Nursery Sneak Peek

I'm going to blame my horrible blogging on my current lack of brain cells. Have any of you ever seen the movie, "Momento?" I'm starting to really empathize with that character.
Anyway, as a feeble attempt to make up for my lack of posts, how about some quick pics of the nursery? We still have a ways to go, but things are starting to take shape. DH finished painting the room and arranging the furniture this weekend, leaving pretty much just some picture and shelf hanging to do.
The "theme" for the nursery is vintage. I wouldn't say that it's true vintage, because most of the stuff is from the late 70's, early 80's. And if the stuff is near my age, it can't possible be vintage, right? ;D

I found the baby scale in the above picture at Goodwill for $5 several months ago. The scale, along with an amazing nursery I found at ohdeedoh, gave me the inspiration for the nursery. The two books on top are Winnie the Pooh books I found years ago at an antique store. The two books on the bottom are a couple of Dick and Jane readers that originally were my mother-in-law's when she was in elementary school. The lamp was purchased new from Target.

With the exception of the TV, the abacus, the xylophone, and the bear toy, all of the above toys were mine when I was a baby. These toys, along with some others, will be on some shelves out of baby's reach.

The fabric on the bottom right is one of the crib sheets that I will be using for the crib. I plan on a future post solely about the crib bedding at a later date. The other fabrics were mine as a child and will be used to display/picture purposes only.


Here's a brief hint about what the nursery walls look like, along with some darling light switches I found. The light switches were made in the 50's or 60's by a company known as Nursery Plastics. The same company also made crib mobiles and nursery lamps. I have a coordinating crib mobile that I will use for the crib that you will be able to see when I do the post about the crib bedding.

Hall Light

Almost as soon as I saw the two lines on the stick, I knew it was time to make some more changes to our house. Specifically, the hallway that leads to the bedrooms. Someone had previously installed this light on the wall in the hallway:

Every time I saw this light, I couldn't help but think that it belonged outside at a beach motel. In addition to the style not being what I would have picked out, the light wasn't very efficient:

True, the hallway did get brighter, but I never really had a need to illuminate 6" of the hallway ceiling. Not to mention that the placement of the light prohibited us from hanging more pictures in the hallway. Since there is soon to be another reason for pictures, this problem had to be fixed.

Moving the light from the wall to the ceiling took a bit of doing, but DH was up to the task. Our hallway is now actually lit, AND I can see so much better into the hall closet!

But best of all, moving the light allowed us to add 10 more picture frames :D

The Porch

Our house came with a screened in porch right off of the living room and kitchen. The porch needed a bit of aesthetic work, so for the last 6 months, DH has been working on the porch off and on. When we moved in, the ceiling needed a fresh coat of paint and new light fixtures. The ceiling fan in the middle was a sad little thing, and the lights on either side had long lost their globes. I wish I had thought to take a picture of the ceiling before, but I was too concerned with getting the old fixtures down.

We found the ceiling fan and the lights at Lowe's. Originally, the lights had a white base, so DH spray painted them with some Antique Bronze paint to match the ceiling fan.

For a while, our porch had a nice new ceiling with the same old walls and floor. For some reason, DH and I didn't want to paint when it was 100 degrees outside ;) So our poor porch sat like this until Fall.

DH painted the walls and trim of the porch, and then set about painting the floor. Our original plans for the floor included painting the floor gray and then stenciling red bricks onto the floor. After DH had completed about 1/4 of the floor, we took a long look at it and decided that it wasn't going to work. So DH painted the floor again, this time a shade of brown.

After we found a rug that we liked at Overstock.com, the porch was finally complete!

Now we just have to wait for it to warm up enough to sit outside :)

Christmas Tour 2010

Unlike the last 2 years, I decided to not participate in the blog world Christmas tours. So for my loyal readers (all 5 of you!), here is a brief tour. Most of my Christmas decorating is similar to last year's, so if you want a more in-depth view, you can catch last year's tour here.

This is our tree for the year. I did the ribbon garland last year, and I could never decide if I liked how it looked or not. I think our star tree topper might be celebrating it's last Christmas on our tree :( My parents bought the topper way back in the 70's as a young married couple, and I took it with me to college and beyond. I have so many memories of sitting in a darkened room watching the lights twinkle on and off.

For a change this year, most of our presents are wrapped similarly to the two variations seen below:

the red ribbon going across reads, "Jesus is the Gift"

I really like the color-coordinated look of our presents this year. Since the ribbon is easy to save, I might do this again next year...

DH and I have differing opinions on how many ornaments can go onto a tree. I prefer to have an overloaded tree that fairly creaks under the weight of ornaments. DH prefers to showcase special ornaments. So he decorates the tree to his liking, and I push him to add "just a few more" ;)
The ornaments seen above are some of my wooden ornaments that I collect that didn't make it onto the tree this year. I know it's not a great way to display them, but it is interesting to dig through the bowl and see what you find. I've determined that next year I am having a tree in the kitchen for my wooden ornaments.

Our mantle. I decided to keep things simple on the mantle this year. I love how other people fill apothecary jars with seasonal items, but I never feel as though I pull it off successfully myself.
On a (somewhat) related note, a great invention would be lighted garland that runs off of batteries. I HATE having visible cords!

