A Happy Birthday

A couple weekends ago we celebrated Little Man's 2nd birthday!  I still can believe he's 2!  I kept things super low-key.  I didn't do nearly as much stuff as I did for his first birthday.  And ya know what?  He didn't seem to mind a bit.  We just had a fun day with family and ate a bunch of pizza and cupcakes.  We even had great weather in the middle of February so we were able to enjoy most of the party outside. 

I loooooved throwing a simple (low stress) party.  I designed the invites, cupcake toppers, and banner, and I only spent money on getting the invitations printed ($6 postcards from Costco) and a stack of scrapbook card stock from Wal-Mart for my dot garland.  Oh yeah, and I made these fantastic low-sugar, carrot and pineapple cupcakes from a recipe I found on Weelicious.com. 

Speaking of birthdays, yesterday The Thrifty Abode turned one!  It's hardly worth mentioning, especially since I've been blogging so irregularly for about three months now, but I figured I'd do it any way.  

Hope everyone's having a wonderful Leap Day!

Shared Spaces and Playrooms

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Y'all gave me such great advice about having a toddler and an exhausting pregnancy when I announced that I was expecting again, that I'm back for more words of wisdom!

We found out that baby #2 is a boy last week, and I'm seriously considering putting both boys in one room to sleep, and making our third bedroom into a playroom.

The thought of baby and toddler waking each other up at night worries me quite a bit, but Little Man slept in our room until he was six months old and we'll probably do the same with this baby.  That way they won't really be sleeping in the same room until Little Man is almost three and baby #2 has established good sleep habits. 

Have any of you other mommies had any luck with bunking your kids together or did it cause more problems than it was worth?

If I'm going to do this, I'd really like to get the playroom finished within the next few months.  Right now the toy clutter is pretty under control, but we don't have any room for big things.  I'd love for Little Man to have space for a little table and chairs or even a train table and we just don't have room for that right now and I can't see fitting that stuff into a room with a big crib or a twin size bed. 

Until I make any decisions and fill y'all in on the plans I'll come up with, here are some shared space and playroom inspiration pics I've been collecting on Pinterest.

I've been looking at shared spaces, not because I'm going to completely overhaul my decor, but because I'm curious to see how other people have fit a crib and a bed into one room.  

Isn't the first picture of that cowboy room adorable?  I love the arrangement, but I think a crib and bed would fit better in our room if they're arranged like the ones in the picture below.

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I've come across some great playrooms and I'm almost 100% positive the the purchase of an Expedit storage unit from Ikea is in my near future.

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Valentine Tag/Cupcake Topper

I whipped up this little tag for my niece yesterday and thought it would be nice to share with y'all.  

We usually don't get too into Valentine's Day around here, but it might be fun to do some things for Little Man now that he's getting old enough to enjoy little activities and crafts. 

What do y'all usually do?  Any fun traditions to pass along?  I'd really love to hear!

Click here to download the sheet. 
P.S.  For some reason the picture of the sheet looks terrible on Scribd, but it does not look like that once the PDF is downloaded!