Nursery To Do List

Every week we get closer and closer to meeting Baby M, and every week I'm still completely unprepared! Well a few weekends ago we were able to get his nursery cleared out and somewhat painted. We originally had it as a guest room, so we had some serious cleaning to do. So I thought I'd share my inspiration for his nursery and TO DO list with you, then track our progress through the blog.

Here is my Pinterest inspiration for the nursery:

To Do List:

• Clean out room
• Paint nursery
• Purchase a Crib
• Purchase a glider / redo rocking chair (need pillows)
• Purchase a dresser
• Hang shelves for reading area - something similar to this:

 

• Organize closet
• Make a sign with his name on it for above the crib - something similar to this:

 

• Buy curtains
• Buy storage
• Paint babies bathroom
• Organize & purchase bathroom storage
• Hang decor 
• DIY Growth Board - something similar to this:

 

I feel a little exhausted just typing out that list... and the sad part is I think I'm forgetting a number of things.

Okay Moms out there, do you ever feel completely prepared before the arrival of the your baby? Or that you have enough time to get everything done?

 

Kitchen Reveal

Back in December we took it upon ourselves to repaint our extremely brown blah kitchen. While I have nothing against the color brown, it was just wayyy to dark and heavy for my liking. I shared the paint samples with you HERE.

 

 

Well here is what it looks like now:

 

 

SO SO much lighter and brighter! LOVING it so much!! We just need to finish decorating the top of the cabinets. 

Restored Bench

This past weekend the hubs and I restored the bench we bought a few weeks ago. You can read about it here and here. We bought two benches from a ranch that had closed down a long time ago called Thunder Horse Ranch. We are using the two of them for different purposes. Here's what it looked like before:

We sanded this one very lightly because it had this beautiful engraved THR and we really wanted to make sure to keep it. Too bad I'm a terrible blogger and forgot to take the in between pictures, especially because the sanding and staining credit goes to the hubs. AND he did it on a Saturday OUTSIDE in AZ. Major props. Well folks here is the final product:

As you can tell I'm no Martha Stewart, but I'm using it to decorate our porch.

I'm making progress, but still need to add a few more things. No big deal we've been in our house for over a year and I'm just now getting to the porch. oops.

Well stayed tuned :)

Bedroom Renovation - Part 1

I sure hope everyone had a GREAT 4th! 

We chose to take this long vacation and paint not only our bedroom, but also our bathroom... scary. Since you don't know the hubbster and I's history on painting... you wouldn't know that we almost didn't make it out alive last time.. Kidding yes.. but it was a PAIN and the actual title of this post should have been called bedroom painting survival 101, but we attempted to take another approach this time... and I am happy to say we did really well this time around. ahhh relationship maturity :)

We went from a REALLY dark brown to a really light gray. It really makes all the difference in the room!! Just wanted to share with you our new room:

Bedroom BEFORE

Bedroom AFTER... dont mind our cords ;)

BEFORE - Sample Wall

Bedroom AFTER

Bathroom BEFORE

Bathroom AFTER

Bathroom BEFORE

Bathroom AFTER

Now the decorating begins! :)

♥ Ashley

DIY Built-In Shelves

Well ever since we moved into our new house it has been nonstop decorating. Don't get me wrong I am IN LOVE with my house, but we have this awkward hole in our wall that is made for a TV to fit in it, in our living room. Well fortunately are TV is TOO big and can’t fit into the hole. Which makes things a little difficult when trying to figure out how to decorate it, so the hubbster and I came up with a BRILLIANT idea to make built-in shelves. we thought it would be an expensive project so we hesitated... but THANKS to Pinterest I found a blog that did the same type of built-in shelving. So this fellow BLOGGER really helped us get started.

Once we started we realized this would be a MASSIVE project because the shelves are 4 ft LONG!!!! While Dan isn't a carpenter (shocking I know), he built this entire thing! Those of you who know Dan, know what I'm talking about. ;) Don't worry I helped... and by I help I actually mean all I did was paint the particle board and drive Dan NUTS with all my questions. :)

Supplies: 

(Note: All of the boards and plywood were cut to fit our measurements)

- (2) Particle Board

- (4) 1 x 2 for under the shelves

- (2 or 3) Pieces of Molding

- (12) Long Screws

- (8) TINY white nails to hold the molding on the

- front of the shelves (we attempted glue but that was a huge FAIL, so I'd stick with nails)

- (1) Gallon of WHITE paint

Don't they look BEAUTIFUL!!! My poor Hubby, now I'm going to have a list of things for him to make. :)

♥ Ashley

New Beginnings

Well... its been a few weeks and A LOT has happened. Sometimes when you think you have everything all figured out God decides he has other plans for you. The hubbster and I have been looking for our first home since the beginning of January. We had previously looked at a house and fell IN LOVE with it, BUT there was already an offer in place.. and offer that had come in an hour before ours!!! We were sad, but we moved on to the new build (or so we thought)... in the same neighborhood.  Well 2 weeks after my post we were notified that the first house was back on the market and we jumped on the chance to have our "perfect" home. So many things had aligned for us without us even realizing it. When we decided to let go and let the big man upstairs work, we discovered that this was the plan all along.
We closed on our "perfect" home last Tuesday. We are extremely excited to start our family here:

Fresh Dirt

Sooo... its been a crazy few weeks! The number one priorty this year was for the hubs and I to purchase our first home. We looked at so many houses that we finally decided that it would be best to build. It will be our dirt. :) So here is the first look at our new home:

Yup! It is just a cement slab for now, but it soon will become our home, but isnt it PRETTY? As stressful as it is, I couldn't be more excited!! I'm even more excited to see the whole process!! YAY!