I'd never heard of the term 'nesting' until I was teaching 6th grade a few years ago. I had a student whose mom was pregnant with twins and one day when I asked how her mom was doing towards the end of the pregnancy she replied, "Oh you know...nesting." 

At the time, I absolutely didn't know. But I thought it might be unwise to tarnish my credibility by admitting that I didn't have a clue what she was talking about, so I just smiled and nodded. 

Being pregnant with baby #3 in just over 3 years...I've come a long way in understanding the period of time towards the end of pregnancy she was referring to. HA!

I've always loved making to-do lists and it's typical for me to have a running list of projects to tackle constantly in the back of my mind, but with the "due-date" of baby #3 rapidly approaching, I've reached the frantic stage of adding-and-crossing-things-off-my to-do list-at-lightening-speeds known as "NESTING." 

And yes, this frantic and frazzled little mother-bird is a pretty accurate in showcasing how I'm feeling right about now. 😂 

But here's the point: After months and months of avoiding it on my to-do list, THE KIDS' ROOM IS FINALLY DECORATED!!!!!!! 

Ever since moving into this apartment I planned to have Lydia and Elliott share a room, and over the course of the last 10 months I've gradually gathered things to furnish it. In August we started the..."adventurous" endeavor of actually putting them in the same room at bedtime and... 😅 safe to say that saga deserves a blogpost (or 5🙈) of its very own. HA.

BUT YOU GUYS THEIR ROOM FINALLY FINISHED AND I'M SO PLEASED WITH HOW IT CAME TOGETHER!!!! 

First of all. It's super simple. Some might even say bare 😂. I'm sure a normal person could have had this level of decorating done by noon in a single day, but I tend to be VERY indecisive and agonize over every little decision when it comes to decorating, so despite what this may look like, it is a HUGE accomplishment for me. (Our last apartment we lived in for over a year and I only ever finished decorating one room. ha.)

Thankfully for me, in the hours I've spent scouring Pinterest, I've zero-ed in on my design style and if all the "how to categorize your design style" quizzes I've taken are correct, my design style is classified as 'minimalist.' (Shocker, huh?)

Hooray for Pinterest teaching me things about myself I never knew and also for the fact that it means I can have only a few things in a room and call it complete! (Less things = less decisions = happier Hannah 👏🏻)

Lydia's crib was gifted to us from Kolcraft and we all love it. (Especially Lydia.) It's called the Roscoe 3-in-1 and even after three months of use she still refers to is as her "new crib." haha. One of the big advantages of this particular crib is that if you purchase it with the accompanying conversion kit, you can use it as a regular crib, toddler bed, or a day bed! And for being so versatile, the price-point is quite reasonable!

At some point soon we'll probably switch it to a toddler bed, but as of now Lydia still LOVESSS having a crib, and I'm in no rush to switch anything up since we finally have a good thing going with the two-kids-in-the-same-room situation. 😬🤞🏻😂 *knock on wood*

I chose this particular crib because of its bright, clean, timeless look and I was happy to see when it arrived that it is much sturdier than our other crib. Plus, when Stephen was setting it up he commented MULTIPLE times about how simple it was! It was already partially assembled in the box which made putting it together a breeze (very much unlike some IKEA furniture we've purchased in the past😅).

Last weekend we finally got around to hanging these adorable animal prints from The Crown Prints, and while it became VERY CLEAR very quickly that Stephen and I should never ever under any circumstances take on any DIY projects together (for the sake of our children and our marriage 😂😂😂) I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. It's amazing how much hanging something on the walls changes the entire feel of the room! Every time we walk into their room now, Elliott points at the animals and attempts to make animal noises and it's basically the cutest thing ever.

Although it's not perfect, and mayyybeeee at some point down the line I'll add curtains or something, for now the room is DONE. And you know what?! DONE IS FUN!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 What a relief it is to be able to cross things off my to-do list!!! (Now if only I could stop finding more and more things to add to it.😅)

Thanks again to Kolcraft for sending Lydia's wonderful crib and The Crown Prints for the perfect animals!

_ _ _

han.

I know I'm about a month late 😅 but it's never too late to post some adorable photos of a chubby one year old eating some cake AM I RIGHT(?!) so here we are! Elliott's first birthday was super low-key (even more low-key than Lydia's - which is saying something because I thought hers was about as bare-bones as they come, haha). We had some neighbors over to eat cake and ice cream and sing Happy Birthday. 

Funny story about the ice cream - when I opened our freezer the day before the party I noticed that there were a lot of things that were melting. Frantically I texted around to a few neighbors to see if anyone had some extra freezer-space for us to stash a few things before it spoiled. Thankfully a neighbor had a spare freezer in her garage that was practically empty so I hurried and moved it all over there. I put the gallon of ice cream I had purchased for the party and other things into her freezer and said I'd be in touch when I needed them. The next day a few minutes before the party started I texted to see if I could grab the ice cream and she said they would be out until late that evening! Oops! I panicked and made Stephen run to the store and get another gallon of ice cream...needless to say, we still have looooots of ice cream in our freezer from his birthday over a month ago. 😂