Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Happy {belated} Memorial Day: a very special homecoming

Hope y'all had a fantastic Memorial Day.  We spent some much needed time away at my in-laws River House, but this post is not about that.  We are so excited to share a super special homecoming with you.

Gretchen (my sister-in-law) and Ryan (my brother-in-law) live out in Washington state. Ryan is in the Navy and while he was deployed their first child was born.  Declan Christopher arrived 5 weeks ago weighing a whopping 9lbs 7oz..   Last Tuesday their little family was reunited and Ryan got to hold his precious baby boy for the first time.  When the pictures started rolling in, the happy tears started rolling down.

We're so proud of both of them!!  Ryan for sacrificing so much to serve our country and Gretchen, for being so strong to go through this without her husband by her side. I don't want you to think she was alone though, my awesome mother-in-law was with her through all of it and Ryan "skyped" for 11 hours straight so he didn't miss a thing.  How awesome is technology?  I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as we did.

Ryan meeting Declan for the first time.


Such a proud Daddy!


Look at this beautiful family!

What a sweet, sweet boy!



We couldn't be happier for them. Thanks Gretchen and Ryan for letting us share your special day. And thank you to all the men and women that give up so much to protect our wonderful Country!





Monday, May 14, 2012

An Organized Home {Linen Closet}

I have a board on Pinterest with this very name; "an organized home", and unfortunately I do a lot more "pinning" than I do organizing.  So today, when the organizing bug hit me, I decided to take action and tackle the linen closet.  I just put the boys down for a nap and for some reason I was feeling extra ambitious.  Maybe I had too much coffee this morning :)  I wasn't exactly sure how this project was going to go down so I grabbed a ton of supplies.  Garbage bags, Fridge Coasters, dust buster, zip ties, hole punch & a glue stick (you'll see).

I'm very embarrassed to say this is the before:







 I emptied every shelf and got to purging and re-folding.  One thing I can't stand is the wire rack imprints left on my sheets and towels after sitting for a while.  I took care of that by adding Fridge Coasters to the wire shelving, LOVE!I broke the Large Bin Fridge Coasters at the perforation lines to get a perfect fit.  Our wire shelving is 12" deep.  


With the left over pieces, I made labels for the shelves.  This is where the glue stick and hole punch came in handy.  I printed out my desired labels and glued them to the extra material.  I then zip tied them to the front of the shelves.




Ta-da!  I love the way it turned out and I think that we can actually keep it looking this nice! 



Monday, May 7, 2012

Painted wallpaper

About a year ago I was perusing around a lovely blog I like to read and fell in love with hand painted wall paper in her home office.  This was just the look I wanted for my powder room and lucky me, there was a tutorial on how to achieve such a look in my house.  I have a pretty steady hand so I thought I would give it a try.  I downloaded the template here and got to work.




I started at the ceiling and traced the entire bathroom out in pencil first.  For the first couple of rows I used a level to make sure my pattern stayed straight.  After that I just used the first two or three rows as a guide and eyeballed it.



After that, I filed up a solo cup with paint and got to work with a small brush. 



Our powder room is right off the family room so I used the left over "greige" paint from that project to tie in the bathroom.  I think it turned out pretty great.



Other than being time consuming, this really was a pretty simple project. It did take me about a week, start to finish, but I only worked on it for 1-2 hours a night.  Give it a try, it is a great alternative to wallpaper and way easier to get rid of if you change your mind about it in a couple of years. To read the full tutorial click here.  Happy painting!!