Here are some of our favorite projects we have done. Click the link below each image for a full post!

Wood Plank Stamped Concrete Patio

Striped Walls

Paneled Wall

Polka Dot Closet

No Sew Chevron Curtains

No Sew Chevron Crib Skirt

ABC Typography Print

Dot Monogram

Chair Rail

Crown Molding

Landscape Paintings

Now that we’ve used the nursery for a bit, I feel like I’m finally ready to wrap things up in there. For the longest time, I didn’t know if I wanted a rug and a mobile. I also had no clue what kind of arrangement to do for the gallery wall. I think I (mostly) figured it out!

First, the mobile. Back in January I posted about how I had no clue what kind of mobile to add or if I even wanted one. Well, once we finished the crib area with the paneled accent wall, the bedding and the chevron crib skirt I made, I decided that I didn’t want a mobile and liked the less is more look we had going on.

Well, fast forward a few months and Mr. Easton had other plans. He’s becoming so much more aware of his surroundings and I’m happy to report that he loves his room. He stares at his curtains, ABC art and giraffe sconces… like honestly, he does. He even sometimes enjoys his room so much that he giggles at inanimate objects. There’s something around his closet area that captivates him and always gets a giggle. I like to think it’s those polka dots I slaved over while 9 months pregnant. He’s a future designer…

As we begin to think about putting him in his crib in the upcoming months (sniffle sniffle, tear), we know he would absolutely LOVE a mobile. Wanting to stick with something minimal, I decided to go with one of the ones I found originally, from Little Dreamers Inc on Etsy.

I wanted to make a mobile on my own, but I saw that the Little Dreamers Etsy shop sold DIY mobile kits for $25. I figured that would save me some time cutting out all of those stars and I would pay probably $10-$15 in materials, so I set out to order it. When I told my mom, she told me that Easton would like his mobile before he’s 12. She offered to pay for it fully assembled so that I didn’t have to put it together. Since I’m still feeding Easton every 2 hours and the mobile has around 165 stars, I agreed to accept the offer. It will be here in 2-4 weeks 🙂

Up next is the gallery wall I’ve planned to do over the bookcase.

During one of Easton’s naps this weekend, I was actually able to make some progress! I settled on a nice little arrangement…

I also had a chance to spray paint the darker frames white, when the can of spray paint I was using decided to clog beyond repair. I’m also working on selecting photos and art to fill these things (though that little onesie is staying, after it gets ironed), so the details will be coming. Hopefully this week…as long as the spray paint gods are nice to me for round 2.

Finally, the rug. I knew eventually we’d want an area rug for the room, but I knew it wasn’t an urgent item so I held off. Now that Easton plays more, I really want to be able to put him down in there. I was originally eyeing up the Capel rug from Pottery Barn Kids in either light blue with navy or navy with white…

We have a gift card and I thought the 4’x6′ size would work. But when I measured it out in the room, it is way too small. We need a 5’x8′ rug, which means way more money. I’m back to the drawing board on this one, anyone have any suggestions? I’m actually not all that picky about looks on this one and I’d take any solid blue or green rug in various shades. Heck, I’d take a cool patterned rug as well! The important thing to me is that it’s soft for little knees and that it’s safe and not full of chemicals. All of the 5’x8′ cotton/wool rugs I’ve found seem to be $500. Recommendations welcome 🙂

ps- If I owe any of you an email, I apologize for the wait. Never mind the feeding a baby every 2 hours thing, but my laptop charger kicked the bucket so my computer time is limited. How does one’s charger die? One word… Macky. He chews wires. Twice in one month apparently. He needs to get a job.

**THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED. CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNER, SARAH G.!**

A few days ago, I showed you how I stenciled the nursery closet using Cutting Edge Stencil’s Polka Dot Allover Stencil…

Now is your chance to give stenciling a shot! Cutting Edge Stencils is offering one lucky Lil House reader a stencil of their choice, up to a $50 value!

Here are some of my personal favorite stencils, in case you need some inspiration before entering:

Nagoya Allover Stencil (cat not included in giveaway)

Zinnia Grande Stencil

Outside of the Box Allover Stencil

Intimidated? Check out this step by step instructional video to see what the stenciling process is like:

Now for the deets….

• One reader will win any one Cutting Edge Stencil of their choice (up to a $50 value)
• To enter, simply follow the directions in the entry window below
• You have 4 ways to win: simply telling me what stencil you’d like from the website (mandatory entry), liking Cutting Edge Stencils on Facebook, following Cutting Edge Stencils on Twitter and following Cutting Edge Stencils on Pinterest!
• Don’t worry, your responses will not be posted for all to see, just me 🙂

And the rules…

• A winner will be chosen using Random.org
• This giveaway closes on Thursday, May 10th at midnight. Any entries made after that time will not be counted.
• A winner will be announced on Friday, May 11th so check back. Even if I go into labor, I will find a way to post a winner!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Around the holidays, Cutting Edge Stencils contacted me and asked if I would be interested in reviewing one of their stencils. Since I was already a fan and own one of their stencils, of course I said yes! Problem was that we hadn’t yet started the nursery and I wanted to stencil the ceiling. Thankfully, they told me I could hold off on my review until I was ready and I chose their Polka Dot Allover Stencil in the small scale size.

Fast forward like, 5 months. We ended up taking much longer than expected on the nursery and after painting the ceiling a dreamy blue, I decided that I didn’t want to stencil it. I focused my stencil attention on the green closet instead.

It took us a while after we painted to get to the closet, but this week I was finally able to spend some time on stenciling. Cutting Edge Stencils sent me everything I could possibly need to tackle this…. the stencil, a foam roller, a brush and a level.

The stencil also came with detailed directions, which is how I realized that I was supposed to remove the stencil from the shipping tube immediately and store it flat. Whoops. But, like I said the other day, I flattened it with some books for a day or two and it was fine.

