Hand-Built Pieces

I'm so excited to share that we have sold many of our buffet tables, sofa tables, and growth sized chart rulers in the past couple of months. This may be a surprise to some because I haven't really advertised it on my blog. I also haven't really advertised our custom pieces on my Facebook page either, I do that through another site successfully, but feel now is a good time to put it out there that we make some quality pieces for people to treasure for a long time.
I must admit, however, that it has been a lot of work to do and am so thankful that I have a husband who has been such a HUGE help throughout the whole process!!!

To start, here is a picture of our buffet table:

We have simplified this piece a little bit with its design, but we love it so much that we even use it in our dining room. It is quite a large piece (everyone we have sold it to has either a truck or an SUV to transport it in) and it provides great storage for lots of items. We are currently using ours as a coffee station, to display dishes, a cake stand, fruit, and a basket of napkins and coasters. See, I told you it can hold a lot! :) Plus, it is very sturdy and can hold a lot of weight as well. Although, it's probably not a good idea to "overload" it with too many heavy things.


The next piece that has been quite popular is our sofa table:

This is another fine piece that, once again, we also use in our home. Currently, it sits in our family room and holds pillows, blankets, and whatever miscellaneous items I choose to decorate our home with. It's also a custom piece we came up with and fits the bill perfectly for areas behind a sofa, in an entryway, or even in a dining room if you prefer a smaller storage area. I have been surprised at how quickly I have gotten messages about our sofa table. People seem to be very pleased with them when they buy them!


The last piece is our growth chart ruler:

We display one of these upstairs in the hallway. The girls love going up to it to measure their height. I also love it because you can write on it and keep it for a long time. It makes for great memories!

I have chosen not to display the cost of each item on the blog- that is found on our other site. But, if you are interested in one of these pieces, just send me a message and I will get back to you to answer any questions you might have. :)

Also, because of the popularity of these pieces, it may take some time to make as we measure, cut, sand, paint, and stain each piece so we thank you for your patience in advance!

Do Your Kids Like Crafts?

 Now that my girls are at the age where they can actually complete a simple craft from start to finish, they do like doing them. Recently, I have begun to look for ways for them to help me around the house with projects...and not just with chores. I am usually always thinking of fun things for them to participate in-like decorating the house for the holidays or helping me paint the letters of their name to use as decor in their room. It's fun being able to come along side them and watch them as they learn new things like that- especially because it's something I enjoy doing with them!

So how do you get your kids involved in such things?

Well, for me, I look for things my girls can help me with around the house- things like decorating their room or picking out a color scheme for the playroom, etc. (And I always try to make sure they want to participate in these ideas because I know that if I just made them do something "crafty" that they didn't want to do in the first place, it would feel like a chore to them and I certainly don't want that).

For example, a couple of things I have been wanting to do lately are paint some letters for my sons room and decorate some Styrofoam cones for Christmas that we just bought at the craft store. I know some of you might be thinking that Christmas decor is a little early, and it is, but I wanted to get a head start on some of it now because, well, it's just plain fun to do!

Here are a couple of examples of how my girls helped me out this week:

1. I took all 3 kids to JoAnn's to help me pick out some things and used our gift card from my MIL. And just to clarify, two out of 3 of my children are able to have an opinion...I wouldn't expect that from my youngest just yet ;) so going out with 3 wasn't all that bad but it was an experience to say the least. 


 

2. When we got home, we busted out the paint (Tempura) and the paint brushes and put some paint on some pieces of paper (that way we could keep the paint contained somewhat).

**We chose the color blue so it would fit in with the nursery colors.

3. And the girls just painted away. They really loved this craft because they knew it would be something special their brother would keep in his room for a long time...and it's something they enjoyed doing for him.

The other project we worked on this week was decorating some Styrofoam cones with pink and purple yarn (colors they picked out on their own) and added some pom poms to them with toothpicks.

I also want to mention that my oldest came up with the idea to secure the pom poms to the cones with toothpicks. It was genius! I didn't have to worry about glue getting everywhere...and the toothpicks were so easy for them to use.

So what we did was wrap the yarn around the cones, secured the yarn with some toothpicks, and used pom poms to decorate them. Super fun!!

Didn't they turn out pretty cute?!

I was even surprised that my 2 year old wanted to do so much of this craft by herself. She was actually able to get the pom poms threaded with the toothpick and managed to put them into the Styrofoam cones herself! Hooray for independence like that!

She was quite pleased with herself, and so was I! They both did a great job and it was a lot of fun to do together!

It is always so neat to watch my girls get excited about projects that we can do together...they especially LOVE painting and are always asking if they can help me paint some of my furniture projects. I haven't been able to let them take the reigns on those kinds of projects just yet, but they do love to help out and for that I am grateful.

I would love to hear if any of you get your kids involved in decorating or the decorating process? And if you do, what are some ways in which you allow your kids to help?

Boys Nursery Room Progress

Some parts of our home have gotten more attention than others. Our nursery is one of the rooms in our home that hasn't seen much action...our son doesn't sleep in their yet since he is still little and wakes often in the night so I never got the motivation to decorate it...that is until last weekend.
As always, the room isn't 100% complete, but it is getting there. I would still love to paint it someday and add some real blinds to the windows, among other things, but am satisfied with how it is all turning out.

In this post, you will see lots of pictures of my middle child. She just really wanted to get into each shot, as always. :)

On one wall we have the changing table- which was used by each of our children- and the rocking chair. The actual nursery rocking chair is currently in our master bedroom since that is where our son is sleeping now, but eventually it will get moved back into here.

For one of my baby showers years ago, my friend hung some newborn onesies by a window and I loved how it looked. I finally got that chance to copy that decor in this room because this room has quite a large window that is perfect for it.

