Not So Pink Baby Girl's Nursery

I loved the bedding and colors I used for Little Man's nursery 3 years back and (to much surprise to MANY people) I decided to use the same bedding and color scheme for our little girl. So baby girl's room doesn't look all that different from her big brother's nursery, but I just added in the right amount of pink accents! I LOVE pink, but didn't want an overwhelmingly pink room for our little girl.

So here is our not so pink little girl's room!

I spent a while trying to find the perfect letters for her name because I wanted them to be lower case letters and I wanted them to be HUGE! So I ended up ordering them from Craft Cuts and painted them a light pink.

Since I bought this bedding set in 2010, it came with a bumper. I only used the bumpers for the pictures and not while she sleeps in the crib.

I modified this plaque from a Restoration Hardware wall hanging by making an A with fabric and adhering it to the wood. 

Our comfy Pottery Barn Kids rocker, that we spend a lot of time in! I think a comfy chair in a nursery is a must!! I whipped together a pink pillow for her chair!

I created some bird artwork for her room using my silhouette.

 I modified the mobile I made by painting it pink and replacing the blue ribbon with pink ribbon.

Here is a close up of the animals hanging on the mobile. This is still one of my favorite parts of this room.

I love her nursery and how calming it is. We like spending time in it, and she loves sleeping in her crib! Here is how little man's nursery look! It's really not all that different, but I do think it has the perfect amount of pink!

Gray and Purple Owl Diaper Cake

Last weekend I hosted a baby shower for my sister. I am so excited as she is expecting a little girl in about a month, so our little girls will be about 5 months apart! And hopefully very soon they will be best friends!

My sister is putting together a purple and gray nursery for her little girl, so we used that as a starting point for the baby shower.

And NO baby shower is complete without a diaper cake. My mom and I put together this cute purple and gray owl diaper cake. It was REALLY easy, especially since we have a huge supply of diapers in my house right now!

Three years back, when my sister's made me a diaper cake for my son's baby shower, they tediously wrapped each diaper with a rubber band..... well as a mom of two, I don't have that sort of time!!! We folded each diaper in half loosely following these directions on how to make a diaper cake. It maybe took us 30 minutes to assemble the general structure of the cake, it was SO fast and SO much easier!!!

I easily decorated the cake with purple and gray ribbon and a cute little owl I made! I decorated the top of the cake with fabric flowers headbands that her little girl can wear!!!! These directions are all over Pinterest, but here are the headbands I made for my little girl.

Pink Nursery

Here is a sneak peak of our pink nursery and what I have been up too lately! I have been a bit busy..... but its so worth it!

Train Artwork

I have slowly showed bits and pieces of Little Man's new Big Boy room. Well today I have some simple artwork I made for his book shelves. I downloaded the shape from the Silhouette website. 

Little Man loves to say "All a board" so it was an easy addition to add to the sign!

This was so easy to make!! Check out the other stencils I have made with my Silhouette Cameo for tutorials on how I made this! 

DIY Baby Headband Holder

With all of the headbands I made for Baby Girl, I had to also make something that we could display them on!! There are a lot of different ideas on Pinterest, but I decided to modify and make my own version.

I took a beautiful framed picture I bought at Goodwill MONTHS ago and painted it pink. I then lined it will some cute brown chevron fabric and used some pink drawer pulls I bought at Target. 

I then used my favorite Command Adhesive strips and attached it to the inside of her closet door! It works for now, but it maybe should have been a little bigger! Since little girls love their hair accessories! 

Linked up at: DOG DAYS OF WINTER “ORGANIZE IT” LINKY PARTYhttp://www.craftyscrappyhappy.net/

Baby Girl Headbands

In a few (hopefully short days we are expecting a sweet little baby girl. So I just had to make some cute little headbands for her to wear! Since our son was basically balk until he was two, I figure our little girl will probably have similar hair and instead of telling people she is a girl, I figured the headbands will MAYBE give people a clue to not ask!! 

These were so easy to make!!! And they are all interchangeable! The flowers are attached to the elastic bands with Velcro! There are a lot of different tutorials for these around Pinterest, but this is one version I used. The only difference is I sewed the circles onto the felt, and used Velcro instead of pins!

I can't wait to see these headbands on our new little girl!!!

Easy Baby Blankets

Before my son was born I spent months knitting him a baby blanket. Now since I don't have that much time on my hands, I decided I should be fair and make my daughter a blanket too.... well I ended up making her 3 but I spent WAY WAY WAY less time on her three combined than on that single one for my son.

The most time consuming blanket I made I started with the pieces wrong side to wrong side and sewed two pieces of soft fabric together. Once almost all sewed together I flipped it right side out and then sewed a second time around the blanket with about a half an inch seam allowance.

My second and third blankets were the same concept, different cute fabric! I carefully pinned the two pieces of fabric together wrong side to wrong side so my alignment was correct on them. I then pinned double fold bias tape around the entire blanket and sewed it in place.

My careful pinning!!!

My third blanket!

