DIY Wood Bead Garland @ The City Moms

This weekend I was a progress machine...
And you can only half tell by the current status of my house...
I swear the next time it's all clean I'm going to have someone come take photos for when it's time to sell so I'll just be like "Oh you need house pics, right here...DONE!"


But... I did, along with tons of cleaning, get a few DIY projects done this weekend... One being for the other girls room <-- a="" all="" and="" baby="" came="" current="" currently.="" dad="" ells="" fit="" for="" girl="" give="" he="" her="" i="" in="" it="" just="" loving="" most="" my="" nbsp="" nickname="" other="" over="" p="" possible="" s="" said="" stuck.="" swear.="" that="" the="" them="" throwing="" to="" told="" toys="" up="" was="" way="" when="" with="" would="">

DIY Wood Bead Garland...
Not for the faint of heart with weak drilling skills...

Check out the tutorial over at The City Mom's blog...

Nursery Reveal

Now that my baby is three weeks old, it's probably time to reveal the nursery. 

It's actually probably a little late, so sorry.

I decided that I wanted to try to take some decent pictures, but this is all I came up with! 

Here's the changing and storage area of the room.  The dresser you may remember we found on Craigslist and then refinished it white.  It actually works out really well because it's on the smaller side.  Anything bigger would have looked silly and probably not fit. 

The bookcase is from Ikea.  That was a fun project with Mr. K.  Ikea furniture has a way about causing tiffs.  Not bad ones, just frustrated because the instructions are not clear tiffs.  Oh well.  This is the perfect piece for in here.  We have toys in the bottom baskets from Ikea, diapers in the plum baskets which we got at Meijer, and books and accessories on the other shelves.  It works great!

On top of the bookcase, I have an elephant lamp that I found at an antique shop with a new shade from Target.  The Lambchop is to represent my sister in the room as that was her favorite show growing up.  Then there are a few other items up there like the leftover buttons from the Cute as a Button baby shower and the invitation as well as a Peek-A-Boo bear from Gigi (Great Grandma).

Here's a shot of the wall where you walk in.  The DIY Mobile works perfectly over the changing pad.  I really like the color that it brings to this side of the room.  The mirror was painted teal (previously brown) and was found at Wal-Mart.  The button was from the baby shower and was given a new coat of white (and might get another coat come spring) to blend into the room better. 

The wall over the crib is probably one of my favorite parts of the room.  We have some baby animals up there, some funny sayings, some lyrics to songs, a picture of Mr. K and I, a sonogram picture of Baby Kakes and some bunting that I made using a template found on Aubrey and Lindsay's blog.  I am in love with the bunting and although not all the colors are right, it still works! 

There's also a little rhinoceros that I purchase off of etsy and a picture that says "cute" made by my mom and Ella's Gram Tam.

Here's the rocking and reading corner.  I absolutely love how my rocker turned out and ended up giving us a little more texture due to the subdued patterned fabric. 

Chair was found on craigslist and I was lucky enough to find this perfectly matching teal table at Target for sitting next to the chair.  It works so well and looks great next to the chair and the curtain from Urban Outfitters.

You can also see in the closet a bit.  It turned out great!  Love it! 

I know it's not a great picture, but there is an antique frame from my great grandmother in there that I repainted teal and a wicker child's rocker which is also teal in there.  This can be a sort of mini-playroom... I hope...to help keep the clutter down. 

This is Ella's outfit display wall.  I figure this will be nice to select outfits or just for fun!  The hooks came from Urban Outfitters and the shown tutu and onesie are from friends! 

So there you have it. 

Look for cost breakdown next week! 

I tried to keep it on the cheap, but that's always easier said than done...

We'll see how I did. 

Happy Weekend Everyone!

Yikes Stripes!

I knew I wanted to do something kind of fun and different in the Nursery closet.  I thought about trying to stamp the walls with a potato stamp, but decided that would not work out as I'm not really artistic.  I wasnt really sure, but i wanted there to be a space on the floor to play, read, whatever. 

So I decide to stripe the closet walls to start the space off.  When I was 9 months pregnant.  Oh yea, Mr. K was not very happy with my decision so I did it while he was not home.  AND I didn't make him help me at all. 

The biggest problem with the closet was the shelves/hangings that were already in there.  Mr. K was very adamant that I did not remove them.  So I had to work around them.  For this reason, I choose to do uneven stripes in the closet.  They are all different sizes...although I'm not sure you can tell it. 

I started with a blank canvas and measured the wall - floor to ceiling.  Then I just started to divide it up into different sizes and hoped that they added up to that height.  I made it so they did.  Then I marked the wall and put the painter's tape up. 

I marked the ones that would be staying white with little pieces of tape so that I didn't paint there!

Here's what it looked like once I had all the tape up.

Then it was time to paint! 

I did the same color as the walls in the bedroom and white stripes.

I never thought I'd really tackle a project where I striped the walls, but it really wasn't that bad!  The hard part was making sure the lines were straight and taping everything off!  That was a pain.  But once I got to the painting it was super easy. 

There are a few places that need some touch ups, but overall I'm super excited for this space!

I know it is just a closet, but just wait!

Lining Dresser Drawers

I felt like our dresser nursery needed something else...

It was white, but I felt like the drawers need something...

So I decided to line them. 

I started with the bottom of the drawer like this.

Then I found different scrapbook papers that I liked and cut them to fit the size of the bottom of the drawers.  In this situation, I used 3 pages of scrapbook paper.  I had to cut them into different sizes of rectangles that worked together and ended up lining the entire drawer. 

