playroom organization.

Thursday, December 28, 2017


one / two / three / four / five / six / seven / eight / nine


We recently redid charlie's playroom, about a year ago, but it's been a process and we finally are pulling it all together. Her playroom room has a closet (which i use 1/2 of it for craft storage) and the other half we use for storing her larger toys. This Christmas she was so blessed to receive so many wonderful gifts from family. However storage has been a little tricky so we decided to move our Ikea Kallax storage from the basement family room into her playroom, we added these bottom drawers to our system. And I just love adding the pink storage bins from H&M and $5.99, can't beat that price! 

So we're busy the next few weeks decluttering the house, making spring garage sale piles & putting together her playroom for her to enjoy all year! We love the playroom for the cold winter months here in the midwest, it's seriously a life saver, since we can't spend a lot of time outside.

I hope you all had a wonderful christmas & a happy new year!

My goal(s) for 2018 is to take off this last pesky 17 lbs, I'm down 53 lbs from my start of the keto diet and working out at the beginning of November, so back on track after the holidays and finish taking off the rest, and to finish updating and organizing our house. I'm switching out some furniture & decor to modernize our space a bit, and adding some ship lap to our walls!


Polar Bear Party

Monday, December 18, 2017


 


We celebrated our Charlie girl turning 2! We mostly celebrated with a trip to Disney & her turning 2 while we were there, which included a ton of Disney park gifts +  a mickey mouse cake, which she absolutely adored. So I was going to skip the party at home with Christmas being so close, but my mom wanted to give her, her birthday gifts & we decided to have a little cake and ice cream which turned into pizza, cake, ice cream, candles. BUT still toned down from the big birthday celebration I was planning on having for her. So we had some plates, threw on a table cloth, put out some Christmas decorations and passed it off as a polar bear winter party. 

I made some polar bear/tree sugar cookies, my mom made a yummy white vanilla cake, and my husband brought home pizza from a delicious Italian bakery. It was such a fun night + we (my husband and I) were so happy we scaled back.

She had the best time checking out all her new toys, which she is STILL playing with, yay for a change of toys. 

We're prepping for Santa to come this year so this week we'll be making cookies for santa & his reindeer. She asked for a baby & a baby bed from santa. I'll post a round up of our list of our favorite toys + items for Christmas soon!


Deck the halls.

Monday, December 4, 2017


This is my favorite season! A reason for the season, I love the reason behind the season and I love the joy and cheer everyone has for Christmas, it's my absolute favorite! We kicked off our holidays at Disney World, and if you haven't been for Christmas it is truly magical! When we got home from our trip we had the cutest box from Tiny Prints waiting for us!

We ordered our Christmas cards, and I absolutely love the detail Tiny Prints think of! The envelopes are personalized with our address, with an adorable design on the outside. And my absolute favorite is the liners! I mean seriously it's perfect! We decided to use our photos from charlie decorating our first family gingerbread. The red foil merry Christmas has my heart!

We also love the personalized gold confetti ornaments, this is our first year for this and I love the idea of collecting these photos over the next several years.

Go check out Tiny Prints & the holiday cards they are offering this year!

everything disney inspired!

Thursday, November 16, 2017


one / two / three / four / five / six / seven / eight / nine / ten / eleven


Hey friends!

We're headed to Disney world, and we can't wait! My family went when I was 3 but I hardly remember it, so this will be like my first time, plus we're taking Charlie, which speaking of it's her birthday while we're down there... how fun! So I put together a fun round up of Disney inspired things that we love or will be taking with us.

If you have any tips or trick please feel free to share them! We can't wait to go, i'll be sharing a few photos on instagram, so be sure to follow along.

Haunted House Playhouse Party

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

 more details + photo over here


Happy day after Halloween!
We had the best time celebrating Halloween this year, it was fantastic to get so many opportunities to go trick or treating, and when the actual day of Halloween came around it was snowing here, yes snow! So glad that we celebrated early.

