Baby Boy Bedroom

Since I'm using this to remember what life was like "back in the day," I thought I would post about W's room. Once we knew we were having a boy, we ditched any gender neutral ideas we had. Daddy was a baseball player, so I threw out the idea of doing vintage baseball. He was totally on board :) We're still looking for a nice dark curtain to replace the oh so lovely blanket on his window...

I know some people love cutesy little character bedding and whatnot, but I am just not a fan. I wanted a room that would grow with him for a little while, so I decided to ditch the normal baby bedding and just make him a quilt. We went with "Americana" type colors... navy, tan, and brick reds. James helped me pick out the fabric and I loved it! I will say, I was a little bummed we couldn't do bright colors for a little girl, but everything turned out so great (in my opinion) that I got over it! I also recovered some cushions on a chair that my grandma gave us awhile back and made a few pillows.

We hung a peg board (FREE - left by the previous owners in our garage) that James painted a soft white. We put his dresser/changing table underneath it since we hung baskets on the peg board for diaper storage. My parents had a lot of vintage baseball decorations that we used. I think they achieved the vintage feel I was going for :)

We also scored some nice shelves on Black Friday at Home Depot (or maybe Lowes??) that we use for toys, books, baskets of socks and hats, and some other decorations. We, of course, have his K-State gear showcased as well! We may be in Sooner county, but we bleed purple!

All in all, I love his room and so does James! It's perfect for the little guy and I think it will grow with him. A lot of the things we got were free that we spruced up with some spray paint so it was pretty economical as well. Gotta love that!

You've Got Mail

James and I have a huge problem with mail piling up in our "catch-all" basket that sits on our counter. It started becoming an eye-sore and driving me nuts so I went looking for a mail sorter. But the ones that I liked were $20 and up... not terribly expensive but more than I wanted to spend. I knew I could make something for much cheaper so I looked around the house for supplies. I had wall hangings in my kitchen that I was planning on taking down - they're hanging where I'm putting my chalkboard dish and the colors did not match our kitchen anymore. I bought two of these for I think $5 each at Wal-Mart back in college. They're very cute, but just don't go in our place. I decided to use one for my project. They're the perfect width and height and already had a way to hang them on the back!
After I painted a few coats of white paint I had on hand to make a blank slate, I attached some fabric to the wood. I put modge podge on the front, placed the fabric on and smoothed out the wrinkles, then flipped it over and hot glued it on the back and put some modge podge over the edges in case it frayed. I also needed something to fashion pockets to hold the mail, so I grabbed some matboard and cut out 2 squares (same width as board and I made mine 6 inches tall), then 4 triangles (3 inches wide and 6 inches tall) to make two little pockets. I hotglued them together. They don't look perfect but I was covering them anyways!I then covered them in the same fabric with modge podge and hot glue again. The inside doesn't look awesome, but you can't see the seams too much and it's the INSIDE and no one can see it! I then hotglued the pockets to the board. I plan on adding two little labels for MAIL IN and MAIL OUT so we can keep things organized. The total cost on this was $0 since I had the board and matboard from previous decorating and the fabric was from my stash - and even if I had to add the cost of the fabric, it was a fat quarter for 50% off at HL that ended up costing about 3$. Not too shabby!I still have another board and matboard left so maybe I'll make another to put bathroom stuff in. Or I can just paint the board and cover with fabric that actually matches the house and call it good.

Linking up to Frugal Friday and Show And Share Day

Decorating on a Dime

Since we're a one-income fam until the hubs get out of med school, I've made it a personal goal to really design on a small budget. We've got a ton of things that we each had before we were married and that we have received as gifts, but I do try to mix things up a bit every now and then to keep our decor fresh. For this reason, I hit up Goodwill every now and then, buy things on clearance, and try new DIY ideas with stuff I have laying around.

I've seriously been crafting all weekend and need to blog on some of those ideas, but I just realized I never blogged about a craft I did months ago that I love. I saw this on one of my many craft blog searches, and I fell in love! I knew I had almost all the supplies around the house and gave it a try. I actually had some of the wire but couldn't find it (cue an organization of my craft closet!) so the hubs nicely went and bought me some. He had also just trimmed our tree and patiently waited while I picked out which branches I wanted trimmed down for the project. What a guy! I then used scrapbook paper I had picked up to coordinate with our living room and cut out 3 sizes of leaves. I then glued the leaves around small pieces of wire and wrapped the wire around the branches. I put them in a vase I had laying around and called it good! I still need to go back and add more leaves (they're even cut out and waiting), but I keep forgetting!It was a really fun project and I completed it pretty quickly! I really like how it spices up that corner of the room!

Linking up to Frugal Friday and Show And Share Day