Once the pieces were cut, I coated the bottom of the drawer with modge podge.  Once it was coated edge to edge, I placed the papers down over the wet modge podge. Make sure to push out the air bubbles as best as you can.  This can be hard and mine definitely has a few wrinkles, but I used a flat edge to push them out as well as I could.  I let this sit for 24 hours.

Then I repeated the modge podge step over the newly lined drawers. 

And Voila!  Lined drawers that coordinate with the room!  Love them!

And it was so easy! 

Just gives a plain jane dresser (or great craiglist deal in this case) a little sass! 

Nursery Closet Dividers

Good Monday Morning to you all out there!  I hope my fellow blog hogs had a great weekend!  I did... It was filled with tons of nothingness really, but I did manage to finish up a few projects that have been lingering...

No, no baby yet.

Still waiting on that one...

She's got her own timeline in mind apparently. 

We shall see...

Any who...  I was told by a friend that the best thing her sister did when she was pregnant was invest in closet dividers.  I hadn't really thought of it before she said something as I figured I would just arrange them in order.  But after doing a little laundry and hanging the clothes in the closet, I did decide to go ahead and give them a shot!

So I went to The Container Store and purchased 5 closet dividers for .99 cents!  Cheapo Cheapo!  Gotta love that!  Then I took them and traced them onto the remaining scrapbook paper I had leftover from the drawers of the dresser.  

*Did I ever share that project with you?  Can't remember... will check and if not share this week!*

Then I cut out the tracings to fit onto the dividers.

Then I hot glued the paper to the dividers and was left with these below!  Too easy! 

So here they are... but they still needed to be labeled otherwise they wouldn't really serve a purpose. 

So I found white sparkly scrapbook letters/numbers to stick to the tops of them.  I probably could have used Puffy Paint or something, but I figured this would be just as easy, and ready quicker.  Haha.

And here's what I ended up with!  I think I kind of love them.

Not only does it help separate the clothing size wise, I assume it will also help with knowing what can be sold to the children's resale, what can be packed and what is still available for wearing! 
Did you utilize anything like this for your kids rooms?! 

The Rocker Redone

Well, things are slowly but surely coming together. 
I've been spending every waking minute getting my house in order... and I still can't find stuff!  Can you believe it?!  I can.  And you would if you saw our guest bedroom closet!  HA!

Anyways, remember the chair that I found on Craigslist for $30?  The rocker for the nursery? 

Well, it's finished!
We actually got it back right after Christmas, but there has been so much going on that I haven't been able to post about it!  But now is the time...

So... here she is!

The cushion was a bit squishy and the upholsterer I found to do the chair did not redo or reinforce pillow seats so she suggested to make it all one section in the middle there - an irremovable seat.  And I agreed knowing nothing.  It also saved us on fabric because the estimate she gave me through pictures was going to be cutting it close once she saw the chair.  Oops!  Oh well, I'm very happy with how it all turned out. 

Mr. K sanded and stained the rockers to match the bottom of the crib for me and they turned out pretty well.  For some reason, once sanded, the stain didn't take as much in some areas as others.  Luckily you can only see the fronts and they look pretty good. 

Here's the whole corner set up.  The chair is a bit big and bulky, but it's comfy and will serve the purpose. 

And the fabric is Covington Belami Jacquard Sterling that I ordered on Fabric.com - one of my new favorite websites... why, I don't know because I don't sew... but it is! 

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Which I realized is a party of the Glenna Jean Grayson bedding set while I was walking through Buy Buy Baby this week.

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So the breakdown goes as follows:

Chair from Craigslist - $30

Fabric - $95

Upholstery - $175

Total - $300

If I had to do it all over again, I would probably just save up the extra $300 and get the chair that I really wanted - or settle for a different chair - but All in all, I think that we made a good decision and the chair will work well for years to come! 

Linking up with House of Grace's Twice Owned Tuesday Party




 And Home Stories A to Z's Tips and Tutorials Link Party 

And on Somewhat Simple! 

Nursery Progress - DIY Mobile { Part Three }

Well, it's official...
I'm done with the mobile, it's hung, and I'm satisfied. 

It only took us like 3 months to get it that way! 

I felt like the biggest dummy while working on this because we could not figure out how to hang this bad boy (1) at the desired height and (2) level!  It was like we needed a "Dummies Guide to Hanging a Handmade Mobile.  Seriously.  No joke on this one.  It was a process.  A long process which included the occasional yelling at each other... Oh yea, home projects and work around the house causes the most yelling!  HAHA... that and driving in Chicago. 
First we thought we'd hang it over the crib as is the case in most nurseries... and we liked that idea.  Then the more time it took to hang it and the more difficulty we had with the fishing wire to hang it, we decided that might not be a good spot for it.  I mean, what if it fell in the crib?!  Mr. K was sure this was going to happen and then was sure that if it did, our baby would be stuck in a fishing wire mess and something bad was going to happen...

So we decided to try another spot.
The final spot. 

While I went and returned some holiday gifts this past weekend, Mr. K decided he'd work on this project for the last time.  While he hung it too low initially, he did hang it.  And it looks pretty good.  See....

What do you think? 

Now, all we need is some sort of mirror.  I'm really wanting to use my Great Grandmother's that I have in the garage, but it's soooo old and it's SOOOO heavy that I'm not sure it will work.  Hmmm....

I was also hoping to possibly find one like John and Sherry did for their nursery at Marshalls and then just paint it... Hmmm....

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Then I think we are about finished...

But at least you can be done hearing about this darn mobile for now!  It did take us forever to finish, but we did it and before Baby K's arrival! 

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