DIY Chevron Metal Locker & New Furniture

Slowly but surely, we are starting to furnish our new home. We are decorating this home with the same mentality we decorated the last house, slow and steady. As we find pieces we can't live without that are prices we can't pass up, we buy.

Over time, this is proving to not only be an awesomely affordable method, but we are finding such unique pieces. Our home is such a blend of new and antique in and out...it really inspires me to find even more amazing pieces to put here.

This summer when we knew we would be moving in the fall, we started keeping our eyes peeled at garage and estate sales for anything we felt was special.

Somehow, this locker spoke to me. And I needed it. Also, it was $5.

Look at how sweet and imperfect it is?! How could I say no, especially for $5.

Well, it moved with us and has sat in our garage for months and finally Hubs took the bull by the horns and told me it's time to do something with that locker.

We desperately needed a solution for our toy/book overflow in the family room and this turned out to be the perfect vessel for those items.

Hubs had two weeks off of work around Christmas and New Year's so he worked like a dog and gave our cheap old locker a whole new life. All I did was pick paint and say "I think I want chevron stripes on the front" (which, I realized I"m kind of into chevron right now since I just bought LW chevron curtains but whatever. I'm on-trend, right?!) and Hubs took care of the rest. I am THRILLED with the result and cannot believe how adorable it looks. Plus, it's fully functional for our book storage in the family room. Did you hear me?! I said it's STYLISH, FUNCTIONAL and was AFFORDABLE. That's like, jackpot. Thank you, Hubs. You are the champion of all champions.

Now, this our family room after we organized the books in the locker and moved a majority of the toys into their new home, the living room:

So much nicer!! And cleaner. It's easy to just turn the light off after bed time in the living room and not need to look at the mess. When all the toys were in the family room it felt so claustrophobic. If I didn't pick them up, it was always a mess I had to overlook to watch TV. Now, I just have to toss a few books into the locker after bedtime and I use that teal bucket on the fireplace as overflow toy storage. So if any toys from the living room make their way into the family room, they go in that bucket. It's great!

And - you can see in that photo of the family room that we bought a new chair! We have a Macy's furniture clearance store about 4 miles from our house and we stalk it. Frequently. That beautiful little chair (which I commonly post on Instagram from) Was $150. It reclines and is unbelievably comfortable! It's the perfect chair for pregnancy, too because it's really supportive through my lower back. Such a beautiful thing.

Today, we bit the bullet and bought a couch we'd been stalking for months. We fell in love when we first saw it buying our chair, but didn't want to pay the price they had it marked as. Just by having patience for a few months, we saved $200 on the couch. Meet our $400 little number, which may look familiar :)

Recognize that? It's the big-brother couch to our little yellow $300 couch from the old house. Sure, it's green instead of yellow but we have never shied away from color. Eventually the little yellow couch will move into the new house and sit across this green guy in our formal living room. Here is a reminder;

We are hoping to find an occasional chair in a bold, fun print to seat adjacent to these couches in our living room along with our favorite estate sale find to date, our vintage chest coffee table. You can see that here, in one of our listing photos (with the cute yellow couch) in the old house:

And here from an older post:

See what I mean? Vintage and modern, all in one space. It makes my heart go pitter-patter.

The new house is slowly starting come together more and more! It's becoming more "us" all the time, which I love.

Eventually, the living room will be an "adult" space for entertaining and the toys will all migrate downstairs but for now, while we have little to no furniture, LW gets to run wild in there with all of his toys. With me working from home, it works really well. LW isn't big enough yet to play in the basement alone and I surely don't want to work downstairs all day anyway. This way we both get to enjoy all the natural light this house allows during the day and at night I don't have to look at toys and mess.

One more new chair recently came home with us, courtesy of a friend who I love buying hand-me-downs from. I've been wanting one of the Pottery Barn Kids Anywhere Chairs for LW for a while, and she happened to have one to unload. A simple patch over the name and we will be golden :) Or, I may try to find a slipcover for that chair with his name on it in a color that works a little more cohesively in our family room space (greens and browns). We'll see what kind of bargains I fall into.

LW clearly loves it, regardless of what name is on it or what color it is.

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A Wild Weekend

The month of November has F-L-O-W-N!!!! Is it just me!? I don't think it is.

Hubs asked me last night while I was writing thank you cards to my Jamberry customers why I hadn't blogged and I said I guess I'm just not inspired enough to write right now.

