Lets train

I flew to STL on Friday for Hannah's baby shower. Maybe I haven't mentioned this enough but Hannah is my bestie. We roomed together in college since our freshman year, mere baby 18 year olds, and lived together until I got hitched and moved up to the Great Artic. Needless to say, we've been through an obscene amount of life changes together, we've shared in our good moments and in our yucky ones. We've laughed our butts off until our faces hurt, we've sobbed the ugly cries, and we've shared parts of our engagements together. But sharing in our first pregnancies together has probably been one of the most fun times we've had, even though most of our discussions take place with lengthy emails. (And note, I say 'one of the most fun times' because really....can we ever top our famous college shenanigans? I think not).

So of course, when Hannah announced she was with child I immediately started to envision the baby shower I'd throw her. I mean, I threw her a bridal shower and bachelorette party but a baby shower? It's so different! Enlisting the help of some mighty fine ladies down in MO, we went to work planning the big day for Halloween....or when Hannah is 35 weeks along. And can I just say that the shower was a success and SO much fun?

Here is the lady of the hour, pregnant glow and all:


And of course, I had to figure out a way to do arts and crafts ahead of time and pack them in my carry on bag for the plane. These paper pennants made the trip just fine! And now I totally want to do something like this for our nursery:




Every baby shower needs a diaper cake, right?


And how about a newborn baby, just one month old, attending the shower to give us pregnant ladies a taste of baby life?


See what I mean? Out of 13 guests, four of us were knocked up. Maggie is 12 weeks, I'm 21 weeks (and holy hell, my belly is huge in this picture...I must have been sticking it out to compete with Hannah's!), Amanda is 33 weeks, and Hannah is 35 weeks. Aren't we cute?


Hannah got a creative photography gift from me, for the nursery. Three frames with pictures of baby block letters and tiny animal figurines in each one. They spell out 'Baby' 'baby's name' 'baby's last name' and I think she really liked them! I mean, she did sort of ask me to take 3 photos for the baby's room and we brainstormed together, so it's not like it was a total surprise. But what a fun project!


Hannah and I with our moms....about to be Grandmas for the first time! Needless to say, they are way more excited for this stage in our lives versus the one where we moved off to college. Yeah, that was a little less fun for them:)



And after the shower, Lindsey (who had the shower at her house as the newest newlywed with lots of fun kitchen supplies to use!) asked me to take some pics of fall colors for their back room. She's going with reds and oranges in there and wanted a few prints to hang on the wall. She didn't have to ask me twice...since I have been a slacker and haven't taken any pics of fall leaves up here, I needed my autumn fix anyway.









So all in all, a great weekend. Next time we are back in STL it will be driving through to my parent's house in mid-Missouri for Christmas. Hannah will be a mommy and I will be 7 months pregnant. SO WEIRD!! Where is the time going?

I'm excited to finally reveal the kids' shared bedroom with you today! As soon as we found out we were expecting baby #3 my mind started imagining Truman's room as a shared room with his sister. Maybe someday we will move CC back to the nursery and let the boys (!) share this room, but for now it makes sense to have the older two together.

My only real direction with decorating this room was to keep it bright, fun, playful and young. I basically reused everything and bought almost nothing new aside from Cecelia's new big girl bedding and a few new wall letters, so this room was created by blending both of their original nursery decor together. It's a bit of a hodge-podge, rainbow, BRIGHT room and we love it.



The bunk beds:


The split panel wall art, wire hanger for kids art, dresser, and 100s of stuffed animals:


The bookshelves with a bright wall gallery:


And the best panoramic I could manage:




Want more pictures and an explanation? Twist my arm.

1. The bunk beds:

We are so lucky that Nate's parents kept his bunk beds that he shared with his brother when they were little. They can be split up to be two twin beds, and Truman's single big boy bed was one of these. We considered keeping the two twins separated in this room and they would have fit just fine, but there is SO much more room this way. Plus, bunks are fun. If we were buying them new I would not choose a natural wood finish and am trying very hard not to imagine these bad boys painted a BRIGHT color (who is obsessed with painting furniture? Me.). Tony and Lois bought these almost 30 years ago, unfinished, from a local store that hand makes them. Then Tony finished the wood himself---so obviously, way too sentimental for me to go nuts with a can of golden yellow paint on these bunks. Just happy to have them and the natural wood may not be my style but it certainly works!




I wanted to use the kids' baby quilts that my mom made each of them for their respective nurseries. They seem to fit just fine in the room with bright colors although they certainly don't 'match.'




I might get Cecelia a fun pillow to add to her bed, since Truman has his truck pillow. But for now they both have their special blankets and a stuffed animal or two and that seems like enough.

Super fun to climb on the top bunk on this 'special ladder'. Luckily Cecelia can't quite climb up there on her own just yet. I give her about a month before she figures it out.



