Getting Ready

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Last night, hubby and I started a movie on Netflix and got to work organizing Skyler's summer clothing into bins to make room for his new fall/winter clothing. We weren't just adding to the bins, but we also took out some of the older bags that I last organized about a year ago - out came the newborn clothes, sleep sacks, 0-3 month clothing, and itty bitty socks and hats in preparation for our little one's arrival!!

Eeek!! It was so fun to pull out these tiny clothes again!!

I have been itching to not only prepare Skyler's closet for his new clothing, but to see how much we are going to need to get for the new baby. With Skyler's birthday in June and baby E's ETA in December, we are complete opposite seasons for clothing. Luckily, we have a lot that will work, but I am excited that I get to buy this baby some new clothing of his own as well!! 

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When I started organizing Skyler's clothing, I got rid of nothing and I am especially glad now that I even saved things he never wore because we might need them this time around. When we started accumulating baby clothes that Skyler was growing out of, I bought two massive bins from the Container Store and a pack of vacuum seal bags. 

I usually just toss the stuff he grows out of into a box in his closet and when it begins to overflow I go through and sort the clothes into similar sizes (I combine seasons, his 12 month bag has fleece Santa pajamas and summer shorts, but I just wanted to focus on size), fold them and stuff them into a bag along with a post it with the size(s) written on it. I also do separate bags for things like socks, hats, and mittens, and I have a separate bag for all of the handmade sweaters we get since they are harder to size.

This is the kind of thing I love to do, and it makes the upcoming arrival of baby #2 feel so so real!

Big Boy Bed

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I just tucked (and so far once re-tucked) my baby into his "big boy bed" for the first time. Of all the big changes that have happened since Skyler grew into the toddler stage, this one stung harder than most! I think it has been a challenging move, for me especially, because he was still sleeping so great in the crib. But, with baby brother arriving in just over three months, I want Skyler to feel like he has his own space and that the baby isn't going to be suddenly taking over his old bed. 

We have been talking about Skyler's new bed for weeks. He knew when daddy got home from a work trip that we were going to go get his bed and set it up, so he has been very excited. I didn't show him the bedding ahead of time because I wanted it to be a surprise, but we have made a big enough deal about the bed that he knew it was a fun change!

Excited boy watching daddy set up his old crib in our room!

Last night, we took apart the crib in Skyler's room and set it back up in our room, where the baby will be until he is sleeping through the night. Then back into big brother's room the crib will go, and a shared room it will become (at least until we move to a bigger home, or longer if they like their shared bedroom sleeping arrangement). For the "before" pictures of our rooms, check out this post and this post.

Skyler "sleeping" in his old bed! The crib will eventually move against
the other wall and will be decorated as a small nursery nook.

After Skyler went to bed in the new crib zone, we got to work setting up his new twin bed with super special vehicle bedding. I thought about staying with the colors/theme of his current room, but knew that my little guy, who loves anything that moves, would flip over this great bedding.

I thought it was pretty gross that I could still see the slats after the crib was moved,
and quickly washed the walls. Toddlers are so dirty ;)

This morning, the first thing we did was go see the new bed, and Skyler was so happy. He excitedly crawled up onto his bed and touched all the vehicles, exclaiming each new find with a big "Oh!!" His current faves are the tractors and cement mixers. It was the sweetest thing to see! We are still waiting on the side rail after a very delayed cancelled order (which almost made me want to wait the week until we can get it from the new store) and I am planning on decorating the high headboard, but for now, I am just happy to have my very excited toddler in his new big boy space. The toy bins that were at the foot of his crib are now to the side of the headboard, and the toy car storage I made still fit perfectly under his new bed!

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Next up will be moving the crib to the other wall in our room, and starting to decorate the small space that will be shared with baby E in just a few months!

And in other exciting news, I think Skyler is asleep! Woo!! Now hopefully we will be able to get through midday nap tomorrow!

Toy Car Storage and Play Mat

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This idea for toy car storage in Skyler's room has been in the works since I reorganized after Christmas. I brainstormed many different ways to bring my idea to life, and when I finally decided the route I wanted to go in, I didn't have much desire to work on it. I am not sure why I have been avoiding this project, but I finally tackled this apparently daunting task this week. 

After Christmas, Joe had this huge box sitting around. I saw it and knew I wanted to use it as toy vehicle storage under Skyler's crib. We cut off about half of the box, creating a long shallow bin. We then measured under the crib and shortened one end of the box so it would fit underneath.

My first thought to cover the box was black chalk contact paper. I looked it up and was really surprised how expensive it was, especially when I wasn't sure it would work. Then I bought a black table cover, but it was just too hard to cover the box with and it tore easily. My next thought was to use fabric, so I went out and got black fabric to make the road and some cute yellow and white gingham to go along with the road stripes and also to fit in with the nursery. I bought the fabric weeks ago, but have been putting covering the box off. I decided that this was the week, even though I was nervous with this project. I am not super comfortable working with fabric, mostly because it needs to be cut just right and I wasn't sure exactly how I wanted to cover the box.

