Hudson’s room

I never shared pictures of Hudson’s room.  We actually just finally finished it a few weeks ago.  Before he was born, I had bought some crib bedding, but then decided it wasn’t really what I wanted.  So we returned that bedding and started completely from scratch.

I saw this sailboat mobile in Pottery Barn Kids and decided to use it as my inspiration for the room.

    

I could have just gone to PBK (Pottery Barn Kids) and bought their sailboat themed crib bedding to match, but I didn’t really want to have a major theme running through the room, so I tried to stay away from going overboard on sailboats.  I painted the walls with Martha Stewart’s Flagstone.  It’s a gray color and I was wanting the room to resemble a foggy harbor.  I used the colors red, white, and blue and some nautical things to pull everything together.

I also hunted for sales.  The valances (you can see them in the window behind the sailboats) were on sale at PBK for $9.99 each, so I grabbed two for the windows.  And all the bedding was on clearance at either the PBK store or online.  The crib skirt was marked down to $19.98.  I think they’re usually about $60, so I snatched it up.  It has red and blue stitching running along the bottom of it.  The crib sheet was marked down to $6.99.  It’s covered in blue and red whales.  And I got two of those, because I know there will be times when I will need to have an extra one on hand.   The bumper is my favorite steal.  I bought it at PBK online. There wasn’t a picture of it to see what it looked like, the website just said that it was red and blue and it was marked down majorly to $6.99.  So I ordered it, hoping for the best, but thinking that even if it didn’t match at all, I could sell it on Craigslist for more than that.   Then when I opened the package, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it matched perfectly.

 

So, here’s the “tour” of the room.  I just tried to take pictures going clockwise, starting from when you walk into the room and see the crib.  My camera lens is a 50mm and does not change (meaning the only way to get more or less in a picture is to move your body backwards or forwards), so there were times when I couldn’t get as much as I wanted in the picture because the room is pretty small and I couldn’t move back any farther.

Nothing’s exciting about this picture, but it’s part of the room, so I just took a picture. (Oh, but I do like my cool Coca-cola box in the bottom of the picture.)

 

This next picture is not part of Hudson’s room, but do you see those cool rope shelves hanging above the bed?  I thought they were pretty fun and they looked easy enough to make, so I convinced Tim (do you notice how often I have been “convincing” Tim lately?  haha!) that we could make some for Hudson’s room.

 

And since Tim is easily convincible by me, we made them.  We paid $1 each for two pieces of scrap wood, bought rope for about $5, and then picked up some unique looking hardware to hang them with.  Tim cut, drilled holes, and then painted the wood.  The hardest part was tying the ropes and getting the shelves to hang even.  But our persistence paid off and in the end, they turned out really cute.  

These shelves are probably one of my favorite things in the room.  The art work are original pieces by Tyson Scott.  (If you’d like to put in an order, let me know and I will contact him for you, but I’ve heard he’s quite pricey! :) )

 

And with the leftover rope, I wrapped it around a softball and made….well, something…. I don’t really know what it is, but I like it and it looks nautical, don’t you think?

And I threw a paddle in the corner and now we’re back to the crib. 

So that was Hudson’s room.

Bathroom Re-do

Since we’re on the subject of home decor lately, I thought I’d go ahead and share pictures from my recent bathroom re-decoration project.  Actually, I’m not sure it should be called “re-decoration” since it was never really decorated in the first place.  It had basically just accumulated things that we already had, but since this is the kid’s bathroom, I really wanted to make it a little more fun and colorful for them.  A big concern was that it’s located right off our main living area, so I didn’t want to go overboard with crazy kid decor or too bright wall colors.  Originally, I wanted to paint the room a light blue-green/turquoise (my new fav) color, sort of reminiscent of the ocean, but when I started painting, I quickly realized that the blue looked way too bright and out of place for a bathroom right off the living room.  It didn’t flow at all.  So, I scratched that idea and decided to paint the walls the same neutral color that is in our living room and just bring in fun turquoisey accents.

