The Daycare center

I am on a roll with showing progress made in the house. Here is the current status of our living room, which we are now calling the daycare center because of all James' plastic toys. We have painted the room and purchased two Ikea bookshelves to house all of the toys. We also added a wainscoting to the entry hall and started the Darcy Miller photo wall. Since those projects we have hit a dry spell in the room, but hopefully have taking two weekend off house projects ready to get started again. Here is how the room looks on an average day after a few minutes of picking up James' toys. There is normally at least one balloon in the room at all times since Ball-oon was James' first word and favorite thing in the whole world.

Our For Like Ever posted moved into the living room from the den since we had to move our very nice bookcase to a safer place.

Besides the two bookcases everything else in the room was there before and mostly in the same position as it is now. We move the ottoman around to give more place area as needed, but as you can see LuLu loves to sleep in the room too.

Here is the very start of our Darcy Miller photo wall. Please note the inside portion of the pony wall is still blue. We could not decided to paint it white or the wall color, we have decided white would be best so need to go back and finish painting.


Here is a better close up of the wall in progress. Items so far on the wall include James' first birthday party invite, our wedding cake topper with a wedding photo, a grouping of photo booth prints of us and James from his first year, a amazing watercolor of our house and a collection of matchbooks from places that have special meaning to us. I have a bunch more frames to add to the wall, but am waiting until I have more meaningful art to add.

The $50 Makeover

Ta Da! Here is the (almost) completed $50 guest bedroom makeover!

Ok, it was a little more than $50 since I purchase new curtain hooks and fabric to line the curtains, but the only new decor item purchased was the Vera Pillow from Anthropologie so I am calling it my $50 makeover. We are so proud to have one room in the house that looks finished and totally like us. I am trying to go back through the photo archives to find my previous horrible attempts at decorating the room to show how far we come, but I think I was too embarrassed of the bad color choices to ever take photos of the room. We still need to get some more artwork, make a bedskirt and figure out the accessories, but those items will come over time.

Here is the breakdown of the room:

• Curtain Rod - Crate and Barrel - previously used in the living room
• Curtain Rings - Jo Ann's
• Green Curtains - West Elm - previously used in the living room
• Duvet Cover – Kate Spade (I miss the linen collection)
• Mirrored Side table – Bombay Company, previously used in the master
• Rug - Pottery Barn Outlet, was in James' room
• Antique Side table - borrowing from my parents
  
• Lamps – Home Goods, - previously used in the living room
• Artwork (vintage model home watercolors) – Purchased from Springfield Antique Fair
• Bed and Dresser – Vintage auction purchase painted black