Cora's Art Gets Framed And Hung (Above A Toilet).

Ooooh La La! My two and a half year old is now producing fancy art for my walls. I love it... even though I hung it above a toilet.
Would you like a little peak?

In my old casa I had a couple of random tree photos hanging in a hallway. I think they're nice and all but I have no memory of when this type of art was my style. I'm all about some funky modern. Those little diddies did not make their way back up on the new house walls. In case you haven't figure this out yet I love a good repurposing! Those framerinos did not go to waste.

This is the best photo I have of them up on the wall. Ehhhh... sorry!

I had big plans for this art. I busted out the painter's tape and taped up a random design on some paper.
Out came the art supplies and the old t-shirts and that little artista in the making got to work.
I wanted to ease her in with some crayons before the paint started flying around the room.

The paint happened. And my old t-shirt made Cora look like she had no legs.

The old mat was cream. So I painted it up and made the shiniest white in town.

Cora's art dried and it was time to pull off the tape.
Oops...
tape does not pull very well off paper.

Change of plans. I pushed the tape back down and went with it. I looked to see where the mat would look best.

I cut the painting and put it in the frame. Up it went.

We painted the bathroom walls the day after I took these photos. I cannot wait to show you! As strange as it may seem, this bathroom is now one of favorite rooms in the house.

ps I painted the frames months ago and I don't think I have any photos of the process. A little paint peeled off after they were painted and I decided to go with it. I sanded a few areas of the frame down to show the original black and gold frame. I like how it turned out! Here is a close-up.

The 2nd Floor Porch Gets An Upgrade (And An Introduction To You!)

Whoops! It looks like I am way behind on letting you in on a bunch of areas of our house.
This particular area was for good reason. It was where all random furniture was laid to rest.

Here's a peak at what's coming your way.

ps I am only showing you this so the before photo is not the first little thumbnail that you see!

This space still has a loooooong way to go but progress has been made. I am not thrilled with it at all but just wait until you see the before pictures.

Scott's brother and sister-in-law gave us a twin bed a while ago that I was sure I would be able to use in our house. It ended up having nowhere to go so we put it on the 2nd floor porch. And for more than 6 months it sat there looking like this:

You would think that I would care more about this section of the house than a lot of others since our neighbors could literally jump onto this bed from their porches and can see how abandoned and creepy ours was looking. But, for some reason, I was totally fine with it looking like it belonged to a crazy person. The reason may have had something to do with a newborn coming my way. It was Scott who finally threw in the towel. He had been asking me my plans for the area pretty much since we moved in and he had volunteered to take care of it himself. After the 30th time he mentioned it I finally got to work. And all it took was one 30 minute trip to Target. I didn't come home with exactly what I wanted and I definitely could have found better stuff. But 30 minutes and a heftier-than-expected Target receipt later I was done! Plus, Cora had a blast sitting on all of the chairs and picnic tables at the store.

I went outside to take some photos for you but Mother Nature unleashed her biggest and baddest wind on me. I was met with this so I held off for another day.

Then Ms. Nature showed me some Dorothy Oz-land-ish skies too.

A few days later, Ol' Mama Nature stepped aside and I snapped a few for you:

That grossy looking rope mess against the wall is a hammock that we have no room for. We loved it at our old house but it cannot find a home here. We are working on getting it out.

Here is the view from inside. 

You may ask the question: "Why did I decide to stage it with some bananas and an empty wooden bowl? "
It is a valid question to ask.
The answer: Unknown.

Future plans:

• Talk Scott into liking the idea of curtains on either side of the porch
• A rug? (I would also have to talk him into that one)
• Paint the mini white table with a cool pattern
• Change out the pillows so they are a bit less (I feel like a doofus saying this but) cheesy 2013ish pillows
• Paint the little black table and chairs a bright yellow
• Paint the frame of the daybed yellow

Projects All Over!

There is a lot happening in the land of babies and fun and awesome things. Yes, that is the land that I live. Doesn't it sound fantastic?!?! There are a few tantrums and non-sleepers mixed in there along with a bunch of back pain. But other than that it is a pretty fabulous place to be. We are finally coming out of the haze of newborn-ness and are getting cooking on lots of house stuff. It is so nice to live in a brand new house where nothing has to be done! Unfortunately, that doesn't stop me from wanting to do things to our house. And now that we have started a few projects it is hard to take my attention away from all of the changes I want to make to this house.

Here's what is coming your way:

• Walls are getting painting or at least getting ready to be painted like this photo shows.

• Closets are getting organized. Trust me... this photo shows a huge improvement!

• Art displays are going up. Here is a glimpse of Senor Scott staining the boards in our messy garage. There were lots of lessons to be learned while making this art display and I will let you all in on every one of them.

• Cubby holes are getting better storage. This one included another life lesson that I will be sure to share with you.

• The 2nd floor porch starts to look normal. You may not think that this is normal but just deal with it.

• Closets are looking worse but great plans are being formed. This one is going to take forever to plan but the gears are working and ideas are popping up.

