A Room For Two

Just a warning before I begin:  This post might be a little of an over-indulgence into what’s actually going through my head as regards nursery plans.  Why?  Well, the time I have on my hands to sit and type has increased as the weight of our two beanettes does…that’s approximately one hour of laziness relaxing per ounce they put on.  So, if you’re not particularly interested in exactly where our cribs are going to be placed or the color of our cloth diaper covers, skip on over to one of the many delicious blogs listed in my sidebar.  They’re sure to be much more engaging.  :)

So, a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that we were tackling the oh-so-fun task of merging our guest bedroom and office to make way for the twin’s nursery.  Well, after a couple of missed personal deadlines, the rooms are now one.

We have yet to do some little things like hanging pictures and such, but it’s immaculately clean and fully-functional.

So onward we move to:The nursery.  However, before I show you the somewhat embarrassing mess that lies behind this door, I’d like to point out the cutest diaper wreath ever made by the marvelous Brittany at ‘Gifts From Above’.  If you’d like to indulge in the cuteness, you can contact her at giftsfromabove.diaperwreaths@gmail.com.  A warning though, they’re so darn cute you won’t want to actually use the diapers or other goodies on the wreath.  :)

Sooo…in we go.  Watch your step. I’d like to think of it as ‘organized madness’.  Each scattered gift bag contains the remains of my organizing – one has newborn clothes, one has three month clothes, one has towels, etc…

This is where I might be a little too over-sharing so read on if you dare.  First, the layout.  A couple of months ago I scratched out a few different options on how we could configure the room.  It’s not the biggest room in the world (especially when you’re squeezing in two cribs), measuring around 12 ft. by 12 ft., but it’s perfect for what we need it for.  Here were the three options: The winner?  Option numero uno…a.k.a. the one at the top.  Anthony didn’t like the idea of putting the rocking chair in front of the window which narrowed down our options pretty quickly.  I’ll give my ten cents, wall-by-wall, in a minute.  The next thing in the planning process was to pull out this shirt from high school:Random, I know.  It’s one of my faves because of the colors and I always thought it’d make such a great inspiration piece when designing a little girl’s room…and lo and behold, years have passed and God has blessed us with not one, but two little chicas to introduce this shirt to.  :)  Oh happy day!

So that brings the color scheme to light pink, lighter pink, peach, lighter peach, taupe, and white.  I want their room to grow with them and I feel like with this scheme, we can replace the cribs with beds one day and it’ll still work.

So back to the detailed plans.  When you walk in the door, the wall to the right will one day reflect this:

I’ve been scouring Craigslist for an old wood dresser I can reinvent (and found one, only it’s an hour away and I’m not that desperate…yet) on which dirty bottoms will be cleaned and in which clothes will be stored.  On the wall, a frame collage maybe?  Some sort of homemade architecture?  Hanging tissue paper puffs?  A stencil underneath some or all of these things?  Oh the options…

Also housed here will be our ultra-cute, cloth diapers:   These are the covers, the inserts (prefolds) have yet to be purchased.  I’m sure a post dedicated solely to our cloth diapering adventure will be in order after the twins are here.  For now, read about Farrah’s adventure.

Moving on…the wall across from the door will be transformed in this way: The desk currently in the rocking chair’s place is waiting to be purchased by a loving new owner on Craigslist and the frames above it will come down.  The lamps (one dismantled) on it were found at Goodwill many moons ago and have put my electric wiring skills to the test…one day I’ll have a whole post on those.  The blob of peach and pink are the tissue paper puffs mentioned above that were creatively constructed by my friend Jenn for the twins shower.  I’ll make new curtains and eventually a cushion for the window seat – curtains before the beans are born, the cushion as I’m nursing one and wielding my mad sewing skills (a joke for sure) at the same time.  Yes, I have standards that high…call me crazy cause I’m sure one day in the not-so-distant future I’ll be echoing your sentiments.  :)

Aaannndd to the left we have the cribs:

Only instead of Photoshop cribs (perfectly safe if you call the Disney Channel home), we will have two of these:  Oh, aren’t they just precious?  Graciously purchased for us by an angel, we can’t WAIT until they come in (ordered from Babies R Us)!  We were planning on using my old crib and my dad’s old crib (both of which I had big plans to paint) but my dad’s crib was deemed unsafe – shocker there – and both are 1000 miles away at the moment.  So, these came as a great blessing to us.

Hanging from the ceiling above them, I really want to construct some simple canopies but with the intent of moving closer to Anthony’s place of work in the next year and popcorn ceilings (hard to patch), that may or may not happen.

But anyway, on to the left and last wall. Obviously, the microwave is out of place and it’s home is being prepped for landing at the moment so unfortunately, our kids won’t have the option of making smores in their bedroom.  However, the mirror behind it will be tacked to that little expanse of wall after I get my crafty fingers all over it.  Curtains will be made to match the window curtains and the closet will be organized and filled with tiny things in pink, purple, and other girly hues.

Other ‘hopefuls’ on the plan list include DIYing a large round rug to lay smack dab in the middle of the room and constructing a faux capize chandelier or other fixture along those lines to dress up the ceiling fan light.

