If you have a newborn baby, you know all too well the importance of a good night’s sleep..if you’re lucky to sleep at all! So, you know how important it is to create a dark and quiet sleeping environment for your little one.

The best way to do this is to invest in a quality set of blackout curtains for your baby’s nursery.

But what are blackout curtains and why are they so essential for your newborn? With so many options on the market, it can be difficult to choose the right curtains for your nursery.

That’s why we’ve put together a list of the 5 best blackout curtains for your baby’s nursery. From light-blocking to noise-blocking, these curtains are sure to help your little one (and you!) get the restful sleep you all need.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link. Please see my disclosure for more details.

What are blackout curtains?

As the name indicates, blackout curtains block out light. This helps your baby nap longer during the day and sleep better at night. Blackout curtains are made from heavy, thick material and feature a light-blocking liner. This ensures that no light can penetrate through.

They also help to regulate the temperature in the room. This reduces energy costs and keeps your baby comfortable.

What features should I look for in blackout curtains?

When shopping for blackout curtains for your baby’s nursery, there are several features you should look for.

The 5 Best Blackout Curtains for Your Baby’s Nursery

And now without further ado, here’s my list of the 5 best blackout curtains for your baby’s nursery.

Blackout Curtains for Your Baby’s Nursery

Blackout curtains can help create the perfect sleeping environment for your baby. They keep our bright sun rays and provide a dark and quiet atmosphere for naps and nighttime. They also regulate the temperature of the nursery to prevent cold hands and feet!

The best part is blackout curtains come in a variety of sizes, colors, and designs! You will be sure to find the perfect style for your baby’s nursery that fits within your budget. I hope you found our list of the 5 best blackout curtains helpful!

Are blackout curtains a lifesaver in your household too? Comment below with your experience with blackout curtains for your baby!

Thank you Dixie® Cups for sponsoring this post.

Check out how versatile these 5 oz. multi-purpose cups are!

There are so many ways to spend time outdoors with your children! From barbecues to pool parties to bike rides, there’s no shortage of outside fun. But, have you thought about gardening? Growing a garden is a great activity to do with children! Not only is gardening an activity to entertain your little ones, but it can also be a great sensory and fine motor activity. 

From the feel of the dirt on their hands to the taste of homegrown vegetables, gardening engages all of the senses. And shoveling dirt, planting seeds, and watering plants are great fine motor activities that will have your child practice their hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity. Furthermore, gardening teaches children about the environment, gives them a sense of pride in their efforts, and introduces healthy foods – that they grew on their own!

Have I convinced you you need to plant a vegetable garden with your little one yet? 

Why a starter garden

So, now that I have convinced you to start a vegetable garden with your children, how do you do it? I recommend starting a starter garden! By doing a starter garden indoors, you increase your chances of having a successful and flourishing garden. If you’re starting before the spring season, you also get a head start on the weather rather than waiting for the last frost to pass before sowing seeds directly outside.

There are many ways you can start a starter garden, but we chose Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups. The 5 oz. size is so perfect for those tiny toddler hands to hold. And who doesn’t love a little sprouting leaf in the most adorable cup?!

While you may usually use Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups with your kids for mealtimes or for brushing their teeth, the small size and beautiful print inspires me to think of unconventional and versatile ways of using them, such as for a starter vegetable garden!

Materials

• Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups
• Potting soil
• Vegetable seeds
• Small shovel
• Spray bottle of water
• Toddler

Pick out seeds

Involve your kids from the very beginning and have them help pick out seeds for your starter garden! Going to your local nursery and browsing their selection of seeds is part of the fun. Ask your little one what vegetables they like, which ones look tasty, or how they can cook them for meals. Doing this will give your child a sense of participation in the gardening process and may help with the buy-in when it’s time to eat them. ????????

Gather materials

Once you have your seeds picked out, it’s time to gather all of your materials. Trust me, you don’t want to leave your toddler alone with potting soil while you’re grabbing the seeds ????. I would suggest using a small tray to put your Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups on for easy transport and fast clean-up. 

