The Urge to Nest

The search for our new home has finally come to a halt!

Last week we found and signed on a hold for a cozy little townhome in an apartment complex just off the freeway in Mesa.

Granted... it took quite a bit of blood, sweat, and tears to get there (the tears were mostly on my part), and we weren't sure for a while if we were actually going to be able to get that place (or any place really!), but with a little help from my parents, a LOT of help from Heavenly Father, and a little faith we are getting ready to move at the beginning of next month into the place where we'll be bringing our little baby girl home to.

Crazy... right? :)

So now that we know where it is we're going, the nesting urges have only gotten worse.

I.

Just.

Want.

To.

Get.
Ready.

For.

This.
Baby!

...is that too much to ask? ;)

So, because I am trying to avoid cleaning the kitchen (which has taken on a life all its own), let me grace you with a layout of all of my evil schemes for the new casa...

 

So, to help you get a better picture... here is a layout of what the apartment will look like:

Cute right?

So... since I don't have much of any plans for the kitchen yet, lets start with the living area.

I'm thinking that we'll find a little tv stand on Craigslist first so that we can put our little 2x2 Expedit in our Master Bedroom as a side table (hoping to find a second one on Craigslist so that we can have one on each side!). I have "starred" a few already but haven't decided if we'll go with any of them...

 

 

...but you get the picture, right? :)

The next thing we'll be snagging is an area rug because our entire downstairs is completely tiled (booyah! Can you say, easy cleaning?) and I'm pretty sure that I've found the one we'll be getting.

...another Craigslist find.

Can you tell what's been my best friend lately? ;)

The last piece of furniture I want to procure for the living room is an Ikea Poang chair...

...especially in this design. I love the colors and I think that with what I'm planning to do with the walls that it'll tie in the colors of the room really well!

The reason that these chairs are so amazing is because not only are they lightweight, take up very little room, and are very modern and stylish looking... but they make the BEST rocking chairs for little babies! These chairs are so comfortable and they have a very subtle and easily controlled "bounce" that seriously puts babies to sleep like THAT! I want one for our nursery (which we'll talk about later) too but it would be so awesome to have one down stairs also! Plus it'll help add some seating to our downstairs which is seriously lacking in our current apartment (when we have friends over, most of them end up having to sit on the floor).

So from there it'll just be a matter of arranging the furniture: our cozy green recliner couch, our piano, the tv/stand, the poang chair, and our cedar chest (which I'm thinking will just back up to wherever the couch gets put).

Now one awesome perk of our new complex is that they allow you to paint the walls so long as you paint them white again when you move out. Being my mother's daughter, and having always grown up in a house with absolutely ZERO white walls to be found, I was THRILLED at the thought of being able to paint and add some color to our home! :) However... when we move I will be about 36 weeks pregnant. Not exactly in the mood to be painting an entire townhouse if you know what I mean. So I found a compromise.

I found this stencil online (I haven't bought it yet... still searching to see if I can find a similar one for a cheaper price) and fell in love with it! This way, I would only have to stencil one, maybe two, accent walls rather than doing an entire house. It'll be enough to add the color and personality that I've been craving in a home, yet it'll be a manageable enough project to be able to tackle in a day or two while being very pregnant. :) I'm not 100% sure on what colors I'll be using yet, but I'm thinking that I'll have the dominant color in the pattern be a taupe-y grey and the accent colors be yellow, a turquoise-y blue, peach, and maybe tan...? Like I said, I still need to work out the details, but you get the idea. ;)

Now for our bedroom, I have been wanting desperately to spruce things up and make them our own. All of our bedroom furniture is hand-me-downs and was used by me for about two years (maybe a little less) before we got married. So while the bed frame is not in bad condition and is beautiful, the bed spread has seen better days, and it would be nice to be able to upgrade to a king eventually. However, being on a newly married and expecting a baby kind of a budget, I knew it wasn't realistic to expect to be able to get everything on my project "wish list" done when it came to our room. HOWEVER! That doesn't mean that I wasn't able to find something to spruce up our room, because while I was perusing Overstock I found this gem of a bed spread!

