We Moved! Finally!

Well we have been in our new house two and a half months..... so I guess we didn't just move. But lets be honest, moving is horrible! And I never want to move again!!

Some how I can't find a "done" picture of the outside of the house. Oh well! The side of the house is as pretty.... sort of!

We closed on the house at 9 am, by 10 am we were back at the house painting! Day one we painted 3 rooms!!!! Both of the kids bedrooms and the playroom!

The kids had a great time playing around in an empty house!

Day two we had movers move our stuff from storage! It was like Christmas getting our stuff out of storage after over 4 months!

My very inspiring craftroom (and a room that is still not even close to being done!!)

 Moving is not fun at all!

The main floor is almost "done." Well let's be honest, there is never such thing as a done house! The main floor is livable, which is all you can ask for! Since day one I have gone on to paint two more rooms. The main floor powder room and the formal sitting area.

I still have a whole long list of things to do. Mostly upstairs! My son and I can't agree on an accent wall in his room (5 year olds are so opinionated!!) I need to do something in my daughters room (she had a nursery but now gets a big girl room!! Her room is currently a toddler bed and nothing else) Our bedroom needs a lot of work! (because that's just how it works right? Kids first, parents last!) And the poor craft room will be a mess for a long while!!

Anniversary Party Family Tree Decor

This past weekend we celebrated our parents 40th Wedding Anniversary. We kept the celebration simple with an outdoor cookout and bonfire later in the evening. 

Since we were celebrating with family and there were lots of great memories over the years, we knew we needed to display pictures! And so I give you the Family Tree!

I love how cute this turned out!!! (And look at how cute my parents were on their wedding day!!!)

I made the arrow sign with an arrow I bought at Target and my Silhouette Cameo. I love simple projects that come together and look awesome!!

Two nails into the tree and some jute and clothes pins and this is such an easy way to display pictures!

Industrial Restoration Hardware Playroom

One of the things that made us fall in love with our house was the large open basement!! We loved that it was a huge open space for the kids to play and run around. When we moved in, I went to work to make it a fun playroom for our son, with lots of bright primary colors. See the before!!!!  While it was a great design for kids, trying to sell your house, maybe not so much??

So I give you my industrial playroom, inspired by everything Restoration Hardware!

I repainted our table and chairs white and black! The table top is technically chalk board paint, but I have not let the kids in on this secret! More on the toy storage in a bit! I painted my book ledges gray! And added some large initials of the kids with an awesome star I found at Pottery Barn Kids. Also I added my "when you wish upon a star" artwork!

One of the first things I did, and you might notice in the before is paint some walls!!! The wall to the left in the below picture used to be a red chalk board wall. Once coat of primer and one coat of the wall color, I had a nice and boring (white) wall! The wall to the right, used to be an adorable house wall I painted, but now its a nice and solid black chalk wall (so we still have some fun here!!!)

 Do you not love the red firetruck in the above picture? It completes the room!

I attempted to make some DIY Industrial shelves using pipes! While they are not exactly what I wanted them to look like, they did the trick and I am very proud I tackled this project!!! I broke my ankle (un-related to this project) mid-project, so I never really got any pictures of the during, even though the during was a big process!

These shelves are the perfect perfect size for a car garage for my sons many many big trucks!!!

 Some industrial accessories! The boat was a win at a White Elephant party one year and my son loves this boat.... so it might be here to stay!!!

 I made a matching taller industrial pipe shelf for the non-playroom portion of the room. This side is supposed to be the adult side with the TV and seating area.... though toys ALWAYS find their way over to this side!

 I made all of the below artwork! I love making state nail air! So easy but such a fabulous look!!

 More of the massive firetruck and chalk wall as seen from the "adult" side!

 I would have redo this shelf if I had not broken my ankle. The top and bottom shelf have too much space between the shelves. These were a real learning process and they were so SO expensive to make!!!!

And a wide shot from the back of the room! This room sure is a huge improvement over the mess it was before!!! 

Thanks again to First Moments Photography for these pictures!

Relaxing Master Bedroom Room Reveal

The master bedroom.... 

So the first thing I have to note, is our master bedroom NEVER EVER looks like this! This is how I wish it looked EVERYDAY! I can dream, right?

Well this is what our Master bedroom looked like one day! I do really like our room, it is very relaxing. 

