Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Nursery Wall Prints

 Thanks to my amazing husband we finally have wall prints in Ellie's room! I had three quotes that all dealt with night time that I wanted to hang in her room. They are quotes from Harry Potter, A Court of Thorns and Roses, and Throne of Glass.  Before we even got pregnant I knew I wanted a night sky theme in the nursery and wanted to feature one of my favorite quotes so I went ahead and found two others that I love as well. 

At first I was attempting to make these with my Cricut, but it was frustrating and I kept ripping the paper. So I made some Photoshop prints and Tim printed them out for me at work which was so sweet.



First up is a Harry Potter quote which I placed along the back wall of the nursery.


This was the last quote I decided on and I think it's so sweet and perfect for a nursery.





Next up over the dresser I have my all-time favorite quote from A Court of Thorns and Roses.



How perfect is that? Side note: if you haven't read this series by Sarah J Maas get on it...it's incredible!


The last quote is above the changing table and bookshelf and is from the Throne of Glass series. 



I just love having these up, they make me so happy! I hope my little girl loves to read as much as I do. I plan on reading to her from day one and hopefully I can pass along my love of reading to her!

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Toy Clearance!

I have a love of saving money, couponing, and clearance hunting! I share a lot more of that on my instagram but I thought I would share a quick tip about toy clearance here on the blog today.

Every year in July Walmart and Target clearance out a ton of toys. They are looking to make room for the new toys that will be released for Christmas and they want them out of their store, ASAP! This is great news for clearance hunters because the prices drop fast. I have been to Walmart twice in the last week and from the first trip to the second the prices had dropped substantially. Many of the toys get up to 90% off, but if you see something you really want I suggest buying it at 50% or 75% since it could sell out.


On Saturday I went and stocked up on a ton of toys. Now, I know I have no idea what my daughter will be into yet. She could not care for Frozen at all, however most of the toys I've been buying will be gifted to her before she turns two. I'm guessing that up until age 2 she will be excited for any toy (I'm also hoping for the same with clothing since I've been clearance hunting for clothes for quite some time too!)

I always grab items for the other kids I buy for and do need to go back and get some more items for them as well. I love that by buying toys on clearance I can still spend the amount I want to spend on them but get them so much more for the money! (Also I buy for 4 kids who all have birthdays in December/ January so that's 8 gifts between birthdays and Christmas- clearance shopping is the way to go!)



Here's everything I picked up during my second round of shopping. The first round I picked up some Frozen barbie dolls. (Again, if my daughter has no interest in Frozen they are something I can sell at a yard sale someday- brand new in package or I can pass them on to someone else who does like Frozen)

Both of the bigger toys were over 50% off, which was great for larger toys. I love that I can give Ellie the little seahorse for Christmas this year and will save the other toys for future birthdays and Christmases. I actually picked up the puzzle because I know a ton of people who love to do puzzles and can use it as part of a gift and the LOL surprises are for some little girls who love LOL and opening surprises. 

I am planning on going back for another round because I desperately need to stock up on boy gifts for my friend Rachel's son and my new nephew Max. I find it much more exciting to buy for the girls, but there are great deals for the boys as well. 

I haven't been to look at the Target toy clearance yet, but generally the prices are higher than Walmart but you can get good deals there too. 

Do you stock up at the toy clearance sale? I know this will be great going forward when Ellie is invited to birthday parties and we need to purchase for more kids. It's not only a great way to save money, but an awesome way to be able to gift more. I love being able to give a ton of toys to my favorite kids!

Monday, July 5, 2021

DIY Nursery Closet Details

 Happy Monday everyone! Today is my official 4th of July holiday and it is always so nice to have a three day weekend. I personally think that having three day weekends every weekend would make for a much happier lifestyle, can we make this a reality? Today I wanted to share our DIY nursery closet which was finally completed this weekend. We have been working on this closet for quite some time and it finally ready to go! 



Overall, creating the structure of it was not difficult and did not cost much at all. I ended up picking a design based off of The Greenspring Home blog and although we are not great DIYers, I think the closet turned out great and wasn't necessarily super difficult if you are a beginner DIYer. 


