Archives for September 2014

Juliette’s First Birthday

September 16, 2014 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

So I might be a tad bit biased, but I have the cutest niece on the face of this planet. Remember when I showed you guys the monthly onesies I made? She is the proud (as proud as an infant can be!) recipient of them!

I got the opportunity earlier this month to go visit her for her first birthday party! My brother and sister-in-law have some great friends and definitely know how to put on an awesome party, so it was a great time. The party was complete with an Ice Cream Sandwich Truck which was a huge hit among kids and adults alike!! That and the bubble machine were a recipe for a successful first birthday party. Well that and balloons:

For her gift I decided every little girl needed to ride in style so I got her a Red Flyer Wagon. And because really what gift is complete without a little personalization? So I put my new Silhouette Machine to good use and added her name in vinyl to the side.

And so that all the other kids will know its still her when she leaves them in her dust, I added an initial to the back:

I think she’ll look pretty cute going to the park in her new shiny red wagon, don’t you?! She seems pretty happy about it!

Filed Under: Gift Ideas

Styling the Study

September 10, 2014 By amusingmjblog 3 Comments

So last I left you guys, we had just painted the study navy and I explained some of the delays behind the fact that I have been working on this room for 2+months and am still nowhere near finished. The other piece of that was the desk.

I ordered this desk for my husband for his birthday at the beginning of July. and it arrived last week. It kept getting backordered and delayed, which was frustrating, but since I ended up spending the bulk of that time travelling for work, it all ended up okay. And the giant box sitting in my foyer was pretty good motivation to get my butt in gear and work on the study when I came home!

So the husband and I spent Saturday putting the desk together and getting a few more accessories for the room!

For $500 it is a great desk for the price! It was super easy to put together, feels solid and sturdy, and doesn’t overwhelm the room. (This is not a very large room, so wouldn’t be able to accommodate a huge wooden desk and a bed. And since I love the bed so much (and find it useful to have 2 guestrooms), this was the direction we went.

We have intentions to hang shelving on either side of the desk, and he has artwork that he had as a kid that he would really like to hang above the desk, but I very much disliked the gold frame it was in, so we are in the process of getting it reframed. Eventually we will also add a gunsafe in the corner to house my husbands hunting rifles (one of our concessions to his affinity to go shooting and my dislike of having guns in the house).

On the other side of the room we added drapes and a side table and an amperstand pillow that somehow leaped into the cart at the last second at Hobby Lobby. I hate when that happens. (no… actually I not so secretly love when that happens)

The drapes are these from Pottery Barn. Normally I only buy things at Pottery Barn when I have gift cards from my credit card points because seriously who has the money to pay that much for everything?! But I loved these curtains and they coordinated well with the bedspread. And they were 15% off this weekend, so I bit the bullet and paid for them. We did hang the rod down about 6 inches because one of the things left on our to do list for this room is to install crown molding, but since I’ve only done that once and it was one of the more frustrating events of my life, I’m not too excited about jumping back onto that wagon. (the experience had my twin brother and I staring at each other saying: we have multiple masters degrees between us… how on earth is this too hard for us?? Well I’m not sure how, but I am sure it is too hard.

Our to do list left for this room is:

crown molding
tailor the bedspread to fit a twin size
find pillow cases for Euro covers
frame and hang picture for over desk
frame and hang diplomas for blank wall
hang bookshelves

Easy peasy! 😉

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Hale to the Navy

September 9, 2014 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

No, my grammar nazi friends, I didn’t misspell the title, I just painted the wall in Reese’s new study navy! Last I left you, the room looked a whole lot like this:

I told you guys in this post that my husband was going back to graduate school in the spring and we decided to do a little change-up upstairs to give him a room of his own to study in. So the goal with this room is definitely to make it more masculine and a calm place that is all him and relaxing for him to use. I bought him a desk that just arrived last week (thank you backorders!) but before we got that arranged in there, we wanted to paint the room! Paint is my favorite (ahem… cheap) way to change the whole feel of a room! After spending a fair amount of time looking at rooms on Pinterest I settled on the sort of rustic industrial look that Reese likes and decided Benjamin Moore’s Hale Navy was the right way to go.

Since this room has only one small window painting the whole room would feel a bit cavernous, so we settled on one ‘accent’ wall.

And this is the point in the story where I really started to feel like this room was NEVER GOING TO BE FINISHED. Do you ever have projects like that? After I had picked the paint color, I also ordered this duvet in the gray color to fit the twin bed. Welllllll it arrived and it was king sized. Wah wah. So I called to see if I could return it and get the right size, but apparently Pottery Barn had a glitch in their online ordering SKU numbers so everyone who ordered the twin size received King size and the twins were backordered until November. And since there is a HUGE fabric difference in king and twin I decided I’m going to see if I can just alter it to be the right size .

But at least I would have the two Euro size shams and pillows I ordered too right?! WRONG! Apparently those were in wrong too… so I received two Euro pillows and two STANDARD shams… COME ON Pottery Barn!! You are killing me here!!

So I returned the two shams, but kept the pillows and will either make pillow cases out of my extra fabric from the duvet or find some coordinating color/pattern to go with it!

So after all of that, this is what the room looked like: