Baseboards and New Shelves- Living Room

Here are some before and afters with baseboards finally installed. I decided I can do one room at a time, so first up- the living room.

 A way before shot. I took this during our home inspection- This is a fun reminder of how far it's come!

 After painting walls

After putting up pictures

 New baseboards installed! Yay. Cameron sprayed them before installing which was a huge time saver. Also, I primed and painted the window casing and window seat. All the trim is BM Advance in white dove.

Some of the other changes I've done in the living room are a new family picture (thanks to my Dad for taking it!) up there in the frame, plant, and yellow throw. The yellow throw makes me smile every time I see it. It's so cheerful! I think I need more yellow things. I picked that up from home goods. The plant is a fiddle leaf from Home Depot. I've been wanting one forever but never saw them at Lowes where I normally go. I toyed with buying a fake one for practicality (I hear they are hard to grow) but the faux ones that look real are $250. I was walking through plants at the Home Depot one day and saw the real deal for $16 on sale!! Score! I figure I (or the kids) could kill a lot of them before it would add up to the fake for $250.

 Here is a good floor picture. This is most accurate to what they look like in real life. You can get a peak at my new shelves in the mirror.

 Here is the before for the shelves. Sorry I forgot to get a true before! Cameron started with middle shelf brackets. The unfinished board isn't attached, we just put it up there to make sure everything was level.

After. The shelves are 2x10x10's cut in half. Cameron sanded them and I stained and polyed them. I already had some Minwax dark walnut which matched the floors. Brackets went up first, then shelves. Brackets are from home depot. Oh and I had to move my imac upstairs since Cruz now has spelling homework on the computer. Crazy!

I'm also excited I finally get to do more seasonal decorating because I have shelves. Summer's not over but I was too excited and decorated for fall with a pumpkin, acorn, and pine cones.

Also Cam did a good job with baseboards here. See that intake vent? He carved the baseboard around it. I think it turned out awesome.

Next week dining room pictures... should give you a better view of baseboards since there isn't any furniture in there!!

Goodbye Purple Walls

We finally finished the walls and ceiling in the boys room. It's so much nicer in their room. Pictures don't really do it justice. Their walls were dirrtty!

Ahh nice smooth ceiling and clean walls.

Living Room Updates

 Let's play the spot the differences game! My kids love that one.

Did you guess it? :) We added some woven shades on the windows a few months ago. And over the break I finally filled in those last empty picture frames. I will tell you, if you want people to talk about what's on your wall just leave some empty picture frames up. I think 90% of the people who come in our house commented on them.  

 Here's where I'm happy I have a little drawing experience. I took some old paper from a drawing class and drew a botanical print from a book I have (see below) with some permanent marker. The book is 11x14 and the image size I needed was 12x16- otherwise I probably would have just cut out the print.

 image from here.

The other frame was filled with a Sacred Grove print. It's hard to find good LDS art for little money. But I do like this print and it was inexpensive. Maybe I'll have to paint some of my own someday...

Noelle's Nursery

Welcome to Noelle's room! Here is how it's looking now. It's a happy place for me to be because it's pretty much the only room in our entire house that is always clean. I love that!

Just for fun, here is a picture of this room from the previous owners mls listing. It makes me realize what a big difference small things like hanging your curtains the right way can make.

 You may remember all I had done in here before was the relaxed shade. I added blackout curtains and sewed on the pink pom pom trim. Notice the finished window bench! I picked up the Nate Berkus fabric on the bench from Joann's on sale for only $8 a yard! We wrapped it over 2 inch foam and added a layer of batting, then fabric, and stapled it to a board.

 This is the dresser we painted in this post . Above is the painting the boys did for her. I think it turned out great! To make it, the boys worked on the red underneath first. After it dried, I gave them yellow, pink, and they mixed some grayish purple. I had to restrain myself but I didn't touch it- it's all their art! It turned out nice and abstract but I'm happy it goes with her room and has some meaning too.

Her crib is a Baby Mod crib from Walmart! I love it. I didn't do any decorating around the crib because dangling mobiles and even frames on the wall make me uneasy to have right next to her. It looks a little bare but I'd rather be safe than sorry!

And last, a picture of the little lady herself... snoozing away...

Finished ceilings and new fixtures in the den/kitchen

It feels good we are making some progress in an area of our house that was in bad shape for a long time. We removed the popcorn ceilings and were stuck there for a while.

We sanded, primed, and painted the ceiling and painted the walls too. It really motivated us to get it all done once we got the new ceiling fan and light.

Here are some before pictures and progress shots.

 Before

 Progress- Fan is a Casablanca Trident.  It works great and is much more our style.

