Home Tour: Master Bedroom

Our little Cape Cod style home does not have a master suite with a big walk in closet or en suite bath. We have a roughly 12x14 room on our main floor with a tiny closet and use the full bath located in the hall. We've had to get creative with our furniture selections and storage solutions. We store off season clothing either hanging in the guest bedroom closet or in a box in the basement. Our bedroom furniture currently consists of hand me down dressers and nightstands from family and our DIY upholstered bed. (Tutorial to come soon!) We would love to get new dressers and nightstands that are more our style and also more functional for our needs, but for now these work. We'll set up a bassinet or pack and play in our room once the baby is born so he or she can be close to us those first few weeks before moving to the nursery. I absolutely love the paint color and our cream bedding. It is so relaxing, the perfect bedroom retreat.

The paint is a custom color match to a Porter Paints color. It is a blue, green, gray. I love that as the light changes in the room, the color changes too. Here is a good comparison of the same shot during the daytime and at night.

Source List: 
Paint - Sherwin Williams paint, custom color match to Porter Paints Scarborough 501-5
Bed - DIY project, made by us. Tutorial to come soon!
Night Stands - hand me downs from family
Lamps - hand me downs from family
Dressers - hand me downs from family
Drapery - HomeGoods
Drapery Rods - Home Depot
Comforter - Hotel Collection from Macy's
Euro Shams - made by me
Wall Sconces - Crosses are gifted from a friend. Sconces by closet are from Hobby Lobby
Frames - Hobby Lobby and Kohl's
Humidifier - Bed Bath and Beyond
Hamper - West Elm
Vase - Bed Bath and Beyond

If I missed anything and you want to know where it is from, please comment below.

Pumpkin Patch 2014

Every year for as long as I can remember my family has gone to the same pumpkin patch. We always take photos in this big pumpkin they have set up. It is so much fun to look back on photos as my sister and I have grown up and seeing how much we have changed over the course of the last year. This weekend we made our annual trip and decided to bring our dogs along for some of the fun. Niah wasn't so sure about having her picture taken, she is cracking me up in these photos.

I'm so excited to continue this tradition with our family and to come back next year with our sweet little baby.

Couples Baby Shower

This weekend Todd's parents hosted a baby shower for our sweet little one. Most baby showers are centered around the mom and baby, which is fine, but dad is just as important in the baby's life as the momma is. So, in order to include Todd in the baby shower fun, his parents decided to host a couples shower. It was so much fun!

We didn't play tons of games, but the ones we did play were great, and centered around both parents and baby.
The first game was a guessing game. They had 7 photos of me and 7 photos of Todd from our childhood (ranging in age from infant to high school). Everyone had to guess how old we were in each of the photos. It was fun seeing which photos our parents picked out for us and guessing about who our baby will most closely resemble.
The second game was a "Meet the Parents" game. It was a multiple choice and had questions about each of us as kids, our relationship and our little one. Such a fun game and perfect for a couples shower.

We were having so much fun we didn't take photos until almost everyone had left! Check out this fruit bowl that Todd's sister and our niece put together.

Todd's sister is due with their third child in just a few weeks. I am so excited for our little ones to be so close in age. I'm sure they will be the best of friends!

Sweet baby, you are so loved and we can't wait to meet you in just a couple more months!

Nursery Dresser

We picked up this dresser on Craigslist for $100. It was posted for over $200 but the girl selling it was moving out of state and had to get rid of it so we got it for a steal. It is structurally in excellent condition. It is super heavy and made of solid wood. I don't know where you can find a solid wood dresser for 100 bucks these days, most furniture stores charge upwards of $1000 for a solid wood dresser. We decided to refinish this and use it as the changing table and dresser for the baby's room. I wanted a white dresser in there, and while this piece is already white, there are several marks on the top and on the drawers, it definitely needs a fresh coat of paint. Plus, the hardware is dated and doesn't go with the coastal vibe I have in mind for the nursery.

Since I'm pregnant and my doctor doesn't want me sanding or refinishing any furniture right now, Todd has taken over this little project. I would love to be helping out more, we all know I love a good DIY project, but he is loving working on something that will be used by our little one for many years. We first removed the old hardware. The knobs look so small on such large drawers and are spaced too far apart to be able to easily open and close the larger bottom drawers. Since we knew we would be replacing the hardware and changing the placement, Todd filled in the original holes with wood filler.

We decided since the surface was pretty beat up it would be best to sand it down to get a smooth surface for a fresh coat of paint. Todd started this process at our house, but as you can see in the background, our garage is a disaster zone and the weather has been quite unpredictable lately. He took the dresser over to his parents house to utilize their garage to finish sanding and painting. They have more space where he could lay out all the drawers to dry without fear of a sudden pop up rain shower ruining the paint.

