Happy Holidays!

Abbreviated decorating this year since we're a little busy with baby. But we couldn't let her first Christmas go by without a tree! Rather than move all the furniture away from the living room corner next to the sofa (see our previous decorating pictures), we decided this year to see if the tree would fit next to the door that we never use that leads out to the breezeway. And it did! This is an amazing discovery - much less effort and just as out of the way. Now we don't have to move a lamp, a table, the sofa, and the coffee table just to put up the tree.

 But the real decor theme for our living room this holiday season is this:

Baby things everywhere! The TV area is loaded up with diapers, wipes, toys, etc. and the Pack 'n Play has set up permanent residence in from of the TV.

Unlike other years, we didn't do the outside or all the other little nooks and crannies in our house, but we did still manage to put together a pretty centerpiece, thanks in part to a beautiful flower arrangement that a friend brought by:

And of course this year we were thrilled to get to hang a new stocking on the mantle for our new little addition to the family!

New Arrival

No no, no baby pictures yet. And while our sweet little girl is indeed a new arrival, she's not the one I'm talking about here today.

Because we've (including both sets of grandparents) been stockpiling food for the first few sleep-deprived weeks, our freezer in the kitchen had become overstuffed. In fact, at one point, the door was just slightly ajar - not even noticeable from looking at it - for the whole work day. Thankfully it was not enough to defrost the contents, but it did make the motor work in overdrive - which is how I realized it was slightly open, from hearing the motor running nonstop when I got home that evening.

And so after much convincing from my mom, we let her get us a deep freezer as a holiday gift. Our concerns up until now had been both the cost of running it and the space needed to put it. First step - find a place for it.

The basement has never been very efficiently arranged, but it worked for our purposes. But with a little redecorating, this:

 Became this (and notice the conveniently located outlet right there beside the door...):

Exactly enough space for a small chest freezer. 7 cubic feet, to be specific. This freezer from Home Depot, to be even more specific.

It's not energy star, but it's not too expensive at least. And we're keeping it in the unheated part of our home where it never gets too warm, even in the summer. So that should help too.

The rest of the basement is still a work in progress. We moved the shelving unit to the other wall and are currently hunting out a few more shelves units to further add some storage space. Stay tuned for another post on that soon. AND we're trying to figure out how best to organize the interior of the freezer. We want to be able to find things quickly and a negative to a chest freezer is having all that space limited to things that can stack (but they are so much more energy efficient than a regular standing freezer). We're thinking probably some boxes from - where else but Ikea. Time to take the baby on a field trip!

The Nursery - In Use

You might have guessed from the long silence on this blog that we've been a little busy with baby! And indeed, our bundle of joy made an appearance just under two weeks ago. We're not quite ready to share pictures here, but we wanted to show you the finishing touches of the room that we made for her. She's not sleeping in there yet, but we are using the changing area to clean her up at night and are happy that it's such a cheerful place (which she probably doesn't care about yet, but it is nice for us at 2am...). Without further ado - the last decorating touches -

First the reading corner - grandma finished sewing the curtains and sent them to us just in time to hang them before baby. Those of you that participated in our poll will recognize them as the winning fabric - white and yellow stripes. They are nice and heavy with a lining that blocks some, but not all, the light and are much better quality than anything we could find pre-made at a store. The rocking chair also looks cute in homemade flannel cushions covered with little zoo animals, also courtesy of grandma.

Because I can't have a whole post about a baby and not provide any baby pictures, here's one of me when I was a baby. Note the elephant - same one as in our nursery on the blue shelf. Washed and restuffed with fresh polyfill, but otherwise same guy that welcomed me home from the hospital.

On this wall, a lovely quilt from friends in Hawaii hangs on the wall on some quilt hangers from Etsy:

And on this wall - another curtained window plus some framed library posters from a school book campaign, courtesy of another friend. Here's the view we get to enjoy during late-night diaper changes, since she's sleeping in our room but getting changed here in the nursery.

We couldn't have done it without everyone's help. The room looks so much more finished and full - and the walls are much less intensely green thanks to the wall art.

Obviously we are going to be a little busy for a while, but don't give up on us. We'll continue updating this blog when we find a free moment. We still have a few projects to tell you about from before baby and a few more in the works.