Howie's Grey & Navy Nursery

After posting all of our house listing photos I realized that there were several rooms I never did a full post about.  Sadly Mr. H's room is one of them!  I'm not sure how it got missed because I even had this post done in draft.  Better late than never, right?

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Poor Baby H has the smallest of our 3 bedrooms.  The room measures in at just 9 x 11.  In the past we always used this room as a guest room and I loved knowing that a full size bed could fit in the space.  (You can view pictures of the guest room here.)  This room is right across from Davis's room so I wanted the spaces to tie in together as much as possible without them 'matching'.  I liked the colors in Davis's room but I knew that they were not right for Howie.  Early on I decided I wanted to use navy, but after deciding that the rooms should coordinate I opted for grey on grey walls with aqua and navy accents.

The stripes on the walls were done using the time-tested flat/semi-gloss method where you use the same color paint in 2 different sheens and paint them in stripes.  The stripes were just enough to give the room some interest and help the room feel a little larger.  

The crib is the same one we used with our older son.  It was handmade by my dad.  The wooden tree mobile was a first Christmas present (because what do you buy a 6 week old for Christmas?) and the deer head was a DIY left over from his first birthday.  The crib blanket can be found here.  

One thing we did that helped tie the two rooms together was buy curtains of the same pattern in different colors.  The curtains are Waverly's Lovely Lattice.  The artwork on the right is a painting we bought at an antique store in Limmerick Ireland (which seemed right considering we found out we were pregnant while overseas).  The painting on the bottom left came from Chris's grandparents and the coins in the top frame are leftover Euros.

One thing that I don't have pictured here (I need to dig it out) is our changing table.  The room is too small to accommodate the chair, dresser, and crib so the closet doors were removed and the dresser sat inside of there.  Chris built a changing table that was anchored into the wall and had a slide out changing tray.  It was very cool!  

Even though I went into designing this room with the idea that the two rooms should coordinate they have really different 'feels'.  This room is calm and relaxing where as Davis's room is energetic and playful.  I used the exact same grey and aqua in both rooms but the accent colors really helped direct the tone of each space.  When I was pregnant I made a comment to Sarah that I thought Howie's room would be a place he would go to as a retreat to rest where as Davis's room would be a place he would go to retreat and create.  I have found both statements to be true!  Do you feel like your environment influences you or that you influence your house?  Or both?

Davis's Gray, Green, and Mint Toddler Room

When we found out we were pregnant with little boy #2 we knew that changes would have to be made to our oldest bumpkins room.  The boys are 2.5 years apart but Davis was still securely sleeping in his crib.  I credit this in large part to the fact that our crib was handmade and has a very 'large' presence.  I honestly don't think that the idea ever crossed his mind that he could get out of it! I knew that the crib would be needed for our newest baby, but I'm a sentimentalist and couldn't bear the thought of 'taking it away' from Davis.  I loved decorating his nursery and suddenly it seemed that it wasn't just moving him from the crib, it was redoing his whole room.  It didn't end up being a whole room redo, but we did make some changes in there that have worked really well as we've gotten into the toddler years, and if I'm honest, I actually love his room more now than I did as a nursery.  I never did a nursery post of his room on this blog but we were really honored that Apartment Therapy picked it as a feature on their website.  You can see pictures of the nursery at this link.

Green, gray, and mint kids room.

 Most of the room stayed the same but the crib was replaced with an antique toddler bed.  The bed was made by my great-great-great grandfather in 1885 for his twin sons.  The bed is quite sturdy and has been updated with a modern mattress.  We feel so blessed that our son gets to have such a unique piece in his room.  (This bed has been used by many people in our family including one of my brothers.)

Antique toddler bed, made in 1885

The dresser was a Craigslist find.  I answered an ad with no photos and was taken to an old man's attic.  It wasn't at all what I was envisioning and I have debated about replacing it many times.  But Chris really loved it and after we changed the room into a 'big boy' room it seemed to fit in so much better.  I do think that at some point the drawer fronts will be repainted white again. 

The boys rooms are close to each other so we thought it would be nice to try and give them a bit of a flow.  We ended up finding the Waverly Lovely Lattice curtain panels in both navy and green.  

The art work above the bed contains a vintage camera (a nod to our artwork), a painting aquired through my senior art show painted by a fellow student, 2 vintage prints, and a Fleetwood Mac record (Bare Trees).  

The changing table was taken out and replaced with a table and chairs.  I honestly dreamed of having an art station in this room before he was even born.  I love having all of his masterpieces around our house.