I was in love! I love the versatility of the color scheme, the accent pillows (I have a mild obsession with decorative pillows... it's a problem), the quilt, everything! Plus it was on sale! :D The downside? It was only on sale for that day (I just happened to be online window shopping on Labor Day... never a good idea). I was heartbroken until I did a little bit of hunting and found the exact same deal on Amazon! So I added it to our Amazon baby registry and I have every intention of using out 15% discount on it... stretching the rules? Abusing the system? Maybe, maybe... but I have no shame. ;)

Also, as I mentioned previously, we currently have one dark brown/black 2x2 Ikea Expedit that we have been using as a tv stand in our living room.

Just as I was raised on painted walls, I was also raised on Ikea furniture. So in imagining our new bedroom I really wanted to be able to have a night stand on BOTH sides of our bed. We currently only have one night stand and it is the tiniest little thing you ever did see... it would be nice to have a good sized nightstand on each side of our bed so that Taylor did have to almost fall out of bed every time he has to search for the alarm clock on the ground in the mornings. ;)

Now for the baby's room... the nursery. Everybody wants to know how you're planning on decorating the nursery. What your color scheme is, what the theme is, etc. I always feel so dumb answering these questions because the conversation always goes a little something like this...

"So Jadyn! I'm so excited to see your nursery! What's the theme?"

"...um...baby?"

Ha ha, I've never been one to stick to a certain theme or pallet when putting a room together. I normally just throw together an eclectic grouping of things, arrange them in a convincing manner, and it all seems to turn out okay. :)

However, here are some things that HAVE been on my mind for this little kid's room.

The Crib:

We received this crib so graciously from a dear friend and old church leader of mine right around the time we found out what the baby's gender was. It was completely free and we were SO GRATEFUL to have such a big ticket item completely taken care of for us and in such great condition for having been used with more than one of her children.

Now, in my craziness I have been having the urge to paint and distress this beautiful crib... I was hoping that maybe Taylor would shoot the idea down because it seems like a lot of work... but he was completely on board with it! ;) So pretty soon I'm thinking that we will tackle the challenge of painting this crib white and distressing it to make it look more worn and "antiqued". I've been using this crib/tutorial as my inspiration... we'll see how it turns out! *fingers crossed*

 

The Changing Station:

So I tried and tried to find a picture of this online but couldn't. We have it sitting in our bedroom but our bedroom is a mess and there is lots of junk piled on top of it currently so I will spare you the view... just imagine for now how beautiful it is! ;)

What on earth am I talking about you ask? On nothing, just the beautiful dresser we got! I was pretty stressed about what we would end up doing in this department... you see... dressers are freaky expensive, so matter how you slice it. Really any big piece of furniture like that is expensive, but that's not the point. The point is that one morning I couldn't sleep past 5:00 am and so I was laying in bed scrolling through Facebook and stumbled upon a posting from somebody in my parents' ward. They were selling their daughter's old dresser/changing table for a great price and it was BEAUTIFUL! We jumped on that deal as quickly as we could and picked it up that weekend. :) Now, I don't remember what the closets in our new place look like (I was more focused on the walk in master closet than I was in the other...), but considering it doesn't have a built-in middle shelf like some do, I would LOVE to do something like this:

OR this...

I would love to utilize the closet space as a nook for either the changing table or dresser by taking off the doors and securing curtains around the opening. I think it looks so cute and clean, and I like that it's still part of the nursery but at the same time it's cozily tucked away (especially for a crib... it cuts down on distractions, light, and other sensory things to keep a kid from being able to sleep...)

 

Some other things I am hoping to incorporate into the nursery?

This simple Ikea hack that's perfect for displaying AND storing clothes. It makes for an easy grab from the changing table but is also a creative way to store clothes when there is limited storage space.

