First Jump on the New Bed!

 
There are things that get my kids really excited that often surprise me... like in the early years, a simple box vs. the actual present. I'd laugh and wonder why I even bothered to get them a present vs. just wrapping paper and a box.  And recently, a new bed for Liam was the talk of the week! Now, I concur in the excitement, as a good bed is one of the most important things to how well we can live the rest of the day, but their excitement was through the roof.
Turns out, they were just mostly excited to break it in with that first jump. :)
Liam's bed was the oldest in our house, and we also use that bed as our guest bed when we have family visit - so when Tuft & Needle offered up the internet's most love mattress and Amazon's Choice bed to review, I jumped at the chance. And because their mattress shopping and buying process is so easy, it was painless.
You can see below the process,  but it really was as easy as it sounds and looks.  We got a queen size one for Liam (fun fact, we actually all have queen size beds - even my and my husband!), and it arrived in a big box on our front step less than a week after it was ordered. My husband and I easily got it up to my son's room, my husband unpacked it with little helpers and we rolled it out. 
The kids were very excited to watch the mattress literally come to life, and after just a few minutes of it expanding into what now looked like a real mattress, the kids broke it in. We just placed it on our existing box spring, but with this adaptive foam bed, you actually don't even need a box spring, you can use a more supportive frame like this, or you can get their box replacement and use a traditional  bed frame.
You have 100 nights to test out your new bed + a 10-year warranty, so really no pressure. And so far, Liam is loving his new bed! 

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DailyBuzz Style 9x9: Month of makeovers

  With a new year fast approaching, I can't help but think about starting new, getting refreshed and making a few changes!  The first change I plan to make starting sooner than the new year: get on board {or in bed} with a better night sleep! I'm feeling rundown and like a lot, getting the less than ideal amount of sleep each night!  By the time night comes, I'm rushing to get all I need to do for that day done, then taking it to bed with me, stewing over everything I must do the next day, making shut eye completely restless.    To help me get into a better routine, I'm starting with what I can easily control: my bedroom surroundings.  For me, a messy, unorganized nightstand can have me up {of course just after I've gotten comfortable, again} grabbing various items I find I need and feeling stressed with disorganized just before I should be relaxing. So I've given some thought to making over my space and creating the perfect, yet streamlined, bedside table with the must have products to help kick start a total nighttime makeover.   For me, I want stuff easily accessible for when the mood strikes, so anything too simple won't work, but streamlined & organized is what I'm going to need to work on. Having drawers will {hopefully} help keep all the stuff organized and things I don't use regularly out of sight.      

  The stuff and why:   1.  A good nightstand - one with clean lines and drawers to store {aka, hide} the stuff!   2. Sometimes at night, I feel my most inspired or remembered all the things I need to do. Writing them down helps get them off my chest, resting assure I'll be able to pick them up the next day. Plus a beautiful journal looks lovely on any nightstand {and makes a great gift}.   3.  Appease the senses starting with smell. A lavender candle to induce relaxation.   4. Storage you can look at! Keeping miscellaneous items contained in a beautiful bowl for easy grabbing and keeping!   5. Let there be light, easily accessible to turn on or off with a lamp with a narrow base as to not take up a ton of table space.   6. Because sometimes at night I'm feeling inspired {a la #2},  love to flip through the latest magazine or table books which helps me ease away from other things on my mind, like work. Favorites: Domino, Lauren Conrad Style & Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible.   7.  Those cuddled up in bed, last minute products... favorite lotion for any dry areas, Vaseline for my lips is a must have and overnight anti-aging face cream stay close by!   8. Little jewelry dish to keep your ring or earrings that you've hopped into bed with but find uncomfortable to sleep in. I like to keep my valuables close!   Once I have this new nighttime-ready surrounding off and running, I'll report back! In the meantime, do share your favorite things to keep by your bed? Or any bedtime routines that send you off into a peaceful slumber worth sharing?   //Inspiration photos via West Elm; Domino Files on Flickr; Elle Decor  

Lacking Lighting

Maybe like most homes build pre-1960s, my house is lacking overhead/ceiling lighting in ALL our bedrooms and in the Living Room.  I love how lamps can add style to your house, but we are in need of some major lighting help, and lamps are just not cutting it.

