Projects in our old house

 Some of the projects I never posted about in our old house were:

Sewed pillows (my first ever), from fabric I had on hand.

Gallery wall with a bunch of our old black frames from when we got married.

 I bought a stencil and wanted to stencil a back splash for our kitchen. It was a great idea in theory but was a TON more work than I thought it would be. Above is the Before, and below is the After picture. I loved how it turned out, but when I  started doing the large section by the stove the stencil ended up curving more and started to bleed a lot more than I wanted. It would have taken forever to update. Since we ended up finding out we were moving I had to paint it all back blue which was a sad day! I think if I ever do something like this again I will just buy it as a sticky vinyl cut-out to put on it.

Colt's Room

Colt's room has been almost complete for awhile now and I LOVE how it turned out! I wanted a Dr. Seuss theme and Tyson wanted sports so I combined the two. I love the feeling when I have a bunch of ideas in my head and they all come together and turn out exactly how I pictured.

Tyson's dad and I did the board & batten on the walls. I picked out the paint colors and got help painting from Darryl, my uncle Kyle, and Tyson. 

I think one of my favorite things is this baseball with his hand print. I was shocked I was able to do that in one try! It's a good thing he is a deep sleeper.

The bedding was Pottery Barn clearance and Teri made the adorable Dr. Seuss throw blanket for his crib. And of course we have a Utah rug.

Those are $24 white Ikea curtains that I painted red stripes onto (the day before Colt was born).

The picture frame I got at $3 from a garage sale and turned it into a magnetic chalkboard.

The Dr. Seuss panel was also made by Teri - we saw it in a quilt shop and thought it would go perfectly in his room.

I saw this quote on Etsy and made my own version of it. I love how it looks in the white frames right above his crib.

I took off his closet door like I did in Jayde's room because it makes the room larger and I can put his chair where it would swing out. 

This bare wall is going to have his name up top (I'm at least done with the letters), and then I want a collage of about 8 different types of frames that I'm going to paint white and put pictures of him in.... and that is the last thing I have left before it's 100% complete!

My Pitiful Pantry

I always thought my pantry was fairly organized, but through the years of living here it became more and more disheveled. I didn't own any good containers for things so nothing looked very streamlined. One day of being fed-up with not being able to find anything, and having chip bags fall on me while trying to reach for other things - I decided that I was going to completely organize it.

I searched for containers I loved that weren't at an outrageous price and found almost all of them at Walmart. It took a few trips to gather up all the containers I needed and after a few weeks of living with my new organized pantry I can honestly say I am in love with it! I love all of the containers I bought, and it is making life much easier in the kitchen. I spent about $200, but it was WELL worth it. The pictures will do it justice, and what is amazing is I didn't even have to get rid of any of our food either.

PANTRY BEFORE:

PANTRY AFTER: 

what every girl should do the day before giving birth

...is paint curtains for her soon-to-be baby's nursery!

Let's just say that it wasn't the best idea to wait until then. 

Man were my hands sore the next day.

But hey - they are adorable in his room and I can't wait to post pictures of how it all turned out!

projects, projects, projects...

Lately I've been super busy with projects to try and get done before the baby comes. Here are a few of the ones I've finished. I love how everything is turning out, but even more - I love the fact that I can cross them off my list!

 I found some cute fabric online at fabric.com and made faux roman shades using this tutorial for our kitchen windows. It took me forever to take end result pictures of this (hence the Halloween decor in the 'before' and the St Patty's Day decor in the 'after' pic haha)

 Baby squishy now has a car seat cover which is a necessity!

 Used some fabric scraps and ric rac to make some boy burp cloths. Now he won't be spitting up on any pink frilly ones.

 I bought this ugly frame at a garage sale for $2 over a year ago, knowing I wanted to make it into a magnetic chalk board. I cleaned it, rolled on the magnetic paint, sprayed on the chalkboard paint, sprayed it red, and then glazed it. It's going to go in the baby's room. 

Oh, and I think we decided on the name Colton (Colt for short)!

 Our neighbor let us (meaning me & my father-in-law) borrow his miter saw and nail gun. Darryl installed the the wainscoting as well as painted the wall/ceiling. Now all that was left was for me to calk, spackle, re-paint the white section, paint the other walls yellow, paint stripes on Colton's curtains, and decorate!

 Darryl also helped me install these metal planter boxes I bought over a year ago. They were just sitting in our garage because Tyson didn't want to drill holes into our house. It took about a year to get him to agree ;) so here they are with fresh flowers I picked out. I LOVE how they turned out. Literally every day when I look at them - they make me smile!

