Housekeeping note: I’ve been trying to publish this post for the past 2 nights but the blog has been down. I had no clue until I tried to get on myself, so I’m sorry if anyone has had trouble visiting here this week.

Ladies and gentlemen (or man, since I apparently have a single male reader), Mike and I did something on a whim on Saturday. Are you ready for this?

We took down the paper blinds in our bedroom. I repeat, we took down the paper blinds in our bedroom!

Yes, we moved in nearly 3 years ago and had not touched these crinkly jerks until Saturday. We’ve actually been on project overdrive, gearing up for Christmas and finishing Easton’s room finally. Oh and the playroom. I have a lot to blog about, but I’ve been too busy checking things off our nagging list to stop and write.

Right, back to the blinds. We’re DIYing some Christmas cards and we were having a photoshoot for Easton in our bedroom. The walls are white and there are windows on more than one wall, so it was perfect. When we went to “raise” the paper shades to let the natural light flow in, we decided to just rip those suckers off finally. Bold move, considering there are 4 windows in the main part of our bedroom and it was already around 2pm.

We ordered roman shades from JC Penney about a year ago. We got 6 for our room (4 in main room, 2 in sitting room) but we used one in Easton’s room since they were just sitting around. How funny is this Photoshopped picture of Easton’s navy chevron curtains?

Once our photo shoot was done (we will share details once the cards are designed). Mike started drilling brackets. During Easton’s late nap, I helped him hang a few. The last 2 or so had to wait until Easton was in bed. And those last ones of course were stubborn and wouldn’t screw in.

But they’re done and it feels like a luxury resort to us.

I’m not a huge fan of these particular blinds since they don’t lay flat no matter what I do, as I mentioned in the post about the one we hung in Easton’s room. But they were inexpensive and they work. I plan to add some curtains to them anyway.

(Yes, I’m sure our neighbors are thankful to no longer have a view of crinkly blinds.)

(And that is an awful iPhone picture taken into a bright window surrounded by bright white walls…)

The bedroom is now blindingly white. White walls, white blinds, white bed (which I didn’t care to make for these pictures I snapped with my iPhone). Though it needs some loving, all of that white is strangely clean and refreshing feeling. For now. Someone get me a roller in a few weeks…

For now, I must get back to gallery walling, Christmas decorating/crafting and rolling around the playroom with Easton. I’ve forgotten how good it feels to be inspired, now if only my blog server will continue to cooperate…

A few months ago during a random trip to Lowe’s, we picked up some hooks for our laundry room.  We needed some space to hang random bags, jackets and so forth when we walk in from the garage.  We planned on lining them straight on a specific wall. But it turned out the wall had some duct work inside of it and the configuration we wanted would not work.  We ended up going with something different which left us with a handful of hooks.

Those hooks sat there for months until we faced the same dilemma in Easton’s room.  His room layout is a rectangle but the closet sticks out as you walk into the room leaving a space that is rather dead.  We wanted to utilize this area to hang random items; quite like the laundry room idea.  We went through some ideas from just mounting the hooks directly to the wall to buying one of those pre-made pieces of wood with hooks on them.

Both ideas just seemed lacking.  Random silver hooks on the wall?  Could work, but it just seemed too plain.  The pre-made idea would work, but we wanted something to really tie into the rest of the room.

The wall behind E’s crib is paneled and all white.  Why not extend this idea to the area when you walk into his room?  After all, I had a ton of wood left over since, well, I can’t measure (but that’s a story for another day).

So I ventured out to cut two straight pieces in order to make a joint in the corner.  From there it was some paint and attach the hooks.

Neither one of us were really sold on the hooks within E’s room.  We love the metal, of course, but the size feels a bit on the larger side.  Did we need to go so big?  I’m not sure; probably because his stuff is so tiny.  I’m sure with a couple of years and book-bags, sports gear and so forth, we’ll be looking to add even more hooks.  So perhaps these hooks will be just fine as Easton grows.

It was such a simple project that added functionality to an area of the room that otherwise would be useless (besides an opening for the door to swing, duh).  And plus, super cheap.  Left over wood from a previous project + left over white paint + roughly $10 for the hooks ($2.50 x 4).

Note to self: change those damn gold door knobs and hinges. 

