Nursery in the Woods

When I first found out that I was pregnant, I immediately started clearing out our guest bedroom to make it into the baby’s nursery. The closet in there was a combination linen closet/catch-all, and I had been storing my fabric stash under the guest bed. I couldn’t wait to start designing the nursery, but I needed to wait until I found out the sex of the baby before I could make any final decisions.

Finally, we got word from our doctor and ultrasound tech that we were expecting a boy. I knew I didn’t want to go overly cutesy with the design for a few reasons. One, I wanted him to be able to enjoy the room for at least 3 or 4 years. Secondly, since I would be spending a lot of time in the room myself, along with my husband, I didn’t want to get sick of some cutesy baby design. Lastly, I wanted it to fit in with the current aesthetic we have in our home. I didn’t want walking into the baby’s room to feel like you were walking into a different universe. I still wanted it to feel like a baby’s room, though.

I was having a hard time deciding what I wanted to do. I’ve had good luck in the past drawing inspiration from designer fabric collections, so I hit up some of my favorite quilt fabric online retailers and started looking at their new releases. That’s when I saw it!

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I fell in love with the Hello, Bear by Bonnie Christine for Art Gallery Fabrics line. I immediately saw a nursery that fit in with our home: greys, greens and golds along with warm, rustic brown wood tones.

We painted the room a green color, Flora by Behr. My in-laws were kind enough to help us out with that and they also replaced the baseboards, since we had some left over from another project. I would have liked to replace the carpeting, right now it’s a renter’s grade beige (since our home was a rental property before we bought it). But it’s in decent shape for now so that’s a project that will wait for another time (if ever).

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The first piece I bought for the nursery was this dresser. It will double as his changing table for now. I found it at a local antique shop. The changing pad cover is Adventure Springs HBR-4438 (as mentioned in this post). The artwork above the changing table was made using a stencil designed by Bonnie Christine. I had intended to stencil a whole wall with it, but being a stencil newbie I couldn’t get the hang of the process. I panted some old canvas white and stenciled it instead and it turned out great. The hamper on the right is this OXO Tot Flip-In Flex Lid Hamper in Gray/Green and the cart on the right is the IKEA RÅSKOG cart in turquoise that I am using to store all his diaper changing supplies. When he’s out of diapers it will be perfect to store toys, books, etc.

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Here is a better look at the IKEA RÅSKOG cart. The bag hanging off of the dresser is a Planet Wise Hanging Wet/Dry Bag in Gray Chevron I will be using for cloth diapering. As you can see, my relatives and friends couldn’t resist giving me some disposable diapers anyway, so we’ll use those when we’re traveling. The floor lamp is this Threshold™ Mosaic Wood Look Floor Lamp with Square Linen Shade from Target, and the grey basket with the toys were all gifts so I’m not sure where they’re from, sorry 🙂

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The second big piece for the nursery is, of course, the crib. I had a tough time finding exactly the right brown I wanted for the crib (not too cherry, not to blonde, not too chocolatey…) and I finally landed on this (reasonably priced) crib, Stork Craft Tuscany 4-in-1 Convertible Crib in Dove Brown. I had originally envisioned using a Jenny Lind DaVinci, but the chunkier lines on this one felt better to me. The sheet I made myself using Oh, Hello Fog HBR-4430. The pillow isn’t going to live in the crib permanently, it is usually on the glider but daddy was using it. I made the artwork above the crib using a tutorial from the Young House Love book (I was a HUGE fan of their blog). I’m leaving some room on the walls to add some pictures, either of the baby or of family.

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The last big piece I needed for the nursery was a rocker/glider. Here is Daddy modeling it for me. I knew I didn’t want the standard wooden spindly one (you know the one I’m talking about) and I had the perfect one picked out on Amazon when it suddenly went out of stock. I scrambled to find an acceptable replacement (grey ones are so hard to find!) and ended up with the babyletto Madison Swivel Glider in Slate. For the ottoman we are using a grey floor pouf purchased from Amazon, the side table is a simple IKEA Lack end table we’ve had forever, and the lamp is one I got from Homegoods that used to live in the living room. The “Be Brave” artwork is a reclaimed wood piece I found at an antique shop.