Prep your Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups

The next step is to prep your Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups. To avoid drowning your baby plants, make small holes on the bottom of each cup for any excess water to drain. I used a knife to make four little slits. 

Now it’s time for your toddler to help! Fill each cup with potting soil using a spoon or small shovel, stopping about 1 inch from the top. Warning: this will get messy! But this is such a great sensory activity that helps your child develop their fine motor skills from scooping up dirt, crossing their midline, and pouring it into a different container. To make it a little easier to scoop, pour the potting soil from its original giant bag into a small bowl.

Plant Your Seeds

Now that your cups are prepped, it’s time to plant your seeds! Read each seed packet for how deep they should be planted. Some of the small seeds can be sprinkled onto the surface while the larger ones will need to be buried. This can range from ¼ inch to a couple of inches. Use a finger or small stick to estimate the depth as it doesn’t have to be precise. Toddler fingers are perfect for this! Have your toddler place a few seeds in each hole. Younger toddlers may not have the fine motor skill for this and instead will dump a whole bunch of seeds all at once, but just scoop out the extra seeds, if you can. If anything, you’ll have extra insurance that something will sprout! Once all the seeds are in, cover lightly with potting soil. Press down gently. Again, toddler hands are the perfect size for the Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups. 

TIP: Use this opportunity to talk with your little one about the seeds: which ones are big seeds and which ones are small seeds and what shape each seed comes in. 

Label Your Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups

As you plant each seed, be sure to label each cup with what will grow. Otherwise, once all the cups are covered with soil, they will all look the same until little sprouts start to emerge!

We used mini clothespins to simply write each vegetable that we planted. These were the perfect size for our Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups. Other labeling ideas include popsicle sticks or upcycled wine corks with small skewers. 

Nurture Your Seedlings

Once your seeds are warm and comfy, let’s love on them! Little seedling roots need both air and water to thrive. Try to keep the soil moist, but not overly saturated with water or soggy. We use a spray bottle to lightly spray any time the soil starts looking dry. A spray bottle is also great practice for fine motor skills!

Place your cups with seedlings in a warm location, such as on top of the refrigerator or in the sun. Another option is to make a makeshift greenhouse by placing plastic wrap over your entire tray. This traps moisture and creates a greenhouse environment to nurture those seedlings.

Patience is a Virtue

Now, it’s time to wait for those seedlings to grow! Luckily, the Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups are so pretty to look at and their vintage design is a great reminder to be present in the moment. Check your plants every day for signs of growth! You’ll be surprised at how fast the seedlings emerge. Remy and I love checking our cups first thing in the morning and I cherish hearing his squeal of delight whenever a little leaf starts to sprout! ????

As soon as your seedlings sprout, place your cups in a bright location, such as a sunny window. Once the last frost has passed and your seedlings have grown enough, you can transplant them to your outdoor garden! And did you know that you don’t have to worry about handling the fragile seedling and moving it from the cup to the garden? You can transplant the entire thing – cup and all – right outside!

In just 1-2 more months, your toddler will be able to help harvest your home-grown vegetables and hopefully help you eat them too!

Gardening is a great activity you can do with your children year after year and I know we’ll be making it a tradition every spring/summer! A starter garden with Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups is the perfect way to get your kids involved with the gardening process right from the beginning. What vegetables will you plant in your starter garden?

Are you looking for a new way to spruce up your home decor? Why not do a gallery wall?

A gallery wall is a great option to display your treasured photos, mementos, and family portraits. We recently added a dream gallery wall to our living room to display family and travel photos. We love how much personality and visual interest it adds to our home. Whether you add a gallery wall to the dining room or a bedroom, it adds a focal point to your wall. 

When planning the layout of the wall, there are many options on how to do so. Of course, you can always use an interior designer. Or you can make it a DIY project. You can use painter’s tape to outline your frames onto your own wall or you can lay your frames on the floor and reorganize them that way.

However, with all the technology available, I went all digital! And let me tell you – it’s such an easy and great way to visualize your layout and pictures! AND no dealing with measuring tape or paper templates!

In this post, I’ll show you how to do your own virtual gallery wall design and give you access to my FREE template!

