Castles and Sand

This past weekend was another packed one. I had to work a full day on Saturday so we didn’t plan much of anything for this weekend. I was supposed to work on Sunday but as the week went on we were not needed to come in on Sunday. I honestly cannot wait for this conversion to be over. On Saturday we all sat at work with nothing to do all day.

Any ways, we ran into our neighbor across the street on Thursday and she invited us over Saturday night. Our bosses let us out early Saturday so I when I got home The Hubs and I were able to put together the sand and water table that Belle got for Christmas. We were also able to run to Toys R Us to get a bag of sand before we had to be at our neighbors house. Belle had fun playing Saturday night with her friend and it was nice to get out and talk with some friends.

Sunday started off low key. We hung around in the house all morning until Belle’s nap time. When she went down The Hubs and I went outside to start working on the backyard. We put the sand and water into her table and set up the umbrella so it was all set when she got up from her nap. Then we worked on putting together her gym, which is a castle. Somehow, I did not know it was a castle when we bought it. We were able to put it together while she was napping. We only had two more screws to do when she woke up.

We still have to move it to where it is actually going to sit in the yard yet. We have a patch of purple flower weeds in our yard that attracts all the bees. We went out last night to get some weed killer. Hopefully that does the trick and we won’t have to worry so much about the bees. I am hoping The Hubs is still planning on calling and having our yard sprayed. It needs it badly and it will help with all the bugs.

The umbrella was apparently crooked yesterday. Opps.

Belle loves her new backyard. So many fun things to do now. I thought I got some pictures of everything but I guess not. She has a picnic table, a separate slide from her castle, a ball pit, her bike, and her cozy coupe.

Now all we need is the table and chair set I want and our backyard will be perfect for this summer. And a new pool for Belle since she out grew the baby pool.

Our Favorite Room

Since yesterday I did a tour of Belle's bedroom, I thought today I would do a tour of the playroom. Considering most of my posts and pictures are of us in Belle's playroom. Nothing has been moved around since we first put it together but it is filled now. Her playroom we basically did on a budget. It was the only way to talk The Hubs into getting it done before Christmas. We spent a weekend cleaning out the room (we are going to have one large garage sale this spring) and used paint we bought for our bedroom that we never used. I spent hours on Pinterest planning the perfect playroom. We bought a white cubical and spent one of our days off painting and putting the room together. Even with all of her toys in the room, it still felt empty and echoed. But since Christmas the room is filled and is our family’s favorite room in the house.

Looking in from the door.

The art work Belle and I made for her wall.

On the floor we have a foam puzzle piece mat that we got from Toys R Us when Belle started to learn how to crawl. We love it and it's easy to clean. Looking in from the door the room looks small, and well it is. It's the smallest bedroom in our house. Lined up next to the door is Belle's push toys, a tea cart, stroller, and a shopping cart in the corner. We have a small area of all her blocks and then we move on to her kitchen. This was in Belle's room before the playroom. We have so many plates and food it is crazy. The food always seems to fall out when you open the fridge door. After Christmas I picked up some bins from Target to help keep things organized. I put one next to her kitchen for all of her plates and bowls. The pots and pans are hidden in the stove and dishwasher. I gave Belle one of our many washcloths for when she does her dishes.

Don't mind the pom poms, they were hanging up but they all fell.

Haven't figured out how to keep them up yet.

This corner is just recently redone. We never had anything in here and at Christmas time her Christmas tree was here. Now we have her doll house and two bins. One bin has dollhouse pieces and one with dress up items. Next to the dollhouse is a chair and her boppy filled with dolls. The cubical is next to the chair and I have it very organized. Honestly being organized makes clean up a breeze. Belle knows where to find everything and knows where everything goes when it's time to clean up. We have two sections of books. The bin on the left is all Mr. Potato Head pieces. The middle is puzzles, and the bin on the right is all the small random toys and doll accessories. The bottom right corner is her leaptop, a lead frog book and a memory game. The top row is mainly stuffed animals. On the very top are some bean bags, the Minnie Mouse head from her birthday party and some more stuffed animals. The file folders and notebooks are mine and keep track of what the theme is at school and the different crafts we're doing during the week.

Next is our art corner. I love her easel. I am so glad we went with this even though it's huge and she's a little small for it yet. The totes underneath are the best and so helpful with a tiny room. I keep some art supplies in the bins along with her letter magnets, coloring books and her art smock. I also store her animal clips that we use for her art work in one of the bottom bins. I have two totes I never put away. One is construction paper and the other we bought her for Christmas. It was a Crayola art supply tote. It is now filled with tons of art supplies that we have picked up and stuff we had. I am in these totes almost every day. The big tote in front is her Sensory Tub. On the wall is a long strip of jewelry line that we use to hold her finished art work. I still need to make it more pretty and add a saying or something above it.

