Here I go again!

I know what you guys are probably thinking...she hasn't done anything remotely creative in MONTHS and now she does two posts in two days??? Well I have gotten the decorating bug once again and my blog stalking is (almost) back to what it usually is. lol. I have a HUGE blog crush on Jones Design Company! Emily's style is to die for and she's super duper creative. And she's a fellow west coast gal like myself! I was perusing her blog and came across this post. I had lightbulbs going off like crazy because I had JUST the canvas sitting in my garage to do this project. So I'm super bad and didn't take a before picture of this canvas so lemme describe it to you. It is a super creepy and gothic painting of a face...REALLY bright and totally doesn't go with my style at all. The problem is that its a really REALLY big canvas (about 3ft/5ft) and could make a great statement piece if it had the right look. I knew it would fit so perfectly above my loveseat in the living room and couldn't wait to do the bookpage and mod podge treatment on it! Well I had the perfect old book that I couldn't wait to mutilate...err I mean re-purpose into the covering for the canvas. Check out Jones design company for the step by step instructions. It was super easy...although it took me quite a while because of the size of the canvas I was using...but I couldn't be happier with the results. Once it was done and totally dry I found a great monogram of a C online and printed it off and did the pencil lead transfer that she mentions to get the design on my canvas. Once it was on there I reached for my trusty bottle of black acrylic paint...Um...it was gone! Black sharpie pen to the rescue!! I sharpied (is that a word?) the transfered monogram instead and it looks just as good! And its super crisp and dark! This is the first thing you see when you walk in my front door and I couldn't be happier!!! What do ya'll think?
Linking up with the following parties
Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Chic Cottage
Weekend wrap up party at Tatertots and Jello
Saturday Night Special at Funky Junk Interiors  
MMM At C.R.A.F.T

My new obsession...

Hey Everyone! I lucked out today and got both the kids down for a nap at the same time. Instead of doing the smart thing which would've been to drag my tired booty to bed and soak up a precious couple hours of sleep, I made HEADBANDS! And not just any headbands....adorable baby girl headbands!! I am seriously in love with how they turned out. I bought some Goody adult cloth stretchy headbands in tons of different colors at Target the other day and I was itching to re-purpose them into something super fun and girly for my little one. Especially since she doesn't have much hair yet...she needs them! I've kinda turned into a headband critic since I had her because I've tried several different types on her and they all leave ugly indents in her head and pull her hair! These are super soft and stretchy and leave her baby-fine hair intact! I'm not gonna do a tutorial for these because they are literally a mish-mosh of whatever I had around the house. Scraps of different fabric and ribbon, buttons, etc. My next venture will be to head to Goodwill and stock up on vintage, funky shirts to cut to pieces to make flowers...the possibilities are endless!! If you are going to attempt these headbands for your little lady then I strongly recommend the headbands that I bought. They come with about 6 per pack and they have multi bright colors and then neutrals with black and whites and creams. I have to give credit where credit is due and give a shout out to Emily at Jones Design Company for her amazing flowers that have inspired me to get creative! Thanks Emily!!
Linking up with Transformation Thursday at the Shabby Chic Cottage

White headband with cream ruffle and funky flower

Periwinkle layer flower with purple headband

Red headband with purple and red flower and cloth button

What I'm up to...

Hey Everyone! Just wanted to post about my life these days since its probably obvious to my followers that I'm in babyland lately! lol

This is the adorable reason for my absince from the blogosphere...

This is my daughter Lyla! She is such a joy...I can't even begin to express my gratitude to God for giving me such an amazing little girl. As most of you know, I went 10 days late with her and she was 9 pounds at birth!! She's a big healthy girl and an amazing nurser and sleeper. She sleeps in 4-5 hour chunks at night already (at 2.5 weeks) and is a VERY healthy 10 pounds 5 ounces. She's 95th percentile for weight and head and 80th percentile for length!! I'm insanely blessed to have such a mellow baby since Liam is quickly approaching the "trying twos" and is definitely trying my patience more than ever. He loves his baby sister and is always wanting to kiss and hug her (as you can tell by the picture above). I literally have to watch him like a hawk because I think he would smother her with affection if he could! lol
So, now that I am on the other side of the birth and can finally come up for air I've been browsing TONS of magazines looking for inspiration for my house and for future projects...as well as browsing all the blogs. I am on the lookout for DIY art for living room, master bedroom, nursery, guest room, bathrooms ETC! Literally I have TONS of art that I want to make so if anyone knows of some cute, slightly funky, unique, possible art projects let me know!! I also have several furniture projects sitting in my garage collecting dust that I haven't been able to get to! I am missing my creative outlet like crazy and am so excited to get back into it soon! I hope you all haven't given up on me...I will be back and "hopefully" better than ever very soon!!!! Love and miss you all!

