Little Man’s Room

While I’m still kind of in denial about it, Little Man isn’t really a baby anymore. So I have been slowly making changes to his room to better suit him. His room as gone through several changes since he’s been born, back then it was half nursery/half office. Everything from the office half has made its way to other parts of the apartment by now, and Nathan can finally call his room his own. Well, except for the closet. But he can’t even open it anyway. ;)

We were desperately needing a new system for his clothes. We had been using a large black hutch as his dresser/closet and his clothes were in those fabric bins for those cubby shelves you see everywhere. But it was really hard to keep things sorted and folded and organized in those bins – at least for me. Most days his clothes didn’t even make into the bins, but were spread out on the shelf on which the bins stood. It was a mess. So I started looking for a cheap dresser on craigslist. Even craigslist is more expensive here than in other states! Sheesh! So I was really excited when my mom gave me those two dressers she was getting rid of and let me refinish them. The coral dresser found its home, and now I’m going to show you the red dresser now happily living in Little Man’s room!

Here is the view when you walk in:
I love how it turned out. Like, really love it. I totally did a little happy dance when I had finished it at my mom’s house because it turned out even better than I had envisioned. I luuurrrrve it.
Here are a few close ups of the knobs. I just cut some shapes on my Silhouette out of vinyl and used the negative space as stencils to paint the designs.
We sent the hutch back down to my parents to store until we decide what we want to do with it and when we started using the dresser I lost my diaper storage. The hutch had a nice big deep drawer at the bottom that I kept all the diapers, wipes, diaper genie refills, etc. I had a brain lapse and left an open stack of diapers next to the dresser one day and within minutes they were scattered around the room by a certain little someone. ;) So some new (childproof) diaper storage was in order. After going back to Target like 3 or 4 times last week to buy and return different boxes and tubs to find something that worked, I decided on this large storage tub made by Hefty – I don’t remember the size though, I threw the sticker away…and since I can’t just leave it blank, it got some nautical vinyl love!
It’s working really well so far – Nathan hasn’t figured out how to open it and whenever he looks a little too interested in that latch, I quickly distract him with something. He usually leaves it alone though. He doesn’t like taking the time to get his diaper changed… ;)
I still had those nice fabric bins and once the clothes moved out, they started holding his toys. They started out just sitting in a row beneath the window, but I knew that things would easily get out of control, especially since the 4 bins we did have barely held what we already owned (and that would be my fault – one bin was almost overflowing the all the felt stuff I’ve made, hee hee). We needed a little room to grow. I initially wanted an Expedit shelf here (sidenote – IKEA isn’t making Expedit anymore! But don’t panic, they are making something new that is similar, it’s called Kallax.) But after measuring that space under the window, I thought the Expedit/Kallax shelf would be a little too tall. I knew Target sold something like it, so Nathan and I went to check it out (you know, on one of our bajillion trips to Target last week) and I found a Room Essentials model that was the right size! It’s about 6” shorter than the IKEA version AND $20 cheaper! And as you can see, it fits perfectly! Win-Win!
I had meant to purchase 4 more bins, but as I was checking out I didn’t realize the packages came in 1s rather than 2s, so I ended up with 2 more rather than 4 more. But the 6 we have are good for now ;) I had planned to put his little collection of stuffed animals on top of the shelf, but they got in the way of the curtains, so they are here in the corner and that has been working out just fine.
I am loving the changes so far! Eventually I hope to have a little display on top of the dresser or something and I’d really like to get some new pictures/artwork up but I am so happy with where we are in this room right now! Thanks for stopping by!

