The Nursery: IRL

Ok I know I already did a post showing you all the things I was using to decorate Sylvie's nursery, but I just had to show you the real life final product! Ta DA!

I really love how everything came together and was pleasantly surprised at how easily the tree decals went up on the wall.  So nice to have it all done!

My mom and sister, Annie did a great job sewing all the bedding and pillows and changing pad covers. They are so talented and I couldn't have done it without them!

I'm sure I'll still add little things here and there, but it sure is a relief to finally have all the important stuff done. I had a ton of help from several people and I really appreciate everything. Thanks again to my mom and sister for spending their Saturday sewing multiple items according to my whims. Thanks to Seth's generous cousin Tim and his wife Cathy for giving us the beautiful crib. And thank you to my awesome husband Seth who did all the heavy lifting and put all the furniture together. Not to mention listening to and giving opinions on decorative details that he could care less about.

You all help make my life so much easier and much more fun! Thank you!

Bedroom Decor on a Budget

So I'd been wanting to give our bedroom a little make-over since we moved into our house. I purposely painted all the bedrooms a neutral beigey color so I could add whatever colors I wanted as accents and still have it look good. Since the duvet cover we already had was brown, this didn't exactly make for the most interesting of rooms. Over time I collected ideas of what I wanted to do and found cheap ways to accomplish it. I thought it turned out pretty good! Granted, we still haven't dealt with the closet/storage situation in that room, but we'll get there eventually.

Here's what the room looked like when we first bought the house... two words: GROSS.

After!

Here's the breakdown of the costs:

Lamps: $9 for 2 bases at thrift store + $18 for 2 shades + $6 spray paint= $33

Sconces: $3 for 2 sconces at thrift store + $1.76 for 2 tapered candles + $4 spray paint= $8.76

Headboard: $50 on sale

Bedding: $176 with 20% off coupon  (duvet cover, 2 pillow shams, 1 decorative pillow)

Mirror: $20

Total: $287.76

Not too bad, eh? I have a few other projects in the works, mainly decorative items for the surrounding walls, but most of these are super cheap and involve spray painting old bottles and other misc. things. And maybe we'll get some curtains eventually too. But as it is now, it has a much more put-together feel and actually like going in there. Huge difference from where we started!

The Wall

Remember this big blank wall I mentioned a while back? The one I was clueless as to how I should decorate it? Well, I came up with an amazing idea ( I thought so anyway...) and have finally finished my vision.

BEFORE

 Big, boring, and devoid of color (unless you count beige as a color)

AFTER

Look at all the things!

So what is all that stuff? Well I'll tell you. I had this idea to create sort of a family history wall. I wanted to hang up pictures and some objects that represent our ancestors and maps of where me & Seth's families are from. Thing is, my vision sort of had to be tweaked a little bit because of a couple hiccups, but the general idea I had is still there.  Turns out old photos don't have the best quality so I couldn't blow them up large enough to fit the frames I had. They are also black and white photos which doesn't really help add color to an already drab wall. So, I used current color family pictures for this wall and put the black and white ones above the piano on the orange wall. 

I also would have liked to hang all the pictures on a big tree mural, but that wasn't a very realistic option budget-wise and there's no way I could paint a nice looking tree on that giant wall myself. But, I think it looks nice without it, so no big deal. I also don't have all the frames and shelves filled up yet, but at least they're hung. All that other stuff can be filled in later easily enough.

I got almost all of the shelves and frames on the beige wall from Ross for way cheap. They have a lot of great decorating stuff there. I got all of the old maps and plates from Etsy shops. So fun to look around on there for cool odds and ends. Oh and just in case you're in the mode of hanging pictures, I found a great tip to help hang pictures straight, more specifically, the pictures with dual hooks on the back. Check this out! AWESOME and EASY! So that's it! Pretty cool eh?

Final Reveal: The Bathroom

Well folks, we got another room done over here. Thought you might like to see. It's the ol' can this time. The water closet. The BATHROOM.

Here's what we started with:

BEFORE

I know this doesn't look that bad. But, it was. The paint was the same ugly brown throughout the rest of the house. The counter top was super ugly and the vanity had been painted, but not very well. The tile looked OK (though the floor isn't level so that may have to be fixed later) and there was wainscoting installed on the wall opposite the vanity which was a plus. BUT, all the fixtures were old and crappy (sadly you can't see most of them in this picture) and it was in desperate need of a face lift. So we gave it one.

AFTER

First thing to go was the counter top on the vanity. We replaced it with a granite counter top from Lowe's which had a built-in sink. This was a great way to make a huge change without getting too crazy on the cost. And it was easy to do! So I'm pretty sure everything we replaced came from Lowe's. The towel rack, tp holder, and towel ring were from Moer's 'Sage' collection, and the toilet cabinet, medicine cabinet (we got the 25" wide one and I removed the crown molding on top because it looked weird with our light fixture), light fixture, and faucet were chosen as individual pieces. I also replaced the knobs that came on the toilet cabinet and medicine cabinet as they weren't very high quality.

 

We wanted to keep this room bright and I really love that light aqua color, so I chose to use Behr's 'Pensive Sky' color on the walls. We stuck with the same white we had throughout the rest of the house for the trim, wainscoting, and vanity. And... did you notice one more thing? Yep. We got new doors and knobs. So much better!

Like I said, there are a couple things that may change down the road (the lumpy tile and the toilet which has the flushing power of spit), but I love the way this room turned out. Now to tackle all my bare walls...

My Favorite Room

After showing you our newly re-done kitchen, I promised I would show you my most favorite room in our house: The Living Room. But first, I have to show you what it looked like before we got our hands on it...

BEFORE

The floors were in terrible shape and that brown color looks like somebody barfed up a chocolate creamcicle on the walls...

AFTER

TA DA!

So we weren't quite sure what we were going to do with this room, but it kind of came together on its own. We started by refinishing the floors... huge improvement! Then the orange paint and new blinds. The khaki color behind the couch was Seth's idea. He called it a "reverse accent wall." It's the color we used throughout the rest of the house and it's called 'Keratin' by Kwal. As you can see, we don't have much on the walls yet... any ideas?? 

The first real decorative thing we got for the room was the rug. It's one of my favorite things in the room and it came from Lowe's. Then, we knew we needed to get some furniture as we only had one sectional couch which was definitely going down in the family room with the tv. We didn't have a ton of money to spend on furniture, so we looked around at a lot of different things. I hadn't found anything I was too crazy about until  I found this patio furniture set on sale on the Target website. Yep. It's patio furniture! Awesome huh? Now if it gets dirty I can just take it outside and hose it off! I did get new decorative pillows as the ones that came with it didn't match too well. I got the flowered pillows from an Etsy store called Pat's Table (way cute stuff at a great price) and the green leaf-print pillows from Walmart. My "weeds" in the tall glass vase in the corner are an old purchase from Ikea (though I've seen them there recently) and the other vases are old purchases from Ross. I thought we did pretty well with a small budget and I love the way it turned out!

So there you have it! My favorite room. Let me know of any ideas you have for my blank walls. So much space to work with!