way too many, but I figured Josh & I could narrow it down once we saw them in the room.  But once I laid them all out on the couch, I fell in love!  So far I've got the total number down to 8.  Not sure how I'm going to knock any more out.

 The couch really needed this pop of color & excitement.  It's getting kind of old, so these pillows do a great job of distracting the eye!

And these lamps... I'm in love!  They're burlap covered lampshades with that pretty pattern cut out.  They are from Ross as well.  I need to find a solution for all these cords, though.  Pretty unsightly with the simple end tables we have.

 And because I have a toddler...

It's the Color Wonder markers & wipes right off of the table.  Yay!

A side by side view:

 

And another during & after view:

I just can't believe the difference!  It's really starting to feel like out dream home!

It's Amazing What a Little Paint Will Do!

We loved the nursery we had set up in the apartment... until we finished the nursery in our house!  It is absolutely amazing what a paint of coat can change.

Basically all the same items, but wood floors & lovely walls.  Robins Nest by Benjamin Moore.  We used the Natura no-VOC paint & loved it!  No smell, no headache, and it went on super smooth.

Oh Pinterest!

We have a good sized apartment, but the kitchen is tiny.  Teeny tiny.  Like, we're in a 3 bedroom & it's about half the size of the kitchen we had in a one bedroom.  And what our friends think is a pantry next to our kitchen is actually a laundry area.  Most of our kitchen appliances are in our hall closet, and some of the food items are stored above our washing machine!

I. hate. that.  How gross?  I keep it to items that are well packaged, but still.

So last night I saw a pin on Pinterest & it got me to thinking.  It suggested using an old armoire as a pantry.  And that's when it hit me... we have a china cabinet that we don't even use!  It's just sitting in the dining room, abandoned from when we decided to start painting it 3 years ago (I didn't get very far at all).

And after moving this last time, I refused to unpack the China again until we buy a house.  That leaves a bunch of awkward pictures in our cabinet & my Willow Tree items that have to be kept away from Hazelnut.

Here's the before & after:

Much better, right?  Obviously, with the glass doors, using it as a pantry is out of the question, but our plates, cups & bowls fit perfectly in there!  And now we have an entire 2nd cabinet in our kitchen dedicated to... food!  No more storing food above the washing machine.

And I now have extra storage room in the laundry area!

I think I'm going to clean out the bottom shelves (not pictured above) & make it a kid-friendly area.  Currently I'm storing baby bottles & candles in there.  The bottles have to go, & I'll find another place for the candles.  The knobs on the doors are very widely spaced, so there are a few extra steps to baby-proofing it.  I'd rather just skip that & let her enjoy the area!

Where have I been??

Whew, life is busy!  Wedding season is here & Josh helped me out photographing the first wedding of the season!  And may I just say that he did an awesome job!

We've also been enjoying lots of outdoor concerts & time with friends!

This just in: we have toes!!  Hazel discovered her toes & loves playing with them.  :)

Decorating the house... (this is just a mock-up for our living room)

And of course someone is now 4 months old!  And daddy took the month picture this time!  Look at those chubby thighs.  :)  13 lbs 13 oz at her 4 month check-up.

This is what I live with...

My two favorite people doing their silliness.  I love them.  :)

A peek into the nursery...

Nope, no baby yet.  Not even so much as a hint of a contraction on Friday!  Oh well... I guess this could be a sign that she's stubborn (or always late) like her momma.  Or... it could mean that she's a baby & isn't fully developed yet, therefore not ready to be born.  You know... one of those!

Happy to report that things are going better with our doctor & we feel more comfortable about everything now.  I didn't write much about it on here, but it has been quite a wild ride with our doctor's office.  My #1 piece of advice to those planning to get pregnant, or who are newly pregnant... think about where & how you want to give birth.  Read up on some stuff, educate yourself, and then actually seek out a care provider that thinks along the same lines.  It seems so silly to think about your birth plan before you even get pregnant, but trust me, it will be worth it, as it is very difficult to change providers once you go with one.  Just like everything else in life, begin with the end in mind!

And finally... we are almost done decorating the nursery!  Wahoo!!  My nesting urge hit around the 6 month mark & hasn't been back since, which is unfortunate since we moved into a new apartment & everything I worked to organize before is completely useless & gone now.  But we are making progress in the new place & it sure is a lot easier to make things look nice when they are nice to start with!  Going from all white walls to cream colored walls is just awesome!  It makes everything look better!