This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using this link. Please see my disclosure for more details.

1. Take a photo of the space where you want your gallery wall

The first step is to a photo of the wall space where you want to place your gallery wall. A good starting point is a large wall with tons of negative space. This could include the wall behind a couch (like ours), above a bed, or the wall of a staircase. 

When taking the photo, be sure to capture the whole wall. Include a little of the ceiling and anything else that is on the wall or nearby. This way, you can look at the spacing to see how different frames or different sizes will look with a certain piece of furniture. A photo that captures the whole space will also help you center your photo wall. 

2. Use Canva to design your wall

In the next step, you want to Go to canva.com or the Canva app.  This free app is an easy way to achieve a perfect gallery wall layout. You’ll need to sign up for an account (if you don’t have one already), but the good news is that it’s free!

Click “Create a Design”.  Choose a canvas that best matches your photo, either landscape or portrait. Then upload your photo of the blank wall and drag it to the blank design.

3. Add in picture frames

Once you have your blank wall uploaded, it’s time to add in your picture frames so you can play around with the layout and find the perfect place for each photo! You’ll be able to play around with different layouts to achieve a cohesive look. Once you’re done, you’ll have a final layout of your gallery wall. 

To do this, click “Elements” on the left-hand panel. Then click “Frames”. Add the frames that match the orientation of your photos and resize them to get a general idea of the frames you’ll be adding to your actual wall. Unfortunately, you really can’t make the frames true to scale, but you can get a general idea of orientation and relative size. For example, you can make squares or rectangles to represent 9×9 vs. 8×10, respectively. Still, this is better than having to deal with a tape measure!

4. Upload your actual photos to the virtual frames

By now, you should have an idea of the photos and items that will make up your gallery wall and if they are all in the right place. Now it’s time to figure out the layout. Do you like these two photos together? Would maybe this photo look better? The good news about this virtual gallery wall designer is that you can move around the frames over and over again without breaking a sweat! Then, once you have the best layout, you can hit “Download” on the top right and you’re done!

FAQs about the Virtual Gallery Wall Designer

Download Your Gallery Wall Designer Template

With this virtual template for designing a gallery wall, there’s no need to deal with stubborn painter’s tape to outline frames on the wall. Or deal with frames on the floor as you gingerly step around them to change up a layout while trying to picture them hung up. 

Having this virtual gallery wall designer through Canva is the easiest way to plan your own unique layout. Once you have your layout, it’s time to gather all of your materials, such as frames and photo prints. Because you did the layout, you already have a general idea of frame sizes and how many you need to get of each. For our gallery wall, we used black frames of various sizes. 

Follow the rest of the step-by-step instructions on how to finish your DIY gallery wall! I can’t wait to see it!

To help get you started with your virtual gallery wall designer, here is my FREE template for you to play around with!

Blank walls hold so much promise! Should you paint them? Paint a mural? Hang shelves or pictures? We have been in our house for about four years now and there’s this blank wall behind our couch that was just screaming to get decorated. I’ve always wanted to do something there, but I had so many ideas swimming around that I actually had a roadblock. One year, I would be inspired to do floating shelves; the next year, I wanted to do canvases. This was a wall in one of our main living areas, so it had to be PERFECT! Looking around our house, I noticed that we were very short on photos of us and our family. We don’t even have a wedding photo up! ????‍ This is when I decided to do an amazing gallery wall!

A gallery wall is a collection of family photos and memorabilia on display! These can be things that matter to you the most: family portraits, trip souvenirs, memorable letters, etc. It’s a perfect way to spruce up any space in your home!

Related Post: Free Virtual Gallery Wall Designer

Choose your spot

Really, any blank spot on your wall could play host to your gallery wall. But don’t pick a random corner that nobody ever sees! You’re going to spend a lot of time and energy into imagining and actually putting together this wall, so choose somewhere that sees a lot of traffic. Living rooms and hallways are always great!

