The Life of CK and Nate

Painting A Laminate Vanity

2013-05-24T10:11:00.002-04:00

Do you remember this huge bathroom fail from a few months ago?

Well it turns out that the issue was that we used water based enamel. Luckily, it cleaned up fairly easily and we tried again, this time with the oil based enamel. This stuff stunk to high heaven (Nate got it done about a week before Will was born) but it did an AMAZING job covering the crappy white laminate vanity.

And talk about durable. We tried are darndest to rub it off to see if it would hold up and it didn't even leave a mark. Now the vanity is a nice shiny grey (I wasn't loving the blue we tried before) and it looks slightly less cheap compared to the white laminate.

To add a little more convenience to this situation, we installed drawer pulls and knobs since it was a pain in the butt to get things open. We still need to add the pull to the fake drawer front. It wasn't put on with everything else because we couldn't find it. Then we finally found it (it fell out of the bag in the trunk) and now I have no idea where it is again. Have I mentioned that my short term memory has completely disappeared with the birth of Will?

So we have learned our lesson when painting laminate: Oil-based enamel = Good and Water-based enamel=Bad. At least we started on something small instead of the huge lamenite built-ins that we have upstairs!

Look What We're Working On

2013-05-20T09:40:00.000-04:00

Work in the kitchen is back in full swing. We may actually be able to finish everything before the one year mark which is quickly approaching for this project!

Using What You Have

2013-05-17T10:11:00.000-04:00

When renovating a home, you tend to accumulate things along the way. In our house we tend to accumulate a lot of trim and scraps of wood and other materials. This came in handy in the kitchen since we needed to trim out the area around the back entrance and pantry as well as around the kitchen window.

Now this trim around the doors doesn't look pretty since it's the original trim from another part of the house:

But the combination of putty, caulk (so much caulk) and primer makes it look oh so pretty.

Similarly, for around the kitchen window, we had left over MDF and short pieces of wood.

Once again, this got a lot of caulk and primer and even without paint, you would never know that the trim isn't all the same material.

We love reusing things. Projects cost less, the garage is less cluttered and it's less stuff that goes in the trash!

Mother's Day Weekend

2013-05-15T08:47:00.000-04:00

I had a great weekend hanging out with my guys and friends. We spent a lot of time outside which I love and I got to go on my first run in 8 months! Here's a snapshot of the weekend.

#1 & #3: Will before our walk on Friday and after. He's big enough for the Bjorn now and he loves

it. I bring it with me on walks now and if he gets cranky I stick him in it and it calms him right down.

#2: Will finally conked out after being fussy at our friend's house. It's amazing how going outside

for a few minutes is sometimes all that it takes to stop his fussing.

#4 & #8: Enjoying the fireworks that our town has every year as part of the Mother's day festival.

We were far enough away that Will slept through them all.

#5: My Mother's day present from Nate. I broke these in with about 7 miles of walking/running

on Saturday and it felt great!

#6 & #7: Walking around Swan Lake on Friday checking out the birds and the artists setting up for

the Mother's day festival

We also enjoyed watching the new moms around town. There are so many new baby birds around the lakes near us. On one walk I counted over 30 babies from at least 4 different type of birds and you sure know which one is the mamma if you walk to close!

Whatcha Looking At?

2013-05-11T11:41:00.001-04:00

Map Art

2013-05-07T10:13:00.001-04:00

The wall to the left as you look at our bed was in desperate need of something. It's the first wall you see as you walk into the room so you really notice its blankness.

I spent awhile looking around for something I liked and was big enough for this wall. Nothing really caught my eye that was large enough that didn't cost an arm and a leg so when I happend across a site by Stamen Designs, I got the idea to make a large piece of art from many small ones. The site is a searchable map of the world with different views like toner, terrain and water color. You can create images of various sizes so I made map tiles of Budapest, Hungary where both Nate and I studied abroad (and both love). I printed them out on card stock and put them in some Ikea frames. I used the toner view so that we could see all the street names.

To personalize it a little more, we used wax pencils to mark off various things in the city like our apartments, the school we went to and all our favorite restaurants.

Since I already had the card stock, the only cost of this project was the frames so for about $80 we now have a nice large piece of art for our bedroom.