He said "If this week wasn't something to blog about...then I don't know what is." Let me recap:

Thursday night: LW woke at 8:45 vomiting kielbasa EVERYWHERE. Hubs and I rush in, I handle LW, Hubs handles bedding/vomit/carpet and within 25 minutes, LW is back to sleep and Hubs and I can go downstairs.
9:30 Princess starts whining and acting up...sniffing ferociously at the basement door. I said "She has something....no....there is something ALIVE under that door that she has trapped there". Hubs goes to investigate. A mouse starts hopping down the stairs. Hubs gets his "mouse catcher" (a box from new blinds and a broom) and escorts the mouse to the far side of our property.
9:35 Princess still losing her mind... I say "Can you just go down there with her and see if there are more...?" Hubs opens the door and P runs to the bottom of the stairs and into LW's play area. Where Hubs finds another mouse. This time dead, and exploded...all over LW's toys. ACK. Hubs cleans up.
9:45 Princess AGAIN losing her mind and I'm about to lose mine. She's following something that appears to be in the ceiling and as I'm sufficiently getting more and more creeped out I look, and there is a wasp on the wall – what she was following. A wasp. In Chicago. In NOVEMBER. ?!!?! Hubs kills and disposes of wasp.
11:30 Hubs and I are finally nestling into bed, drifting off to sleep and I hear that horrible, terrible, awful sound, as clear as day. LW puking. Again. Repeat steps from earlier, this time even FASTER since we were expecting it. Clean up, bathe toddler, new jammies, clean sheets, scrub carpet, new blankets, rock, rock, snuggle snuggle, out like a light. 15 minutes. Can I just reiterate how horrible the smell of vomited kielbasa is? UGH. Really horrible.

Finally, we were able to go to sleep Thursday evening. Friday Hubs was off work so he ran all of our family errands while I worked. Friday evening we moved a family heirloom from my in-laws over to our house. A 1915 Victrola. We don't have many things in our new house yet, but we are acquiring cool things!

Friday night we designed and ordered our Christmas card. CHRISTMAS!! My FAVORITE TIME OF YEAR! Some of my friends have referred to me as a "real life Buddy the Elf" because I love Santa so much. And Christmas. And snow. I can't wait to share our card with you! But, it's no fair showing you before it mails ;) Plus, it's not even Thanksgiving. I have some respect, you know.

Saturday morning I woke up feeling like it was Christmas because it was the Old Navy cardholders Black Friday Sale. WAHOO!!!! I spent way more than I planned (shocker) but I FINALLY got some real pants that fit LW and I bought myself the most comfortable PJ pants on the planet. I've asked for 150 more pairs of them for Christmas.

I learned this weekend that Old Navy toddler 18-24m pants aren't as long as the "baby" 18-24 month pants. However, the toddler 18-24m pants have the zipper and button like real jeans, which helps TREMENDOUSLY in getting pants over a cloth booty. Plus, the toddler jeans come in skinny and WOW are they cute. We love Project Pomona pants but for $8/pair at Old Navy, I couldn't resist giving their jeans a shot to try with his cloth bottom.

Saturday evening we had a church pot luck and worship rather than having worship on Sunday morning so I made our favorite brisket recipe.

I usually must let it slow cook 8-10 hours because this time I only did 6 and it wasn't as tender as I like. BUT, the brisket was gone in a flash and I used the leftover BBQ sauce to make sloppy joe's on Sunday. YUM! Waste not, want not :)

For Christmas this year we have already finished our shopping for LW because he is getting the most tremendous Christmas gift ever. A SWING SET! He'll have things to "open" also, but a family member of a close friend offered us a deal we couldn't refuse on this beauty. It may not look like much now, but I can't wait to look out the window and see LW and his pals playing on it for years to come.

Finally, Sunday. We didn't have church in the morning so the plan was to "sleep in". Which, originally we laughed at the thought. "Sleep in" with an 18 month old?! HA! Well.... we've recently moved LW into a toddler bed and the beauty of that is that instead of crying when he wakes up, he gets out of bed and (typically) knocks on his door to let us know he's awake. Sunday morning he unplugged his monitor and proceeded to cruise his room. For I'm not sure how long....Hubs and I lazily opened our eyes and started chatting at 8:45am and looked at the clock. "OH NO IT'S ALMOST NINE". I leapt out of bed and ran to LW's room to make sure he was okay and sure enough, he was twirling and dancing around his room, jolly as you please. He looked up at me like, "Oh, hey! You're up!"

LW and I had a 2nd birthday party in the afternoon for a friend from the old neighborhood at this SUPER fun play spot very close to our house. If you're in the NW burbs - check out Kids Club Party & Fun! Apparently they have Groupons often and it was a FUNNNNN two hours!!

