Boys' Room - Before & Update

Finding out we were going to add to our family was such a happy day.  It was actually our fourth anniversary - super fun!  I have to admit that my brain switched into overdrive thinking about how I wanted to decorate the room both of our kids would share.  How exciting to find out that our second child will be a boy!  I grew up in a family of all girls and Mr. D has all sisters so to say that I am learning about boy-inspired style is an understatement considering that I really like all things girl.  The blogosphere has become a wealth of inspiration and it's from this inspiration that I inundated Mr. D with one idea after another.  We decided to switch the office with little C's room because there would be more room to fit both boys and ALL of their stuff.  THEN Mr. D woke up one morning and decided he wanted to make my boy room dreams come true and create board and batten detailing on the walls.

source

AH!  I totally LOVE that look!  That was the sweetest thought EVER but unfortunately we hit a huge roadblock.  All of our walls are textured...heavily textured.  I thought it was no big deal and that we could just sand them down or something.  Ha ha ha, silly me!  Board & batten was not meant to be.  We consulted with our good friend and construction guy extraordinaire who gave us the sad news that we would have to take down ALL of the drywall and redo it if we wanted untextured walls again.  WOW!  I was so not expecting that.  Well, we revamped our idea and decided to use the feeling of the flat moulding used in board & batten but in such a way that would work with our really great textured walls. 

Mr. D got to work and removed all of the 1980s moulding and Construction Guy Extraordinaire got to work, with Mr. Ds help, to put up our new moulding. 

 

colour possibilities...the red was a fleeting thought

As you can clearly see, our room and whole house actually, has 1980s moulding that really has very little character.  Oh and I don't need to mention the strange use of chair rail moulding that looked more out of place than anything.  If you look really closely you can see that dark olive green on the walls - again.  I can't tell you how nice it is to have a light and airy room.  The black furniture in the middle of the room will be moved into the office with the help of a few very strong and burly guys.  It's so heavy and this pregnant lady is not taking any chances.

That's the uninspired before.  Here are some pics showing our progress to date.

We still have some details left to finish with the new trim.  There will be a piece of trim under the window sill and the opening to the closet (in the top right of the above photo) needs to be finished properly then trim applied.  Let's just say that the people who owned our house before us did a lot of interesting home improvements...on their own...without looking into the how-shall-I-say "right" way to do things.  Needless to say, there's been much undoing and redoing.  

We are so excited (I did my happy dance) about how the room is turning out and I can't wait to get little C moved in.  I'm pushing to have the trim that is up painted by the end of the weekend so we can start the moving process.  I ran into a little glitch with that but trusty Google came to my rescue.  I'll share more about that another time.  It's getting difficult to live with office furniture and stuff in every corner of our house.  

There you have it.  We've been at a sort of stand still until that trim gets finished but I'm going to push things a little.  I think we can finish the rest of the trim with little C moved in so we're going for it!  YAY!  I can hardly wait! 

I'm off to our home improvement store with little C.  Have a wonderful weekend.

Impromptu Break

Two months ago life was just beginning to get really interesting (and really busy).  As my last post before this impromptu teeny, tiny break suggests I was getting all ready for Christmas.  It was going to be the BEST Christmas in a long while.  Our little family of three was traveling across the country to spend the holiday with my family and I was especially excited for little D to really get to know ALL (9) of his cousins for the first time since, well, ever.  I was so nervous about the flight and how little D would do but I was armed with my back-pack-of-goodies.  The flight went well and little D slept through good chunks of both flights but I thought it was weird that he didn't really eat anything.  I just reassured myself that flying kinda threw off his little tummy.  We waited at the airport for our ride and it quickly became clear as to why little D hadn't eaten.  Looking back we realized that he was probably ill before we left but hadn't shown any signs.  That was just the beginning...that flu spread to Mr. D (since he held little D most of the flight time) and then to each one of my sister's family members one by one.  As each person started falling ill we crossed our fingers that we would all be healthy by Christmas Day.  I'll spare you the details...nobody needs to know those...but I will say that once the flu was done a nasty cold set in.  We ended up bringing it home with us, our little family of three, with matching antibiotics to boot!  Whew!  It was the most eventful Christmas and it flew by way too fast.  The rest of January was spent recovering and getting back to regular life in this time zone.  Oh, and on top of it all, we are expecting little boy #2 in June so that added just a tad to my ability to harbour that nasty cold.  Everything together made for one tired mamma so I made sure that rest and getting better were at the top of the list before anything else.  Unfortunately, my blog took a back seat but I'm excited to say that I'm back!