Linking To: Hi Sugar Plum, The Great Indoors, House of Hepworths, My Repurposed Life, Our Delightful Home, Five Days Five Ways, Serenity Now, Lovely Etc., The Rooster and the Hen, Six Sisters Stuff, Tatertots and Jello, Wayward Girls Crafts, Twigg Studio, Serendipity and Spice, Ask Anna, Home Stories A to Z, Uncommon Designs, House wives of Riverton, Crafty Texas Girls, Southern Institute, Watch out Martha!,http://www.myrepurposedlife.net/

Everything and the Bathroom Sink

2013-05-03T14:32:00.000-04:00

Well, technically, the bathroom sink is basically the only thing that is going to be replaced in our downstairs bathroom. Since we decided to hold off on renovating this room until we can redo the entire addition, we have a very short list of improvements that we want to do to make it a little more user friendly and a lot easier on the eyes. So, a few weeks ago, our bathroom looked like this:

This bathroom was an eyesore of white laminate accentuated by way to many mirrors and a pretty nasty sink so we finally decided to fix at least one of these things and pop out the sink. I had tried many times to get the old sink clean, but the at-one-point clear faucet handles that had turned cloudy along with the odd ring around the drain (not to mention the drain itself) made the sink always look dirty.

Let's zoom in on the nastiness shall we?

Gross right? Since I could not get the sink clean with products, we headed to Lowe's to see how much it would cost to replace it. Did you know that you can get a replacement sink like this for under $20? I didn't, and it definitely made our decision on wether or not to replace it a lot easier. We also picked up a new faucet on clearance and after a little install we had a nice and clean new sink.

We have a few other projects in this room that we're slowly working through and hopefully when we're done it's a much nicer space. Until then, we at least don't have to stare a grodiness when brushing our teeth!

One Month

2013-05-02T07:00:00.000-04:00

Right now I'm:

Sleeping in three to five hour chunks

A very noisy sleeper

Getting good at pushing myself over from my stomach to my back

Losing my hair

Teasing Mommy and Daddy with "almost" smiles

Using my improved neck control to occasionally head butt Mommy (sorry for the bruises)

Laundry Unit Progress

2013-04-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

The last time you saw the laundry unit, the main structure was in place but it was still in a very rough stage.

The first thing we did to start the finishing process on the unit was to bust out the stain and give the countertop, shelves and rod a darker look to match up with the rest of the room.

Then we added trim to the front of the shelves and to the edges of the boxes so there wouldn't be rough edges exposed. We still need to add some trim at the top and paint out the bottom of the shelves that you can see. I picked up some baskets from TJ Maxx and now they store Will's clothes that don't fit yet and various other things like bibs and socks.

We also added some angled supports for laundry baskets in the bottom boxes. We decided to go with angled supports (instead of straight like this pinterest inspiration) so that we can easily toss dirty laundry into the appropriate baskets. We need to add the supports to the other side and paint those as well and once we do that we'll be done!

In case your like me right now and can't remember two seconds ago let alone months, here is a comparison of what this part of the room looked like in the fall vs now.

Bear Dresser: Finished

2013-04-26T09:54:00.000-04:00

The bear dresser has finally been completed! While it was technically usable a long time ago, I didn't get around to adding the bears back on until recently. If you can remember back to last August (This project has been going on forever!) I created a stencil of the bears on the original dresser so that once I refinished it, I could add some nostalgia back.

The stencil I made worked perfectly. I traced out the bears and then painted them. I only put on one very thin layer of paint to give it a more rustic look and used a bright yellow (the same yellow as the murals on the wall) to add a little punch of color. I also decided to do a simpler design with the bears and just have it look like one bear was cartwheeling down the dresser.

Overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out. It definitely feels a little more masculine but the bears and the zebra handles keep it fun for Will's nursery.

Linking To: Hi Sugar Plum, The Great Indoors, House of Hepworths, My Repurposed Life, Our Delightful Home, Five Days Five Ways, Serenity Now, Lovely Etc., The Rooster and the Hen, Six Sisters Stuff, Tatertots and Jello, Wayward Girls Crafts, Twigg Studio, Serendipity and Spice, Ask Anna, Home Stories A to Z, Uncommon Designs, House wives of Riverton, Crafty Texas Girls, Southern Institute, Watch out Martha!,http://www.myrepurposedlife.net/

Two and Three Weeks

2013-04-22T20:44:00.000-04:00

We've been having fun the last few weeks getting to know our little guy better. It's crazy how much Will changes every day and we've been really lucky to have both been home with him to watch him change. Here's a rundown of the last couple of weeks.