We’ve had this chair sitting in the bathroom for the last several months.  Between the kids’ baths and potty training, we needed a good spot to plant ourselves for long periods of waiting.  It was just an extra chair we had sitting around our house, so one day it made it’s way up to the bathroom and it never left.  It’s ugly and boring.  I really wanted to spiffy it up.

After several coats of paint and some sand paper, it came out looking like this.  It reminds me of the beach.

So here is the after shots of the bathroom.  I know, I know, I should have taken some before shots so you could see the improvements.  But I didn’t.  (By the way, those picture frames are also from our shopping trip to Ikea.  And the prints are from a seller on Etsy that I just love.)

It’s fun and colorful for the kids, but not too obviously a “kid bathroom”, which is what I was going for since it’s so highly visible and also the bathroom that any guests use.  It kind of has the beachy, relaxed feel that I wanted.  I found the striped towels at Marshall’s and they were actually the inspiration for the entire bathroom.  I pulled my colors basically right off the colors in the towel.  I think that’s the easiest way to decorate a room.  Find something that you love, that you want in the room, and then go from that.  The bathmat is from Target.  I love the polka dots.  I think it’s cheery and playful, just like the kids. 

I found this guacamole colored trash can (from Target) and put it in the back corner behind the toilet.  And got the “blueberry patch” colored soap dispenser.  Both items are plastic and hopefully hard to break.  I can imagine that the soap dispenser will be dropped on the floor many times, so I stayed clear of anything glass.  And my pet peeve is when you buy a new shiny metal soap dispenser and it starts to rust right off the bat.  I’ve had that happen to me way too many times.

I had to get these shower curtain rings (also from Target) because they just fit in perfectly with everything else.  We already had the white shower curtain, so that was free!

So there you have it.  Or newly decorated kid bathroom. 

Who loves Ikea? (Part 2)

Continuing on with some more Ikea finds…

One item that was on our list to look for while we were shopping at Ikea was a new kitchen table.  Here’s a picture of our old table:

 

There’s really nothing wrong with it other than the fact that it’s not a great fit for our family anymore.  The most obvious thing being that there are only four chairs at this table and we are now a family of five.  And when we purchased this table a few years ago, we loved the extra height on the table and chairs, but now that we have a two year old that is constantly climbing up onto her chair, the extra height just makes the table more of a safety hazard.  Also, this table just wasn’t really cutting it when we had family or friends  joining us for dinner.  We always had to drag extra chairs in from the “formal” dining room and then squeeze everyone in around the table.  The extra chairs are actually even taller than these and this left people uncomfortably hunched over while eating (which is probably terrible for digestion!).   Honestly, we could have just sucked it up and put this purchase off for a few more months or maybe even a year if we kept Hudson in a high chair, but we decided that Ikea is a pretty affordable place to pick up a table, and since we don’t make it by there very often,  it just made sense to go ahead and buy one if we found one that we loved.

And we did find one that we loved!  In fact, the table was the first thing we both saw and agreed on immediately.  We loved it right off the bat and it is huge!  It’s plenty big for our entire family and any dinner guests that we might have over.  There’s even a leaf to add in the event that an entire army would be stopping by to eat dinner with us.

We picked out these chairs to go with it.  Originally we were going to get eight.

But then, we saw this bench.  We thought it would work perfect for the kids.  So we bought five chairs and one bench.

 

The table works best in our kitchen pushed up against the wall.  Tim and I each sit at an end and the kids sit on the bench.  There should be plenty of room on the bench for Hudson to join them there when he’s big enough.  When we have guests, we can just pull it out from the wall and set the other three chairs along the back.  The way we have it set up actually makes the kitchen seem bigger and roomier than before when we had the smaller table. 

We love the lighter color of the wood as opposed to the dark wood table that we had before.  It really lightens and brightens up our kitchen.

 

Moving on…

Do you guys remember when I told you I wanted some floating shelves in my living room?  ( I think I blogged about that.)  At the time, I didn’t anticipate ever making it to Ikea, so I persuaded Tim to build me some shelves for an office area in our living room. 

