July 16, 2010

{ window treatments: the before }

I love my mom.
Seriously.
She doesn't "get" my passion for decorating, but she totally "gets" me and since I love it, is totally supportive of me.

We were talking about all the changes I am in the process of making to our condo (does the list ever end?  Um...no :) and she mentioned that she has been wanting new curtains in her living room and kitchen for the longest time but just hasn't found the time to make them...

Enter me.

When she asked me if I could help her with some new window treatments, I think I about squealed out loud,  I was so excited.  Here is what we are starting with...

Window over the kitchen sink -- overlooks the backyard

Three bay windows looking into the side of the yard

One large window looking into the backyard

and two patio doors

I am so excited to get to work on these and have been scouring the internet looking for some sample pictures to show my mom.  I want the room to reflect their style and be comfortable.  Also, my parents have 13 (almost 14!) grandchildren, so it has to be very kid-friendly.

Any ideas for window treatment styles I should look up would be greatly appreciated!

July 15, 2010

{ fabric loooove }

I have a problem.
I love fabric stores waaay too much!

Seriously, as soon as I walked into the shop, I wanted to not only get fabric for baby boy's room, but re-do my daughter's nursery and every other room in the house.  Those places are dangerous.  Seriously.

Luckily (for my husband), I restrained myself and ONLY purchased fabric for the nursery right now.

Do you have any idea how hard it was to find "boyish" fabrics that were still cute?  I am picky too...I wanted cute, but not "cutesy".  I'm weird like that.    After weeks of searching, I found some fabrics I loooove:
Oh! Could you just die!  I am LOVING them!  They are bright and fun and just what I wanted in baby boy's room!

I wasn't originally planning on using a brown, but it seemed to work well, so I went with it.  And I love it with the other colors.  Seems to tie thm all together, don't you think?

I love the stripes on this one...I think it just screams boy but in a cute way.  Maybe that doesn't make sense, but in my head it totally does :)

And my all-time favorite!  I adore the pattern on this fabric.  So fun!  I knew I wanted squares, but I love how these are not all perfectly lined up.  Perect, perfect, perfect!

All this time, I've been planning on painting his room green, but now I'm wondering if that would be too much...any thoughts or opinions?  I know I could always go the traditional blue for his room,  but I'd like to do something a little different if I can make it work.

I feel like I can breathe so much easier now that I have the fabrics picked out and in my possession!  Anyone else feel that way when they finally get what they've been searching for?  I feel like the hard part is over, now I can just put it all together the way I see it in my mind.

Any thought on wall color?  Also, I'm planning on getting dark bamboo shades or his room.  My babies tend to wake up to light (Um, I guess it's just baby, since I only have one child right now!), and I like to sleep in, so anything that helps with that, I am all for!  Any suggestions on where to get those? The window in his room is 59"x47"...do they sell them that large?  Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

July 10, 2010

{ project: nursery }

Wow.
Obviously I am VERY new at this whole decor blogging thing, because I completely spaced posting for the last week or so.  If I were more "with it", I would have planned some posts ahead of time.  Ah well, live and learn right?
Sorry for the brief hiatus -- I am back and ready to go!

So, as some of you may know, I am a little bit pregnant.
Oh, who am I kidding -- I'm about to explode.
I am 35 1/2 weeks pregnant and baby boy (no name yet) is due to make his appearance on August 3rd.
This was me at 29 weeks:
  I have not taken a more recent pic -- if I do, I'll post it for y'all to see.
While we could not be more thrilled, I am suddenly thrown into nesting overdrive. 
See, with my Taelie girl, I made her nursery bedding, and I've been planning on making this little one's too, but between moving for the summer and having to haul stuff back and forth, I decided to just wait until I got home to worry about it.  (and I could not for the life of me, find any fabric that I just LOVED in Baltimore.  Soooo frustrating!) 
Well, I'm home now...and I only have 3 1/2 weeks to whip together some of this cuteness:
Boy, those bumpers took a lot of work -- they aren't hard at all - just time consuming.
And, knowing me, I had to make the crib skirt difficult and use multiple fabrics instead of just one.  I have issues, people...issues!
This blanket took by far the most work though...luckily I love it, but man!

I love making baby bedding, so I am actually really excited to get started on baby boy's nursery.  I have it all planned out in my head how I want it to look. 

As soon as Taelie girl wakes up, we are off to the fabric store.  I am praying this little boy waits until his induction date to get here...if so, then I have T-26 days until delivery.  That is plenty of time to make everything, right?  (just nod along with me...it will make me feel better!)

Now, if I can just find fabric I love...we'll be set!

July 9, 2010

{ in shock }

I got an award.


I know, I am stunned too!  I have had this blog only about 2 weeks and am feeling a little majorly  overwhelmed by the amount of talent out there, so I am just tickled pink that Ashley thought of little ole me.

Ashley, from No Apologies! {Hi Ashley!  Waves frantically!} (don't you just LOVE that blog name? It's awesome!) passed this award onto me, and I am sooo thankful!