We put some decorators on Charlie's playhouse to make a "spooky haunted house", and we ended up having a pizza party with lots of yummy treats!

I'm sharing all the details over at Destination Nursery + the details here to find party supplies & the yummy chocolate caramel popcorn.

And a huge thank you to Kate Aspen for providing the cutest party details, shop the look here.

HALLOWEEN.

Thursday, October 12, 2017




Can you believe that its October already? This is my far my favorite month! Seriously, I love all the crunchy leaves, crisp air, and pumpkins! Life has been super busy so we haven't had a chance to make it to the pumpkin patch, but we will one of these days! I put together this cute cat inspired/halloween round up of my favorite halloween inspired items! This year I'm going to add a few books and jammies to charlie's treat basket, because i'm not sure she will grasp the idea of a bag full of candy yet, and while I'd love to eat the entire bag... let's just say the candy will be going with dad to work! We have our first halloween trick or treat this weekend + a costume contest! Stay tune, for our unicorn costume, it's a fun one! 

With the temp dropping I luckily found a cute knitted unicorn sweater for her to wear over her leotard, because 66 degrees is too chilly for just a leotard. How are you guys prepping your house for Halloween this year?

DIY Balloon Topper

Friday, September 22, 2017



Happy Fri-Yay!
I'm share this fun DIY balloon cake topper today! This is SUPER easy! Like I'm talking 5 minutes easy!

Here's what you need:
5" balloons, I used these.
Gold Star Stickers, I used these.
Balloon Sticks, I used these.

All products mentioned above can be found at Amazon, with prime shipping.

Step one: Inflate balloons, tie a knot at the end.
Step two: Add gold stickers.
Step three: Trim plastic balloon sticks to height you desire, I trimmed about half.
Step four: Add balloon to stick.
Step five: Place sticks in cake.

It's that easy! I hope you guys have fun making these & celebrating! Lots of color combinations can be made with the 5" pack I listed above.

Playhouse + Last days of summer

Wednesday, September 13, 2017







Oh sweet summer, you are QUICKLY fading, and that's okay because fall is my favorite, but we're just not quite ready to let you go! Yesterday I got to have the day off for my birthday, seriously, last year in my twenties, how is that even possible? Anyways, so we got to play the entire day, and we soaked up every last bit of summer in the afternoon! Playhouse, water table, hose, painting, you name it! But we're planning apple orchard dates, football games, smores, and a fun halloween party, so fall we're ready for you!

P.s. If you didn't get a chance to check out the playhouse + get the plans hop over to Destination Nursery where you can download + check out the supply list!

Fri-Yay! Round up!

Friday, September 8, 2017



Happy Fri-YAY! Fridays are my jam, they get me pumped for the weekend, and for once we have NOTHING scheduled on our Saturday! I wanted to do a quick round up, Mostly just of things I currently love, my husband and I decided to buy charlie a few Christmas gifts each month until Christmas, and her birthday, it's the 1st, but we're headed to Disney World for her birthday, so that kind of trumps any gift we could/would get her!

We decided to also have Santa leave all the gifts unwrapped and just leave them under the tree, with a big bow, so she wakes up completely surpised! So here's some fun things that could make great gift ideas, or just toy ideas for any upcoming birthday or gift!

Check out this cute kidkraft kitchen + refrigerator over at zulily for $139, super cute, if you've been needing a cute play kitchen for your little one!

P.S. snag this cute wood furniture for the doll house set on amazon - $30 for the entire set!

Dress Up with Little Adventures

Thursday, August 31, 2017






Is it Friday? Because I swore when I woke up this morning, it was Friday, than I was so nicely informed it was just Thursday with charlie & I both spilling out breakfast all over the driveway, so if you're looking for Friday or eggs & french toast, than you can find a few of those still sitting on my driveway. That aside, if you've been following my instagram you've seen I've teamed up with Little Adventures Dress Shop to do a discount to our readers + a giveaway.

