Baby Girl's Argyle Nursery

Continuing with the room decorating....

I think I'm about done with the nursery. Like everything else, it's been a work in progress. This weekend we bought replacement hardware for the crib hardware that we lost. So from a functional standpoint, the nursery is now ready to go! And tonight my butterflies arrived. Mike rolled his eyes. I however was super excited and hung them immediately :)

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I do have a couple details to clean up still. Like finding some art for the picture frames on the ledge. Not a big rush though. The pictures of Baby M are still cute :)



I didn't really have any plans going into this project. All I knew was that I wanted to keep the original argyle pattern but change out the colors.

Here's a little before and after:

 

I also decided to get rid of the accent wall:

From there I found the hot air balloon idea on Pinterest (of course). Then saw the world map print on Etsy and thought it was a good match. You know... hot air balloons... travel... maps...

So that's that.
I have at least one fan...

A New Room for the Big Boy

I finally finished the car painting!! But I haven't taken pictures yet so instead I'll share pictures of M's big boy room.

It feels like I just finished decorating the nursery for him. It's hard to believe it has been more than two years! And now we have moved our little guy into a big boy room. <tears>

With the impending arrival of baby #2 we decided to move M out of the nursery and into the former guest room. And luckily we had already painted the guest room a blue color, so the move didn't involve much painting :) (I'm patting myself on the back for that one.) I did end up painting a white border along the ceiling of the room. The room doesn't get much sun during the day so I thought this would lighten things up a bit.

 

As you can see I've already hung the car painting. It's actually not quite complete in these pictures but I was using it as a place holder.

 

It seems like this transition took a couple months. Between moving out the guest room furniture, painting, acquiring a bed, and adding some accessories it took me awhile. I'm moving slowly these days...

 

The dresser was recycled from me. It's actually a piece that I bought second hand about two years ago. We decided that rather than buying the kid new furniture we would finally buy ourselves some adult bedroom furniture :) Actually a lot of things in this room are recycled. The dresser. The bed we got from M's cousin. The orange side tables are recycled and painted Ikea tables. And the little desk and rocking chair came from M's grandparents. Pretty much the only thing we moved out of the nursery was the rug.

And what's a room without a tribute to our favorite dog breed? 

I bought the print from Etsy and had it printed. The only thing missing is a blue eye ;)

Up next is the new nursery. Then I can take a break from redecorating!

Gallery Wall

House projects continue to consume our time. I'm sure it will be that way for awhile! Over the holidays we finished painting/hardwood flooring the bedrooms and also squeezed in painting the hallway. There wasn't much time to enjoy the fruits of our labor before moving on to the next project: The Wall.

We've been itching to tear down that wall ever since we first saw the house. It separates the front living room area, which gets glorious sunlight, and the family room/kitchen area where we spend most of the time. The wall just isn't necessary since we aren't the type of people to have a formal living room. So that continues to be a work in progress. Although the wall is down now we still need to clean up the edges.

Among the chaos I thought I'd find solace in finishing a room... the hallway. If you can count that as a room. The hallway starts at the front door, takes you through the house, and drops you off at the bedrooms. Just painting the dingy walls and getting rid of the gold fixtures made me extremely happy.

Now up near the front door the hall opens up into..... a large standing area? The space is really unnecessarily large. I guess it's nice for welcoming guests. Sure, we'll go with that.

I knew I wanted to do a gallery wall someplace in the house. They're all the rage right now. You'll just have to trust me on that. In our old house we used the wall along the staircase for this. Since we no longer have a staircase I had to find another spot. Enter unnecessarily large space in the hallway.

I credit this next idea to someone else... probably something I saw on Pinterest. Instead of just hanging pictures randomly I cut out pieces of paper to plan out where I'd hang my frames. I thought this would be terribly tedious but it actually wasn't so bad.

My Christmas poinsettias are still going strong!

The tedious part was hanging up the frames. Why do 4x6 frames need TWO wall anchors? It just adds an extra step of hanging to use a level. So annoying.

I'm not sure how much time this actually took me, but I gave myself a Sunday to casually work on it. So there we are. A lot of the pictures are kind of random- most of them seem to fall in the category of art or pictures from our trips together. For example that picture in the middle left. Yes, the promiscuous one. That was a piece of art we picked up in Portland. It was done by a local artist and if you look closely the drawing is made up entirely of small numbers. It's pretty neat.

Zoom out a bit and here's our new entry area.We tried to make it functional. Now when people visit they have a place to hang their coats.

Speaking of that coat rack. I'm pretty into it. I picked it up on Amazon. When not in use it hangs as an inconspicuous wall sculpture/art. The hooks flip down to hold coats as needed. So clever.

