Wonderful Girlyness!!

I'm so excited to be able to blog about some lovely girlyness today! We have had this bedding for a while now, but are finally able to use it since our 16 month old little girl has made a complete transition from the crib to a big girl bed! She is currently sleeping in the 2nd upstiars bedroom (which was her nursery). Over the summer we hope to get her new 'big girl room' downstairs ready and she will eventually transition into that room. Because this won't be her room for too much longer we will not be painting it quite yet.... so for now you will have to enjoy this pink, brown, and green lovelyness! :o)


Here are the blankets that we are using for now. They match wonderfully with the other bedding. There is a comforter that goes with this bedding, but we won't be using it until she is big enough for a twin bed.

This is the main pillow, it's pink on one side and brown on the other. Wonderful! :o)

These are the lovely sheets that we will be using on her twin bed once she is big enough. They are so sweet and give the room that wonderful little pop of green!

Throw pillows... too cute!

This has got to be the cutest rug I have ever seen, and it matches everything so perfectly!!!

Flower lights from IKEA. They will be hung on the walls once they are painted. They are a perfect girly addition to the room. They are also very wonderful because they provide a lot of light, but little kids can't burn themselves on the bulbs because they are hidden!

Every little girl deserves a pretty pink flower in her bedroom. We scored this adorable flower from the local dollar store for 1 buck! Can't beat that!
I loved this color scheme so much we actually used most of these items for our daughters 1st birthday party back in February! I am so happy with her 'big girl bedding' and her birthday party decor. Nothing beats getting twice the bang for your buck!!!

Projects On The Go

Just wanted to give you all a quick update and a glimps of what's to come soon...
We have built the chunk of fence that was missing from the backyard, all that is left to build is a gate and then painting it to match the existing fence. Fence pics will be up shortly!!!
I'm hoping to add some plant to the backyard at some point this summer, so check back for that too!

As for the inside of the house...
-We have had the electrical panel upgraded recently. I'll blog about that soon as well.
-We have stripped down most of the original wood trim upstairs and have started to paint it a gorgeous white.

We will hopefully be getting to some of the bigger projects within the next few weeks, so keep checking back!!!

Tiles, tiles, tiles!!!!!

Tile pictures are finally here! Yipee!

The upstairs bathroom had never been shower proof... in other words, you had to make sure you didn't spray the the wall since there were no tiles or backsplash of any sort.

Without further ado, here are some easy steps to tiling a shower:

1. Have a plan. Make sure you know exactly what you want before you start. Have all of your tiles, thinset, grout and tools ready and at hand. Make sure you have enough tiles to complete the job (you can always return extra's later, so it's better to have too many instead of not enough!)

2.  Mix your thinset and start to trowel it on a few rows at a time with a notched trowel. Spread it evenly. 

3.  Set a tile into the thinset by twisting it slightly. Remove the tile to make sure you have good coverage on the back. Put the tile back on the wall and keep setting tiles using spacers in between.

4. Continue to install the tiles one row at a time until you reach the top of the shower stall. Measure up from the top of the last row. Mark a line with a level as a guide for the next row.

5. Carefully use a tile cutter to cut any tiles that need trimming. We had a window right in the way of the shower, so we had to carefully cut a tile to fit in that space. 

6. Once you have tiled to the hight you prefer, let the tile set for 24-48 hours. 

7. Grout the tile. Mix up your grout and use a sponge float to smooth it into the joints. After 30-40 minutes you want to wipe the excess grout with a damp sponge in a circular motion. Continue wiping the tiles down until the tile is clear of all grout. 

8. Let the grout cure for at least 24 hours. Then caulk all the edges of the tile. 

Voila! That's all there is to it.

Aren't the tiles gorgeous!!!! Thanks to my wonderful father-in-law who taught us how to do it! Him and Shaun did an awesome job!

Better bathroom pics...

Ok, so I realize you might not see much of a difference between the "before and after's" of the bathroom... so I am putting up bigger pictures of the after's and a better explanation of what we've done.... Enjoy!

Here was the mood board of colors for the upstairs bath:

The bathroom was already sporting the red wall paneling when we moved in, so instead of ripping it all off we decided to work with it. (It might eventually go, but for now it's staying.... ps. I have a small fear of what it hiding behind it. :o) We tried to match the red as well as we could, it was near impossible finding a red paint that worked. In fact we had to buy 3 different colors to finally get this color.... 

1st can was not mixed well by the lovely young Wal-mart guy that said "I've NEVER EVER mixed the wrong color, so don't worry!" Bahaha... sure. It was pink... enough said. 

2nd can turned out pink as well. I was trying to get latex paint instead of oil based, but apparently you can't get that color in latex because it won't get dark enough. Sigh.

3rd can was as close as we were gonna get... after 4 coats of stinky oil based paint. :o) 

Thanks honey. :o)

We painted the top half of the bathroom a lovely soft tan color. We will use the same color in the kitchen and hall way. All the trim, doors and windows in this house are wood, and although they are in really awesome condition and have been well taken care of (about 6 thousand coats of varnish to keep them nice and shinny!), we have decided to paint them all white. We also added chair rail to the wall... we needed something to separate the 2 wall colors and create a more finished look. 

Once the trim, and chair rail were in and painted white, the mirror looked sad in comparison. I had originally wanted to put in a new mirror, but quickly realized it wouldn't fit... so I had to think of a plan B. We had some left over trim from a project at our old house, so I framed the existing bathroom mirror with the trim to help it flow with the rest of the bathroom. 

We also added this lovely new light fixture. I was a bugger to put up... but it is definitely an improvement to the one that was there before!

Like I said in the last post, the only thing left to do is replace the linoluem. Here is the one that we have decided to go with.... it is a lot darker in real life than in this picture. 

I just realized I haven't shown the tiles yet, so that post will come tomorrow... I promise! 

Bathroom Pics!

Ok, I finally have some bathroom pics to show you! 

Here's a list of what we did:

-sanded down and painted all the trim and the door white

-painted the walls (tan on top, red on the bottom to match the red panel that was already there)

-tiled the shower

-put up new blinds

-put chair rail around the entire room and painted it to match the other trim

-framed the mirror

-added a new light fixture

All that we have left to do is the linoleum. Yay! I'll post better pictures soon. Sorry these are so tiny. I will also post pictures of the shower tile soon too. 

Just Because I Can...

We have been so mega swamped with other stuff lately, that we haven't made anymore progress on the house.... sigh. The bathroom is basically finished, but I haven't had time to get any good pictures of it. 

Since one of the reasons we haven't had time to do house stuff is because of our photography business, I encourage you to check out our new photo blog. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

Also, if your an avid facebooker, check out our facebook page as well.