O Christmas Tree

Last week I saw this cute idea for making a felt Christmas tree that toddlers could decorate and un-decorate themselves, in hopes of keeping them away from the real tree. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.johnnyinadress.com/2011/12/play-felt-tree-ornaments.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JohnnyInADress+%28Johnny+In+A+Dress%29

For less than $10 in felt and a slightly sore wrist from cutting all afternoon, we have some great trees! We decided to make 3 small trees rather than one big one. We used pinking shears to give the edges some flair, and we used cookie cutters as templates for cutting out the ornaments (just trace with a pencil and cut). We ended up attaching them to the wall with masking tape. Zoey was trying to rip them down as fast as my mom could get them up.

May-May adjusting the trees.

Hat-Dad helped cut ornaments out of felt.

Abby loved decorating the trees...

...while Zoey loved un-decorating them.

All cute and decorated.

This was the scene a few minutes later.


I'm so excited about this as an easy craft idea for all seasons and holidays - imagine a giant Easter egg, or Jack-o-Lantern, or tree, or whatever! Plus I want to make more ornaments - I have grand ideas of getting out my hot glue gun and putting together snowmen and candy canes and such. Plus presents to put under the tree like the blogger showed in her pictures. Guess I know what I'll be doing during nap time this week!

Home Decor update: Living Room

5 months after moving to our new house, we finally have a living room sofa! We are eternally grateful to our "benefactor" (a longtime friend of the family) who helped us to purchase the sofa. It is so great to have someplace to sit besides the one leather chair, and there's plenty of room for all of us to cuddle. Of course, we want to protect it and keep it looking nice for many years, so we may end up draping it in drop cloths until the kids are at least 10 years old! :)

View of the whole sofa


The "button" detail on the arm is pretty cool


We love the curved end of the sofa.


Having fun playing


It feels really nice that the house is starting to come together...

Home Decor: Nursery

We finally got the nursery decor pretty much done! A big thank you goes out to GrandMary for finding and purchasing the curtains, floor cushions and owl picture, and to both GM and Grandpa Gene for coming over to watch the babies while we installed the curtains and hung pictures. It's next to impossible to do projects like that if we don't have at least one extra adult in the house.

But first, the old bedroom decor - the former owners used it as the master since it's so big, but it doesn't have an attached bath or screen porch like our bedroom does.

View from doorway toward windows. Yes, that is grasscloth wallpaper and thick musty carpet.


View from bed toward closet. Jason spent 12 hours ripping up the carpet in this room and the hallway. It was worth it to find hardwood floors underneath!


And now the new room! View from doorway, focused more on right half of room. It's so wonderful to have so much room for them to play! We painted it a green that was very similar to their old nursery, so that it would match the items we already had. The dresser is my (and my mom's) old dresser from childhood, which Grandpa Steele stripped of white paint and re-stained. My mom painted the knobs. The monkey paintings were done by Jason's Aunt Crystal. The little green toy box is from Target. The foam squares can be gotten just about anywhere - I got mine on Craigslist. The curtains are JCPenney - they're Eclipse blackout curtains, and they make the room nice and dark! The roller shades are cheapo ones from Lowe's - they already have rips in them and we're going to need to replace them with something sturdier.


Lucas in the cuddle corner. The giant animals and the lime green floor pillow were from Homegoods. The Ugly Dolls were from Uncle Dane. The babies love flopping on the pillows. We do a lot of bedtime reading there in the evenings.


The crib end of the room. The cribs are from IKEA and will convert into toddler beds when we're ready for that. The flowers on either side of the owl print are also from IKEA and are actually lights - we just removed the light portions b/c it wasn't safe to leave the long cords plugged in.


Close-up of the purple rug in front of the changing table. I got the pink and purple rugs from Homegoods - they are actually bath mats, which is great b/c they have the non-slip backing and they're washable.


View from crib side of room to the door. I'm realizing these walls are kind of plain. But it's not really safe to hang anything above the changing table because of the way the babies grab things. I do have a few more monkey-themed prints and little mirrors from IKEA that I could hang above the bookshelf. The changing table was a gift from our friends Audrey & Andrew, and the bookshelf and chair were mine from childhood.


View of closed closet doors. I've been thinking about painting the bookshelf in my spare time (ha!) but can't decide what to do with it. Maybe stripes or a stencil? Maybe I could repaint the chair too. Hmm...


Straight-on view of closet. Eventually I want to install a 2nd hanging bar below the first, and get more bins to keep stuff in. But right now all they'd do is pull everything apart anyway so it's all up out of reach.


View while standing inside closet, at far end. (Entrance to attic is above my head. This is not convenient when we have workmen who need access and babies who need naps.)


So that's the nursery. We're hoping/planning to keep them in the same room as long as possible so that we can keep the other 2 bedrooms free for guest room and office.

Home decor update

Our friends Grace and Benson told us about a great clear plastic banister guard. We got it from amazon - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003TXW576


So much more attractive!


