Hannah Grace's Nursery Reveal

I have taken a break from blogging recently because we have had our hands full with two kids under two!  We welcomed our baby girl, Hannah Grace, into the world on June 1 and she has added so much joy to our lives!  She is so sweet and snuggly and it has been such a blessing to see Joshua love her so much!  

It is so much fun to do the hair bows and dresses this time around and I had a blast doing Hannah's nursery.  It wasn't what I had originally planned but it turned out even better than I imagined.  I definitely wanted to do a "girly" nursery and it definitely is that.  It's sweet and feminine, just like our girl.

I found this little girl's room and loved everything about it.  So, I decided to paint the walls Sherwin Williams Amour Pink (although we used Behr and had it color matched) with pops of SW Hopeful (the darker coral) and dark teal.  The feature wall is stenciled with a bird mobile I made out of salt dough and paper flowers.  Her crib skirt is a ruffled crib skirt with dark teal, light teal, and white lace ruffles.  The white lace also got used in the curtains and actually used to be in my room as a little girl.

  

Sean made this sign for her nursery which shows the meaning of the name Hannah, gracious and compassionate.  When we found out that we were going to have a little girl we prayed about what we should name her.  We felt like the Lord was prompting us to name her Hannah and we loved that Hannah was a woman of prayer and that she trusted the Lord with everything that she had, which is exactly what we want for our little girl. 

We refinished two dressers and painted them the dark teal color and added new hardware.  One dresser we got from Sean's step sister and the other one we already had.  We had picked it up from the side of the road in my parent's neighborhood and had painted it brown.  It's been in our guest room since we moved into our house.  When I realized it was the exact same style as the other dresser I knew it needed to go in Hannah's room. This girl has been very blessed by hand me downs from sweet friends and family, she already needed more dresser space.

I wanted to incorporate little birds into her nursery because they are sweet and play on our sweetly nested theme.  I have really grown to love little birds in our home decor and we have them all over the house now.  I put them in her mobile, added a bird cage, and she even has little birds on her curtain rods.  

For the curtains I knew I wanted to use lace, but thought I needed to break up the pink a little bit.  So, I did a full panel of the dark teal and added some lace half way down.  Like I said before, the lace used to be curtains in my room as a little girl so it was fun to add them for my little girl.  I cut the lace in half and cut around some of the shapes and sewed it onto the dark teal fabric.

We also did thumb print art for Hannah's nursery.  All of our friends and family put their thumb prints as leaves on a tree and then I added four birds to represent our little family.  I included 1 Peter 3:4 "For you shall clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God."  Whenever I pray for our little girl I feel the spirit prompting me to pray for a gentle and quiet spirit.  

I love the way her nursery turned out and hope she never wants to change it, or at least always loves pink stenciled walls.  I might cry if we have to paint over them.

 

The Farmhouse Kitchen Table

$600

This beautiful, rustic Farmhouse Kitchen Table will give your kitchen a relaxing, inviting presence.  With antique detailing and distressed barn-wood style top, your family will love to share meals here for years and years to come.  Easily fitting six people, this comfortable, yet high end table will invite guests into your home and make them want to stay for dinner

.

Rustic X Detail Coffee Table

$300

This beautifully rustic coffee table will be the perfect centerpiece for any southern living room.  Made from solid wood, it's sturdy enough to kick your feet up on after a long day yet beautifully crafted with hand painted antique detailing.  It's warm and inviting, yet intricate and refined.

So much brass...

Our house was built in 2001, but it's got some really. uh..., lovely 90s decor.  When we moved in every fixture, door knob, hinge, and faucet was brass or better combo of silver and brass. 

Oh yes, it was beautiful.  So, we have been working on de-brassing the house every since (3 years in and still trucking along).  Probably the first summer we were there I tried spraying the doorhandles, hinges, and hardware in the downstairs oil rubbed bronze.  We have 7 doors downstairs  and 14 doors upstairs that each have two handles, a lock, a mounting hardware, and three hinges.  I thought for about 2 seconds about just buying all new, but at  $13 a piece for knobs and about $3 a piece per hinge that would cost us almost $500!  And that doesn't include all the faucets and light fixtures!  We are way too cheap for that and since the handles and hardware were in good condition, we decided to try and spray them.  

