Nursery Tour

The time has FINALLY come. Now that Jude is over a year old, I decided it was about time to take some pictures of his room and post them :) I really love the nursery! I think it turned out to be a calm, serene, and really classic baby's room. It also ended up being pretty gender neutral, in my opinion. It does have a lot of blue, but it's such a light, soft blue that I think it would work for a girl, too. All that to say, if we ever have another girl, I might just add some girlie touches and leave the nursery as is. (Wouldn't that make my husband happy?! HA!)

By the way, I really didn't want to use the flash in these pictures, but it was hard (for me) to get the camera settings just right. So some of the pictures have a little bit of a funny hue to them. You get the idea, though :)

Here is the view of the room when you first walk through the door. We originally didn't do the stripes on the wall, but after living with the room without the stripes for a few months, I just felt like it needed something. So we took a little of the leftover wall color, mixed it with some cream paint, and did the stripes just on that one wall. I LOVE the way it turned out, and it just really made the room feel more "finished" to me.I also didn't originally have a rug in the room, but I thought it needed a little more color since the bedding was so muted and the walls were neutral. I knew I wanted a very muted rug, too, and I was having a hard time finding one locally. So, I looked on Overstock.com and found this one. I was SO nervous about ordering a rug online since I couldn't really tell the true colors on the computer screen, but I took a risk and just did it. I ended up being really happy with the rug. Again, I think it was just a good finishing touch for the room. Another thing that we did that ended up being somewhat of a waste of time was painting the ceiling blue. We picked a very pale blue from the bedding, and it ended up being so light that you really can't even tell it's blue. If the room had white crown molding, I think the blue would be more noticeable. I still love the blue ceiling in theory, but I think we probably could have skipped this step ;)This is a view of the other side of the room with Jude's changing table. I love that all of our upstairs rooms have window seats. I decided not to go to the expense of having window seat cushions made for the nursery window since a nursery is a somewhat temporary room. I decided to just add some pillows and call it a day :) This rocking chair was my great grandmother's, and I think that's really special. I found the lampshade at a baby boutique, and it matches the fabric I used for Jude's bedding exactly. I was so excited to find that! Speaking of the bedding, I LOVE it. I'm a huge toile fan, and I don't think I'll ever get tired of it no matter how over used it is. Haha! My grandmother made the bedding for me, and she did a great job! One of my favorite things in Jude's room, and the thing I get the most compliments on by far, is that painting over his bed. My dear friend Ashley did it for me, and I just love it so much. I told her I wanted this verse and I sent her fabric samples, and she did a great job. (The frame is chipped -- I've been meaning to touch that up.) I love that this verse hangs over his bed. My biggest prayer for Jude is that he will be a servant of Jesus Christ. There is nothing I want more for my children.

I also framed Jude's birth announcement and hung it in his room. It worked out so well that it matches his room perfectly! I could not be happier with how the nursery turned out. I love sweet, traditional, serene children's rooms, and I think this nursery is all of those things :)

Bed Transition and a Big Girl Room

I've mentioned a time or two that we bought a big girl bed for Aubrey recently and moved her from her crib into the new bed. I'm so happy and relieved to report that the transition has been basically perfect. For the record, I was pretty petrified to make this change. Aubrey slept great in her crib, and she was contained for naptime, which was so important to me. Even if she chooses not to sleep, she still has to stay in her room for a certain amount of time, and I was so worried that would become a major ordeal when we moved her into a bed that she could get out of.

After I bought her big girl bed, we explained to her that she was going to be sleeping in a new bed. She was actually SO EXCITED about this! She literally could not wait for us to get her bed set up. It didn't hurt that I got her some "pink covers" (sheets) for her new bed. Anything involving pink is just awesome as far as Aubrey is concerned! :) Her bed is a full size bed, and we decided not to do any bed rails. One of my favorite baby/toddler books written by a pediatrician actually doesn't recommend bed rails, and I think a bed looks better without rails (obviously), so we decided to just see how it went without any. If we felt like we needed them, we would have just gotten some after we realized they were going to be a necessity. I'm happy to report that Aubrey has only fallen out of the bed once, and she was totally fine. It did scare her, but she wasn't hurt. It was in the middle of the night, and it about scared the daylights out of David and me when we heard a crash and a scream over the monitor. Like I said though, she was fine, and she wanted to get right back in her bed and go back to sleep. It hasn't happened again since. We just make sure there isn't anything hard that would hurt her around the bed if she did happen to fall out. She has carpet in her room, so that helps too.