Keys, Keys, and More Keys

It's a fun day when you get to go to Lowe's and buy a new door lock. Then ask the key guy to make you eight new keys. He then makes a comment about how you must have a big family.

After a solid five minutes of key making you feel bad and scale back your order. You also realize your new lock already comes with two keys! It's like you won the lottery.

Did I mention we moved? 

Naturally new houses call for new door locks. Among the chaos of packing, keeping the house super tidy, etc. I forced a crafty project on myself. Why buy those generic key covers when you can spray paint? Enter Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint.

At the time the color choice seemed like a good idea. Afterall, they would match the metal of the new door hardware.

Of course hindsight is always 20/20 and I probably could have gone with a bolder color. These are sleek though. Classy and sleek.

As for our old keys, I decided to make a keepsake out of one of them... because I'm attached and emotional like that. I had seen this idea awhile back on Pinterest. (Here is the link to the actual blog.)

Sure, a map could have been cute too.

And here is my little creation.



That purple image/sketch-looking thing in the background is our house. I played around with a photo in Photoshop then applied my favorite filter: Poster Edges. It was meant to blend in to the background a bit. But also be... well... relevant.

I should also clarify that this is clearly the husband's key as I am not a die-hard Ravens fan. Shame, I know.

My Everything Room

My humble little everything room. When we first moved in we called this the fun house room because most of the walls were not straight. They were bowed. Or slanted. But definitely not straight. But that issue was remedied by Mr. Colorful Engineer. He's so handy.

Now there are a lot of possibilities in this little basement space. If nothing else it keeps all my arts and crafts junk from being scattered around the house!

I've got a good corner set up for painting.

I've got my computer corner for those digital projects. Also good for killing time on Facebook. There's a sewing nook for those random sewing projects. (Meatball's vampire costume reins as my greatest sewing success to date.) And then there's room for everything in between.

Temporarily my Everything Room has been packed up. I know. It's really a sad state of affairs. Every time I feel like whipping out a paint brush my plans are quickly derailed.

It's okay though. My room is only being relocated. And soon I will be back in business! 

My paintbrushes await me. 

Garden 2012

In addition to it being Easter weekend, this was the weekend we decided to start our garden and do our yearly landscaping. Once a year our front yard looks awesome. Then, slowly, we forget to water things, weeds start sprouting, and we give up.

But once a year our yard looks like this: fresh flowers! It's a little hard to see, but those are fresh flowers and mulch under the tree.

Now for a street view.

Every year we seem to try out a new annual. This year we planted a bunch of marigolds. I mean they are every. Where.



And I'm well aware that they smell terrible, but I don't care. I hear that they repel mosquitoes, which is really what I was after. I had pinned this handy article on Pinterest and they were the only plants on the list I could easily find at Lowe's. So we'll see what happens.

As for our garden, our major accomplishment this weekend was weeding it. It was completely overtaken by weeds. Anyone else have those weeds that seem to shoot seeds when you touch then? After weeding, we mixed in some manure and hummus (which seemed to work awesome last year) and planted some spring onions, spinach, and lettuce. No pictures, unfortunately, since, the garden is still a heap of dirt.

We'll save the tomatoes and peppers for when it gets a tad warmer. We have the seedlings going in our kitchen and Mike has been diligently tending to them.

Instead of planting herbs in the garden again, we decided to change it up and use pots on the deck this year. Last year the herbs got so devoured by the tomato plants that the basil was the only one that really took off. So hopefully we have better luck with pots. Plus, by being on the deck they are easier to access. You know, instead of taking that grueling walk down the deck stairs!



And last but not least, our new tenant. This guy has been building a nest under the deck. He's woven a piece of balloon and ribbon into a nest, which leads me to believe he's a party animal. Plus he's got some tasteful decor.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Christmas is exactly a week away. Less than a week if you consider that Mike and I do our own Christmas on the night of the 23rd.

House decorating is done. Most of our Christmas shopping is done. We have a lot of baking to do, but that won't happen till later this week. Aaand I'm pretty pumped for the pumpkin pie and various cookie recipes that we are trying out this year. I've also been busy working on a variety of crafty project/ presents that I'll share later- after the gift-giving is done.

In the meantime, a tour through our festive home...

Starting with our front door. This year's new wreath.

Meatball resting by the tree.

 

THE tree.

The stockings.

Best nativity scene. Ever.

Home-made Christmas donuts. Recipe here.

Not our home, but the carousel at the mall.

Meatball watching Santa go by on the fire engine! (By the way, I LOVE this tradition.)

A view from outside.

Now I'm counting down the days till this weekend. And looking forward to my short week at work :)