Home Office Makeover

My Hubby started working from home back in February of 2016.  Back then we still lived in Utah and his office was squeezed into our guest room so we bought a smaller table/desk and just made it work until we moved that summer.  

Fast forward to now, we've been living in Georgia for nearly a year, he is still working from home, but he now has an entire room on our main floor for his office.  

Sadly, up until this week it's looked like this:

Random stuff and all of our important files sat in this corner pretty much since we moved in.

So this closet was actually full of boxes and all of our board games! I didn't think to take the before pictures until after I'd already hauled out all of the games and started unpacking the boxes (which were mostly all books).

Not very inviting.  

I can't believe we've let it look like this for so long!

He went out of town for 3 days this past week and I decided to give it a complete overhaul to surprise him for Father's Day!

 So I worked really hard to unpack boxes, move out excess stuff that shouldn't have been in there and then I got to work pulling the room together!

I did all of this and I could have easily stopped here:

Curtains, new shelves to display things and a new (to him) desk.  He would have still been super happy and surprised with this much done!

The desk was brought up from the basement. I was using it for my craft desk but we are going to do a much bigger one so this one was free for the using! It was so much nicer and hid all of the ugly computer cords so well.  Plus--more storage!  I hung curtains to make the room feel cozy and go these shelves from Target and put them together after the kids went to bed.  (Only took 4 episodes of Friends doing it on my own...)

But why stop there?? 

Ta-Da!!

 

I bought a real plant for the top of the shelves and then got new updated pictures for these frames that we used to have hanging in our old house.  I created a gallery of family photos for him to look at every day!  Very "Father's Day" appropriate, too :)

(The cats really liked Scott's new office... )

On the other side of the office I got another plant (which we have to shew the cats away from!) and pulled up this black chair from the basement.  The chair isn't super nice, but it was left behind from the previous homeowners and it actually works really great in the space! Plus now I have a cozy chair to sit in when I bug hubby at "work" :)

The closet is holding a bunch of our books (until we figure out where to put real bookshelves) and the file boxes are organized and look much nicer in the close than in a heaping mess in the corner of the floor.  Plus, the doors can stay closed and the mess will be hidden.

Bonus points:  I filled Scott's desk drawers with organizers and office supplies from the dollar store.  

His trashcan is hidden nicely in this lower cupboard part of the desk

I'm really happy that I found a great way to display his Garfield comic book collection that he had from childhood.  So much better here than stuck in a box!

 

Hubby came home late on Wednesday night, so I had to stay quiet all night and all morning he was really taking his time "getting to work" so I was patiently waiting for him to walk in and get the surprise of his life ;)  It was so much fun to watch!  I totally wish I got it on video, but he was just a little too quick for me to grab the camera. Totally worth all the hard work and late nights. 

 What do you think?

 

Baby Girl Projects: Hair Bow Holder Frame

This will be the last of the baby girl projects until I finish her room!  I have done a lot of projects to decorate the nursery, but I'm going to post them once the room is all done.

This one was pretty easy, too! I like easy if you haven't noticed.

I took a very large frame that I already had (I tend to collect them) and spray painted it purple.  This particular frame did not have glass, but it did have a hard backing.  I took that hard backing and covered it with thin batting and a piece
of fabric using hot glue to secure it.

Then I took lace and ivory ribbons with gold designs (like gold polka dots) to string across the whole thing. I got all my ribbons and lace at Hobby Lobby during a 50% off sale.  (I didn't use all these ribbons, but I found all these cute trims and ribbons at Hobby Lobby and they were hard to resist!)

I also secured the ribbons using hot glue on the back.  Then I put it all back into the frame and I was done!  I just clipped on a bunch of hair bows that I had leftover from the ones I used to make for craft fairs.

The original plan was to screw hooks directly into the bottom of the frame to hang all my elastic headbands, but then I decided I would just re-use the hooks that I used to hang towels on for Sam.  So I spray painted that purple too and then hung up all her headbands (which I got for crazy good steals from a girl selling them on a Yardsale Facbook page)

Something happy to look at when you first come in the room!  This picture shows the ever-so-smidgen of a sneak peak at the curtains ;)

 The rest of the room will have to wait until I get it all done!  Hopefully that will be this week or next.  Baby is coming soon!  I'm 38 weeks as of yesterday!

IKEA RAST hack – Teal and Tacks

I started making over our Master Bedroom in September--I got busy with Family Trees so I haven't finished all the details in the room enough to show it off.

But I've been wanting to show off these nightstands for months now!

When I started the Master Bedroom overhaul I decided we needed nightstands that had more storage space.  I immediately thought of all the cute IKEA Rast hacks that I've seen and knew that I wanted to do one of my own!

When I was choosing the paint color for our bedroom I ended up buying a whole gallon of a really dark Teal color.  I decided not to put it up on the walls, but then I was left with a whole gallon!  So I chose to paint my Rast nightstands with it instead!

Then I got some cute knobs at Hobby Lobby when they were 50% off (this happens all the time--do NOT pay full price!) And I got some upholstery tacks for the edges and I love love love how it looks!

And with a little fake staging, here's the final result!

You'll have to see them in their final nightstand glory once I finish the rest of the room, but for now I'm happy to show them off like this!

So what do you think?