I bought this ugly bench as a set for $35 at DI. Cleaned, vacuumed, painted, and found a cute pillow for it. The other two pieces I sold for $20 so the bench only ended up costing me $15 + $40 for the pillow and about $25 for the paint/primer in one. I also love how this turned out.

I love that Jayde is such a trooper when I'm getting things done. I hand her one of her fake paintbrushes and she 'paints' right alongside me. It is so cute to see her reach for the tools and mimic what I'm doing. She has some wooden puzzles and one is a tool theme and she loves hammering with her puzzle piece like it's real. So cute!

the painting/parade of homes weekend

Last month I FINALLY finished up my family room painting with the help of Tyson's dad - THANKS A MILLION DARRYL! I love how it looks, and was getting tired of the blah tan walls. I'll have to post a picture of the after with curtains up etc.

 Wearing my mask since I'm preggo - even though the dr's said paint nowadays doesn't hurt the baby while pregnant.

 

Oh, and while we painted Jayde was entertained by Tyson's mom - THANKS TERI!! We couldn't have done it with her running a-muck like the crazy toddler she is.

We then went to a bunch of Parade of Homes with Tyson's family. Since Ty was still studying for the AZ Bar he wasn't able to come, but we had a blast! Jayde and Hayley (her cousin) did amazing and we had a very fun -filled weekend. I just love doing the Parade of Homes and look forward to it every year.

This year was a little bit of a downer home-wise with not really much that really WOWed me, but there's always next year.

Jayde loving on Hayley. She looves babies!

the twenty-five buck toy chest

I found this very ugly, beat-down, grimy toy chest at DI one day while I was searching for some furniture I could re-do. I've been wanting to get a toy chest for Jayde (and my future children) to hide their mass of toys in so they weren't seen in the family room. The only ones I've liked were over $250 apiece, and that wasn't going to work. So - when I found this beauty for only $25 I snatched her up to make her over!

After some majorly cleaning the chest, priming, sanding, painting a couple coats, putting a clear topcoat, reupholstering the seat with cute fabric; our family room toy area went from the above picture.... to this next one:

and LOVE how it turned out! I wanted it to be general neutral and match with the colors of our family room. The fabric is here and I got a yard to be on the safe side for $7.50, the paint was about $8 total for both cans and I already had the topcoat on hand. I seriously need to get a staple-gun because I keep having to borrow Tyson's grandpas which I'm super grateful for. The drawer in front is supposed to pull out, but I like it better the way I have it where you can open the seat portion. I can stow away all of Jayde's toys in there and will leave the top open for her to grab whatever she feels like playing with.

She approves.... and her favorite thing is to climb on top of it to play. When she gets up there she has a huge grin on her face and claps because she's so proud of herself.

More Curtains

As you found out from this post - I LOVE curtains.

Jayde's room was feeling small with her huge closet door swinging all about.
Soon that wall will have bookshelves and will be Jayde's own reading corner.
To accomplish that, I made the executive decision to remove the door,
and put a curtain panel up instead,
which I told the husband about very matter-of-factly.....

Let's just say he wasn't too thrilled about that idea.
Anything involving changing the house (i.e. painting, removing doors, and drilling holes) leaves him in a less-than-excited mood about life (which is a complete understatement)!
I told him I would do all the work including removing the door,
and that he wouldn't even notice.

Here's how it turned out:



I love it! It turned out exactly how I planned. We bought a small hook-thing to screw into the door frame so I can swoop the curtains up and out of the way if I want... which hasn't gone in yet because I'm still too nervous to use a power drill (I have no idea why - I use my power sander and love it!), and then we have Tyson's less-than-excited idea of drilling yet another hole into the wall has put it to a halt for the moment. BUT I still wanted to post about it.

Oh, and the curtain fabric came from Walmart at a measly $3 a yard! How awesome is that?! They were super easy to sew, and while I was at it I made her some curtains out of the same fabric. The cheapest rod I was able to find was at Lowes ($18?). The one from Bed Bath & Beyond was more than double and looked almost the same which is crazy. Three cheers for being able to return things back to the store!

I'm also still waiting for Tyson to want to put the 'tie backs' into the walls which requires drilling more holes. I seriously just need to toughen up and not be scared of that measly drill and just do it myself... (which I've been saying for the last 6 months)... we'll see.