My favorite part is her table and chair set. We spend a lot of time at it having tea parties, painting, doing puzzles, and coloring. When she is not at it, her Princesses are.

We spend our evenings in the playroom now and it was the best idea we have had. I am so happy to have my living room back and not be tripping over toys all the time. All of her toys have a place and it has helped with Belle putting toys away without us asking.

Nursery Confession

This weeks Toddler Talk Thursday is about switching to a toddler bed. Since Belle is only 16 months and no where near ready to switch to her toddler bed yet, I thought I would post a confession about Belle's room. And I am hoping you have some good tips for a toddler room.



Confession, the room I obsessed over the entire time I was pregnant, we never finished. Belle's room is butterflies which are pink and brown. Pink walls and black furniture. We simply ran out of time. The room was painted, the furniture was put together, and the crib was ready. But we had nothing on the walls. We thought we still had three weeks to get stuff for the walls. We had the letters for her name painted and ready to go. I think Belle was home for a week when I finally got The Hubs to hang them. And that's it nothing else has been hung up.

The letters are not crooked, its just my bad camera skills. Oh and

in both pictures it's the same wall color. Not sure why they look like different colors.

Within the last week I have gotten the urge to put together her "big girl" room. She's still in her crib and not ready for the toddler bed yet and were not going to change the furniture but I would like to get some stuff up on the walls and get some of the baby stuff out. Like umm, her infant seat that is sitting in the corner. Yeah, we have no other place to store it for now.

I found a really awesome idea/tutorial on how to make your own wall clings from digital scrapbooking designs. Only I can't find anything that will match her room. One reason I picked the bedding I did was because it's not babyish. It will grow with her. So I don't want to change the theme of her room. I love it and it fits her really well.

One of the butterflies on Belle's bedding.

Belle's bedding. This was taken before she was here.

I also have an idea to buy some canvases and let Belle go to town on them with some pinks and browns and cream colors. Then when they are dried I was thinking of modge podging some butterflies on them and hanging them with the same ribbon as her letters. I really like this idea because she will be able to create something for her room by herself.

I need something on the walls, I hate how plain they are. I would also love to get some shelves up in her room. I have two American Girl dolls from when I was a kid that I pulled out and cleaned up when I was pregnant. Right now they are sitting in the corner next to the infant seat. I would love to put them up on a shelf along with her Precious Moments.

Here are some pictures of her room and the blank walls. It looks so sad.

Abover her changer. Across from her crib.

And we obviously need something to cover our bad paint touch up job. opps.

Above her little cubby organizer thing. The door is to the left.

The small wall next to the closet. The crib is to the right of the closet.

I want to put shelves on the small wall.

The wall looking into her room. The only window in her room as well.

The changer is on the wall to the right.

The other side of the window by the crib. Don't mind the TV tray table. It's

the only way we could have her humidifier and monitor near her.

Any ideas would be much appreciated. I really like the idea of the canvases and letting Belle paint them herself. I think it is art work she will love to have in her room for years to come as well. I would probably hang them above the cubby/organizer and I am thinking I would do two or three of them. I have had a few different ideas for above the changer but have never done anything. I was thinking a vinyl wall cling and then thought about hanging her quilt above it. But I don't want anything that she can pull on.

And a side note, these pictures made me realize I really need to get her some real curtains.

Disaster Site.

Since now I have a toddler I have decided that my house is never going to be clean again. I try my best to keep it clean during the week. Lets be honest, once Belle is down for the night I am exhausted and have very little ambition to wash the living room tables, again. I have glass tables in the living room. I wash them and seriously 10 minutes later some how little fingerprints find their way on to them. Even when she is already in bed.

Since there is not much time from the time we get home to bed time during the week her play area usually stays pretty clean. I pick up and reorganize some things. But on weekends it's a disaster. I clean it up every night after she goes to bed and when she gets up in the morning it's like a tornado has gone through it.

Tornado Belle...

...And the aftermath.

And even after I clean up the aftermath of Tornado Belle, I turn around to find her pulling more toys down.

My living room is a disaster. The tables need a good cleaning. And I have a laundry basket full of clothes that apparently do not fold themselves. I have sympathy cards laying on my coffee table. And confession time, I still have Christmas lights up in my front window and some snowmen still on our entertainment center. Every thing else has been put away. I have one tote that needs to come up. The Hubs offered to bring it up for me but I didn't have the energy that day to take everything down. With my father being sick and passing at the beginning of the month I didn't have the time. Then the week after I didn't feel like dealing with it. And now, I am simply just exhausted. It will come down so I can put my valentines heart in the window. The laundry will be folded so we have clothes to wear this week. Belle's toys will be picked up and put away each night. And my tables will be cleaned. All so that it can be a disaster by Friday again.

I think I just need a cleaning lady...

I Have Lost My House...

