Baby Quilt Fabric

Fabric in the mail always makes for a happy day.

I ordered these fabrics from fabric.com for Baby E's quilt. They are so cute!

Quilting isn't my usual creative outlet, but I decided when I was expecting Miss V that I wanted to make each of my kids a baby quilt. I made one for V using a Tumbler or Thimble pattern, and for being an amateur quilter, I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. I don't have a good close-up of the quilt, but here you can see a little of it with a three week old V resting on it. :) Ack! How has she gotten so big?

V's quilt is a mixture of pink, raspberry, cream, green, and taupe. The toile fabric has little lambs on it, which was a theme I used just a little bit in her room.

For our soon to arrive Miss E, I decided to go with fabrics in pink, cream, teal blue, and raspberry. There's also a very subtle bunny theme going on with some of Miss E's possessions, similar to the lamb theme I did for V. I was thrilled to find a fabric with all my colors in it, with some very tiny bunnies hanging onto balloons. Again, it's subtle, but I know it's there, and someday E will too. Just a little something extra to personalize her quilt and make it different from V's. Since the girls will eventually share a room, I wanted to make their quilts and things coordinate, but still have some differences, so they will each have their own personal touch in the room.

I still haven't decided what quilt pattern I'm going to use, which is probably a major quilting rule or something that I am now breaking. I keep pinning ideas on pinterest, but I haven't found "the one" just yet. It has to be something pretty simple because I am not super precise when cutting quilt pieces. I try! But it just never seems to come out all perfectly at the corners like I see on quilts made by more experienced quilters.

This fabric from Sarah Jane Studios is so cute. I love the little saying, "just stay little" that is repeated all over the fabric. What parent hasn't thought that at least once?

I'm mostly content with being a good-enough quilter, and hopefully my girls won't mind the imperfections, but just treasure their quilts as keepsakes from their babyhoods. I'm a poky quilter though, so I need to get a move-on with this project! Baby E will be here before I know it! :)

A Simple Spray Paint Project

For our chalkboard wall and family command center, I knew I wanted to find something cute we could use to hang up our keys.

But after a few trips to TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Homegoods, etc, I wasn't coming up with anything that really jumped out and screamed "BUY ME!"

So, eventually I found this little guy at Hobby Lobby.

I loved the key shape, and it was just the right length for the space, but that dark black with bits of rusty brown, was not going to show up against the black chalkboard paint.

I was sick of shopping, so I bought it anyway and figured I'd find a way to make it work.

When my hubby was painting the phone shelves, I quick grabbed the key hook thingy and he gave it a couple coats of white spray paint too.

Much better.

When spray painting something like metal, it's better to do several light coats of spray paint rather than one thick coat. You might get away with a thick coat of spray paint on something like wood, because it will probably absorb some of the paint, but on metal, it is just going to glob up or drip and give you little streaks where the paint runs. So go easy with that spray paint (this is hard for me because I just want to hurry up and get it done!) and make sure you let it dry thoroughly between coats.

Once our key hook was all painted and dry, we screwed it to the wall, gave the screw heads a dab of white paint, and TAH-DAH!

All done! I love how it turned out! I really debated about painting it a color, maybe a bright turquoise, but that would have required my fifth trip to Home Depot in one day, so I decided to start with white and see if I liked it, and I definitely do.

I forgot to mention that this key hook thingy was only $4! Thanks Hobby Lobby for running such great sales, especially since I was shopping rather unexpectedly and sans coupons. Otherwise, it would have been $8, which I still don't think is bad, but $4 is definitely better. I like cheap stuff.

No more misplaced keys, or keys on my counter.

I'm sure I've mentioned a few too many times how much I dislike that.

Plus it looks great with the rest of the items on our chalkboard wall. All the white accessories keep the black wall from being too overwhelming.

Now I just need to figure out how to be more fancy in my chalkboard art attempts. I can sew and I wield a fierce hot glue gun, but I cannot draw. Not even a straight line.