Here’s the before shot:

 

Here’s the after:

 

Tim did a great job building my shelves, but if we had known that we were going to get to go to Ikea just a few weeks later, we totally would have just waited and then bought them there.  At just $29.99 each, you can’t beat the price.  We spent about $60 for all the materials and then Tim spent hours building them and painting them for me.  In the end, it worked out, (I really love my shelves!) but there was an easier way.  The desk lamp, mouse pad, picture frames on the top shelves, white vases, and the clear vase with potpourri in it are all from Ikea.  Also, the white curtains (which are really hard to see in this picture) are also from Ikea.  

Did I mention that I love Ikea?!! 

Who loves Ikea? (Part 1)

I do!  I do!

I have been wanting to go for a while, but with the closest Ikea store in Atlanta, I just didn’t see that being much of an option, especially with having three kids that don’t exactly like to spend their days riding for hours in cars and shopping.  (Why doesn’t Ikea let you order online?  Anyone?)  So, I had settled for flipping through their catalog, dreaming, and wishing for an opportunity to present itself. 

Then, a few weeks ago, Mimi and Pop Pop let us know that they were going to be taking a trip out this way in mid-June and would love to stop by and spend a few days with us.  And they graciously agreed to spend a day watching all three kids for us so Tim and I could make a break for Ikea.  I was beyond excited. 

As the day got closer and I got more excited, I kept thinking that something was bound to go wrong and we wouldn’t get to go.  I even had a dream about getting to Ikea and then Peyton throwing up all over me while I was trying to shop.  Anyway, the week before we were supposed to go, Tim got a last minute email saying he had to go out of town for a week and would be leaving the next day.  Besides the fact that I was overwhelmed and stressed with having to take care of the kids alone for a full week, I just kept thinking that he better get home in time to go to Ikea with me, or someone was going to have another thing coming to him.  To spur myself on through the difficult times while Tim was gone, I just kept reminding myself of my big reward when the week was over : a shopping trip to Ikea!    (And let me just say that with the week that I had around here, I deserved a giant shopping spree to Ikea!)

So, I made it through my week alone, Tim came home on Tuesday and the grandparents arrived that same day.  Our plan was for me and Tim to go to Ikea the next day.  I was counting down the hours at this point.  Then wouldn’t you know it, around 3 or 4 a.m. on Wednesday morning, I woke up and felt horrible... major headache, sore throat, and body aches.  Nooooo!   All I could think was that I was going to miss my one chance to go to Ikea.  As I tossed and turned the rest of the night and into the morning, I kept going back and forth in my mind on whether I could just tough it out and go anyway.  I thought that maybe once I got up and got going or ate something that I would feel better.  No such luck.  I was miserable.  I knew it would be ridiculous to try to go.  So instead of taking our getaway trip to Atlanta, Tim took me to the doctor.  I had strep throat. 

Pop Pop had a doctor’s appointment on Thursday and I spent the day taking my medicine and recovering.   Then Mimi and Pop Pop so sweetly offered to stay an extra day to watch the kids for us so Tim and I could go to Ikea on Friday.  Yay!! 

We had so much fun together.  It’s very rare that we get chances to get away without kids.  And there’s really no way we could have taken the kids shopping in Ikea with us.  We literally spent HOURS shopping.  We came home with our van loaded down with Ikea furnishings. 

One of my favorite things we bought was this shoe cubby. 

We use the back door off the kitchen all the time to go outside and play.  I don’t let the kids wear dirty shoes inside, so there were always several pairs of shoes laying around the kitchen door or right outside on the deck (or even sometimes in the yard).  I hated the constant mess, loss of shoes, and tripping hazards that this caused.  I love organization and when I saw this shoe cubby, I knew it was the perfect solution for us.  We had a blank wall right next to the kitchen door and the cubby is thin enough that the door can still swing wide open.  (We did set the door stop a little tighter just to make sure the door wouldn’t get slammed into the new cubby.)

I added a few flowers on top and it brightened our kitchen right up!

Dr. Brown’s bottles make cute vases.

Stay tuned for more Ikea finds!