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Another piece I created for the room was this little wooden bookshelf. I had the wood in the garage (left by previous tenant) so all I had to buy was the stain and the brackets I used to hang it. The brackets were silver but I spray painted them gold to match the rest of the room. All his books fit perfectly. The grey crate was a gift and it holds Mike’s lamb from when he was a little guy. The frames on the wall were another antique shop find and I used gold paint pen along with the Bonnie Christine stencil to paint the trees on the wall.

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I love the curtains and the curtain rod I created for the room, but what a project they were! I’ve had good luck with curtains from Urban Outfitters in the past and they came through for me again. I found these adorable Assembly Home Birch Trees Curtains. They do not block light at all so we left the blinds on the window as they are still in good shape. The arrow finials are also from Urban Outfitters (specifically, Magical Thinking Arrow Finial Set), but buyer beware! They are ONLY designed to fit into UO curtain rods. Unfortunately, the window I was covering was too wide for their curtain rods. I was able to jerry-rig the finials into the existing rod I had for the window, but I ended up spray painting the rod & finials so they would all be the same gold color. Also, the finials had a green enamel detailing in the centers that isn’t pictured online.

Here are a couple more pictures of the nursery:



I hope you enjoyed this look at my Nursery in the Woods! I can’t wait for baby to come home and enjoy it!

Dining Room Mood board

So as I pointed out on the floorplan, the dining room and the living room are actually one big room. We have done pretty much nothing in this room since we moved in. Evidence:

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The lovely mirrors (no sarcasm there, I actually love them) were left behind by the previous tenants. Thanks!

So I’ve whipped up a mood board for what I would like to do to the dining room area of this room. This will all likely not happen for a long while; this room is pretty low on our list of priorities and I actually like having it kind of empty for big parties and such. Anyway, on to the mood board!
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1. I’ve been obsessed with this dining room set from Plummers since we saw it in store a couple of months ago. All of the pieces (table, 8 chairs, sideboard, cabinet) will cost over $7k so that’s on our dream list for now, haha. Maybe someday!

2. The current brown color in the room won’t work with that dining room furniture, so we’ll need to paint. Maybe the same grey as the kitchen/family room?

3. Of course, that ugly cream carpet will have to go and be replaced by a dark wood.

4. I’m loving this rug from Overstock.com.

5. We actually already bought and installed this light fixture from Costco! It takes the place of that ugly brass chandelier in the picture.

6. How awesome are these curtains from Ikea? They really tie into the high glossy luxury vibe.

I know there isn’t much color outside of grey in this mood board… what can I say, I love that color! Maybe once I get some inspiration for the living room area of this room I will think of some ways I can tie color into the dining room portion of the room.

Family Room Updates

So as we discussed in the kitchen post, these rooms are really one big open room, so we are keeping the color scheme pretty much the same in both rooms. With that being said, moodboard!

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1, 2. We painted the walls the same Sparrow by Behr color as the kitchen. I love the idea of accent walls, so we painted one wall (the wall the TV is mounted on) a green color by Behr, which I have now forgotten the name of. It’s close to this spring green by Glidden. We also painted the baseboards in this room which really helped the paint on the walls pop.

3. Like I mentioned in the kitchen post, someday I hope to refloor the entire house with a dark flooring like this one.

4. The drape shade I loved in our kitchen’s moodboard also comes in curtains! We have a larger window I am thinking of using this on.

5. This bar cart is sooo cool, I’d love to get something like this and place it below the large window to the right of the room.

6. We have a weird recessed area in one of our walls that I’d like to put some sort of white cabinet in to hold our DVDs and other assorted living room items in. This white one is from Overstock.com.

7. Love this coffee table from Plummers! I love different looking coffee tables and this one will bring more of the white into this room that is happening in the kitchen.

8. We already bought a dark mocha couch pretty identical to this one within a week of moving in. I had originally wanted to go with a charcoal color, but all of the sofas I liked either didn’t fit into our price range or were not comfortable enough for Mike. We compromised on this one. I am hoping once we upgrade the floors, it won’t stick out like such a sore thumb.

9. Really struggling with rug choices. I know I want something low pile and preferably solid, not sure if I want to do a lime green (worried about the room becoming too green) or a grey color. This rug is lime green AND grey, but seems a little too matchy with the curtains.

I didn’t include any artwork, but that’s another thing I’m really struggling with. There is one really large wall that I think I will do some kind of collection of artwork on, but I’m not sure yet. It’s not on the mood board but we did buy that awesome standing lamp within days of moving in. It’s been hard getting used to not having overhead lighting, in all of our apartments there was plenty so we’ve been buying a lot of lamps.

