The Play Kitchen

For Christmas this year Tim and I decided to take on the challenge of building Sawyer and Jane a play kitchen. We spent many, many, many cold nights in our garage working on this project. It was a lot of work but we are super proud of the end product. Sawyer is pretty crazy about it too...

Here is our $35 craigslist beauty. Can you see the amazing potential???

The big reveal on Christmas morning...

The play kitchen.

We are thrilled with how it all turned out and LOVE watching Sawyer pretend to be the "cooker." 

Super Sawyer

It is so hard to believe my little dude is three. Seems it was only yesterday...

The party theme was debated for weeks. Sawyer's top three theme choices: Justin Beiber, High School, Super Hero. We opted for Super Hero and went on a Pinterest hunt for great ideas that could be easily copied. The inspiration resulted in some pretty cute decor, if I do say so myself.

Super Silly Sawyer

Cupcakes

I made each kid a cape and the craft was making super hero masks. Cuteness.

Grandma K helping Sawyer with his Super mask. Notice his cute Superman shirt has been replaced by a new Tebow jersey 

(a cool present from Uncle Adam and Aunt Amy). Notice, also, that you will never see the cute Superman shirt for the remainder of the party.

When doing anything of importance, the helmet is required.

Happy 3rd birthday Sawyer. You are the Superest kid I know. 

Nursery Projects: Heirloom Artwork

My dad's mother, Betty, spent a year or so in Design School, back when she was about 19 years old (between 1939 and 1940). After she passed away, we found a box of dozens of her beautiful sketches, tracings, and newspaper clippings of her favorite clothing designs. I have always been a fan of vintage anything and for most of my high school years, my bedroom walls were decorated with her sketches. 

As we have been planning and designing Jane's nursery, in the back of my mind has been 4-5 sketches my grandmother did of little girl clothing. Though it had been years since I had actually seen them, I could still picture them.  A few weekends ago I was able to get to my parents house and go through the box of grandma's artwork. I was THRILLED to find the little girl sketches and even more excited that they were even cuter then I remembered. 

 I can not wait to get the art matted and framed for Jane's nursery. These pieces are such a gift from my Grandma.

 

Nursery Projects: Paint and Bookcase Re-do

It has been so very fun to start on our baby girl nursery! When Sawyer was born we were living in a very small, upstairs apartment and were very limited on what we could do decor wise. Getting to paint and design both Sawyer and baby Jane's rooms is such a treat!

A couple of weekends ago we began working on Jane's nursery. We started with painting the walls an adorable, super soft, shell pink. I'm so happy with how the paint turned out and how it pairs with the ceiling and carpet colors.

My awesome husband is a fantastic painter!

So eager to help!

Proud big brother

Once the paint was on the walls it was time to think about how to arrange the furniture. Sawyer has recently transitioned to a "big boy" bed, thus freeing up his crib for sister. We moved the crib into the nursery and got the changing table out of storage.

The next step was to re-do an old oak bookshelf someone had given us when we got married.

First we sanded

Then came a couple coats of primer

Then came the super cute yellow paint

 

We primed the back of the bookshelf

 We used our bedding fabric to line the back of the bookshelf and the result...SUPER CUTE!

 

We are so happy with how things are turning out! Can't wait to meet our baby Jane!

The DIY Show Off: More Than Rubies featured post!!!

I am so excited! Our closet/office re-model was the daily DIY feature at The DIY Show Off. A HUGE thanks to Roeshel for the blog spot!

As I was trying to explain the thrill to my husband, all I could think of was equating it to that feeling of pride a child gets when their teacher chooses their piece of art to hang on the wall.

Call me dramatic but its one of my first times being "featured" and I can't help but be a bit giddy...

Be sure to check out Roeshel's blog and the plethora of inspiring DIY ideas she boasts!

Closet/Office Re-model

I have been itching to blog about our weekend project...well...all weekend! As we begin to prepare for our little baby Jane, we have encountered a few obstacles. First, the room we intend to use as the nursery has been our office/craft room/"don't know what to do with it" room since we moved into the house in August. Our first solution was to move the office into our bedroom and find storage space for my crafting supplies in one of the hall closets. The plan was to find a medium to large hutch type piece of furniture and convert it to our office space. I had found a few pieces I liked but they ranged from the low $300's to the high $700's and that just wasn't in the budget. Even if we were able to find an affordable hutch, I wasn't super excited about having to move the office into our room. We brainstormed a bit and came up with a Plan B: turn the guest room closet into our office! We did some research online and found great inspiration...

From blisstree.com

from dwellerswithoutdecorators

Our first step was to clean out the closet:

Second step was to re-vamp our old computer desk (which I bought at Goodwill years ago):

Tim bought a 7ft piece of plywood which we used to extend the desk top to fill the closet.

Then came the sanding, priming, and painting.

After getting the painted desk and desktop into the closet, we added some side shelving for additional storage...

As a finishing touch, we ran a piece of molding across the front of the desk so that the plywood addition wasn't so obvious. It worked out perfectly!

I LOVE IT!!!

The total cost of our closet re-model was about $100 dollars. So much more cost effective than trying to find and fix up a large hutch or looking into custom shelving options for our room. I am thrilled with how it all turned out and so thankful I married a man who can turn my ideas into reality. He even re-wired the electrical socket in the room so that we can plug-in the computer and printer from the inside of the closet!

The final step is to find fun curtains to hang over the front. I'm seeing an Ikea trip in the near future...

The most exciting part of the project is now that we have moved the office and craft supplies out of the soon-to-be nursery, we can really get going on prepping for the baby! Pink paint samples, here I come!!