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Saturday, August 25, 2012

My biggest project to date

Hi there! Long time no talk, huh? I have been pretty busy working on the biggest project of my life. What’s that you ask? We’re having a baby!!!
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We’re expecting our baby boy Archer, August 31st which, you might realize is this Friday, but I am still hopeful I’ll go earlier (like last week would have been good). I’ve had a ton of stuff I’ve wanted to post about with this pregnancy but between working my full time job, starting photography on the side, all the fun pregnancy symptoms (no one told me about half of them! uggghhh!), and actually keeping busy doing all of these projects (when I haven’t been feeling like complete crap) I’ve been crazy busy. Which is good, because these last 9 months have seriously flown by.
Even though I’ve been a slacker on posting about all the fun baby projects I’ve been up to, I wanted to share with you my favorite. The nursery!
I had a hard time nailing down a particular theme I loved so I combined a little bit of this and a little bit of that to create a modern eclectic nursery. A few challenges I had with the room was it's small size (just like all the other rooms in our house) and the fact that I didn't want to spend a fortune on the room so I tried to be somewhat frugal, only splurging on a few items. The rest were diy projects, sales and hand me downs.

{SORRY the pictures are so blurry! I'll be taking more pictures soon and as soon as I do I'll update the pictures here}

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Now, I actually shared this room with you last year when I transformed it from my junk room to our guest room in this post. This room has been busy!
First thing I did was paint the room a nice grellow. The color I used was Benjamin Moore Sesame. Then I ordered this fan from Overstock for about $150 and my wonderful husband installed it. I love the fan! It was a great price, quiet and really cools the room down. My only gripe with it is that the light is really dim, which, I tell myself is ok, because that way I get to use my beautiful brass swing arm lamp giving to us by my grandma (I seriously love that lamp. Thank you Grandma Kathleen!). My two big splurges in the room were the crib and the rug but I think they are pretty important as they really set the tone for the modern eclectic vibe I was after. The crib we ordered from Amazon and it cost about $400, the rug was $200 from Ikea. The side table was a garage sale find for $15. I really debated getting a beautiful new rocker like this one or this one but in the end I opted for a new leather recliner for the living room and using the old one from there in here. It may not be as pretty as the others but I know it will be comfortable which was what made up my mind. That and really wanting a new one for the living room Winking smile.
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Next, we took the closet doors down, put up a shower curtain rod just inside the closet and hung curtains that I got on clearance from the Land of Nod outlet. They were seriously a sweet score. I think I got both panels for $10. If you don’t have a Land of Nod outlet store near you, you can still buy them online here.
I know you can barely see it but I also made a crib skirt. Without the skirt, you can see straight into the drawer on the bottom. So I followed these directions from Sherry at YHL to make a crib skirt using 1 yard of green and tan striped fabric that only cost $7.
The poster above the crib was made by my amazingly talented little sister for my baby shower! I told her as soon as I saw it that it would be going above the crib, that's how much I love it.
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To the left of the closet we have a $20 clock from Ikea, a deer silhouette that was a diy project using left over materials from other projects and the tennis racket actually used to be my great grandpas!
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Above the window is my old bow from when I was a kid and to the right is a target magnet board from Crate and Barrel outlet (I don't remember now how much I paid for it). We thought they would be fitting since we are naming him Archer, hehe.
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The wall opposite the crib has a dresser I refinished to serve as the changing table and the gallery above it is probably my favorite project in the room. All but one of the frames were from Ikea, the two plates were from Homegoods for around $8, the Love sign on the bottom left is a canvas with chalk board paint left over from our wedding, the M is a paper mache letter from Hobby Lobby (painted using this tutorial), also left over from our wedding and the long white thing above the M is actually a shelf I had on hand from Ikea which I plan to add his foot prints to as he gets older.
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In case you are interested, here are some more details of the gallery wall. The top left frame I talked about here. Those are my dad’s old fly fishing lures. The A below that is from Land of Nod outlet which cost about $8. The B in the top middle row is from a alphabet flash card pack also from Land of Nod outlet I picked up for about $5. The frame below the B is a fabric swatch (leftover from trying to pick a fabric to make the crib skirt). The globe picture below that is actually a card that we got from one of our baby showers. It says “The world needs more people like you.” I thought it was too cute and decided to include it in the gallery wall. The red bicycle and Illinois silhouette are actually left over iron-on decals from a onsie making station that my sister in law did at my baby shower. So I only spent $50 on frames and  $21 on art since the majority of the art I used was free or leftover from other projects!
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Last but not least we have the inside of the closet.
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My wonderful husband made the shelf in the middle and I painted it white. We also added curtain hold backs to keep the curtains open for the times when I’m in there digging for an outfit, a toy, more diapers, Narnia, etc.
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The baskets are from Target and are great! They’re plastic, so they should hold up well and be easy to clean. They were only $10 each. The labels were another free diy project using a cereal box and left over chalk board paint.

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All in all I'd say we spent around $1,100 on the room which in my opinion isn't too bad!

So thanks for taking the time to look at our nursery for our little man! We’re hoping he’ll make an appearance soon so he can enjoy it!