Supplies Needed

Closetmaid Vertical Organizer 

2 Closetmaid White Laminate Mounted Shelves 

Closetmaid White Metal Shelf Bracket Support Kit (optional- we didn't end up using ours because we aren't going to be storing anything super heavy on these shelves)

Wood Closet Rod

Wood Closet Rod Pole Sockets (2 Piece)


Step by Step

First of all, disassemble any previous closet structure. We had a wire shelf with a single hanging rack installed in this closet- think builder grade materials. I actually really despise wire shelving, I think it looks super cheap and was not a fan of the single hanging rack because baby clothes are so tiny. There is so much wasted space underneath them when hanging. One afternoon I got my screwdriver out and used my muscles to pull the wire shelving out of the closet. It was anchored in and involved some serious tugging, but I only needed Tim to help me with one anchor that I just could not get out of the closet.


Once your old closet system is out of the closet you will probably need to patch holes and paint. I patched all the holes myself, sanded everything down and then painted. I didn't do a super thorough job painting since we would be installing a new system and you wouldn't be able to really see the paint job behind it anyways.


Here is the closet, patched and ready for the new system to be installed.

After you've completed this, you want to build the vertical closet organizer. What I did was build the bottom three bottom squares and then built two more separately knowing that a shelf would separate them. This left one square unused because it wouldn't fit nicely in the closet with the two shelves I wanted. 


Now before actually installing anything we did some measurements. I wanted the vertical organizer to be centered in the doorframe which meant that it was not centered in the closet. We measured both sides to figure out how long we needed the wooden dowel to be cut since we wanted four hanging sections. We also had to cut the shelves since they were a little too long for our particular closet.


Here is the closet laid out without the wooden racks installed yet. 


I also purchased some storage cube bins from Amazon. I picked the pastel pink but there are a variety of colors depending on your preference. I really wanted to lean into the light pink for our little girls closet. I filled these and then pulled them back out so Tim could install the wooden clothing racks. 


Tim took the lead on installing the dowels and then wood glued them into place. Then the following morning it was time to fill the closet!




I measured all the areas available and then headed to HomeGoods to pick up some bins for the top and bottom of the closet. I also grabbed some more hangers so I could get all of her non-pajama outfits on hangers.


All the baskets were purchased from HomeGoods so I unfortunately don't have links for them. 


I also got the adorable elephant piggy bank at HomeGoods. I thought it would be a sweet subtle decoration that will also come in handy to collect change.


I haven't finalized the organization of the closet yet, but I will share what I've done so far. The top left basket holds muslin swaddle blankets. The middle pink bin holds bottles and pacifiers that will need to be sanitized. The top right basket holds our infantino baby carrier.

The top left hanging section is for newborn and 0-3 month clothing. The top right hanging section is 3-6 month clothing.

The top two pink bins hold clothing and shoes that have been handed down to us but are in much larger sizes. We won't be using 2T items for quite some time but I haven't established a system for clothes to grow into so for now they will live in these bins.



The bottom left hanging section is 6-9 month clothing and the bottom right is 9-12 month clothing. I realize that it is a little silly to hang all of this in the closet, but I know our sweet Ellie will be growing out of clothes so fast I think it will be easiest to keep everything hung during the first year and rotate sections out as she grows. Once she is a size for more than just a few months I will section the closet off by clothing type instead of size and keep sizes that she will grow into elsewhere. 

The three pink bins hold burp cloths and bibs, wipes and size 1 diapers. These diapers are the backups to the changing station I have set up with newborn and size 1 diapers. Since we are unsure if she will wear newborn diapers from birth, I set up a section of them for her but also set up size 1 diapers in case she goes right into those. I also have several drawers in the nursery filled with extra diapers that are still in packaging, but these are diapers that were taken out of their packaging for a quick refill.

The bottom of the closet bins hold feeding supplies on the left (boon drying rack, breast milk storage bags, nipple pads, etc) and extra hangers on the right.

As I mentioned, I haven't exactly figured out my organization systems in here yet but this is a good start and I can certainly adjust as we go forward and see what we need.

Here are two quick sneak peeks of the rest of the nursery....




