Natalie's new room

Natalie's been in her new room for nearly three weeks, but I wasn't able to put the finishing touches on it until this morning, thanks to a Christmas Eve package delivery. She's loving it, I'm loving it, so I thought it was time to share it.

I had perhaps more fun creating this room than I did creating the nursery two years ago, simply because this time I knew I was creating a room exclusively for a little girl, rather than creating a room that could easily work for a girl or a boy. Perhaps what made this experience even more fun was knowing the little person I was designing the room for. I tried to incorporate as many of her interests into this room as possible, and I got her involved and excited in the decorating process along the way.

Bedding -- the inspiration
My vision for the room began over the summer, as many visions do, with a trip to Target, where I happened upon the Xhilaration twin quilt ($50) that ultimately became the room's inspiration piece. Even though Natalie's continuing in her crib (for as long as she'd like, which could be a while) I thought it would be wise to base this room that she'll grow into around fun bedding, so I threw in a pillow sham ($20) and slowly pieced together other items. She scored a new Mini Dot Crib Fitted Sheet in bright pink ($16 after coupon) from Pottery Barn Kids, too. Fortunately, she loves to say "polka-dot," and there are yellow polka-dots in her quilt, so there's some coordination going on, too.

Curtains
My next task after tackling the bedding was to get some seriously heavy-duty curtains. Natalie's new room has two windows whereas the nursery has only one. I considered DIYing the no-sew curtains I had made for the nursery, but knowing I'd have to make twice as many curtains and knowing that the room lets in a lot more light than the nursery, I decided this time I'd be better off hiring a professional and getting real curtains made with built-in black-out liner.

It took me a while to find a well-reviewed local seamstress willing to make curtains, but I finally happened upon Young's Cleaners. I'd recommend their seamstress services. I had to do a little back and forth because of language barriers, but by working with the owner's daughter I was able to get exactly what I was hoping for. I decided to be perhaps a little unconventional with the overall curtain design and went with three panels (instead of two or four) and chose one patterned fabric for the two outside panels and one solid fuchsia material for the middle panel.

These curtains were definitely an investment, but I am happy to spend the most on curtains for a room for a child. If there's one thing we value in our house, it's sleep.

Curtain fabric -- $75 for 8 yards (16 feet of patterned fabric, 8 feet of solid fabric), Jo-Ann Fabrics
Black-out liner fabric -- $36 for 8 yards, Jo-Ann Fabrics
Seamstress labor -- $210 for three curtain panels, Young's Cleaners
Curtain rod, 48"-88", black satin finish -- $32, Bed Bath and Beyond
Curtain rings -- $18 for three packs of 7 rings each, Bed Bath and Beyond

Furniture
Because we moved Natalie's crib out of the nursery and into the new room, we temporarily dodged the bullet of needing to buy another bed. We are still waiting to see if we'll need a second crib for the nursery. I'd predict yes at this point, but for now baby boy (when he arrives) will kick it in the Pack N Play and then we'll reevaluate.

The only furniture, then, we needed to consider for Natalie's new room was a bookcase and a dresser. For her bookcase, we chose the eight-box Expedit from IKEA in white ($70).

For her dresser, we decided to tackle the one real DIY project of this new room and we refinished an old dresser a friend handed down to us when we moved into our house seven years ago. This refinishing project was not a monumental task, as the dresser was in good shape aside from some water stains on the top; I just wish we hadn't waited until the coldest weather of the year kicked in during late November to take on this project inside our freezing garage. We followed the same procedure we did when Matt refinished the dresser for the nursery. Matt sanded the dresser, and then I painted it a shade called Watermelon Smoothie ($15.75 for a quart) manufactured by Glidden, but color-matched using Behr paint thanks to the recommendation from a Home Depot employee and professional painter who told me he'd always choose Behr over Glidden.

As another splurge and mini-project, I decided to line the eight dresser drawers in fancy handmade paper from Paper Source ($46 for eight sheets). I chose gold dragonflies on fuchsia, gold dragonflies on sea green, bean orange, and bean white on green. I used Modge Podge to get the paper to adhere to the drawers' interiors. It's a time-consuming task, but I love how Natalie opens her drawers and says, "Mom made art!"

Art
Actually, Natalie likes to talk about the art all around her room. Specifically, I framed two pieces of art Natalie already had, and I purchased three new pieces of art: Reading Rainbow, 17"x 20", Society 6 ($24); Muppet Alphabet, 17"x 20", Society 6 ($25); Home is Wherever I Am With You, Etsy seller RawArtLetterpress ($20). I was super pleased with the service I received from both sellers. In the case of RawArtLetterpress, my order shipped immediately and it arrived with a few added free goodies that I plan to make into greeting cards. I was a little dismayed when I checked over the two prints I received from Society6 and discovered a couple green dots in the middle of each poster. I contacted the company, and they sent me new versions of each print, no questions asked, that very day. They even responded to my email within 15 minutes. I framed all the art in cheap-ish white frames from Michaels ($54 for four frames after various discounts).

You might notice in the picture above two pink fabric bins with an owl pattern that house some of Natalie's toys and stuffed animals. I picked those up at Home Goods in early November ($13 each).

I also decided to go with another decal, just as I'd done with the nursery. I went with Dali Decals again and opted for the Peaceful Leaning Birch Tree with Blossoms in white with pink flowers ($89 after coupon code). While not absolutely necessary, this decal rests over Natalie's crib and helps fill what had been a giant empty wall in the room. Plus, I love hearing Natalie talk about how the leaves from her tree will fall on the grass (she was pretty jazzed to talk about leaves this year).