Will isn't the only one who loves the Boppy Pillow. I've now caught Zoe sleeping on it twice.

My parents visited for a couple of days and Will showed off his head control skills.

Will also got his first real bath since his cord finally fell off.

Right Now I'm...

Loving bright lights

Going through a growth spurt

Eating about every 2 hours

Loving real baths after hating sponge baths

Enjoying grabbing hair and holding on

Over nine and a half pounds!

Closet Happenings

2013-04-19T17:16:00.001-04:00

As part of the kitchen renovation, we took an awkward closet/passthrough and nook and turned it into a bump out for our appliance wall in the kitchen.

The bump out didn't span the entire wall so we were left with two narrow but very tall sections on either side. On one side we framed it out so it could be a closet for hanging clothes and on the other we left it more open so we could put shelves in.

On the left, we bought a few large wooden dowels and wooden closet rod brackets. We drilled the brackets into studs and then popped into the dowels to create rods to hang clothes. We were able to stagger the rods so we were able to get three rows in: one way high up for my dresses (it is situated towards the back so that the dresses can hang behind everything), one in the middle for my shirts and one low for Nate's shirts.

On the right we installed shelves basically floor to ceiling for all of our folded laundry. These two closets hold the majority of our clothes while the rest (mostly of the undergarment and sport variety) live in our bathroom closet. This allows us to not need any dressers in our room which definitely helps make it feel more spacious.

Now that we can use these spaces, we can focus on making this area look a little nicer by trimming out the shelves and adding a closet door.

Faces of Will

2013-04-16T07:00:00.000-04:00

We're enjoying all the faces that Will makes during the day. It feels like every minute he's making a new one and it would be great if we could capture them all but he just makes so many! These were taken over just a couple of minutes. I personally am loving his little forehead wrinkles.

Baby Room Art

2013-04-10T13:05:00.001-04:00

In the baby's room we had just enough space to squeeze in my favorite couch. We got it years ago and it has lived with us in every apartment/house we lived in together. It's not the prettiest thing but it has held up really well and was the perfect size to hang out on the wall next to the window in the baby's room. Since Will came home we have used it a ton so I'm really glad it's in this space.

One challenge with the couch is that the back is quite low (it's basically in line with the bottom of the window) and so there was a lot of empty space above it which looked awkward. To fix this, we rehung a large shelf we had previously had in our office about two thirds of the way up the wall to house stuffed animals and added two photos that Nate's mom got us below the shelf.

The pictures are from Sharon Montrose and she takes the most amazing animal pictures. I especially love her baby animal collection and the two we have are a baby bear and baby bobcat. I'd like to eventually get a few more for the room, but in the meantime (since they are kinda pricy to buy a lot of), I've been trying to get a little better at editing photos. I took a pic that Nate took while at the State fair this year,

and then after playing around in Gimp (a free photo editing program) for awhile, I was able to remove the background and improve the coloring on the giraffe so it now looks like the pic was shot with a light grey background.

For a first try at this I'm pretty happy with how it came out and i'm thinking I'm going to hang it between the other two to fill out that wall just a little more.

One Week

2013-04-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

On Saturday we officially made it through the first week with Will and I can honestly say we are enjoying every minute of it. We feel like we got really lucky with this little guy.

Right now I'm....

Loving my paci, breast feeding and the Moby Wrap

Enjoying car rides as long as we don't hit too many stop lights

Sleeping basically anywhere I'm put down including my swing, crib, rocker or the bed during cuddle time

Rocking tummy time

Eating every 3-4 hours

Not bothered by noise or light

Getting up at about 12, 3 and 6 at night which makes mommy and daddy very happy

Looking like I have auburn hair (like Nate's beard) and very dark grey-blue eyes

Weighing in at about seven and a half pounds

Bones of a Laundry Unit

2013-04-04T10:00:00.000-04:00

Since we have the baby's room in the same space as the laundry, we wanted to do something so when you walked in, it didn't feel like a laundry room. To do this, we decided to build a laundry unit around the washer and dryer. We initially were going to try to buy something for this space but we wanted it to serve so many purposes, that we decided it would be easier to build it so we could get everything we wanted.