There is still a lot to do, but I feel so much better about the status of the nursery! My mom is throwing us a baby shower in a couple of weeks and they are throwing me one at work the following week so I know we will have more items to organize in here, so I'm trying to not go too crazy. 

Now, one last look at the gorgeous closet...


Ahh so pretty! Have a great day everyone!!



















Thursday, July 1, 2021

June Empties


Happy July!! I can't believe it's already July and summer is in full swing. Yesterday I pulled out all my empties (4 of which I actually finished up yesterday- gotta love that end of the month push!) and took a picture so I could get them out of the house for trash day today. So let's get started and I will share my thoughts on each product.

Bath and Body Works Tiki Mango Mai Tai Body Scrub- I loved this body scrub! I thought the scent was really nice and I've been using scrub on my feet and it has been wonderful during this pregnancy.

Mrs Meyers Basil Dish Soap- Another bottle of this down, if you haven't been here long then you might not know that basil is my all-time favorite Mrs. Meyers scent. I don't hand wash dishes usually but I tend to go through these very quickly. 

Bath and Body Works Hello Beautiful Shower Gel- This shower gel was okay. I am glad I only had a small size of it because it was used up fairly quickly. I love Bath and Body Works shower gel but this scent wasn't my favorite, it was very floral and I am not big on floral scents. I tend to go more for beachy scents.

Bath and Body Works Kitchen Lemon Hand Soap- I am a big fan of Bath and Body Works Foaming Hand Soaps. This kitchen lemon scent was a great one to keep by our kitchen sink and I would definitely repurchase it in the future. 

Downy Unstoppables Fresh Scent- These are my new laundry obsession. I have been using these in my laundry for a few months now and I think it makes everything smell so much better. I do want to try the other scents that are available but I like this one so much I'm almost afraid to because I don't want to not use this scent. That's how you know you have a good laundry product!

Macadamia Shampoo- Guys. My mom gave this to me at Christmas 2019. I have been working on it on and off since then but decided I wanted to push through and get this out of my stock. I finally finished this yesterday and I am happy to see it go. I like to switch up my hair products and this shampoo was just way too big. I would use the product again in the future but definitely get a smaller size.

Macadamia Deep Repair Mask- One of my all-time favorites! I pick this up at TJMaxx and it's always a bargain because it is just the nicest hair mask that I use as a conditioner. I will continue to repurchase this from time to time because it just makes my hair feel so nice.

Cake Batter Chapsticks- My all-time favorite chapstick! I use this religiously and still have a huge stockpile of it thanks to my amazing husband. I will keep using this for the foreseeable future.

Bath and Body Works Island Papaya Hand Soap- I liked this hand soap which we used in our bathroom. I love beachy scents and this one was sweet and nice. I would definitely repurchase this particular scent in the future. 

Vitafusion Prenatal Vitamins- love these! I am not against taking vitamins in pill form, but it's far more fun to take them in a gummy form. I recently had to add an iron supplement in a gummy form as well because I have been labeled as severely anemic. I was told if I don't get my iron levels up by birth I may need a blood transfusion...so I will be religiously taking my vitamins each day!

Caldrea Pear Blossom Agave Room and Linen Spray- I loved the smell of this room spray and my house always smelt to great after I sprayed it. I would 100% repurchase this in the future even if it is a little pricey. I have loved every Caldrea product that I've tried, so I feel comfortable in telling you that if you are on the fence you should definitely order one.

Dove Cucumber Deodorant- I liked this deodorant, but I have switched to one that is aluminum free. I won't repurchase this in the future and only had bought it as a back-up deodorant. I decided to finish it up before buying a new one and was glad when I was finished and could go pick up a new one that is aluminum free. 

Dollar Shave Club Razors- I had purchased these razors on clearance after Christmas and I was excited to try them but I don't think they are that great. I prefer a razor that has shave gel attached or some of my other disposable razors to these ones. I do have another one in my stockpile, but I probably wouldn't purchase them again in the future.


Now tell me what products you've finished up lately. I would love to know if you have any recommendations!

Have an amazing long weekend for 4th of July!!