The Room

We had our homestudy update done this morning. It didn't last very long at all since we just had all of this done in Feb. of this year ... but for some reason foster care homestudy's and private adoption agency homestudy's are some how not the same. It just seems funny to me that it's okay for me to adopt a child through the system on a foster care homestudy but not okay for me to adopt from a private agency. Weird, but it's just one more hoop for us to jump through to get one step closer to bringing home our baby. We're willing to do just about anything to make that happen. We still have a few more documents that she gave us to get filled out before she can finish writing it up. I had to go get a physical done today and a TB test. Hopefully Alya can get off work early next week to go get his done. We have yet another criminal record check to do (because the county and FBI checks aren't enough, so let's just throw in a state one too while we're at it.) We have to have our employers sign off that we actually work there and mail in a copy of our 2009 tax statement. She said that it should only take about a week for her to write this up ... but that we have to wait for our FBI checks to come in. I just mailed them off this past Tuesday. She said that they have been averaging about 13 weeks so we are praying that it comes back sooner than that! We are so close to being able to send out for our grants ... we just need that piece of paper!

Since we have been cleaning like mad trying to get our house together I thought that I would post pictures of what our nursery looks like. We have had it set up for awhile now since this was Hope's room. We've changed a few things around since then and can't wait for our little baby girl to start sleeping in it.

Here's a before the room became a nursery picture. When we first built our house we knew that we wanted to start having kids right away. So Alya worked really hard putting up the bead board and getting it ready to transform into a nursery. :0)


Here's what it looks like now ...

We bought the crib off of craigslist for like $30. It was only a year old and looked brand new. It used to be a really light wood color so we just painted it black to go with the color theme we wanted.


I got the bedding at Target


We bought this changing table at a garage sale for $10 and painted it to match the crib.


The storage area is also from Target. I had always wanted to get paint and hang letters of my child's name on their wall. But as foster parents I never thought that I would get the chance to do that. So I came up with the idea to do it for every foster child we had in our home. This was Hope's ... we added a picture of her with her name. I love it, and it's a constant reminder of how much she changed our lives for the better. I haven't gotten the boys letters yet, but plan on doing some for them as well.


You have to have pretty pink curtains in a girls room. :0) We also hung green, pink, yellow and white paper lanterns all over the room. I love it!


We used these handy closet organizers to store blankets, towels, bibs, etc., etc.


As foster parents we never knew when we would get a phone call asking us to take in a child. We didn't have time to plan and get the things we would need for each particular sex and age. So, I came up with the idea to help us ORGANIZE! I love love love containers and labeling lol. I'm a freak about it actually.... hey at least I can admit it! :0) What I did was I put three storage containers on each side of the nursery closet. One side for the boys and one side for the girls. Then I labeled the bins with 0-3mo, 3-6mo, and 6-up months so that when ever we got "the call" we could be prepared with some clothes. I loved this system and it came in handy! I plan on continuing on using this system when we have our forever kids too.



This is a rocking chair I got at a garage sale. It was a light wood color as well ... nothing a good coat of pain can't fix! It had also been recovered in a mother goose type of fabric that was just not my cup of tea. So I decided to recover it myself ... now I had to hand sew it because I don't have a sewing machine. Let's just say ... it looked like crap lol. So this week one of my friends brought over her sewing machine to help me really recover it.

Here is a before picture of the nasty mis-matched cushions ...



Here's a picture of it now.


I think it turned out a lot better, don't you?

When we went to the foster parent conference this past weekend I won a precious little baby quilt that I LOVE! I hope it becomes our babies favorite blankie lol.


And last but not least here is another AMAZING craigslist buy! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the color orange ... and when I saw this little baby I couldn't resist!

It makes me SOOOOOOO happy lol

So there it is friends ... the nursery! Now all we need is a sweet little baby and we'll be all set!