A Little Tour of Lyla & Archer's Rooms

The older Lyla and Archer have gotten, the more stuff they have accumulated.  So their rooms look a little more lived in than they did when I first showed off their rooms.  I thought we'd take a little tour of their current sleeping and playing situations.

The biggest addition to Lyla's room is the kitchen Adam and I got the babies for their first birthday.  They love to open and close all the doors and put the play food into the pots and pans.  It's been nice to have another area where we can play besides the living room.  Whenever they start getting crabby, usually if we just go to a different room in the house, they're more content. 

I also made a few other small tweaks.  I rehung her artwork.  Even as I was hanging it when we first split up the babies, I knew I didn't like where I was hanging it.  But I was just trying to get it done before someone had a meltdown so I just went with it.  So I rehung it gallery wall style instead of sprinkled throughout the room. 

Lyla loves her room.  She adores digging through her big bin of books.  She'll pull out her favorites and stare intently at them for good chunks of time.  She also loves her crib.  She's happy to just roll around in it with her blanket even if she's not tired.  And when she wakes up, I'll hear her happily chatting to herself before I come get her.  She also enjoys gnawing on the top side rail of the crib.  There are some pretty hefty teeth marks.  Good thing Adam made us get the cribs with non-toxic finishes! 

We still have the changing table in Lyla's room.  I can count on one hand how many times we've actually used it to change diapers.  But it still works as good storage.  We keep all of the babies' extra sheets and blankets stored in there, along with extra wipes, diaper cream, etc.  We'll probably replace it with bookshelves one day, but it works for now. 

Another change was moving Archer's clothes to his room.  I kept all the clothes in one closet, which made it easier to put away laundry.  But thanks to generous hand-me-downs from my cousin (Thanks, Becky!) and friends (Thanks, Emily & Libby!), Lyla needed more space for her cute clothes.  Poor thing, she doesn't have anything to wear. 

I keep a garment bag (that white bag on the top right shelf) in each baby's closet to put sentimental clothing and accessories in as they outgrow them.  I've also turned that round laundry bin on the floor into the "too small bin."  As soon as they outgrow an outfit, I just throw it in there and then when it gets full, I transfer them to bins in the basement.  

Archer's closet is certainly less full, but he will by no means go naked.  Since we don't have a dresser in the closet like we do in Lyla's room, I put some hanging organizers in there to keep track of things like pants, jammies, socks, and shoes.  I definitely keep the closet doors closed so I don't have any "help" taking all the clothes out of the hanging organizers like Lyla's doing below.  

I also rehung the artwork in Archer's room.  I think I've learned my lesson to not just slap something together.  In the future, I'll wait until I have the time to do it right the first time so I don't end up doing things more than once!    

We added some bookshelves to Archer's room to house some books and toys.  We also keep the baby monitor and his sound machine on top of it.  These bookshelves hold a special place in my heart.  My dad actually made them for me and were in my childhood room when I was growing up.  I love that they're now a part of Archer's room.  I found some round bins on clearance at Hobby Lobby and stuck those on the shelves to help corral some of the books and toys.  I don't have much of an organization system going on (as you can tell by the photo below), but can definitely implement a system when the kids get older.  

For the babies' first birthday, we also got them this fun rug and some cars from IKEA.  They haven't quite grasped that the streets on the rug are roads for the cars to follow, but they do enjoy flopping around on the rug.  I think they'll have more fun with it as they get older.  

Archer likes to hang out in his room, too.  He likes to pull all the toys and books off the shelves and run around in circles.  He also likes to pull his loveys and pacifiers through the crib slats.  I tend to keep his blankets and pacifiers in his room, so he's all about any chance he gets to hang onto them.  

It's been fun to watch the babies' rooms grow with them.  I'm sure Archer and Lyla's rooms will have many different reincarnations as they continue to grow up.  I like the challenge of creating spaces that are fun for Archer and Lyla, functional for housing all their stuff, and cute enough for me to want to spend time in too. 

An Easy Fall Wreath

It's been a little while since I've had the time to do any crafts, so I thought I would remedy that by making a wreath for our front door.  It took me the time span of a few naps, but overall it went pretty quickly.  I wanted to make a wreath that didn't scream fall, unlike this one that I adore, but like to put out closer to Halloween.  So I decided to use cozy textures to give a subtle nod to the season.

I had a small foam wreath I bought at an estate sale a long time ago, and decided to use it for this project.  I wanted to wrap it in some yarn, which seems very cozy and fall-like to me.  So Lyla, Archer and I ventured out to a craft store to get some yarn.  I picked a dark gray color.  By the time we made it to the check-out counter, it was rather soggy from Lyla chewing on it.  But she also didn't scream once during the trip, so who cares about some soggy yarn?  

Once Lyla and Archer were down for their nap, I started to wrap the yarn around the wreath.  I tied the end of the yarn around a straight pin and stuck in the foam wreath to anchor down the starting point.  Then I just wrapped and wrapped and wrapped the yarn around.  This part took a bit longer than I bargained for, but was able to get it all wrapped up in two naps.  When I got back to the starting point, I simply tied the end of the yarn around the straight pin that held the starting point of the yarn.  (If you to make a wreath of your own and don't want to bother with all the yarn wrapping, you could also just get a grapevine wreath.)   

Next came the fun part!  While we were at the craft store, I also picked up some felt which I would turn into flowers.  I picked out some purples, light pink, goldenrod, cream and teals.  I just held up different felt sheets until I had a group of colors that looked good together.  

Once the wreath was wrapped in yarn, I cut the felt sheets into smaller square-ish shapes.  I didn't measure anything or worry about cutting too neatly.  The more imperfect, the better the flowers turn out.  After I cut out the squares, I rounded off the corners.  Then I cut a each rounded square into a spiral, like the photo below shows.  

After that, I started with the outer part of the spiral and just rolled it up until there was nothing left to roll.  I was left with a pretty flower.  I repeated this process using different sized squares in different colors.  I ended up using 10 flowers on my wreath.  (You can use as many or a few flowers as you want.  I just laid out the flowers on the wreath until I had an arrangement I was happy with.)

When I had all my flowers rolled up, I plugged in my hot glue gun.  I put some hot glue on the bottom of the flower and stuck the end over the hot glue, like so.  

From there I cut out some leaves and hot glued those to the backs of the flowers. 

Once I had a good group of flowers with leaves all glued together, I started to play around with the placement on the wreath.  I ended up using 10 flowers, in 2 clumps of 5.  As soon as I was happy with the arrangement, I hot glued the flowers onto the wreath.  

The final step was to attach some twine to the back so I could hang it up on our front door.   I just tied some twine around another straight pin and stuck it into the back of the wreath.  Then I tied the ends into a little bow.  

I love how it turned out!  All the cozy textures reminds me of fall.  And the flowers seem so welcoming and cheery, which is exactly how I want all my guests to feel when they come to our home.