A Room to Grow

Hello! Did you have a nice long weekend? Ours was lovely, and even lovelier is the fact that tomorrow is already Wednesday :)

We finished Charlotte's room a few days ago and now it's definitely my favorite room in the house. I had my worries about painting the walls pink, but now that it's done I think it actually looks really great against the crisp white trim and ceiling. I like it much better than the yellow (I didn't mind the color but I was just tired of it and it had started looking really dingy).

Charlotte's feelings about her room are overwhelmingly positive. Sometimes when we've been downstairs or outside for awhile she'll stop and ask to "go see my room? I love my room!". And she regularly tells me that she's "so excited about my big girl bed!". So that's adorable. And it definitely makes the aggravation of painting the ceiling worth it.

Here are some "before" shots:

And some "during", which are never pretty. We pretty much just dumped everything from her room into the extra bedroom until it was finished, making for this lovely sight:

After the painting was complete, Chad built her new bed frame in her room. We bought her a twin bed frame with built in drawers underneath, which meant we didn't need to buy a box spring--yay! And those drawers hold a lot, which is a must in a small house with precious little closet space.

Thankfully he had some "help":

After a very long day of sanding, painting, cleaning, and building, we were hungry. Charlotte was gone most of the day so it was a race against the clock to finish everything up before she came home and needed to go to sleep. This is what happens when Chad orders dinner on a very empty stomach:

Let's not discuss how much of this we actually consumed in one sitting.

Once everything was done we moved the crib back into the room, along with the bed, just in case there was drama with the new bed and she needed to sleep in the crib awhile longer. Thankfully she loves her bed, so out the crib went after less than a week. 

So now I present the finished room:

I was going to make a new quilt, but realized this one I made last fall was kind of a perfect match. It's a double sided patchwork made of flannel (the line is Marmalade by Bonnie & Camille for Moda). It is super soft and a great size for a twin bed.

I made this bunting out of some of my most favorite fabric ever--The Simple Life by Tasha Noel for Riley Blake Designs.

The only other change I want to make is to switch the curtains out to white--I'd like to find some white eyelet and make them, with maybe a shade underneath to block out more light when she's sleeping. I'm planning on repurposing the pink striped curtains and making floor pillow covers. Someday, someday...

This room just makes me happy. It's bright, colorful and cheerful--just like the little girl who sleeps here. :)

~Stacy

Planted

Last weekend we stocked up on all of our flowers for the season. We kept it simple--just a few containers and hanging baskets with a mix of low maintenance flowers in reds and whites. My little helper made sure they were well hydrated until I had time to pot everything:

Then earlier this week I set aside a few hours and got everything arranged and planted. Done! That's my kind of gardening :)

Simple is good.

~Stacy

Inspiration Boards

If you love DIY, sewing, and crafting blogs as much I do then you've probably heard of the blog I Heart Naptime.  The site is full of ideas and tutorials for everything creative, along with recipes and decor projects. Their goal is to make creativity and the DIY mentality a priority while paying close attention to costs and saving money. A couple weeks ago, the creators of I Heart Naptime came up with an amazing new site called The Inspiration Board. At first glance, you might wonder how that could be any different from another little site called Pinterest. Ah, allow me to explain.

Like Pinterest, The Inspiration Board is all about creating collections of images and ideas that fit into a similar category and can be used to get ideas or to find inspiration for something--anything: cooking, building your dream home, remodeling your kitchen, taking your dream vacation, etc. The Inspiration Board is a way to use those images you've collected from Pinterest, your own personal photo gallery, or literally anywhere else on the web and create one cohesive idea board. You can add text, frames, and other embellishments to prettify your board and then you have the ability to share it anywhere. I've been having a lot of fun using it because, for me, it brings my various ideas I've found on Pinterest together and lets me create a more complete picture of what I'm looking for.