The giveaway is closed, Congrats Aubrey G, but for all of you I still have a 15% off discount code + shipping is always free in the U.S.. Use code BBD15% at checkout!

We love this little mermaid dress, if you use code BBD15% at check out this brings this cute dress $21.25. The BEST part about all these dresses are that they are completely 100% washable, the fabric is soft unlike other dress up's that are stiff. These are also SO cute for Halloween, which is coming up soon! 

Happy shopping at Little Adventure Dress Shop! Code: BBD15%

Fall Favorites

Friday, August 25, 2017



Happy Friday! Fall in Iowa is one of my favorites, and tonight we get to go to our first football game, so that definitely means fall is here, or at least little hints of fall are here! I listed some of my favorites for fall & I'm absolutely LOVING that soft pink color, mixed with denim, it might just be my new favorite.

I love the pink pom pom shoes! We just got charlies in the mail, and they are more adorable in person, so note, they do run a tag large so size down.

Also if you haven't checked out old navy's new fall arrivals, do it now. Some of the cutest finds + it's super cash time, so spend & receive super cash to use in the future.


Unicorn cupcakes

Thursday, August 24, 2017









This past Wednesday it was one of my young women from church birthday! So I made these fun DIY unicorn cupcakes, and this was my first time EVER attempting a multicolor swirled frosting, and oh boy it was fun!

I'll include the frosting recipe below. I used a chocolate cake mix, since her favorite is chocolate, I always freeze my cupcakes before I frost them, this helps keep them moist, plus helps me plan ahead of time, so I don't have to bake the cupcakes, wait for them to cool, frost than decorate!


Here's how to make these:
Swirl Frosting I divided the frosting into 4 batches, mixed the food coloring in, put the frosting in a bag, then I put the frosting into individual pipping bags, flatted them.

Frosting Tip I put all the frosting bags in one pipping bag with a large star tip. Just apply pressure and squeeze until all the colors com out evenly.

Unicorn Horns + Ears I used gum paste, premade, you can buy it here or you can purchase it from hobby lobby. I rolled out the horns into a snake shape with tapered ends, put the tapered ends together and twisted the gumpaste. For the ears I used a tear drop shape cookie cutter and pinched the rounded sides together. Here's a good step by step image I used for making mine.

After the gumpaste dries I used this gold dusting glitter to brush onto the horns. To get the glitter to stay you'll need to drip a brush in vodka then the dusting glitter and brush it on.

Butter Cream Frosting:
  • 3 cups Powdered sugar
    1 pinch Salt
    1 tsp Vanilla extract
    1 cup Butter, unsalted
    2 tbsp Heavy cream or heavy whipping cream



DIY Playhouse.

Thursday, August 17, 2017




plans + details are over here at Destination Nursery

I promised that I would share Charlies playhouse that we worked on off an on this summer! This was a fun summer project for my husband and I, Charlie watched the progress of the house but never really picked up on it unto we were done & moved her kitchen in! She absolutely loved it! We decided to build her a playhouse instead of buying one, for bigger space + if we bought a kit we would have ended up painting the entire inside. So we built!

And I promised I would share the plan + materials list which you can find over at Destination Nursery website, plus I shared what we decided to buy + what we DIY'd, We turned an old night stand that was given to me by a co-worker, modified it a bit and turned it into a mini kitchenette. Plus you'll have to see the peg board my husband made Charlie, she adores it!

If I could do it all over again, I would probably make it a BIT bigger, but our house is located on a corner lot, so we are a little limited on space since we don't exactly have a backyard. I would make it 5x7, this way she could go into a little more, but I'm sure in a few years shell be over the kitchenette so we can add a table instead!

If you're up for a fun DIY project with your hubby I recommend building a playhouse, but there's just something so rewarding doing it yourselves! Head over to here for the plans to print out + material list.