The Nursery (that we are leaving behind...tear)

I am so excited to be moving into our new house in less than two weeks (if all goes as planned), but at the same time I am feeling a bit sentimental. Usually I start packing as soon as we start talking about moving as I actually enjoy getting rid of things, packing, and organizing, but so much has happened in our lives while we lived in this 1240 square foot rental house that I am hesitant to pack things up, especially in the nursery. When Micah and I moved into this house 2 years and 10 months ago, we thought we would stay for a year and hopefully move into a house of our own. But as time went on we realized that this house was a good fit for us and we didn't feel ready to take on the responsibility of home ownership again (we bought our first house in February 2007 and sold it in August 2010 when we moved to NM).

A year ago we decided we would renew our lease one more time as it would be extremely difficult to move while I was pregnant with triplets, so we got permission from our landlord to paint the room that we used as an office which would become our nursery. We decided which color to paint the room before we even knew the genders of the babies as the color we wanted was gender neutral anyway. Micah and his parents painted the room when his parents came for a weekend visit, which was great since I wasn't supposed to do anything physically demanding even early on in the pregnancy.

On one of my mom's visits from MI we stopped in a thrift store and happened to find a dresser with bars for a changing table on top, which my friend Katie helped me paint when she came to visit (and Micah put the final coat on).

The dresser with the changing table on top at the thrift store! It was in perfect condition and it was a steal for only $70!

Katie sanding the dresser

I even helped with some of the painting, but I wore a mask to protect the babies.

My friends Amy and Sarah putting the shelf paper in the dresser

Micah's mom sews and she offered to make the crib skirts and valance from the fabric I picked out. 

The valance which has strips of fabric from which the crib skirts were made.

Jack's crib skirt

Alexis and Faith's crib skirts

The reason the crib skirts were so important is that I bought these plastic storage bags for larger size clothes which have been stored under the mattresses. As the babies have grown I have swapped out the clothes in their closet and dresser for the bigger sizes and put the small stuff under the beds. The crib skirts hid the storage areas under the cribs perfectly!

I have never been very creative, but I had a lot of time on my hands while I was pregnant , so I got on Pinterest and found some easy, low cost decorating ideas. I didn't really have a theme when I started the room, but the final product could be described as "whimsical." 

Putting the mobiles together

Getting ready to put the mobiles up in the nursery (about 6 weeks before the babies were born)

I made these pinwheels while sitting on the couch :). I directed my mom while she pinned them on the wall above the changing table. I was so thankful for her help in getting the nursery completed!

Alexis showcasing all of the decorations above her crib. I made the mobiles, I bought the owls from Hobby Lobby, I made the frames with the first letters of the babies names, I made the flower and tree (Jack's side) frames, and the NICU nurses took the babies footprints a couple of weeks after they were born and wrote out all of their birth information and I put them in the frames after the babies got home.

 

 

The frames above Jack's bed. Ignore the wire - that is our baby monitor.

Jack wanted to show his side off too!

Faith showing off her frames

A closer look at Faith's frames.

Here are some other pictures of the room:

Alexis and Faith's side of the room

Jack's side

We had one of our maternity pics printed on a canvas. We really liked this pic as it has the whole family in it :).

The wall with the window and the closet. Faith's crib is in this pic and Jack's crib is on the opposite wall.

Their linens are kept in the polka dot drawers, but in our new house we'll have more closet space so we can actually put them in the linen closet.

The girls headbands and lots of books (luckily Jack doesn't care that the headbands are on "his side" of the room).

The completed changing table / dresser

This is a pretty small closet, but I bought a rod that hangs on the top rack that is about half the length. This has really helped as we were able to put Jack's clothes on the bottom and the girls clothes on the top and we still store things on the floor of the closet on either side of Jack's clothes. I also bought the pocket storage that hangs on the inside of the closet door. This has been great for storing hats, newborn mittens, and other miscellaneous things.

Although most of the stuff in the closet is current sizes, I do like to have some bigger things in there too so I can try them on the babies as they grow. To make the closet more organized I added tags to separate the sizes (thanks Melissa for the great idea!)

 

Faith hanging out while I took pictures of their room today

Alexis hanging out

Jack hanging out

Jack in his crib today

Jack when we brought him home at the end of July. He's grown so much!

 Now that it's time to pack up the nursery, I feel sad that I haven't thought much about how I'm going to decorate the new rooms. First of all, we're not 100% sure who will be sleeping in the same room as although we originally thought it would be the girls, in reality Jack is our best sleeper so it may be better if the girls were separate so they didn't wake each other up. We've also been focused on the other parts of the house so I'm not sure how much decorating we will do in their rooms. Of course we will put up the same decorations, but the rooms might look kind of empty for awhile. Oh well. Honestly, we hardly spend any time in our nursery right now and I don't think that will change with the hew house as we are most excited about the fact that we will have a family room which will contain all of the babies toys and it will be completely baby proof!