The current owners have a great looking microfiber sectional. It’s big but clean lined and it fits well in the space. My original inkling was to go the sectional route in this room. I love the idea of a sectional for cuddling as family to read books. I can see the boys lounging to watch golf or football on a sectional – I love the idea of a sectional.

 The Pottery Barn Comfort Square sectional I’d buy in a heartbeat if the reviews and “used” pictures I’d seen weren’t scary.

But in reality? Does a sectional make the most sense. Does anyone ever sit in the corner seat? Last summer I read in BHG a quote from a homeowner about how she chooses two matching sofas over a sectional because it gives you the look of a sectional but allows you to rearrange furniture and gives room for an end table for people to put drinks down. I liked that line of thinking.

Via Emily McKevitt on Pinterest

So what say you? Are you a sectional or sofa person? Pros and cons to either? I’d also love to hear any sectional or sofa recommendations.

Between moving and registry shopping, I’ve been reflecting on our very favorite and most used wedding gifts – some we registered for, others were pleasant surprises. Here are our top 6 most used kitchen items (with the exception of our daily dinnerware and water glasses – you need dishes that you’ll use everyday).

And when Thomas could stand, I tried changing his diaper standing up. Hahahahaha. Hilarious. I would try on and off, but it was ridiculous. And there were plenty of times I wish I had the standing up diaper skill mastered – like in public bathrooms while I’m lysoling an entire gross baby changing station just to change a wet diaper.

When I was offered the chance to try Huggies SlipOns for Nell, I jumped at the opportunity. Nell’s one month away from her first birthday and becoming more active by the day. She doesn’t sit still for a diaper change, and when we move in a couple weeks, we can guarantee we won’t be hanging a mirror over little Miss Grabby Hands’s changing table.

So we received the diapers last week and scheduled Nell’s “first fitting” for Saturday. The diapers went on easily and fit her well. Nell’s on the very small end of the weight range for the size 3s we tried, and they still covered and protected her great. She looks like a big kid in these diapers – it was a little bit bittersweet.

I really like the concept behind the Huggies SlipOns and I love them in practice, too. We’ve used other pull-on diapers in potty training Thomas and I always returned to diapers because they just seemed to cumbersome. That was not the case at all with the Huggies SlipOns, which are much more diaper like. The best aspect of them is that you can put them on standing up (buh-bye gross public changing tables), but they have tabs for easy removal, and I was even able to refasten them when I checked Nell’s diaper and she wasn’t in need of a change. In fact, these are my new go-to diapers for having in the car and in my purse for diaper changes away from home. So quick, so easy, and cute!

Nell’s still officially a baby for a few more weeks and I’m savoring these moments, but I’m beginning to accept that our little girl is turning into a toddler. I wonder if toddler Nell will sleep more than baby Nell? There’s got to be a plus to my baby getting bigger, right?

For coupons and to learn more about your baby’s first fitting, visit the Huggies Fitting Roomhttp://www.huggies.com/en-us/products/diapers/littlemoversslipons

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Huggies. The opinions and text are all mine.

I knew that based on our home’s square footage, we needed to appeal to the type of people we were when we bought the house – young professionals with no kids – or someone with one or two older kids. Which meant that the Fisher Price garage, the Learning Home and all the “We have babies and toddlers!” gear needed to be put away. When we found out we were under contract on our future house, we had a fast 24 hours to get our house looking a little bit less like two kids dictate the decor at our house.

The playroom transitioned back into an office, just like it was when we first moved in. All the toys (train table, art table and other play things) went to storage:

All the toys and books in the main living area got relocated to a small designated play space in our basement, or neatly put away in the kids’ rooms.

The golden rule of staging is to depersonalize your home so that people can picture themselves living there. I kind of bah-humbuged this rule for a long time, and then I realized it’s really a safety concern. Not like my kids’ pictures aren’t all over the internet, but complete strangers were going to be coming into our home. I took down our gallery wall and relocated the beach prints to over the console table. We relocated our family photo albums and jewelry to various secure locations for this whole period of time, and we left very little identifying information visible in our home.

