Obsession: Part II

So I think it is safe to safe I like to obsess over things a little bit.


Like when I confessed to obsess over nail polish.


Yes, well I am at it again. A new obsession, or guilty pleasure if you will.


Pinterest!


I know a lot of you have known about this website for months, maybe even years (if it has been around that long, I have no idea.) But I am a new pinterester and I can not get enough of the fun ideas people tag on there. 


If you give it a try, I am sure it will become your new obsession as well!!


I recently found a picture on Pinterest and it linked to a tutorial on how to make a no sew pillow. That is my kind of pillow!! I do not know how to sew, and although I would LOVE to learn, my passion to learn right now is at an all time low. So the idea of making new pillows that take like 3 minutes and no sewing ability needed...count me in! 


I found the tutorial here.


Then I ran out to JoAnn's and found this adorable fabric. 
(I already had some pillow inserts that I had planned on learning how to cover sometime in the near future.)

Instant cuteness, and it took me literally 3 minutes or so.

Then I made a cute little one and attached a rosette I had made a few days ago just for fun.

The white pillow on the left is a little left out, but don't worry, now that I am confident that I can make these things, I plan to go buy him some of the same fabric as his bro on the right and get him all covered up.

What do you think?

 If you know how to sew, would you still attempt these pillows, or is it to amateur for you women with incredible sewing capabilities?

Here it is....

After searching high and low for the perfect pieces for our room, I decided the final pieces can wait, and I can reveal to you the {almost} finish product.

We are still searching for some green artwork or a modern sculpture for behind the bed. I know I will find it eventually!

Here is what we did...

• A fresh and modern coat of paint
• Stripped and repainted our nightstands
• New baskets in the nightstands
• New lamps
• New bedding
• Repainted our cherry wood frames
• Repainted our hanging candle sconces and added new candles
• Put up new shelves
• Framed artwork from our favorite artist...Camden High
• Added a few new accessories.

To see the *before* pictures, go here.

I knew I wanted a modern black and white room with a subtle accent color. I fell in love with this bedding and added accents based on the bed.

We needed balance on this wall across from our bed. We have our dresser and TV centered with our bed. It throws off the look of the wall, and I had to find a way to balance it. Wes was up in the attic putting away some baby stuff the day we started on our room. He found these 2 shelves up there that we have had since we moved into our house. They are the perfect balance for the wall, and a perfect place to add accessories. I really wanted to add some greenery on the shelves, I just have not found the perfect ones yet. So for now, just a few candles and frames will do.

We also have our H on the shelf. I made that a few years back and still love how it looks.

We left this space open to the left of our dresser because eventually we will have to move Wesley's desk in here for more peace and quiet for his studies.

We left the frames where they were before, to the left of the bathroom door. We painted them white so there would be more of a contrast between the wall and the frames. And the black and white pictures stand out much better. We have some frames to hang on the wall to the right of the door, they just are not done yet.

These sconces were originally a rusty bronze and I had white candles on them. Now they are white with a silver decorative candle. I love these!

Our nightstands are still pathetic, but not as bad as before. They are cheap-o Ikea nightstands that we bought when we lived in our apartment. When we bought our house we didn't want to buy new nightstands because we had greater costs to worry about. So we painted our Ikea ones and added feet to them as well as a travertine top. Over the years our pathetic paint job wore off and the baskets were hideous. Since we are still not in a place to buy new nightstands, we decided to repaint them once again, but do it the right way. I found better baskets, and love how they turned out. The only problem is that I could only find 3 baskets, so Wesley's nightstand is missing the top basket. He doesn't mind :)

I also finally found the lamps I wanted! I knew I wanted a green lamp with a white shade. I had a hard time finding exactly what I wanted until the other day. We were browsing through Target and I found these gems for $20 ea. A steal for a lamp!! They also had one that had a black base and white shade, but I knew I couldn't pass up another green accent! 

So what do you think? Did we do ok? 

We are so happy with how it all turned out. We love doing all the work ourselves and seeing what we can do on a tight budget.

How to: Headboard

How to make a headboard

A few years ago Wes and I decided our room needed some real furniture. We purchased our dressers, refinished our nightstands, and wanted to buy a headboard. After looking around, we decided our budget didn't allow us to buy a $400 headboard, but we knew there had to be another option. We did some research and discovered an easy way to make our own. 