Here are some shots of the nursery:

We have truly been so blessed!  I love how everything is coming together!

The mobile was really hard for me to decide on.  I wanted something with black & white & red, as well as music.  Those were the qualities that seemed to really make a mobile effective in encouraging Hazel to learn & respond.  But I couldn't find any mobiles that had the black & white on them that matched... and of course red wouldn't really match either.  So I found this at a consignment shop for $8 or $15 (can't remember).  It plays classical tunes, has the black & white that moves around to pique her interest, and also perfectly matches the colors in her room!  I snatched it up so quick it would make your head spin!

Also, above the crib will be a wall decal with Hazel's name on it.  Some friends got it for us at our baby shower & I can't wait to put it up!

Josh & I made this canvas together.  It's close to being finished.  The lyrics are some of our favorite Cat Stevens lyrics, and the music notes are to remind her to be lively, and the musical rest is to remind her to rest.  The music notes were Josh's idea, and I love it!

Our diaper stash.  On the left are all the smaller cloth diapers, and on the right are the gDiaper refills (we'll use until they run out-- especially helpful for the newborn stage!) and our wetbag.  I figure we'll adjust the flow of things as we go!

And finally, the closet!  I picked up these hanging organizers at Wal-Mart for $7 each.  The green one is a shoe organizer and I think it was more like $5!  They all have side mesh pockets as well- lots of places to store things!  Then the canvas bins are from Ross for $6 each.  I'm still working on the organization in here, but I like the direction it's headed so far.

So that's our nursery to date.  There are a few things still left to add, but I'm pretty pumped about it finally coming together, hanging things on the walls... it's making it all very real!

Disappearing Act.

Here's what I've been doing rather than posting lately... I hope to get back to posting regularly very soon!

Getting awesome presents from great friends & family... this is an adorable owl hat for Hazel!

Packed up most of our belongings in December, then went to visit family for a week after Christmas... then came back & had even more stuff to pack!

Almost done packing...

And moving into the new place!  This was actually after we'd started putting things away... it's been busy around here!  I'm in love with the vaulted ceilings, though, and the cream colored walls (as opposed to boring white...).  Not to mention we have 400 more square feet now!

 But that doesn't mean I get a break from work!  Been plugging away at both jobs & enjoying it!

Oh yes, and there's that little detail where I'm 8.5 months pregnant.  It's getting really hard to be mobile, but with living on the 3rd floor now, I'm getting my work outs for sure!

Thrifty Nursery.

We are likely going to be moving into a new apartment before Hazel is born, but I'd already worked on this nursery, so I'm going to share it anyway!  I know I'm a photographer & all, but cell phone pictures are what you're getting.  :)  We got a lot of really great deals on our larger items, so I wanted to share our finds!

We started with this idea:

And here's what we've got so far.  There's a lot less color in it right now because we don't have all the decorations up, but you get the idea.

Crib, mattress, white dresser: $150 from a consignment shop.  We got the info off of the crib & researched it to make sure it had good reviews & wasn't recalled or anything.  We also got a bedding set with it that's adorable, but just didn't fit in our color scheme, so we're selling it for $20.
Mobile: $15 (or was it $10?) at the same consignment shop.  It plays about 10 different songs & spins around.  I love that it has the black & white swirls as well, since that's what they suggest for mobiles.
Rug: $5 at a different consignment shop
Canvas with lyrics: $60 We bought the canvas at Michaels' for $40 (was 60% off) & the paints & paintbrushes (what I didn't already have) was about $20.  We had the idea & painted it ourselves.  It's not quite done yet, but more on that later.

Guitar Lamp: $30 at Burke's Outlet.  You can't see it in the first picture because it's beaming a bright light, but it's on the white dresser.
Music = Love small canvas: $5 at Burke's Outlet

Dry Erase Wall Dots: $5 for a 2 pack  I run a photography business out of my home, and it takes a lot of space to set everything up!  I quarantined most of it to the closet with some careful organization, but I still needed some space for the printer & such, so I used this little corner, which you can't really see from the door.  The two blue wall dots are removable dry-erase wall decals.  I keep a list of to-do's on one, and other notes about clients on the other.  Super helpful!

Large bookcase: This used to be in our living room with China & books on it.  I love the cubby organization systems and almost bought a cubby shelf just for this room.  But space is an issue in this apartment, so I took the bookshelf that was already in the nursery & moved it to the living room, and brought the large one from the living room into the nursery!  There wasn't enough room for all the books, even after giving many to Goodwill, so I double layered them-- there is another complete row of books behind each row you see!  The bottom right hand cubby of books is all our baby/kids books.

