Amaya's Nursery featured on the DIY Show Off today!!

Hai! Just wanted to give a shout out to my good bloggy friend Roeshel over at the DIY Show Off.

Today she's featuring Amaya's nursery on her awesome blog, check out munchkin's nursery post here. And if you've never stopped by Roeshel's blog before - go check it out, it's one of my go to stops when I'm looking for DIY and D&R inspiration! Thanks Roeshel for featuring Amaya's nursery - as always, I'm so honored to be featured on your amazing blog! 'Till next time :)

::knock, knock:: Is this thing on?

SORRY guys! I have totally been the worst blogger ever in the last month or so. Work is still crazy, but my rotational assignment is winding down, so hopefully life will be calming down within about a month. I promise, promise, promise to pick back up with What I Wanna Buy Wednesdays, my monthly munchkin updates, etc. I also must post about my DIY spring/summer wreath tutorial & a sort of recap of the last month {since, you know, I was MIA for the last month}. I'm gonna get started back up very very soon, like in the next day or so!

Also, in my defense, one super cute little munchkin has been taking up all my free time...see exhibit #1:

{whatchu talkin' bout mama?}

<------- Oh yeah & PS - notice my brand spankin' **new** "featured on" badge over there?! I was totally honored to have little munchkin's nursery featured on the Baby Lifestyles, which is a really awesome all things baby website/blog! Check me out here & while you're at it, browse around the site - there are all kinds of nursery, gift & party ideas & more!! 

 {Ahhhhhhh, still my fave room in the house!}

Okay, that's all for now, I'll be back soon - {girl} scout's honor! 'Till next time. :)

Baby Amaya's nursery featured on Chic & Cheap Nursery!!

I am sooo excited! Today our sweet little girl's nursery is being featured on Nicole's awesome blog Chic & Cheap Nursery! If you have never checked out her blog, head on over & check it out - there are sooo many great nurseries, kids' rooms & DIY ideas. I even got the idea for the DIY recycled greeting cards shadow box art on her blog. and so I'm very excited to have our nursery featured on her site, go check it out here. 'Till next time. :)

Project Nursery - the BIG reveal!!

Well it's done. It's finally done! As most of you know, I love D&R and DIY'ing stuff, but I never had more fun doing a room & DIY decor for a room than I have getting Baby J's room together. I don't know if it's because I'm just so stinkin' excited to meet this baby girl or if it's just that I have been itching to do a cute nursery since we bought this house back in 2007 & I got the D&R itch {I suspect it's a little of both}?! This post will be very picture heavy, but I'll also give source info & also link to tutorials for DIY projects...so without further adieu, here is our precious little girl's loosely owl themed nursery!

Here's the entry door to her room with the diaper wreath my girlfriend made as a gift hung up:

Come in & take a look...

View from entry to room:

View from the other side of the room:

 

And the front wall of the room where her {teeny tiny} closet & bookcase are located:

And now all the deets! Quick overall side note - the paint color is Valspar's Ocean Whisper in their Satin Finish, not sure if I ever posted that info. I think we'll start with the back wall first:

And some closeup details....

 {reading corner}

{wall shelf}

If you remember all the way back to my master plan for the nursery, this wall was slated for the dresser/changer combo & glider/ottoman, which will serve as our little reading & rocking corner. Both the dresser/changer combo & crib are a part of the Baby Cache Oxford Collection - $569.99 {dresser} & $469.99 {crib} (we bought it during a 20% off all nursery furniture promotion). The glider & ottoman are both the Newco brand from Baby Depot. We got them both for a little less than $350 because the color we wanted {chocolate} was being discontinued - just fine for me & you know I love a deal! The pillow on the glider is a part of the Brooke Collection from PBK - $19 (not including the cost of the pillow insert, but I believe it was on sale when I bought it & I had a one-time 10% off coupon). The wall decal is a mirror image of this one sold by Designed Designer on Etsy - $68. The wall shelf is the Shelf Silverstein from Land of Nod - $45. The diaper caddy is by Sara Bear from Target - $30 (got it while it was $5 off). The night light on the far right corner of the shelf is a Spoka Night Light from Ikea ($13) & the owl bookend is from I Sew Lucky on Etsy ($24'ish each - I got two during a BOGO promotion for $40 total I believe).  The changing pad was from CSN & I got it for FREE by winning a blog contest....my fave price of course! The ribbon mobile & bow holder are both DIY. Everything else you see was a gift or will be covered in another section of the room.

Next, let's move on to the crib wall:

And some closeup details....

