Olive's Nursery

I don't have all the pictures of her nursery yet. I know that is what you were expecting. Sorry. I think I will wait until after she arrives and it is more "lived in." Nonetheless, I do have some nursery-prep pictures to share. We have hung Olive's name on the wall and Lucy helped me paint, as I mentioned in a previous post.

Some of the pictures are a little blurry. She wouldn't sit still for a picture and she blinks! I decided just to click and move on...

We had fun; although, it tested Lucy's ears and mommy's patience. Here is the finished product after we got daddy involved to hang it, and used his measuring skills. :)

 

More nursery pictures to come. Although, I wouldn't believe me. I often promise pictures and don't deliver. :{ I'll try really hard this time!

Bread Painting

Heath has started up graduate classes again. This time it is a 6 week period, with two classes a week.  So, that leaves Lucy and mommy alone two nights a week. I have used this opportunity to try fun, Pinterest projects. :)

First, we got a paint brush. Now, we really needed those little, cheap, water painting brushes, but didn't have one. So, I found a new, foam one and washed it with dial soap. Then, I got Lucy situated and ready to paint.

Then, we got out four bowls and poured a little milk in each one. Then, I asked Lucy what colors she wanted. Of course, she said purple. I had to remember my color mixing, since I only had four colors of food coloring.

She requested: pink, purple, orange, and blue. I could have gone darker; but, I didn't want to waste the food coloring and it worked!

I laid out two pieces of bread and a napkin for Lucy to blot on.


She picked it up pretty well; however, she kept dabbing all of the milk in the middle of the bread. It was getting too soggy. I kept trying to get her to go around the edges...

 I thought that maybe it was the brush - it was picking up too much milk. So, we tried a basting brush...


It worked MUCH better.

Lucy asked me to do some too, which she enjoyed.

We did four pieces, front and back. She especially liked when I tried to paint around her hand.

Then, we threw the bread in the toaster to dry.

I thought about just buttering them, but decided to make grilled cheese sandwiches out of them instead.

 Lucy thought they were pretty fun. We both had a colorful sandwich. Of course, Lucy had the one with an 'L' on it.

It was fun and she made sure to tell Daddy all about it the next morning. I am sure we will do it again sometime. :)

Big Girl Room: Update

Heath painted Lucy's room! :) He did a really, really good job too. I asked a hard challenge of him, by painting two walls white, one wall purple, and one wall teal. Meeting in the corners was difficult; but, he did awesome! :) I wish I had the pictures gathered to show you.

Disappointingly enough, I haven't gathered any of the photos yet. BUT, we did take a few photos on our phones! :) So, here they are - just a sneak peak until I gather more photos and we completely finish the room.

First of all, I gathered the paint samples, the true colors, for you to see. Hopefully the colors are true on my iphone camera (they are the top, darker ones).

Once Heath painted the walls, I started to paint smaller items that I had collected....

(You can see a teal wall in the top of the photo.)

 Like this candle stick that I have no idea what I'm going to do with...but, I thought it would be cute painted.

Or, this large wood frame that I hope to use on the wall in the room.

As you can see, there were some smaller frames that we also painted, and some letters.


 Do you remember in Lucy's nursery, how her name was on the wall?

 

Of course, we had to put her name in her new room too! :) So, we repainted the letters to hang.

Before:

(The picture looks yellowy because of the lighting.)

 

After:

The frame was a fantastic touch! Want to know where we got it? :)

My cousin had her mirror break in her dorm room. So, she was left with just a pink frame. When she asked if I wanted it, I thought, "Sure!" I knew I could do something with it. But, when I framed Lucy's name, it was perfect! :) We didn't have to do anything to the frame either; Heath just hung it! It was already a perfect color!

All I can leave you with now is a shot of the curtain rod we got at Lowe's.

It's pretty cute too! :) It doesn't add a lot to the room; but, it was too cute to pass up.

Hopefully I can show the entire room later this week. Stay tuned!

Easter 2011

Is it too late to share Easter pictures with everyone? Whoops! I am really bad at getting pictures gathered on time. Sorry! But, at least now you aren't burnt out on Easter posts. Perhaps you will welcome the Easter reminder. :)

Our weekend started with dying eggs - 36 of them. I know; we didn't need that many. But, I wanted to use several decorating kits that I bought. We had the regular kits (which I always double the color tablets, to make the color darker). And, we also had two fun kits:

Glitter kit? Difficult. Cute. Messy. Gets glitter everywhere! Continues to shed glitter days later.

Tie dye? Advanced. Messy. Cute. For older "children."

Here are the results!

Let me mention the following things:

1) Heath did Lucy's egg (top, middle).

2) The vibrant purple egg in the middle, on the far left, was the result of mixing all of the dyes together! :)

3) The pink one, on the bottom, second from the right is a pig...

Finally, I had to show you an up-close view of one of my prides:



What is it?

Anyway, enough showing off

We woke up to our baskets the Easter Bunny brought.

Lucy's, Dad's, Chico and Squirt's, and Mom......wait. Mom's? Apparently we had a biased Easter Bunny this year. He didn't bring Mom anything...

Perhaps next year he'll take it upon himself to bring her something very expensive, like diamonds. :)

Then, we got dressed and visited a lot of family.

finding the basket...

and throwing it in!

 I think she is finally getting the hang of it!



"No - that is a dandelion, honey."

Well, kind of. :)

I hope you had a wonderful Easter too. :)

Renovation: Complete!!

We are done! Whew! It took us about 2 months, which isn't too bad. A big thanks to my husband and his family for doing this for us (Ron, Bob, Sam, and Derek)! I am so excited to share the completed room with you!

If you are just now joining us, go check out the Basement to Playroom Transition. Then, check out all of the updates: Renovations.

