iluvit iluvit iluvit

Look what was installed yesterday.

I love it.  My husband loves it.  He actually told me that this room is really starting to develop some character!  Ah, so proud.  We do have quite a few rooms with "builder basic" qualities, but I have just known that it will take time to put our personalized touches on everything.  I don't think Byron has quite the same vision (or does quite the same research) that I do, but it really made me feel like I did something good when I saw how much he liked it.  My personal style dwells somewhere between girly and modern, so I'm glad when I can find something we both like.  The room is still just a basic shell - I just can't wait for it all to come together.
Speaking of coming together, here is another project that will soon be in the works.  I had previously purchased Byron a rocking chair from IKEA (that I can't seem to find online - maybe they don't make it anymore?).  It had been in our room, but I moved it into the nursery and I love it.  I am thinking about making cushion covers for it, so to test it out I just draped the test fabric around it.  Here is what it could potentially look like.

I think the scale of the chair looks super short in this picture, but I swear it's adult sized.  And the black pillow came with our living room couch, but it is the perfect size for the chair, and I think the pattern coordinates, too.  I envision this corner with a floor lamp, a side table, an ottoman, and a basket for toys and books.  I just have to get up the guts to cut the fabric and make the covers.  I've never done it before, but I'm sure I'll be able to figure it out.
I am hoping for some progress on the dresser this weekend.  I know I keep bringing it up even though no work has started on it.  Byron has a pretty busy week this week, but I did hear him tell me it's one of his next projects in line.  As long as it gets done sometime in the next 11 or so weeks, I'm sure we'll be fine!

Problem Solver

Let me tell you a little story.  You are the main character who has come to my house for a visit, and I am the hostess. We are having a fabulous time.  I am providing an endless supply of fabulous food and drink.  After several hours, you need to excuse yourself to use the facilities.  Upon completing your business and washing your hands, your fabulous time comes to an end with the awkwardly placed hand towels.  Wop wop.  That is the sad ending to my story.  I know, I know, I should have been a writer!  Anyway, here are the pictures to illustrate my story.

So here's what happens in the non-fiction version.  You wash your hands, then they either drip all over the floor and toilet in order for you to dry them, or they have to drip dry forever before you reach for the towel.  The reason behind this is that we hung the hand towels on the regular towel bar, because we replaced the towel bar with the hooks you may remember from this post.  (Note:  this picture is from the master bath.  The 'story' takes place in the hall bath.  The same hooks were installed both places.)  I finally realized how annoying it was, so on a recent trip to Lowe's, on our anniversary no less, we solved the problem.  And a few screws later, we now have this.

I feel kind of weird saying this, but I love the result.  I don't have to drip my hands across the entire bathroom in order to dry them off.  And I think the little holder that we picked out is so cute.  We did see several toilet paper holders that looked similar, but I assure you, this was meant for hand towels.  On second thought, would I care if it were a TP holder if it did the trick?  Probably not.

Anyway...that's the end of that story.  We do have another little bathroom problem and solution that cropped up over the weekend, but we are in the middle of waiting for some warranty drywall repair on our home and want to do ALL the touch up paint at once, so I'm saving that project for next week.  Until next time, look forward to more adventures in bathrooming!

I Forgot to Mention...

Kim over at Newly Woodwards mentioned my alphabet blocks a week or two ago.  Head on over and check out all her amazing projects.  She is in the middle of home renovation, and I must say, it looks great!  Thanks to Kim for mentioning my project.

Nursery Update - Paint, Crib, and Blinds

So I realize that I have left everyone hanging on the progress of the nursery, which, admittedly, hasn't been a ton.  But we have done some of the foundational work.  The "before" shot of the room was an empty blue box, later transformed with the neutral paint.

