Thursday, June 12, 2014

Need More? Now You Can Stalk Us on Instagram

I'm late to the party, I know, but I am finally on the Instagram train. What I find great about it is I don't have to bombard all my Facebook friends with seven million photos of my kids when I can instead bombard all the Instagram strangers who WANT to see pictures from my life if they choose to follow me.

Anyway, if you are curious about our visual life, please check it out! I can promise you endless photos of cute and quirky kids, and the occasional random philosophical thought. But less of the latter. I'm too busy parenting.

Just click here and then click the "Follow" button!

Instagram

Nursery Inspiration

Like my toddler's room, my newborn's nursery was put together based on a lot of ideas I consolidated over time. Now that my daughter is here, and her gender is public knowledge, I can now share the results of the nursery. But first - the inspiration!

With Bugga, we were also in a rental (and very small) house. I knew we'd likely move shortly after she was born so I decorated one side of our guest room using some basic details. We chose to be surprised on the boy/girl topic, so I went with a green and white beach-y theme with surfing monkeys (of course) and various sea creatures.

Since we knew Bella would be a girl, somehow I started heading down the path of a very girlie design. If anyone knows me at all, you know that this isn't typically my style, but I just couldn't help being drawn to it. I'm not sure if it's because I was limited with the first nursery or not.

So here is where I started:

Color Pallette:

I was really gravitating toward white and a metallic/mirrored silver.  And perhaps a pop of something else but I wasn't sure right away. I'm going to toss out the idea of pink, but I doubt I'll go that stereotypical.


 





Overall Look & Feel:

Classic. Warm. Feminine. I just love all of these examples and really wanted to go in this direction.





Wall Design:

I almost went with more stripes like I ended up doing in Bugga's room. I swear, stripes call to me. You should see my closet.



Wall Decor / Curtains:

I love the Baroque style of the frames and mirror.
I would love to add a whimsical "installation"-style detail like a group of butterflies.
A custom-made mobile over the crib would be adorable.
I love the style and color of this mirror.

I like the pop of color in the curtains, but I also like the pattern on the wall as an accent.

I always seem to sing this to my daughter...so sweet!

Girl power! And a little Shakespeare.

Furniture / Accessories:

The new nursery will use the same crib I had in Bugga's room, and I will order another white dresser. I'll also move the glider from Bugga's room to the nursery and probably add a bookshelf to display little details and store books and toys.
These are super sweet and would be a nice detail in a nursery.
I guess basically I'm going for a classic feel for the room and I am surprised how I excited I am to go this route. The room itself has a tan carpet and off-white walls, so the all-white look won't be happening, and my glider (which I am not recovering) is a tan color.

Again, I am limited with what I can order in Canada, and I hope to make a lot of the little details myself.

Click here to see how everything turned out!

Friday, June 6, 2014

And just like that...

We are moving back to Texas! After what has been one of the longest winters on record (at least according to all the Calgarians I keep talking to) we are leaving just as it finally stops snowing...and then just in time for the sticky triple-digits of Houston.

Seriously - I JUST posted my toddler's room reveal and WHAM I have to take it all down. And I haven't even shown you what I did with my newborn's nursery yet! I'm planning to just recreate the same designs in the new house so I will do an update post as well. I will need to reorder a lot of the decals since they weren't reusable (ugh, what a waste!) but they are so much easier than painting. I say they were a waste because I know for a fact there are reusable decals available (I found some for the girls' bathroom) even though they look great, but they are hard to find.

Anyway, so we are currently trying to survive between homes. We had a disastrous week last week in a hotel in Calgary as our house was packed and cleaned, and now we are in corporate housing until our furniture gets to town. I say disastrous because as much as we were SO very fortunate to stay in a two-bedroom suite with a toddler and a baby, NOBODY slept all week, naps, nights, whatever. The baby was up every 2 hours, the toddler decided she couldn't stay in her bed even though we set everything up PERFECTLY...and I was a ZOMBIE!

The crazy thing is I had been dreading our four-hour flight down (Bella's first flight) and made massive preparations as far as entertainment for Bugga, packing perfectly, etc. and it ended up being the easiest flight in the history of parenting. At least for this family.

And things have only improved since we landed. Our corporate housing apartment complex has three bedrooms (win), a playground (win), and a splash pad (super win). And Bella is just coming out of a growth spurt which means she's slept 8 plus hours the past few nights, allowing me to gain a little of my sanity back.

I think the spurt's over though so tonight could be back to 2 feeds a night which isn't awesome but tolerable...and soon we get to start solids so that might improve things as well.

Anyway, time to get back into the swing of things here - YEE-HAW! Yeah.