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Asher’s Natural Explorer Nursery

I had no real plan for this nursery when I started out beyond liking gray and orange.  The first item I purchased was the cow rug and the rest of the room kind of evolved from there.
Many items in the room were repurposed.  For example, the dresser and chest were my mom’s when she was a little girl, just repainted with new hardware. Likewise, the suitcases were already in the guest room. I had actually just moved them out of the way when we were positioning the crib and they ended up staying there.
We had originally planned built in bookcases but as my due date neared and my nesting reached critical levels, we opted for the plumbing pipe shelving for the sake of speed.  Once installed though, I couldn’t be happier with the choice.

Woodland Nursery for Baby Girl

My husband and I share a passion for climbing and being outdoors, and we knew from the beginning that we wanted to incorporate those two things into the nursery. I began planning for the theme before we knew the gender of the baby, so I wanted most of the decorations to remain gender neutral but bringing in feminine/masculine colors once we found out. We were elated to find out that we were having a girl!
The room is quite small, only 10×10, but I’m glad we were able to get all the essential furniture in there.

Ezra’s Dr. Seuss 1st Birthday

Since I really wanted a Seuss themed nursery for our son, and it didn’t work out, I was determined to use it for his first birthday. He has loved having the Seuss books read to him more than any other since he was tiny so we knew this was perfect. I love planning parties, and I wanted Ezra’s to be extra special and have more personal touches than your average first birthday. Due to my husband’s insistence I also did this on a pretty reasonable budget as well by ordering lots of printables from etsy.com, using wrapping paper and ribbon to decorate old formula cans and adding foam balls to hold up the chocolate lollipops and marshmellow cat hats I made, and making the cupcakes myself.

First Birthday Garden Party

For our daughter’s first birthday party we decided to host the party in our backyard. She has a spring birthday and it would give the kids plenty of room to run around. We started with the butterfly invitation from Tiny Prints and I scoured the stores starting in February for decorations or craft items. The baskets and garlands from World Market were perfect and we built the rest around those colors and designs. We took one of the baskets to the bakery and asked them to design a cake to match it. We entertain a lot so we had most of the serving dishes but decided to add some kid friendly non-breakable additions and some outdoor tablecloths. Since we had boys and girls we made sure we had lots of colors with some pink thrown in. We also had several ages of kids and lots of adults so we varied the activities and menu to match. We had lots of bubble toys, a tub of rubber frogs, a splash table and balls for the kids to play with. For the menu, we had chicken salad sandwiches, tomato tarts, melon balls, bug shaped mac and cheese, pbj sandwiches and ham and cheese sandwiches, chocolate covered pretzels and cheerios along with the cake and cupcakes. For beverages we had water, juice boxes, lemonade and raspberry lemonade punch. For favors we had bubbles and a rubber frog for all of the kids.