I loosely followed this tutorial. I didn't take any pictures while I covered it because I was just focusing on cutting the pieces to the correct size and length. To be honest, it looked pretty bad as I went along (mostly the black fabric), jagged and uneven, but when it was fully covered, it is hard to tell. This box was not the best to cover, which can be seen through the thin gingham fabric, but it was the exact size and shape I wanted, so it worked out alright!

To start making our road, I measured out a piece of contact paper on the bottom of the box. I marked where the road lines would go with sharpie and then cut the pieces out with a X-acto knife.

After doing the right side, I decided to only cut out every other line on the other side. Once I was done cutting out the pieces, I removed the liner and stuck the contact paper onto the fabric.

The make our road lines, I painted over the contact paper with white and yellow fabric paint.

Once the lines were painted on, the contact paper came off and our new play mat road was finished!

I am so happy with the finished play mat road. As soon as Skyler saw it, he knew exactly what to do! He had so much fun playing with this mat, and we spent the entire afternoon driving all of Skyler's vehicles and exploring with our new activity.

Skyler enjoyed touching the rough painted spots, and the smooth fabric. 

Skyler quickly decided to get inside his box to drive the vehicles around!

For awhile, he even took his vehicles out to "walk, walk!" along the road, then out of the box, just to quickly turn around and step inside, practically running down his own little catwalk!

We used almost every vehicle toy of Skyler's. One of our favorite cars to play with was his set of pull-back cars. Skyler sat on one end of the box and giggled while I pulled back and released the cars, sending them flying in his direction. I helped him pull them back on his own, and he has had these cars for awhile, but this was the first time he was able to do it on his own. 

We really did use EVERY vehicle though.

Skyler just kept running around his room, grabbing anything with wheels. When he got bored with one, he would just get another. It made me so happy to see him loving this new activity, even though I didn't love the way the fabric covering turned out. But, he is thrilled with the new road to drive his cars on, and I got the storage that I wanted.

It was such a great feeling to complete this project that I planned to do so long ago. While creating the toy storage and play mat was not the most smooth process, the finished product is one that both Skyler and I are very happy with!

Closet Reveal

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Well, it is still incredibly frustrating to photograph, but the closet is finished and I am so happy with the results!

I am also happy to be done with this project so I can get back to writing posts about the fun stuff I do with Skyler. Between working on this during his naps when I am normally prepping activities and how interested he has been with everything he got for Christmas, we really have not been doing too many new activities around here. The two things we have done almost every day because Skyler has been LOVING them, are snow painting with food coloring and washing dishes in the sink.

But, back to the closet. The wonderfully organized and easy to maintain closet! I am so giddy every time I open the door I can hardly stand it. And this entire room reorganization took me only ten days. 30-60 minute chunks at a time. Whew.

Some of these pictures really stink which is kind of a bummer because it looks amazing in person, but our camera was not loving all the super close up shots in a very skinny space, so I had to take some with my IPad. I'll take what I can get I suppose...

This was the closet as I left it last with some minor de-cluttering that took less than an hour.

And here is the finished closet as of yesterday.

You can't see me, but I am smiling.

My favorite thing about the closet and what I see first when I open the doors are the pictures of Skyler that I took until he turned twelve months old. One set of the pictures had been along the back wall, but it didn't really work in the space, so now they are both along the wall to the left.

The green set of drawers got some cute shelf liner (that I used to line his dresser drawers here) and some labels. The bottom dresser used to hold odds and ends, but now is where I put stray hangers.

The shelving unit on the opposite wall also got some labels above each cubby. These bins did not change at all, but I did go through a couple of them to get rid of things we don't use anymore.

Starting at the top left and going to the right, we keep seasonal items (Halloween costume from this year and an inflatable swimming pool) and bags, Manuals and extra parts for toys or furniture, baby wearing gear, and diapers. The bottom left and over houses an alphabet play mat, documents (papers from classes, cards to Skyler, filled journals that I write to him), balls (that used to be in the inflatable pool ball pit in our living room), and his laundry basket. 

Something I decided to do at the last minute was store some of Skyler's smaller art materials in a random shoe organizer that I have had for years. I put it in Skyler's closet when we moved in and it has just hung there ever since!

We use the strainer at the top to thread pipe cleaners, and then the four bins below hold adhesives, decorations, drawing tools, and paints/paint brushes. His ColorBlast books are there as well, but they are usually out of his closet, or at least one is. I am trying to think of a better use for that space. These little bins are great because I can easily grab the type of supply I am looking for instead of searching through the bigger art bin on the top shelf.

 

The upper shelf has large bins for some assorted manipulative toys for smaller hands, the bigger art supplies like construction paper and sheets of foam, and the musical instruments and interactive toys that are being rotated out for now. Though, with the Velcro attaching the pictures on the bins, I can easily put these back out in his room. The smaller bin has some extra sensory bin materials. 

 

The other side of the shelf is where I keep our color box and Skyler's holiday themed books. For now, I love this cute cloth bin, but as his collection of holiday books grows, I will most likely purchase some skinny bins for each season of books, and hold something like stuffed animals or balls in the striped bin.

The greatest perk of this reorganized closet is that every single thing has a place, which should make maintaining the space nice and easy so it does not end up looking like that before picture again!