That was the process of going from blue, to primed, to painted.  Byron did the whole thing, pretty much because he wouldn't let me come anywhere near the paint.  Even though we did get no VOC paint and it should have been fine, he still did it all.  The strange thing is that whenever other people are doing projects, I get super antsy to join in.  I was nearly beside myself the whole time trying to figure out what to do.  Somehow I managed.
One fun thing I wanted to point out is that we used magnetic primer underneath the window, just for a little something fun (that's what the black stuff was).  Byron was definitely skeptical, and I was a little worried that we wouldn't be able to cover the black with such a light topcoat, but if it didn't work, we were only out the cost.  Fortunately, it works! Byron became a believer, and hopefully it will serve as a fun little treat for our little one.
After we removed all the tape and put away all the tools, we ordered this crib.  I had my eye on it for awhile.  I love how old fashioned it looks, and even though it might be a tad girly, I ordered it in a more masculine black.  It came within the week and it is perfect.
Finally, we hung blinds in the room.  I am a curtain girl at heart, but we learned from experience when this was set up as a guest room that there is a certain time in the afternoon where the sun peeks through and you can't hide it with curtains no matter how hard you try.  Well, you can, but it involves taping the curtain to the wall.  Classy, we know.  So blinds were a necessity.  The first two options we tried weren't the right size, but the third time was the charm.  We got these from Target, which only cost about $16.  I wasn't the smartest when we hung them, so we did end up with a few too many holes in the window frame, but fortunately you can't see our mistakes.
And with the paint done, the crib put together, and the blinds installed, the room now looks like this.

The curtain isn't really a curtain - I just clipped one of my inspiration fabrics up to the rod to see if I liked it.  And I do. But, I don't have enough to make two floor length curtains (my favorite).  So I could either do one panel, and always have it open to the side, or I could do two panels, but not have them be floor length.  I think there is enough to make them just longer than the bottom of the sill.  I hope.  Any advice?  I'm all ears.  I do have the other fabric that I could use for curtains, and I think I might have enough of that to make two panels.  So we'll see what I end up with.
The next project for the room will be to install this light fixture, which I just ordered today.  I saw it in a master bath/master closet redo here and I loved it.  It is just what I was looking for locally but wasn't finding anything.  It should hopefully be here next week, but it is something that we might have to lure some friends over to help us (and by us I mean Byron) hard wire it in.  Don't everyone call us at once, now.
We still have to start working on the dresser, and after that, I'm a little at a loss.  I am scouring the ends of the internet for inspiration and ideas, and I know everything will come together eventually.  And if it isn't all in place on day one, I'm pretty confident the little guy won't notice it anyway.

3 Years

Today is our anniversary - we have been married for three years.  Somehow the time has flown by and yet it seems like we've been together forever!
Our plans are low key tonight, but still special nonetheless.  Just the way I like it!

Purge #4

Final edition of the 2011 challenge.
Last time, I made it 75% to my goal, but if you remember, I didn't know where else I was going to find the remaining items to get rid of.  Well, it turns out, it was all just a matter of where to look.  Because, my friends, as soon as I looked under the bathroom sink, I hit the hoarder mother lode.  take a look for yourself.  (Note:  All products were living under the bathroom sink, so whereas normally I would count empty bottles as trash, these are considered possessions. Second note:  In my defense, some of them weren't completely empty, just no longer needed.  I feel better.)

And now for the breakdown:

• 2 empty bottles of baby powder
• 1 half empty curl spritzer
• 1 empty bottle of saline solution
• Half empty lotions and cremes, including 1 Nair (yuck!), 1 tanning lotion, 1 suntan lotion, and 1 facial moisturizer
• 1 (gross) shower basket
• 5 various applicators and utensils
• 1 bottle of nail adhesive
• 1 conference pin (yes, found under the sink as well)
• 9 empty makeup containers
• 1 old flat iron
• 1 plastic toiletry bag

And there it is.  And there it went.  As soon as I snapped the picture, it all went into the trash.  I'm going to clean up the straightener and donate it to Goodwill, and I am going to take the empty makeup cases back to Mac to be recycled, but everything else bit the dust in a matter of seconds.
This purge is the most embarrassing, by far.  I essentially was storing trash in my living space.  First lesson for today - do not do this again.  Ever.  The total for today is 27, bringing my GRAND total to 102 items.  I surpassed the 100, and it didn't kill me.  In fact, if I can be honest here, I found most of these items a few days ago and was just waiting to photograph them, and in the past few days could have probably added about a dozen more items.  I was just too impatient and wanted to get them out of the house.  Immediately.
So in conclusion...just kidding.  I do want to say that I found this "cleansing" process extremely valuable, and would like to repeat it every year.  Will that happen?  Can't say for sure.  But it would be awesome.
I can't remember if I said this before or not, so at the risk of sounding like either a broken record or a crazy person, I definitely learned that storing junk that I don't need actually COSTS me space in my house.  I would have previously told you that all our junk that was out of sight was out of mind, but now I realize that's not entirely true.  One thing is for sure though - I hope this new mind set sticks with me for awhile!


Purge #1
Purge #2
Purge #3