Canvas Bins: $9 each  This was not a cheap purchase, but thankfully, I had enough in Wal-Mart gift cards to more than cover the cost!  I can decorate them if I like, and they hide a lot of junk that I know won't always be organized once the baby is here.  They will also make moving much easier, and even collapse down to a flat square if needed.

Yikes... I never said the nursery was finished!  Here is the closet & changing table/baby armoir (which needs to be refinished & get new knobs).  Cloth diapers are in the baby armoir... for now.

Bassinet: Free!  It's our friend's bassinet.  We knew storage was an issue, but also knew a bassinet would be super helpful that first month or so.  So a friend offered to let us borrow theirs they aren't currently using (& they needed the extra space!).  Works perfectly-- we don't have to waste money on buying one that we'll just turn around & sell, and they don't have to look at it for a few months.  :)

And we've come full circle!  Like I said, the decorations are definitely not all up yet (nor will they be until we move).  A friend bought us a wall decal with Hazel's name on it, too, and I can't wait to decide where to put it in our new place!

The universe does not want me to start nesting!

I know, here I am again being a slacker.  Life has really been busy lately!  We're now at 31 weeks & I can't even believe it!

Why haven't I posted lately?  Well... this, for starters.

That is the closet in the nursery.  There are 4 closets in our house, and this closet is the size of the other 3 put together (although, really, it's about the size of a normal small bedroom closet).  At any rate, the entire shelving unit collapsed.  This is, of course, after I had worked to organize it all.  It was actually really helpful that I had because it made sorting through everything go much quicker!

In order for maintenance to replace the closet shelving, we had to take everything out of the closet.  So every piece of floor space in the nursery was covered with items except for a small strip of carpet where you could walk from the door to the closet.

Then, come Monday, we were having guests at our house!  We had no choice but to leave a few baby items out in the living room-- mainly the swing & bouncer.

And finally, today we got our stroller & car seat.  And now our living room & dining room look like this!

It's like an I Spy game for baby items!

So if you'll excuse me, I have some more cleaning to do!  And yes... I'm nesting, in case you didn't notice.  :)

The end of an era.

When we first moved to Virginia we learned that some of our neighbors get milk delivered weekly to their house.  How cool is that?  They had a milkman!

I'm not a huge milk drinker, but Josh was all about it, so we tried it out for a little while.  I admit, it was fun to have milk delivered in glass half-gallon bottles to our front door every week.

And the milk was good.  It was tasty.

The night before the milkman arrived, we made sure to have our glass bottles rinsed out and back in the cooler to be reused.  Love that part.

And this was all that was thrown away from each half gallon of milk.  Just the lid!

But for now, we'll have to say goodbye to this wonderful milk.  It's tasty, but we're looking to save money and this is one big way to save.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to have my last glass of this milk!

And so it begins...

We look like we've done a lot more to our nursery than we actually have.  Truth is, we have done 3 things:

1) Got rid of the bed.

2) Spent 15 minutes at a consignment store & bought a crib, mattress, bedding set, and chest of drawers

3) Put the crib together (okay, Josh went solo on this one) because we had an actual baby we were taking care of that needed to sleep in there!

But hey- it looks like we've done a ton!  Truth is, we're not keeping this bedding set.  It came with the crib.  At first we thought we might keep it, but the more I look at it, the less I want to have a pink & brown room.  I was going for more orange, green, blue, yellow, and a touch of pink--- and this bedding set just isn't going to work.  In fact, we're probably not going to get a traditional bedding set at all.

That's not the point of this post.  The point is the problem we're going to have to deal with in about 5 months!  Check out these shots-- all taken within about 30 seconds of each other.  Pay attention to the activities going on with the animals.  In every picture, there is at least 1 animal underneath the crib, or on his/her way out from under the crib.

Look closely-- it's not just that black blur-- look on the left side of the crib at the little bottom going underneath!

Ahh- the cat bolts from under the crib, dashes out of the room, then comes back to taunt Jigsaw, who is still under the crib!

Yes... it will be quite interesting!  It wouldn't be such a huge problem if Jigsaw fit better under the crib. When he walks underneath it, he bumps up the mattress, and then the entire crib comes off the ground when he gets out from under it.

I don't think crib skirts are for this family!