The giant "T" and "C"--a favorite part of the room for me. We already had the big C in Cecelia's nursery, so I bought the T and covered it in fabric. I got the ampersand on Etsy and yarn wrapped it---a total beast of a job, but it worked. If we would have kept the two twin beds separate, I wanted to put these across the entire big wall as a focal point. Once we bunked the beds I worried there wasn't space for my letters but we made room! Just had to remove a few pennants from the ceiling and now it works.




2. The dresser, art wires, and stuffed animal area:



I am not sure I will keep all of the stuffed animals out like this, but this dresser top is pretty huge so it's fine for now. In fact, this was another awesome Craigslist find for Truman's big boy room a few years ago---the dresser is huge enough to house both of the kids' clothes no problem. These stuffed animals are all gifts from before Truman was born. Added a few of CC's gifted animals to create a few pops of pink in there, too.







Our 'caught ya being good' jars: you can see that Truman 'accidentally' touched my black fabric paint on the T before it was dry. Sigh. But Cecelia had to get a jar now that we are teaching her to stay in a big girl bed until 6:30 am. So far it's working!! Once they each fill up their jars from especially good behavior and 'sleeping in', we take them for a 1:1 parent-kid date of their choice. Truman always picks a theatre movie and I have no idea what CC will want to do with us. She just started her jar so we have awhile before she fills it up.

A few of my favorite kiddos.


Split panel wall art:



I got these from Etsy seller Saturday Designs as a gift and I seriously love these panels! I picked the color and the quote and when they arrived I was excited to see how light weight they are. I hung them with 3M Command Strips--super easy. I like how this adds a little bit of sappiness to the room full of bright and fun and loudness.






3. Bookshelves and wall gallery:




These are all old frames recycled from both nurseries. So are all of the photos and prints. I am seriously in love with the chaos of this wall gallery.


My babies.


The owl print was an Etsy purchase for CC's nursery. A lot of the photo prints I already had stored in a drawer somewhere. It was fun to attempt keeping the photos and prints equal between children, too.





I bought this tiny letter C and we already had the T---added feathers to the C and added felt circles to the T. There are so many other fun ways to cover wall letters online---hard to decide on which craft product to use.

Their 'announcement' prints that I made on Photoshop for each kid after birth. Tear. I made a lot of prints for Truman's nursery just using photoshop--bought two bigger prints for Cecelia's, and they all made it onto this wall.


Closet, night lights, rug, etc:

The closet actually has a LOT of unused space right now. And Cecelia's clothes/hair bows probably takes up 75% of it, too. It's chaotic and not really 'picture worthy' but whatever! This is also their favorite spot to play upstairs right now.


In order to convince Truman that he had to get rid of his lamp for sleeping, we had to find something else 'fun' as a transition to sharing his room with his sister. We found these night lights on Walmart.com of all places, for $10 each. They light up but also shoot a big picture up on the ceiling at night. CC's has Disney princesses that she calls 'Eel' (Ariel) and Truman picked a Monsters Inc. light. They have worked perfectly for our boy that used to be 'too scared' to sleep without a lamp!


View from above---the wall panels and my old favorite rug from Truman's nursery. I briefly thought about moving this rug into the baby's nursery but I just can't do it. It's too 'Truman' and the rainbow colors are perfect for this bright room.

Textures.


They approve.




Progression of shared room:

We started with Truman's single bed against the wall, then moved it by the window to see if there would be room for a crib. There was! And that is when I started thinking about two twin beds instead of bunks. When my mom was visiting us, we needed an extra bed for sleeping so we assembled the bunks AND kept the crib in the room. Mom slept on the bottom bunk, we officially moved Truman to the top, and I realized that fitting three kids in this room wouldn't be totally out of the question (wink, wink, Nate). And then we took down the crib and the room opened up for just the bunks.

I'm too lazy to do actual links and prices here, but you can email me if you need more specifics on this source list...

Source list:

Wall paint color: Gentle Rain by Behr
Bunk beds: hand-me-downs from the in-laws (built locally about 30 years ago)
Bedding: both big quilts and sheets from Target (T's is Circo, C's is Room Essentials)
Colorful quilts: made by my mom for each of their nurseries
Wall letters T&C: Michaels, wrapped in fabric or yarn by me
Fabric pennants around ceiling: sewed from fabric scraps by me and my mom back in 2009
Striped rug: Ikea in 2009
White dresser: Craigslist (find of the year!)
Stuffed animals: all gifts throughout the years
Rock jars: made from old plastic containers and random craft supplies
Art wire hangers: Ikea on Amazon in 2012
Split panel wall art: Saturday Designs on Etsy
Bookshelf: Target back in 2009
Picture frames: some from Ikea in 2009, some old black ones hand painted with acrylics or spray painted by me
Wall prints: made by me in 2009 for Truman's nursery and Etsy sellers in 2012 for Cecelia's nursery
Night lights: Walmart


And now it's time to focus on the nursery!