Maybe I can find a chalkboard stencil somewhere? Anybody have some tips for my crafty-but-definitely-not-artsy self? :)

Mother's Day, 2013 and the World's Best Sandwich Ever. For Reals.

We had a low-key and relaxing day for Mother's Day.

I'm so glad, because boy was this lady worn out after our long day in NYC! We slept in, skipped church (which I especially hate to do on holidays, but there was no way we could have managed it), and my sweet husband made pancakes for V and I. Mine were heart-shaped.

Then, we met the rest of my family at Cracker Barrel for a late lunch and came home to more visiting and eventually naps. Ahhh, there's nothing better than a good Sunday afternoon nap. V wiggled between the couch and my pregnant belly to come check on me. "Mama, you awwight?" She doesn't understand that mama actually likes to nap.

For dinner, my husband did more cooking (can you tell my mother's day mostly centered around food this year??), and made my favorite cream of potato soup and the best. sandwiches. ever.

No lie. These were seriously amazing. Bacon, provalone, sliced avocado, and sliced apple on a pretzel roll bun with a little bit of mayo, then warmed up in the oven for a few minutes just to make everything a little melty and more awesomer.

Ahh, looking at these pictures makes me want this meal again, pronto. Soooo good!

The somewhat picky toddler wanted nothing to do with a smaller sliced bread version of the sandwiches, but she happily tucked away two bowls of soup and some apple slices, so everyone was full and happy by the end of our meal.

I got the most gorgeous bouquet of flowers I think I've ever had. They remind me of our wedding flowers too, which makes me love them even more.

I also got a card, and a cool berry basket bowl we saw at Marshalls and reminded me of the much more expensive version from Anthopologie. I've been wanting one of these for a while. I think I'll put apples in it.

I am so so blessed to have these two in my life.

Curb Appeal: The 2013 Update

Here's what our house looked like when we bought it three years ago.

Yikes! It was pretty spectacularly horrible. And this is just the outside.

So after a while, we painted the shutters, the porch, and the awning. Then we trimmed those massive holly bushes waaaay back, ripped out some flower beds on the right side of the house, and planted some barn red mums on the left side. I blogged about all of that a while ago.

We loved the huge improvement it made.

But then things took a downward spin back in the fall when we converted from oil heat to natural gas and the gas company insisted on running the gas line right through my flower beds!

We had been wanting to re-do that flower bed anyway, because when we bought our house, the home inspector told us raised beds against the foundation were a bad idea because it increases the chance of termite damage. It was on the list of things to do, but kept getting pushed further down. So once we realized those beds would be torn up anyway, we decided to pull out the beds, and re-do them with some more permanent solutions.

And here's how things look right now!

We decided to put a flower bed back on the right side of the house. Having nothing there made that side look really empty, not to mention we were forever dealing with tall weeds growing up alongside the foundation in that spot.

The only plants in the flower beds right now are some small type of holly bush that we got for $15 each at Costco. I like that they'll be green all winter long. Our house's siding kind of looks like high-water pants to me, so I want to keep those flower beds filled up to hide the house's "ankles" a little bit. Another reason for adding back in the flower bed on the right side of the porch.

I really liked my red mums that I had before, but after they lost their flowers, they just looked like dead plants the rest of the year. Anyone know what can be done about that? Dead flowers are something I'm all too prone to having anyway, so the easier to grow, and long-lasting a plant is, the better.

Some other little things we did, were paint some parts of the gas line hook-up thingy that runs into our house. When the installers but it in back in the fall, they hooked up an enormous gray box with spidery arms coming out of it, right smack in front of my light yellow siding. It stuck out like crazy and looked horrible. Cold weather set in right after that, so I had all winter to contemplate possible ways to disguise it. Big bushes seemed like a good idea, but after three years of pruning our old holly bushes, my hubby was definitely hoping for some smaller, more low-maintenance plants. I finally decided (and yes, I did check with the guys who installed the gas line) to get some good exterior paint that matched our siding and paint the parts of the big gray gas thingy that stuck out past the bushes. It worked out really well and unless you're looking for it, I don't think it's really even noticeable anymore. Thank goodness!

