Our Bedroom So Far

I have learned one thing in the last two years: decorating while you stay at home with kids takes a WHOLE lot of time, like two years of it. A couple of weeks ago, I finally FINALLY sat down to sew us a bedskirt and pillow for our bed. After living here for so long, this makes me one happy lady! I am an *extremely* visual person and very much obsessive so this has been hard for me to go so slowly when decorating our house….but I've managed to do it, so far, at least. Does this happen to anyone else or is it just me?


Anyways…here is some of our bedroom, which I am really starting to love!

The bookshelves were given to us by my in-laws. We painted them white and I styled them with things we already had (and all of our books). FREE!

I finally found my nightstands for $50 each on Craigslist. They actually weren't even listed, but we went to meet with the seller to buy a dresser for our living room and he had these there as well and asked if we wanted them (they match the dresser).  Fate, I tell you! I l-o-v-e these. They are extremely nice, solid wood, dovetailed drawers, and are exactly what I had envisioned. (Also painted.)

I already talked about the fabric--all from Hancock. I paid $5 for the Robert Allen on the pillow! The curtains are my favorite white panels from Ikea, and the lamps are from TJ Maxx which I got right after we moved in. Quilt is Overstock and Euro shams were clearance at Dillard's. I've had most of this stuff for about 2 years now and didn't really buy any accessories new…I had all of it because I am a home decor hoarder. (It's a problem.) Oh, and that headboard. I spent all of my birthday money on it 2 years ago. TJ Maxx. My favorite headboard ever.

Still working on the dressers and wall art on the other half of the room but it is coming together! I found some awesome mirrored frames on clearance at HomeGoods (I feel so weird typing that, we finally have a HomeGoods!) and just ordered some of our wedding photos to fill them. 

Oh, and there's this kid, who happily played by my side while I played photographer. (I had to crop train tracks and random toys out of several pictures.)

That's about all I got. Hope you liked it!


Sharing at The Shabby Nest too!

Here's the Plan for Our Bedroom...

Hello! 

So, back to our house. We have been knocking out a TON of projects lately, and quite truthfully, I haven't been dealing with the mess very well, but it feels good to finally see real progress. FINALLY. 

More on those later :).

Another project that I have managed to be crazy enough to start during the existing chaos is making over our bedroom. I cannot take it anymore. Did you know that it is seriously depressing to wake up to this every morning?

These pictures are from our walk-through, so we currently have a bed in here and our dressers from our last bedroom, but that's it. We have not painted (I KNOW), we have not hung anything on the walls, and we definitely have not replaced that icky fan or the water-damaged carpet. 

(creepy mirrors)

I do want to say though, that I LOVE this house. I love this bedroom. I love the size of it! It is huge and it has the perfect spot for a king bed (underneath those creepy mirrors), room for all of our furniture, and plenty of space left over to play and walk around. I've always wanted windows on either side of our bed and now we have them. I am thankful--but I am ready for things to be pretty again.

The main reason we haven't done anything in this room (or most of the house, for that matter) is that I have been trying to save up some money. Well, I did that (!) but then was torn on how I wanted to decorate everything. When we moved into this house, I said that I was going to be more bold in my decorating choices...but I just can't. I am drawn to soft color palettes, natural textures, and clean lines. And I am happy with that. :)

With ALL of that being said...I have finally gotten around to selecting paint and fabrics and putting together an inspiration board for our bedroom. Here it is:

We already have the headboard. It's a Drexel Heritage and I got it at TJ Maxx for $250. It was extremely discounted because it didn't have the frame with it, which was fine because I was just wanting a headboard anyways. I LOVE this thing. It is huge and substantial and a true statement piece but in a subtle way.