I don't want you to worry about missing out on an ounce of the fun... even the most boring topics (most of them) from the list above will be blogged about.

Sorry... again!

The completeld post that went up for a bit day will be up on either Tuesday or Wednesday.

Sorry about that! 

Here's a photo of my cutie lil guy to try and make up for it.

Introducing The Entryway AKA The Most Exciting Post Ever

Happy Happy Wednesday! 

I realized that I still have not introduced you to my whole house. Let's get you one step closer to you feeling at home here.

How about taking a little look-see at the entryway.

Before we moved in, I showed you my plans for it.

Plans changed. This is what it looks like:

And, unfortunately, this is what it looks like on most days... ehhhh we're a bit messy.

Here is the view from the front door.

Soon, I will hang something above the bookcase, probably a mirror.

Who is fascinated by this?

Here is the view you get when your fancy dancy husbandy-dude hijacks your photos for way longer than he should.

Did anyone want to see the exciting view that you get coming down the stairs?

This group of paintings is not staying. Eventually, I will replace it with one big painting.

These are the frames that I had in the entryway of my old house. I framed a bunch of different fabrics and scrap paper.

Here they are in the old house:

Here is a view of my dusty bookcase. Sorry! It didn't look as bad in person. The flash really showed it off.

Close-up of paintings that I will soon change.

And another view going up the steps. I cannot wait to get some paint on these walls!

It is the first thing people see in our house and I still haven't finished it. It is amazing how low house-updates fell on my list of priorities after having a second child. I don't understand how this was happening but a year and a half ago I was posting 5 blog posts per week. Pure craziness is what that is.

Future plans include:

• painting it
• hanging a mirror above the bookcase
• changing out the group of paintings of one big one
• painting the six large frames white

If you are interested in seeing the rest of our house here are the most up-to-date posts about each room that I have shown you:

Master Bedroom

Nursery In A Closet

Cora's Room

Cora's Cubby Hole

Scott's Office/Cubby Hole

Living Room

Dining Room

2nd Floor Hall (here and here)

Front Porch

Main Level Bathroom

Guest Bedroom

Garage

Oooooh Some Pretty Master Bedroom Curtains Are About To Enter Your Life!

Hello! Happy Wednesday to you!

I apologize that a phantom post went up on Monday with nothing in it. Fooled you!

Today, I have the real deal. And, if you like curtains then boy oh boy was it worth the wait!

A couple of weeks ago you got to see the final Nursery-In-A-Closet product. Somehow I managed to keep the curtains out of that post's photos and wheeeewww weeeeeee did I build some suspense. I can't even count the number of people* who emailed me asking to see what kind of awesomeness I had done with the windows.

THE.TIME.HAS.COME. to reveal it!

lower

expectations

now

please

I love how they turned out but I think I may have laid it on a little thick!

I went with Chipper Twill Storm by Premier Prints for the fabric and my awesome Mother-in-law was kind of enough to sew these little diddies right up for me. She finished them hours before August was born and claims that August wasn't going to come until she had finished sewing all of the curtains in the house.

I had decided that the width of each curtain panel should be half of the width of the window and no more. My mother-in-law suggested that a wider panel might look better. She was big time right! She added about 8" to what I suggested and it really helped. They would have been super skimpy if we had gone with my measurements.

Since the window to the right of the bed (pictured below) butted right up to the headboard I decided to go with just one curtain panel. I'm into it the result! 

It is driving me crazy that I didn't straighten up my comforter or pillow better before taking these photos but I took them in the 3 minutes that I had while no babies were sleeping in a room that was actually tidy. 

Here is a glimpse of my snazzy curtains peeking into August's room.

Here's another Fooled You, Bert (that's a common expression around here... it is the title of one of Cora's favorite Sesame Street books). I removed all of the extra baby stuff to take some photos of the room looking fairly decent. 
Aha! I am tried to fool you once again. I removed the huge piles of clean clothes from the bed, the boogered-up Q-tips from the bedside table (ewwwww yes I did say that and I apologize), I made the diapers look orderly and I took out the massive dirty clothes piles.

Here is the room looking cleanly baby-ed up:

Here is a close-up of my baby station. August thinks he lives in California and likes to wake up at Pacific Standard time (4am) instead of Eastern Standard Times (7am). Until we break that awesome habit I keep a couple of toys by my bed to entertain him.

Ignore that gross wall situation above the changing table. I tried to put up 2 different floating shelves and neither worked. It is not at the top of my list but eventually I will make that area look good. 

On top of getting the room baby-ed up the way I just showed you we have also classed it up a good bit by adding our signature look of garbage bags to the windows. Yes, yes we are classy folks. Now, between the curtains and the blinds there are trash bags to make the room pitch black with The Aug Man is going down for his naps. It makes a huge difference! Naps instantly improved. We will remove the fancy black bag layer of the window when Sir August moves out of our room.

*it turns out that I could count and the number was zero.