Saturday, June 30, 2012

Alaire's Bedding.. Okay Pillow Sham : )

I finally got crackin' on Alaire's bedding.  It has been a long time coming.  Slowly but surely right?  You can see all of the details and a tutorial on my sewing blog (gasp, yep I'm a geek I have 2 blogs).  Lairi J is the name of my blog and big cartel shop.  You can check it out if it interests you any.  I hope to have some sewing patterns and handmade goodies in there real soon!



Here is one of my latest sewing endeavors that I will hopefully have for sale soon.
It is a little retro swimming suit if you weren't sure.  It is ridiculously cute on little people, especially if they are a little chubby in the legs : )

Friday, June 29, 2012

Father's Day

So... belated doesn't even begin to cover it, but I hope everyone had a great Father's Day.  We had an awesome day, which included everyone taking a nap in the afternoon.  Sweet right?  

Drew likes politics and history, and NEVER asks for anything. 

Alaire and I found these bronze book ends of Abraham Lincoln at Goodwill.  $2 a pop.
I thought we could use them for both function and a little bit of fun decor.
We spray painted them Antique White and wrapped them up for a Father's Day gift.


This is another gift that Alaire made Drew.  We turned her beautiful artwork into a plate for him.

I love that Alaire is at the age where she gets excited to pick out and give gifts for others.  She often hands me items in the store that she thinks I need or shirts in my favorite hue.  It's sweet and makes me feel super loved!  
She said we needed to get Drew balloons and candy, which we did do, but Alaire gave him the balloons and took the Sour Patch Kids candy weight and ate it.  
The Happy Father
(Alaire is behind him trying to steal the Reisens candy bars that she got him.  
She might get it from her mama!)

The Lincolns now reside on Drew's bedside table, which is what I had in mind for them.  He reads a lot of books.  A lot of books at the same time that is and I find them EVERYWHERE.  

Now his books have a home. 
Kind of creepy.



Drew had a softball game that night so we did a little of this:
KIDS
 LOVE
BLEACHERS

They are so cute

And then there is our attempt... it has much to be desired!

Friday, June 15, 2012

Alaire's Bathroom Update

Last week we finished up a few projects in Alaire's bathroom.  We had already put up bead board on the wall opposite of the toilet and added a chair rail above it.  I had plans of putting a few hooks up, but it looked like they were thrown up there, so I added a thin piece of craft wood under the chair rail.

I painted it and then added the three hooks.

I added a bench that I built under the hooks.

Random, but I found this custom laundry basket on clearance at Lowes for $10.  It had been $100 and whoever ordered it custom, returned it.  Score for me.  It rolls out on drawer slides, and I love that it is hidden under the vanity.

I painted the moulding on the mirror that I had put up.

Sorry for the horrible blinding light off of the vanity.  I can't wait to replace that fixture!  
We finally finished putting up the crown moulding on the ceiling!  I love how finished it makes a room look!

Alaire found this little wagon at a thrift/upcycle store and just had to have it.  It's perfect to catch bobby pins and pony tail holders.

Here is the beadboard wall all finished, caulked, and painted.


Yay!  Glad we have all of that done.  We still have a few projects in this room, but it is finished for this time around.  I can't help but show you once again what the before was of this bathroom.




And the After:







This room is so much cleaner, brighter, happier, and less creepy pink ceiling with sponge painted walls, so what's not to love.  Alaire loves her bathroom too,and that's the most important thing.  


Have a good weekend and Happy Father's Day.  Alaire and I have a few plans for Drew, but mostly he looks forward to having a day to do whatever he wants and relax.  That's great and takes some pressure off of me : )






Thursday, June 14, 2012

Starting Alaire's Room




For some reason Alaire's room ended up pretty close to last on the list : ( sad.  After three or four people  asked me to see her room in one weekend, I decided it was time.  It got a little embarrassing to say I hadn't done anything with it when they were expecting this stellar room.  
Backing up, Alaire was born when we lived in our townhouse and had, what I thought, was a super cute room.






