Almost 4 years...

 We have lived in this apartment for more than 3.5 years. I always like taking pictures of the places I live to look back and see how my home evolves over time according to our needs. As I look back over the last 4 years of my life with my husband it is fun to see how much has changed. As I am preparing to pack everything up that we own and move to a new place, I wanted to show you where, and how we have lived for what felt like so long but really was very little. Since so many people we care about have never seen our current home, this will be my tribute to my newlywed years. Our first home, our diplomas, our first child, our first real jobs and many other things all started or finished in this place.

 This is the then of my living room... this was the first summer we lived here.

 And this is now. You can see that I have started to practice my long time enjoyment of decorating.

 This was our first table that I got at the thrift store and our bookshelves before we overflowed with books. It looks so clean and open in our apartment back then.

 And now, its a little more full.

Back when there was room to eat in the bay window...

 Now it is our office, our little guy got the second bedroom. At first this was hard for my husband, but as soon as he had every thing set up in this little nook he started to like it. I even heard him refer to it as his command center on occasion.

 Our current table. We quickly outgrew the round one. We used an outdoor picknick table for a long time before I got this one.

 Yeah, this pretty much sums up my least favorite part of our home. This is what our kitchen looks like, it didn't change much from before. I swear they do not build these apartments for people who cook.

And for the most private room of the home. These days I hardly ever show anyone what it looks like. I decided that it was my room, and that it was wierd to show it to people who came over to our home. So the door is mostly shut now, but it is my favorite room. Above is then... Below is the now.

Since we moved in I was able to get a few large wool rugs and all new bedroom furniture. When I say new I really mean old but new to me. I love old furniture painted or not. It gives such a history to my home.

 And the most special room of the apartment is where Bubbie sleeps. He is a really great independent player and I think he does a lot of learning and imagining in this room. Sometimes he goes in there and is really quiet and after a while I start to worry about him. When I check on him he is usually only playing quietly with his toys. I didn't ever take a picture of this room before because it was our home office, or should I say my husbands room. No matter how hard I tried I could never make it look organized or nice.

When I was pregnant we decided to decorate it in a pirate theme. It was really fun painting and sewing things to make this room special.

As I am starting to pack up I am realizing that it is a little sad to move. This has been the only home we have known as a family and as much as I gripe about its flaws I do think I will miss parts of it.

Woo Hoo!

We got the Job! We are moving! I am so excited! Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. I am looking forward to the future that my little blog holds. We already have a house lined up to rent and it is going to be so great to have more space and more fun things to do because we will no longer be living in the rain.

Yellow

 I have been frantically sewing a quilt that I started in October. I have to finish it in anticipation of a potential move that we might be doing soon. My husbands job interviews went well and he has successfully completed  a background check and drug test and we are waiting for the final word.

 I started this quilt in anticipation of a move months ago. I actually am taking a quilting class from a lady in our ward. She will help me finish it by quilting it if I get it done. Since I knew that my time was always limited on this project (quilts sometimes take people years to finish), I did a really simple pattern to allow me to sew it faster. I used mostly sheets that I bought at the thrift store. I used some leftover fabric scraps from when I did my first sewing project, a crib set as well.

 Here it is taking up my whole living room. I wanted t make a queen but I have been sewing faster than the class meets and when I laid it out the first time it was too small. I almost had a heart attack because I really didn't want to sew more blocks for it. I ended up sewing a boarder around the edges and I really like it now.

Here are all of my blocks before I sewed them together. I am really fond of the soft yellows, creams and whites. Red used to be my favorite color, but now as I look around my home and see so much yellow I think my favorite color is changing. Besides yellow is the first color my little guy can say, hes been walking around for a week calling everything yellow

One more reason I love cloth diapers!

I decided a long time before we had our little guy that I was going to use cloth diapers. We had a few friends at the time who were using them and they showed us that it really was not that much of a hassle.

Some of the reasons that I already knew that made it worth it for us was...
1. easy on the pocket book
2. healthier on his little body parts
3. more comfortable for him
4. more aesthetic for me (there's nothing cuter than him with only his cloth diaper on)
5. they smell good, he doesn't smell like plastic diaper or like urine,
    and his poo smell isn't as strong
6. they smell and feel so good fresh out of the dryer
7. I'm a little bit of a traditionalist, I like a lot of things old school.


Well, as many of you know we went on a little road trip last weekend for some job interviews. It was a 6 hour drive not counting the stops. On Sunday we left to come home and 45 miles outside of town (a couple of hundred miles from home) our little guy started to throw up. Now I must fill in some back story and tell you that I had packed cloth diapers for him. If you don't know much about them, you have a diaper and then something called a cover. The cover keeps the wet in and the rest of the world out. Well... I forgot our covers. I spent all weekend bumming diapers off of our friends who were letting us stay at their house for three nights. I felt terrible, kinda like a mooch. Now back to the barf. When Bubbie threw up it took me a minute to remember that I had 10 clean prefolds and a giant wet bag. I was soooo grateful it worked out like that, I had something in the car that could easily clean up nastiness and then something to hold it smell free. Not only did our wet bag hold the barfy diapers it held the two outfits he yacked on as well. Let me tell you, it would have been a long winters day in the car if I hadn't forgot our diaper covers. I learned a lesson too. Remember to pack something in case your kid gets sick. Now I will have to add number 8 to my list... cloth diapers work for other bodily fluids. Sometimes we get blessings in the strangest ways.