Thanks, Ashley, you are a total sweetheart.  I mean it.

The guidelines for this award are:
thank the person/people who gave it to you
share 7 things about yourself.
pass the award on to 15 bloggers, whom you have recently discovered, and think are fantastic

7 things about moi:
{1} I am 25 years old, married for almost 4 years to my high school sweetheart.  We have 1 girl and 1 boy on the way.
{2} I am OBSESSED with home decor.  Love it. Crave it.  Spend WAY too much time looking up ideas for our home.
{3} My husband is a door-to-door salesman -- this is why we move every summer.  We LOVE his job, but it makes it harder to get all our projects done being gone during the best part of the year.
{4} I still LOVE the show FRIENDS.  My husband and I usually watch an episode every night before we go to bed.
{5} I think I was born to travel -- I have lived in 3 different countries and 5 different states.  All but one of those moves have been since I graduated high school.
{6} I am terrible with directions. If I don't have my trusty GPS, I will get lost.  Guaranteed.
{7} I am a total perfectionist, and I'm pretty sure I have OCD.  I like things clean, organized, and looking good.

Bloggers I Just Found Out About and Love:
(not necessarily in any order-they all rock)

I know, I know, I was supposed to do 15.  And believe me, I totally read wa-ay more blogs than that and could have listed off a bunch, but I decided to just do 5, so that hopefully others will go to their sites and check them out without being overwhelmed by a huge list.  These 5 blogs are awesome, and they should definitely be recognized!

July 1, 2010

{ sprucing up the dining room }

While I do believe that in many cases, less is more, THIS is not one of the times that holds true:
A dining room should not have a ridiculously bare wall like this, am I right? 
Yeah, that's what I thought too.

I kept changing my mind about what to do with this space.  At first I wanted a big family picture, then I decided I wanted the first initial of our last name, "A" up in vinyl in a scrolly print with a sweet saying behind it.  (I still want this somewhere...maybe the master bedroom?) Then I wanted a long line of random, fun, informal family pictures up on the wall.

Decisions, decisions!  The answer finally came to me when I found three beautiful floating shelves at our local thrift store for, get this, $1.50 TOTAL. For all three of them!  I'm pretty sure I let out an audible squeal of delight right there in the aisle.  This is where my thrift store obsession began.

They needed a little bit of TLC, but for a buck fifty, I was NOT complaining! I took them home and gave them a good scrubbing and a coat of black spray paint.  The shortest shelf needed a little repair work, and my husband fixed that right up.

Once we got them hung up, I knew I wanted some vinyl saying up there to tie it all together, and I played around with a bunch of different ideas and went to a million different vinyl websites.  Then I remembered that my husband had been given some vinyl lettering samples from one of his clients.  I thumbed through a couple of them until I found one I liked:
It wasn't along the same lines of what I'd been thinking, but when I read it, I loved the saying and knew it would work great for this space.
Now that I had the layout all put together, I was finally ready to start decorating those shelves!  I was so excited!  But I could not for the life of me find arrangements of things I liked.  I was SURE I had enough stuff lying around the house that I could figure something out, but I kept coming up with nada.  So, our beautiful dining room looked like this about a month:

What?  It's NOT a gorgeous dining room?  I know!  I was so sad.  Then one day it just hit me.  I had found a couple other awesome thrift store finds and once I had those ready to go, the rest just came to me.

Here is the finished (for now!) product:
That's our little dog, Chloe.  She is totally a member of the family.  Maybe it's weird to have a picture of our pet up, but we just love her like crazy, so it seems normal to us!
The other photo is of our daughter and niece.  They are only one week apart.  It's been so fun watching them grow up together!  Both frames were thrift store finds that were .75 cents each!  Can't beat that!
The reed diffuser I already had -- the oil was long gone, but I'd held onto the piece because it was so cute.  I am so glad I did!
The flower was one I got at Robert's Crafts forever ago, I'd been planning on making it into a clip for my daughter, but never got around to it.  It found a new home instead!  The circular vase was a buck from the thrift store and the little glass container (I have no idea what that is called!) was another long used up reed diffuser that I just took the label off of.
I love the sweetness of a single flower...so cute!
The vase was the most expensive thing up there at $15.00.  My husband and I went on a date where you paint your own pottery and this was his creation.  He was very proud of it (as he should be -- it turned out great!)  The fancy silverware was $2.00 for all of it at the thrift store.  I could not believe it!  I think I literally skipped out of the store.  It is gorgeous.  Not sure I'm loving how it's arranged, but it works for now!

One more to see it all put together!
Obviously, there are still some bare areas and I'm trying to decide if I should add to it or leave it as is in a "less is more" fashion.  Any suggestions?  Until we decide to change it up, I am feeling much better about this than the nothingness that was there before!

p.s.  Please ignore that all the pictures say "the inspiration studio".  That was my old blog that is no long in existence.  Apparently when I edited the pics, I didn't save the originals onto our external hard drive, and our old computer crashed, taking them with it, so the old edited pics are all I have.  Awesome.  Sorry for any confusion.

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