Hi! It has been over a year since we last wrote a blog post and recently we have had a few inquiries from friends and family wondering what the heck we have been up to. Maybe everyone is just a little bored since they can’t really leave their homes, but the requests made us feel more motivated than ever to fill everyone in on what we have been doing and it’s A LOT!

So, what have we been doing?

For starters, a baby girl joined our family just five days after we wrote our last blog post! When I wrote that post, I thought we still had about a month until she made her debut (we also thought “she” was a “he”), but she had other ideas. If we had our own HGTV renovation show, her early arrival would have been television GOLD because we were so unprepared, it was ridiculous downright entertaining.

It’s all foggy now, but I do remember ordering premie-sized going home outfits off Amazon between contractions, because I didn’t want to bring a naked baby home from the hospital. I also remember texting my family just half an hour before delivering, saying that I was hopeful the baby would come into the world with a nametag because we had no idea what we would name him. Later, after her arrival, I remember face-timing with color-blind Ronan from our car in the parking garage of the hospital as he sorted through bins of clothes he had just dug out of our basement. He held up tiny hats and onesies and pjs and asked over and over “is this pink?” The (pretend) tv audience would have loved when I left the hospital wearing the same clothes that I wore to work three days before on the day I thought I was going to have a normal 36-week OB check-in after work, but instead had a this-baby-needs-to-get-out-immediately appointment.

Anyway, when we got our baby home, she didn’t have a finished nursery (not even close, actually) and that was fine because what we did have was a healthy baby and a happy family. As new babies do, she slept in our room for the first 6 months anyway. We organized her tiny clothes in a shelving unit that we would eventually use in her room (we didn’t even have a dresser for her yet) and everything else we needed went into our bedroom or the living room. It was fine and we were able to take our time making decisions about her room, which is always my favorite part of the whole renovation process.

What happened to the readers getting to vote on design decisions?

I went back and forth a few times on how involved with the blog I wanted to be while we worked on her room. Ultimately, we decided to tackle her nursery as a family and make all of the decisions ourselves. The reason for that was that when we make decisions about our house in general, we do so with plans to eventually sell. We want to make choices that our readers like, with the mentality that if most people who read our blog like our choices, then hopefully most potential buyers will like them too.

However, I have discovered when it comes to the kids’ rooms, I am a lot more sentimental than I am with other rooms in our house. Their rooms seem a lot more special to me. My thinking is that throughout their lives they will probably live with many different bathrooms, kitchens, living rooms, etc. Likewise, they will have many different bedrooms, right? However, my baby will only ever have one nursery and it seemed important to me to make her room look exactly like I pictured it looking for this short period of her life. The desire to create a room that was timeless and would be as beautiful in 10 years as it is now, didn’t seem important to me in this case because the need to make her room perfect for her, right now at this exact moment in her babyhood, seemed more important. I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to make a dreamy nursery because a potential buyer somewhere down the road might not like it. I wanted to go all-in on a design and see what Ronan and I were able to do with no opinions other than our own (and our super opinionated 5-year-old) and I am so happy that we did! We are completely in love with the finished product.

Is the nursery done?

Since the nursery felt more pressing, and less like an evolving room than most spaces in our house, it is the most “done” room of any in our home with the exception of our guest bathroom. I took pictures of it last week (with a real camera!) and I intend to make a whole blog post to show it off within the next few days!

What else have we been doing?

If you follow us on Instagram, you will know that we are currently in the process of renovating our front hallway/entryway. It is much quicker and easier to post on that platform than it is to write a full blog post, so there is a good chance that updates on that particular project will show up on Instagram first and then on the blog once it is completed.

We have also finished up the majority of our son’s room (with the sweet loft) and are hoping to share that soon with all of you! Finally, we have started to work on the master bathroom which is small, but has the potential to be SO good : ) There is so much to update you on and we are so excited to share it all!!

Thanks for following along and being so patient with us! Most of all, thanks to those of you who have been asking for updates and telling us that you missed the blog, it meant more than you know and provided SO much motivation : )