So here's what happens when Pinterest and The Inspiration Board have a baby together:

Click on each number for image sources: #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5

This is a board I made based on ideas for Charlotte's birthday party (yeah yeah, I know it's not until June and it's only going to be a small gathering of people but still). I had pinned a bunch of ideas to a board with pictures I liked and ideas I thought were cute but they weren't all centered around the same theme. I had ideas for the milk & cookies party, a vintage-y fair/carnival theme, and another set of pins focused on a girly looking farm theme (I say girly looking because if I just looked for "farm themed party" I got mostly pictures of John Deere tractors and other farm equipment. Um, no).

Here's the board I came up with for the county fair/carnival theme:

Click each number for image sources: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, and #7

After doing the first two boards, I realized I'd included a lot of the pins that were related to the farm idea (there weren't many), so I didn't make a separate board for that one.

So I think I'll come up with a way to use the milk & cookies with the carnival idea. I love the colors in the carnival board--all the reds, aquas, and yellows. The colors in the first board are pretty, but a little too pastel/pink overload for my liking...my favorite idea from that board is the glass bottles of different milk flavors. I'd like to find mini Mason jars (or something similar) and serve those, since most people probably don't want a large glass of milk on a summer day (except Charlotte).

Thoughts?

~Stacy

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

Thanksgiving weekend is when we usually decorate for Christmas. Chad has some time off, the weather has been decent, and I love having the house all lit up and Christmas-y. It started lightly snowing last night and is still doing it this morning. I'm hoping for a white Christmas this year, then the snow can make an early exit until next December :) Here's peek at what we worked on yesterday:

And thanks to the wonderful thing that is the Internet, my Christmas shopping is done. I can now turn my focus to finishing the handmade gifts that are not really at all close to being finished.

On an unrelated note, today is my mom's birthday. Happy Birthday, Mom!!!

~Stacy

Thanksgiving Table Decor

Thanksgiving is two weeks away! I mentioned in my last post that Chad and I are hosting this year, which I'm excited about. I've been working on my grocery list and thinking of ways to dress up my table. Normally our table is dressed up with fingerprints, crumbs, random pieces of mail and at least two or three sewing projects. Aside from cleaning it up, clearing it off, and polishing it to a beautiful shine I'm not sure what to do.

I like simple designs and preferably ones that use natural elements or things I already have. And a tablecloth is preferable, but not a must. Ideas for holiday table arrangements can be found everywhere, but the hard part is finding a design that A) I like and B) is doable (read: very inexpensive or free) and C) isn't atrocious. Some are waaaay overboard for my taste, with dozens of candles, vases, flowers, gourds and other stuff that looks cluttered and leaves hardly any space for food or elbows. And some go a bit overboard in the creativity department--for example: I saw an idea for a Christmas table that used an old wooden toboggan as a large buffet. Cute idea for say, a magazine photo spread, but not necessarily a practical choice for the average hostess.

Here are a few ideas I've found that might work:

Click for image source

I love this one, but I'd have to get my hands on some sort of wooden box structure that is rustic looking and not too big. Definitely a contender:

Image source

I'm ignoring the super ornate background decor in this photo and just focusing on the centerpiece. I have vases and I have a toddler who will happily collect sticks for me. This could be the winner :)

Image source

This one looks more wintery than the others, but I really like the cream colored candles and pinecones:

Image source

Simple and cute, but would require buying flowers:

Image source

This one is very pretty and wouldn't take up much space--bonus!

Image source and also here

I'm still not sure what I'll end up doing, but it'll likely be a combination of some of these ideas. And let's face it, all anyone really cares about is the food and the pie. Pie is non-negotiable. Specifically, pumpkin pie.

Image source

Mmmm.

~Stacy

Oh My.

I've been absent for several days, and in a minute you'll see photo evidence as to why.  What started out as an innocent "let's paint the living room" project has morphed into a full fledged living room re-do that has left my house looking like it was picked up, violently shaken, and dropped back down.  I am currently living in a half-painted and entirely messy disaster area.

Let's back up.

This all initially started here, where we decided to paint the dark wood trim in the dining room a nice, crisp white.  We didn't want to commit to doing the rest of the trim in the living room and upstairs hallway until we were sure we really liked it.  It's a big change, and frankly, it's a crappy job.  Well, we ended up loving the look of the white trim so we decided to move forward with finishing the rest of it.  Since we knew we'd be moving everything out of the living room to paint the trim anyway, we figured why not just repaint the walls since it's been way too long.  Makes sense, right?  K.

