Home preparations for miss Annie!

We have been busy "nesting" over the last few weeks/months making our home just perfect for our little girl!  Right now (and at least for the next 10 months), we live in a 2-bedroom apartment that we really love!  It's a great place and definitely the most "homey" feeling place we have had in all of our locations!  But, as you can imagine, having a 900-square foot apartment also means that we have to get fairly creative when it comes to making room for a little one!  Even though she won't take up too much space, I can't imagine not bringing her home to a nursery that is made just for her. 

So what does that mean?  It means that our second bedroom, which is right now filled with our extra "stuff", needs to be re-organized, cleared out, and transformed into a nursery!!!  Man o man, has that been a task...see exhibit A and B:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

BUT, we finally feel like we are making some progress!!  And, luckily I've been in the mood to get rid of things, which is a nice surprise :)  Now, our second bedroom looks like this: (much improved from the last few pictures)!!

Annie's room as of 9/20/12

The kitties have also been enjoying the packing... :)  Love these two! 

Sugar (right) fits just perfectly in that box, right? :)  Big cat likes to think she's little :)

The next phase is to move some stuff to long-term storage, re-organize our storage closet outside....then we get to move onto the fun stuff!!!!  Painting and putting things into the nursery! :) 

We have enjoyed picking up things here and there for the nursery!  We already bought a white dresser for her room (my sister found it outside of her school on sale for $60, can't beat that!) - we need to revamp it a little bit - repaint the top, new knobs, etc.  But, it's a great dresser!  You can see some of the other things we've picked up along the way on top of the dresser in this pic:

You can kind of see the color scheme - yellows, bright pinks, light teal (and owls!)

Ben also painted some fun accessories for Annie's room this weekend!  Thanks baby, they look great! :)

Now onto picking out the paint colors....hmm, which shade of yellow?  We are only going to paint one wall for right now because we plan on moving late next summer into *hopefully* a house that we buy!!!

Big decision....hmm...anyone have any great shades of yellow!?

In addition to the nursery, we also wanted to make our living room more "baby friendly."  Here is a picture of our old living room:

LIVING ROOM BEFORE

We decided that we wanted a rug/carpet that was a lot softer than our previous one - and one that was bigger.  Not that Annie will be really crawling before we move out of here, but of course we know that we will be playing with her a lot on the floor and want something comfy!  We ended up getting a pre-bound carpet remnant at Floor Depot on Labor Day weekend when they were having a 50% off sale - so we were able to get this 12'x9' carpet (which is SUPER soft) for only $120!  Can't beat that.

As you can see in the previous picture, while we love it, our coffee table takes up too much space in this smaller living room.  So we decided to trade that in for 2 soft ottomans, which can be used as foot rests and can easily be moved around to give us the space that we need!  We really like the new set-up!  And, we now have a small moveable table (made by my grandpa) that we can use while we are sitting on the couch!  So here is the new living room (once again, the kitties like this as well)!!:

SO...there is the update on our "nesting" :)  We can't wait to get all of the stuff to storage so we can really start putting the nursery together!  I hope it turns out as cute in person as it is in my mind! :)