See it sticking out there behind that bush? I painted the top part as well as the pipes that branched off of it. I didn't paint the parts that were just up against our foundation because they didn't stick out as much as the parts that were in front of the siding. Also, I am hoping by the end of the summer that the bushes fill in a little bit and disguise the gray box even more.

My old wine barrel pot is the only thing filled with some colorful flowers. I always stick to red flowers outside because it seems to bring out our red door and shutters.

The side of our house still needs some work. We've never even painted the shutters on that side. They're still brown almost three years after we painted the ones on the front red. What can I say, we don't really see this side of the house much, so they're kind of out of sight out of mind. We did plant some grass over here where it had gotten sparce, hence all the straw covering the seeds.

So, here's an updated before and after.

Before...

After!

Who agrees that my hubby needs to build me some nice chunky window boxes? I think that would help downplay the long narrow ranch look, and make things more cottage-y. What do you think?

Are you doing any outside projects now that spring has finally sprung?

Linking up to Inspire Me Please Weekend Blog Hop at House of Rose, and the Weekend Wrap-up Party at Tatertots and Jello.

New York City Family Day Trip

Saturday, my little sister graduated from college in New York City. Since we are only a few hours away, we decided to skip the pricey hotel room (everything is sooo much more expensive there) and just get up really early to be at the mid-morning graduation ceremony.

We got up suuuuper early and then hopped right in the car and were on our way.

 This crazy man loves to drive. I'm so thankful, because it is not something I enjoy at all. He was really excited for what seemed like the ultimate driving challenge: driving into Manhattan.

V was extremely well behaved the entire day. She's usually a pretty easy-going kid, but I knew a trip like this would be a challenge for any two year old, so I wasn't sure what to expect form her. She did get scolded briefly in the car on the ride there, and this is how she coped.

The graduation ceremony was held in Trinity Church in the business district of Manhattan. This is the church that was in the movie National Treasure. It had such incredible architecture! I was reminded of churches I had been in years ago in Europe. I'm just not used to seeing something this grand here in the U.S. We all enjoyed just sitting in the pew and looking around while we waited for the graduation to begin.

V enjoyed sitting with my mom and getting lots of grandparent attention.

Here's all the "kids." From left to right: My husband, Miss V, me, my sister, and my brother.

After the graduation was over, we stopped for a quick lunch, and then traveled uptown to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This was my third time at the Met, and I could seriously spend days and not see it all. It is such an incredible museum.

I love this open courtyard inside the building. You can get right up to the statues and there's tons of natural light from all the windows in the walls and ceiling.

V enjoyed having Auntie at her complete beck and call, so they held hands the whole way through the museum. So cute! I was afraid she'd get bored, since this is hardly a kid-friendly place, but she just enjoyed being with everyone and she and Auntie found lots to talk about in the paintings, like the colors they saw, and naming the various animals and their sounds, and of course she can spot a baby a mile away, so any piece of art with a baby in it was very interesting indeed.

We made a quick trip through the Egyptian art section (which usually is so not my thing), and I spotted this. I have no idea what it is, and didn't think to look at the description, but how gorgeous are all those shades of jade and turquoise! Is it weird that I want to diy this with paint chips or something? This is definitely being filed away for inspiration in a possible future project.

I was so tired at this point in the day! I think the bags under my eyes clearly say, "I got up at 4:30 this morning!" That's way too early for me!