 

I don't know why but lately I've had this infatuation with rugs that look like this:

 

I have no idea where or how I'd get one, because despite what Pinterest makes it seem... these sorts of rugs do not grow on trees, and they are not stocked ANYWHERE at an affordable price. Plus, the ones that are are absolutely tiny... so, I'm not sure if this one will ever come to pass, but I really love the quirky look of these faux fur rugs.

 I'm also in love with THIS nursery!

I really just love how soft and peacefully feminine it is. I really like the peachy color of pink with the tans and greys... again, I don't have a "color palette", but if I did, it might be something similar to this. :)

I also REALLY would love to have another Poang chair for upstairs in the nursery, like I mentioned before, and have been perusing Craigslist for an affordable used one in good condition. Not so much luck yet... but I'm hopeful! :)

 

And lastly... the thing that has been crazy trying to put together but still fun and exciting?

Our diaper stash!

Again, I don't have pictures because that's quite a bit of work, plus we don't have everything yet. Also, our stash is built up of what I GUESSING is going to be the best fit for us but we might end up hating what we chose and have to re-vamp the stash later on down the road.

But I'm pretty confident in what we've decided to go with. :)

Looking at all of our options for diapering, there were lots of different things that different types of diapers offered. Some diapers were more affordable, while other were much more convenient to use. Some were more babysitter friendly, while other seemed a little more intimidating to use. Some were advertised as being able to fit your baby from birth to potty training (making it more economical) while others were sized like a disposable diaper would be. In the end we decided that, above all, the two most important things to us were affordability and how long we would be able to use the diaper/get it to last. Because of that we decided to go mainly with "prefold" and "fitted" diapers with covers. I could explain what each of those means but that's an entirely different post all it's own that maybe I'll write later (after we've had some experience trying them out ourselves).

The brand we decided to go with was Green Mountain Diapers or Cloth-eez as some people know it, so our stash is built up of 12 prefolds in each size plus 12 fitteds in each size. We currently have ALL of our prefolds, yay! :D We're almost done getting all of our newborn fitteds, and I'm working on replacing the fitteds we have with snaps for some without snaps (I just think it'll be easier to get a better fit that way). To give you an idea, here is what they all look like. :)

These are what the prefolds look like un-folded (we have sizes newborn-large - orange, yellow, red, and blue/brown):

And this is what they look like folded on a baby:

The main reasons we chose to go with prefolds was this... COST! These diapers are by far the most affordable to buy in bulk, for us it was a no-brainer. We would rather deal with a few extra minutes on the changing table folding than having to spend more than $15 on something our baby would be pooping on. ;) Now, the down side to these is that they look intimidating to use, and they aren't water proof. They require a waterproof cover to go over them, which we were fine with, but some babysitters might be nervous if they go to change the baby's diaper and they think they have to go all "Little House on the Prairie"... the nice thing with these is that the way you put the diaper on can be as simple or complicated as you make it. You could come up with an elaborate "fool proof" fold OR you can simply tri-fold it and lay it flat in the diaper cover like this:

Easy enough, right? :)

Well, for those who are still intimidated by the prefold, and for those late-night/half-asleep diaper changes we also decided to go with the Cloth-eez fitted diaper, the "Workhorse".

This diaper is made out of the Cloth-eez prefold material, just contoured to be in the shape of an diaper. :) Easy peasy! While these little guys were a few bucks more expensive than their prefold cousins, they STILL blew every other name brand option out of the water when it came to affordability. These guys, just like a prefold, aren't water proof and so they also require a cover, but they are just as simple to use as a regular disposable diaper. Just wrap around the baby and snap in place (or use a snappi fastener if you are using the snapless versions like we will be)!

We also have a few pocket diapers that we either received as gifts or bought for VERY cheap on craigslist that we will try out (though I'm pretty sure that I will not be a fan of the pocket system... I'm planning on these being our back-up and swim diapers). Aside from those I also splurged a little bit and bought a few All in One diapers to try out/keep on hand for babysitters.

I think they're adorable and especially handy to keep around as an easy-to-use back up diaper and babysitter diaper.

 

...and I think that's pretty much it.

Long story short...?

I really can't wait to get our new place ready. :)