DIY Swinging Baby Gate

Babies are tiny little Houdinis. Before they're big enough to crawl they can cross the room in a blink. Add their signature stealth-waddle and they'll be up the stairs, in the bathroom, splashing in the toilet before you even know they're gone. One of the trickiest things to do as a parent is find ways to contain the children (and their respective havoc) to keep them safe and save your sanity.

One of the baby-problem-areas in our home is our master suite. It's upstairs and the staircase is wide open. I can't do anything up there (make the bed, put laundry away, clean the bathroom...) without the brothers making a break for the stairs. The other problem is that our babies sleep in our room for quite a while - until they are at least mostly sleeping through the night. Baby Brother is still there at 14 months old, but he is definitely outgrowing the pack-n-play that he's been sleeping in. Our best solution for this is to put the crib mattress on the floor, but we don't want him sneaking toward the stairs when we are asleep. The obvious solution would be a baby gate, but all the openings upstairs are just a little too wide for a standard gate, and the larger sizes are pretty pricey. So we made our own with scraps of wood from the garage!

The great thing about a DIY gate is that you can make it just the size you need for any space. We made it perfectly fit our hallway upstairs. It's also really nice having a swinging gate because we don't have to fuss with putting a gate up and taking it down each time. Plus it's pretty affordable to make! We spend about $15 on hardware and all the wood was leftover pieces we already had (if you need to buy new wood you're probably looking at $10-15, depending on what board sizes you get).

Elderberry Syrup {and our natural medicine cabinet}

You guys know we try to stay pretty chemical-free around here, especially when it comes to our little fellas. A while ago I talked about how we ditched our conventional personal care products in favor of some safer alternatives, and then did the same with our cleaning products. But there's another big area we've also been addressing, and that's the actual medicine part of our medicine cabinet.

Not that we think medicine is all bad. It definitely has it's place and we use it when we have to. But before we go running to chemical products that suppress symptoms, we want to give our immune systems the best chance to fight off illness. So immune-boosting foods and supplements have been our first step. One of our very favorites is this homemade elderberry syrup. Elderberries are high in vitamins A & C, stimulate the immune system, are high in antioxidants and are anti-inflammatory and antiviral. This syrup tastes pretty good so we have no trouble convincing Big Brother to have some, it packs an immune-boosting punch, and it costs a fraction of the commercially available stuff. Plus it's super easy to make!

Ready to make your own? Here's all you need:

2/3 cup  elderberries (available here)
3 1/2 cups  water
2 Tbs  ginger root (grated fresh or dried)
1 tsp  cinnamon
1/2 tsp  cloves (whole or ground)
1 cup  raw honey

We bought 1/2 lb of elderberries  and I think we will get four pints of syrup from it. Extra berries can be stored in the freezer to keep them fresh.

Basement Laundry Room

I have an itty bitty laundry board on pinterest. It only has four pins on it. Why only four? Because they so perfectly pin down just exactly what I dream of for a laundry room. This is my single favorite laundry room in all of time and space (and I'm pretty sure it was one of the very first things I pinned):

 image via pinterest

The whiteness, the wood countertops, the plants, the natural light, the oversize pendants... this is my laundry room love. Followed by this close second (yep. basically exactly the same thing):

 image via pinterest

But let's hop out of pinterest for a moment and into my actual laundry room dungeon basement.

The Shelves I Almost Threw Away

As much as I try to get rid of any extra junk-stuffs, I still have some borderline hoarder (hoarderline? anyone?) tendencies fighting to gain ground. My biggest weakness is the organizing stuffs. Boxes, baskets, even... wait for it... shelves. This particular set of shelves was found at a yard sale two summers agao. It's one of those adjustable deals that attach to the wall with moveable brackets. A whole huge set of them for $2. My mom talked me into buying them (she also loves a good organizational gadget) so home they came. And they took up a huge chunk of my garage for two years. I looked at them probably five times a year and had this dilemma with myself:

I should probably get rid of those.
No I'll keep them.
But I just tripped on the brackets AGAIN.
But what if I need to organize something?
So much wasted space. We're obviously not going to use them at this point.
But organizing.

And so they stayed. Until that fateful day when I had the big "duh" moment that starts most of our projects. Our garage was a mess of disorderly chaos and I looked at Husband and said "we need some shelves in here." *dropped jaw spin move toward pile of shelving* Oh. Like these shelves that have been lying right beside all the other junk for TWO YEARS. And so our scattered piles of wood scraps became this:

Everything up off the floor in a tidy stack. And now that we can actually see what kind of scraps we have, we are actually burning through them. No more buying whole boards when we have a smaller piece that fits the bill. Whew.

We had to put them high enough for our super long car's bumper to fit underneath, which also left enough room on the ends to tuck some of the outside toys away.

Those couple shelves started a garage landslide that lasted an entire afternoon. When we were done, you guys, it was tidy. You know, for a garage anyway.

Complete with clear pathway beside the car. *angels sing*

No more piles of tools on the grill. Which has resulted in much more grilling. Hooray summer!

And those tools have found a tidy home in the cabinets with the help of a few cheapy plastic bins. And yes, those cabinets have always been there. Why did we put the tools on the grill instead of in the empty cupboards. I do not know this. It just happened, okay?

Now that it's cleaned up, maybe hopefully it will please please stay that way. Please. We only used a teensy bit of the huge shelving set and now we're on this whole shelving rampage. We're working on expanding our pantry, and even adding some shelving to our master closet. It's going to be so adjustable around here.

And no. The moral of this story is not that I should become a hoarder and keep all the things. Maybe it's more like "I need to stop watching Lost and put away all the stuffs instead of waiting two years." Because I'm totally watching Lost again. Even though I know I'll hate the ending. Don't judge. In fact I'm going to watch it right now because I have two nappers?!? And as my friend Robin always says, "two sleepers should never be wasted on dishes." Pass the popcorn.

What are you glad you kept for way, way too long? Or have you purged something only to regret it later? How do you find balance between keeping and tossing? And tell me straight, guys, is Lost just as disappointing the second time around?