My baby girl...

Hey ladies of blogland! Just wanted to post a quick post to fill you all in on my recently expanded family. I delivered our beautiful baby girl Lyla Mae on July 15th...she was 10 days overdue and I had to be induced to get the process started. I don't know if I mentioned in a previous post that I had an emergency C section with my son...well I was planning on having a VBAC with our daughter (vaginal birth after cesarean). Well after about 14 hours of hard labor I succeeded in delivering our 9 pound daughter by VBAC and she is gorgeous and healthy and I couldn't be more blessed and In love!! Our son is in love with her and wants to kiss her and hug her all the time! He's also really realizing that he's no longer the only focus of our attention and he doesn't quite know what to do about that. We are a little overwhelmed with getting used to two but that'll get a lot easier once we settle into a routine. I will post a pic of her soon, right now I have to change a diaper! lol

Craigslist was VERY good to me today...

Hey everyone! So...STILL PREGNANT...now that I got that out of the way I wanted to share my amazing/fabulous/never-to-happen-again Craigslist finds from today. I am OBSESSED with Craigslist's free section. I must admit that I've been very lucky and found some gorgeous and quality stuff on there...but I've also found a lot of junk....today was not one of those days! I sent my toddler to play in the sunshine on the deck and give Mommie some space and while he was busy I decided to see what the free section had for me today. Well imagine my shock and amazement when THE VERY FIRST POST was for 3...yes I said 3 Authentic...original Herman Miller FIBERGLASS SHELL CHAIRS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was freaking out! I have been wanting just ONE shell chair for about a year now but every time I find them they are WAY out of my price range and usually ugly and in bad shape! Well these were not that way. They had been in an old lady's garage collecting dust since about 1950....oh and can I also add that they still have the tags on them??? Yup they do....
I called the number when the post was only about 2 mins old and asked if I could come pick them up...the lady said which ones do you want...I said ALL OF THEM! She couldn't believe that I was so excited to take her dusty gross junk. Little did she know what she was calling junk....
I drove out there in horrible traffic to rescue the mid century modern beauties from the landfill and I couldn't be more excited! They are all different colors which is totally fine with me. I made the mistake of letting my husband know how valuable they are and he insisted that we sell them....Um i don't think so buddy! They will grace my home until you pry those metal legs from my cold dead fingers! I don't know if any of you guys get as excited about funky mid century modern pieces as I do. I just love the style and shape and unique-ness of them! And these chairs and super comfy! Can't beat that!!! Ok here's a picture of my prizes...they are on the deck because I had to hose all the dirt off of them...they were practically brown from years and years of dust!

Can you believe it? I'm still shocked and can't believe my luck! Other than a teeny bit of rust on a couple of the legs they are in perfect condition! Hopefully a wire brush and some vinegar will fix the rust issue and they'll be good as new. Any of you ladies have any of these chairs???

Still pregnant...

I am tired...sick and tired of being huge and clumsy and pregnant! I am tired of all the "well meaning" people saying tactless things at an attempt at humor, i.e. "sure are getting big Kelsey", "Wow you look REALLY pregnant, is that baby gonna fall out on the sidewalk?", "You must be due ANY second". There are so many of those types of comments and so few of the genuinely sweet, in awe at God's creation comments like I received at Target yesterday...(seriously Lady from Target...if you are reading this you truly made my day). I know I sound like a total whiner and I'm sorry...pregnancy is truly a beautiful time and I know that as soon as I'm not pregnant anymore I will miss it. Even though I complain to my husband about the fact that I lay down to go to sleep and its party time for baby...for an hour...EVERY NIGHT....as soon as she's on the outside I will miss those kicks and nudges in my belly.
I've been going in to the midwife every week for the last two weeks. I am 1cm dilated and 50% effaced as of Wednesday but she said not to expect to give birth any sooner than my due date because she didn't want to "over-promise and under-deliver". I also have been studying the Bradley Method for Natural Childbirth and am planning on going drug free. This is going to be a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) birth and I want to try and avoid drugs at all costs if possible so that my chances at birthing normally are not compromised in any way. I had an emergency C section with Liam and I really don't want another one...so we'll try out the natural thing and see if God gives me the strength that I've been praying for... He hasn't let me down yet so I'm trusting him now! I went and got pedicure's today with Ron's mom and two sisters...it was fun and relaxing...I asked the lady doing my toes to massage the insides of my ankles REALLY hard in hopes that it would send me into labor. (for any of you that don't know this, there is a spot about three finger widths up from your ankle bone on the insides of your ankle that, when massaged, will release oxytocin that can "hopefully" stimulate labor contractions). No worries though if your only a little bit preggo...it won't "send" you into labor but if you're getting close then it could push you over the edge. That was my hope!
So, the bags are packed (as of tonight), the carseat is assembled and put into the car, everyone is on alert to spring to action at the first call, and I'm just waiting. Waiting sucks! Hope everyone has an awesome Father's day tomorrow...Ron said that a baby would make a great Father's Day gift...I think I'd be fine with that! :)

