Monthly Archives: May 2013

Welp, its over, friends.

Babyhood in my house is officially, 100%, gone. The binky was exchanged for a phone. 😉

It really was bittersweet, even as much as I hated searching for, washing, buying, and finding those things. This was the very, very last thing. She is potty trained. Sleeps in a big girl bed (or at least, her sister’s, which we are working on, lol!).  But even though it was a teensy bit sad, it was such a relief. Its always a bit stressful giving up crutches your children have, especially when it relates to sleep. She did awesome, though. The first day she asked for it at nap (but still took one) and asked for it at bed (but still went to sleep) and hasn’t asked for it since.

Now for the story of the ding dong joke.

Not sure what that is?

Well, the children frequently like to tell jokes at the dinner table. Jackson is getting good at it, London just cracks herself of and doesn’t understand punch lines or how to use them correctly (which is funny), and Brooklyn has her own form of a joke. Instead of saying, “Knock, knock?” for a ‘knock knock joke’, she says, “Ding Dong!”. I don’t know what it is about that, but it cracks me up! She really does think you are supposed to say Ding Dong, like a doorbell! I laugh every.single.time.

I hope she does it forever.

This room has been really fun to work on!

Its just so much fun to have a room in your house that just screams “girl”! London really wanted pink walls, but since I knew that everything else she and Brooklyn would want would be pink or purple, I decided to go with an aqua color called Palladian Blue by Benjamin Moore. It is puuuurrrfect in person…the perfect robin’s egg blue. From there I just added special touches I knew they would love.

I found these adorable frames at IKEA for $5 each, which is awesome!

Their bedside table holds a cute picture of the two of them and a great little print I found!

Moving toys into their bedroom was a new thing that came with this house. We lost the playroom, so most of the toys are now located in their rooms and in the living room (well hidden behind the couch). While having toys in their room has proven to be a distraction at bedtime and nap time, I think they are getting used to it. Their room is much smaller than the room at the old house, so they are also learning to put toys away as soon as they are done. I’ve actually liked it this way; having a playroom meant that at some points, ALL the toys were out and clean up was a huge task. Now that the toys are split up between 3 different rooms, the mess never becomes crazy.

These prints are one of my favorite parts of their room! I ordered them from a shop in Etsy; they are vintage-esque prints of the cities London and New York (Brooklyn). I think its fun to have something that speaks to their names but isn’t glaringly obvious.

All their hair bows are stored neatly behind their door!

And that’s their room! They share a very tiny closet, but that’s probably a good thing. I can go a little crazy when it comes to little girl clothes. The reading lamps above their beds have been wonderful at night; they love to read silently to themselves before I turn out the lights, and I love that there isn’t a lamp they can knock over! The only thing I really have left to do in here is hang the tissue paper balls on the ceiling above the print (I Smile Because You Are My Sister) and the lamps to fill that space in a bit. London picked out the curtains, which aren’t my favorite (they are a cream base and I think a white base would work much better), but I couldn’t say no to her design. 😉 Perhaps I’ll suggest an alternative at some point, lol! For now, I’m calling it good. 🙂

I’m a perfectionist. Shocking, I know. I’ve been dying to post pictures of the house, but I’ve been caught up in the idea that I wanted rooms finished before I gave the grand tour. Well, about a month in, I realize that it would be a very, very, very long time before you saw the house at all if I did that. So, I’m getting over myself and giving you tours of the house before rooms are finished.

*audible gasp from me*

The one room in the house that HAS to be as complete as possible is our school room. Its the heart of the house, currently. We spend most of our time there, or thinking about being there (since lately school has been on a back burner while we try and get everything back together). We moved into our house very fast, and I had most of the boxes unpacked in the first week…but thats all it was. Unpacked, but not organized. Finally, this morning, I finished most of the organizing in that room. So, I present our School Room.

Can I tell you how nice it is having a whole room completely devoted to this? In our old house, it was the very first room you saw as you walked in (we used the formal dining/living room). It always had to be clean because it was always seen. It was strange welcoming people into my home and the first thing they would say was “do you run a preschool?”. In this home, our school room is located at the end of a hallway. It has a door. I can shut that door whenever I want. Awesome. 🙂

Now, my original idea was to paint that entire wall in chalkboard paint. After doing a bit of research, I realized that would be quite an undertaking. Chalk paint requires multiple coats, isn’t low VOC (which means that room would reek for months!), and isn’t cheap. So, we found these chalkboard sheets at Home Depot for $10 a sheet. I used two of them and hung them up. We are going to install moulding around it to make it look more finished. I LOVE having a chalkboard. Way more fun than a whiteboard, and easier to maintain with children. With the whiteboard, whenever they wanted to draw on it, I’d always end up with marker on the wall. Chalk washes off much easier!

This little section has worked out perfectly for the girls. The metal buckets and rod are from IKEA and hold crayons, colored pencils, and chalk. The picture makes the rod look crooked (lol!) but its not. I promise. Above the rod I have a wire system to install that will hold all of their works of art for display.

This shelf holds most of the things I use for preschool/kindergarten. We have a rocking chair and a stack of pillows to relax in while reading, and music is easily accessible. I keep all our construction paper organized by color so we can get to it easily for projects.

I got a label maker. I’m in love. It just makes finding things (and putting them away!) so much easier!

This is one of my favorite parts of the room. We removed the closet doors and put shelving in the closet. Having this has made a world of difference! I can keep things up high and out of reach (like markers, glue, scissors, office supplies, etc) and keep all our curriculum and books organized. I am going to get more containers for the bottom four rows for all our preschool things and curriculum I haven’t bought yet for next year. We have a place to hang our library book bags, store extra pillows for times we read on the floor, and extra supplies like shoeboxes for science experiments and art projects.

I was *this* close to getting rid of this bad boy, but I’m so glad my husband talked me into keeping it. I tried to do a workbox system with the kids, but it just didn’t work out. So, instead, its become a sort of spare organizer AND place for extra work. Two of the boxes will have things Jackson can work on to earn extra technology time, like math worksheets and language arts activities. If he wants to play a game, he has to pick something out of one of those boxes and complete it first (that was Greg’s brilliant idea!).

I also made four of the bins “tot tray” bins, which I can’t wait to use. I’ll put one activity in each box, and when we are doing school and the girls need something extra to do while I work with Jackson, they can just pull out a Tot Tray and work on that!

So that’s the room so far! I still need to hang up our calendar, the magnetic sheet for magnet play, bookshelves in the pillow corner for our library books, the art display wire, watercolor drawings I did of the kids, our think pad (big pad of paper we use to flesh out ideas and introduce concepts), and finish the chalkboard, but its so close to being done!

I promise to get over myself and post the rest of the house. BUT! We have been working on a big project that has to be finished before I introduce my living room, which is a handmade dining room table! Here’s a little tease…

My husband wants to be a carpenter when he grows up. 🙂 Its soooo close to being done as we speak…I just have to stain and poly it!