I did the shabby chic bedding from target and painted the walls to match.  The bedskirt was striped so the little nook had the matching stripes.  If you are wondering if those took forever, then the answer is yes.  I actually did them to scale with the stripes in the fabric. (cray cray)


Now, back to her current room. The following pictures are the first few days we moved in.  She was still in a crib and the room was completely blank.  If there wasn't wild paint or boarders on the walls in our house when we moved in, then there was contractor flat  white sprayed on paint.  Oh, and about a billion nail holes and SCREW holes that weren't even put into studs.  The previous owners RULED! ; )

White on white




She has a great walk in closet, which I have some fun ideas for later


We switched her to a big girl bed in December, when she turned two.
This is a picture on her birthday.  We ballooned her room, which kids freaking love btw.


This post is FULL of pictures and is getting super long, so either cut your losses now, or finish what you started.

For those of you who are going to continue on this journey...

These are two of the Michael Miller fabrics I picked up from Fabric.com.  

I will add them to the bedding and window treatments and whatever else I come up with.
Onto the painting.  We decided to pull the dark coral and the palest (is that a word, or is it most pale?) yellow for the wall color and break it up with a dark gray chair rail.  The coral looks kind of blood red in some photos, but in person it is coral.  

This little girl wanted to help.  

Bottom half coral


All of the yellow trimmed out



The painting is finished and ready for chair rail







There are still a few places in the chair rail that look like this, and need to be painted.



So there it is, "Phase 1" of Alaire's bedroom.  I will admit, I kind of got burned out and haven't done much except for buying fabric and painting.  I did hang that wooden giraffe art pictured above, and I started building her some floating shelves for a reading area, but that is really it.  
There are a lot of little projects I have in mind for this room, the main ones consisting of:
  • window treatment
  • decide on plan and execute duvet and pillows for bedding
  • finish and hang floating bookshelves
  • find a bird cage to hang from the ceiling (Alaire is in love with them right now and they are everywhere)
  • hang bunting or streamers somewhere in the room
  • put in a closet organizer on one side of the closet
  • "secret project for other side of closet"  (it's something fun for Alaire)
  • Light fixture (just say no to boobs lights)
  • Make a permanent cover for reading tent (not pictured)


I am going to stop myself there, because the list gets too crazy and somewhere in there we are getting new flooring, which makes me shutter thinking of moving all of the crap treasures and things out of this room : )

So, for now Alaire's room looks a little less sketchy.  Some rainy day I will get up there and get after it, but until then I will just say my husbands least favorite over used on a daily basis quote, "it is what it is."  (I always say that when things don't turn out, dinner isn't cooked, Alaire puts glue on the wall, the dog gets into the garbage, or I half way finish a project.  As crazy as it is, one or more of those types of things happen around here REALLY often : ))



Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Carpet in Bathrooms

SICK! Right?
Both the master bathroom and Alaire's bathroom had carpet in them when we moved it.  Needless to say that got torn out fast!
BTW I cannot believe I am posting pictures of the biggest messiest rooms ever.  Again if you didn't read my first few posts.  I walked through our house the day we moved in and took "before" pictures.  I wanted REAL before pictures.  After the boxes were unloaded out of the moving truck I literally started painting on the first night.  Because I was being crazy, our house was torn up for a few days.  Alaire was about 18 months at the time and was free running the house tearing it apart.. so here you go : )





We tore that disgusting carpet out ASAP!  We also took out all of the baseboards and are going to put in taller ones after the floor is laid.
We put plywood underlayment in while we figured out what we were doing next.  We decided to leave the shower and bath alone and just get new floors in.

Here are some pictures of the bathroom after everything is out and the underlayment is in.
Alaire in the bath tub with the toilet.  She thought pushing the handle down was the coolest thing ever!







And after we put the floors in.


This is where we are now.  
There are a few things that need to be done ASAP, like paint the walls and put the baseboards in.  
I'll get to it when I get to it, which should be soon.  For now I am glad to have that nasty carpet out and have something covering the plywood that we lived with for a few months.