Brainstorm

What kind of items do you want to display on your gallery wall? Is there a theme? Color motif? Do you want to include decorative artifacts? To get an idea, take a stroll down the home decor section of Hobby Lobby or browse Pinterest. Or are there certain photos that you definitely want to display? For us, we knew we wanted to show off our cute little family. I’m our personal paparazzi, so we had plenty of photos to choose from.  

Plan Layout

This step is a little harder because there’s no right or wrong layout. You can do grids or you can do a variety of sizes that are pieced together like Tetris. However, you do want to make sure that your gallery wall is balanced so it’s not too “heavy” or “light” on one side. There are many ways to plan your layout. You can use painter’s tape to outline your frames onto the actual wall or you can lay your frames on the floor and reorganize them that way. The first method is a little more tedious, but it allows you to see if your items are centered and evenly spaced. For me, I went all digital! I used canva.com to plan out our gallery wall layout. I posted step-by-step instructions with a free virtual layout planner in this blog post!

Be sure to take your time with the layout. Take photos of one layout before changing it up and compare to see which one you like better. Don’t forget to take a photo of your final layout plan so you can refer back to it!

Gather Materials

Once you have your layout of your gallery wall, it is now time to gather your materials. Note the frame sizes and number you need, so your shopping trip is quick and easy. For the frames, we bought the Ribba series from Ikea because we wanted the same style over a variety of sizes. In addition, we wanted frames with mats since we had larger photos and didn’t want the gallery wall to look too crowded. The white space breaks up the photos enough and gives the whole wall an overall artistic quality.

For the photos, you can print them out anywhere photos are done! We printed our photos from the Costco Photo Center and they turned out great. We even had two photos that were 16 x 20 and the quality was amazing!

Get to work

Once you have all of your materials, you’re ready to put up your gallery wall! Refer to your layout photo throughout the whole process and take it one step at a time. My husband did most of the heavy lifting while I stood back and “supervised”, making sure everything was spaced appropriately and that the frames were straight. ???? We used a combination of nails and command hooks to hang up our 8 frames.

Sit back and enjoy!

And your gallery wall is done! It looks beautiful! We certainly enjoy having our family photos on the wall and it makes us smiles every time we cuddle on the couch. It’s such a statement piece for our living room and gives it so much personality! How did you decorate your family room? I would love to hear your ideas and inspiration!

The year 2019 is literally a few days away! Happy New Year! I love new years. They are full of promise and potential. New beginnings. If the last year didn’t work out as planned, here’s a brand new year to start over! This is the perfect time to make resolutions for the upcoming 365 days.

The issue with resolutions is that they are most likely forgotten about by Valentine’s Day. I’ve been there. ????‍ I would reflect really hard on New Year’s day to write a whole list of maybe 20 resolutions that I promise myself that I would do for the next year. But then either, these resolutions are forgotten about or I get burned out from trying to achieve them. So how do we solve this dilemma?

By making SMART resolutions. I know…you’re probably thinking, “Well DUH. I’m not going to make DUMB resolutions!”.  Of course I know that! And that’s not what I meant. By SMART, I mean Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. Let’s take a look at what all of this means and how it will help you have the best year ever!

SUBSCRIBE TO GET YOUR FREE WORKSHEET AND PRINTABLE!

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SPECIFIC

Describe your resolution and what you hope to accomplish by being specific. Let’s say one of your New Year’s resolutions is to save more money. This is a great goal to have! But if you go into the new year with just “I’m going to save money”, it’s so open-ended that if you save an extra $1 per paycheck, you have reached your goal! I’m sure you would want to save more than $1. You want to be more specific so you have a clear idea of what it is you want to achieve and how you’re going to achieve it. Instead, your resolution could be something like, “I want to save an extra $200 every month by cooking more at home and eating out less.” With this resolution, you list what you hope to attain and exactly how you will get there. (BTW, if your resolution is indeed to save money, check out easy budgeting for the modern family!)

MEASURABLE

How will you measure your progress toward meeting your resolution? Having a measurable resolution kind of goes along with having a specific one. Instead of having a resolution of “I want to lose weight”, having a measurable one would be along the lines of “I want to lose fifteen pounds”. Or instead of “I want to spend read more”, you can have the resolution state, “I want to read at least one book per month”. The fifteen pounds and one book per month are quantifiable and easy to measure.