Don't worry about the mirror over the crib- it will probably get moved at some point- but it is also anchored to the wall even though it is very very light-safety first! Probably one of the lightest mirrors we have in the house so don't be fooled by it's size. And the crib isn't actually up against the wall...it sits a few inches away from the wall.

My little monkey climbing in and out of the crib- that could be a potential problem with placing the crib here. Thankfully, we have some time before our youngest begins to even consider doing that. :)

This is the "card wall" where we display some of the cards we received after the birth of our son. I love that he can have some special memories up in his room from friends and family.

We have big plans for this room years down the road...for one, we are considering taking out the window seat (I know, I don't want to do it), because you can't fit a twin bed in here comfortably and as the boy grows, he will eventually need one. The room isn't small and isn't large- it is a pretty decent size, but the layout makes it a bit difficult to decorate around, especially with where the window seat is arranged in the room. I have tried all kinds of different options in here like moving the crib to where the changing table is, etc. but feel the way I have things in here now is the best set-up. We will see. ;)

Upstairs Bathroom- Mirror Changes

Musical Mirrors was a post I wrote a few days ago about how moving some of the mirrors around in our home quickly changed up the look in some of our spaces. Well, this post is similar in that I ended up changing out the mirror in the upstairs bathroom. Originally, the circular mirror we had in the upstairs bathroom wasn't that practical for the girls. It was hard for them to see themselves while they were either washing their hands or brushing their teeth, so I changed it up and moved that one to our bedroom and put a rectangular one in there instead. It is working out much better. In fact, after I hung it up, my youngest said excitedly, "I can see myself now, Mom!" It made me glad that she was happy about it, so I think I made the right choice by changing out the mirror to this "new" one. :)

I should mention that the tiled floor is originally to the house and not something we would have chosen for here. Someday, we would love to change it out...or paint it if that is even an option for tiled floor. But for now, it will have to do.

  
I really like the way the larger mirror makes the space seem bigger. Another reason to keep it in here because this bathroom isn't necessarily what you would call a large space.

As you can see, I still have some holes to fill in the walls. :)

A few details about the space:

Wall color is SW Alabaster White
Color above trim is a gray mixture I made myself with leftover paint
Cabinet color is SW Gauntlet Gray
Shower curtain is from Target
Wall shelves are from Lowe's on Clearance
Wall mirror is from a Williamsburg thrift store and repainted with some leftover paint

I think that is about it for this space...just wanted to share some updates and show how you can "shop your house" for updates.

What to Do with Your Kids Artwork...

If you are like me, you find it a little hard to part with your child's artwork. 
I wouldn't say I am a hoarder by any means, but when it comes to something that my kids create, it can be hard to let go...even if it is just a scribble on a piece of paper. (anyone else relate to that?) 
If they are excited about it, I want to keep it!

However, I do not keep all of their artwork...I have learned over the years to let go of some of it. The rest of it gets displayed around the house or placed in a folder. What I have recently started doing is organizing their artwork. I have a pre-school folder where a lot of it is kept, and then the remaining art has been placed in frames that I have had for a while and displayed all around the house in places like the playroom, the kitchen, and even the girl's bedroom.

We are fortunate enough to have a set of separate stairs leading to our kid's playroom and I thought that would be the perfect spot to display their art- gallery wall style.
Here are some photos of that:

My oldest did this "abstact" (if you will) black and orange art at school not too long ago and was so proud of it that we had to display it. :)

I also like to put the dates on the back of my kid's art projects just so they can keep a record of when they completed something. I figured they could look back on that in the future and have an idea of how old they were when they did something. Does anybody else do that?? Please tell me I'm not the only one. 

How do you display your child's arts/crafts? Do you have a hard time letting go of some of it?

Musical Mirrors

Ever since giving birth to our 3rd child, I haven't been able to do many projects around the house- obviously. It's really something I love to do and I recently got the itch to get back into it again. I figure if I start with small projects now, then in the future I can get back into the swing of things and take on larger projects. But for now, those big projects just aren't in the cards right now...which is ok with me, although I have to admit it does get hard to hold back from starting a project as soon as I think about something to do. But there are other things that must take priority right now.

Recently, I wanted to experiment moving some mirrors around in the house. I started with the entryway, living room, and downstairs bath. I began by moving around the mirrors to different parts of the house and took pictures to see which look made more sense stylistically.

This gold mirror was in the downstairs bath originally and so I moved it into the entryway. I liked it there, but wasn't sure it was the best fit for the space.

I also took the smallest mirror, the oval one, and put it in the living room. I think it looks good here too, but I'm thinking it might be too small for the space. Taking pictures of it helped me decide.

I actually liked having the large rectangular mirror in the bathroom and also moved it to the entryway and living room to test it out. If it stays in the entryway, it is going to get painted at some point- along with the entryway walls- but that is a project for another time. ;)
Also, I really liked how the white blended in with the white walls and trim in the bathroom, but I felt that this mirror wasn't proportionate to the sink area so I tried it in the entryway.

And lastly, I moved the gold long oval mirror into the bathroom and think it fits best here. Since we have gold fixtures on the sink and a gold picture hanging to the right (not pictured) it probably makes more sense to keep this one here.

And below are some more pictures of our spaces.

It is amazing how moving just a few items around in your home can change the look of a space.
Just for fun, I have made some before and after photos so you can see the difference- as if the post and pictures above aren't confusing enough. ;)

**Oh, and in the pictures below, the first picture in each collage shows the look I preferred.

Photo 1- Half bathroom

Photo 2- Living Room

Photo 3- Entryway

What do you think??
Do you prefer one look over the other?