I was so intimidated to actually start this project and like most projects I don't know why. This was a REALLY easy sewing project. Just a bunch of straight lines (and some might not be 100% straight!!! - I am pretty sure she isn't going to care!!!)

Little Man's Last Nursery

When Little Man was born we rented an apartment in Michigan while Casey finished Law School. The awesome thing about our apartment was we were able to paint (not so awesome when we had to prime it back to white when we moved out!!!) Little Man had a really nice sized room for an apartment, not that he EVER slept in there!!! So this is his first nursery.

I was never a fan of the glider we bought for Little Man's room (and trust me I spent HOUR and HOURS in it trying to get Little Man to sleep!!!!) so I sold it before we moved to Wisconsin (why move something I didn't have too!!) We lived with my parents for about 5 months after moving to Wisconsin and because we did a lot of traveling back and forth with him when we lived in Michigan, they bought a crib and he had his own room. So while living there I helped my mom decorate his room there.

Then we have Little Man's nursery in our new house.

About 6 months in our new house I decided I wanted another glider in his room.  So we have our final and last version of Little Man's nursery. Soon we will move him into a toddler bed and in the not so near future he will be moved down the hall to his big boy room.

So I give you Little Man's last nursery!

I love how it turned out!! And I will be very sad when Little Man moves out of this room. But I am so excited to start working on his Big Boy room and all of the fun that will bring!

Here is how I made the alphabet canvas artwork.

Baby Girl Name Plaque

Over the weekend we went to a Baptism for an adorable 9 week old. I didn't know what to get her and since I didn't get her anything when she was born I decided to make her a wall hanging for her bedroom with her name on it.

A while back I purchased these awesome wall plaques from Restoration Hardware Baby and Child. They are thick 17x17 inches of wood. I had to prime the board to cover up what was there, which meant I only needed two thing coats of pink paint!

I made the stencil with my Cameo Silhouette. I forgot to grab my transfer paper so I improvised and used wide painters tape. It worked in a pinch!

I am loving this plaque and so happy with how it turned out!! 

The boards come with the ribbon attached and I actually removed it before gifting it because the ribbon is brown and the paint is gray (pretend you don't notice that in my picture :) )

Large Alphabet Wall Art

After re-arranging my little man's nursery I had a very large blank wall so I created some large scale alphabet wall art!

This huge 36 x36 inch canvas that I painted for our first house while I love the colors, does not really fit into the colors of any room in our new house. And since this is a huge canvas I wanted to re-use it! I repainted the whole thing the same dark chocolate color for my new project.

I designed my "design"out in InDesign first before creating the letters in the Silhouette Studio software. I ended up using Arial Bold font size 530pt (so the letters were HUGE)

I then went used way too much vinyl to make this! Luckily I scored 2 rolls of pink vinyl when my favorite local craft store was going out of business for $2.30 a roll, because I used one whole roll and at least half of the second. I tried using contact paper but that's a whole other issue :)

I will admit it was not easy to transfer the vinyl to my canvas because I was working with such large pieces. I found it did help to cut the row in half and work with smaller pieces. Also going back to my being a craft hoarder I saved all of the inside pieces of my vinyl alphabet for a later to be determined project!! The key to laying the vinyl is to GO SLOW and BE PATIENT!!!

To prevent bleeding I then painted with my original bottom color and let it dry!


Then I gave the letters a coat of my Behr Color matched Restoration Hardware Baby Silver Sage Paint.


Since I was pulling up such huge pieces of vinyl I let it dry longer than I normally would. I didn't want to pull up the vinyl with wet paint still on it and have it accidentally land on the print and ruin it!! I also did have to do some touching up on the letters.

Here is the finished product and it nicely shows the size of this canvas!!

I am happy with how it turned out! Little man likes to point to the different letters and it fills the space perfectly!

My Current TO-DO list

To try and keep myself honest and ACTUALLY get things DONE, I thought I would post my TO-DO LIST to be completed by April 1. And cross them off as I do them!!! Why April 1, well we have a big birthday in April so I figure that's a nice time frame. It also gives me time before my sister's wedding in May and then doesn't put the pressure on to have a million projects to do over the summer!

1. Finish Little Man's room - DONE - just need to blog it someday

This was done before, but I made some changes, so its no longer "done" I don't have too much left in this project. Just some new art work and things for the wall. Super EASY! I should be able to cross this off of my list in a week.... right??

2. Re-Do Wall of Guest Bedroom - DONE - sort of.... its a fix for now....  again need to blog it

I love my guest bedroom, but I don't love this wall of the room. It just doesn't quite cut it. So I have plans to re-do it. Not 100% sure yet what it will look like, but it will include the Red Envelope "You make me happy when skies are Grey" artwork.

3. Organize Craft Room - DONE

OMG this room is a disaster!! Trust me it's a mess and is in desperate need of organization! Some days it looks better than others... but most of the time its a stressful place to work on projects. I have started a gallery wall in this room, which I love, but need a few additions.

Update: This room is done!!! Check it out!

