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.

We need more space!! (continued)

Our downstairs bathroom is very small, and boasts and avocado suite. Glorious.

It also had a useful, but rather ugly, yellowing cream plastic cupboard with mirrored doors in there, and a painting of a boat. Despite our professed love for all things 70s and vintage, this just proved too much, and they had to go.

How do you modernise an avocado bathroom? Well, we've matched ours with a bit of lilac and grey, which I think works a treat, and the hidden shelf above the door means we can store all the stuff we need without it being on show. Much better, and with the bizarre plastic cabinet gone, the room feels bigger too. We swapped it out for an old mirror I had lying around the warehouse...

We need more space!!

Why is it that a space is so easily filled? We have so much more space than we've had in our previous homes, but we seem to fill it so easily.

I've started to try and find ways to effectively store things, without anywhere looking too cluttered. A challenge.

We started in the kitchen - it's tiny. For two very keen cooks, it's smaller than tiny, it's doll sized. All of my baking equipment (which fills 4 x 64 litre containers) is in the garage, and our herbs and spices alone would fill a cupboard. We considered adding shelving to the wall, but the only available space was immediately in front of you as you walked in, and as we have the door permanently open, you'd see the whole ugly side of it all the time.

I had a few old wine crates at the warehouse, so I brought one home and we painted the inside of it and hung it on the wall to use as a shelf. We bought some super cheap spice racks that we painted in white and hung asymmetrically next to the wine crate, then just kind of hung everything else around those - aprons, chopping boards, shopping bags and the cute plate we bought in Mexico a few years ago that we're too scared to actually use for fear of breaking it.

I like that it's not all matchy-matchy and it breaks up an otherwise bare and boring wall.

Next up.... the bathroom!

Refurbished nursing chair

When Little Girl was a few weeks old, and I was halfway between basking in the joy of being a new mother and crying my eyes out at the pain of breastfeeding, I decided I needed somewhere more comfortable to sit in, which I could breastfeed her in.

A quick google led me to some rather unattractive, but undeniably practical, nursing chairs that rocked, had reclining backs and came with matching footstools, but at around £150, they were well out of my maternity price bracket. So I found one on Ebay for £30.

Mr went and picked it up and put it together, and I was instantly happier with my special chair. But my goodness, was it ugly!! Beige corduroy on a stained oak rocker - definitely not my cup of tea. I made grand plans to recover it and paint the wood. This was around May 2013.

We moved into a new house in October 2013, and I was still breastfeeding, so putting the chair together was a priority when we moved in. I made a mental note to get cracking on my re-upholstery project as soon as we settled. I spent a while searching for fabrics and getting swatches sent to me, and eventually settled on a beautiful print from Sanderson - it wasn't cheap, but I figured it would look so good that we could keep it for years to come! The fabric sat in its wrapper for a while, and eventually, I made a start.

Having never upholstered anything before, I thought I'd start simply, and do the footstool cushion first. The cushion pad turned out to be a bit rubbish, so I popped into a local haberdashery and bought a new piece of foam to use. I also decided that it would like better as 3 pieces of fabric (top, bottom and sides) rather than 2, which is what it was originally. Also, having suffered a baby with reflux, I knew everything had to be easily removed for washing, so I made a simple pillowcase opening on the back.

The cushion pad looked great, the footstool, however, was still a pretty bland stained oak. I rectified this promptly with a purchase of Annie Sloane chalk paints and wax. It was super simple to use, and I hope you'll agree that the footstool turned out a treat.

At this point, Little Girl had a massive sleep regression and I simply never had time to get on with the chair part of the nursing chair.

Eventually, I ordered more foam to replace the seat pad and back cushion on the chair, and recut them to a slightly more elegant, rounded shape, then cracked on with making the new covers. I used the old cushion covers as a guide, and added a few extras - Mr is a whole foot taller than me, so although my head sits comfortably on the back cushion, his rests on the wooden frame - I added a layer of wadding and put it in a simple covering, so that his head is gently cushioned on those nights where we spend a few hours cuddling Little Girl to sleep. I then had to add a couple of poppers to the underside of that cushion to keep it from flicking up - simple enough.

Really chuffed with the end result, and even managed to get it done before Little Baby arrives.

A changing mat

Has anyone else noticed that the portable changing mats you buy are somewhat on the small side? Great for a newborn, but once you get to 6 months, all that fits on there is half a bum cheek. Not ideal for any poo-splosions....

I needed a new one, and nothing much ever seemed to be available, so making one was the solution!

I bought some waterproof fabric in a colourful print, put a layer of old fleece (to absorb any accidents, and make it bit softer on Little Girl's back) in the middle, and sewed it together with a bit of brightly coloured bias binding. Lovely.

And it rolls up to a tiny size, so fits in our pacapod without any problems.