Reclaiming the house!

I have been on a mission this last week to reclaim our house! I have started to feel like I live in a daycare and it was time to change! Our living room as all toys with only one little toy box and a few baskets. I also really felt like Ava was outgrowing some of her toys and not really playing with anything because she was overwhelmed with all of the choices and was..well...getting bored of them. So I decided to move a few things around and bring a stand I had in the kitchen into the living room for toys instead of kitchen crap stuff.

So here is our new and improved living room :) Much better!! (well other than a few over flowing books since we went to the library lol). But it's so nice to have a place to put our toys now. And Ava is getting so great about knowing what it means to pick up our toys. And we can pull out just a drawer or two at a time so we aren't overwhelmed by toys at one time!

This in turn meant my kitchen needed to be reorganized because I had changed the furniture by bringing this stand into the living room. So my kitchen got a much needed "going through" too! I was able to take a whole box of stuff to goodwill and make a lot more room. It was also nice because I was able to make a couple of drawers baby proof with kitchen things that are safe for Ava to play with while I'm cooking. I should have done before and after pics of these but didn't even think about it. haha

We also moved a ton of toys to Ava's room! This is nice because even though it was the babies room, it was not really baby proof. I had books that were not meant for 14 month olds to play with down low and a few other random things that just weren't good for Ava to play with. So the reorganizing continued to her room! Her closet is now full of her toys at her height (along with a few other toys through out the room) so now she can actually go play in HER room! It is so nice! She really loves going between the rooms and finding what's fun for her at that time.

Here she is playing in the closet as I started to bring toys in there. It's much different now. Those books are up higher except for the ones that are either cardboard or are paper books that I don't mind her ripping if it happens by accident. The others are for when we are older or were mine growing up...would be very sad if they were ripped! So now she has a shelf of toys and some on the floor too :) I also moved the garbage can so it's not tempting with toys or even just to pull stuff out of! Ewww! :)

Once we find out the gender of the sweet, sweet baby in my belly we will start really digging into making Ava's big girl room and working on the nursery. The gender depends on which room Ava will be in. If the baby is a girl she will move to the other room and I will keep this as a girl nursery. But if the baby is a boy we will make the other room a boy nursery, the other room is already a blue color so it will be less work to move a boy in there :) Either way I am so excited to work on both rooms and make a happy home for our soon-to-be TWO kids!

I did find a quilt that I fell in love with on craigslist, still brand new and unopened, for Ava's big girl room! I wasn't going to buy one yet but I fell in love with this one and it will work so perfect in either room!!

Here is bad picture of it but you can get the idea. It has owls and birds on it too but they are hard to see. I love it because it is mostly pastels but has pops of bright colors (like the orange) so it will match her light yellow room well if she stays there. I will be glad to know which room she will be in so I can start moving furniture appropriately. Along with some of the bigger toys that will be in her room when there isn't a rocking chair and changing table.

So what is left on reclaiming the house?! Other than doing the kid's rooms...is the master bedroom!! It has become some what of a pile-all place and I've been going through that the last couple of days and trying to get it back under control! My sewing table is in there too, which is very motivating since I have a few projects to work on :)

Move to come with reclaiming the house but at least it's feeling like home again and less like a daycare! :)