After we finished at the Met, we parted ways with the rest of my family, who were going back to Brooklyn to help my sister pack up her apartment. We decided to take the bus as far as we could back downtown so we could get back to our parking garage. I highly recommend the bus if it is your first time visiting NYC. The subways are so confusing (not to mention pretty gross) if you're a newbie, but the bus (in my experience) is much more user friendly. I have found it to be cleaner and less crowded, not to mention you can see where you're going! It was raining buckets when we came out of the Met, but we made it to the bus less than a block away.

There's one bus that goes the whole way from the Met down 5th Avenue to 8th St, and another going uptown that runs along 6th Avenue. Word to the wise: they only accept coins and metro cards. No dollar bills. People in front and behind us were being turned away (in the rain!) for not having the correct form of payment. I'm so glad we already knew to be prepared with lots of quarters. Dollar coins are ok too.

We ended up in Soho after we got off the bus and the rain had stopped. I really liked this part of the city and would have loved to explore it a little if we'd had time. It was much quieter and looked to have lots of cute shops and restaurants.

After about 20 minutes of walking we realized we weren't nearly as close to our garage as we had thought (I need an iphone!) so we took a taxi the rest of the way. Somehow we ended up with the only cab driver in the city who didn't know his way around, but we eventually figured out how to tell him where we wanted to go, even though we weren't totally sure ourselves.

We finally hit the road again a little after six, and after stopping for a quick supper, got back at a not-too-horrible hour. V was already asleep (thank goodness!) and my husband and I could barely keep our eyes open long enough to unload the car.

It was such a long day, but made for a fun family outing, and it was great to see my sister graduate from college. I always forget how tedious it is to travel within New York City. I'm sure if you're used to it, it isn't bad, but when it's something you only do once a year, everything just seems to take so much longer than you think it will.

Have you ever been to NYC? Any tips for if we decide to go again in the future?

$14 Lantern-Style Chandelier Makeover and some Dining Room Pics

This is the tale of a sad, brassy light fixture that was given a new lease on life.

We picked up this little beauty at our local ReStore on a 50% off day, so we only paid $6! The electrical components were all in good shape, but she wasn't much to look at.

Most of the lights we looked at with this lantern style had metal braces between the glass panes that were soldered onto the glass, meaning that the glass was permanently attached to the brass parts and could not be removed. When we saw that this one had removable glass panes, we knew it would be a good candidate for a makeover with a can of ORB (oil rubbed bronze) spray paint.

This is what happens when two DIY dorks get a kid-free night at home alone...

SPRAYPAINT! (Can I still claim to be a normal and yet admit that this may be my favorite picture ever of my hubby and me?)

I'd seen a similar fixture online and had considered buying it, but had yet to pull the trigger. Lighting is so dang expensive!

We took all the pieces apart, and used painters tape to tape off the electrical components. Then we gave all the brass-colored parts (cord and all) several light coats of ORB.

Here's the finished product with our little DIY'd light fixture!

I like it! And it was only a total cost of $14! Six bucks for the light fixture and about eight for the can of ORB.

I think it really adds a nice dose of vintage charm to our dining room.

Excuse the wrinkled tablecloth, but unless your name is Better Homes and Gardens and you want to put my home in your magazine, I'm not gonna iron for you. ;)



Here's a little side-by-side shot of the light fixture I'd been eyeing online, and our DIY'd version.

I'd say it's pretty much an exact match!

Love it!

Linking up to:

Inspire Me Please Blog Hop at House of Rose

Tatertots and Jello Weekend Wrap Up

Thrifty Decor Chick's Before and After Party

Family Command Center and Chalkboard Wall

I am so so excited about our new family command center and chalkboard wall!

What's a family command center? Each one is different, depending on the family's needs, space, and preferences, but for us, it is a place to sort mail, manage schedules, paperwork, charge phones, and store keys.

And all of this in a tiny 42" space behind a door!

One of the (only) disadvantages to a house with an open floor plan and lots of windows is that there is very little wall space. Add to this, we have no real entryway, so there's nowhere for me to set a small table or some cubbies that might help organize all those little things that so often end up piled on kitchen counters.