ATTAINABLE

What steps will you need to take to achieve this resolution? Having a resolution that is realistic is key to making sure that you reach them by year’s end. Setting an unrealistic goal is definitely setting yourself up for failure, even if you don’t mean to. It’s best to set small steps. You may have noticed in my examples above that I want to do such and such “every month”. Instead of, “I want to read twelve books in 2019”, I resolved to read at least one book per month. With reading twelve books in 2019, the resolution is indeed specific and measurable and it’s even attainable. But with this resolution, that could mean you could read all twelve books in December 2019! If you weren’t reading in the first eleven months, you’re not as likely to read all twelve by year’s end. It’s better to set small goals as they are easier to MAINTAIN as they become habits.

RELEVANT

Why is this resolution important? What impact will reaching this resolution have on your life? When you are brainstorming of your resolutions and what you want to achieve in the new year, make a resolution that is meaningful to you. Otherwise, you’ll be less motivated to try to attain them if it’s not something you particularly care about. Will losing weight make YOU happy or somebody else happy? Will saving more money impact your life that is meaningful to you? Don’t take this step lightly. This is probably the hardest part of making SMART resolutions, but it’s truly the reason you’re doing this!

TIMELY

How long will it take you to reach your resolution? Yes, you’re making your resolution for the new year, but it doesn’t mean you only have a year to achieve it. And vice versa, you don’t need a full year either! However, you do want to have a timeframe that is within the near future or you may lose sight of the end goal or even get overwhelmed. For example, let’s say you’re saving up to go on a family vacation in about two years. Instead of saying, “I’m going to save up $5,000 for the family vacation of a lifetime”, you can break it into smaller steps and say “I’m going to save up $200 per month to put towards our family vacation”. $200 seems more manageable and less overwhelming than $5,000, am I right?

And there are your steps for making (and keeping) SMART resolutions! Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. To help guide you when you make your SMART resolutions, check out the free workout with the prompts for each section. Once you have your final SMART resolutions, write them in the free printable that is pretty enough to frame! Feel free to share some of your 2019 resolutions and can’t wait to see what you accomplish!

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Raise your hand if you struggle with what to cook for dinner on a nightly basis. ????‍ Or you stand in front of the fridge with the door open when you get home from work, trying to make sense of what you have left and what you can make out of the hodge podge.

In the past, that has been me plenty of times! I hated the last minute planning, the frozen “back-up” pizzas, the runs to the store for “just 1 ingredient that I didn’t have”. I mean, I have pinned tons of recipes, so why do I never actually cook them?!

Enter in my favorite FREE meal planning app: Copy Me That!

Take all of those recipes that you find online or on Pinterest and keep them in one online recipe box with the click of one button! Then, you can add meals to your weekly meal planner and your grocery shopping list. That way, you know what to get when out shopping and what you’re having for dinner each day. No more last minute planning! Read on to see how this fabulous app works! 

Making an Account and Adding the Copy Me That Button

Sign up for a free account here.
Then, add the magical button for easy recipe clipping:

• For Chrome, add the extension button here.
• For other browsers or devices, follow directions here.

Copy Me That has an Android app and an iOS app, so you’ll never be without your recipes.

Saving Recipes

While you are browsing the interwebs and you come across a delicious recipe you want to try, go ahead and push that “Copy Me That Button”! The app will then copy the recipe to your personal recipe box. Note: the button has to copy a recipe from an actual recipe, not Pinterest. Try this out with our favorite garlic parmesan kale pasta!

Every time I’m on Pinterest (which is more than I’m willing to admit), I save lots of recipes to Copy Me That so I always have new recipes in rotation.

Organizing and Editing Your Recipes

Once you copy a recipe, you have the ability to edit the title, picture, servings, ingredients, and instructions to fit your needs. You can then organize your recipes by adding tags so it is easy to find based on your cravings or what you have in your pantry! Examples of tags can include what the recipe is for (dinner, side dish, etc.), how it’s cooked (grill, slow cooker, instantpot, etc.), or what the main ingredient is (chicken, fish, beef, etc.). You can add as many tags to each recipe as you see fit.

