Somewhere to put our shoes

We were recently given a bag full of shoes and boots that were the perfect size for Little Girl, mostly all in the same size - so we went from one pair of shoes and a pair of wellies, so 6 pairs of awesome mini converse and adidas shell tops and some proper winter boots. She has to wear them all, and we needed somewhere to keep them!

My measly one pair of hi tops, and Mr's two or three trainers could also do with a home, so Mr set to it, and found a few branches that were dry enough in the garden, and bought the rest of the wood he needed.

I'd love to go into detail about how he made it, but I honestly don't know - I do know it looks mighty good though, and Little Girl's special small shoe space is just the cutest. Our hallway is so much tidier now, and I'm starting to wonder how we ever coped without a shoe rack beforehand!

Let's make a changing station.

When Little Girl was born, I couldn't imagine ever forgetting a day of it. But lo and behold, 2 years later, I can't remember anything about those early days - How do you bathe a newborn? How many babygrows do we need? Do we need to put cream on them? I still have not researched this. I'm relying on the memories coming back, or my fail-safe : Winging It.

What I do remember, however, is the night time nappy changes. I do not miss those. With Little Baby in with us, it makes sense to have a changing station in our bedroom for the first few months, to save us having to stumble into the bathroom and blinding ourselves with bright lights.

We needed something simple and cheap, that wouldn't take up any space, so we decided to do what we did last time around and make do with the top of our dresser. Ta-dah! Instant changing table. We put the changing mat on there, and screwed a few wicker baskets to the wall above to use as shelves for nappies, creams, anti-bac gel and a few well chosen toys. Our decision to use cloth nappies adds a little pop of colour to the wall, and I made a removeable cover for the changing mat to make it nicer for Little Baby to lie on.

Let me know if you can spot any essentials I've missed on the shelves!!

Operation Move the Nursery!

With Little Baby on the way, we needed to make a decision - let the two of them have their own room and risk never having guests stay over, or make them share a room and keep a spare room for guests (and here's hoping that guests = family (free) babysitters).
It didn't take us long to decide we wanted to keep a spare room. So we started operation *move the nursery*. Little Girl was in the small bedroom - ideal for one toddler, but not so great for two, plus all their accumulated toys.

We're still in the bubble of not knowing the sex of Little Baby, so we needed a gender neutral colour scheme, and I'm really liking the greys that are out there at the moment, added to that, I bought a tub of a bright mustard colour a while back that needed to be used up - so the our colourscheme was decided upon fairly easily. Little Girl's refurbed grey & pink 70s dresser would look great in there, so it was an easy decision to make,

I went off to work in the morning and left Mr at home with his folks - Nanny looked after Little Girl whilst Mr and Grandad set about moving the rooms around and redecorating. They did a great job, and Little Girl was incredibly chuffed with her new room. It's still very much *her* room, but Little Baby will be in with us for the first 6 months, so we don't really need to worry about adding any furniture at this point.

I went out a couple of days later to buy some frames to make a little feature on the wall, and with all her colourful bunting and Nanny's original watercolours on the wall, the room looks great now.