An Enchanting Entryway

Okay, so maybe ‘enchanting’ is a little much, but I absolutely adore alliterations. (See what I just did there? Yeah, I’m a nerd…)

So one of the dressers that I refinished at my parent’s house went into the entryway of our apartment. I don’t have a good before picture (again) because I ended up sending all the old stuff down to my parent’s house for the yard sale a couple of weeks ago and it didn’t even occur to me to take one. But we had a black 3-shelf bookshelf – with its shelves removed – and a little shoe shelf. You know. For shoes. The bookshelf didn’t have any shelves because I took them out for Little Man’s safety. They weren’t very secure and he could pull them out – right onto his toes. So the bookshelf mainly housed what I called Nathan’s ‘magpie nest’ – his random collection of toys and items that he decided were now his, such as paper towel tubes, small boxes, empty plastic containers, etc. And he loved pulling all the shoes out of the shoe shelf and taking them to random parts of the apartment. Which I thought was kind of gross. And he’d lose our shoes. So the bookshelf and the shoe shelf had to go. And I put my lovely coral dresser there instead. :)

But as you can see – it needs a little something. Besides some organization…
Vinyl. Vinyl was the right answer ;) I used my Silhouette and a herringbone pattern to fill in the lonely spaces. Though the front was looking a little too tribal for me, so I took the drawer front vinyl off yesterday. It’s a little less overwhelming now. Whew! The sides are enough to add the extra punch for me, and I love it!

I also made some drawer liners with this adorable wrapping paper I found several months ago at Target. I didn’t actually have a good reason to get it back then, but I’m so glad I did! I love the way the gold looks with the coral! I covered the top of the wrapping paper with contact paper to protect it and help it to last longer. I’m still deciding what is going into each drawer, but shoes are in the bottom drawer for sure, and it’s so nice to not lose track of our shoes anymore ;)

But the top of the dresser was still needing some love. Yikes!
So I’m proud to introduce you to my second IKEA hack. :) That set of drawers came from IKEA and since they don’t make them in the US anymore, I’d begged and begged my mom to let me have some of hers that she bought when we were living in Germany if she could manage without them. I now have 2. ;) She gave them to me sometime last year (I think) and as you saw in the last picture, this one was nicely labeled and is doing quite a nice job of keeping lots of things corralled and organized. But it was definitely time for a makeover! I painted the whole thing white and flipped the drawers around so the little finger holes we no longer visible. I found some metal label pulls at JoAnn’s and spray painted them gold and drilled little holes into the drawers to fit the brads through. I didn’t think that would be a strong enough hold though, so I added some superglue to the back of the label pulls themselves as well. I love how it turned out!
I got a little spray-happy and sprayed my pencil holders gold too – but now they match! It’s so awesome what a little paint can do! They look so much nicer now!
I also got a cheap $2 plastic dinner plate at Target to use as a drop off spot for keys, cell phones etc. I didn’t have any painter’s tape, so I just used some vinyl scraps to mark off some stripes and sprayed it gold as well. I was getting a little lazy (and naptime was going to be over soon) so I didn’t really measure the stripes as well as I could have, but I still love the way it came out. I was a little worried about how well the paint would stick to the plastic, but I sealed it with a gloss acrylic sealer and it’s holding up well so far.

And there you have it! It makes me so happy every time I come home to my bright, cheery, organized space! Hurray!

Project Week at Nana’s

So John went on High Adventure all last week. Rather than hang out at home by myself with the crazy little man for the whole week, we went down to my parent’s house to hang out and do projects.

And do projects we did! I basically woke up in the morning and worked on projects until I passed out every night. A HUGE shout out to my mom for hanging out with Nathan most of the time so I could get everything I wanted to done! I wanted to be all cool-DIY-blogger and get progress photos of all my projects, but I was so pressed for time and I kept forgetting to pull out my camera. So you’ll see the finished projects, at least. ;) I refinished 2 dressers, built the top hutch part of our media center that I built a couple of months ago, and we put on a yard sale!

My mom got Nathan a super cute pirate themed water table to play with while we worked outside.
His favorite thing was this little red bucket. He carried it around everywhere with him when he was outside.
Ginger apparently thought it was a gourmet dog bowl…
He was so helpful to Nana while I worked, helping bring in the recycling and everything (but where are his pants?! Oh yeah, it was waaaaaay too hot for pants, most days I didn’t think I’d ever feel dry or cool again).
Here is the one picture we got this week of me working – this was near the end of the week, putting on my last few coats of paint!

We made sooooo many trips to Lowe’s that week too. I had my plywood for the hutch cut there and I’m pretty sure the guy hated me by the end of it. At first I felt bad, but then when I got back and realized I had to fix most of the cuts, I didn’t feel so bad anymore…Little Man enjoyed running around Lowe’s with Nana while I got my wood cut.