Sam's Room Update

The last time I showed you Sam's room was October 2012 and at that point it still had about 5% more changes that needed to be addressed.  A few details had yet to be addressed--like the lamp, the changing table and the shelves above the changing table.

So here I am over a year later and I can finally say Sam's room is completely done.

Here's what it looks like now:

Not huge differences to this viewpoint--

I've added curtain hold-backs to the window, taken out the bumper from the crib and switched out 2 of the framed art pieces in the gallery.

However, this side of the room looks quite a bit different.

Here's what it looked like before:

The floating Shelves have finally been styled in a way I like enough to leave it be.

Sam LOVES cars and trucks, and he received cars & trucks sticker/decals for Christmas.  I wanted to put them up so he would have something to look at during diaper changes.  I didn't like too much random with the cars just plopped on the walls wherever.  So I designed and cut out roads on black vinyl with my Cricut and then made this:  

Other changes on this side of the room include a new/old dresser I found in the classifieds, a new lamp (relocated from Luke's room), a crate for books, and new stylization on the floating shelves.  I like the way the dresser looks in the room, so for now I will leave it be and not paint it.  If I ever get a new crib I will probably want the dresser to match it so I'll probably paint it then.

 The confetti wall and the entry of the room are the same, but here is what they look like:

 

Probably the only room in the house I consider to be D.O.N.E.

It's a happy room!

 Cloud Mobile Tutorial
Changing Pad Cover Tutorial
Confetti Wall

Baby Room-More Details
(before this room was completely updated)

Playroom Loft Update

This is what our playroom area looked like for the majority of the last few years:

Ok well, actually it looked more like this…

Yeah.

Anyway…

Not a whole lot on the walls, and not that much storage for toys which always seem to be multiplying. 

The couch belonged to my sister, and she took it to her new house (she didn’t have room for it before in their old house).  It is a family heirloom, so the longer in my house it stayed the more worried I got about Sam destroying it.  I already had to scrub pen mark artwork off the back once.)  Once it was gone, it left a lot of raw space to work with, so I decided to redo the entire space!

So now it looks like this:

We moved the toy bin unit to Luke’s room to hold his dinosaurs and a few other toys that were just his.  I got rid of the other two tables and then bought two 2x4 Expedit units from IKEA.  We added legs to the bottom of each of the shelves to add some height and character to the shelves. 

Then the hard part…finding bins for the toys.  You would think that with the popularity of these shelves and people’s ever-growing need for storage and organization there would be tons of options.  Not so.  I didn’t like any of the IKEA options except for the basket-type, but they were kind of pricey at $14.99 each.  That was basically my probably through-out the whole search.  The baskets I liked that were the right size, were either not the right color, or too expensive.  Other baskets that were good prices were usually too small.  I eventually found these bins at WalMart.com, but I really wanted red ones.  After thinking about the design of the room some more I decided to pull in more black, so I went with the black bins.  Turned out to work really well in the space!  I did bite the bullet and spend more than I wanted at 12.97 each, but in the end the bins are huge and hold a ton of toys.  I think they will hold up to the kids wear and tear, too. 

I had Scott install the curtain rod, and I used these curtains that used to hang in my kitchen once upon a time.

Nothing fancy, but the colors worked well in the space and it blocks out light when I want it darker up there. 

Then I made custom 20x30 posters to fit IKEA frames.  

These by themselves were quite the project.  I made them all myself in Photoshop, but getting them to fit in those weirdly sized Ikea Frames from prints that weren’t the same dimensions was a bit more math and measuring than I care to do.  They turned out great, though and I love them! 

Now I just have to refinish or paint the little kids table and find some chairs that I like to go with it.  I think Sam will love having a little table to sit at and color and play.  I also need labels on the bins so that Luke has an easier time putting toys away on his own. 

So what do you think of my new space? 

Birdhouse Village and other Spring Decor

I always feel kinda cheated out of celebrating Spring when Easter is in March.  April is still all Spring to me, so I am leaving up this stuff all month! {ok, I might take down the bunnies…}

I’ve been working on a very cute project that really stretched my creativity! I haven’t done something like this in a long time.  It is not as easy as it looks to coordinate 8 different birdhouses using different patterned papers, and several different paint colors and have them look like they all belong together!  I had to re-do a few houses along the process when I made some dumb choices, but they turned out super cute! 

I used some small candle holders and a bowl {from the thrift store} to help give my houses some different heights.  

I LOVE how it turned out!  Such a happy thing to look at when I go into my living room! 

I’ve also had the mantle done for a couple weeks, and we recently put up some new bamboo shades on the windows to help with our overbearing sunlight situation. 

Here’s the mantle:

Mantles are not my strong suit, but I think this one turned out cute enough. I used paper doilies from hobby lobby for the garland. My mom crocheted those bunnies for the boys the last two Easters.

And here are the new shades! I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love these! Our living room gets SO MUCH LIGHT and we were in dire need of a way to block out light on super sunny days! Now we can pull these babies down and watch TV or play the XBOX without getting a headache from all the glare and brightness!

Combine all these things together and I’m loving the living room right now! It’s so fresh and happy! Now I just wish I could figure out the furniture {blah} and fix the gallery wall behind the couch {not pictured for a reason!} Happy Spring!!