Oh The Places You'll Go Baby Shower

I can't tell you how blessed I feel from the outpouring of love from my friends and family in showering baby boy!

My amazing friends Kristen and Colby threw an "Oh The Places You'll Go" themed baby shower for me and I loved it!

We're holding off on sharing the name until he arrives

All of the details were so cute and I love the fact that we're able to incorporate the DIY decor projects into the nursery.  Sadly, sharing pictures of most of the decor will have to wait until we share nursery pictures after he comes since they do have his name on them.

The food was so tasty!  Chicken salad sandwiches, quiche, rice krispies, parfaits, and the cutest baby shaped fruit display.

We were gifted some awesome gifts including our stroller, car seat, crib, cute outfits, and even some great elephant themed baby items.

I can't wait to put all of these items to good use once he makes his arrival, which is getting closer and closer. We're so excited to meet him next month!

Have you been to or planned any cute baby showers lately?

My First Wreath

One of the things that I looked forward to after closing on our house was being able to make wreaths to decorate the front door.  I have Morgan over at The Handcrafted Life to thank for that, she has done some amazing seasonal wreaths for her house and I was excited to test my DIY skills again.

I started with a green wreath based and ribbon from Micheals, going around making loops and securing it with parts of the bendable branches.

I didn't really have a pattern in mind, just changing up the direction of the loops every now and then.

Once the loops were complete, I busted out the glue gun and got to work covering the L with some red, green and silver balls.

I wish the L stood out a little more (maybe I should have gone with another set of colors), but other than that I am pretty satisfied with our holiday wreath.

And one shot on the front door (we'll be painting that door at some point).  It's a little tilted because I decided to use some floral wire to attach the wreath to hanger to deter anyone from simply pulling it off and taking it with them (not that our neighborhood is unsafe in anyway but better to be safe than sorry).

Have you made any holiday decor items for your house?

Travel Tree

In my last post, I mentioned that the table top tree in the center of our holiday buffet has a story behind it that deserved a post of it's own.

Back when we lived in our apartment, I filled the fridge with magnets from our various travels.  You can make out the beginning of the magnet covered fridge in this shot taken when we first moved into our apartment.

With the stainless steel refrigerator in our house, the magnets were packed away in a drawer until I could figure out something to do with them. As the holidays rolled around, I thought it was be a great idea to decorate the table top tree (that was once used as the only tree in my first apartment) in a travel theme

In the process of going from magnet to ornament

A little hot glue and floral wire later and the travel tree was complete!  I love that this is on display on our buffet and always take a trip down memory lane when walking by it.  Remembering our trips to Napa, San Francisco, San Antonio, past cruises to Cozumel, the Bahamas, Costa Maya, Belize, and our trip to see my dad's birth country Trinidad and Tobago...

...our Christmas spent in Ohio, our honeymoon in Mexico, birthday trips to New Mexico, New Orleans and Fredericksburg, and a couple of trips to Vegas...

And my favorite the larger picture magnet from our trip to Disney World that acts as the star on top!

I am so glad that we figured out a way to still display these travel mementos, even if it's only one time a year.

Guess I Should Leave More Often Part III

You're probably starting to think that I go away all the time and leave Chris behind.  This will be the last installment as there are no other trips sans Chris planned for the near future.

A couple of weekends ago I headed down to Austin to hang out with some of my fellow bee bloggers.  I didn't take many pictures (in fact I left my camera at home so all I had was my iPhone) but you can see some great ones over at Allie's blog.

A few shots I took while at the Capitol.

Right before I headed south I received an amazing call from my best friend's mother.  While their wood floors were being replaced, there was an accident with her dining room buffet.  They planned to replace their entire set and wanted to know if Chris and I would like their table and 10 chairs.  As Chris and I were in the market for a table to fill the recently emptied dining room (so glad to finally be done with boxes!) we jumped at the offer!

It took 2 small SUVs and Chris' F150 but with the help of my parents we were able to get it all to our house in one trip.  

We really lucked out with our house as this model normally has a formal living room and smaller dining room in the front.  Without the formal living space in our layout, the dining room is extra large and we got the added bonus of the butler's pantry.  I can't wait to decorate and set the table for Christmas dinner which we'll be hosting at our house this year.

While I was down in Austin, Chris made and installed new shelves for the laundry room.  I'll be on the look out to pick up some baskets to house cleaning supplies that don't fit in the pedestals below the washer and dryer.

Along with other minor fixes like replacing the light in the garage and screwing in hooks to hang items like brooms behind the laundry room door, Chris also found the time to paint the nursery!  We had picked out a color (Behr Spring Stream) back when we first moved in (before we were pregnant) that we loved and thought could go with accents for either a boy or a girl.  It's a blueish green color that's kinda hard to really capture.

Yes, those red curtains from the sellers will be going soon

Here's a shot that I took later in the day with the lights on... totally looks different, right??

I think the real color is something in between these pictures, closest to the last shot from outside of the room.

Guess I Should Leave More Often Part II

When the cat's away, the mice will play... or in our case - when the wife's away, the husband gets a bunch of house projects done!

This past extra long weekend (Thursday - Tuesday), my family enjoyed a trip back home to Philly/New Jersey for my cousin's wedding.  Since Chris recently started his new job, he wasn't able to make the trip with us so he had 6 days to himself at home.