In the kitchen, we took just about everything off the counters, and scrubbed things until they shined. I washed all of the hardwood floors throughout the entire house with vinegar and water.

Upstairs, I moved all of our winter clothes out of the closets, and left only our bed and bedside tables and dresser in the master bedroom.

Our Master Bathroom was always the one room that never saw a paint brush or any decor. And so I just did a thorough cleaning in here.

The kids’ rooms and guest bath just got thoroughly cleaned and things were straightened up and put away.

In the garage, we took most things to storage. No one needs to see our stroller collection. I purchased a power washer to clean up the garage floor and back patio. We set the basement up into zones – a TV zone, a workout zone and a small kids play zone (knowing that regardless of the fact that we were selling our house, we couldn’t move all of the toys out).

I loved this process. It’s really helped me realize what’s important. A million decorative vignettes? Nope, just clutter. The train table and kids art table? Essential to our daily sanity and I cannot wait to have them back in the center of our home, in all of their cluttered glory, in our new house. This process opened my eyes to what’s important. I see SO MANY pins on Pinterest about how to fake a clean home for your blog. And shouldn’t we really be embracing the life that happens and telling people it’s okay to not live in a catalog. I’ve loved living in our catalog these last three weeks – it’s beautiful – but I cannot wait to have our “we are a family, this is our life” reality back in June.

Another thing I realized in this process? Because we were casually looking for a new house before listing and found it, we had to turn around to get our house in showing condition quickly. I was hosting a monthly college friends’ night at our house the night we went on the market. And my girlfriends showed up ready to clean, took Nell, who’s in an only mom or dad will do stage, to the grocery store to buy frozen pizzas for dinner, and were absolutely amazing helping us get our house ready. I knew what a wonderful group of friends I had, but this drove it home even more.

And most importantly to the listing our house for selling success process, once everything was cleaned up and all the clutter put away, we got out of the house. Casco moved in with my mom and dad for the weekend. My brother was in town with his girls the weekend we listed, so we spent a lot of time at my mom and dad’s visiting with them. If he hadn’t been in town, we probably would have headed to my aunt’s place in the mountains for the weekend. B’s mom extended an open invitation for any portion of our family to invade her home at any time. We left our house on Saturday morning, were negotiating an offer that afternoon, and still had showings lined up for back-ups through the weekend.

So that was our “staging” or cleaning up to sell process. With neutral basics it wasn’t a tough process, just took a little time and the ability to be ruthless with what should stay and what should go.

Mr. B and I have done what we consider to be a decent amount of travel since becoming parents. Between our trips to Florida and DC to visit family, our big road trip last Fall, and a trip to Oregon, we’re far from jet-setters, but we love to travel and hope to expose our kids to fun places around our state, country, and maybe someday world. I can honestly say that B and I love traveling with our kids – rather than dreading the flights, activities, and entertaining our kids, we look at it as a challenge to see the places we visit through the wondrous eyes of a child.

I shared some of my tips for tech-free toddler travel in January if you’re interested in how we entertain the kiddos on flights and road trips without an iPad or DVD player. But getting to your destination is only a small part of traveling with kids. Once we get to our vacation spot, there are things we think about to make traveling with our kids something we look forward to and love rather than a headache and chore.

Whenever B and I pick a destination for our family vacations, we immediately look into a couple things. The first thing on our agenda is to find kid friendly places to stay. B and I are of the opinion that we need to expose our kids to grown-up and nicer situations if we expect them to learn how to behave in grown-up and nicer situations. We take them out to dinner at restaurants that aren’t your typical family-geared chain, etc. But when it comes to where we’re going to stay on vacation, we know that things will be less stressful if the place comes with a seal of kid friendly approval. Whether that means places that cater to kids or just hotels or condos that allow kids (and serve breakfast – breakfast at the place we’re staying is mandatory with our crew) doesn’t matter as much, as long as we know that we’ll be welcomed and not shunned with our two children under the age of 3.