The following is what we wanted to achieve with this unit:

Make the washer/dryer stand out less
Have storage for baby clothes currently not being worn (bigger sizes)
Area for sorting laundry
Area for folding laundry
Space to store laundry supplies as well as ironing supplies
Place to hang shirts

We picked up three sheets of 1/2" plywood and Nate basically made two U shape structures using the plywood, corner braces and our nail gun. To make everything a little more sturdy, the outside sides of the unit go all the way up to the ceiling which will serve as the sides to the upper storage.

To complete the bottom boxes, we used a combo of 1 x 8's and 1 x 10's to create a butcher block counter. We made sure that all sides of the bottom boxes were plum before using the nail gun to attach the top.

We decided to not put a back on this unit so the wall color could still be seen and power outlets could still be accessed. Since this took away some structural support of the unit, we attached the whole unit to the wall at the corners so it is very sturdy.

At this point, we had our folding space (the counter top) and the beginnings of the sorting space (The bottom units will hold laundry baskets). The washer and dryer were becoming less obvious but still had a way to go and we still needed a lot more storage.

That's where the top units came into play. Using a similar method as the bottom units, Nate used the plywood with corner braces to create upside down U's with the countertop completing the rectangle. These units got support piece of wood for shelves to be attached (which were made out of 3/4" plywood). You'll also notice that we didn't put the unit all the way against the wall. This is so we could slide the ironing board in over there so it can stay tucked out of the way unless we need it.

Between the two upper units, we attached a long wooden dowel for hanging shirts and added a long shelf for storing laundry supplies.

Since we used plywood, all the edges are a little rough so while you can see the bones of the unit here, there is a lot of trim, stain and paint that needs to be done before we can call it done. We also have to add the supports for the laundry baskets. Since the unit takes up the whole wall, the washer and dryer are no longer the focal point and we are really excited for how much organization space we will have once this is completed!

Introducing Baby Will

2013-04-03T19:33:00.000-04:00

The end of last week ended up being pretty exciting for us. Around midday Thursday I started having irregular, mild contractions. They were spread out enough that we weren't even sure they were contractions but it definitely got us excited that the baby might come soon. They got much worse that night so I only slept about two hours and was hopeful that things were progressing (at this point they were about an hour apart). By the morning, the contractions had basically stabilized at an hour apart and weren't getting stronger or more frequent so I started to think it was false labor. I actually went to a couple of meetings that morning (Nate drove me just in case) just to take my mind off of things. Luckily, by late afternoon I was having stronger contractions about every 20 min and weaker ones in between. Once again I got about 2 hours of sleep before I woke up around 2:30 am with much stronger contractions every 6-8 min. Things moved a lot faster from that point and by 5 am they were very strong and just under 5 min apart.

We headed to the hospital at 5 am and even though we live only about 5 min from the hospital, by the time I got hooked up to the monitors in triage, my contractions were about 3 min apart. Our hospital is notorious for sending people home if they aren't far along enough so I was very happy to find out that I was 3 cm dilated and that they were going to admit me. I got to walk around the maternity floor until 7 am when they moved us over to Labor and Delivery.

I had been on the fence about having pain meds and an epidural up to this point but by the time we got to Labor and Delivery, I had had only 4 hrs of sleep in the last 48 hrs and I knew if I didn't get some rest that I wouldn't have enough energy at the end of things. So, around 7:30 I received some pain medication to take the edge off until they could get me an epidural. It made me super loopy but let me relax for a solid hour. It wore off really fast between 8:30 and 9 and the contractions got really bad until I got an epidural at 9:30.

I didn't react very well to the epidural basically right off the bat. I was numb a lot higher than anticipated (basically from the elbows down) and it made me feel like I wasn't breathing well. I also got horrible shakes and uncontrollable shivers. It didn't help that the temperature control was broken in our room so we couldn't get it higher than 65˚. However, I couldn't feel the contractions any more so even though it wasn't completely restful, I did get a break until about 3 pm. The scariest reaction to the epidural was that my blood pressure dropped really low and at one point it hit 65/38 and while they were trying to get it back up, they lost the babies heart beat and couldn't find it again so the on call doctor came down around 12:30 and broke my water and put in an internal monitor for the baby. They got my blood pressure back to a more reasonable level and by 2:45 I was 10 cm dilated.