We've also wanted to install built-in bookshelves in the dining room pretty much since we moved in.  We finally had someone out to give an estimate and decided to go for it.  These will be installed within the next several weeks, so we thought we ought to hurry up and paint the living room since we didn't want two rooms out of commission at once.  We're also going to do all the priming and painting of the bookshelves ourselves, so yet another reason to get one painting project out of the way.

While I was testing paint colors for the living room, I was reminded of how our couches have seen better days.  Much better days.  We've had them over 8 years, they were pretty cheap to begin with, and they're a blue/green color that has not aged well.  I bought slipcovers last year, but I really didn't like the look of them.  They were ill-fitting and just ended up looking like...slipcovers.  So then we decided we should take the plunge and get some new couches.  Ok, so now we're at new paint, built-ins, and new furniture.

As we were getting the room ready to paint, we decided that a new furniture arrangement would be nice.  We'd been stuck with pretty much the same one mostly because of our TV.  The TV isn't a terribly large screen (I think 27"?) but the entire unit was approximately the size of our refrigerator.  I think it was at least 3 feet deep and weighed at least 185 pounds.  We had it on a TV stand/entertainment center thing that I've never liked but it worked and served the purpose we needed.  Chad's been heavily hinting for years that maybe we should look into a new TV, maybe one that doesn't require a crane to lift or a huge contraption to store it on.  It just so happened that he had researched exactly which TV we should get if we should ever decide...and, coincidentally, Costco had said TV on sale.  Two hours later it was in Chad's trunk on its way home.

So, without initially planning on it, we've completely rearranged and gotten rid of half our living room furniture, ordered new couches, and gotten fully immersed in repainting.  Oh, and since we had to take the picture frames off the walls anyway, I decided to update all the pictures and spray paint some of them to coordinate with our new colors better.  Because what's one more project, right?

We're chugging along, getting as much done as we can during naps and in the evenings after Charlotte goes to bed.  In the meantime, it looks like my living room threw up all over my dining room and kitchen.

It's not pretty, but here you have it:

Don't worry, I didn't decide on a leopard print design for the trim.  It's wood filler, waiting to be sanded and painted.

My poor sewing table.

Charlotte "helping"

I like order.  This is definitely not orderly.  It is chaos.  I'm finally getting to the point where I can see progress and things are taking shape, but I'm very much looking forward to getting this done and our house put back together.  You know, so it can get all messed up again in a few weeks when the built-ins are installed.  :)

I can't wait to have the finished "After" pictures.

~Stacy

Painting: Done

We somehow managed to finish all the painting and other assorted projects on our list in one day.  Even though painting the trim required 4 coats of paint, it was surprisingly not as bad to do as I was prepared (given that I hate painting.  Seriously.  I'd rather mow grass for an entire day, tackle an ironing pile as tall as the ceiling, or trim Howard's nails).  This was great news for two reasons:  we were able to finish the project ahead of schedule without much frustration and now I'm confident that we can handle painting the trim in the living room ourselves instead of paying someone else to do it.

We started by filling some small holes with wood filler, then lightly sanded everything to make sure the paint & primer went on smoothly.  It wasn't until he was done sanding that Chad realized we had a pack of 50 face masks in the basement.  I won't repeat what was said when he found this out after inhaling dust for an hour.  Not recommended and definitely something we will make sure to have covered in future projects.

Here's our lovely "after" pictures (I did not take any "during" photos because the dining room looked like we'd been ransacked and I didn't want any records of it in such a state):

So glad it's done, and very happy with the results! 

While we were working, Howard did his best to help by staying out of the way.  Apparently watching people paint is tiring business:

Our house smells delicious.  Chad went to Trader Joe's on Saturday morning and came home with a bundle of hyacinths:

I have them in the dining room and you can smell them all the way upstairs.

The best part of the weekend?  Getting this back:

Howard was pretty happy to see her too, though it may be because he could play with her toys again...

I hope your weekend was great!

~Stacy