I love giving gifts that aren't toys and take a little creativity to construct. For our birthday boy friend, I built a gift basket full of all organic and gluten-free snacks! Birthday Boy's mom has Celiac's so I know diet is really important to her for her son. I had a BLAST constructing it and with a World Market coupon, it kept the gift totally within my "birthday gift" budget.

For some people on our lists that seem to have "everything", a gift basket full of treats they may not splurge on normally is a really fun and inventive gift. Hubs and I love giving baskets full of wine, cheese, crackers and sausage to his dad for Christmas every year. And every year we have such a great time building them! Then all year long when we visit, we munch on the little treats from the basket.

What's your favorite creative gift to give?

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Some Notes on Me Lately

Hi! I've been so busy lately I haven't been able to fill you in on much via blog - however I have been posting little nuggets on Instagram, so follow me there to stay in the loop! Here are some notes on my life lately:

I feel more at home in the new house than I have ever felt anywhere but my childhood home – actually, I feel more at home here now than I do at my childhood home. Maybe because Hubs grew up here and knows every finicky light switch, every creak in the floor and every stubborn door knob but maybe just because we know this is it. We've reached our final 'landing' place and we couldn't be happier. I absolutely love our new home.

Working full time from home with a toddler is hard. Like....HARD. But, every day I seem to find new tricks to make it a little better (like hiding grapes around the kitchen so I can work and he stays off my keyboard!). Toddlers are delicate because one day they hate watching TV, the next they will sit and watch a whole show. One day they love playing blocks and will stack/knock them down for an hour, the next they think blocks are stupid and cry if you suggest them to play with. I'm constantly changing and evolving as a mom just like LW is constantly changing and evolving as a boy! 

I have taken time for myself a lot lately because I have learned I really need it. One way is by putting new Jamberry Nails on every week. Last week I sported Midnight Celebration and this week I'm sporting Alphabet over Deep Sea (both discontinued). I feel so girly and fun when I have cute nails! It's like they belong on Pinterest all the time. I also got a massage this weekend. Whoa. 

Slowly but surely, Hubs and I have started to acquire pieces that will make this house 'our' style. For the first time ever we have matching bedside tables. I can't even begin to say how exciting THAT purchase was! Plus, at the same garage sale we scored a vintage, ornamental mirror for our entryway and a super cute bench for LW to sit at in our bedroom and look out the window, one of his favorite past times. I thought the blue color in the Greek key pattern on the bench would be close to the blue on our walls and it is nearly the exact shade. All four of these items (two tables, mirror and bench) were $40. We win! 

Oh, and window treatments!!! I scoured Bed, Bath & Beyond this weekend and came up with a winning combination that won't break the bank. I found the rod ($6) and valance ($4 on clearance) plus bought a set of honeycomb cordless blinds that are regularly $39.99 on clearance for $16.99 and I used a $5 coupon....That would mean I just dressed that whole window for roughly $22. Bang. I'll post another pic once Hubs hangs the blinds and when I know the size works, I will be going back to buy them hopefully for the all other windows we need blinds on! I knew I was hoarding those $5 coupons for a reason. 

As more pieces of the home come together, I will share more photos. For now...don't hold your breath for a "home tour" like the one on the old house because I just don't know if we will ever be "done" decorating this house! 

And, if any of you are in the Chicagoland area or know someone house hunting in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago....please SHARE OUR HOUSE THAT IS FOR SALE. THAT is the real home-tour to see ;) 

In the coming weeks I hope to at least decorate the front of our home with festive fall items. Bales of straw, pumpkins, gourds, mums and the like. I follow John Colaneri on Instagram and not only do I want every beautiful accent in his home to be in my home, this weekend he and his wife decorated their front steps. Swoon! 

Here are a few other front steps that I love for fall...Happy Decorating! 

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We Moved!

Oftentimes in this life I have to pinch myself to remember that this is real, even though it feels like I'm living a dream.

This weekend, Hubs and I moved into our dream house. It's the house Bill grew up in and as long as we've been together, we've dreamt of buying it and living in it forever.

So all those home renovations we took care of at the other house? Yeah, it was to sell it :) I'm sneaky that way. And no, sadly we did not complete a "Grocery Challenge" with this move. Having a toddler that requires fresh fruits and veggies prevented that!

Praying for a quick sale on the other house and a lifetime of happiness in our new one!

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Raised Ranch Home Tour

This is a post I've been aspiring to complete since we moved in...The "Final" home tour. It's REALLY photo heavy but here are before and afters of every room in our home!