At this point I was having contractions every couple of minutes but they weren't very intense so my doctor (who had just gotten back into town) gave me the option of trying to push and see if the baby would make progress or get Pitocin to increase the intensity. I really wanted to avoid Pitocin so at 3:15 I pushed through four contractions. Unfortunately, the baby didn't move so they sat me up to have gravity help and started me on a Pitocin drip. This unfortunately coincided with the epidural wearing off so the next hour was extremely bad contractions with basically no break between them. My doctor initially was going to get them to top off my epidural, but instead (much to my dissapointment) had me start pushing at 4:30. I went from 0 station to +5 in the first fifteen minutes of pushing and then the baby got stubborn and it took another 15 to get his head out. Finally, at 5:02, William Allan was born. Nate got to cut the umbilical cord and I got to help clean him off right away. After he and I got taken care of, we finally were moved to Mother and Baby at 7 pm. We stayed in the hospital for two days and finally got to come home on Monday.

Some Stats:

Name: William Allan

Birthday: 3/30/13 at 5:02 pm

Weight: 7 lb 14 oz

Length: 21.5 in

Apgar score: 10 (surprisingly)

A Little Trickery

2013-04-01T09:00:00.000-04:00

Happy April Fool's Day! Are you ready for some eye trickery on this fine morning?

One issue we had with not completely renovating the addition of the house were the doors that led out to the backyard. We went back and forth on whether to keep them or not and how to make them safe to have in the baby's room. We resolved to keep them (mostly for the light) and to make them safe, we screwed them shut and spray foamed all the gaps so they were completely sealed off. This essentially turned the doors into really long, inoperable, windows. Now, there is no direct outdoor access in or out of this room, but it was still pretty ugly.

Our goal to make this area a little prettier was to trick the eye into thinking that this wall has windows instead of doors. From our last house I already had a bunch of basic white curtains, but our ceilings in our last house were a lot lower so all of the curtains were too short to be hung properly in this house. Awhile back, I had bought a few yards of cute elephant fabric and I had been contemplating using it to elongate the curtains so that they would touch the floor. After going through a few ideas and not liking any of them, I realized that if I used the fabric to make a valance, then I could get away with hanging the white curtains much lower and it would give me the added benefit of covering up the top of the doors (plus if I want to use the curtains somewhere else later on, they would still be plain white curtains)

A lot of people seem to like the "no sew" methods out there, but I find my sewing machine faster for projects like this so just hemmed three of the edges and then folded the top over enough so that the curtain rod could go through and stitched. The trickest part was lining up two pieces of fabric so that the elephants were even. I then hung the valance near the ceiling so it just covered the top of the doors. I didn't have enough curtain rods to hang the white curtains so we picked up a metal electrical conduit at Lowe's for under 2 bucks and used that with some left over brackets to hang the white curtains near the bottom of the valance which allowed them to touch the floor. By using three curtains, all the edges of the door, as well as the lock and handle, are now covered up so you can't tell that these are doors when you look at it.

To help the doors look even more like windows (and to add more storage to the room), we pulled an Ikea bookshelf in from the living room and placed it infront of the doors. This cuts the doors off at about the same length as the other window in the room (which also got a valance and white curtains).

Now we are really happy with this wall of the room instead of cringing every time we see it. Plus, the bookshelf is a great place for the baby monitor, books and more storage for toys and various other things. It also makes it so no one can even attempt to go out of the house this way.

It's been interesting working in rooms we eventually want to renovate. We don't want to spend a lot of money in a space we want to change, but we also want to be happy in the space until we do change it. This has forced us to be a lot more creative which has turned out to be a lot of fun! (This particular project came in under $20 since we used so many things we already had) We have a lot more projects that fall into this category so hopefully we can keep the creative juices going.

