Bedroom Overhaul

And thus we come to our May house project.  It was a big one, though it actually took less time than doing those bathrooms in February.  Go figure!  Anyway, we decided to tackle our bedroom, which I have been wanting to redo for a long while now.  I just wanted something lighter and fresher.  

Let's look at it before (please note the brassy fan):

I'm happy that our house was painted a neutral brown all over, but after a while it gets to be a lot of brown everywhere you look.  So it was time to shed the brown!  I decided to go with a nice light grey (Saxon Grey) for three walls and a plum for an accent wall (Intellectual Plum).  My explanation for this is that I like grey and I've been very taken with the idea of a plum wall lately.  My color choices are basically a gut decision, I guess. 

Maybe now is a good time to mention that I ask Drew's opinion on these things, but he generally agrees with whatever I pick.  So this is basically all my decisions with his stamp of approval.  Though of course, if it were up to him I'm sure all the rooms would still be brown, haha.  MEN.  He is very good to go along with all my schemes, color and otherwise.

ANYway, we taped things off Friday night and got to work on Saturday morning whilst the babies played at the park with Drew's parents.  Needless to say, tarps were put to use.

We got the grey done just as a new paint crew arrived:

Once that crew was put to bed, we started on the plum.

At this point I stopped taking pictures until it was done so I will just list what we did after finishing the painting: bought a new little ceiling fan, went to several stores in search of new bed stuff (Gordman's was the winner!  I'd never been there before and I will go there many, many times in the future.), got some pizza for dinner, fed babies and put them to bed.  Then Drewbles took down the bedroom fan, took down the fan in the downstairs TV room and then put THAT fan in our bedroom.  Of course by this point it was dark so he did this as I held a flashlight, sometimes in my hand and sometimes in my mouth if he needed help.  But we did it!  

Old fan, reused fan, little brand new fan.

Then we ate our pizza at 10:00 and watched some Amazing Race.  When we did our bathrooms I'm pretty sure we ate at 10:30.  So...a little better?

But anyhoo, once all was said and done, I love it!  It turned out even better than I hoped for.  I love the colors, I love how much lighter and brighter it is in there.  It's so much more cheerful.  But let's look at the evidence (AKA pictures of the babies):

(The duvet cover is from IKEA, the pillows are from Gordman's)

This next picture is notable for the fact that Mr. C is actually airborne.

Okay okay, the rest of the room (please note the fan):

HER CUTE LITTLE FACE AUGHHHHHH

Oh you two, just being all adorable and hijacking this post!  Go on then.  

Where was I?  Right, the room.  The idea is to get a canvas print/s for over the bed but we haven't picked a picture for it yet.  So for now it's just the Intellectual Plum.  I'm okay with that.  

And for our June project we will go back through all our painted rooms and do touch ups....

Office Redo

This past weekend we did our monthly house project but before I post about it I have to post about the one in April!  We decided to redo our office since it's not really an office anymore because Drew works at an actually Office now.  

(Do you have the Office theme song in your head now?)

Now I call it the hobby room, which I'm sure will be a show one day too.  Here is how it used to look, minus Drewbles:

It was a very low key project, and mostly involved rearranging and repurposing things we already had around.  No painting, hurray!  We planned to do something simple this month since we expected to exceed our $100 budget in May (which we did).  Anyway, here it is now:

I had this obsession about getting a chaise, not really sure why I latched on to that.  In the end we did not get a chaise.  In fact we bought nothing, just took this brown chair that Drew's parents were getting rid of.  It fits just right and is pretty comfy.  Maybe I'll get that chaise one day (probably when I'm an old lady).  

The new stuff was the chair pillow, diploma frames, that little fake plant and the longer white shelf.  I've been meaning to hang those diplomas FOREVER and now they look so nice and everyone who comes in this room will know how dang smart we are.  Too bad hardly anyone goes in there...

I had my ma send me all these Star Wars guys so I could finally display them (the other shelf has my Jack Sparrow and Toothless).  Don't they look awesome?  Wouldn't they look MORE awesome with lightsabers?  Yes, yes, they would.  Still waiting for someone to send those to me... (HINT HINT)  It would also look pretty cool to have a Legolas figurine on the shelf too, huh?  (HINT HINT)

Anyhoodle, another project in the books!  

Bathroom Redoux

That's how you pluralize redo, right?

This year, instead of focusing on a major overhaul of the kitchen, we've decided to do a house project per month and our goal is do it for under $100.  Some projects will probably go over that, but others will definitely be well under it so it should all balance out.  Some of these projects will chip away at the kitchen too so win win.  This month we decided to redo the guest bathroom, which has been on the list for over a year.  

