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!

Brown Bomb

OK.  So this is kind of embarrassing, but I'm gonna share anyway.  I was hoping to have a beautiful, new, white chair that I got a great deal on to show off today.  Instead, I have a brown chair that's being returned and I'm back to square one of my cheap chair hunt. 

First off, here's why I thought I was getting a white chair.

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That is exactly what the listing on the Williams Sonoma website looks like.  NO WHERE does it say that the upholstery is brown or "walnut".  Oh, and when I ordered my chair the sale price was $479, so I was in a pretty big hurry to place the order before such a great deal was gone.

Here's the embarrassing part:  I was so excited to get a chair at almost $1000 off the original price that I didn't even realize that the "walnut" in the description was referring to the fabric.  No warning flags went off, no thoughts, of, "Hmm, that's funny maybe I should call about that and possibly cancel my order."

Please tell me that I'm not crazy and that I had every reason to be completely shocked when a brown chair showed up at my house! 

After a short freak-out session and a chat with customer service (I kept the freak-out separate from the customer service call) I got them to agree to come pick the chair up and give us a full refund.  Whew!

Anyways, I have definitely learned my lesson.  From now on, every online order will be read and scrutinized a million times before I click "place order."

I'm a bit bummed that I didn't get the deal that I thought I was getting.  The chair really is great and very high quality.  It's comfortable and it's the perfect size and style I was looking for, just not the right color.  Now I have to start searching all over again. 

I'll let you know what I come up with!

A Liiiiiittle Bit to the Right

As promised, here's the little bit of rearranging I did in my bedroom.  Nothing big, just some shifting.  The bed used to be in the left corner which left a huge open space on the right side of the room (picture here). 

The last time I posted progress pics of my bedroom Andrea from Decorating Cents asked why my bed wasn't centered.  At first I couldn't remember, and I thought, "Why isn't my bed centered?"  I started poking around my room and I was reminded that the air vents are both right under the windows.  That's why I hadn't bothered to try and center the bed, 'cause I thought that the bedside tables would block he vents. 

Well, I got curious and pushed the bed and night stands to the center.  Turns out the night stands fit without blocking the vents!  (Thanks for the inspiration, Andrea!)

I love the new centered bed/sunburst focal point and that they're the first things you see when you enter the room.  I also think it will be less expensive to fill two small-ish corners instead of one massive expanse that was almost the size of our living room.  

The picture below is a quick break down of what I have left to do.

So I'm still looking at Craigslist everyday an making frequent visits to Home Goods and furniture discount places.  I've got two big ticket items to buy and I'm hoping to find some good deals.  I think it'll be a while before I come across anything at the right price, but when I do, I'll let you know!

Corner Inspiration

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Real Simple did a feature on corner makeovers years ago and I never forgot it, especially that changing corner (swoon).  Well, I did a bit of rearranging in my bedroom and now I have two corners to fill (pre-rearranged bedroom here).  I'll share the rearranging later when I get the master nice and clean.  Our bedroom was severely neglected in the weeks that I didn't feel too hot (I'm proud to say that the rest of our house stayed pretty clean, though). 

One corner will be a little reading nook and the other corner will be a little changing area.  I have a pretty short list of things that I need to buy in order to get these corners finished and have a mostly done bedroom.  I still need a fairly inexpensive, but comfortable chair, a large leaning mirror, and an ottoman.  I haven't figured out the best (cheapest) way to go about acquiring these things.  I may try to make an ottoman (like this one), places like Home Goods usually have large, relatively cheap mirrors, and lately I've been scouring furniture clearance places for a chair. 

There will be lots and lots of looking in my future until I find just the right pieces that are also the right price.

The hunt is on!

Big News

So basically that's why I've been MIA lately.  I was about 10 weeks along at the beginning of December and I thought I was going to make it through my first trimester without any symptoms, but then I just got slammed with nausea, heartburn, and exhaustion.  Anything that wasn't essential to daily life went out the window.  No Christmas tree, no advent calendar with cutesy activities, no baking (definitely no baking), and no decorating or household projects.  Thank goodness Little Man is not even two yet and won't remember the Christmas that Mommy ruined!

I'm still experiencing some sluggishness and food aversions, but now that I'm 14 weeks, I think I can feel them starting to go away and I'm ready to get back into the swing of things! 

How did some of you mamas deal with pregnancy, a small child, and everyday life?  Also, any tips on having an infant and a toddler would be welcome.  I'm so thankful and very excited, but I am kind of nervous about learning how to take care of a newborn and a toddler at the same time.  I'd love to hear what you have to say!

I'll Be Right Back!

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Please excuse my terrible blogging etiquette of just takin' a little break with zero explanation whatsoever.  I've got a really good reason and I'll do some explaining when I start posting again next week.  Until then,  hope y'all had some great holidays you've had a great start to 2012!

Bah Humbug

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I'm being a bit of a Scrooge this year.  I still haven't put our tree up, I haven't made our Christmas cards, my advent calendar is no where near finished, and while I'm done shopping, I'm dreading the wrapping and making a trip to the post office.

I think I spent so much time cleaning and getting organized that I just don't want to make a mess...and Christmas decorations and wrapping paper make a mess!

I'll be spending the rest of today getting over it and getting stuff done!

Have a great Wednesday!

Dead Ringer: HDC Brookefield Table Lamp & JCP Linden Street Balustrade

I love the look of balustrade lamps.  So timeless!

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This one is from HDC and it's $129.

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This one is from JCP and it's $59!

Check out some other high-end versions of this lamp:

1.  Ballard Designs: $219
2.  Layla Grayce:  $196
3.  Anthropologie: $268
4.  Pottery Barn:  $200


Have a great Monday!