BABY: Nursery Tour

 

I've been meaning to do a nursery tour for a while now, as I love reading these posts - any excuse for a good nosey! We have been adding new bits here and there to Isabella's nursery since she was born, so kept putting off doing a nursery tour. It's still not completely finished but she'll be out of the nursery before I do this if I don't get on with it!

NURSERY: Storage Ideas and Solutions

When it came to creating our daughters nursery I wanted it to be stylish, practical and organised. The practical aspect was especially important, particularly as she won't be sleeping in there for the first 6ish months. It needed to be a space that we can change her, get her dressed and I can breastfeed her. We looked at various types of nursery furniture, which came with a variety of types of storage - from drawers to shelves to a hanging rail. Though babies are only tiny and their clothes are small too, all of the things they need quickly take up a lot of space! We eventually decided on a shelving/changing unit and a wardrobe with two shelves in. Therefore the majority of available storage was shelves. We couldn't just pile her clothes, nappies, wipes etc on the shelves as it would have been hard to find anything and probably looked messy. Neither of which I really wanted for the nursery. 

I hunted around for reasonable storage boxes to put her clothes in, so that I could organise them and they would sit on the shelves neatly. If you're thinking of doing a similar thing make sure you measure the height, depth and length of the shelves you have. This allows you to find storage that will make the most of the available space, rather than buying a box that's big enough to fit on the shelf but then doesn't leave enough space for another box. It's just worth thinking ahead slightly.

IKEA was of course an obvious place to look, especially as we were already there buying the nursery furniture. I found the following storage containers that fitted perfectly on the Hensvik Changing table/cabinet.

^KASSETT Box with lid - white - 2 pack - £3.75^

^I can't seem to find these on the IKEA website, they were brand new out so may take a while to get on to the website. They were £3 each. The turquoise container is almost the perfect match to the colour of our cot bed - match made in heaven.^

 

 ^HYFS Box with lid - Grey - £3 each^

The following storage items I picked up at H&M (in New York but there's a similar one currently being sold in the UK) and The Range.

^Similar - H&M Storage Basket - £1.99^

 ^Again these don't seem to be on The Range website but we only bought them a couple of weeks ago, so I'm sure they'll still be in store. It's a three pack of white wicker baskets for £8.99.^

What did you use for storage in your little ones nursery?

Feel free to leave me a comment :)

Helen x

RECIPE: Rainbow Cupcakes in a Jar

I've wanted to have a proper go at Rainbow Cupcakes in a Jar for a while now, I say 'proper' because the first time I made them I missed out a key step and the outside of the cake went completely brown. That essential step is putting the jars into a roasting tin filled with water when cooking them. This stops the outside turning golden brown as it usually would, leaving you with these vibrant cakes in a jar!

To make these even easier and quicker to make I used the Betty Crocker Classic Vanilla Cake Mix, I'm becoming a very big fan of using Betty Crocker cake mixes to save time! There's also no need to go out and spend lots of money on jars - I just bought 3 jars of strawberry jam from Tesco for around 24p each, emptied out the jam, soaked off the label and ta dah! The smaller jars were from The Range for 79p each.  

What you'll need:

Betty Crocker Classic Vanilla Cake Mix

3 Eggs

Vegetable Oil

Water

Gel Food Colouring, the higher quality the better. I've found some of the cheaper brands to not keep their colour very well during the cooking process

100g Butter

200g Icing Sugar

1tsp Vanilla Extract

What to do:

1) Preheat the oven at 180'C. Make the cake mix, in line with the instructions on the back of the packet. If you don't want to use a packet cake mix then you can make a classic vanilla sponge mix from scratch.

2) Separate the cake mixture into 5 bowls (or however many different food colourings your using). Using a cocktail stick add the desired amount of food colouring to each bowl of cake mixture. Always start with a small amount of food colouring and build it up - you can always add more but you can't take it away!

3) I sprayed the inside of the jars with FryLight, although you don't need to. Put a couple of teaspoons of one colour cake mix into the bottom of a jar. Using the spoon, make sure the cake mixture is evenly spread around the base of the jar and that its completely touching the edge of the jar. Repeat this process with your other colours. Make sure you leave a gap of about 7cm from the top of the jar. The cake will rise and you want some space to pipe on buttercream.

4) Fill a baking tray with cold water and carefully place your jars in. Bake in the middle of your oven for around 30-40 minutes or until when a knife is put into the middle of the cake it comes out clean. 

5) As you can see the cake rises, you may need to cut the top of the some of the cakes, so that you can pipe on the buttercream. Leave the cupcakes in a jar to completely cool.  

6) To make the buttercream - put the butter in a bowl and into the microwave for 20 seconds to help soften it. Gradually beat in the icing sugar, until it's completely combined and your happy with the sweetness. Stir in the vanilla extract. Put the buttercream into a piping bag, I used a star nozzle but you can use any you have.

7) Once the cakes have completely cooled, you can pipe on the buttercream. Try to keep the buttercream below the lid line, this lets you screw on the lid and create a completely transportable cake! I added some sprinkles for a bit more colour.

Are you going to have a go at these?

Feel free to leave me a comment :)