Kids art station

We live in an older ranch house.  That means that we don't have fun nooks or extra closets.  This closet has turned into a favorite spot in our house that is functional and fun.  Shortly after our son was born Chris installed these shelves into a shallow recess in the closet.  They have served us very well (this kid is a massive reader).  The pillow was something I made for Davis that ended up in here.  I used silver craft paint and carved a stamp from a potato and willy-nilly stamped the walls.  We have spent many moments together in here snuggling, reading books, and laughing.  What a wonderful little spot it has turned out to be.

How did you decorate your kids rooms?  Did you know exactly what you would do before you started or did it evolve over time?

Nursery Project: Chandelier

Although I had originally intended to post my nursery projects as I was doing them clearly that did not happen :)  BUT I still have the pictures on my computer so it seems silly for me not to go ahead with them.  Today I'm going to show one of the easiest (and most fun) projects I completed for D's room, the chandelier.

I debated whether or not to do a fun color on the light fixture or whether I should do something more neutral (like silver) for when we go to resell the house.  In the end I decided that I live here now and I might as well enjoy where I live, so I picked up a can of kelly green spray paint and went to town!  I found this little chandelier at the ReStore (I LOVE the ReStore) for $10.  Total this project cost around $15.

This is what I started with:

As you can see one of the white plastic 'candle' sleeves was missing.  So I guess I did spend a little more on this project because I bought all new sleeves at Lowe's, I don't remember specifically how much they were (such it is when you're posting this 9 months after the fact...) but I remember that they came in packs of two and were in the lighting department under the ceiling fans (in case you're on the hunt as well). 

Before I started spray painting I wiped the chandelier down with a damp rag and then lightly sanded the entire fixture.  After I sanded I did another wipe down and then taped off all of the bulb holes (not sure what the technical term for that is!) and the end wires. 

As you can see I chose a bright green Krylon fusion paint.  It worked wonderful.  Here is a picture after (I believe) 1 coat:

After another 2 thin coats I slipped the new sleeves on it and the hubster installed it in our nursery!

Here's the finished product in (almost) all his glory (since he's missing a bulb - oops!):



I am SO glad that I ended up doing the green on this fixture.  Everytime I look up at it it makes me smile.  I often catch my little dude looking up at it too (I'm sure he's just checking out the shape and the contrast against the ceiling) and that makes me happy.  One thing I have decided (and I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before) is when it comes time to change out the bulbs I'm going to switch them out for round vanity bulbs instead of the candle ones that are in there now.  I think it will just make it a bit more mod and whimsical.

I'll be back later with more of our nursery projects and then once those have all been shown I'll showcase the finished product (which means I need to finish one more thing and take some more pictures - it never ends!).

Hope you're all having a great day!





Nursery Project: Dresser

Sick of hearing about the nursery?  Sorry, but too bad.  I've been working on a bunch of nursery/baby related projects lately and have a bunch of stuff almost ready to share - but not quite yet!  I promise to try and do some event planning posts soon!

My plan for the nursery included finding an old dresser and painting it in the green accent color we are using.  I searched Craigslist every day and scoured every local thrift store regularly in search of the perfect dresser (in the price I was willing to pay).  I was looking for an older, short dresser that needed a little TLC that I could work some magic on.  In the back of my head I was looking for a dresser similar to the one in our guest room:

One day I came across an ad on Craigslist by a guy who said he had multiple dressers and wanted them gone.  The ad had no pics but said to email for more details, so I did.  After a week or so I ended up getting a couple of photos of the dressers the guy had.  I wasn't sold on any of them 100% but Chris liked one of them so I went over to look at it...especially because they guy told me it was only $30!

When I got to the man's house it turns out he was well into his 70's and was just the absolute sweetest old man!  He was rehabbing his house getting it ready to sell later this year so he could get married.  While I was there he told me all about his daughter and her husband (who are the same age as Chris and I) and even pulled out their picture in his wallet to show me.  The dresser isn't at all what I was looking for, it is WAY more modern than what I had in mind, but it was in great shape, was solid wood, and that old man won me over!  So here's a cell phone picture that shows the before:

One of the reasons I wasn't sold on this piece is that I was wanting a short dresser to use as a changing table, as you can see this is a tall dresser.  Or so it appears.  The top piece of the dresser (where the 4 white drawers are) is actually a seperate piece that can be placed on top of the lower drawers or used seperatly.  We're not sure how we're going to use it yet, but isn't that neat?  Since the dresser was overall in good shape with the exceptions of the drawers which needed a new coat of paint, and the inside of them which had some crayon on them we decided to not paint the entire piece. 

Here's what we did:

Yep, I just painted the drawer fronts with the green accent paint and lined them with this super fun wrapping paper I found at Target!  When I saw that paper I thought it was perfect, but then it ended up being just $0.87 a roll - that's when I knew it was destiny!