Meal Plan and Shopping List

About once a week, I will sit down and review all of my recipes in Copy Me That, especially any new ones I recently saved and want to try out. I will then add those recipes to my meal plan, even scheduling which days we’ll eat each recipe.

I can then add the recipe ingredients to my shopping list. When we’re about to grocery shop for that week, I’ll pull up my shopping list on the app and check the fridge and pantry to check off items we already have. I can then add my own items that aren’t a part of recipes but we need to restock on, such as milk and eggs. And off we go to the store! To get exactly what we need for our meals for the entire week! Good-bye last minute runs to the store!

Rate your meals

Another nice feature of Copy Me That is the ability to rate the recipes. Now, tell your family that they’re not rating your cooking ability, but the actual recipe itself. Was it easy to prepare and cook? Something you want add to your normal meal rotation? This way, it will be easy for your to sort out the better recipes from the not-so-good ones.

Copy Me That Community

Finally, there is a community with Copy Me That users where everyone shares recipes. You can find some great recipes from the community to add to your own personal recipe box.

Overall, Copy Me That is a great FREE app/website that has transformed our family’s meal planning and grocery shopping to make it so much easier. My husband also likes to get involved and picks out some of the meals we eat. How does your family meal plan? I would love to hear from you!

When you hear the word “budget”, do you cringe? I know I used to! It’s a bad word, full of responsibilities and adulting, am I right?! But in this day and age, budgeting is a very important aspect of your life as it can dictate everything that you do: what car you drive, where you take your vacations, even what you eat on a daily basis, etc.

After I graduated pharmacy school, I had my first “real” job and realized, “Oh man, there’s this money coming in. I have to make sure I’m allocating a certain amount to my living expenses, bills, school loans, and maybe a little bit to savings.” However, I had no idea if I was allocating enough to each thing. Is $500 a month a lot for groceries? Is $100 enough for gas? Having a category for each small thing was very confusing and frustrating. How can you possibly keep track of all that?

Enter in the 50/20/30 rule for budgeting. I stumbled upon this rule while on a Pinterest search and it has forever changed how I look at budgeting. Since then, I actually get excited about budgeting! I’m a nerd, I know. But now I know if I’m spending too much in one area and not enough in another. My financial goals are being met, we bought a house AND I paid off my $60k school loans in six years! Read on to see how the 50/20/30 rule works and how you can start applying it today with a free worksheet!  

Fixed Costs – 50%

Half of your take-home pay (gross pay after income-based taxes, such as Federal/State tax) should be allocated to bills that do not vary from month to month. This includes rent/mortgage, car payment, and utilities. You can also include subscriptions such as gym memberships or Netflix since you are committed to paying the fee each month.

Financial Goals – 20%

After your essentials are taken care of (I mean, Netflix is essential, right? lol), you will now dedicate 20% of your take-home pay to your financial goals.  This includes paying down credit card debt, building an emergency fund, or saving for retirement. You may have other financial goals, including a down payment for a house or repaying student loans. An important aspect of this budgeting rule is that you “pay yourself first” before having fun with the leftover money.

Flexible Spending – 30%

So you’ve taken care of your essentials and working on your financial goals. Finally, the last 30% of your take-home can now be dedicated to your flexible spending. This includes day-to-day expenses that may vary from month to month, such as groceries, gas, shopping, entertainment, eating out, etc. You do not need to have a specific budget for each of these expenses, but be aware of your spending and do not go over your flex spending budget. For example, you may eat out more one month and not as much the next month, but you can be flexible in the other areas of spending to ensure that you are not going over 30%.

And that’s it! A very simple and easy budgeting rule. Hopefully, you didn’t just cringe at the word “budget”. Are you ready to put this rule into action? Download this free worksheet, plug in your budget items and numbers and you’ll be set! How do you budget now? I would love to hear other ideas. If you try this rule, let me know how it works for you! Happy budgeting!

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