I looked for a lot of blogs about how others renovated their raised ranches - so I hope this post helps  inspire other raised ranch home owners!!

Let's start with the biggest transformation, the mirrors. Before:

 After:

The entire main space of the upstairs (this wall, living/dining/hallway to bedrooms) is "Morning Sunlight" by Behr.

 Then we walk upstairs into the living room. Before:

 After:

The hardwood we chose to match all existing woodwork - it is called "Dark Mocha Oak" and we got it from Floor and Decor. Normally I prefer lighter hardwood but we did this for cost reasons and it really turned out beautifully. It's much more affordable to match what's there than rip everything out and start over!

Then we go right into the dining room...Before:

And after:

 Don't mind the brewing beer on the table...I was not about to lift that 5 gallon sludge to get the "perfect" photo - sorry! I "staged" the house for this photo shoot, but only to a point. I'm human :D

Then we stroll into the kitchen....before:

And after:

 The color in here is "Corn Husk Green" by Behr.

 The backsplash tile is Carisma St Croix Stick Mosaic from Floor and Decor.

Which leads us into the bedrooms and bathroom upstairs. Here is our master bath before:

All we did in here is paint. Everything is in pretty spectacular shape, so we let it stay. The color is "Shaker Beige" by Benjamin Moore.

Here is our master bedroom before:

And this is the master bedroom after. Please note that this photo is slightly photoshopped as we have a patch in the paint to do in one corner, so I simply photoshopped the corner to match the rest of the walls. The blue walls are "Smokey Blue" by Behr and the off white is "Beach White" by Behr.

Please also excuse our lack of bed skirt. We can't get one to stay on the bed since Princess loves to rub on it and rip it off...repeatedly. Saving the money and sacrificing finesse.

All we did in here is paint and add a head board - which is a door I found for $40 on Craigslist. Bill cleaned it and hung it. Simple :) The bedding was $9.99 at IKEA and the accent pillows/print on the wall are Joss & Main* finds (*aff link)

Guest bedroom before:

Paint is the only change in this room also. It is "Shaker Beige" by Benjamin Moore.

Billy's room was the biggest transformation aesthetically I think. That wallpaper....

And now it is "Dolphin Fin" by Behr - my favorite grey in the universe. It is the perfect grey. It's never too dark or too blue. It's perfect.

Now the basement is another pretty huge transformation. First of all, we renovated the stairs from carpet to hardwood. What, everyone else didn't have plastic covered carpeted stairs when they moved into their home?? Just us?

And now. Different angle, but I wanted to show the white risers. I loooooooove them.

The basement bath (aka guest bath) was very neutral before. Not bad, just outdated.

It is much more fresh and modern now. In this room the floors were replaced with new tile ("Bambu Light Porcelain" again from Floor and Decor), walls were painted "Shaker Beige" by Benjamin Moore and the vanity/mirror were replaced.

 Just wanted to show the gorgeous wall color in here. So perfectly beige.

The "man cave" is the only room we didn't paint, and it's just the beige that came with the house. Before:

It isn't an actively utilized space so there is new carpet and man-things, and that's about it.

Which brings us to my favorite place in the house, my studio/office/Billy's playroom. Before:

I know you've already seen the after...but I took more photos to share because I just absolutely love this space.

The walls are "Aqua Breeze" by Behr and the accent wall is a remnant bucket of Glidden I got for $7 at Home Depot - the color is almost identical to the "Smokey Blue" by Behr in our master bedroom.

The carpet in the man cave and studio is from Luna..and now I cannot for my life remember the color, brand or finish. Bad blogger!!

But, look at my cute craft nook!! Thanks, Mom & Dad for helping me with this part!!

And finally, our deck! How can I forget? This was the only thing on the home inspection when we bought the house that was a "YOU MUST FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY, OR ELSE!" so it was the very first thing we did when we moved in two years ago. Two years! That's how long it takes to renovate on this scale. TWO. YEARS. People. 

The new deck is pretty dang sweet. Billy and I eat every meal outside when the weather permits! Which lately, has been every meal every day!! Love it. 

There it is! Our home. I hope it inspires someone to change their space into a happy place :)

My best advice to others who aim to create their happy place is to let it move at it's own pace. Good things take time, and if that means renovating one room step-by-step over time, then that's how it goes! Our kitchen was a multi-step process and all we really did was paint and add backsplash! (and swap out appliances)

I used Pinterest like crazy and I know it drove Bill nuts because I would spend hours on the couch dreaming and building every room over and over and over again, but I firmly believe the end result is better than we could have imagined. It's perfect now :) Hope you enjoyed!

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