The paint color that I have chosen is Benjamin Moore Refined. I'm going to use it at 50% though. I have about seven paint colors on our wall right now and this one is SO pretty and soft. It goes super perfectly with the fabrics for this room. I ordered about 30 swatches from fabrics.com and am SO excited to use these together. (Sidenote: When asked if he cared about using a floral fabric in our room, Bryan immediately rolled his eyes and said "I'm a guy, why would I care?" And that is why I love him ;)

I've already gotten a new quilt from Overstock (this one), and we just got it in the mail two days ago. It is awesome. I also went and got king-sized pillows last night so now we actually have pillows that fit our bed!! If only I could convey my genuine excitement over this fact--it is ridiculous.

I'm still on the lookout for an awesome couple of dressers and have my eye on several bedside tables. I would really like a mirrored set to add another layer to the room. Let me see....a woven bench or set of stools would be amazing for the foot of the bed---something light and airy though--gourd lamps are a must, and so are my favorite bamboo blinds, also from Overstock (I like that place a little too much). I'm also thinking of sticking with my favorite white curtains from Ikea for both windows. They are so airy and nice looking in real life!

We eventually want to replace the old carpet with something like sisal or a natural fiber (along with new baseboards), but that will unfortunately be the last thing we do in the house since we have so much dust and construction going on. I'm trying to be patient about that one but it is hard to wait!

We also have something fun planned for the ceilings and the only thing I'm still truly torn on is whether to stick with a new ceiling fan since we do actually use it throughout the summer (SO HOT), or go the pretty but less practical route and get a glitzy ceiling mount like the one above.

ALSO. There is this weird little corner in the room. It's about 3 feet deep and 6 feet long and neither of us know what to do with it. It's driving me nuts!

Originally we talked about building a desk for me to work at. But then I didn't want to bring work mess into our room, so that idea was nixed. Then we talked about building bookshelves, but we have those in the living room (though they can be moved...), then we talked about being a small sitting area....and then about closing it off to be an extra closet. (We each have our own walk-in closet in our bathroom though.) What do you think? Any ideas? I'm having a hard time finding inspiration for this particular problem and am just stumped.

So that's where we are with that. It's so exciting and refreshing to get going on this. I hope to hear some of your thoughts and suggestions!

Have a wonderful weekend! 

Our Master Bedroom

Hello all. First I want to thank you all for your sweet comments yesterday. They were very encouraging and really helped me get over my feeling idiotic for taking pictures of myself. Seriously, thanks!

Exciting post today. I have finally finished and photographed our bedroom transformation. This has been a long time coming, but I'm so happy to say that it feels pretty complete. There are a few other extra projects that I may do in this room, but for now, it's "done".

You may remember the "Before":

And here is the "After":

($5 if you can spot lazy Louie)

The frame above our bed is from Savers. Yes. It was $6.99. When I picked it up, I thought, "Am I really going to buy this for my home? Seriously?"....Yep, I did. And I love it!

We had a very large amount of unused mirrors sitting in our storage room. I don't know what my deal is, but when I don't know what to buy, I always resort to wall mirrors. Any way, I tried to use a couple of them by stacking them on our dresser. Love, love.

Our lovely duvet cover and shams are from the "Sienna Paisley" bedding collection at Pottery Barn. EBay, baby. Half the price.

The velvet euro shams are from Target. I'm kind of obsessed with them.

I'm so proud of myself because I managed to make this bed skirt! Tutorial to come. Total cost: $14.

I got the lamp on super sale at TJ's. $18. There's a dent on the back of the shade..."So what?" is what I say to that.

Ah, these stools. I'd been looking for cute garden stools for several months, and then I came across these beauties at World Market. On sale. Sold!

Our child. Our very bored child.

The wall color is "Bay Sands" by Valspar. It's a shade lighter than the color in our bathroom. We don't have room for bedside tables (our door is the to right of the bed and almost touches it when it's open), so the lamp will eventually move to our guest room to make way for wall sconces. I love me some good wall sconces!

So that's the room. I feel like we did a lot with such a small space. I'm hoping to add some wall art to the wall that's on the left side of bed, but until then, we are fin-ished.

Hope that I'm not the only one who loves it! Have a great, great day.

P.S. 30 for 30 will return tomorrow!