All we had to do to install it was punch holes and use zip ties to secure it to the railing


From certain angles you have a cool "underwater aquarium" view. Plus the babies love to smush their faces up against it, which is pretty funny.


Adorable boy

Home decor: Dining room

This week's room is the dining area. We haven't done much to it besides give it the same paint that the rest of the living room got. We'll probably get around to hanging pictures sometime next year...

View from living room. The dining room also serves as a parking place for the babies' riding toys and a place for their toy kitchen.


View from kitchen. Notice the 2 folding chairs - we have to sit on folding chairs because the sturdy chairs that go with the table are being used by the babies' space saver high chairs. We'd like to find some inexpensive yet sturdy chairs to put their high chairs on so we can have the real chairs back to sit on in the dining room. Of course, we'd eventually like to get a more modern dining room table - maybe something rectangular in a darker brown.


The stained glass light fixture. Notice the dragonflies? We'd like to replace it with something a bit more modern at some point - maybe something from IKEA.


So that's it! Not too exciting, but it's great to have a place to eat outside of the kitchen, since the kitchen is taken up completely by high chairs (more on that next time).

Home Decor, part2: Master Bedroom

Ok, the 2nd room on our tour is the master bedroom. We took the smaller of the two upstairs bedrooms because it had an attached bath and we needed to use the bigger bedroom for the nursery. You'll notice we don't have any pictures hung up yet. We're just glad we finally got things unpacked and reasonably organized.

This was the bedroom before we moved in. It was used as a den, rather than a bedroom.


View from hallway into bedroom. We chose a pretty neutral paint color - some sort of soft taupe. Notice the sliding glass doors leading to the screened porch (yay!) and the pack n' play that is used to separate the babies when needed for naptime and bedtime (boo - maybe someday we can get rid of the PNP and put a bench at the end of the bed or something). Having the porch means that the bedroom is rather dim, but it is totally worth it to have a screened porch right off of our bedroom. Someday maybe we'll be able to drink our morning coffee out there...


Because of the way the bedroom is configured, with one wall being all closet and another wall having sliding glass doors, the only spot for Jason's dresser was in one of the closets.


Unfortunately, this means that Jason and I have to share a closet for our hanging clothes. "Thankfully," once I moved all the clothes that don't fit me to a downstairs closet, there was plenty of room for Jason's clothes (sigh). We even have to share a shoe rack - the horror!


View from bed toward dresser and door to bathroom. The dresser isn't centered on the wall because of the way the door to the hall (at left) opens into the room. It's a tight fit when the door is open.


View from doorway to sliding glass doors that open to screened porch. There used to be ugly vertical blinds over these doors. We either want to leave them uncovered, or get some curtains that can be pulled back when we don't need to cover the windows. There are enough trees in our yard that I don't think we need to worry about people seeing in the windows, but I'm thinking it might get cold in the winter with all that exposed glass. Plus it's hard to get babies to sleep in there when the room is bright.


You'll have to wait awhile to see pictures of the master bath, since it's going to have its "before" look for quite awhile. We want to wait to paint and decorate it until we have the funds & time to update the fixtures. Right now it's a mix of green 70s tile, tan sponge painted walls, and just plain ugly medicine cabinet and vanity.

Home decor, part 1: Living Room

I thought I'd intersperse the baby blog posts with some updates about how we are settling in to our new home. I'll feature a different room for each post and show you before and after pictures, and talk about what still needs to be done. Enjoy!

The living room before we moved in. It's hard to tell, but the walls were painted a pale peach to go with the sofa. In front of the sofa there was a teal and peach rug with a glass coffee table on top.

 

 

Our living room after the paint job. We are thrilled with the color - it's Soft Blue from Porter Paints, and the ceiling and trim are Velvet White. (I took these pictures in the evening so please excuse the shadows)The rug came in a set of 3 from Bed Bath & Beyond (there's also a long hallway runner and a small doormat), the leather chair is from IKEA, and the leather storage ottoman is from Target. We want to get a brown microfiber sectional sofa - something kid and pet friendly in a streamlined, modern style.


And then there's the tent & tunnel complex. There are actually a total of 2 tents and 4 tunnels, plus a round connector piece for the tunnels. The babies love chasing each other through the tunnels and playing peek-a-boo in the tent.


View from top of stairs down to entry. Note the extra stylish baby gates tied onto the railings. The metal rails are too far apart and we don't want anyone getting stuck. Anyone have a more fashionable yet inexpensive alternative??


View of living room from dining room. Love the high ceilings!


Our old couch was pretty worn out and not the style/color we wanted for our new living room. So it will inhabit the downstairs family room eventually. But for now we're using the seat cushions as play pillows for the babies until we get a new sofa. They love rolling around on them, and they make a good napping area for grown-ups in a pinch.


We're trying to incorporate lots of brushed nickel accents, such as switchplates and outlet covers. Check out this cool dimmer switch!


Ok, here's one pic of the babies. This table and chairs set is from my childhood - my parents save everything. The babies like to sit at the table but aren't quite tall enough to really make it work well yet.