Nursery: Organization & Cleaning- ORC Week 4

We've been working hard on our nursery the past few weeks! To see all the progress check out week one, week 2, and last week for all the changes and updates. It's been a lot of fun to see all the different varieties of work happening in all the other guest's different rooms! This challenge has definitely kept me motivated to see the project through to the end.

To-Do & Shopping List:

• Lighter paint color
• Better curtains (but with black out for more baby sleeps) Just need to hang up.
• Rug
• Paint crib
• Rest of the furniture r
• Organization and storage options
• Changing station assembled
• Lamps/lighting
• Assemble crib 
• Wall art
• Organize closet
• Accessories
• Name art
• Chair
• Pouf/footstool- hoping for this one from my registry!
• Smaller desk- likely this one from IKEA because we have a $50.00 gift card and it will adjust for when the baby grows up a bit and needs a little coloring desk or something. 
• NEW Additions: 
• Dresser
• Shelves/Storage above desk for office supplies
• Bigger bookcase???
• More baskets for under changing table

We are definitely making some serious progress! For most of the wall art I did a little shopping around our house and in the garage where I've got some of my extra art stored for now. I did this to save some cash and also to get more items out of my storage area.

So ready for some progress? Let's start right when we look in through the door. One of the first things you see is the new desk area:

Making A Rental Feel Like Home: Living Room

As you all know, we moved to Denver in June of 2017 and started renting our 1,000 sq ft 2 bedroom 1 bathroom home just 15 minutes from downtown Denver. You can check out more of our entire process here from when we first moved to the area and picked a home.

Now, since then, we've been fortunate enough to be able to work on different elements of the home to make it more "homey" and somewhere we feel like we could be awhile. We already talked about the kitchen and dining area, the master bedroom and lone bathroom, and if you've been following along with the blog we are currently working on converting the second bedroom that was once the guest room and office to the nursery (with tiny corner office area!) through the One Room Challenge. So far it's going well! Check out the week one progress , week two, and week three!

The only place we haven't talked about much is the living room space. Here is a reminder of what it looked like when we walked through it the first time last May:

A pretty great space with room for larger sized furniture and to have a bunch of people over. Something that we definitely enjoy being able to do!

Let's talk about what we did to take this peanut butter living room and transform it into something more cozy and that reflected our style. Thank goodness for our amazing landlord who has a lot of faith and trust in us!

Nursery: Furniture & Progress- ORC Week 3

We had an incredible time over the weekend finding out the gender of our little human on their way to join us in this world (we're down to about 16 weeks! Which is still awhile... but... ya know.) and in case you missed it check it out from Monday's post here! It was so special and his brother made this awesome art piece for him to keep forever.

Knowing the gender definitely has helped us solidify our ideas for what we want to do for our little guy's nursery. Ready for week three of the One Room Challenge?

On last week's post we talked about some of the things that we needed to do to get this room "done." Here's a reminder of the list:

To-Do & Shopping List:

• Lighter paint color
• Better curtains (but with black out for more baby sleeps)
• Rug
• Paint crib
• Rest of the furniture
• Organization and storage options
• Changing station assembled
• Lamps/lighting
• Assemble crib 
• Wall art
• Organize closet
• Accessories
• Name art
• Chair
• Pouf/footstool- hoping for this one from my registry!
• Smaller desk- likely this one from IKEA because we have a $50.00 gift card and it will adjust for when the baby grows up a bit and needs a little coloring desk or something. 

Backyard Gender Reveal Party

We have finally discovered the gender of our baby! It was a really long 22 weeks of not knowing what was going on up in there. We were able to put our Gender Reveal Party on my birthday weekend which was kind of a fun combination! We had a lot of wonderful friends and family that joined us for the weekend!

Since it was a small get together, about 20 people, we decided to keep the festivities small and pretty tame. We used our chalkboard collection and some dollar store tassel banners to decorate. Otherwise, the reveal image was the star of the show! I'll show you that later in this post. It was really awesome.

I am notorious amongst my students for my absolutely love of all things Little Mermaid and Brennan is well known for loving his Dallas Cowboy football team. So we decided to have our party inspired by that. As folks came in for the party we asked them to cast their vote for the gender using paint chips and throwing them in the basket.

Total count for Cowboy: 17. Mermaid: 12.

28 Facts About Me On My 28th Birthday

Oh man, my 28th birthday is today! Friday the 13th. Whatwhat! I was also born on Friday the 13th, which was also Good Friday that year. Ha. I always think that is a fun fact about me. Especially when I tell my freshmen students, they get a little nervous. A good spot to have them in!

Just kidding!

Now that it is basically my birthday, here are 28 random factoids about me you may not know:

Nursery & One Room Challenge Week 2 Progress

As you saw last week, we have joined in on the One Room Challenge Spring 2018! Ready for week 2?

It was in pretty rough shape last week when we got started. Here's a reminder: 

Very embarrassing. Very bad. Terrible awful.

Nursery & The One Room Challenge

I'm linking up to the Spring One Room Challenge 2018 with one of my best blogging friends Sam at Away She Went Blog. She always inspires me to do the things so, here we go. What better reason, right?

We've decided to turn our second bedroom from a guest room/office into a nursery for the baby when it gets here. We luckily have a great landlord who lets us customize our space and, since we're staying for sure another year, we figure we may as well make baby comfy in the meantime. Right now, it is a hot filthy mess. Luckily we've got a few months left to get it all together.

Full disclosure: The following photos may trigger you into organizing your entire house. If this mood strikes you please let me know in the comments below and you can use that passion on this room! just kidding of course... but... here is a picture of the room as it is currently:

Our DIY Wedding: Invitation Suite on a Budget

 

We are so excited to be getting married! One of the first pieces to that process was how we planned to communicate to our families our pending nuptials and information that they needed to have to plan or determine if they would be able to travel to be a part of it.  So. Step one in our DIY budget wedding planning?

Selecting a Wedding Suite on a Budget! 

What to look for, what you need, and how to get it in your budget.

5 Helpful Podcasts for New Moms

Becoming a mom has been completely unexpected for me. We were engaged in August and I was in the throes of planning our dream wedding when- SURPRISE - we found we were pregnant in early December. We originally were supposed to get married this June but decided to postpone.

I'm a person that likes to do research and gather as much information as possible about things that are going on so I've been listening to a lot of great parenting podcasts and mom podcasts. It's been a huge help! It makes me feel less alone and more excited about this new adventure.