When we travel to Florida to visit B’s grandparents, we always opt to spend a little bit extra for a suite instead of a standard hotel room so that we can put the kids down for naps and to bed in the bedroom and stay up to watch TV, read, and talk. When we don’t have the option of a suite, we tend to keep the kids out a little bit later so that we can see lots at our destination and all go to bed together – the key, we’ve found, is flexibility.

 The second thing we look for when planning a family vacation is kid-friendly activities. A quick search usually will yield a list of activities for kids of all ages so that you can plan out the places you want to see before you travel. Again, flexibility is key when kids are involved, and so B and I have our list of possible things to do and we do what seems feasible as the days come. In general, we know that we need to do something active at least once a day – generally before naps – so that the kids have fun. Then we sometimes squeeze in something more geared at B and me – like touring the monuments in Washington, D.C. But in general, we just try to frame everything we do in a way that Thomas (and soon Nell) can understand and appreciate, and honestly? B and I end up having so much fun, too.

When Mr. B was in high school, his extended family took a Caribbean cruise on Norwegian Cruise Line and it was one of B’s standout vacations. He loved the flexibility to run around with his cousins while his parents, aunt, uncle and grandparents did their own thing. He still talks about the excursions they went on, and the places that he got little tastes of that he wants to take our own family back to someday. As our kids get a bit older, cruises will be a great option for the type of vacations we love – laid back family fun, the ability to see different parts of the world, and water.

Norwegian gives families their best vacation ever with Freestyle Cruising and Nickelodeon entertainment. Norwegian offers a youth program that is active and filled with lots of optional activities for kids of all age groups. The youth program features counselors, sports activities and lots of fun with other kids on an overall family-friendly ship with pools, slides and family entertainment.  For more information about Norwegian’s family vacation experience, click here.

Norwegian and BlogHer are giving away a cruise voucher for a family of four to one lucky winner. To be entered in the sweepstakes, you must leave a comment on this post or another participating blogger’s post. One winner will be chosen from all the blogs participating in this promotion. To enter the sweepstakes, tell me in the comments below, “What is your dream vacation for your family”? Good luck!

No duplicate comments. You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

1. Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post
2. Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post
3. Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post
4. For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

Entries from all participating blogs will be pooled for winner selection; only two entries per household. This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older. Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here. This sweepstakes runs from 5/7/2013-6/2/2013.

Be sure to visit Norwegian Cruise Line’s brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ posts!

So that’s a sneak peek at the house we’re under contract on. Fingers crossed all continues to go smoothly!

Hair has never been my thing. For me it’s either straight down or up, which can be a bit of a problem for formal events. Of the five weddings we have this summer, I’m in one of them, so thankfully an expert will handle my hair for that one. But for the other four, I’ll be on my own. But this tutorial from Oil of Olay for a loose, curled bun is something I can totally handle – it gets hair off your face in the hot summer months and for dancing, and looks elegant. I’ll have to try it, but I think it might just be my go-to hairstyle for weddings this summer.

What’s your go-to hairstyle for events and weddings? Watch this clip and answer the question that folllows it to be entered into a the Oil of Olay Sweepstakes for a chance to win up to $250.

Sweeps rules:
http://www.blogher.com/hair-sweepstakes-offical-rules-week-6
Prizes & Promotions page on Blogher.com:
https://www.blogher.com/blogher-tv-weekly-hair-style-sweepstakes

• Two weeks ago, I decided Thomas needed to be potty trained. He knew what he was doing, he was just refusing to use the toilet. Thomas is generally reserved about new things. He likes things the way they are and when he decides he’s doing something his way, that’s the way he wants to do it. Don’t know where he got that from, I am the epitome of easy going.  I think this will be good for us when he’s 16. It could also be really bad for us when he’s 16. But let’s focus on him being 2 years and 9 months for today. He was refusing to use the toilet. He was going to wear diapers until he was 5. Or 100. Or 16. And two weeks ago, I just decided that was the end. I bought him a race track for his cars as a present that he would get when he decided to pee on the toilet. Just one big present, knowing that using the toilet for the first time was going to be the hurdle. And it was a hurdle. I was pumping him full of liquids until he had absolutely no choice but to pee, I had to hold him onto the toilet, he peed, jumped up, was so proud of himself and that was that. He was potty trained. Seriously. Not a single accident. It was a 30 minute battle, followed by two days of peeing around the clock in his choice of toilets because it was new and exciting. It was an exhausting few days despite how successful it was. I would tell you I hadn’t spent that much time on the bathroom floor since college but that would be a lie. I was pretty tame in college.

