Nursery (part 4)

More nursery progress! We have a finished/usable armoire in the room! Here’s the breakdown.

We got this armoire for free last summer from neighbors who were moving. Free=nice. Navy=Not Nice. It sat idle in our garage for almost a year.

Finally I realized that we’d need somewhere to put all of baby girl’s clothes, so we pulled it out of the garage, dusted it off, and relocated it to our third room for a makeover. I pulled out the primer from when we primed the basement before we even moved in over a year ago. It was the consistency of Elmer’s Glue…uck! But, I’m cheap and lazy, so I made it work!
After priming, 2 coats of paint on this beast (which was a paint in the ass to paint BTW!), and a few cute door knobs from Hobby Lobby, it’s like a whole new piece of furniture!

If I’m being honest, I don’t love it. It doesn’t offer a lot of storage like I’d hoped, but it’s fine for now…and for free (+ cost of paint and door knobs). As warned, it looks way cuter in the pictures than it does in person! Hopefully it will grow on me...otherwise I'll be DIY-ing again soon!


Note: the knobs ended up being to big for the doors (they don’t close all the way), so I’ll have to go back and get a smaller set, but you get the idea!

So there you have it. Another check off the list. I feel a little bit better having this phase completed: it was the last major project to finish, but now I'm noticing all of the little projects I should work on in the evenings. Instead, I sit down for an hour and watch the Real Housewives of New Jersey because they are seriously nuts and I love it, so I'm happily entertained!

Nursery (part 3)

More nursery advancements! It’s coming together, and with around 11 weeks to go, I’m glad to be finally making progress!

Color…check! Transformed into Meadow Mist! This was such a relief. A relief that it’s #1: done, and #2: I like/love it (my opinion changes depending on time of day, mood, lighting, etc). And fyi, the pics aren’t great examples of the true color because I’m a crappy picture taker and I they are taken at different times of the day…so if it looks too “In-Your-Face-Blue”, it’s not! *Refer to example below :-)

When Jim first brushed it on, I said “OMG I LOVE it! Don’t you LOVE it?”

…then I went back into the room 5 minutes later and complained, “I hate it. It’s too green or blue, or something. UGH!” and immediately wished I would have gotten sample colors.

Jim asked if I wanted to go get another color before he painted the whole room and I said, “No, paint everything and if I don’t like it we’ll just repaint it.” We did this with Jack’s room and I know that with enough paint, you’ll eventually find something you can live with!

Luckily, it’s growing on my everyday. And just like I did when the room was freshly cleaned out, I poke my head in every time I walk past it…and sometimes I walk past it just to poke my head in!

First DIY project…check!

A while back, I fell in love with Amy Butler’s LOVE Heart fabric collection. But seeing as I’m not a seamstress or anything close, I thought THIS project was 100% do-able for me. So I bought my fabric on Etsy. And after some careful/sloppy placement, glue, and patience, mission accomplished!

My fabric rings are done and I love them, but you can never see the backs of these because I’m too cheap to invest in a pair of good quality scissors, so it basically looks like it’s been chewed on by a dog. ;-) But that dog was me!

*Notice how different the wall color looks in the 3 pictures below...as noted above, don't trust my picture taking skills! Focus on the project at hand!
Taken in the early evening:

Taken in the afternoon light:

Taken in the morning light:

Two more checks off the list. Yeah!

This weekend I hope to paint the dresser/armoire and rocking chair…oh I’m getting so ready for this baby girl to come visit me! Lila Grace? I’m just throwing it out there and thinking about it…I have the urge to start having things monogrammed!

my new(ish) chair!

Remember my chair?! The chair I rescued from the garbage and hauled down my street in the middle of the night because I saw potential?! Well, it’s finally done! It only took me like 3 months to slowly, but surely, finish the job!

So without further ado (3+ months is “ado” enough!), here’s my new(ish) chair…

It was rusty and in need of a fresh coat of paint, so my first step was to sand it down to a nice smooth finish and give it a coat of Rustoleum (in Almond). (Refer to “Funny Story” below.) Here's the rusty mess...

And now, after $16 worth of fabric and paint, I am perfectly happy with my new chair!

Now all I need is some spare time to relax and enjoy it...lol: spare time! :-)

Funny story: I bought the brush-on Rustoleum paint rather than the spray. I painted it one day during Jack’s nap, so needless to say, I was up against the clock.

When I finished, I went inside to clean my brushes as I usually would: with water in the sink. As I squeezed my hand through the brush to remove the paint, I begin to realize that the paint wasn’t washing off as my interior latex would. I rubbed more and slowly began to recall that this is oil.based.paint! SH*T. I had no mineral spirits, my hand (and wedding rings), sink, and anything else I might touch are covered in Rustoleum, Jack would be waking up at any moment, and Jim was golfing so I was stuck, literally.

After minor panic, I grabbed a bottle of nail polish remover and doused myself made the best of it. And although I smelled as if I was combustible, I was mostly paint free.

