Nest Fest

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we have been nesting like mad around here. We're finally about done, I think, because I'm way too pooped to do anything else except lay around and eat junk until the baby comes. But here are some pictures of some of the big projects we've gotten done.

Project #1: Moving Bryn in with Addison

We decided to put the two of them together for several reasons, and it has really worked out very well thus far. Bryn is loving her real-live big girl bed and transferred easily to it from her toddler bed.I think they really like sharing the loft, and it's nice that Addison doesn't have to be all the way up there by himself anymore. My main concern going into it was what to do about nap/quiet time. Bryn still naps almost every day and Addison has an hour of solo playtime during her nap. We had a few awkward weeks of poor Addison being stuck in the baby's room playing with plastic keys and squeaky toys because all the big boy toys were upstairs with the slumbering Bryn. Poor little guy. But we finally decided to just trust him to play quietly in his room while Bryn slept. It's working out very well. I don't know so much about the playing quietly bit, but Bryn slept through a long tambourine concert this afternoon without so much as a twitch.

Without further ado, the room. Addison was very excited to take a picture of he and Bryn together in each bed.

Addison's bed and Bryn's dresser

Toys and Addison's dresser

Bryn's bed and more toys

Bookshelf and reading corner

Project #2: Redoing the kitchen (Phase 1)
I absolutely love our kitchen. It is huge and has lots of counter and cabinet space and fabulous tile. If we ever move I've decided that we will be sawing the kids' room off the top of the house and yanking the kitchen out and bringing them with us. That said, the kitchen has been in need of some updating for a few decades now and we've finally struck upon the inspiration we needed to get started: lemons.

I want to decorate it with lemons. One of my best friends knew it and got me started for my birthday with this cute little lemon tree.

That was enough to start out with, and helped us to decide what to do with our fabulous 70s-green cabinets.

Awesomely enough, I forgot to take a "before" picture, but this one kind of gives the idea.

We decided that we wanted to paint them a light cream color and add some depth to them by putting trim around the edges. The original plan was to antique around the trim, but we tried a few and didn't love it, so we're keeping them just plain cream. I love how they've turned out - very bright and cheerful.

 Here's a closer picture of the trim we added. I think it looks great.

And hooray for butter-colored shelf paper!

 Still to come as time, inspiration, and financials allow: countertops, redoing the lighting, and painting the walls.

 Project #3: The Nursery
We really didn't have to do too much to get this room ready once we moved Bryn out. We stuck the side back on the crib, dug out all our baby toys, and moved a few things down from the loft. The only new furniture we got was the little cube book/toy shelf, which I adore. I love the placement of the rocking chair and lamp - mucho cozy. When I walk in there it's easy to picture myself rocking our little one to sleep (or more likely myself at 3 a.m.). It's just right, I think.

Project #4: Man-Nesting
This isn't really a particular project, per say, more a lot of odds and ends projects the sum of which equal Nate sympathy-nesting with me. While I've been folding baby blankets, cleaning out closets and fluffing pillows, Nate has been hard at work too. His projects are much more manly, though. He organized all our attic crawl spaces, got the lawn fertilized and sprinklers going, shampooed all our carpets and stairs, and just tonight updated our stone-aged plumbing in the kids' bathroom by replacing the pipes under the sink and putting in a faucet that the kids can actually turn on by themselves. What a guy!