A few weeks back, I mentioned that we inherited a king sized mattress from my brother and sister-in-law. We passed our queen sized mattress to my other brother, who just moved into a condo. We didn’t have a frame for it, but we figured we could always pick up a cheap one.

After a few weeks of sleeping on the bed, I was hit with back pain. There was one weekend where I couldn’t step up and down the single step in our family room without doing this embarassing yelp of pain. The mattress was much too soft for us and Mike’s back wasn’t far behind mine. We knew there was nothing we could do to really help it, since we found out that my brother had the same problem, so we didn’t want to invest money in any sort of topper. We slept on the couch most nights until we finally decided to bite the bullet and head to Sears for their Labor Day mattress sale.

We bought our queen mattress there 5 years ago and knew the prices were ridiculously low at this time of year. The last time we went mattress shopping we shopped around for days, hit every possible store, layed on bed after bed and made an educated decision. This time we went to Sears with Easton, left his pacifier in the car on accident, had an overtired baby with no paci and picked out a mattress in less than 10 minutes.

We went with a Sealy Posturepedic and chose it like Goldilocks. Sterns and Foster? Too expensive. Basic Sealy? A little flimsy feeling. Then there were two priced in the middle $100 apart. I compared the features while running back and forth across the department and decided to go with the one with the stay cool fabric memory foam Eurotop. I think Sears called it the Gibson. Then I tried to make Easton forget about his missing paci while Mike played the same game and landed on the same mattress. We had the option of getting it plush or firm and after the two of us were walking around hunched over for two weeks, we went with firm.

This was also a great opportunity for us to add on that standard bed frame so that our mattress was no longer on the floor. We saved some additional money by keeping my brother’s box spring. All in all, it was way cheaper than I ever thought we’d be able to get a middle ranged, king mattress for. I think in the end we paid around $1000. I was too busy keeping my finger in Easton’s mouth while he slept to watch the register…

Our mattress was delivered on Monday and since we now have a frame, I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to show you the pathetic state of our bedroom.

We moved in 2.5 years ago. Still no paint. Still no window treatments. This room kills me. At first I was like WTF, the pillowcases don’t match for the picture? Then I realized that it just adds to the trailer park chic 🙂

Part of the reason why we haven’t done anything in here is that the room is overwhelmingly huge. For example, we just got a king bed. In this picture, you will see that our queen frame (and bedding) is still living in the room, fully assembled….

And there’s a full sitting room behind it that can accommodate another king bed. And we can probably fit a full by the door. Maybe we should just rent this space out to some nice college kids?

Since we added a wall with french doors to close off the sitting room (it was one giant room before), we still have yet to prime it. We also have yet to caulk or paint the new trim in the room (new meaning 2 years ago). Since we’ve put this off for so long, we think it’s best to hire someone to tackle it. Let’s face it, we’re not going to do it. We always put the rest of the house first and this job is HUGE. I’m fully confident we could do it in a weekend, but it has taken me 2.5 years to realize that I’m fully confident that I don’t want to. I would like a nice hotel like feel in here, but I also savor every bit of my weekends now. If we opt to paint it ourselves, we’re just going to put it off again. I think we finally need somewhere cozy to sleep.

Operation bedroom starts now. I’m thinking medium gray walls, an upholstered headboard, maybe I’ll make another bedskirt and some curtains. I’m feeling inspired by this extra set of sheets we picked up at Target…

Maybe I should finally make a mood board?

ps- Sorry my posting has been inconsistent, I’ve been battling my second and third nursing illnesses… in a single week. Just when I feel like I’m making progress in the juggling game, I am put back in my place.

This weekend we inherited my brother’s old king mattress. We’ve wanted a king sized bed since we moved in, so much so that when we got married, we registered for a king sized bedding set. That was over 3 years ago and it’s been sitting in it’s packaging, in our linen closet. When Easton arrived, our want for a king sized bed turned into a need (okay, in a first world problems sort of way)…

Every morning, my one ass cheek has been clinging for life off the side of the bed. So when I heard that my brother was looking to get rid of a king and that my other brother, who just bought a condo, wanted our queen, it was perfect. Plus, my brother’s friend was willing to pick up the king, bring it to our house and take away the queen. Talk about an ideal scenario 🙂

This all happened so quickly that we are bed frameless. I’m currently typing this from a mattress and boxspring sitting on my bedroom floor. We held off on a king because a) we didn’t want to spend money on a mattress and b) we hoped to build a bed because c) we didn’t want to spend money on a bed. We wanted to build the farmhouse bed from Pottery Barn…

(via Pottery Barn)

But once we had a mattress (on the floor), I thought maybe we could find an expensive bed frame at Ikea. So we packed up the kid and headed out!