And, the drum roll please...the photos you have all been waiting for...click on any pictures to make them larger, then hit back.

This is a three photo comparison of one of the walls: the before, the in-progress, and the after. This was the creation of a whole new wall.

Next, is the corner you see when you first walk into the room. Sorry - some of the angles aren't exact. As you can see, we painted that black beam white and finished the ceiling.

Here is the stairway down and my new holiday storage closet! Again, the angles are bad - sorry!

Here is another look toward the stairs.

It seriously doesn't even look like the same room! Here are some more photos of the room:

In case you were wondering what was in all of those storage containers...


Clothes for dress-up and doll clothes

ABC blocks



Small toys



Large toys



Large Legos



Stuffed animals

Here is a closer look at my new framed books, from my dad. Read more about it here.

And, here are more of our books. We have a ton of Golden Books!

And, finally, I will leave you with a picture of my new shelf. I had so many Lucille Ball items. I have collected them for a while now. I used to put them in our spare bedroom; but, that is now my Lucy's nursery. :) So, my collection had been in totes for a couple of years.  Now, they are all up and proudly displayed. I love it!

All the dolls are Lucille Ball dolls, except for the one on the left. That is Lucy's 2010 Holiday Barbie. And, my husband would like me to mention that he has one more bracket to put up on the left side; so, that is why it looks lop-sided.

I tried not to be so girly; but, the flowers and butterflies on the walls pushed me right over the female edge. Oh well. I will worry about making it more neutral when the time comes (if at all).

Lucy loves her new room! She just runs and plays all over. We all love it and are very excited that it is complete!

What do you think?

Renovations: Finished Shopping

Alright - I have put a restriction on myself. No more buying things for the new playroom.

Just joining us? Read about the Basement to Playroom Transition to catch up.  Also, you can catch up on all the related posts here: Renovations.

I have finished buying things for the basement; because, frankly, I need to be. Otherwise, we will be in the same crap-filled situation we were before. And, may I remind you of our borderline Hoarders situation? Yikes...but, on a good note, I finally found what I was looking for! Check it out! :)

All you Target lovers out there know the brand.

I am still not 100% in love with the open, backless shelves; nonetheless, I will make it work. How so? Of course, I'm going to fill this unit with cute totes! These were the ones I decided on...probably too many. But, I sure would hate to not have enough!

Our entryway light is very yellow....sorry! It made the colors look off.

These polka dots were just what I was looking for! I decided on some other, not-so-girly colored totes (the teal and lime ones). I'm really trying to make this room non-gender-specific. But, I will admit, the dark pink has gotten a little out of hand...

Who knew I had such a soft spot for dark pink, dark purple, lime green, and teal? Future Lucy big-girl-room colors? Hmmmm......

Heath is at home today finishing up on the painting. Then, this Friday they are finishing up the trim. To end the night, I get to fly in, scrub carpets, vacuum, and dust. Don't be jealous; your day will too come. haha. Right!

Perhaps on Saturday, I will get to start moving in furniture!

Alright, so here is what I left you with:

Yes - I know. It's a perfect diagram of the room. I should be an architect...but, enough talk about all of my talents. Let's move on.

I am thinking this layout for furniture:

Again, the furniture is perfectly to scale (ha!). These are my thoughts as of now; but, you how that goes. You get furniture in the room and quickly change your mind or realize that it won't work how you imagined. We'll see.

I sure hope I can give you all a final renovation update next Monday!!

Any fun ideas or suggestions for our playroom, before I make our final touches?

Renovations: Entertainment Center Make-Over

We are continuing the basement renovation and I’m beginning to plan the placement of furniture. While, thinking about the layout and design, my favorite part, I decided to change our 10+ year old entertainment center.

This entertainment center is on its last life, as far as I’m concerned. It has come so close to being taken to the ‘dump’ on several occasions. I am trying to think back to why we saved it exactly and I really can’t think of a reason. However, in our basement it’s been…just holding my old, non-flat screened, college TV.

And, since it has been so resilient, of course we are keeping it again! It just needs a little ‘tuning’ up, if you will. It’s getting pretty rough.

So, at work last Friday I made an executive decision concerning our entertaining friend. I thought to myself, "I'm gonna paint it!" I immediately googled how to paint particle board. I knew that paint wouldn't stick to that shiny exterior. So, what could I do?

According to....hmmm, I think it was 'HowTo.com', I should sand it first. It would give the board some 'grit' and the paint would then stick.  I shared my idea with Heath and there you have - we had a plan!

According to the site, I should use a 220 grit sand paper, which I started with. It worked; but, I was going through it like crazy! And, I felt like it was taking fore..ev...er! So, I eventually used 150 grit and that worked great! It made it go a lot quicker too!

Thank goodness we have a sander; I was planning on doing the whole thing by hand. THAT would have been a nightmare!

After I removed the shelves and doors, and I sanded, Heath wiped it off for me.

It looks weird, huh?

Now, on the saw horses, it was ready for a coat of white paint. We decided to use a flat paint, since that is what the rest of the basement is.

Here I am painting. My father-in-law was helping by touching up the corners, where my roller couldn't reach.

It took two coats to really cover it; but, I went through a third time, just to be anal. We were very pleased with the results!

And for all of you who are scrolling up and down, here is the comparison. :)



The only part that looks bad, is the lower, right cubbies. That is because there will be doors that cover that area. So, I wasn't too concerned about being particular on sanding or painting. And, there was like a faux, cardboard back, which was brown. The brown kept coming through the paint; so, it is tinged yellow-ish. Again, not a big deal; because no one will see it.

After some more thought, I probably could have painted it a fun color; however, I think with all of the toys in the room, and red carpet,  it could get a little cluttered. Overall, I'm glad I stuck with white! :)

The total approximate cost of this project was about $15.