The directions stated that you could use spray adhesive to stick the stencil to the wall. Since I started this at night and didn’t really have an open space to spray it, I decided to just use Frog Tape to stick my stencil to the wall. Please excuse the mixture of night time, day time and iPhone pictures for these in-progress shots. I had to work on this over 3 days in small increments because you know, I’m kinda really pregnant at this point 🙂

Yeah I taped the heck out of that first stencil. Since I started in the bottom corner of the closet, I decided not to use the level. It snapped on easily and worked well, but I quickly learned that the closet is not at all level! The baseboards are uneven, the side of the wall gets more narrow at the top and the level showed that it was slightly off. So I just started by lining the stencil up with the baseboard, as close to the corner as I could get and then just aligned the rest of my stencils based off of this first one.

For my method, I first started with the brush. I just personally prefer holding a brush rather than a roller so I dabbed some paint on the first two rows of dots. It was looking a little sponge painted, so I decided to try the roller on the next rows. Here is the difference between the two finishes.

I decided to go with the rolling for a more consistent paint application. You can also see from the above picture that my stencil is not completely touching the wall. I was worried this would be a problem with bleed through and that I would need the spray adhesive but it did not cause any problems! Once I rolled over a dot, the pressure applied pushed the plastic stencil flush to the wall for a clean line.

The absolute key to this process? Don’t overload your roller. I did two very thin coats of paint on each dot– too much paint at once will cause bleed through.

Once it was time for the next stencil, I just overlapped the top row of the stencil I just did with the bottom row of the one I was about to start.

I also gave it about 5-10 minutes between moving the stencil so that the outside was not soaking wet with paint when I peeled it off the wall. Mostly to protect my shirt, since my belly protrudes and pulling the stencil off made it smack into my body. It also gave me a break in between rolling. I even had Mike do most of the repositioning and taping so that I got a good 15 mins between each rolling session. I had no issues whatsoever with paint being on the back of the stencil, so I didn’t have to worry about it being completely dry when I moved it.

The halfway point (6 sheets of stencil)…

I repeated sheets like this until I got to the point where I could no longer fit a whole sheet. Then, I just overlapped the amount of dots I needed to get as close to the corners as I could.

Once I got to the top, I only needed an extra row of dots to hit the ceiling.

So I aligned my stencil with the existing dots and only had to paint the top row.

Then, I was all done!

Before…

After!

The stencil was really pretty much fool proof to use. My dots came out clean with minimal effort. This particular stencil was extremely forgiving when it came to aligning and overlapping areas.

The dot color is the same paint as our trim in the room– Olympic’s Crumb Cookie in a semi-gloss finish.

I’m so happy that I decided to stencil the closet and I can’t wait to see it with the closet organization system all in. Hopefully that piece that we’re missing arrives soon so we can get this all settled and packed with clothes!

Special thanks to Cutting Edge Stencils for sending me the stencil, roller, brush, level and inspiration. I would definitely recommend their stencils to anyone interested, the options they have are seriously endless and droolworthy.

Repetitive disclosure: I received the supplies necessary for this project in exchange for a product review. All opinions expressed are 100% mine.

You know how sometimes things have to look worse before they look better? That seems to be the case with our nursery progress as of this weekend.

(Sorry pictures are a little blurry today, it’s rainy out and I took them this morning before putting my contacts in. Whoops.)

We set out to conquer a bunch of things on our to-do list. Mostly, we were all set to make the closet pretty. We originally talked about our plans for the baby’s closet here. I know I’ve mentioned that I plan to stencil the closet, but I don’t think I’ve exactly explained the plan. It will be white polka dots.

So the majority of the mess in the nursery? Pieces of the closet system.

We started to put pieces together only to discover that we’re missing a screw… literally. Mike called Allen + Roth and they will be sending us a new piece, but it can take anywhere from 1-7 days. Whaaamp whaaamp. Slight setback, but that’s okay because the closet has to be stenciled first! Which brings us to clutter cause #2…

I got all ready to stencil on Sunday with the supplies that Cutting Edge Stencils so kindly sent me way back in December. The problem was that it took me so long to actually stencil and I left the stencil rolled in the shipping tube it came in. So it was way too curly to use and I had to let it sit for a few days.

Holding down the stencil are some books and a fan we picked up for the room this weekend. It seems to be working and is pretty flat at this point. Hopefully I can tackle that in the next day or so. Until then, the ottoman is home to directions for both the stencil and the closet system.

The crib has become a catch all for the storage bins that will eventually find a home in the closet.

But the good news is that we did get a lot done overall. Those two little outfits are all washed for the hospital. The dark gray one is my first choice (complete with gender specific hat and blanky) and the chevron one is a larger size incase I have a big baby. I decided to go with a gender neutral outfit because the baby is usually all blanket and hat in the beginning anyway and the gray looks so nice with both baby pink and blue 🙂

We also assembled most of our gear this weekend and it has found a home in the corner of the nursery.

We tucked this stuff in here because the last time we left something in the family room this happened…

Don’t worry, the bassinet pad hadn’t been washed yet. The stroller will be in the garage so Macky won’t get used to free rides… not that I pushed him around the family room in there or anything. Okay I did. I considered it quality control.

Finally, you may have noticed the giant elephant frame in the room. We made a trip to Ikea this weekend and picked up a frame for our alphabet print over the dresser.

I started my maternity leave today, so I’m hoping to wrap most of this stuff up this week. I probably won’t stick to my usual posting times, since well, I can post whenever I want now!! Though I’ll probably stick to weekdays since that’s when Mike works. I decided to take last night off after work so I could celebrate by sitting on the couch with a giant bowl of ice cream. It was fabulous 🙂