This weekend, just shy of one year from the date we arrived here at this house, we did something I like to call Moving In. We aren’t done, not by a long shot. But we started, which is something.Let me explain: we moved very quickly without any notice. We had movers pack our stuff - a first for both of us - and it did not go well. What we got, instead, was everything thrown together in total disarray. Silverware divided between several boxes, individual pencils wrapped in sheets of packing paper, heirlooms thrown into junky basement toy bins, clothing thrown into holiday bins. Imagine the clean-up after a tornado hits your home and that approximates what we brought down here with us. 

So we still have boxes left to unpack. We have three big boxes in the house and countless in the garage. I would toss it all at this point, ordinarily, assuming if we haven’t needed it in a year we will never need it. But the state of the packing makes that impossible. We literally have to go through every box and separate the junk (most of it) with the cherished possessions (little of it). It is tedious, overwhelming, time consuming. It makes me so mad that we did not hold the packing company more accountable.

So…..

I officially finished Addison’s room. Finally. I added the pictures of her brothers up over her crib and added some huge dVider dragonflies onto a big previously bare wall. It looks *perfect*. She LOVES her new “flies” and today I heard her whispering her brothers’ names over and over again when she was supposed to be napping Sweet.

I also hung four shelves in Noah’s room and finally put his name letters on his wall. I put up both Dalton & Teegan’s wall shelves so now their trophies and prized possessions have a place of honor.  I think, aside from new furniture, Dalton & Teegan’s room is done too. Noah needs new furniture and he wants his room painted and decorated in some sort of jungle animal theme.

Tony and I made a dent in the garage - the most daunting of tasks. There is SO MUCH STUFF that needs to be thrown away or donated so we can even get to the point of purging and reorganizing what does belong in the garage. But I am reclaiming (or claiming, I guess) that space. I love that garage, as dumb as that sounds. And it is going to be functional for us.

We hung unused bikes, we went through two HUGE wardrobe boxes full of sports equipment and purged TONS and organized the rest into our sporting goods organizers. We set some stuff aside for garbage pick up and set lots of stuff aside for Goodwill. But it is all just a drop in the bucket. When we moved here, we took everything. We had no time to purge. Now we are purging.

Here is the remaining mess:

All that stuff in the front left is garbage/donations. All the stuff in the front right are the bikes that four kids use daily. Everything behind it is mess that needs to be sorted, pitched or donated. We have a long way to go. Back there somewhere it a utility tub I could have really used this weekend that I didn’t even know existed until Tony told me about it when I was complaining that we don’t have one! haha. THAT is BAD!

Among the boxes in the garage are 2 dozen or so book boxes filled mostly with Tony’s books but also with kids books and books of my own (although I had already purged my own book supply before we moved). I am selling off Tony’s book supply on half.com and over the weekend I went through three boxes of my own/kids books and purged some and moved the rest up to our gameroom….the final stop on the eventual completion of Moving In. There are three more waiting for me tonight. I can not WAIT to go through all of these boxes and get that much closer to organizing the most messy and disorganized room IN our house.

Last but sooooo not least, I tackled the tedious job of painting our playhouse. I have wanted to post pictures of this beast since my Daddy built it but I wanted to wait to get the paint done. In my mind, I pictured it as a pretty minor feat but boy was I wrong. It was ALL trim which meant TONS of taping off. Add to that that I was painting weathered wood - you know, the kind they make wooden porch railings out of? It is awful to paint, the paint does not just glide one. Plus I had to paint every single spindle and then I had to paint trim *through* the spindles since the porch is not big enough for actual people to get on. Now I know why the previous owners of said playhouse never painted it! After four hours of painting, I got exhausted and quit. I did the entire outside and some of the underside of the roof. I need to apply the quarter round to the outside and then it will be finished outside. Inside, I still need to apply trim around all four windows inside and paint all that trim including the ceiling planks. Then I need to hang christmas lights in there and I think I may paper the particle board that is the roof with some cool scrapbook papers - that would be cheap and sooooo super easy, right? And cute!  I’m so excited to finish this project.

So after a year, we are finally Moving In. Getting pictures hung, paint on the walls, making this house feel like a home. We have SO far to go but the fact that we did so much this weekend makes me feel 1000 times more at home. And let me tell you - I will NEVER hire packers to pack my stuff again! How hard is it to just pick up the utensil tray and lay it in a box? Harrumph.

After getting about 7 million requests for this pattern, I finally found what appears to be the last spare diaper in our house so I threw together the very very remedial pattern for you all. This diaper fits on the big Baby Alive (original) but works fine on smaller babies and other brands as well. It was made, however, for the original Baby Alive so we could stop buying the BA Diapers that cost as much as real disposable diapers! Eek!

So here’s the pattern:

Click on it, go to Flickr and make sure you download the original (full) size. It should be 8.5 x 11 so its meant to fit on a standard sheet of printer paper.

1. Print it out and cut along the lines. You can feel free to make them straighter than my hand-rendered version! haha

2. Get some scrap fleece. Fleece works best because its stretchy and no-hem. Fold your fleece in half and then line up the left side of my pattern along the fold line of your fabric. Trace and cut out.

3. You should be able to open up the full diaper now. If you are old-school and prefer that Junior diaper’s Baby Alive in traditionally pinned diapers, you are done! Just get some pins and away you go. Don’t blame me if your kid stabs his eye out (or your’s!). If you have a snap press, add some snaps. But if you have a snap press, I’m guessing you aren’t here visiting this site looking for directions on making no-sew baby doll diapers! So that leaves Velcro or whatever other brand fastener you chose. You don’t want the self-stick variety. It will pull right off. You’ll want to sew this stuff on. Sorry!!!

4. So cut two 1″ long  pieces of the hook side of the Velcro for the tabs and one 3-4″ piece of the loop (soft) side of the Velcro for the front. I noted on the pattern where each piece goes. You’ll want to center your big piece as best you can. Sew em on with a sewing machine or by hand, it doesn’t matter.  You just want them to be on securely enough to stand up to washing in the washing machine and tearing on and off by tiny hands.

That’s it! The whole project should take you about 10 minutes, start to finish. You can mass produce these babies and roll out tons of them very quickly and then, unlike me, you’ll have a stash waiting whenever your Baby Alive “makes a stinky”. Gag.