I wish I had pictures to share but that also took a back seat so I'll leave you with some of my nursery ideas instead.  How fun is THAT - 1 room, two boys and countless new ideas!  I can't wait to get started.  And then, jump back to the living room to continue what I've started there.  And then jump over to the kitchen - Mr. D discovered the Food Network and now we have added our kitchen to the decorating to-do list.  Things may seem a little scattered and bounce from place to place but stick with me!  It'll be fun for sure!  

Here are those boy's room ideas (I know some of these pics are girly but trust me, my room will be FAR from girly).  I'm thinking a really great pale, warm grey for the walls - something like this from madebygirl.blogspot.com .

These stripes by teamturnbow are a possibility and the lime/turquoise accents are definitely worth exploring.

Add a little navy with pops of lime green and turquoise.  Something like this would be fun but I think I'll look for something other than polka-dots.  Check out more pics from this room at babylifestyles.com .

This navy carpet is wonderful and would add such a great graphic element to the room.  I love the coral accents too but that will have to wait for another time and another room.  Head over to sarah catherine design to check out more fabulous pics of this great room.

Well, these are a few ideas that have been rolling around in my mind's eye.  I am so excited to get started but there are a few things that need to happen first.  We are switching our home office with the boys' room so we will be cleaning, organizing and packing before paint goes on the walls.  It's going to be so hard to wait but it'll be worth it in the end. 

Happy decorating everyone!

Blog Favourites

There are just so many great blogs out there and so little time!  I thought I'd share some of my favourites with you.  Why keep a good thing a secret right?  Click on the logos to check out these blogs.

Jones Design Company is a recent find for me and I was inspired right away.  Check out her kids' rooms...so fun!

Thrifty Decor Chick was one of the first blogs I discovered.  It's a great resource for DIY projects for the home.

This was the first blog I ever read and I can't even tell you how inspired I was!  I've never come across someone who loves different fonts as much as I do until Marta.  She writes about her life, her work and design inspiration.  You just need to check it out.


I stumbled across Ain't No Mom Jeans one day as I sought inspiration for my sad and boring wardrobe.  I was so excited to explore this blog and see that I wasn't the only mom struggling to redefine her style after having a sweet little one.  I particularly thought the New Here? section was a great introduction to this blog by real moms for real moms!


Honest to Nod is the blog attached to the store Land of Nod.  I haven't fully explored this blog yet since I only discovered it last night while window shopping on the Land of Nod site.  There are some cute ideas for all things kid related - crafts, food, party ideas.  I can tell right now that I'm going to waste spend a LOT of time here and I can't wait for their Christmas ideas to start popping up.

Well, those are just a smattering of the blogs I'm following right now.  Do you have any favourites to share?

Phew...2 weeks already?!

I'm back after an impromptu two week break.  Boy, life just keeps marching right along and it's crazy how quickly two weeks went by.  I hadn't intended to put posting on hold for that long but life took over and, well, here we are.  I've been going back and forth in my mind...keep going with fall decor or start on some fun Christmas projects.  Back and forth I tell you!  I actually didn't get my fall boxes out of the garage this year because, well, I'm not sure where they are.  The garage isn't that big but all of the "stored" items are over in a huge pile and not that easy to access.  Luckily, I had my husband put the Christmas boxes on the outside so we are ok there.  PHEW!  Crisis averted!  I think I've moved on to working on Christmas projects actually because I know as the most wonderful season of all approaches I'll be just too busy.  Here are a few things I'm thinking about working on.

This super fun wreath was part of Starbuck's holiday 2008 display and I fell in LOVE with it then.  I think I'd like to try to recreate it but with a little twist to make it work for my home.  I'm not sure if I'll get to it this year but it is definitely on the list of things to do!

These Potterybarn stockings are darling and I really love the velvet fabric.  

These Potterybarn knitted stockings are so adorable too!  How to decide?!

This Potterybarn Kids advent calendar is one of the sweetest I've seen and would be so fun for little dude to use to count down the days.  