We also decided that we weren't going to make a rule that she had to stay in her bed. Because she was older when we moved her, we felt like she was old enough to make the decision about whether or not she should get out of bed. If she chooses to play and skip her nap, that's fine, but she will be tired later, and maybe she will know not to skip it the next day. Also, since we don't have a video monitor, it would have been hard to enforce this rule because we wouldn't really have any way of knowing if she was out of her bed unless we went into her room. This was what we decided would work for Aubrey, but I know every family and child is different, and for some kids, I think it probably would work best to have a "no getting out of bed" rule. Anyway, so far this hasn't been an issue, because Aubrey NEVER gets out of bed unless we go into her room and tell her she can get out. I was shocked by this. I thought she would be out of her bed the moment we shut her door. Even when she wakes up in the morning or after nap, she just calls for me to come get her, and as soon as I open her door, she jumps out of bed. It's so funny! I wouldn't mind if she got up in the mornings and just played quietly in her room for a while, but I'm not going to put that idea into her head! The way it is now is working out fine, so I'm going to leave well enough alone! I am so relieved that this transition went so well. I really had prepared myself for no sleep for days, and I half expected her to drop her nap completely. She does skip her nap probably once or twice a week, but she did that while she was still in her crib. As long as she is having quiet rest time in her room, it doesn't really matter to me whether she sleeps or not. She isn't all that dependant on her nap anymore now that she's older, and she can skip it and still be in a good mood that evening.

It's been fun to be able to start thinking about finishing Aubrey's room now that we have her big girl bed. I got a white matelasse coverlet for her bed, and now I just need to have some Euro shams made. I would like to do some kind of canopy over her bed, but I don't know how that will work with the way her ceiling is sloped. I'm using this blue floral fabric in her room, and I got this pink fabric to go with it.I LOVE the pink fabric. I was originally going to use it to make window seat cushions, but then I thought I might want to use it in a way that would be seen more. So, I can't decide.

I also got this mirror for her room recently, and I think it looks perfect over her dresser. I still need to get a nightstand for her, and I'm planning on painting it blue to match her fabric and distressing it. We also still have to do the moulding boxes on the walls below the chair rail, and THEN I think we should be about finished with Aubrey's big girl room! I can't wait for it to all come together! :)

Jude's First Birthday: Part 1

*I decided to do two birthday posts so that one post doesn't contain 200 pictures. Ha! This one will just have pictures of the party decorations, and the next one will be pictures from the actual party.*

Jude's first birthday party on Saturday was such a success! I decided a while back to go with a barnyard animals theme for the party just to give me a jumping off point. I didn't go crazy with the "theme", but it was helpful in deciding on the menu and the decorations. Two of the main reasons that I chose to go with the theme I did was because Jude already had a cow costume that he could wear for the picture on the invitation, and because I thought going with a barnyard theme would give me a really good excuse to keep things ultra casual. Ha! So, first of all, here is Jude's invitation (with our address erased, of course):

I was SO happy with the way it turned out. I thought it was super cute! I ordered it off Etsy from Dimple Prints. They were great to work with, and I would definitely use them again. We printed the invitations at Fed Ex so that they would be on a thicker, post card type material.

I also ordered cupcake toppers from the same Etsy seller. They were super cute, too, and there were TONS of choices. The seller literally emailed me 23 pages of customized cupcake toppers, so I had a hard time choosing which ones to print out to use! :) They were easy to put together, and I think they really made plain ole cupcakes a little more special. And speaking of the cupcakes, I made them myself. I have kind of gotten duds as far as cake and cupcakes go for both of Aubrey's parties, so I decided to attempt to make Jude's myself. I figured they would be edible at the least, and we'd save a lot of money. I made chocolate and vanilla cupcakes, and I bought frosting already made. I used the Wilton brand that is just white, and I used food coloring to get the frosting the colors I wanted. I then just piped the frosting on, and even though I have no clue what I'm doing when it comes to piping frosting, I was satisfied with the way they turned out. They didn't look professional by any means, but I think they were just as cute as the ones I paid for last time! :)I really wanted to make a birthday banner for Jude just like I did for Aubrey's first birthday. I picked scrapbook paper that would coordinate with this party, but that was neutral enough to use for Jude's future parties too. I think making these banners is so fun and easy, and they're kind of sentimental since I make them for their first birthdays. I use bulletin board letters to spell out Happy Birthday.As far as decorations for the party, I kept it pretty simple. I really wanted balloons and sunflowers to go with the barnyard theme, but we ran out of time to go get them. (Plus, I have no clue if sunflowers are even in season? We are NOT plant people around here. Ha!) I used mason jars for the utensils:And I used some checked fabric for the table. I really wanted to have card tables set up outside on the deck with gingham table clothes and mason jars with sunflowers, but it was just TOO hot.

