Organizing!

I’ve come a long way the last two weeks unpacking and most importantly organizing all of our “stuff”. Scott thinks I’m a wee bit over the top when it comes to organizing but I love being organized. It provides a sense of calm for me when I see things in order. Ha! I’ve been a great customer to Target, Container Store, and Bed Bath and Beyond this month, that’s for sure :).

I’ve pretty much organized every nook and cranny of the house and Scott helped organize as well (much to his dismay). He’d rather do other things which I can certainly understand.

Here is Olivia’s beginnings of her closet. My Mom and Hillary helped me out a ton by pulling all this stuff out of the boxes and lining it all up for me. Her closet is very large so there is plenty of room to grow in here. I’m very fortunate that she is pretty much set as far as clothes go. I have 0-6 months on that back wall and 6-12 months on the side wall and everything else is boxed away for now.

One of the best parts of this house is closet space and an enormous attic. We have designated a separate closet upstairs for all of Olivia’s toys so we can access them as she grows into them. This way, all toys have a place, and can be tucked away while not in use. On my to-do list is to pick up a couple more of these Itso cubes for Olivia’s toys and for her closet.

This is Avery’s closet. It’s smaller than Olivia’s but has awesome built-ins behind the closet door which makes it so easy to keep nice and neat. You can see Avery here wearing her pink tutu. As long as she is at home, she has it on.

My closet is one of the first things I organized so I could find my very “limited” amount of maternity wear. I’m loving having my own closet and plenty of shelf space for my shoes and things. However, the shelves go all the way to the ceiling at 12 feet high so I’m probably going to have to install a library ladder.

I learned how to fold my sweaters on the internet! 🙂

We have three junk drawers in our kitchen so we have to keep them in order to be able to find things:


This is another toy closet that is down stairs off of our family room. All of Avery’s toys reside here so she can pull them out and play. There still are two or three more boxes of toys in the attic that I have yet to unpack but I figured she hasn’t missed them for the last 5 months so we can pull them out a bit later.

A glimpse into my craft room space:

Pantry:

For my own reference, here are a few places I love to visit for organizational inspiration:
1. http://www.penelopeloveslists.com
2. http://www.realsimple.com/home-organizing/
3. http://www.russellandhazel.com/
4. http://www.seejanework.com
5. http://www.deliciouslyorganized.blogspot.com
6. http://www.bobsyouruncle.com
7. http://www.paper-source.com/cgi-bin/paper/office/index.html

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“I’m a Princess!”

This was taken in December at Matt and Dawn’s house. She is singing about her magic wand. Over a month later, she still puts on a tutu pretty much every single day and yells out “I’m a Princess!” over and over again and puts on a show for us. She really cracks me up! She will make a magic wand out of anything. She has two wands and if those aren’t available, anything long and skinny will do. She has a tutu in pretty much every color but only PINK will do for her when she is a princess.

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New Years Festivities

Better late than never, right? I’ve been meaning to post about NYE but have been distracted 😉

For New Years, my friends were on the ball this year and booked our hotel rooms, dinner reservations, and party plans way back in early November. We had all considered going on a trip but I was the party pooper because my doctor said no traveling after early December. Scott and I were in a bit of a dilemma with what to do with Avery and Nene (Avery’s nanny when she was a baby) since we didn’t have our house yet so we booked an additional room for them which was nice because they were close by. We went to dinner at Brennan’s which was FANTASTIC, followed by a party at Hotel Zaza. I will say that at almost 9 months pregnant, I was exhausted by 10 pm. I said goodnight at 12:05 am. Everyone else partied well into the night. It was a great evening with amazing friends and a wonderful way to ring in 2011.

From left to right, Brian, Elizabeth, John, Mariam, me, and Scott:

About to POP!

John and Mariam:

Jennifer and Jessica (Stephen got cut out some how):

Elizabeth and Brian:

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We Moved In!!

We are finally home! I’m overjoyed that we are finally here. I have this immense feeling of relief that I can’t explain, especially since Olivia will be here in a few weeks. We closed last Friday and slept on air mattresses that night because we were so excited. The movers came on Saturday and unloaded boxes for 7 hours (how does one accumulate so much stuff which did NOT include much furniture because we are pretty much starting from scratch with this home). Scott and I have been working 15 hour days for the last 9 days unpacking and organizing everything. Dad came to help last weekend, Nene came to help me one day this week and Hillary and Mom came at the end of the week to help. I’m so thankful to my family for all their support and to Dawn and Matt for allowing us to stay with them all of December!

After this week, we finally feel settled which as I mentioned before is something I’ve taken for granted all my life. Scott and I have worked so hard to get here. It truly has consumed our lives for the last 14 months. We look forward to creating beautiful memories with our family and friends here.

Below is a sneak peek at our kitchen. It is one of my favorite places in our home. I spent countless hours designing this space, rethinking it, changing it, tweaking this and that, and I love the way it turned out. It definitely isn’t finished though. Our home will be a work in progress over the course of this year for furnishings and styling. I’m pretty burned out and have employed some help for furnishings and styling design. We are still missing our hardware on the drawers. We ordered cup pulls from Colonial Bronze in Polished Nickel the beginning of November and they just arrived last week. They should be installed tomorrow 🙂

A few of my very favorite things of the kitchen:
1) The calcutta gold marble (this was a match made in heaven because I actually ordered statuary and had a 3 day crisis because the slabs weren’t big enough for the island and couldn’t find anything until I found this. It is the one dilemma that worked out in a great way (unfortunately, not cost wise but that always happens, right?)
2) The polished nickel Rohl faucet
3) The Venetian plastered vent hood
4) The handmade crackle tile on the backsplash (adds a touch of Old World, I think)
5) The huge white farm sink (I had stainless steel in the last house and I don’t have to worry about water spots now)
6) Right next to the refrigerator to the right is a hiding microwave and TV that will swing out

Of course, my very favorite part of this kitchen is my Avery!! Here she is sitting at the island negotiating what she will eat because she is a very sick little girl right now 😦 We both are. We finally settled on a “pizzadilla” as she calls it ( a quesadilla). She had a fever of 104 yesterday and it really scared us. We were able to get it to come down within a short amount of time. The doctor says it is not the flu but possibly a bacterial infection. She was swabbed and the test came back negative. Whatever it is, we pretty much have the same symptoms but I don’t have a fever which is good. You can really tell she doesn’t feel good in her eyes.

Not feeling good at all:

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Resolutions for 2011 and Looking Back at 2010

2010 was truly a whirlwind year! For us, it was a year of
“building” in several ways. You could say that we were “building”
our family as most of 2010, I was pregnant with Miss Olivia and
pray to meet a healthy little girl on February 9th, 2011. In a more
literal sense, we built our “forever” home and hope to be moving in
very soon. I also spent the entire year building my business after
selling one of companies in 2009. Phewww! This year has proved to
be really exhausting. Looking forward to 2011, I look forward to
nesting and getting settled. My resolution is to focus on my family
this year and spend less time working and more time with my
children, cherishing every little moment with them. One thing I
really missed in 2010 was that feeling of being settled and it is
something that is really easy to take for granted.

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