Double P.S. Chances are, I'm linking this post to a couple of link parties which can be found HERE. Check them out!

Tiles and Croutons

Here is the latest of what's going on at our household...

Bryan made the announcement last night that he was going to start working on our bathroom. And so the mess took ensued and I've been trying to ignore the sounds of drills and saws ever since.

It's looking good though!

I also made homemade croutons today! My friend Alli's sweet mom gave me a few quick instructions, and I have to say, these are much better than any croutons I've ever bought at a store.

As any house of two knows, it's hard to finish a loaf of bread before it goes bad/stale (among other things). So, I took some of our stale bread, cut it into little cubes, placed it on a baking sheet, drizzled olive oil over the top and then sprinkled on garlic salt and italian seasoning. I baked them for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees. (Where in the heck is the degree sign on a computer keyboard? I'm not seeing it.) So easy!

I hope everyone has big/fun/productive and/or relaxing plans for Memorial Day Weekend! We are obviously planning to get a few things done (fingers crossed), but I'm hoping to relax and have a little fun too....maybe go see a movie and finish the book I just started reading. Firefly Lane, anyone? I heard it was good.

Speaking of books, I just finished the very popular (and recently movie-made) Water for Elephants. Love, love, love it. I had to read it in about a day because I didn't want to get a late fee at the library, and because my normal reading schedule was interfered with when I saw this:

...And just had to re-read all of the Hunger Games books again. I am so excited they are making them into movies!

Happy loooong weekend!

The Next Project

Well, due to some very windy weather this past weekend (I'm talking brown skies and dirt in your eyes), my intended project was postponed for a bit (hint hint--outside project!). Since I don't have any work to show as of right now, I thought I'd focus on a project that I literally cannot WAIT to do.

Our master bedroom is very....blah. That's the word that comes to mind when I think of it. And beige. The room is very, very beige. Since I spend a lot of time in our room, it's only natural that I would be sick of the beige, blank walls, ivory bedding, and brown furniture....so I'm very excited that we plan on mixing it up a little in the next few months. I've honestly put off decorating our room for the last year simple because I didn't know what to do. BUT, I've recently kind of found my "style" as far as home decor goes (light, airy, lots of whites, creams, blues, greens, updated traditional, blah, blah, blah....), so I'm ready to move forward (woo hoo!).

So, to get in the spirit of things, I decided to make an inspiration board to keep me going in the right direction. I tend to get overwhelmed when I decorate, so I'm thinking that this may help. Before I show you all of the lovely inspiration I dug up, I must first show you what I have to look at every day.

Bare and beige. Yeah. Boring.

Why yes, that is my flexi-nylon hamper that I've had since my freshmen year of college. I'm that cool.

And here is what I hope to be looking at in the near future....

A few fun notes: (we're doing bullets, people)

• The paint color in the top left is called "Camouflage" by Benjamin Moore. I am obsessed with this color and can't wait to get it on the walls.
• I'm obsessed with sunburst mirrors, that's all.
• The beautiful bedding is a duvet set from Pottery Barn. I love it. Maybe it's because it reminds me of the pillows in our living room which I'm also obsessed with. Coincidence? I think not.
• I'm thinking of hanging a large cluster of frames with some vintage botanical prints on the blank wall that you see right when you come in our room. Or maybe something else. That's still up in the air.
• We don't have room for bedside tables and lamps on either side of the bed so it's looking like we will be getting some pretty wall sconces! (The floor lamp has already been moved to the Guest Room)
• I'm also a little obsessed with smocked curtains, like the ones pictured above from World Market. Let's see if I end up getting them!
• A few light, but patterned fabrics are also a must somewhere in the room. I'm thinking stripes.
• I really hope this fits the description of calm, light, and airy....because if it doesn't, I probably need to start over.
• I said the word "obsessed" way too many times in the above list.

Well, that's it. I have no clue why I'm blogging right now. I have to be up in 5 hours to go to a prayer breakfast before work! Have a great and happy Wednesday, friends!!