Have any of you dealt with installing ceiling lighting, fans, etc - anything involving electricity?  My husband wants to do this himself... Which scares me, a little.

But more fun...  Picking out the source of lighting... Hubs wants ceiling fans all around (I draw the line at in the Living room).  I think they are useful, but just hate the way they look.  I am thinking a form of Recessed Lighting for the Living Room and would love a pretty pendant or chandelier light for the bedroom...

What do you guys have in your homes? Ceiling fans or Pendant/Chandelier/Recessed Lighting?

Lemon & Lime.

Remember when I was envious for a fabulous green room?   Well, I finally got my own.  My very own pretty green room - kelly green with a touch of chartreuse. The actual paint is by Behr and color is Pepper Grass. The room is my lime.

And I am the Lemon.

{Yellow cardi - J.Crew; Floral dress - Gap; Leopard belt - Target; Black tights - Target; Black wedges - hand me down from friend}

Look at my NEW leopard belt! I love it so much, I wore it with this gray and white dress. I liked the mix of patterns and that it was a bit clashy!  I'll probably be wearing this belt a lot...

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Day 30 {Whooo-Hoo!}

Day 30!  See that.  30 days of wearing the same 6 pairs of shoes, 3 skirts, 3 dresses, 2 pairs of pants, 11 tops, and 5 sweaters.  And seen.

Ending with my brights out in the melting snow.

I started this Remix Challenge out at the beginning of my home remodeling projects.  I had to pack up my entire closet (clean out the whole upstairs - every little thing), so a perfect time to pick out what I needed for the next few weeks, while the rest of my closet got stuffed in various parts of my house.

But 30 days later, and the house is still under hostage by our painter. We're close, I think, to being done... but not close enough.  The wood work in all 3 bedrooms takes awhile.  And that is done.

Next, it is down with the wallpaper (this crazy gross wallpaper) and fresh painted walls!  One room will be navy and the other green.  Our room is already blue, but will be touched up.  So lets hope this will not go on for another 30 days... Now I have to go dig out some more clothes to wear while I burn all these (I mean, wash).

Good Luck to everyone else still remixing!!

Envious of Green Rooms

I'm so envious of these beautiful green rooms, that I am just going to go and make myself a green room!  That's right.  I see what I like and I am gonna do it. I have SO many home updates coming up, that I don't know even where to start.  You all have seen my Guest Bedroom mood boards, and how I'm going for Navy Walls with White & Orange accents.  That is still in the works, but we have another room.  One that you've not seen.  You haven't seen because it's hideous.

 Technically, it is a little green - but the sick kind, nothing to be envious over!

Well, we're doing a lot of work all at the same time!  Our floors were recently just finished (more on that to come) as you could see the hanging tarps in my Remix outfit day 1 post, and yet we're still living, breathing, sleeping & eating in our living room.  That's because now our painter is baaaaack to do white trim, doors, window panes (etc) in all 3 of our bedrooms and paint the Guest Bedroom walls Navy (see how it was before) & our 3rd room GREEN (our Master Bedroom already was painted blue - so just need the white trim/woodwork)!

Oh but what color green.  Here are some rooms I'm loving...and considering.

Citrusy Green {Erinn Valencich's room}

Kelly Green {Design Dazzle}

 Moss Green {Best Home Gallery}

Leaf Green {Fresh Design Interior}

What do you think about green rooms?  I think green is a very versatile room and can be transformed throughout the years...

Barefoot on a Cold Floor

...because I'm having the hardest time picking FLOR carpet tile for my bedroom!!  Last month I was looking at 4 yellow/off white color options and you all helped me get some samples, so they came and I was not impressed.  They looked like they belonged in a basement:

Just not right.... I had higher hopes for the top one, that larger, has yellow floral pattern - but the background color is just ick.

So I went back to the drawing board by myself and went safer.  Grays.  New samples:

You can't really tell from the small samples - in person either - so they weren't very helpful. Here are the 3 above options in the FLOR styled photos:

{#1 - Feelin' Groovy; #2 - Walk the Line; #3 - Two of Hue}

I'm leaning toward #2, the mixed thickness stripes (and laid all mix directions like that)....

What do you think? I know it's a lot of grey...

