Decorating and accesorizing the Nursery

Holy moly!

What a ride. This week has seen the end of the preparations in the nursery. Today we are at 39 weeks and with the exception of one picture that will be put in a white frame above the crib that our great friend is creating for us, the nursery is complete. I sat down in the glider in the corner and looked at the room as we placed the final items on the newly installed shelf and said to myself "wow, this looks great". That was followed up shortly after with "I don't think I will ever put this much effort into a room again.

Sorry second child.

Here is sneek peek of the room along with my very pregnant wife. Enjoy!

I will be posting more pictures of the nursery eventually...

More generosity!

As soon as we found out we were having a girl, one of my co-workers was SOOOOOOO excited. She was leaving on maternity leave and was about to have a boy. She had a girl a few years back, in fact her girl just started school, very cute pictures.

She decided that she wanted to give us ALL of her girl clothing. She didn't want to donate it as she feels like she was giving away her child and we were grateful to receive anything.

Holy Moly, I could have never imagined the amount of stuff she was giving us. In fact, here are some images of us sorting through our new found treasures...

Onesies, pants, shirts, shoes, bathing suits, coats and snow pants, bedding sets, blankets... you name it and it was in there. Three big microwave boxes FULL of stuff. We are very grateful.

So thank you Veronika for you generosity!

Organization... The Hall Closet

I've heard about it many time, I have also seen it first hand but until you actually live it, it's hard to realize.

Kids take up a lot of space.

We aren't even close to having half the things (thank you again family and friends!) but already I am questioning where we are going to put everything.  The Nursery is in complete disarray right now. Everything we have received has just been placed in there with no order. It doesn't help that the closet in that room (which isn't that large, but definitely bigger than many I've seen) is currently housing our shoes. We don't have any other place to put them.

This made me realize that the main culprit for this problem resides in the hall closet. Our hall closet is very small and very inefficient. It is a basic closet with a a rail along the top and a shelf above that. At the bottom, there is also what looks like an old step which you can flip up to reaveal a hidden cubby of sorts. The door is not helpful at all as it is one of those white folding vinyl things. I hate it. You can't hang anything from it.

So I have decided to tackle that closet. Now, remember that we are only renting and as such are limited in the changes we can make. The landlord, when looking through the house initially, made sure to show us the versatility of that step at the bottom so I cannot take that out. I also won't want to as I believe if I did, I would need to repair the surrounding wall.

The first thing I will do is remove that stupid door. I will wrap it and put it in the shed in the back. If they decide they want to put it back on after, they can.

I will clean out everything that is in there, remove the shelf and the rail, measure it up and come up with a plan that will still allow us coat hanging space along with some shoe storage space.

It will be great! I will do a before and after post about it when I actually get started. The wife is away for the weekend in a few weeks, so I think that will be the weekend I do it.

Stay tuned!

The Solution to the clothing problem.

After the post in which I mentioned the generosity or others, There have been boxes of clothing all over our room. We have been trying to figure out how to deal with this.

We have a big wardrobe in our room, but the wife has decided that she no longer wants that. It's too big and clunky and takes up A LOT of room. So we have decided to get dressers instead. We looked around at a bunch of places that sell them and they all seemed to be very expensive. So we decided to take a look at IKEA and we knew that there were some there that we liked. We decided on the Hemnes line as it is solid wood and not that press board stuff they use for some of their stuff.

We have purchases this one:



We also plan on getting the 6-drawer version but until we get rid of the wardrobe, we don't have the room for all of that. The dresser is already sitting in the middle of the room.

Our first Purchase

So we did it. We finally purchased our first items for the baby.

After much discussion and review, we decided that we weren't going to be getting a full carriage/travel system as everyone has been telling us that they are too big/bulky/heavy and with our Kia Soul, we probably wouldn't have enough room for anything else in the trunk if we got that.

So we have purchased the Baby Trends Snap 'n Go. It's basically just the frame to a stroller which you put your baby seat on. It folds up nice and small.

We also got a few other items so that we added enough to get the free shipping. Those items were essentials like receiving blankets, towels and socks.

More to come.... much more.

Winter tires

Here we are in the middle of summer, in the midst of a heatwave (it's suppose to be 46 with the humidex today) and I have one thing on my mind. Winter tires.

We live in Ottawa, which can get hit very hard by winter weather sometimes but growing up in southern Ontario, winter weather driving was a concern maybe two days a year so we were easily able to get by using all-seasons. It seems that this thinking has been difficult for me to overcome.

That coupled with the fact that we have had new cars with brand new all-seasons since we have moved here 6 years ago, I thought we have been fine.

However, now I have someone else to take care of. Bad on me for my wife and I not being a good enough reason, but it can no longer be ignored.

I will now be on the lookout for new winter tires this year. And as an earlier post of mine alluded to, this will be a long process of comparative shopping.

Nursery II

An update on the nursery for you. The wife had a friend over last week who drew a tree on the wall as an option for us. It's very nice and the friend is very artistic which I would easily trust with this task. The wife really likes this idea but we will see how it goes. The wife also found this today which she likes.

Seems that we may have found a piece that will be included into the nursery somewhere. One of many pieces i'm sure.

More to come

Shopping, one of the first things I think of.

I am not the biggest fan of shopping. Although it is not very apparent to those around me. To my wife, she may think that I love it because it takes me FOREVER to buy anything. But the truth is, I love the chase. I love trying to find the best thing for me in the situation. Whether it availability, price, colour or size, anything can affect the decision and it's usually more than one of these at a time. As an example, when looking for something as simple as socks, I will look online for options then go to three different stores before deciding which to purchase.

This process/approach does not bode well for the amount of purchases that will need to be made for my child. We're not talking about a pair of socks here. Most of these purchases will affect my child's safety.

As soon as the news comes across, one of the first things I do is hit the web to take a look at anything from car seats, to cribs, to booster seats trying to find the safest, or most compact or most highly rated products out there. Price is playing a very small factor in this decision as I want to ensure this little guy or gal is the safest that can be! Although, if the product goes on sale....

A friend of ours knows how much of a comparative shopper I am (mostly because she hears my wife complaining about it all the time), so she sent me a link to a comparative shopping site for baby items. I loved it!

I'll update as we make decisions on items and share the thinking that went into it.