We printed out Jude's monthly pictures (minus the two month picture that we never took and the twelve month picture that we took that day and didn't have time to print). I thought they were super cute displayed on the mirror in the dining room. We had BBQ for dinner. I thought that was appropriate with our theme. My dad made some awesome pulled pork, and I made potato salad and a watermelon salad and we had some veggies and dip. Super simple and casual! :)

I thought it made it so fun to have a little theme to work with. Typically, I'm not a very "theme-y" person. (No themed nurseries, etc.) However, I thought it was fun and cute for a young child's birthday. Like I said, I kept it pretty simple and didn't go all out with the theme. I read online about some people who had barnyard birthday parties and hired petting zoos to come out to their houses. Whoa. That's hardcore. Haha!

The party was small and low-key, but it was just what I wanted for Jude's first birthday party. He was surrounded by the people who love him the most, and I was just overwhelmed with gratitude that we were given such a blessing in our little Jude.

Next, I'll post pictures from the actual party!

Projects Big & Projects Small

I've mentioned that we've done several projects around the house, and this one goes pretty far back. We actually started this project when I was pregnant with Jude and moved Aubrey to her new room. It should have been a relatively "small" project, but it turned into a rather "big" project. I wanted a dresser for Aubrey's room, and I didn't care what it looked like, because I was going to paint it and distress it anyway. I found this dresser at Goodwill for $40 and it was perfect. We didn't use the mirror.

We had a lot of white paint left over from Aubrey's room that we used below her chair rail, and we decided to just use that since we already had it. It turned out to be a big mistake, because it was semi-gloss paint, which doesn't work great for distressing. We didn't really think about that at the time, though, so we painted the whole dresser with that paint. After the paint was dry, I went to work distressing it. I just used some sandpaper and did it by hand. I wasn't real happy with the way it was turning out, because sanding was rubbing the shiny finish off where I was distressing, so the dresser was turning out to be a mixture of dull and shiny -- not the look I was going for. I was also working on this little project outside in our garage in July while 9 months pregnant. Oh, and I was SUPER swollen. Not the best combo. So, the dresser kind of got put on the back burner, and when Jude was born a few weeks later, it was forgotten. It literally sat unfinished in our garage for months, and we couldn't even park our cars in there because of the dresser. Months later, we were ready to use our garage for it's intended purpose, and I finally went to work on the dresser again. I thought that the only thing we were going to be able to do to salvage the dresser was to completely sand the shiny paint off and start over with matte paint. So, David got out his electric sander and went to work on it to prepare it for another coat of paint. However, the more he sanded, the more it was growing on me. At that point, I was kind of just ready to be DONE with it, so, after David got all the shiny-ness sanded off, I decided to just go with it. It's now heavily distressed, and I was really planning to do more of a light distressing, but I really do like the way it turned out. I ended up putting a light coat of tea stain on the whole thing, and we replaced all of the hardware. Once we were done, I was happy with the finished product! I know it's not everyone's taste, but Aubrey's room is very "shabby chic," so it works! :) The interesting part was getting the dresser upstairs. David was convinced that it was going to take 4 or 5 grown men to get it up (it's heavy and awkward), but I was impatient to get it up to Aubrey's room. I convinced David to try to get it up the stairs with just me one morning, and we did it! I'm sure it was a hilarious sight to see, but I was pretty proud of myself once it was safely upstairs. Haha!

Aubrey's room is still a work in progress, but I'm happy to be one step closer to getting it done and turning it into a sweet "big girl room."I'm afraid the next project in her room is going to be getting her into a big girl bed!! Ahhh! I'm kind of dreading that ;)