Selfie on the swing! ;)

On Friday we hit up all the great food deals! It was Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-a, so we dressed up as cows and got free food!! It was pretty awesome. I didn’t think we’d get it completely free, but we DID! We didn’t have to pay anything! Definitely saving our costumes for next year!!!
It was 7/11 day, so we got free slurpees too!
AND it was Krispy Kreme’s 77th birthday, so when you bought 1 dozen, you got a second for $0.77!

Friday night was yard sale prep. I had also taken a day and cleared out some of the things we have been storing in my parent’s basement. We brought everything up to the family room once Nathan was in bed to sort and price. It was quite the operation:

We had the yard sale on Saturday morning and while we didn’t sell all that much, we still had quite a few people stop by and then everything that hadn’t sold by noon was packed into my Dad’s truck and taken to goodwill. So either way, all the extra stuff is GONE! Yay! After the yard sale I put on my last few coats of paint  for my projects and I was finally done! YAY!

So now I will show you what I did. My mom was getting rid of two dressers, so I asked if I could have them. I painted one for Nathan’s room, and one for our entryway. I painted the one for Nathan bright red and chucked the old hardware and painted some wooden knobs with some nautical pictures (we’re going for a nautical theme in his room now) – I just used vinyl as a stencil for the little pictures. I love it. It even turned out cuter than I had imagined it would! It looks awesome in his room. I just wish I had taken a before picture so you could fully appreciate the transformation. It also went super quick because my parents bought a paint sprayer a few weeks ago for staining their fence. Seriously the coolest ever. One coat of paint on here took 20mins tops. Awesomesauce.

The second dresser was my first IKEA hack! I don’t think they make this model anymore, but it was just am unfinished 3 drawer dresser that had been sitting in my mom’s craft supply area for years and she emptied it out when she moved all of her craft stuff to her bookshelves upstairs. I painted this one coral to go with my navy/white living room. Though I had to buy 2 different colors of paint before I found the coral I wanted. The first paint chip tricked me and it ended up looking like the color of Barbie’s convertible. Way too pink. Eek! John would have never let it in the apartment. ;) But the new paint (Animated Coral, by Sherwin Willaims) turned out much more like I had envisioned in my head:

Ignore the flies on the leg there. Ew. I had hoped to somehow invert the drawer fronts so that those little holes/handles weren’t there and I could add cute hardware, but it didn’t quite work out. I’m still pleased with the way it turned out though.

Finally, I finished the hutch half of our media center. This was the biggest project.

I still can’t quite believe how much I got done that week. I think I’m still recovering! We left for home Sunday morning and my Dad followed us home with the hutch and dresser in the truck. John, my Dad and brother Cameron hauled everything up to the apartment and I’ve been working this week on getting everything all set up in their spots in our home. So stay tuned! ;)

Berry Picking!

We went berry picking at Larriland Farms last weekend when my family came up to visit – Jason was in town – and we had so much fun! The weather was beautiful, and we picked sooooo many berries!

We had hoped to pick strawberries, but we had just missed the season, but there were raspberries and blueberries!

They had goats and llamas over at the barn.
There were red raspberries, purple raspberries, and black raspberries. We started with red raspberries (which was probably a good idea, since they were the least thorny). The purple raspberries were a lot bigger, and the black raspberries were really tart!
This is when I make fun of Jason because it looks like he doesn’t have any berries in his box. We routinely fought over the ripest berries on the bushes. I typically lost…he’s bigger and stronger than me… ;)
Jennifer was great and watched Little Man for us while we picked.
He really loves the camera.
I tried to get him to taste a raspberry – he loves them – but totally spit this one out for some reason!
He found some excellent sticks to play with while he waited for us to finish.

We came away with about 5-6lbs of berries (I think, it’s been a whole week now, so I don’t actually remember…)! We picked blueberries too, but I don’t think we have any pictures of that. But what I love about Larriland farms is their abundance of fruit for picking. There’s no scrounging around for good berries, they are everywhere! We ate a bunch with waffles the next day and the rest are in the freezer. I see milkshakes, popsicles, and hot raspberry sauce in our future!! :)

14 Months!!

*Walking like a champ! He still walks with his hands up for balance most of the time, but can put them down periodically and carry larger items as he walks (like empty diaper boxes). Also thinks he can walk backward, but that usually ends up in a tumble. Whenever he does that, he takes these itty bitty steps. It’s quite hilarious.