Linking To: Hi Sugar Plum, The Great Indoors, House of Hepworths, My Repurposed Life, Our Delightful Home, Five Days Five Ways, Serenity Now, Lovely Etc., The Rooster and the Hen, Six Sisters Stuff, Tatertots and Jello, Wayward Girls Crafts, Twigg Studio, Serendipity and Spice, Ask Anna, Home Stories A to Z, Uncommon Designs, House wives of Riverton, Crafty Texas Girls, Southern Institute, Watch out Martha!,http://www.myrepurposedlife.net/

Freezing Whole Strawberries

2013-03-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

With our haul of strawberries this year, we decided to freeze about a third to use for smoothies and such later on. About half of them I froze whole while the other half I sliced up. Withe the whole strawberries, it's really nice to just grab a few frozen ones and not deal with a huge clump frozen together. To achieve this, I first cleaned and hulled the strawberries, dried them slightly and laid them out on a cookie sheet.

Then I stuck the cookie sheet in the freezer for a couple of hours until the strawberries were completely frozen.

Once you have frozen strawberries, you can toss them into freezer bags and stick them back in the freezer. As long as you do this quickly (so they don't start melting) the strawberries won't stick together!

Installed Beams

2013-03-28T12:46:00.000-04:00

Believe it or not, the kitchen is not finished yet. However, all major things are now finished now that we finished installing the beams. It may still look really rough, but to us, getting the last sections of beams up looks amazing. Getting the beams up didn't come without a cost though. Nate hit his head against one of the lights which knocked the shade off. It turns out that while the bamboo floors are pretty soft, they aren't soft enough to prevent a glass shade from shattering when dropped eight feet... now we know.

The reason the kitchen isn't finished at this point is because all that is left is finishing touches and this is where we classically peter out. The kitchen is completely usable so there is nothing really pushing us to finish things up. All that we have left to do is a ton of painting and a ton of trim which won't actually take long to do, but I don't see it getting finished until Nate lets me get on a ladder again.

Baby's Crib

2013-03-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

We wanted something simple for a crib and this Babyletto Madison crib kept coming up over and over again as a favorite when we were looking. We really liked the fact that it was a white crib so it wouldn't overwhelm the room but had the dark brown base which felt a little more boyish. This combo on the crib is what has inspired the brown/white combo in the rest of the room.

The other thing that we really liked about this crib is it's versatility. The fact that all the sides are the same level give it a modern look but also allows us to place the long or short side against the wall or have it sit in the middle of the room and still access the baby on any of the sides. It is also a convertible crib so the mattress drops as the baby gets bigger and then it turns into a toddler bed so it will be getting a lot of use for many years to come.

40 Weeks

2013-03-26T16:00:00.000-04:00

This week, Baby is the size of a: Watermelon

How far along? 40 weeks

Due date: March 25, 2013 (yes yesterday)

Total weight gain/loss: 18 lbs

Maternity clothes? Yep. At 40 weeks I officially have moved into maternity only shirts.

Sleep: I've had a horrible cold for the past weeks so I have finally had a couple nights of sleep after basically not sleeping all last week.

Best moment: May sound silly, but getting some things checked off my to-do list has been the best moments of the past couple of weeks. After three months of christmas decorations sitting in our dinning room, they are finally put away and that makes me feel so much better.

Movement: He's still moving all over the place. He definitely doesn't seem to care that he has no room... he'll just push whatever is in his way out of the way.

Food cravings: Spicy food... especially Thai and Indian. If I could eat it every day I would. This is true on a regular day for me too but it's a little more extreme right now.

Symptoms: As the baby gets lower my ability to walk after sitting has gotten worse and worse. This is suppose to help with my breathing but since I've had a cold I haven't noticed that benefit yet.

Gender: Boy!

Feeling toward Pregnancy: I was really down last Friday since I was so sick and I was coming up on a week where my doctor was on vacation. I'm still not ecstatic about our current situation but I'm doing better now that my cold is going away and I've had some rest.

What I miss: Since we're so close to the end I'm looking forward to enjoying some of the things I've been missing. I'm really looking forward to being able to get some exercise in.

What I am looking forward to: Baby!

Milestones: We made it to the full 40 week mark! We also think we have everything we need to welcome baby to the world.

Our New Bedroom

2013-03-25T08:00:00.000-04:00

When we showed you how we created our canopy in our new master, we had yet to prettify the room so here is our bed side of our new master.

We're still loving our new king bed and having the boxsprings sit directly on the floor is working really well with the dogs.