Then I saw this post on pinterest, and I knew I had found a solution to some of our organizing problems!

We have a small space between the back door in our kitchen (to the left) and the doorway to our basement stairs (on the right). I've always kept my calendar hanging on this wall, but never did anything more to take advantage of this small, but valuable area in our home.

I showed my husband the picture from pinterest, and he agreed we could come up with something similar. We made a list of all the things we would like this space to store. Then we shopped/built the key players.

First, is this mail organizer from Home Goods. Now we have somewhere to put mail that needs to be dealt with, as well as a small cork board for notes and lists. I think I will put my list of emergency contacts here too.

Next, we brainstormed ideas for storing our home phone, as well as a place to charge our cell phones. This one was hard to figure out. We needed whatever we used to be short enough to fit into about a 12" length of space on the wall, as well as be no more than 4" deep, so it would not extend beyond the doorstop on the baseboard, which would make it likely to get banged up every time we opened the door.

We finally decided two small shelves were the best option, but the only ones we could find in that size were very ornate, so building shelves got added to the hubby's to do list. He came up with the design himself, and did a great job. I love how they turned out.

Being the techy/handy one in this relationship, it was my husband's idea to add outlets and a phone jack above the shelves, so that we could plug in the phone and chargers without having a cord running from an outlet several feet away. I love how the black outlet covers (also painted with chalkboard paint) and black cords kind of visually disappear into the wall. And I really love that we now have a space off the kitchen counters for the home phone as well as the cell phone chargers! Plus, it's high up enough to be out of the reach of little hands who would love to find a stray cell phone. Hopefully we will spend less time trying to locate missing phones!

This USB charging outlet is my hubby's favorite part of the project. He has been looking for an excuse to get one for a while, and this is the perfect place for it. Now we have a handy spot for charging those cell phones!

My husband is using some of the extra space to store his wallet, something else that I often found in random places around my house, but most often on my kitchen counter. Along with his....

KEYS! Which now also have a home on our family command center wall. Can you tell I'm a little obsessive about keeping non-kitcheny things off my counters? It may or may not be a source of tense words all too often around here. But not any longer, because now everything has a home! That's usually the problem with clutter, isn't it? Some things are just hard to find a permanent spot for. I think we've solved that problem for a few of those items with this family command center idea. I wish we'd done this ages ago!

The key hook is metal and from Hobby Lobby. It was black-ish brown when I bought it, so we spray painted it white so that it would show up against the chalkboard wall.

The chalkboard wall portion of this idea is something I've been wanting to do for quite a while, but again, felt like I just didn't have the right spot for it in our little house. Shortly before I decided on the idea of using this space for a family command center, I started eyeing it up as a potential location for a chalkboard wall. V looooves drawing and doing anything artsy, so I knew she'd love a space like this where she could freely doodle at a moment's notice.

I worried about having so much black on the wall, fearing it would make that corner of our kitchen feel smaller. Once we decided on using this wall for our family command center, I knew I could keep the chalkboard wall from feeling too heavy by using a lot of white accents to brighten things up and give the eye a place to "rest" from all the darkness of the black chalkboard paint.

The fabric bunting is leftover from V's first birthday party. I cut a piece off the original, much longer banner, and attached it to the wall with thumb tacks. It gave this otherwise all black and white wall a much needed shot of color.

Here's the view from around the corner in the kitchen.

I feel like a much more organized person just looking at this wall. So I stare at it.


A lot. :)

And V has been having so much fun being the little artist.

And just because we all enjoy a good before and after...

Before. And....

After!

Linking up to....

With:

Young House Love

Bower Power

Sparkle Meets Pop

Red Bird Blue

Also linking up to:

 Inspire Me Please Weekend Blog Hop with House of Rose

Tatertots and Jello Weekend Wrap-up

Thrifty Decor Chick's Before and After Party