 Before

 

 Progress- Pendant is from Ballard Design and is the Tours 4 Light Pendant. You can see in this picture we didn't quite finish painting the walls. We ran out of paint and need to grab more. The pink is the previous color and we covered it with BM white dove. Ceiling color is BM chantilly lace.

 Before

Yay for Progress!

Baby Nursery- White trim and a shade

We are expecting a baby girl in November which means our guest room will turn into the baby's room. Even though I have zero energy this pregnancy, I've managed to get a few projects for her room done (definitely some nesting kicking in). I painted the trim in the room from oak to white. The difference is amazing.

Before

Current. Sorry it's super hard to get a decent picture of this room because it's tiny!

I also made the shade. It's a relaxed roman shade. Right now it's just faux because we have a room darkening roller shade under it. I have intentions of making it a real movable roman shade eventually once she is big enough to know not to play with the cords. So it's just for looks now but I'm happy with the fun pattern it brings in the room. Fabric is from Tonic Living, I love that store! And in case anyone is interested I followed this tutorial mostly but instead of using glue I sewed it so I could covert it later.

Hopefully, I'll be able to finish all my other plans for this room before she makes an appearance :) Here's whats on the list:

• Set up new crib (LONG story,  but my old crib got recalled in 2010 and amazingly after 2 hours on the phone and an hour in the store I was able to return it for a full refund! Time well spent!) 
• Paint old dresser. The new crib is white so I want to paint the dresser we have white to match. 
• The carpet in the this room is so worn and yucky. Replacing the carpet is not in the budget so I'm going to cover it with an area rug for now. 
• DIY a starburst mirror.
• Have the boys paint a picture for hanging above the dresser. We'll see how that goes :) 

Filling a big empty wall on a budget

Update: Check out my new site Shapingthenest.com for an updated version of this post. I added lots of info on how to make your wall budget friendly!


One of my favorite things to do till fill an empty wall is to do a gallery wall of pictures. As I mentioned last week I had plans to do that behind our sofa.

Here are the results:

Obviously, I have a few more frames to fill with prints but I'm happy with the arrangement. And I got the new lamps I needed too. I love them so far. They on sale for much cheaper in the store but I got them here.

And a close up. You may see that something on my mirror. Yes, those are Army men. Cruz added his own little touch and I couldn't take them down yet.

Normally, my method for gallery walls is to cut out several scrap pieces of paper the same size of the frames. Then I arrange them on the wall using tape. It's very forgiving because you can arrange a bunch and there are no holes in the wall. After you like the design, hang your frames right over the paper. It's easy!

This time around though, my frames are way bigger and it would have taken a ton of paper to use the method above.  So I hung as I went. It was difficult. There are lots of different ways to hang a gallery wall. But, I do have a few tips that have worked for me on making it look put together. These are for if you do the random frame method like me.

#1 Hang your biggest frames toward the center of your arrangement. Smaller ones on the outside.
#2 Balance. It's hard to describe exactly how to do that as a lot time you just have to use your own intuition.
#3 Find an inspiration picture.
#4 Space your frames somewhat evenly.
#5 Go for a theme.

Obviously, none of those are hard fast rules but it's a good starting point to work from. 

Here's another arrangement I did at our old house.

And some of my favorite inspiration.

 
 The inspiration for the arrangement in our first house. Source


A formal arrangement. Source

 

A great way to disguise a TV a bit. Source

Decorating the living room- and my take on decorating in general.

We still have another ceiling in the den to remove popcorn in and paint walls before we move on to new wood floors in the living, dining, and den area. I'm super excited. Even though the living room isn't finished, I plan on decorating in there a little bit. It will be so nice to have one room semi put together while we tackle other projects.

Decorating is the fun part for me.  Decorating is interesting because it is totally personal and what one person loves another person will hate. There are so many styles.

When it comes to decorating, I naturally would love to have really nice stuff. BUT we have a budget and most important of all we have boys. Ours are very active and it would be totally ridiculous to go out and buy an expensive couch or chair . So I'm still having fun decorating but everything I buy has to be cheap, washable (at least somewhat), and hard to break.

So on to the living room. Here's the plans so far now that all the furniture is settled back in.

First step, is to put up a gallery wall full of pictures perhaps? I also bought this sweet set of antlers months ago on a flash sale site. They are going to be incorporated somehow too.

Also, you may have noticed from the pictures this room has no overhead lighting. Because of that lamps are a must have! I've been on the hunt for a pair that are not glass or ceramic because as mentioned above, I don't want to worry about them breaking.

Lastly, I'm hoping to add window treatments. I'm thinking shades for the bay window, and a curtain/ shade mix for the dining room window.