We still have to make the headboard, get shades for the windows, and hang some artwork that I'm really excited about but other than that this side of the room is in really good shape.

The other side of the room is still a work in progress that we'll share with you later but the room is to the point where it is completely livable and all the rest of the projects can be finished when we have the time.

Just for fun, here is a night shot. we really love how the carpet and the canopy make the room very cozy and we are still amazed with how well the king bed fits in this space. We were really worried the room would feel cramped but now we're considering adding a storage bench to the end of the bed since there is significantly more room than expected!

DIY a Mobile for Under 10 Bucks

2013-03-22T10:00:00.000-04:00

Can anyone explain to me why baby mobiles are so expensive? I understand it more so for the ones that play music and such, but there seems to be a huge markup on the simple ones. If you follow me on Pinterest, you may have seen some mobiles that I pinned for the baby's room and there are a bunch on Etsy that I would have loved to buy, but I just couldn't justify paying $50 to well over $100 for something that I could make.

What I did get from looking at a lot of mobiles was a really good idea of what I wanted for ours. First I wanted to stick with the theme of the room so I wanted animals and I wanted to bring in the brown/white theme. I also wanted the animals to be colorful and I wanted the mobile to be able to move without getting tangled.

I headed over to Hobby Lobby to see what I could find and came home with two embroidery hoops, two rolls of white thin rope and seven wooden animals that I found which were conveniently pre-decorated and very colorful (and pretty cute)

I took the inside hoops of the embroidery hoops and had Nate stain them while I drilled holes into the wooden animals (I put the hole at a point where the animal wouldn't tip to one side or another) and attached a piece of rope. I then tied the rope of each animal to the hoops and tied all the ropes together.

We installed a simple hook in the ceiling and hung the mobile so that it can be seen from both the changing table and the crib. It's a really basic mobile but it's perfect for our needs. One of my favorite things is that when the overhead fan is on in the room, the mobile slowly rotates, continuously, back and forth and the double hoops make it so the animals can't get tangled.

The hoops were $1.29 and $1.49, the animals were $.67 each and the white rope was BOGO so for the two it was $1.99. We already had the stain and drill/drillbits so all in all we spent just under $9.50 for the mobile and it took about an hour over two nights to put it all together. This was the design we chose, but there are a ton of different options at craft stores if you get creative and don't want to spend a lot on a mobile.

Linking To: Hi Sugar Plum, The Great Indoors, House of Hepworths, My Repurposed Life, Our Delightful Home, Five Days Five Ways, Serenity Now, Lovely Etc., The Rooster and the Hen, Six Sisters Stuff, Tatertots and Jello, Wayward Girls Crafts, Twigg Studio, Serendipity and Spice, Ask Anna, Home Stories A to Z, Uncommon Designs, House wives of Riverton, Crafty Texas Girls, Southern Institute, Watch out Martha!,http://www.myrepurposedlife.net/

Enamel Painting Fail

2013-03-20T09:53:00.001-04:00

We've been working on some small updates in our downstairs full bath (basically the master bath). It's definitely the worst bathroom in the house and at one point we entertained the idea of gutting it before the baby got here but decided to hold off since we really couldn't figure out a good configuration. Instead, we're trying to make it better with what we have and one of the many issues that we have is the white laminate base. I saw a tutorial online that used pre-colored enamel to paint the laminate and so I decided for $10 it was worth trying it out.

Pretty much right off the bat it was horrible. The color was about 10 shades lighter than what was on the can and it didn't go on smoothly or evenly. I figured it must get better with additional coats so I painted out the whole thing (which was a mistake) and let it dry for a couple of days.

After it was completely dry, I tried to put on a second coat but I noticed it was taking off the bottom coat. After a little scrubbing, the enamel came off leaving the vanity looking exactly like it did before (the first door in the first pic is pre-enamel and the same door in the second pic is after I scrubbed the enamel off). At this point I called it a fail and spent 45 min scrubbing the whole vanity back to where it was a couple of days prior.

So what went wrong? Well, I didn't pay full attention to the tutorial and I purchased water-based enamel versus oil-based. Honestly, after the horrible performance of the water-based enamel, I don't have high hopes for the oil-based but we're going to give it a try (on only one door front this time) and see if we can get some color in this bathroom!