To my 15 month old. Wait, did I just say 15 month old?? Hold on while I hyperventilate......

....ok, I have composed myself some what. Any ways, my 15 month old has slowly taken over our house. The room that was/will be her play room was not cleaned out by our deadline of Christmas. And right now we just don't have the time to clean it out. My new goal is to clean it out either by her birthday in October or next Christmas. Why so far from now? After I thought about it, she's not ready for a play room. We won't have a TV in there or a nice comfy couch in there. So no place for us to be comfortable right now. And she is too young to go in there to play by herself. Maybe in another year she will be ok.

So for now, she has taken over by dinning nook. Its not a dining room because it's a nook off of our living room. In reality it is a part of our living room off to the side. It's hard to explain but the way our living room is, it's not really able to be part of the living room. So we had our kitchen table in there and it was our "dining nook".

Then Christmas approached and we had no where to put a tree with out completely losing our living room. So we did some rearranging and finangled the table into the kitchen. It's in there, but no room for us to sit at it. Then Christmas happened and our child has more toys then she knows what to do with and we still have to find a place to put her play kitchen.

So she was giving my dining nook and it is now her play nook. Spoiled spoiled child.

If you remember this is where her toys use to be. I am loving the room back over here.

This is when I tried to set it up. Everytime I put a toy some where she pulled it out. So I had to wait until after bed to put it together.

Finally organized.

How long before she pulls my books down?

Her kitchen will go some where in here. And I would like to still get some more bins like the pink one.

Tales of Renting A House

 After a year a half of asking our landlord to replace our warped, pealing, horrible front door it is here. Our pretty new door. Well kinda. After four and a half hours of working on it, it's still not done. He is coming back this afternoon to finish it.
Our landlord decided that he couldn't miss out on his casino money one month and use our rent money to make some repairs so we got a door he had bought for his own house and for whatever reason never used. It didn't fit in our door frame. So they had to cut into the drywall to make the door frame larger.

Do you know what kind of mess drywall makes when you are cutting it??? It's all over my living room. I washed the floor Tuesday night after he left but I didn't bother dusting since he's coming back today to finish.

But our landlord being a cheapo worked out in our favor. We got a nice door. Not a he's going to be cheap and buy the cheapest he can find meaning its going to be a really ugly door.

Here is an unfinished picture. Hopefully it won't take long today and all the molding will be up and it will be finished. Oh and yeah there is no screen door right now because it's broke and our landlord has known it's been broke. The Hubs ex room mate broke it YEARS ago. It's been broke since before I moved in 5 years ago. The landlord and I had a conversation about it last September. On Tuesday he acted like he knew nothing about it.

He wants to put that screen door back on. My question is how is he going to put it back on when they had to widen the door frame?

So hopefully I will have some pictures for tomorrow to show how pretty our new door is all finished. Hopefully.

Just Another Manic Monday

So the weekend is over and I don't know where it went. Was it even here? Saturday Patrick cut the grass and even weed wacked the entire back yard, the sides of the house and some of the front. The extension cord didn't reach the entire front. Belle was extremely cuddly so her and I cuddled on the couch for most of the morning. She did really well with napping in her crib again. I didn't do much of anything during the day on Saturday.

My brother invited us over Saturday night for pizza and wings. So we brought Cranium over and played that. Umm...one of the longest games ever! But it was actually a lot of fun. I learned that we suck and drawing and humming. And sherades haha we won't even go there. Belle woke up while we were there and that was the end of the game. She wanted to go home. So we packed everything up and headed home right away.

Belle actually slept in past 8. Can you believe it?? Considering that she was up at 6:30 on Saturday. Remind me to that JD for that one. Sunday ended up being a busy day. We were only going to clean the kitchen, I ended up cleaning most of the living room. Our kitchen is small with very little cupboards and the worse set up you could ever imagine. We have a tiny table in the kitchen that we never use. We have a nook in the living room that we use as a dining room. So the table was holding a lot of stuff that we just never tried to fit into the small cupboards. Patrick did a great job of finding places for everything. Eventually we are going to get rid of the table and buy a butchers block or something with more storage. Considering we really don't even have a place for all of Belle's bottles.

So then it was my turn. We have horrible grained white tile in our kitchen. I would like to meet the jerk that put this flooring in. It is the worst floor for a kitchen. Seriously. So to get this floor clean I grabed my trusty bottle of Kaboom and my scrub brush...yes scrub brush and cleaned each tile individually. I think I was in there for almost 2 hours. My hands was soooo red when I was done. But it looks better thankfully. When we buy a house it can not have groved tile!

I washed all the curtains from the kitchen and living room. I can't believe how dusty they were but they look great.

Now that all the rooms have gotten the deep spring cleaning we can now focus on the outside and hopefully begin to spend these nice weekends outside and not inside.