Kristin

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Tree Escapades

Cam and I started a tradition last year of cutting down our own Christmas tree. It was a tradition from his childhood that he loved and I loved the idea of continuing this tradition with our own family (which, for now just consists of he and I but we still love it)! I posted pictures last year of our tree adventures so I wanted to share with your some pictures from our escapades this year.

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Tree found!
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Tree down!
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Word to your mother.

My other goal for the day besides obtaining a tree was to get a picture for our Christmas card. So I brought with my tripod and set the timer on my camera…
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And the winner is…
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I did the card design myself on Photoshop and I’m having them printed here. I’ve never ordered through this company before but it was really cheap and comes with free envelopes and it’s hard to find someplace to print 4x8 without using one of their card templates. I haven’t gotten them yet but they should be here Monday (keeping my fingers crossed). Just in time to hopefully squeak them out before Christmas.

Happy Weekend!

Kristin

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Sweet Baby Kayla

I had the pleasure of shooting my good friend’s Christmas pictures last weekend. Her baby girl is soooooo cute!!! No seriously, it should be criminal how adorable she is. So I wanted to share some of the adorableness with you and post some of my favorite pictures from the shoot.

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**Sigh** I love the holidays and I really love sweet adorable squeezable babies.

Kristin

Saturday, October 22, 2011

What’s been going on

I thought I’d give a quick update on some things that have been going down in the daydream hiz-ous. Really they’re not too exciting but I feel like a bad blogger if I’m away for too long. Which, I am sorry to say, is usually the case.

So for starters, I’ve been searching for some pillows for the living room that have a fall-ish feel. Because I’ve been to lazy busy to pull out the Halloween decorations this year, I’ve been just focusing on fallification. So I was jumping for joy when I found these pillows at Marshalls for cheap.

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Aren’t they perdy? Here are some glamor shots.

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Work it, work it.

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The two patterned ones are really neat and embroidered (or is it needlepoint, I can never remember the difference) that I got for 20 buckaroos each and the cool orange fringy one I got for a sweet $15. The white one is a cover I made out of an old sweater last winter. I think they look pretty nice with my newly painted yellow console table. But I still have to do something with that wall that the monster sits on. I’ve got a few ideas floating around…

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Then the other thing going on I have to say I’m pretty proud of. I pulled up a little over half the carpet in our main living/dining area. And here’s the kicker (well, for me anyway), I did it all.by.myself!

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Here’s a before shot.

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Aww yeah, just call me Carpenter Kristin (which I know, has nothing to do with pulling up carpet but it sounds cool. Almost as cool as The Ginger Haired Genius which, by the way, I also respond to : P )

I had been bugging Cam about pulling it up for a while because there is hardwood underneath throughout the house, but I always feel bad nagging because he is super busy and he does do a TON around here as is and then he also has hobbies that unfortunately do not include ripping up carpet (boo). So I waited until he was gone for a weekend to an out of town friends bachelor party and I was able to pull up the whole dining room and entry area by myself and surprise him. Thankfully he loves it. I didn’t get to the living room simply because that is where the bigger furniture is and I needed help to move it because I didn’t want to scratch up our newly exposed beautiful hardwood. And while I was expecting it to look pretty trashy not having all the carpet up, I don’t think it looks bad. Not bad at all. I would still like it all to come up eventually but I’m not in a rush since it looks pretty good and I need the time to pick out a rug anyway.

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The floors are in EXCELLENT condition except for one spot near the kitchen that looks like it had some water damage (but I’m really good at turning a blind eye to that sort of thing if I want). They’re really cool, really small one inch boards and I can not even imagine how long they took to install.

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So that’s the latest in my neck of the woods. Anyone want to come over and help me pull up some more carpet! J/K Winking smile

Happy Weekend!!

 

Kristin

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Loving Leather

In the home that is. Well, I guess I love leather period but for not-making-this-an-extremely-long-post purposes I’m just going to rave about leather in the home for now. K?
I’m seriously drawn to masculine rooms and I totally associate leather with masculine design. I love how sleek and sexy they tend to be with deep colors and tons of texture. I can be a girly girl about some things but when it comes to decorating, give me leather over ruffles any day! And there is something about this time of year that makes leather so much more yummy. I include it in my things I associate with fall category (which incidentally coincides with my manly man things category. Hmmm, I’m sensing a pattern here) like flannel, plaid and antlers (maybe not everyone associates antlers with fall but I live with a hunter, so around here September 1st = open season. Ahh, now I see the pattern). Plus it doesn’t help my leather fetish that I keep coming across gorgeous rooms like these…

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I immediately fell in love with this room as soon as I saw it! I mean the leather headboard, the plaid sheets, the curtains around the bed, ahhggg….. I seriously don’t have enough words to tell you how much I love this room.


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I want this leather headboard and I want it NOW! Seriously, gorgeous!! Can I get a amen!

So, do you guys associate anything in particular with the seasons.
How about antlers? Any hunter’s wives out there? If you are a hunter’s wife and you’re reading this….don’t worry, I feel your pain Winking smile Hehehe


Kristin