The inspiration for the color was the children's book Miss Suzy, which is one of my very favorites.  Well, that is probably obvious since I based this bathroom off it.  The color we went with is called Cottage Grove and we chose it after much deliberation.  My instinct was to go pale with the color, but then I watched Rehab Addict and Nicole convinced me that bathrooms are the ideal place to go bold with color.  So I sent her a high five across the ether and went for it. 

After a long morning going to a million stores to gather all our goods, we put babies to bed and got to work.

I will admit I was afraid of what I'd done after that first coat.  But even with my misgivings we decided to just paint the half bath downstairs too.  Why not, right?  We are all about using up paint.  So we did that.

Once the painting was finally done, we added some hardware to the cabinets and hung a shelf to put some doodads on.  And that was it!  

(Nothing changed but the paint downstairs)

And by the next day I loved it.  I think the green is so pretty and vibrant and that's just what I was going for.  Plus Boo Boo will walk in and say with delight "Miss Suzy!" and that is a nice perk too.

A Sewy Little Christmas

No, this post isn't about actual Christmas events.  It's just the usual rundown of crafty things I did for Christmas this year.  In other words, look at how talented I am!

(lawl)

Mostly I made stuff for Baby this year.  The biggest project was a little quilt for her, like the one I did for Mr. C's first Christmas.  I should mention that he treasures that blanket and sleeps with it every night.  

JUST KIDDING, it's in his closet...

(As for that Winnie the Pooh blanket, he DOES sleep with that one every night.  Figures!)

But here is her blanket:

The colors look rather washed out in photos but you get the idea.  It was fun to pick out the fabric (thanks, Jo-Ann!) and I think it's really cute, despite my best efforts to mangle every corner.  Here it is in its natural habitat:

A byproduct of going to Jo-Ann's was that I found this great London-themed fabric.  So I made myself pajama pants:

Just because I've torn holes in like six pairs of pajama pants in the last year *weeps bitter bitter tears*.

I also made Baby a sleep sack and hat, like I did for Mr. C last year.  I think the hat is super cute and the sack keeps her cozy.  

I will NOT say that I did my best sewing on the sleep sack.  In fact I did some of my worst but it is functioning just fine and no one but me and Baby ever see it anyway.  And did I mention she looks super cute in that hat?  Mr. C calls the knots "kitty ears."

Speaking of Mr. C., I made him this bag for his library books because he likes carrying bags and he likes library books:

Let me clarify: I bought the bag at Hobby Lobby, the patron saint of Christmas craftiness, and then added the letter.  It's felt that I cut out using a template I made and then just hand sewed on.  Easy peasy.

In ornament news, I made these candy canes of my own design for my family this year:

(I bought the bows, after attempting my own...)

We also made Baby's handprint ornament for ourselves and the grandmas.  Only one of them got broken by a certain someone and had to be remade.

Finally, since Drew works at an actual office now I gave him a bunch of stuff for his desk.  I made this to go along with it:

lol indeed!

Great Snakes!

For Halloween this year, I pulled out the idea I postponed from last year--Tintin and Snowy!  Perfect for a little boy and a littler baby.  

Originally the plan was for me and Drew to be Thomson and Thompson:

But it turned out to be surprisingly hard to find all the components!  It would have been funny, but we switched gears.

Drew decided to be a somewhat dressed down Captain Haddock and well, I was a unicorn with a secret.

(Get it??)

For Tintin, I bought the sweater online and made the socks from leftover fabric I had.  His shirt, pants and shoes all came from my beloved JBF consignment sale (can you believe those pants??).  

Really happy I didn't have to make those pants.

Snowy on the other hand, well, I made all of that.  I used a pattern that came with the sleep sack, but by the time I was done, I realized I should have made my own pattern based off an outfit she already had.  It would have been easier and fit better.  The suit was HUGE on her when I finished it.  HUGE.  So I had to cut it down to size, but it didn't fit great still in the end.  

BUT the fabric is such that all my adaptations didn't really show.

BUT the fabric is such that it was impossible to work with.  Never again!

(Please note her little tail.  Hee hee!)

I made her little headband from a 97 cent Halloween headband from Walmart.  I actually made it several times...  In the end, I assembled it with hot glue.  

As for us, I bought the shirts and made the iron-on designs myself.  Drew did the sketch of the unicorn though because, as it turns out, I do not draw a good unicorn.  No no.  But I did finish it up.  I also made some unicorn earrings to go with it.  

In the end, I don't think anyone knew who they were and probably didn't even realize we were wearing costumes.  But!  Being recognizable has never been a HUGE concern of mine at Halloween...and they looked cute all the same.  

And now it's time to brainstorm for next year...