 {bedding}

 {DREAM banner}

{DIY Martha Stewart Poms}

Since the back wall has so much going on & because the PBK Coco Dot crib bedding ($248 & I used a one-time 10% off coupon I had for PBK) is so pretty & bright, I wanted to keep this wall relatively simple. The vintage DREAM banner is from the Crepe Confectionary on Etsy - $24 & I got the inspiration for the banner from Holly's cute nursery for her little girl Wren over at Life in the Fun Lane. And finally, the poms are DIY - there are lots of tutorials on the web for these poms, but I used the one on Imperfectly Beautiful & I used tissue paper from Target...they have such cute colors & they always have a great selection on clearance.


As for the bookshelf/closet wall:

Details...

{photo/art wall}

{canvas toy bucket}

{closet + DIY dividers}

{wall art made by my little sister's BFF}

The bookshelf is the Bentley Kid's Cubby Bookcase from Target - $99 (with free shipping). The wall frames are from Amazon, Target & WalMart - they are all a similar style, but I just bought them from the different places based on costs/needs. The ABC and Sunshine art are from Pretty Smitten on Etsy (sorry no prices because the shop is temporarily closed due to the shop owner going out on maternity leave so she can prepare to welcome her newest bundle of joy). The frames filled with the cutesy patterned paper will eventually be filled with Baby J & family photos, but I filled them with cute paper for now so they looked nice up on the wall. The shadowbox owl art was DIY. The toy bucket is from the Girls' Canvas Bucket collection at PBK - $35 + $6.50 for personalization (used my PBK 10% off on this too). The closet dividers are DIY.

And finally the wall where the room's two windows are:

And details...

{DIY owl lamp}

 {framed art hung between windows}

The window treatments are Vivan Panels from Ikea - $13 for a pair of two, so $26 total. I am SO proud of those curtains, lol...I hemmed them myself & I think I did a pretty darn good job, but let me tell you - that was so time consuming! I was so happy to be done! I forgot to take a closeup picture of the window hardware we waited on forever, but it's the Pink Bubble Rod hardware from JCP - $15 each. The matching "beautiful" & "miracle" art are from [ReDeemed] Unique Art - one piece I won in a blog contest & the other I purchased, but I can't remember the exact price. They are each one of a kind, but I believe if you ocntact Noel from ReDeemed, she can do something similar if you are interested. And of course, the lamp is a DIY makeover from Salvation Army.

So that's it! What do you think?! The room has been done since this past Friday, but I knew it would take a while to write out this post, so I have been procrastinating. It was worth the wait right?! I absolutely L-O-V-E her nursery - turned out just the way I imagined it & I'm so happy we put all the effort into it that we did {speacial thanks to my husband for putting up with me & all my decision changes [as if he had a choice ;oP] & for doing all the manual labor, lol}. Now all we're missing is our little Baby J...but she'll be here so soon! Thanks for following the chronicle of Baby J's nursery progress & I hope you enjoyed the tour!

Wanna see our little one's nursery progress from the beginning?! Check out the master plan for the room, the first set of DIY goodies I made for our little girl, the major furniture all put together, my cute owl accent finds & my decision to do a understated owl theme in her nursery, my "owl" bean bag score turned FAIL, how we "planted" a tree behind the glider to read books to our sweet baby girl under, my easy peasy DIY owl wall art that I made using recycled greeting cards, the finished dresser/changer combo & crib walls plus a simple & cute DIY bow holder, her cute bargain bookshelf & the plans for the wall it's up against plus a simple DIY framed monogram, the DIY Salvation Army reading lamp makeover I did to go next to her glider, and our bedding selection! 'Till next time!

Project Nursery - the bedding selection!

Hi there everyone! Sorry again for being extremely MIA lately...at the end of next week my life will hopefully go back to being semi-normal. Our fiscal year (well the part I need to be concerned with) will be done & over with & I'll be able to breathe a little.

So today I want to share the selection we went with for Baby J's bedding! Before I found out we were having a little girl, I told myself that I wanted something neutral that would work for either sex. And I fell in love with lots of stuff from PBK's baby bedding selection, so I knew I wanted to go with something from there! Their stuff is expensive, but I had a 10% off coupon & they always have sales going on + I planned on doing so many DIY projects, that I knew we'd save $$ in some other areas. As I mentioned, I originally wanted something pretty neutral, so I was looking at this:

 Sweet Lambie Bedding from PBK

It's cute, but wouldn't have really gone with the walls in our room & I needed aqua walls - love that color! So I was thinking something simple and not overly decked out, but still neutral. Perhaps something like this:

Pique Bedding from PBK

I figured with something like that, I'd be able to do whatever I wanted with the rest of the room because it's pretty versatile. It's also pretty...well WHITE & IDK if that goes too well with a newborn, so I started to look at more gender specific bedding.