Also not included in my mood board was a wall mount Michael bought for the electronics (PS3, receiver, Wii, etc). That will go below the TV.

Here is a picture on move in day (excuse crookedness/darkness please!)

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Here are some pictures of the family room as it is today…

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View of the family room from the hallway leading to the garage and bedrooms.

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View from the sliding glass door leading to the backyard.

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View from the same door, but turned more to the left. You can see the weird recessed area on the bottom left I was talking about before.

Here is my to do list for this room:

      Move TV mount down a foot. It’s too high as is.
      Install electronics wall mount.
      Craigslist or give away current media shelving.
      Re-floor.
      Buy rug to go under sofa and coffee table.
      Buy coffee table (and end tables?).
      Fix fireplace.
      Remove ugly pink tile around fireplace, replace with something else that actually matches the room.
      Purchase and hang curtains for small window next to sliding glass door, the sliding glass door, the window above the bar.
      Replace the ceiling fan with something else (pendant light? Another ceiling fan?) or remove altogether.
      Get some art or pictures on the large wall next to the TV.

Kitchen Updates

So before I go any further, here is a mockup of our new house’s floorplan:

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Totally accurate rendering.

Totally professional, right? 🙂 Anyway, as you can see the kitchen and family room are actually one big room (gotta love open floor plans!) so we are doing both in the same color scheme. Here is a moodboard I whipped up for the kitchen…

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1. White Cabinets/Long Nickel Hardware/White Countertops: This site happened to have a pretty exact picture of the cabinets I’m envisioning. We are refacing our existing cabinets to make them white through Home Depot. Those will be installed within the next six weeks. We are also replacing the hardware from dark knobs to these long nickel handles. We’re still debating where we want to go with the countertops, but my vote is for white Corian!

2. Stainless Steel appliances: The appliances in the kitchen look to be original to the house (almost 20 years) so we are slowly upgrading. We had to replace our refrigerator within a week of moving in and got one similar to this (it’s one door on top instead of two).

3. We already painted the walls this grey sparrow color by Behr.

4. Someday I would LOVE to upgrade our flooring. Right now we have cream carpets and pink tile (ew) but I’m dreaming of this dark handscraped hardwood (swoon). However, to do this throughout the house will cost upwards of $7k, so we’ll probably go for a more affordable dark laminate.

5. I already bought this Young House Love Farmhouse Pendant Light from Shades of Light to replace the globe light above my sink in the kitchen. Can’t wait until it arrives!

6. These happy Limeade Metal Stools from Overstock.com arrived just in time for our housewarming party and I’m so happy with them! They will be a great punch of color against the white cabinets.

7. I’m loving this Soaring Bird shade for above my sink, but I’m worried that the pendant light will be lost against this busy (but beautiful!) print. Guess there’s only one way to find out, I need to measure the width of the window and see if it will fit. That may make the decision for me!

For reference, this is what we started out with:

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Beige-y glory!

You can’t see our kitchen’s main amazing (imagine sarcasm) light fixture or the pink tiles in that one. Here is the progress we’ve made so far…

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I took off those basic blinds, we painted the area grey, added appliances like a microwave and refrigerator, and added the stools. The new light fixture for over the kitchen sink is on order as are the cabinets, we’ll see which gets installed next!

Update from the new digs!

I can’t believe how much life has changed since I last updated. On the day I last updated, we submitted a bid on a home. We had been seriously looking at homes since May 2012 and submitting bids, but none of them were accepted. Finally, 14 or 15 bids later, this most recent bid was finally accepted! We are now homeowners!

Our home

We closed escrow on November 30, 2012 and started moving in the next day. Believe it or not, everything from our tiny one bedroom apartment fit into the two-car garage of the new house! After that we went right into the holiday season, a busy time for our business. Between that and buying furniture, painting walls, etc it has been a busy time for us.

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Last night I finished setting up my new sewing table and ironing/cutting table!

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I’ve been itching to get back to sewing since the holidays wrapped up, and I finally got up the gumption to sort out the mess that is our office to make room for my sewing area. I’m going to put up some fabric for a design wall and I want to get a thread holder to put on the wall, too.

Can’t wait to get started!!