And that’s that.  The twins will actually sleep in a co-sleeper in our room until they’re six months or so, so I’ll have time after they arrive to work on baby-fying this room while they lounge in swings and such before they officially move in.  I might also mention that my budget for this room is low, very low, so I’m excited to get some brain-power back after they’re born cause I’m gonna need it.  Progress will be slow and documenting it will be like watching a fishing show, so in the meantime I’ll be sure to post some quick updates but I’ll have some other project happenings to tell.

Happy weekend! 

Twins: 29 Weeks

I’ve got two three-pounders this week which, as you smart people have probably already figured out, means six pounds of baby and a few more pounds of fluid, placenta, and all that good stuff.  AND, on top of that, at least a month to go.  Twins lungs are fully developed and functional on their own at 34 weeks so the doc says if they happen to want to come anytime after that, he won’t stop ‘em.  However, he won’t let them lounge in utero over 38 weeks so we’ll see.  One month?  Two months?  Who knows?  I do know that we’ve got a complete disaster of a nursery still (of which I’ll share my plans/vision Saturday) and currently have just half of their cloth diapers.  Cest la vie, right? 

As promised last week, here are yesterday’s ultrasound pics:

Top of their heads…twin a’s face is pointed towards twin b’s ear.  Telling secrets?  Whispering sweet nothings?  Giggling about all the random stuff mommy eats or that daddy says?  I guess what is said in utero, stays in utero…

Beach Bums

Spending the day at the beach…

 (Image of wee Anthony and wee Sheena courtesy of Photoshop.)

Twins: 28 Weeks

 

Actually measuring 34-36 weeks, it’s needless to say it’s getting a little tight…for me and my two little pals.  Honestly, it’s really a hair short of a miracle that stretch marks haven’t yet made their mark…any day now, I can just about feel it.  On the bright side though, life is swell (no pun intended).  :)  We’re about to move our efforts from an almost completely organized, super-clean guest room/office to a currently disastrous nursery.  Don’t worry family, I’m not doing any heavy lifting, super-hard work, or straining myself in any way…everyone freaks out at the slightest mention of ‘cleaning’.

Next week you’re in for a treat as the twins have another photo shoot!  One of the last two before we get to have outside the skin shoots!  Have a great rest of the week!

Guest Bedroom + Office =

A full week of decluttering, newly formed Goodwill piles, and the tedious melding of two rooms in order to give the twins their own space.  This has been my self-imposed project for the past week…me thinking we’d have a fully functional, picture-perfect guest bedroom/office by today.  Well, using the easy excuse of slower functioning due to pregnancy and the fact that my better half has been away more than home this week, I’m having to extend my deadline.  But, we did make quite a dent over the past six days.  Let me divulge.

Here’s where we started circa last weekend: With Anthony’s muscles, we managed to move the bookshelf and desk over from the future nursery, beginning the process.  We thought this was the layout we’d stick with, but then I had second thoughts.  You see, we were planning on selling the desk that was previously in this room…the one I had primed and thought I’d get around to painting someday but I just couldn’t do it.  It was so much more attractive than the one we planned on keeping: Super-functional but super non-appealing in my opinion.  So, putting my best persuasive skills forward, I convinced Anthony we should sell the above desk and chair in lieu of the other…me still thinking I’d one day get to repaint it.  I even souped up my argument with a new room layout.  It took a little convincing, but he was sold.  Off I was to craigslist to sell a desk and chair. 

So that brought us here: I single-handedly and once again emptied the entire bookshelf of it’s contents so that Anthony could more easily move it and created this new mess:

This is where Anthony disappeared into the busy world of being a Director of Religious Ed during the spring and I began pregnancy-safe jobs like paring down the contents of the closet and dresser.  And the Goodwill pile grew, and a trip to ReStore to drop off unused lamps came.

As of yesterday morn, here’s what the room looked like: A mess, but an organized one…in my mind anyway. 

Then, after a Saturday of more sorting, decluttering, and organizing, I got us to here:You can’t see it in this picture but the bookshelf now resides, fully stocked, on the right wall next to the chair.  The bed, while still not habitable, is at least a little more visible and mainly covered with pictures from each of our pasts which I refuse to just stuff into a drawer like they were before – I’m working on filling up albums during my sit-down breaks based on which era they’re from…fun, fun.

So, in case you’re still here reading about the boring process of converging two rooms and the mess we’ve made doing it, you must have figured that, yes, it’s the most interesting thing going on in our lives right now.  Even though it’s not near as exciting as spray painting stuff and sewing creations, it feels so good to get rid of stuff we haven’t used and don’t really need.  We’ve got an entire section of closet in the future nursery full of picture frames and mirrors that we’re finally going to put up around the house too in the next few weeks to get these bare walls looking more normal and homey.  I’m really excited about that.  :)

Anyway, I promise I won’t bore you with more progress pics of this bedroom but I might share a pic or two of the picture-perfect completion.  Then it’s on to the nursery, waiting to be used in two short months…can you believe it!  Cray cray. 

I hope everyone has a great Sunday!