The verdict was… he loved Ikea.

I think this is only the second or third picture that I have of us together. I really need to work on that.

We were pretty disappointed in the bed selection. I couldn’t snap any pictures because, as you see above, someone decided he didn’t want to sit in his car seat anymore so we ended up carrying him around. The only thing we liked was this Bekkestua headboard.

(via Ikea)

It seemed overpriced though, the Ikea website lists $300 for a king headboard alone, though I swear it was $400 something in store. Combined with the frame it it ran over $600! Still not much compared to other stores, but still more than we wanted to spend. Needless to say, we left Ikea empty handed for perhaps the first time ever.

We think we’re going to make Easton like the Travelocity gnome and just take pictures of him in front of random scenes.

Since we had to travel to Philly, by the time we were leaving it was time for the bub’s next meal. We may have spent just as much time in the parking lot as we did in the store.

Yes, his bottle matches his outfit 🙂

After striking out in the bed search, here is what I’m thinking. The bedding we have is aqua/white…

But we also have an orange/white duvet cover, so I want to keep things as neutral as possible. I want to be able to change bedding easily if need be (and because I have an accent pillow addiction).

After seeing the upholstered headbard at Ikea, I think maybe I’ll make my own for now. In my dreams I would still like a canopy bed someday, but I know our to-do list is endless and it’s just not a priority now. After browsing Pinterest, I found this headboard/wall color that I’m liking…

(from Bedding Experts via Pinterest)

I’d probably do the headboard a lighter gray like the Ikea one and keep the walls a darker gray/brown/greige color. I’ve always loved patterned headboards, but I think keeping things neutral is the smartest idea for us. I’m also not sure about the tufting and I prefer a straight, more modern headboard. So yeah, I pretty much just like the lighter headboard on a darker wall. As for the frame, we’ll probably just expand the current full sized metal frame in our guest room and rock a bed skirt.

For now, I shall sleep on the floor… sprawled out 🙂

I’m channeling my inner J-Lo with this post title.  Oh yeah.

Since Rebecca has a human growing inside of her, we decided to rip up the builder-grade carpet in our spare bedrooms this week.  Just over a year ago, we replaced the carpet in our bedroom, sitting room and hallway with hardwood floors.  And a few months ago, the builder had to come in to rip up our existing hardwood floors downstairs and replace them.

Seriously.  I am sick of looking at hardwood floor boxes.  But the good news is we’re actually almost finished with them!  (Because we really don’t have anywhere else to lay hardwood down anymore.)

Here are some before shots with the builder-grade carpet.  They’re a goldish tanish color (I’m horrible with colors.  One day my kid is going to ask me what color something is and I’m going to be all, it’s a reddish grayish color with a hint of greenish.  And then the kid is going to give me the same WTF look that I give my mom today (love you mom!)).

This is the bedroom that is nearest to our master bedroom.  It’s also a potential baby room.  It has one window (just off camera to the right) and faces the woods.

And here is the other potential baby room which is at the back corner of our house.

This is the 3rd bedroom also known as office 2.0 around here.  We’ll be moving our current office to this room as the downstairs office will become a playroom.

And here is that same room with the new floors!

Here is a view with our backs to those windows and looking towards the hallway.

This is the bedroom in the corner of the house.

And this is the bedroom nearest to our master. Followed by a shot of looking out of this bedroom into the hallway.

The hardwoods will be completed tomorrow (hence the dusty and dark pictures) then we can clean this place up and get you some better ‘after’ pictures. It’s incredibly hard to get full room shots of these rooms, but it’s already so nice to have seamless flooring from the bedrooms, to the hallway, down the stairs and into the kitchen!

Now I guess we should decide which room will be the baby’s, eh?