Bedroom Carpet Options

By carpet, I mean Flor carpet tiles.  A couple months ago I posted about some options of all sorts of colors and textures for my bedroom.  I've now narrowed down the color I want, but still need your help!  Please vote by commenting to this post...I'd really appreciate your feedback.

The Flor Carpet Contestants...

 Photos from Flor

The room it's going in...

This room was designed around no real theme or solid ground, but a collection favorite colors.  It started with the bedding - hubs and I finding something we both liked (a feat).  Then moving into our home and painting the walls a light blue color (another agreement) and slowly the painting all wood furniture, which will modernized the room. The light blue walls, dark brown furniture and steel colored duvet/pillows looked cool together, but also felt a bit too cool.  So I started trying to add some other accent colors to warm up the space, like green (DIY headboard) and yellow.  I think yellow flooring around the bed will add a pop of warmth to the room - what do you think?  What yellow (bright, muted, etc) Flor Tile do you think?

Thanks for your help!

Another Photo Canvas...

I'm loving photo canvases as home art for all my blank walls and Groupon (but that's a whole other story).  Together, I've gotten 2 great deals on Gallery-Wrapped Photo Canvases from CanvasonDemand.com, as you may have seen me tweet about.

You might remember my first canvas for my grey hallway wall.  See that beautiful photo here!  And then I saw another Groupon (I follow a few different cities that I visit sometimes, and often times there are online redemption discounts) for Canvas on Demand.

This time I used a photo that a friend of mine took in San Diego.  He is a talented photographer and you can check out his photo collections here (then click on the flickr logo).

I welcomed this pretty thing into my bedroom this week:

It has a surfers - 70s vibe to it.  This photo was taken from my bed.  I love being able to see it, as it's a very calming photo.  I'm lucky to have a talented friend for this new piece of art!

DIY Headboard

I've alluded to the DIY Headboard I was meaning to get around to doing for the last few months, and this past weekend I finally did it!!  It was just as easy as I've heard, but it does take 2 people, a bit of thinking (and planning it out) and a couple of hours.

I think it adds so much to our room!  Here's before and after, and then the process I took to do it.

Here is the step-by-step process I took:

1. Measure your bed.  Mine is a queen, and I wanted the headboard to be a few inches wider.  I then used painters tape to visualize the measurement and make sure I would like the size:

2.  I mapped out all the measurements and figured out exactly how much batting and fabric I'd need.  For the batting and fabric, you want to add 3 inches onto the headboard measurements all around.

My Road Map:

3. I got all my materials:

-Fabric: ordered from Fabric.com and got Waverly Parerre Grass

-Quilting batting from a hobby store, mine from Hobby Lobby

-Cushioning foam - got a twin size bedding foam from Walmart and trimmed to size

-Ply-wood - cut the base to size at Lowe's and used the extra pieces for the legs on the headboard

Tools needed:

-Staple gun & staples

-Circular saw (to cut the legs to size - you could have the hardware store do that instead)

-Nuts and bolts to adhere the the legs to the base & headboard legs to the bed frame

4. Start assembling.  Take the base of the headboard (the cut to size ply wood):

and find a working space.  We used two saw horses for our workstation.

5.  Attach the legs to the base.

6. Use the Staple gun to fix the twin-bed sized foam to the ply wood (we stapled it right on top since we were covering this up with batting and fabric) & trim off the extra foam:

7. Wrap the batting around the base.  This is where 2 people come in hand.  Pulling the batting tight, staple it on the backside (wall facing) of the headboard. 

8. Now, the same thing for the fabric.  If you have a patterned fabric, like we did.  We got it in place by doing a few staples with the front side up, so we could make sure we were keep the fabric in place.  Though, using the stable gun this way, is not super safe. You should probably wear goggles/face protecting gear if doing this.

9. After getting the fabric in place, we flipped it over to secure the rest by stapling the fabric to the back side.

10. Dealing with the legs.  We did the base first, and around the legs, cut slits to corner off.  I took extra fabric and batting and added it to the legs.  I overlapped the fabric from the base with the added fabric to the legs and we stapled it to the back side of the legs.

End result:

Now with the addition of the lime green patterned headboard (and the 2nd newly refurbished nightstand), I'm thinking the yellow FLOR rug option - what do you think?