So, Sean helped me take all of the doors off their hinges and remove all of the door knobs and hardware.  I laid out sheet in or yard and tried to space them out the best I could.  There was so much hardware it took several batches to get it all done.  I sprayed it with Rustoleum's oil rubbed bronze and to give it more of an antiqed feel I took a Q-tip and before the spray paint dried I rubbed off a few accents so the bronze would show through. 

 We also sprayed them with a clear coating to help keep the paint from chipping and hopefully help them last longer. Sean helped me rehang all the doors and re-install the hardware.  It was definitely time consuming but for about $20, it made a huge difference in our house and was way easier to swallow than the $500 option.

Boy's Race Track on the Go

I made a portable race track for a sweet little boy that goes to our church.  The pockets at the bottom hold match box cars and it folds up to be packed up in mom's purse or diaper bag.  He can take it out and play with it at a doctor's appointment or out at a restaurant.  It is fully customizeable and makes a great gift.

Infant Car Seat Cover

One of our friends contacted me to cover an infant car seat for her son.  Their first child was a baby girl and their car seat was pink and very feminine.  They were expecting their first boy and didn't think he would enjoy riding around in all that pink and flowers.  It took me quite a while, but I finally finished it.  It is no longer pink, but still very cute (I think) and will fit over their old base perfectly.

Before:                                                          After:

 

Kitchen Cabinet Redo

.

Over the past several months we have been working on painting my parent's kitchen cabinets.  My mom has been talking about it for a while and we finally decided to take the plunge.  Their house is as old as I am so it was definitely in need of an update.  

The dark oak cabinets made the kitchen very dark. It's amazing how much brighter the space looks!  My mom is talking about getting new appliances and counter tops too, but I think we are already off to a great start and a brand new space.

The first thing we did was remove all the doors, hinges, and hardware.   My dad was hoping that we would be able to reuse the old hardware, but they had way too much stuff built up on them from years of cooking in the kitchen.  Sean numbered the inside of each door behind the old hinges and drew a diagram so that we would know where to put them back when we were finished (which was such a brilliant idea and saved us a lot of time and frustration).

   

 Then he cleaned them all with TSP (which worked crazy well in taking off all of the gunk).Just remember to wear gloves while you're using it because it might melt the skin off your hands (probably not but better safe than sorry).

He sanded down all of the cabinets and frames lightly to get them ready for painting and we painted them with "gripper" primer from Home Depot.

I also did some organizing while we had all the cabinet doors off.  My mom was hating me during it but we got 4 huge tubs worth of things to donate to Goodwill and now you can easily find whatever you're looking for.  I even had fun using decorative baskets and labels.  Ahh, I love a good organization system!

We ended up buying a paint sprayer for a little over $100.  It was well worth it!  It gave a really professional finish to the cabinets and was a real time saver.  You do have to spend a loooong time cleaning it, but I still think it saved time in the end and the results were well worth it.

We went with "white linen" and bought the paint from Sherwin Williams, because they have a special paint specifically for cabinets.  It was definitely pricier, but hopefully it will hold up better and be a better investment down the line.  The color isn't a bright white but more of a subdued off white.

We also decided to go with a darker color for the kitchen island to add some visual interest.  I love the way it turned out and wanted to go home and paint my kitchen island right away....but, that thought ended when I got there and had 50 spit up covered toys to clean up and 3,000 loads of laundry to do.

before:

after:

 The color is "thunder grey" by Sherwin Williams.  This was actually just their Proclassic paint because apparently you can't get the cabinet paint in a dark color....lame.  But it was cheaper and looks really great.  You can't tell that the cabinets and island are a different type of paint either.

It looks brand new, and yes we got rid of that disgusting 30 year old trash can too (against my dad's wishes).  He is still complaining about missing that old trash can, go figure.

We decided to go with cup pulls and hinges in a dark oil rubbed bronze color that really pops off the light colored cabinets!

The light color really makes the backsplash pop too!  It's hard to see in the photographs but here is a close up:

We tried to tie in some of the grey when we picked out the island color.

It honestly took up like 5 months to finish.  My parents were so patient living in a kitchen with no cabinet doors for months and months.  With Sean's broken leg and trying to chase around our newly crawling baby it took quite a while.  But, was well worth it.