Baby "Stage"

Oh baby!  Ya see this picture that totally doesn't do this room or bedding justice?  When we had E 3 1/2 years ago I wanted to forgo the pink route and use some bold colors and lots of pattern.  Well I don't know that we ended up with "lots" of patterns but we did end up with some gorgeous fabric in some bold colors.  I was lucky enough to have my mom offer to sew some bedding so we spent a couple of hours at JoAnns one day playing with fabric.  That sounds like fun doesn't it?  I miss doing that..maybe soon I will have a project that forces me to go rummage around a fabric store.

 Now this pic is even worse..I can't believe I didn't get better pics of this room when it was tidy and cute.    You see that tree there...Well before there were(or before I knew there were) vinyl wall decor options all over the place I decided we needed a tree on the wall like the one in a pottery barn catalog.  So the hubs graciously spent a few hours spread out over  a few weeknights to whip this baby up.  It turned out great!  Don't laugh when I say the poor hubs learned the hard way that you should not attempt to draw on a wall with a sharpie if you EVER plan on painting over it with white paint.  Lesson learned and many coats of kilz later it still looks good.  The sharpie is still showing its ugly face in a few areas but we  decided not to care a long time ago;)

Now enter good photography!  The lovely Miss Tanya of Cozy Impressions Photography has done a series of photographs to capture our last two babies 1st years of life and she does it well!

Look at my sweet E!  Our first girl!  She really was an angel baby..We had such a hard time with our first born that she probably would have seemed "easy" no matter what she did.  Sorry bud..you will probably always get a bad baby wrap but you know you are loved;)!

Here is a better pic of the tree too.  Didn't hubby do a nice job.  I am pretty lucky to have a guy that doesn't mind helping me achieve a girly goal when I need him too.  I am just to much of a spaz to draw a tree.

O.k. so the point of this post is really to document a few things we did to "stage" the house to put it on the market. 

Obviously that second picture probably wouldn't have wooed buyers to come take a peek.  The truth is I felt like I was staging the house most of the time we lived there.  I say that because we were constantly de-cluttering, putting things on craigslist, donating and just organizing so it didn't feel like we were being taken over.  Yet we still always felt like it was so easy to start drowning in stuff every time a birthday or Christmas would roll around. For that matter also any time family would come to visit..wink wink momo and ya ya.  

One thing we did was try to make the shallow closet in the girls room work better for us.

Enter: A quick trip to target for a closet shelving system.  It was fairly inexpensive(don't remember how much) but I wouldn't have bought it if it wasn't!  This gave us a place for some cubby "baskets" and shelving for all of those little shoes that you accumulate when you have two little girls.  

We also added a lower rod and raised the original one so we could have one for each of the girls.  Bitty baby's stuff on top and E's down low where she can reach and help momma by picking our her own outfits. Which she is actually pretty good at! Score!

One thing I have a attempted to do in the kid's closets is always have a labeled box in the floor so if in the "heat of the moment" which is the battle of getting dressed each day we could toss anything that didn't fit just right anymore into the box.  It isn't a fool proof system but it helped it not to just get tossed here and there(like in the laundry to be washed 162 times even though it was never worn).

I still use a bankers box in little mans closet but purchased these pink doosies for the girls closet because I think it looks cleaner and of course keeps the bugs out!

O.k. now as usual I am going to back track because you might think I have totally forgotten what room I am posting about if I don't.  In May of 2009 we found out we were getting a new little surprise in our family!  We were not expecting or planning this so after the shock rocked us for a bit and we found out we would have another chica in the house I started thinking pink! After all I didn't want to regret never playing with a pink room because I am typically not drawn to it so I  took the opportunity to soak it up anyway. (that is where you either do identify with my illness or not;)

I was perusing around baby's r us one day and came across this bedding set for I think $70 !  That is pretty good for a crib set as far as I 'm concerned.  It was pink and simple and I could totally see it working with the green tree wall that bitty baby would be inheriting from her big sis.

Then I came across these party poofs at michaels and got to use my 40% off coupon so I literally spent a few dollars for a nice contrast to our outrageously pink wall!  I wanted to tie the walls in with the bedding a bit and this is what we did.  I probably wouldn't do it again but we definitely were not going to repaint it.

Bitty baby needed a window treatment so again to Target we went and ended up mixing a couple of different styles of curtains in order to cover up the whole length of the window.  If I did it again and wasn't in a hurry I would have done something a little different and definitely hung them higher.

Ok back to staging...We previously had this little changing table # for E's room.  Turns out this was way less handy than using a dresser as we had for little man's room.  I just found it hard to organize and then there was all that wasted space around it that could be filled up with storage!

So knowing that we needed more room for the girls clothes(all we had were those 3 little drawers in that red dresser in the second picture in this post) I started a very long craigslist search for a decent and cheap white dresser.  Does anyone else think craigo has gotten competitive?  You really have to be on the ball around here to get anything good.  This wasn't as cheap as I wanted(150.00) but it was the best thing I could find at the time.  So hubby went to a sketchy area with a defense plan and got our baby girls clothes some new digs.

To balance it out a bit I brought some green from the tree wall to this side of the room with this little guy.  Again from Target..I swear I don't buy everything there. As a matter of fact I try to avoid the place because it is too easy to spend $$ on un-needed yummy stuff.

Now enter more good photography(not mine but a local real estate photographer we hired in preparation to hit the MLS).

It is clean, uncluttered, simple and staged.  I sure wish we had gotten around to replacing that boob light but oh well it won't be our random boob for much longer.  I know most realtors would probably suggest we repaint to so we don't turn off potential buyers but we just don't have time so here's hoping someone will love it or be willing to do their own thing!

Linking to the parties at:

Thrifty Decor Chic

Be Different Act Normal

Tater Tots and Jello

Whipperberry

Just a Girl

House Of Hepworths

Shabby Creek Cottage

Fireflies and Jellybeans

Somewhat Simple

Savvy Southern Style

The Thrifty Home

The Trendy Treehouse

Blue Cricket Design

Type A Decorating

DIY by Design

Hope Studios

Todays Creative Blog

Between Naps on the Porch

The Girl Creative

Skip to my Lou

Sumos Sweet Stuff

Crafts Keep Me Sane

Diy Home Sweet Home Project

Life Made Lovely

Dittle Dattle

Polly Want a Crafter

Home Stories A to Z

Playful Decor