So now I am really loving the dresser, but am still very concerned that the room is going to look like a mish-mash of random stuff pulled together. For now this is all I'm going to show on the dresser, but once we pull the rest of the dresser upstairs and more of the details start coming together you'll see more details of it (I actually haven't even put the whole thing together yet since I brought the drawers upstairs to work on and the rest of it is downstairs waiting for the room to get ready for it).

Nursery Planning II

Just popping in today to share two things about the nursery. 

1)  I bought the fabrics for the nursery.  I've decided to take on the crib bedding myself (with some help of course!).  As I shared in the previous nursery post I am going to be using grey, aqua, and green for the room.  Here are the fabrics I've purchased:

The grey/green fabric will be used for the crib bumper and the aqua will be used for the skirt and the inside of the bumper.  I plan on adding aqua ties to the grey bumper (which hopefully will also have a white trim).  The aqua skirt will have a green ribbon or ric rac trim.  Depending on how the bedding goes I may consider making curtains as well.  But we'll see :)  Here are some links to bedding patterns that I've found online 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

2)  Over the weekend my baby sister and I started this project and then I finished it after she left.  Since you get so many baby clothes in the beginning (of all different sizes) I decided to make some size dividers to hang in the closet.  They turned out just adorable (if I say so myself!).  Check them out:

This project costs less than $10 and 2 hours to complete (including drying time).  We painted the top with a silver acrylic paint then glued the green paper on the bottom with rubber cement.  The ribbons are simply tied around the hangers and the numbers are just scrapbooking stickers.  I already had the paint, but I purchased the hangers (47 cents each), ribbon ($1/roll), paper (50 cents for 3 sheets) and the number stickers ($3).  I plan on painting the inside of the closet aqua - I think this will be a very cute addition!

Nursery Inspiration & Baby News

I'll start with the baby news because I'm just that excited -

We're having a BOY!

YAY!

So now that we know what we're having (and we wrap up a couple of other projects around here) we can start on the nursery!  I have tossed around several different color schemes, originally thinking of yellow and grey.  As time wore on I still loved the idea of the grey but wasn't loving the yellow in fear that the room may seem too modern.  (Not sure why I was feeling that way about those colors, but I was).  A couple of months ago we were out and about and I spotted a line of clothes at Carters that are just TOO cute.  So last weekend we went out to start our registry and bought one of the little outfits.  That same day I had been out and about and found a scrapbook 'paper' on sale for 50 cents that I grabbed up.  It is actually a vinyl cutout of the alphabet in a fun, punchy aqua color.  For 50 cents I figured I could frame it up as an accent piece or not use it at all.  And here are those two items:

After looking at these items and some various paint chips taped to the wall we've decided to go with a light grey color on the bottom portion of the wall with an aqua at the top.  We plan on doing a tall chair rail (roughly 2 feet from the top of the ceiling) that will seperate the two colors.  As an accent we'll use a fun kelly green color.  Here is a photo including the paint chips:

I hope that it doesn't come across too babyish.  I plan on finding a dresser and painting it the green and also having bedding that includes all three colors.  Although at this point the bedding seems to be very elusive.  I'd LOVE to find bedding with some sort of star in it.  I don't want to go all out with stars, but I do think it could be a fun pattern accent.  I'm not sure why, but this has been my favorite bedding photo for a long time now (even before I started liking the stars):

I can't find any bedding that is even close to something I would consider and would LOVE to have it made (which is my hope) but at this point that also seems elusive as I can't locate any fabrics!  I found this crib sheet via Serena & Lily that may end up being used, but I do wish I could find a kelly green star print instead of the more lime color that is so popular.

And that's what all I'm thinking of right now for our little Mister's room.  If you see any bedding or fabric that fits what I'm looking for make sure and send it my way!

Nursery Ideas

Back when we were expecting my nephew to be born I did a blog about some nurseries that I found that I liked.  You can check that out here. 

Now that we're expecting our own small fry soon my head is filled with ideas about what to fill our baby's first room with.  While I've got some ideas that I'm for sure going to use I thought I'd share some photos of nurseries I've found that I really like.  I LOVE the all white nursery, sadly hubster doesn't feel the same.  (But to see photos of my all time favorite nursery be sure and check out Wren's nursery by Holly at Life in the Fun Lane.)  Here are some all white rooms that I adore...

You'll have to forgive me in advance, but I will for sure be posting more nursery inspirations in the future.  I'll also share some of the changes happening around Casa Weseloh as we arrange stuff for the big arrival.