Moral of the story: Read directions (ironic that I didn’t seeing as my profession is WRITING directions!)…know what kind of paint you’re using…always have mineral spirits…and steal your neighbors discarded junk!

The end

Nursery (Part 2)

This weekend we made nursery progress! And by progress, I mean basically we cleaned out the bedroom. It was a disaster! Since we moved in, it has been used as a Computer room/Extra large storage closet/"If you don’t know what to do with it, throw it in that room" Room.

I am proud to say that the room is now (mostly) a clean slate! I love a clean slate. I’ve poked my head in the room every time I’ve passed it since it’s been overhauled because I’m so excited about the new beginning!

Side note: the peonies (poached from my Mom's) in my antique blue jar is the exact color scheme I'm going for in the nursery: light turquoise, pink, green...obsessed!

I gave the boys one job which was to reassemble the crib. They set to work, and for some reason doing a project for the boys means to do it without a shirt on (I don’t ask anymore…it’s just a boy thing). At this point, whatever gets the job done…and they did!

Yes, Jim is making the "Are you seriously taking a picture right now" face... : )

Crib setup…check!

I had the girls help me pick out the paint…hello Meadow Mist with an accent of Positively Pink from Lowes! I love it (right now). I’m an impulse buyer so I didn’t bother with buying multiple samples and testing (too many decisions is nerve-racking for an indecisive person), so I just took the plunge and bought me a gallon! (Note: I am fully aware I may regret this decision and end up repainting the room…)

Paint…check!

So two "checks" down...about 100 more to go...that's progress right?!

swingset!

Our swing set has been put to good use since it's inaugural "raising of the flag slide", if you will. Here's the boys with some helpers during the WIP stage. Notice Jack already enjoying himself...

And our very own "Bob" the builders!

Here's Papa once we finally gave him a break to admire his work. As soon as the set was completed, it was like a magnet for the neighborhood kids, who coincidentally all called Herb "Grandpa", so now he's the honorary neighborhood grandpa!

And Jim posing with a hatchet. (Jim thought it was very cool and I could tell he wanted to play Daniel Day Lewis in "The Last of the Mohican's".)

I have no idea why they would have a need for a hatchet for this project...it must be a boy thing!

A true swing set-building warrior!

All I know is that one person in particular is more than pleased with his new toy...

Unfortunately, it looks like rain this weekend so we won't be able to get much use out of it...BUT, we do have a lot of grass seed that needs watering, so there's an upside!

(PS: You know you're old when you are excited about rain so you can get grass growing in your yard!)

our weekend...

It was a b-u-s-y weekend! Our first goal was to cover the bare spots in our yard with topsoil and seed to hopefully grow grass. We had a total of 6 tons of topsoil delivered. Lots of scooping, wheel-barrowing, tilling, evening, spreading, seeding, watering...good thing we had fuel:

Luckily, we had 3 tough guys to get the job done.

Phase 2 of the weekend goal was to pick up a swing set I scored on Craigslist! After stalking Craigslist for months, I finally put a “Wanted” ad and totally scored within a couple hours!

Jim and Herb had a…well I won’t say “fun” time, but they had an experience dismantling, moving, loading, and unloading this bad boy. Thanks for giving up your Saturday... Here's what it looks like put together...I can't promise it will look the same once reassembled ;-)

Jack was SOOOOO excited as each piece was unloaded. He could hardly stand it. This week, Poppy is going to power wash and stain it to look like new, and hopefully we can reassemble it soon, because it’s bordering on just plain mean to make Jack stare at his play set in pieces all.week.long.

In baby news, our little girl is the size of a papaya this week (actually all month long). I only have 4 fruits left...which makes me kinda sad because I loved to see my "fruit" change by the week...now we're changing by the month.

She's an active little one, and Jack enjoys giving my tummy a kiss and saying hi to his baby sister...

And we also watched Up! this weekend...def my new favorite movie. Def! (Not taking into account that I've pretty much only watched Cars movie for going on 2 months straight...it was a really good movie!)

For now, here's men at work:

Our Saturday...

Our Saturday was full! Full like a bag of wet leaves. An appropriate analogy seeing as the better part of our Saturday consisted of blowing, raking, funneling, stuffing, bagging, dragging, hauling, all of the leaves from our yard.

Here's Jim looking misleadingly happy...actually, scratch that...he probably was happy because it was the last bag!

Luckily, it was an awesome day outside…and I always complain that Jim and I never spend any quality time together…well, we got it. :)

35, count 'em...THIRTY-FIVE bags of leaves!

And I felt it necessary to demonstrate what a dirty job this was. My hands were (and possibly still are) stained orange, along with my shirt, and the look was complete with dirt under the fingernails. (I'm sure Carey will think it's gross that I showed this, but whatever, Care!)


Oh, and our biggest tree, has barely begun to drop leaves, so we will have a bunch more to come. (Check back for the sequel!)