Our very relaxing and comfy looking bed!! I love the look of all of these pillows, but I don't like them tossed onto the floor at the end of the day! I made both the front throw pillow and I made the Euro shams in the back row! And my pretty orchid (which I have since killed, I am NOT good at keeping these things alive!!!) I could not find a vase that would work for the orchid so as the photographer was ringing the door to take these pictures, I was hot gluing jute to the original purple orchid vase!! Hot glue can do it all!!!

 We got the black Pottery Barn sconces hanging over our bed for a wedding shower gift 10 years ago and I still love them! The silver mirrors are mirrors I got from Target and painted silver. Oddly, the lamps were from my mom, they are the perfect color for our room.  Our master bedroom will probably look a lot like this in our new house!

 Our gallery wall. Check out my original post on our gallery wall and all of the meaning behind it. I still love this wall!! This is a frame I spray painted and the background of this is a leather skirt I wore when my husband proposed!

Some more homemade artwork and pictures of my baby :) I love the look of mixing different meaningful items in a gallery wall!

Check out my Master Bedroom Dresser Re-do as well!

Thanks again to First Moments Photography for all of the fantastic pictures!!

Kitchen, Dinning Room and Family Room Reveal

Since I have showed pretty much every other room in our house, I should probably show you the living room, dinning room and kitchen combo in our house. 

It's not an all blogged out designed area. It is a practical (with two young children) space where we live. I do love this space. This is the first house we have had with this open concept and there is no going back from this. It's so awesome being in the kitchen and knowing what is going on in the living room! 

One of the first things we did when we moved in was hire an electricial and have them put in an electrical outlet above the fireplace, behind the TV and install an HDMI cable behind the wall. It was the best money spent and it was less than $150 dollars!!!

It took us almost 3 years in our house before we finally got a proper sectional in our house!!! Before we moved in this house we always had a sofa and love seat, so my husband and I could both lay and watch TV. When we moved in here we moved those to the basement and had a small sofa in here. I think everyone in the family was very excited when we replaced it with this sectional! SO much space for everyone!

Some of my artwork on our back wall. I love my University of Wisconsin Subway art and my artwork I made using my Silhoutte Cameo sketch pens on veneer! 

Something we never have in our house, fresh flowers! Fresh flowers and kids do not mix! Enough said!

I might have an issue sewing pillows.... though I did not make all of these.....

Then I give you the kitchen! It is a good layout and worked well! I have always had on my to-do list to paint the cabinets white, but never got around to it! (And oddly, with picking out things for our new house, I found out my husband really really wanted white cabinets, he didn't care about anything except having white cabinets!!!!!)

In the dinning room, I re-stained this table. And painted the chairs. And reupholstered those chairs two times (even though they could already use a third time!!! Kids are messy,,,, my kids are messy??)

And our "mudroom," Or where all of our stuff is tossed after we enter the house through the garage. This space needs to be a million times bigger and needs a door..... oh new house???

Using Your Silhouette Cameo Vinyl on Stained Artwork

In a few days I will be sharing my Industrial basement playroom. When I had the room mostly complete, I realized it needed one more thing. 

I had a lot of 12x24 in boards laying around, So I decided to stain one, and create some fabulous artwork for the playroom. 

I love the contrast between stained wood and paint, so decided to bring out my Silhouette Cameo and create a fun playroom appropriate saying. 

I quickly quickly realized applying vinyl from a Silhouette is nearly impossible on stained wood if you do not spend a lot of time wiping extra stain from your board, which I never did!!! So this was a much harder project than it needed to be!! (Doesn't it always seem to be like that, something that should be simple always finds a way to be extra difficult.)

I love my finished result. I think it looks great in my industrial playroom!! And now I know how to stain a board and use vinyl from your silhouette!!

See more of my projects using stencils I made with my Cameo.

See more of my projects using my Cameo.

Blue and Orange Organized Science Playroom

When we originally bought this house, I struggled and I mean struggled with the front room of our house. It is the first room you see when you enter the house and it is directly attached to the family room. And we really didn't use it for the first year and a half we lived in our house. I blogged about this room in Fall of 2012 and you can see the before of this room we a pretty blank slate. 

Rewind a minute, when we moved into our house I decided that we would have a toy box in the family room and the rest of the toys would be in the basement. At the time my son was a little over a year and din't have all that many toys..... well fast forward 4 years and with a 5 year old boy and a 2 year old girl, my kids have WAY WAY WAY too many toys. Needless to say, the toys and kids have taken over the house..... So my naive thought on only having toys in the basement soon changed and over time, I am not sure how or when, but that front room slowly because a play room. About a year ago or so I finally embraced the fact that this room was indeed a play room and my life became much easier!  