• About a week before the potty training happened, B and I decided we were serious about moving in the next six months. Denver’s real estate market is kind of crazy right now. We figured we could sell quickly and for a good price, and might have to buy a little higher than say a year ago too, but that’s the way it goes. We contacted our awesome real estate agent, told her we were casually looking, loved our house and would only move if something great for us came along, we didn’t want to move for the sake of moving. We discussed the possibility of submitting an offer before listing ours because of that scenario, so B and I got pre-approved for potentially carrying two loans, though we hoped and didn’t expect that to be necessary. We casually looked at a few houses and discounted them for not being “great for our needs”. And then our real estate agent called me Tuesday night and said, “Em, there’s a house you need to see. It’s looks like it’s similar to the floor plan you loved on the other house but the backyard is even better. It just came on and isn’t having showings until tomorrow, but I want you to see it first thing in the morning, I’ll set it up”. We went, it was great – good space, great bones, great yard – we knew if we even wanted a shot at it we had to make an offer right away, so we did. And Thursday night we were informed that our offer was accepted. We were in shock based on how things are going around here – we made a solid offer, but knew there were other offers and lots of interest – but psyched. And scared because we had a house…that we love but have outgrown…to sell.

• We listed our house Saturday morning with our real estate agent, and as of Sunday morning we were under contract on our beloved home. Inspections on both houses are this week, so if all goes well, we should be in our new house in June. We have heavy hearts to be leaving behind the amazing neighbors we have, but are excited about a house our family can really grow and live in for years to come. And the knowledge that our friends here in our neighborhood will be our friends no matter where we live, and especially since we’re only moving about five minutes away.

So that’s our update. It’s crazy, and I’ll share more pictures and details as things get moving. But for now, I thought I owed you all an update!

The final week of my challenge I decided to focus on the main floor of our house. My mom and I cleaned, reorganized and purged unnecessary items in both of our kitchens last Fall in preparation for Christmas – we gave each other replacement items we needed like new cookie sheets, etc and the first step was cleaning and organizing so we knew what we needed. So our kitchen was in good shape. And the rest of our house, with the exception of the office/playroom, remains pretty clean most days.

Well, Mr. B and I disagree about that. To me, clean is a vacuumed floor, dustless surfaces, and cobweb free corners. To Mr. B clean is tidy. It’s taken me 6 years of living with Mr. B to realize that instead of being offended when he comes home and “cleans” when I feel like the house is clean, I just need to accept that he and I define “clean” differently. Now, Thomas and I do a “10 minute tidy up” before he and Nell go down for their naps to get the toys off the floor so that Mr. B can walk into a house that’s tidy and not stressful to him. I do my cleaning – scrubbing the counters, swiffering and vacuuming the floors, before we go to bed at night. And we’re both happy.

So all of this is to say, the house is clean, but nothing really eventful happened downstairs. Except, I took a page from Claire’s book and decided to clean up our computer – namely our pictures. I ordered our 2012 family book, transferred all of those pictures to our external hard drive (after two computer crashes I keep our computer permanently backed up now with Apple Time Machine, but I still transfer pictures to the external hard drive for storage purposes. And I started making our 2013 album – my goal is to work on our 2013 family book each month so that I remember the events as they happen. So here are a few pictures of that:

Our 2012 album on its way to our house:

Our 2013 Album in progress:

I switched services this year. I’ve used Blurb in the past and don’t love the quality, so this year I went with Shutterfly. I’ll let you all know how the quality compares when I get them, but price wise, for our 100 page book, Shutterfly (with a coupon code)  was the way to go.