Here is how you do it.

You will need:

A piece of 1/4" ply wood the size of your bed.

Fabric: 

{You will want something pretty thick, an upholstery fabric will typically work best.}

Batting

Staple Gun

That's it!

The first step is to wrap the batting around the plywood and staple it down. Make sure it is wrapped tight, you don't want it to buckle in the front. 

Then you lay the wrapped ply wood on top of your fabric. **Make sure if you use a patterned fabric that you line it up correctly with your edges so you make the most of the pattern.**

Fold the fabric over and pull tight. Staple down as many times as you like. We tend to over staple to make sure it is secure.

When you are finished you will have a headboard that looks about like this!

We do have pillows for the bed, they just aren't on there for the picture :)

Our first headboard cost us around $30 I believe. This new one cost us only $4.99 because we reused the plywood and batting from before. I found this fabric for a steal at Goodwill for $4.99. Pretty good price for an upholstery fabric.

Think you will give this project a try? 

Bedding

Any thoughts on this bedding? 

This is the one we chose for our room, and I LOVED it the moment I saw it. Wesley loves it because it is not too feminine like most bedding is. I was just doubting my decision a little bit, I was afraid it looks too young. 

What do you think? Am I over thinking this?

Artwork

Our room needed some artwork. So instead of spending my money on random artwork, I put our son to work!! Ok, so I guess it wasn't work for him, more like playtime. I bought some white and black finger paint, put it on some paper plates, and gave Camden some paper then let him create. 

It ended up being a very fun project. Yes he is still to young to really appreciate the fun of finger paint, but I think he enjoyed getting messy and squishing paint between his fingers.

It is all washable, so after he was done I threw out the plates, rolled up the towel with Camden's clothes and tossed it into the wash! Simple as that!

I had him paint 4 pictures, but I only framed 2. I found 2 frames from Marshall's that I thought would look great against the color on our walls. (I would have bought more if they had them!) Thats ok, I think I can manage to find a place the hang the two that we did frame.

Here is the final result! I think they turned out pretty fantastic. 

What do you think? Would you attempt to have your children paint you artwork to frame and hang in your home?

All about paint

We did it! We started our room, and finished it in less than a week. We are so pleased with the results! I will be blogging throughout the week to show you the little changes we made and show how we did it.

First off, I want to say how thankful I am to my husband for allowing me to redesign our room. We joke that it is his own fault for marrying an interior designer, because I am ALWAYS thinking up new ways to make our house better. I am so blessed that he is so handy and loves to do the handy work himself. I have yet to find a project that would be challenging enough for us to hire someone. Wes is literally a jack of all trades; he is a master painter, a tile installer, landscaper, plumber, and all around good looking guy :)

Alright, back to the room!

It started like this

This is the during

Then we had a little extra help from this guy

And then we finished! All before lunch :)

But I can't show you the final room yet, that would give it all away! 

Stay tuned.....

Room Beginnings...

Well we are officially on spring break! We are enjoying Wesley's time off and spending as much family time together as possible. Today we went out to breakfast together, went to Camden's music class, had our lunch outside, went on a beautiful walk down a desert trail, and now enjoying our evening together watching the Bachelor (well, Camden is sleeping). In between all of this fun stuff we are still working on our bedroom remodel. We are right in the middle of it right now! 

Here are a few pictures we took just before we starting taking everything off the walls to change it up. We are basically done with the little things, but we have some larger things left to do. Like paint...my least favorite part of redoing a room. Thankfully my husband is a fantastic painter and he usually doesn't let me help much because I am a horrible painter. I don't have the patience or steady hand like he does, thank goodness he does :)

::Before::

::Before::

::Before::

And lastly, we are adding some original artwork to our room from an up and coming artist. It is one of a kind work and we feel so honored that this artist chose us to display his work!

Coming up...

I am soooo excited! Next week is Wesley's spring break! That is a big deal in our house, because during a normal school week our days look like this....Cam wakes us up around 6, Wes gets ready and leaves around 7:30, Wes gets home around 5, we usually spend an hour together or so, then I make dinner, we put Cam to bed, and Wes studies while I clean up, we get ready for bed together and read our devotional, then I go to bed and Wes stays up until around 1:30 studying. Basically our days consist of studying and trying to cram in some time together. So spring break for me is all about family time. I look forward to waking up in the morning and not having to get Wes out the door. I am excited to have him home and get him all to ourselves. 