Philly airport, the house I grew up in, Pat's Cheesesteaks, Atlantic City

My cousin and his new wife!

While I was enjoying reliving memories of my youth, Chris was busy knocking out project after project in our home.  First up was mounting the TV in our bedroom.

We've had the TV on the floor for some time, waiting for our handyman to come mount it and hide the cords behind the wall.  Well our handyman has been very busy with his main job, so Chris opted to just mount it himself and build a shelf to hold the cable box.  Now I can actually watch tv in bed instead of on the floor!  We'll get around to hiding the cords later.

Chris has been the king of shelving lately.  Last time it was creating the linen closet, this time it was building shelves in his gameroom for our DVDs and his video games.

Similar to the linen closet, Chris used a track system so we could alter the heights of the shelves if we need to.  He cut and painted wood and attached little blocks to the ends to hold the DVDs in.

Me being the type A personality, I went ahead and alphabetized the DVDs then loaded up the shelves.  While going through them, I noticed that there are a lot that that we should probably get rid of because we never watch them (as in still in the plastic from when they were purchased).

On the other side of the room Chris created a wrap around system to utilize the corner bump out.

Corner before

Looking at this picture one might think we were starting up a GameStop!

I have no doubt these shelves will fill up once we unpack the rest of his graphic novels and other decor items.  Mario says Yippee!!

And the last project was a complete shock to me!  We were texting Sunday night and Chris asked if I wanted to see his hair cut.  I thought this was a little odd because Chris tends to get the same haircut, only once during the summer he surprised me by coming back with a shaved head.  So I'm thinking he's done something cray cray to his hair.

Nope, same haircut, but one huge surprise behind him - he painted our master bath!!

I love how the white cabinets pop more against the green walls then they did with the beige.  We still need to hang items (like towel hooks and some art) and get a couple more mats, but I am just so happy that the painting is done!

After 5 hours of painting the nooks and crannies of the master bath, Chris is truly looking forward to a relaxing weekend this upcoming weekend.  With all of the projects he has completed lately, I have no issues with a veg out weekend!

Guess I Should Leave More Often

Last week I had to go out of town for a business trip and came home to some great improvements!

The first was an idea that I saw on Pinterest which replaced the plastic silverware tray with wood separators built into the drawer.  We purchased all of the wood before I left, and while I was in Jacksonville Chris sent me these pictures.

It's a little hard to get the big spoons out, but it's doable.  We rarely use them anyways, lol. Chris also did it for the drawer in the butler's pantry for our wedding silverware that will be used for special occasions.

The other improvement was creating a linen closest! I may have mentioned before that our house does not have a linen closet in it.  We actually didn't notice this until our 2nd or 3rd tour of the house.  Thankfully, the main guest room closet had a little bit of extra space in it which Chris utilized to install a track system and some shelves.  

You can make out the bump out in the closet from this picture of the game room corner.  That area where you see the electric outlet is the added space in the closet.  It's hard to get shots inside of the closet since it's small and there are no lights, but here's one from before I left of Chris measuring out the tracks.

Chris installed the tracks, cut and painted the wood for the shelves and I was able to come home and load it up with our extra towels and sheets.

I don't know if I can tell him enough, but I am so grateful for my handy husband!!

A Place To Lay Our Heads

Can I just tell you how happy I am that we can actually sleep in our master bedroom now??

First things first, we finally got around to painting our master bedroom.  We went with Behr Caribe and Ultra Pure White.  We originally were going to go with just the blue, but when we put it up on the wall I thought it would be a little too much to have the whole room in that color.

Chris went around and painted the baseboard in the matching white (it's still the original off white in the photo above) just in time for the arrival of our new bed frame!  I did a lot of online window shopping after falling in love with a headboard that I saw on This Casita.  I located it on Amazon, but ended up buying a version of it on Wayfair to get the foot rails as well.

Chris did all the heavy lifting, piecing together the frame while I worked on putting up our annual birthday pictures and the DIY map.

Once the bed frame was up, we took the plunge and purchased a king size Tempurpedic mattress.  I've never purchased a new mattress and Chris was rocking a futon before moving in with me. We have been eyeing one for some time, always gravitating to the same Cloud model every time we stopped into a Sleep Experts or Mattress Firm.  We used the rational that we need to invest in a good night's sleep, and this one has a 25 year warranty along with a 1 year love your mattress guarantee (which means we have 365 days to decide if we really like it, and if we don't we can send it back and get another mattress).  

The mattress was delivered the next day and I was quick to finally break open the bedding that we originally registered for our 2011 wedding, but ended up buying ourselves because it was discontinued between the time we set up our registry and our wedding date. This actually ended up working in our favor because when it was discontinued, all of the pieces were marked down AND I still got to use Bed Bath and Beyond coupons to reduce the price even more (just had to travel to 3 different stores in order to get everything)! 

I purchased pretty much every accent pillow that went with the set

As you can tell, the bed and the bench are the only pieces of furniture in our room.  We still need to find some nightstands and a dresser as well as some sort of seating by the windows for the reading nook.  But for now I'm just so excited to see where this room started and where it is today!

What do you like most about your bedroom?