In the years that I was a college student and recent grad, I got really used to packing and unpacking. I was moving in and out all the time. 6 times, to be exact, in the same number of years. How did I do it? I have no idea. I did learn a few things from that experience. A lot had to do with making packing as easy as possible. Probably the biggest lesson of them all: Get rid of random crap, you probably don’t need it.

While others I know settled into their temporary dorms and apartments, hanging things up on walls and even painting them sometimes, I was always aware of the move-out date. I never hung things on walls because, I didn’t want to deal with taking them down 9 months later. You could call this laziness or just being smart.

You can imagine how strange it was for me when my husband and I bought and moved into our first home. A place that was now, permanent. I think it took me about a year to realize that we could hang things on walls, plants things in the ground, and nail up shelves, without having to worry about taking them out.

Since that realization, I’ve gone a little crazy in our yard and garage. We completely re-landscaped our front yard with drought resistant plants and had a field day converting our garage to a multipurpose room. I’m slowing starting to move my nesting-machine self into the house itself. The first place of inspiration? The nursery.

I had my eye on these alphabet cards for a while. I love the whimsical illustrations, and the elementary school teacher in me is excited to teach Gianna the ABC’s with them. They’re also conveniently 5” by 7”, the perfect size for a small stack of white frames I picked up a while back for the nursery.

Putting them together was as simple as unwrapping the frames, sticking in the cards, and making sure the cards didn’t slip with a small piece of tape. My husband did all the measuring and nailing of the frames up on the wall, he’s getting more and more awesome at around the house stuff like this.

I chose to use just A, B, and C for the room. I thought about doing Gianna’s initials, but I could just imagine lots of confusion when we started learning the alphabet!

Now, on to nesting in the living room.