But that is not where it ends. There is a downside to school breaks during medical school...you don't actually have much of a break. Sure, he won't be going to class, but the studying does not get a break. He has to take his huge board exams in June, so he plans on studying for those a few hours each day during the break. I am ok with that! He plans to study each morning until around 12, which is fine. I use my mornings to organize, get ready, and make sure Cam goes down for a nap. So thankfully I will be busy while he is busy. But after 12, he is allllll mine!!! 


So what are we going to do with our time together?? Well, good question! We are going to redesign our bedroom!! Ahhh I can't wait! We actually have always loved our bedroom. I make sure it is always clean and tidy, because it is our escape. We love to have our alone time in our room, and making it a calm and inviting space makes that alone time all the better. But I am just sick of it. I am tired of the colors, tired of our bedspread, and I love to redesign and repurpose the things we have. So change is coming! We are planning to repaint the walls, recover our headboard (a how-to will come along with that), possibly redo or just buy new nightstands, and painting our current decor to match our new look. 

A little inspiration:
I love the simplicity of the black and white in this room.

We are transforming our room from warm tones; tan, brown and blue to more cool tones; black, white, and gray! My only problem right now is deciding on our accent color. I can not decide if I want our accent color to be a teal blue, lime green, or neutral taupe. I really want it to be a look that we won't have to change for the next few years. Here are some ideas that I am looking at to help me decide on an accent color.

I am loving the teal accents in this room.

I love the hint of red. I am usually not a fan of black, white and red, but just a little bit, like in this space, is nice.

I am actually surprised how much I like the yellow. 

Again, I am liking the punch of red on the floor, but still not sold on adding it as my accent. I was actually drawn to this picture because of the bedding....LOVE!

So for now, I will continue to dream up our perfect bedroom and post a few pictures along the way. I can't wait to start on it next week, and hopefully complete everything before Wes goes back to school. We are also on a very tight budget, so it will be fun to see what we can come up with!


I will leave you with this. A before picture of our bedroom. This is actually not the most recent picture. We no longer have that little lamp on the nightstand, but we do have some nice larger ones that I know we will be changing in our upcoming remodel. Stay tuned to see how it will change...

Homemade Blocks

We finally got the little shelves put up in Camden's room. I wanted to put something "baby" on the shelves because his whole room is pretty simple and "non baby". I thought blocks would be fun, but I don't like the blocks you can buy in stores. I looked on Etsy and found some cute ones that people made using scrapbook paper. I thought that would be a fun project to keep me busy for a day. So my mom ran out to a few craft stores and picked up the necessary items. I ended up making 9 blocks. All together with the paper, blocks, glue, and letters the final cost was under $25. And I have a ton of paper left over; I will have plenty if I want to make more blocks.

Here is how I made them...



I started by painting the edges of the blocks just in case the corners showed through.


This is the color paper I added to one side of the block. We bought a book of reversible scrapbook paper, so we had a ton of colors and patterns to use.


I flipped the paper over and covered the block with the Mod Podge.


Stick the block to the paper and hold firm for about a minute.


After I glued the paper to the block, I cut along the edge using my Exacto knife.


This is what it looks like after you cut it out.


Here are a few of the blocks along the way. I used different paper on every side of the blocks.


I then added chip board letters to the blocks using the Mod Podge.


After the letters dried, I applied Mod Podge to every side of the block to seal in the paper and the letter.


I made three blocks with different letters on each side so we can arrange them how we want. I first had these stacked to say ABC, when Wes came in he switched the letters around to be Camden's initials. I kind of like it :)


Here is where the shelves are hanging


I really wanted to put a cute word on the shelf but I couldn't think of what would be good. Wes wanted something "manly" as he put it...so he came up with "Trucks". It was either that or "meat" and I was not about to have the word "meat" sitting up on my baby's shelf. The blocks that say Trucks only have letters on one side, I didn't plan on switching that word around so I didn't bother adding more letters to the other sides of the blocks.


Here is an up close picture of his blocks. How "boy" is Trucks?!


His room is getting more cozy with each thing we add!