The Need for Community

January 25, 2012 By 3 Comments

Jesse and I have been full of emotions the last couple of days relating to our foster care journey. We have been everywhere from super excited to crazy scared. My mind is constantly running with things we need to buy and questions we need to ask. I guess there is really no way of knowing what it will be like until we get our first placement. We are at the point now that we feel so close, yet still so far away.

It’s been a full year now since we first started getting these ideas of becoming foster parents in our heads. Last January we finally decided to jump in with both feet and start figuring out what was required to do something like this. We quickly realized that we were all of a sudden in over our heads. Having just left my job to work with Jesse, we were already navigating as much change as we could handle for the moment. Even though we decided that we needed to stick with the class we had started, we knew that we were not ready to have a child in our home right away.

We’ve come a long way since last January. We are confident (yet still a little scared) that we can do this. We are so much more financially stable than we were at this time last year and we’ve now managed to settle into a work routine that agrees with both of us.

It’s a little unfair of us to expect our licensing people to all of sudden start working at lightning-speed to finish up our process, after we’ve been taking our time getting ready for them. But that’s exactly what we want to happen!

All of this to say that we think it’s time we start attending the foster care support group. This area of our lives comes with such a specific set of needs and emotions that we are starting to realize that most people can’t really relate to. We’ve been invited to go before, but felt weird going knowing that we were no where near actually being foster parents. Now that it’s getting closer… I think we could really benefit from meeting some friends that have been where we are. It’s a little scary to put ourselves “out there,” but I think that it could be really awesome too!

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Project: Nursery

January 23, 2012 By 19 Comments

I feel like we’ve made some huge progress toward our foster care goal in recent weeks. Some projects have been no-so-much fun to work on, others have been more exciting. This project falls into the exciting category… our nursery is set up!!

Several months ago, our home office was set up in the first spare bedroom. After moving all of our office related things into our bedroom, we got to work transforming the room into a nursery.

Before

We painted a light beige color which we thought would be nice and neutral.

Painting

The most exciting part was finally purchasing and setting up our new crib! I think it’s about the only brand new item in there and it looks SO pretty! Jesse left to go to the store the second we got the notification that our online order was ready for pickup. Then he came home and immediately started working on puttin it together. He’s getting really good at furniture assembly these days!

CribJesse assembling cribJesse finishing crib

I couldn’t wait to see how cute the bedding would look in the crib. A friend of a friend (a complete stanger to us) donated the entire bedding set, all the coordinating accessories, and the changing table. The best part about it is that it’s perfect for our situation of not knowing if we will get a boy or a girl. It’s a good mix of pink and blue. Love it!

BeddingCrib with bedding

The rules for crib arrangement include being placed away from windows with no pictures or shelves hanging above the crib. So, I found this sticker decal to decorate that bare wall without breaking any of the rules. Jesse helped me put it up since my brain wouldn’t have been able to arrange them randomly. I think it turned out pretty cute.

Jesse making treeGrowing treeTree over crib

My parents let us use the rocking chair they still had from back when my brother was little. It makes a nice little sitting area by the window.

Sitting areaBasket

The changing table is cute and polka-dotted and filled with a few random items that people have given us already.

Changing table

I found these free printables that I thought would go well in the room. I used some old frames that we already had so these didn’t cost us anything.

Pictures

Finally, we used Jesse’s old dresser that we had in the guest room since it matched the other wood pieces we had in there. I put the cute, little matching lamp on top along with a teddy bear that my grandmother made for me when I was little.

Dresser

So… how do you like it?

Room leftRoom right

Clearly we’ve decided that we’d like our first placement to be a pretty young one. It seems like the natural place to start. We’ll likely expand to accepting older children later on as we get a little older and gain some parenting experience. We’re still working on nailing down the exact age that we feel comfortable starting with for now.

The next item on our checklist is to go for fingerprinting. Hopefully we’ll be able to get an appointment for that sometime this week. Yay for progress!

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Spice Cabinet Reorganization

January 19, 2012 By 5 Comments

I was inspired by my bloggy friend Rachel to give some much-needed attention to my spice cabinet. She’s participating in The 52 Week Organized Home Challenge, and this week happens to include organizing spices. Now that I love to cook all the time, that little corner of our home gets a lot more use than it ever did before. And it just seems like whatever I need to use is always buried at the very back of the cabinet… frustrating.

So, my goal was just to plan out a better layout for that one cabinet. The last couple weeks of the challenge had included all the kitchen cabinets and drawers. I had decided that mine were fine and I could skip that week. However, once I got started on one cabinet it was hard to resist a couple more changes to make the rest of the cabinets better organized as well. Pretty soon I had the contents of most all of my cabinets spread around the kitchen. I can’t help it that I trick myself into getting stuck in these projects… I don’t know how it happens. It’s just as well, my cabinets flow so much better now. I don’t have to take out seven items to get to the pot I need to use or get the step stool to get things form the high shelf to make dinner. So much better! (I didn’t take any pictures of that part since it kinda happened accidentally.)

I finally decided to get rid of our spice rack. We bought it (or it may have been a wedding gift) when we first got married. Many of the spices were empty, some of the weird ones I didn’t know what do with were still sealed, and only about two of them were still in use. I had been intending to buy new spices to refill the empty ones with but it’s always a better deal to buy a larger container which wouldn’t fit in the spice rack containers. Anyway… I bought this nifty turn-table to take it’s place on the counter.

New spice rackTurn tables

It’s got two small turning sections and a taller shelf in the back. I can keep my most used spices on the counter top, like they were in the spice rack… only they’re easier to get to since the turn-tables are smaller. Spices don’t get lost being stuck in the middle. I kept my old turntable in the cabinet, but it’s got a lot more space open on it. And I made a list of all the spices I’m out of that need to be replaced. I’ve been procrastinating buying spices since they can really add up on the grocery bill. I often find myself looking for something to substitute for a missing spice, but then I forget what I was out of once I’m at the store. That problem will soon be fixed and a full spice selection will fill in the extra spaces.

Most usedSpice cabinet

See, so much prettier and nothing is hiding or buried in the back!

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