The End of a Season & Budget Decorating

This week at the doctor's office, after twelve weeks on bed rest, my maternal fetal specialist officially ended my restrictions. We've quickly returned to our normal pace around here, with a few big changes. The first two weeks on bed rest were nightmarish for me, only because I was prohibited from engaging my abdominal muscles (that's a tall order!) and I felt like the only thing I could do was sit and worry that we were going to lose a third baby. After those two weeks, though, my body began turning around and my spirit followed suit. I will never forget the amazing things that happened in my heart, our house, and especially my womb during that time. Healing without explanation, beating all of the odds, lots of prayer, and a new understanding of the breadth of God's love for us. In the thirty years of my life, this past year has been a long season of loss and grace and stumbling, but I feel like the repeated losses, at least those related to pregnancy and health, are slowly coming to an end.

On a much lighter note, now that I am no longer on bed rest, I am catching up on getting our house and Joshua's nursery ready for a new baby. We obviously have some major medical expenses right now, so I'm doing my best to keep the cost of this nursery down.

Way down.

We ordered a changing table from Walmart.com (did I mention we're on a budget?) and it has open cubbies at the top to house diapers and wipes. I knew we needed baskets for the cubbies, but I wanted to spend less than $5 a basket, and I wanted something durable, sturdy, and cute.

Never you mind that yellow wall and gold trim. They'll be gone pretty soon!

Last week at Joann's (which has been my only stop on the way home from the hospital, since the store near us is small enough that I can walk around without breaking any of my doctor's rules), I found these blue mesh storage bins on clearance for $4 each, down from $8.99. Score! The down side is that they're ugly. Or at least they were. Now they are cute and I kind of love them.

After staring at them for 15 minutes and contemplating hot gluing fabric to the fronts, I knew I wanted to make slipcovers so that I could change the look in the future (I have big plans for this changing table once there are no more diaper-wearers in this house). I will try to post a step-by-step tutorial later, but I just traced the sides of the box onto paper and used that as a pattern. I used coordinating fabric and ribbons for the front panels and plain muslin for the sides and back. I sewed them snugly so they stay upright once you tug them on and there's no sagging. I have plans for labeling the bins, but these bins came with label pouches sewn on the front and sides, and I used my seam ripper to remove them before I slipcovered them. If you want the labels to remain, just stitch them back on to the front of your slipcover.

I already owned all of the fabric for these boxes, so this project was really just $4 per bin. I am so happy with the way the slipcovers turned out. If you make some of your own, I'd love to see pictures!