4. Add Some Style to the Master Bedroom - Working on it

I love our end tables, headboard, the lamps, the sconces above the bed... BUT this room just needs MORE. Besides what you can see in this picture, there is one photo on the wall, which is directly opposite of the bed. To the left is a big blank wall, to the right is a nice big wall of windows with white curtains. I love the start of this room, but it just needs MORE! Like another gallery wall, and maybe a stenciled wall behind the bed. We will see! Check out my Master Bedroom Pinterest Board...

5. The Living Room - Still a hot mess!!

We have lived in this house for six months and I still have not gotten around to this room. And of course it's the first room you see as you enter the house! When we moved in I put those black shelves up but I don't like them. The empty room has been a 4th playroom for my son... and worked out well for our Christmas tree... and currently holds Little Man's train table... but it's time for this room to at least have a place to sit! A while back I bought 2 chairs on Craig's List that need to be refinished, so I have to tackle that project! A while back I started pulling staples... I didn't get very far because it was hard work! ... and I have upholstered easy chairs before like these and this... but never a big chair... Then of course I want to paint and curtains, artwork... oh the possibilities.... check out my Pinterest living room board...

6. Paint Guest Bathroom Vanity - NOTHING.....

Just because I have the paint and I want too... and I think it would look fabulous with the Dr. Seuss decor of the bathroom!

7. Paint the Main Floor Bathroom - NOTHING

It's a pale green, and its fine, but I don't like fine in my house! I am thinking white and turquoise!

8. Finish Little Man's Photobooks - ONE DOWN.....

When Little Man was born I had the brilliant... crazy... something... idea that I should make one photobook PER month for him... Little man was born in April and I think I did the first month pretty quickly... and then things slowed down. As of 2 weeks ago I had only finished the first 6 months (which is PRETTY good considering my insane idea) then 2 weeks ago I completed 2 more books. So I am ONLY a year behind and need to complete January of 2011 until April 2011. THEN I need to figure out how I am going to do year 1... Obviously I should NOT keep doing this insane idea of one photobook per month for the rest of his life... too insane, plus any additional kids we have. I am debating either one for the entire year or maybe 2 for the year... we will deal with that when it happens... hopefully before his second birthday!!

9. Lose like 40 pounds - NOPE DIDN'T DO

I ordered my bridesmaid dress 2 sizes too small so I need to make sure it fits!! Even though my son is almost 2 years old, I still have not lost the baby weight... but that's a whole other story... so it's time to lose it and get on with my life!!!

So there we have 9 super easy projects that I can easily get done in 2 months... right?? Time to get off the computer and get doing... something...

Update: So as of April 1, I had 3 things done. I picked April 1 because I knew we were going to be on vacation for a week and it was Little Man's birthday.... and my sister's wedding... so yeah not all that great.... oh well, on to the next goal list... 

There is no thing as a "finished" room...

There is no thing as a "finished" room in my house (and pretty much every other DIYer)!

A few months ago I said Little Man's nursery was done and finished! Conveniently right before our house warming party... well then I had to go and buy a new glider (we had one in our Michigan house, but I didn't LOVE it and when packing decided to sell it on Craigs List... then when Little Man was sick with croup I REALLY wished we had one again... ANYWAYS.... I bought a new glider) SO I had to re-arrange his room to make it fit... which meant this weekend I had to move shelves, cover holes, re-think artwork.... etc... so we are on to version 2 of Little Man's room at this house...


Shelves down... and a big hole where I painted around the shelf... OPPs!

Then I had to start re-working the guest room... a room no one has slept in during the 6 months we have lived in this house ... even though its one of my favorite rooms...

I am working on some new artwork for the new rooms and then I will show the new versions!

Personalized Foot Print Stool

This was included in my little man's nursery post, but I love it so much that I thought it deserved it's own post! Little man's nursery has a higher window ledge than other rooms in our house and he loves looking out the window.... so he needed a foot stool!

I found this simple stool at Micheal's. I painted it with the Silver Sage paint I had color matched at Home Depot to match Restoration Hardware Baby and Child's Silver Sage paint.

I then taped off a boarder using blue painters tape and painted a nice dark chocolate boarder. Then I had little man help with his foot prints! I then used my Silhouette to stencil on his name - in case we forget whose feet they are! I still need to add the date - because that is WHAT I will forget!
Perfect for looking out the window!! And perfect size for little feet!

The new house nursery

I finally finished my son's second nursery! I knew I wanted to do an accent wall and this is what I came up with! It is based on the Restoration Hardware Baby curtains and bed skirt I purchased.

It was very simple to paint. First I painted the Silver Sage color (I have used this before, I had it color matched at Home Depot with Behr Paint) I let it settle for 4 days and then taped the thin brown line.
Here is the rest of the nursery:
I love how bright little man's room is! Making the black out curtains a must! I love the white little book shelf. It's now a favorite of his as well, he likes to climb in it and play with the stuff on top off the shelf.
My little man and I made this stool for him to look out the window. I am planning on painting his name and date under his foot prints!