The dresser is going to be right in front of a window in the nursery. We opted for the same white as all of the trim work and doors in our house for the dresser paint. This way everything matches and the dresser won't look weird with the blinds and window casing directly behind it. I am not big on everything being matchy matchy, but if the trim and doors are one shade of white and the dresser a different shade, it would look like we tried to match and missed and would be an eyesore. Or maybe I'm just telling myself that to rationalize my crazy pregnancy brain. haha.

I picked up several handle and knob options from the hardware store and didn't love any of them. Ultimately, we settled on these handles from Lowes. The knobs on our built in cabinets are from the same collection. The knobs on our cabinets have a brushed nickel finish, but we opted for the bronze finish for the dresser pulls. We changed the placement of the handles. We centered the pulls on the smaller top drawers first. Once those were centered, we lined up the hardware on the two larger drawers. Now that the handles are closer together on the larger drawers it is much easier to open and close the drawers.

Todd painted the dresser beautifully. He also put some wax on the bottoms of the drawers to help them glide easily in and out of the dresser. We are so pleased with how the dresser turned out. After he was all done, we moved it into the room. I got to work right away lining the drawers. Now all we need to do is start washing everything and put it all away. We are so excited to fill this piece with all the baby's tiny clothes, blankets and necessities. 

A Coastal Nursery - Mood Board

I started coming up with inspiration images for our baby's room. The room is already painted a beautiful blue/green color which we love. We want something gender neutral but nothing super babyish. Neither of us are really into themed nurseries. I do love coastal decor so we are going for more of a coastal feel, not necessarily a nautical or beach theme. Here is just a fun little mood board of items I've seen online that I like and think could fit the coastal vibe.

Sources:
Chair and mobile - Pottery Barn Kids
Light Gray knit ottoman - RH Baby and Child
Cribs - Buy Buy Baby
Square pouf ottomans and Lamps - Target
Dresser - Already purchased, Craigslist
Drapery and Carpet - Stock images
Dark Gray Knit Ottoman - CB2
Paint - Sherwin Williams Halcyon Green

Guess what...

We announced on Facebook today some very exciting news. I'll let the pups share the news with you. 

Ellie and Niah are going to be big sisters! We are so excited to welcome a sweet baby to our family at the end of December. We wanted to wait and announce until I was into the second trimester and we had a chance to tell close friends and family in person first. We are beyond excited and can't wait to meet our little one. 

Some questions we've been getting: 
How are you feeling? Great now! I had a rough first trimester, lots of nausea, zero appetite and lots of getting sick. I am past all of that now and feeling great. Starting to wear more maternity clothes and this little bump is starting to pop. 

Are you finding out the gender? Nope! We feel there are very few true surprises in life and this is one of them. I can't wait to meet him or her on their birthday. 

Do you have a name picked? We have a few in mind that we like, but we aren't planning on sharing name options with anyone. We don't want to settle on the name until we meet the baby and have a chance to enjoy a few moments with him or her to determine if the name truly suits them. 

We are just so excited! We'll be re-doing a few rooms in the house in order to prepare for little one's arrival so I'll be sure to update on all those plans and projects as they unfold. 

Home Tour: Craft Room

As I mentioned last week, there are two bedrooms on the second floor of our home. The other day I showed you our guest bedroom. Today I'm going to share my sewing / craft room. Just a note, this room is never this clean as I almost always have a project going on or a quilt laid out on the floor. I tried to keep the furniture to a minimum so that I would have plenty of floor space to lay out quilt blocks as I'm working.

The closet has a small shelf at the back that holds all of my paper crafting supplies - scissors, paper cutter, paper, stickers, etc. The hanging sweater organizer is perfect for holding all of my fabrics. The wicker basket holds my fabric scraps. One day I'll probably replace this with another method to sort the scraps by color or something, but for now this works.

In the built in cabinets I store quilt batting and miscellaneous crafting supplies. I store the items I use the most either in the desk or on the shelves below the cutting table. These would be things like fabric scissors, pens, quilting rulers, rotary cutters, thread, etc.

Now that this room is spotless, I think it is time for me to get started on a new project!


Source List: 
Paint - Sherwin Williams Halcyon Green
Desk - hand me down from family
Table - Ikea
Swivel Chair - overstock outlet
Wood Chair - hand me down from family
TV stand - Target
Book shelf - hand me down from family
Pink Chair - family heirloom
Artwork - souvenirs from our travels


If I missed anything and you want to know where it is from, please comment below.