It looks like I've got my work cut out for me!  Maybe I should have started back in July!  We'll see how much I can get done and perhaps some will have to wait for next year.

...one more thing... Are you working on anything for Christmas yet or am I the only one jumping the gun? 

Time Flies

I just looked back on my last post and it said 3/4/11...WHAT???  It's been that long?  Wow!  Time has flown by!  So much has happened in the last couple of months but I won't begin to list it all.  I've recently decided that I'm going to update my home room by room no matter how long it takes.  I know I said this back in December when I started my blog but I didn't really down-in-my-heart mean it.  I've been inspired... now is the time even though it will take MONTHS to update each room.  We're talking a s-m-a-l-l budget here people, small!  But I've already been able to make some fun updates in the living room!  Can I just say one word... IKEA.  I'll share those later on as things come together.  It's been s-l-o-w but gratifying, especially when I hear my sweetie say "that was a good idea.  I really like that."

WAY back when, I promised to show a project that I had worked on for little dude's room.  So here it is.

frame - Ikea, ribba

photo - my AMAZING photographer husband, printed at Walgreen's

monogram - c/o microsoft word

I made a few test copies of the text and monogram to make sure they fit nicely inside the frame.  I adjusted the size accordingly and printed it on my home printer with regular printer paper.  I'm sure you can have it printed professionally or print it on paper that is more sturdy.  I didn't look into these options as my home printer suited me just fine.  Every time I look at that photo I think back to when little dude was teeny-tiny!  Such fond memories.

I'm going to put updating his room on hold as I focus on the main living space.  I'm super excited and I can't wait to share with you what's been going on.  In the meantime, I'll probably mix it up with recipes and time/money saving ideas as I am still on a quest to streamline my busy working-out-of-my-home life.

Happy Saturday

...one more thing... check out one of my favourite blogs  Thrifty Decor Chick 

Decorating baby's nursery - Little Dude

The start of a new year is always exciting.  I think one of the most irresistible things about it is the possibility of a fresh start.  I'm definitely taking that approach with my home.  It's a modest (some would say small) size - 1500 sq. ft in all, but it's very efficiently laid out.  The four bedrooms, two on each end, are on the smaller side but they hold fun possibilities.  The kitchen is pretty much closed off to the rest of the house but the dining area and living room are open and airy.  In an ideal world we would knock down the walls closing off the kitchen and open the place right up but my hubby and I are working to get out of debt so that remains a far-off dream.  That's ok though because our little house is ours.  We moved into it together after we were married and we had our first child in it.  Best of all, it's ours and I wouldn't change that for anything.  What I would change though is the decor.  BLEH!  It does not reflect our style at all.  Actually, it probably does reflect a style...the "I-don't-care" style which is NOT what I want people to feel when they come into our home.  So, this year is a year of possibilities.  I've got a laundry list of things I want to do, change, paint and maybe even build.  Do I think they'll all get done?  Probably not because like I said, we are trying to get out of debt, little dude is a busy 9 month old and I work out of our home 30 hours a week.  It's going to be a slow transformation but I'm so ready for the challenge.  My mind has been racing and I'm itching to get started.  There are some fun projects ahead and I am looking forward to stretching some of my creative muscles again.  There might even be a sewing tutorial or two!  YAY!

So to start it all off, I'm going to slowly tackle little dude's room.  We painted it before he was born but that's about it.  To be honest, I couldn't decide how I wanted to decorate it. As I've gotten to know little dude, rugby stripes just seem to fit.  I'm not big into themes but I love the bold colors and collegiate style.  It brings back great memories from university days when my sis and I would watch her hubby play rugby on rainy Saturdays.  My hubby is a great photographer so I'll probably use some of his work.  And I've got a couple of fun projects up my sleeve.  I also realized that my posts have been seriously lacking in the picture department so I think I'll start to change that today.  Here are some of the things that are inspiring me right now.

I love LOVE this rug!

The clean look of this organized space makes me feel all warm inside!  I love LOVE!

These canvas buckets are just the right combo of function and fun!  Totally love LOVE these!
*all photos courtesy of Pottery Barn Kids.

Where did you find your inspiration for decorating your child's room?


... one more thing.  Stay tuned for pictures of little dude's room before we get started!