It was so tough finding cute boy bedding that would go well with aqua & that was not overly themey. I looked all over the internet & found only a few options that I thought were just okay. I decided that if Baby J was a boy, then I'd likely go thru Etsy & find someone to custom design a bedding set. Lucky for me, I didn't even have to go there because shortly after making that decision, we found out we were having a little girl! Lucky because I had already fallen in love with a few PBK baby girl bedding sets. My choices were narrowed down to:

Kelsey Bedding from PBK

Coco Dot Bedding from PBK

So I polled my friends, co-workers & ask the hubbs for his opinion on which bedding to go with. Everyone was pretty unanimous in selecting option #2 - the Coco Dot bedding. I think it's because it has aqua in it & would essentially match perfect with the walls. But I LOVE birdies & the Kelsey bedding has birdies & the colors in it would still look really cute in the room. In the end I decided to go with... ::drum roll please::

The Coco Dot bedding! I think it works perfectly with her room! The quilt is not pictured above - it's hanging on the arm of her glider, but we got that too. I ended up going with this in the end because it has so many bright & fun colors & I thought it would just work better in her room. Plus, if I ever decide to get rid of the owl "theme", I can still use this bedding & just switch out some of the owl room decor. That's not likely to happen before we move out of this house (the plan is to be here another 2-3 years then upgrade to a single family), but just in case. ::wink:: So anyways, what do you think of her bedding? Once you see it along with everything else together in my big reveal post, which should hopefully be in the next few weeks (after we receive the curtain hardware & remaining wall frames)...eeek {it's almost October}, then I think you will definitely agree that we made the right selection!!

P.S. - later (like after I had already made my choice), PBK came out with a nursery line of their Haley Bedding, which would have also worked pretty well in the nursery. Check out this cuteness...it has owls & everything!! I still like the bedding we selected better, but it's definitely cute. :)

And bonus - check out the little GMU onesie I got a couple weeks ago:

Adorbs right?! I think I just created a word, haha! As I believe I mentioned before, we met & fell in love as undergrads @ GMU, so she just had to have something from our Alma Mater! You can see a little peek of her lined drawers there too. I'll post a full pic of all the drawers tonight/tomorrow with my weekly Baby J to do list update. Time is ticking away & we are so close to meeting our little girl, yaaay!

Wanna see our little one's nursery progress from the beginning?! Check out the master plan for the room, the first set of DIY goodies I made for our little girl, the major furniture all put together, my cute owl accent finds & my decision to do a understated owl theme in her nursery, my "owl" bean bag score turned FAIL, how we "planted" a tree behind the glider to read books to our sweet baby girl under, my easy peasy DIY owl wall art that I made using recycled greeting cards, the finished dresser/changer combo & crib walls plus a simple & cute DIY bow holder, her cute bargain bookshelf & the plans for the wall it's up against plus a simple DIY framed monogram, and the DIY Salvation Army reading lamp makeover I did to go next to her glider! Enjoy & 'till next time!

Project Nursery - we have light...a DIY lamp makeover!

Well we always sorta had light, lol. There is actually a ceiling fan in Baby J's room with three lights on it, but they tend to be a little bright (they are energy efficient bulbs though ;), so I'm not sure how often I'll use them. Originally I was just gonna buy a lamp because I didn't think I'd want to DIY anything else since I was planning soo many other DIY projects for her room. So, I scoured the internet for the perfect lamp to put right next to her glider & I found this pink gingham lamp at Target a couple months back that I had been drooling over ever since:

Photo Credit

Cute right?! So cute. I even put it on my Target baby registry & everything! But then I thought, $60? And it was online only thru Target, which means no one would probably give it to us as a shower gift & that's kind of a lot of money for a lamp anyways. Right? So I decided that I could definitely fit in a DIY lamp makeover project.

So, I headed to my local Salvation Army to check out their selection of lamps & I found this ugly duckling:

She wasn't pretty, I thought the detail on the base was kinda nice & had potential...and at only $13.99, I figured why not & decided to give her a chance! I think that she was actually originally the fugly brassy/gold that I loathe & whoever owned her before painted her this creamy looking gray color, which ended up working out for me because it served as sorta of a primer for my paint! The lamp came with a shade that was pleated, starting to turn yellow & basically falling apart - didn't even make it the ride home - so I just threw it away before even getting a chance to take a pic.

After giving her a good cleaning, I commissioned the hubbs to spray paint a few coats of some nice glossy white spray paint (be sure to tape or somehow cover the cord & bulb socket since you definitely don't want paint on either of those things). She already looked 1 million times better after the clean up & spray paint job!