State of the uterus address...plus Master bedroom sneak peak

Hey everyone...hopefully you all had a restful weekend. I did not! We spent the whole day Saturday running errands and then went over to my husband's parent's house to see his brother and sister in law and their new adorable baby boy that are visiting from Denver CO. It was so good to see them and spend time with family...but....Liam was not himself! He was fussy and whiny and really REALLY hard to please. He's a toddler so obviously you have those off days but I could tell something was up. Well when we got home we put him to bed and when he woke up the next morning he was burning up. He had a 104 fever and was miserable! Needless to say we skipped church and blew off all other plans to stay home and take care of our sick kiddo. He's had a fluctuating fever since then but today he woke up with nothing. Yay! The pregnancy is moving right along. 4 weeks and counting till I (hopefully) meet my baby girl! Lets just hope she doesn't plan on being fashionably late and making me wait in agony...wouldn't that be fun! lol
So as most of you that read my blog know, my family and I recently moved into a new place. Its a great house and we are loving playing around with paint colors and arranging everything. I started painting pretty much right when we moved in. There were two bathrooms that were a HORRIBLE day-glo Terra Cotta color and the color offended every part of me that longed for something fresh and clean. So after scoring on two separate gallons of great Behr oops paint at Home Depot (aka my second home) I got to work transforming those baths. One is a half bath and one is a full bath upstairs between the rooms..but neither is that huge so it was easy for me to tackle the project by myself. (promise to post pics of the baths soon)
Well the master bedroom was the only other room that I had on my "must paint" list before baby girl arrives. I knew I wanted to go with a darker color in there...kind of a steely gray...storm cloud kinda feel because it would make all the white wood in the room majorly pop. Well what do you think I found while browsing the paint section at Fred Meyer last month???? Oh ya...you guessed it....a storm cloud-ish color of blue gray that was in their oops section for 5 bucks! Gotta love being in the right place at the right time! Well this color was the perfect tone for what I was going for...but it was REALLY dark. I painted a small amount of the dark color on the wall and lived with it for about a week. Yup...too dark. Well I didn't want to buy more paint and I really just wanted to start the project and not make yet another trip to home depot so I grabbed the dark color and a half gallon of creamy white that I had in the garage and mixed them together. After a vigorous mixing it looked like just the right blend of "moody but not scary" blue gray. I got to work on the room yesterday at around 11am...then my husband came home in what literally felt like 2 hours later...um it was 6pm and I had been working on the painting ALL DAY. (My toddler was happy and well fed during this painting process...don't report me for child neglect!)
So after taking a trip to Taco Bell to feed my family because I had obviously lost way too much track of time to make dinner...and the fact that I could barely move...I put down the roller for the night with only one wall left to do. Dark colors are kinda a pain...they require really REALLY even coats and usually it take at least 2 and a half coats to get the right color with no splotchy-ness.
So today I finished that last wall and did a special art project for above our bed during Liam's nap time...I love how the room came out! I'm totally not done with it yet but a few of you have asked to see pics of the new place so I didn't want to keep you in suspense any longer. Plus if I wait until my house is perfectly decorated and spotless to take pics and do a blog post you guys will be waiting A LOOOONG time. lol.

Ok so in a couple of these pics the wall color is showing up kinda purple-ish. Its totally not...definitely a cool blue gray. I showed you guys the "safe zones" that were clean and not covered in cheerios and paint drops. I am going to be reupholstering my headboard fairly soon...most likely in drop cloth or something neutral and plain. I really don't like how the color's in it look in that room. That picture that's above the headboard is the word Forever and was part of my nap time accomplishments today. Its just a piece of drop cloth and some acrylic paint and a frame that I had in my garage. Super easy!
I hope you guys like it...I'd love some advice on art and stuff that will help balance out the deep wall color. I'm totally not used to having a dark wall color but I love it in that room! Hope everyone has a fabulous week and please pray that baby girl decides to "head out" sooner rather than later! :)