*While he still loves to pull all of his books off of his bookshelf, he has started to pause mid-destruction and pick a book, sit down, and flip through the pages. It’s crazy adorable. Especially since the book is usually upside-down. Then once he’s done, he pulls more books off until he finds the next one he wants to ‘read’. Sometimes he will bring his book over to wherever I am sitting and want to sit on my lap to look at his book. It’s so sweet. Then about 10 seconds later he pops back up to find something else.

*My most commonly uttered phrase during the day is “Be careful!”. Closely followed by “Slow down!” and “Watch where you’re going!”.

*It is becoming quite impossible to get him to hold still during a diaper change. I’ve learned the best solution is to give him a book. Otherwise he’s trying to grab the wipes, the piece of fuzz on the floor that’s just out of arm’s reach, the dirty diaper (AH!!!), the clean diaper, you name it. 

*LOVES to “help” with the laundry. I’ve started folding clothes on the couch in the living room so that I can do it while Nathan is awake and I can keep an eye on him. He helps me by taking all the clothes off the couch and throwing them on the floor. Then when the mood strikes him, he puts a few items back on the couch for me to fold.

*As Uncle Jason puts it, Little Man is a ‘heavy drinker’. ;) He loves to drink! I have to wait until he has eaten at least half of his meal before giving him his sippy cup, otherwise he’ll drink himself full, rather than eat his food. Then he’s starving 30 minutes later…

*I have tricked him into wearing his bibs again. His clothes thank me. I spent a few days strapping it in underneath the highchair straps (which meant the highchair straps got disgusting – oh well) and so he thought he couldn’t take it off any more. Then after about a week I went back to putting it on him over the highchair straps and he doesn’t really mess with it anymore. Victory for Mom!

*A new favorite activity is pulling all the couch pillows onto the floor and flopping all over them. It’s so funny to watch, since he usually misses the pillows and ends up rolling around all over the floor. He squeals when he does this and it always makes me laugh. I can also get him to cuddle with a stuffed animal by holding it to my face and saying ‘awww’ and giving it to him. He then holds it to his face and flops to the floor.

*He is starting to mimic us when he can. If you stick your tongue out, he will usually do it too. My favorite is putting my arms up in the air in a victory pose and saying “Yay!”. It’s so cute when he does it (without the ‘yay!’ though).

*We’ve switched to a big boy toothbrush – we’d been using a little silicone finger glove with bristles, and he’d bite us – and he hates the new one. HATES IT.

*We are communicating on a very basic level, which is pretty exciting. Still can’t get him to use baby signs, but whenever I ask him if he’s ready to eat, he runs over to the kitchen; he seems to understand the phrase ‘diaper change’ (he then runs away giggling). When he wants something he points his hand toward whatever it is he wants and when I want him to give me whatever he is holding, I can hold my hand out to him and say “Can I have that please?”, and he usually gives it to me. When we are getting ready to leave the apartment I can ask him if he’s ready to go and he usually grabs his shoes (if he can find them) and heads for the door. Pretty cool stuff.

*Still loves berries. Does not like ground beef. He’s really good about trying new things though. He had his first piece of pizza this week. (What?! We are at Nana’s). Loved it. How he managed to down an entire slice 2 hours after lunch still baffles me. He’s kind of a bottomless pit. 

*Loves playing the piano. He has a little tikes one that he got for his birthday, and while he likes it fine, how can you compete with all those extra notes?! We’ve taken to just leaving the cover open all day (we started that after he pinched his fingers trying to open it) and he goes back several times during the day to play music for us. It’s lovely. ;) Ours is also electronic, which comes with lots of buttons. Toddler heaven.

*He started clapping this month! He doesn’t do it very often and certainly won’t do it on demand, but when he’s really happy, he will clap. He also waves to people every once in a while.

*He just cracks us up with his fun personality! We just love you little man!