Sorry for the dark pic - it was overcast that day, I know now to only take pics when it's nice & sunny out!

Now, on to the fun stuff...the lamp shade! For this feat (& it really was a feat), I gathered up my supplies:

• The largest {& cheapest, but still sturdy} (non-pleated) lamp shade they had at my local Walmart. I'm pretty sure it's this same one. $14
• A can of spray adhesive (I found the one pictured below at Joanns on clearance, so I decided to try it out although it was an off brand). $3
• Scissors; already owned.
• 1.5 yards in the fabric I chose to cover the shade - I got the Life's a Hoot, Owls Dot Pink fabric from Ribbon Retreat for a steal! Check them out if you haven't before, they have the cutest ribbons & fabrics for awesome prices! $13.50
• Embellishments - I just got a simple large, pink ric rac ribbon on sale at Joanns to use for this project, I didn't want it to be too embellished. $4
• A light colored marker; already owned.
• Some craft paper or newspaper (or in my case old wrapping paper that I didn't plan on using before) - you just need something large enough to trace the shade pattern on to; already owned.
• Sewing pins; already owned.
• Hot glue gun & extra glue sticks (not pictured); already owned.
• Clothes pins (or in my case binder clips) - anything that'll clip to the lampshade to hold down the edges while they get nice & dry (not pictured); already owned.
• TOTAL =  $48.50 - saved a little money, woot!

Next I drew a pattern for the fabric on to the back of the wrapping paper by rolling the shade along the paper & tracing the shape as I went. Then, I cut out the pattern & pinned it to the wrong/back side of my owl fabric. 
WOD Tip: 1) when tracing the shade pattern on to the paper, you want to make sure that you start at the seam of the shade, so you know where to end your pattern on the paper; 2) make sure you iron your fabric really nice before pinning it.

Ignore all my random extra lines - I messed up a couple times on the pattern until I finally got it right!

Next, cut out your pattern, leaving about 3/4 - 1 inch border of fabric around the paper. Then, cut about 1 inch slits/flaps on the top & bottom of your fabric up to the beginning of the paper pattern (you will end up folding these inside the lamp shade) - make sure not to cut the sides of your pattern!!!

Next, iron a hem line on to one side of your fabric (sorry, no pic for this step, but I just ironed about a 1 inch hem (about the same size as the overhang on one side of the pattern). Then spray a coat of adhesive to the back of your fabric (be sure to cover your work area). Next, starting at the seam of the shade with the raw (un-hemmed) side of the fabric, carefully cover the shade, smoothing out any bubbles as you work (also no pics of this step since it required 2 hands, or in my case 4). You should end this step by applying your hemmed end of fabric to cover the "Raw" edge of the fabric you started applying at.
WOD Tip: I had to get the hubbs to help me with this part, the spray adhesive is quite tacky & it was too hard to keep straight enough on my own without having the flaps get stuck to parts of it or it getting bubbled/wrinkled as I applied it to the shade. If you can get help with this step, I highly suggest you do!

Fold in the flaps on both the top & bottom of the shade. Then, using your clothes pins (or in my case, binder clips), clip them to the top & bottom of the shade for about 10-15 min until it dries up nice.

Next, use the hot glue to glue the ribbon/embellishment(s) around the edges of your covered shade, working in small sections - I just eyeballed the distance I wanted the ribbon from the edge.

You can see my hemmed side here; if you need to glue it down a little more because it's sticking up, you can use a little hot glue in small sections on it & that should do the trick.

Closeup of completed shade w/ ribbon embellishment.

Screw your shade on to the base, throw in a {energy efficient} light bulb & step back to admire the finished product!

What do you think? A HUGE improvement from the starting product, eh? I think it's perfect for her owl themed room! It may even be one of my favorite DIY projects I've done for the nursery! I can't wait to read lots of bedtime stories to my little girl under this reading lamp!

Wanna see our baby girl's nursery progress from the beginning?! Check out the master plan for the room, the first set of DIY goodies I made for our little girl, the major furniture all put together, my cute owl accent finds & my decision to do a understated owl theme in her nursery, my "owl" bean bag score turned FAIL, how we "planted" a tree behind the glider to read books to our sweet baby girl under, my easy peasy DIY owl wall art that I made using recycled greeting cards, the finished dresser/changer combo & crib walls plus a simple & cute DIY bow holder, and her cute bargain bookshelf & the plans for the wall it's up against plus a simple DIY framed monogram!! Enjoy. :)

Linking up to:

So that's it for this installment of project nursery - up next...my bedding selection! 'Till next time!