Our entertainment unit. The "Jesus is the Gift" sign is a bit small for the space, but I wanted it to have a key focal point. So above the TV it went ;)

I made the signs that flank the entertainment unit one morning after deciding that the audio piers needed more height. To see how I made the signs, you can read about it here.

Some day, I would love to have some "real" signs from Red Letter Words.

This year, we are using Ann Voskamp's Jesse Tree devotional. Her free book comes with printable ornaments, which is great for someone who can't draw :D If you are looking for a Jesse Tree devotional that has weight for child and adult alike, I highly recommend the book.

Unlike years past, I didn't get out my Christmas village this year. BB is not too happy about that. I must admit that the village made decorating the table in our front hallway easier.

But the village's absence does allow me to highlight some of my favorite ornaments.

I bought this mini village (and the buildings you will see on the piano) on clearance from Target last year.

The doorway between the hallway and the schoolroom.

This is BB's Peanuts (as in Charlie Brown) tree. You will see some better pictures of this tree in an upcoming post. Prior to this year, BB had his tree in his room. But after super-gluing 5 ornaments last year, we got smart and moved the tree this year :D

These are the other buildings that I bought at Target last year. In between the buildings is a snow family figurine that DH bought me a few years ago, and a nativity set that I had in my room as a child.

I just love lighted buildings.

We kept the decor the same outside this year with the exception of a wooden nativity. We bought this set a few months ago at a local craft fair. One of the things that I look forward to at Christmastime is driving around to see the lights, but for us, I wanted things simple.

After all, this is what Christmas is all about.

2010 State of the House

Today marks the one-year anniversary of our house. To commemorate, I thought I'd post a tour of our house as it is today. To keep this from being the longest post ever, I've linked to previous posts about the rooms where possible.
Our major expense to the house to date has been installing new windows. Next year, we plan to replace the roof.

Exterior

For the exterior, we have removed many of the bushes that surround the house, restored the pond, and laid the patio (partially visible here). Next spring, we'd like to do some landscaping.
In the future sometime, we'd like to replace the siding and trim. When we do that, we will sand down and repaint the exterior doors.

Master Bedroom

So far, to this room we have replaced the ceiling fan, painted the walls, moved our furniture in, and hung pictures. Until a month ago, we had shutters over the windows in our bedroom, but when we placed the windows, the shutters had to go :(

We hope to paint the ceiling (we didn't realize until we moved in that someone had painted the ceiling yellow), and install crown molding sometime in the near future.

Master Bathroom

This room was the first room to get a major overhaul. Looking at this room makes me excited about my plans for the rest of the house.

The only thing left for this room is replacing the shower and redoing the door. I like the bifold door, but I realize that it does have it's drawbacks. When we take up the carpet, the bifold door will likely be too short for the lower floor. I'd love to install a pocket door, but that would involve moving an outlet.


Hallway

We have painted the hallway and hung pictures. We would like to replace the hall light and move the light so that it is mounted in the ceiling.

Guest Bedroom

We have painted the guest bedroom and filled it with the stuff that doesn't have a home anywhere else :)

Other than replacing the ceiling fan, there are no current renovations planned for this room.

Schoolroom (aka the Front Room)

Aside from painting and moving things in, we haven't done anything to the room.

BB's Bathroom

We have painted the walls and decorated. We plan on doing a major overhaul to this room like we did to the master bath, hopefully at the beginning of the new year.

BB's room
Again, all we've done here is paint and move stuff in. We are going to replace the fan in his room, and aside from the flooring and door changes, we have no further plans.

Living Room
We have painted this room and moved things in. I dislike the off-set fireplace, but as of yet, I don't have a plan for the fireplace.

Kitchen
We haven't done anything to the kitchen aside from moving our stuff in. After we replace the roof, the next project we're saving for is a new kitchen.

New cabinets, new flooring, new counter tops, new lights, new oven, new stove, new hood...

I can't wait.

We initially planned on painting the existing cabinets and countertops, and repairing the cabinets where needed. But after some research, we've come to the conclusion that a better use of our resources would be to replace. We don't plan on selling this house anytime soon, but whatever changes we make we want to make with the resell factor in mind. The time and money it would cost to fix the cabinets doesn't make it worth our while. Replacing the cabinets will also enable us to improve the layout of the kitchen.

Front Hallway

In the hallway, we replaced the globes on the existing light fixture and spray painted it to take it from shiny brass to antique brass.

We also removed and/or painted over the wallpaper. Parts of the wall are still bumpy, so we'll have to go back and fix that. Other than that, we have no further plans.

Laundry Room

In the laundry room, we patched and painted the walls. We plan on either removing the cabinet doors or painting them. When the kitchen gets new flooring, we will replace the flooring in here as well.

Overall Interior

Throughout the house, we plan on replacing the carpet with hardwood flooring. When we do this we will also replace the base molding. At some point, we would like to replace the hollow doors with 6-panel solid doors. Chances are, this will take place after the kitchen remodel (which is after the roof).