So I give you our first floor play room, I wanted a somewhat simple and not so kid looking playroom, that is still fun for the kids! Since this is the first room when walking into the house, I didn't want it to scream playroom and I think I achieved that. 

A while back we got a new sectional for our family room, so I was able to move our little sofa into the play room, which is so nice to have in a playroom. The "coffee table" is actually our train table. This room has no over head lighting, so I added some fun orange hanging pendants and I started a globe collection! Simple Etsy artwork of constellations really complete the look of the room!

When you turn the corner into the play room is where you see the toys!

A play kitchen and some more shelves with bins easily hide the mess!

I love this view! I love the planets, since we made them, and I love the colors on my periodic table. I searched for a long time for the perfect periodic table and ended up finding this one from the Land of Nod. I love the colors with the pop of orange!

Some more Etsy artwork!

Do you not love these hanging lamps? I love the pop of orange! And of course my globe collection. One globe we "borrowed" from my parents, another from my husbands parents, one my sister gave us and the 4th was from Target.

This shelf and the matching self on the other side of the couch hide so many of their toys. A ton!

I knew I wanted to find some sort of science artwork for the room since I already had the periodic table and the plants, so I searched for a while and was finally really happy when I found these great prints on Etsy!

Don't you just want to grab a toy and play?? And yes, our toy room ALWAYS looks like this!! I have my kids so well trained they put their toys away immediately.... (ok, maybe we are still working on this....)

This orange gear was a great find from Pottery Barn Kids! I love it!

My son and I had a great time painting and hanging the planets. We used a simple kit I found on Amazon and these are my absolute favorite part of this room!!

So it took a while but I am finally very happy with this room. What have you done to embrace the toys in your life?

DIY Railroad Crossing Sign

Last week I revealed my son's train bedroom. If I did't say it enough in my reveal post, I LOVE this room. Love it!!!! I would not change a thing (ok I would add a headboard..... which I never got around too... )

One of my favorite pieces in his room is this large railroad crossing sign.

When I started planning for his room I knew I wanted this sign to be a feature. I just was not sure how I was going to create or find it!

After a lot of thought on how to cheaply get a big circle piece of wood, I decided to search for one of those 3 legged wooden round decorative side tables! I asked around with family because someone had to have one of these tables laying around!!! My aunt did and the legs were broken so it was a great free win for me!!!!

A little bit of painting tape, some "R" stencils (I made mine with my Silhouette) and some yellow and black paint and I had a free large railroad crossing sign!!

If you need more information on stenciling, visit my other stencil projects!

Gray, Yellow and White Craft Room Reveal

 In February of 2012 I revealed my finally organized craft room.  In May of 2012 we found out we were pregnant with our daughter so we could not longer have a separate guest room and craft room. I only enjoyed a nice and organized craft room for a few months before I combined our craft room and guest room together to make a new big boy room for my son! It was quickly decided that we really did not need a guest room (In the 4 years we lived there we had one guest!!!) So the guest bed was moved into my son's room and again I had my own space for a craft room.

So I give you my second craft room - the former guest room! I love this room! It is such a fun and relaxing place to create!

 It's a craft room so I wanted as much storage space and I could get! And I really wanted a separate sewing table. I was sick of trying to clear off a little space on my desk to find room to use my machine.

Two work spaces in a craft room is key!!! And I have so much storage! And even more in my closet! The entire thing is very neatly organized with small totes of different crafting supplies!

 I also wanted to have an area for the kids to craft. Since kids are sometimes messy, I added a little rug under their table, just in case!!!

I had my dad make me some ledge shelves, but we used a wider board so they were extra deep which I loved!

I love being able to keep my machine out at all times. It makes getting quick projects done so much easier!! And I kept all of my supplies within reach! The small shelves on the desk also hold a lot of my sewing supplies!

 My desk ALWAYS looks like this!!!! And of course I ALWAYS have fresh flowers!!!

This is probably my favorite part of my craft room. All of my STORAGE!!!! I spray painted these shelves in my garage (NOT A GOOD IDEA!!!!!!!! I turned EVERYTHING in my garage yellow!!! And I mean EVERYTHING!!!!) I am not going to lie, these were tricky to paint and took a lot of cans of spray paint, but they were worth it. I love how I have easy access to a lot of my craft supplies. And they are all labeled!

I am so in love with this room!!!

Again, a special thanks to First Moments Photography for taking all of these fabulous pictures!! She took all of these fabulous pictures plus our listing pictures!!