Extras
Moving Natalie into her new room meant sacrificing some storage space. Because her new room shares a wall with the hallway bathroom, this room is actually slightly bigger than the nursery, but its closet is significantly smaller than the nursery closet. So, baby brother will be housing some extra gear in his closet. Even still, Natalie's closet has room to expand, as many of the items that are in there are either clothes she'll grow into or toys she doesn't even know she owns yet that she'll be slowly gifted during her brother's first few months of life.

Moving Natalie into this room meant breaking out her P'Kolino Little Reader Chair that I received for her at my baby shower. She didn't have space for it in the nursery, but she loves it and her stool with her name on it in her new room. She especially cracks me up when she reclines in the chair with her arms on both armrests and both of her feet propped up on the stool. She looks like a queen. It's absurd.

Overall, I didn't make a tremendous time investment in this space (we got away with not painting the walls and sticking with the original Behr Sagey we painted the room seven years ago, so that definitely helped). Still, it took me much longer to piece together this room as compared to the nursery simply because of the comparatively limited time I have at this point in my life. I am thrilled, though, that Natalie loves the room so much, and I'll share soon how we got her to transition to the new room.

Nursery progress: Quick ottoman update

For a while now we've been at a nursery progress stand still. There isn't really anything that needs to be done, but there are some little side projects I can accomplish as we wait on the baby's debut. The easiest of the remaining little projects involved reupholstering the $50 brown ottoman we bought at Target last month.

If you're on the Target website and you search for ottomans, you'll get over 1,000 results. This is no joke. Lots and lots to sort through. I found two light green microsuede ottomans that could have potentially worked in the nursery, but one cost $150 and the other was also over $100. Plus, I couldn't tell if either would be a perfect match to the color of the nursery recliner, so I figured after paying for shipping and then likely having to deal with the hassle of returning the furniture it wasn't worth the risk.

Instead while at the Target store Matt and I bought a circular brown fabric-covered storage ottoman that is the perfect height for the chair and the perfect general size for our relatively small nursery space. I wasn't in love with the ottoman's aesthetics, but I figured this was an opportunity to buy a staple gun and get to work.

I took leftover fabric from the nursery curtains and originally planned to reupholster the entire ottoman, but once I reupholstered the ottoman lid I thought the less-is-more statement worked quite well.

Because I've never upholstered anything before, I once again turned to Young House Love for advice and found this super easy tutorial for reupholstering a cushion, which is essentially what I was doing when I reupholstered the ottoman lid.

So, I went ahead and stapled the leftover curtain fabric at the 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock positions on the back of the ottoman lid. Then between each initial staple I performed a series of simple folds and added three more evenly spaced staples. The trickiest part of performing this task is keeping the fabric as taut as possible.

Eventually the entire lid was wrapped with too much leftover fabric, which I simply trimmed off before putting the lid back on the ottoman.

I'm satisfied with the less-is-more approach to the ottoman redesign. I think it gives it some style and makes it more integrated with the nursery decor without going overboard.

Although I could still add a mobile, some floating shelves, and a better solution for getting our additional light and humidifier to fit into our small space, for now I feel like the nursery is done...and that means tomorrow I'll share with you the big reveal!

Simple travel art

Whenever we return from a trip abroad, we always bring back with us some small change (after doing a very good job spending our last equivalent of $5 U.S. on things like chocolate and Gatorade at the airport). So I throw the small foreign change with all our American small change, which I take to Coinstar about twice a year and convert to an Amazon giftcard, inevitably annoyed to realize that I forgot once again not to mix the American and foreign currency when Coinstar gets mad at me.

When we got back from Argentina this summer (I realize I still have not written about that trip -- whoops!) I rounded up all the small foreign change in the house and turned it into this simple art project.

I bought this basic black frame at Michael's. It's not exactly a shadowbox, but it's much deeper than your typical frame. Then I covered the backing in white paper and glued each coin down with craft glue. One or two coins, because of their shape and size, did not want to stick at first, so I did have to reapply some glue, but giving the glue ample time to dry solved that problem.

I used state quarters to signify our domestic travels to places like Hawaii for our honeymoon and the eight states we visited during our cross-country trip (as you can see, I'm still waiting to find a bunch of quarters of western states such as Colorado, Utah, and California to join our lonely New Mexico and Arizona quarters).

This easy art is a sentimental reminder of some of our most memorable travels together and a great way to turn loose change collecting dust into something more meaningful.

Nursery progress: Crib skirt done

After making my first set of DIY no-sew curtains for the nursery, I thought I would try my hand at making a no-sew crib skirt. Once again I followed the advice of the Young House Love folks and pretty much identically copied their crib skirt post. So, I don't have much to add to that dialogue, though I can say that:

1) It took me much longer to find the right fabric for the crib skirt. I already have two other patterns in the nursery between the curtains and the Modge Podged gift wrap coating the back of the bookcase, so I don't want to add too much else. But, I'm also comfortable with things not matching perfectly, so I finally pulled the trigger and got a black-and-white modern patterned fabric.

2) I bought twice as much fabric as I needed. For the four panels of the crib skirt I needed two yards, not four. Whoops. I'm a newbie at this whole fabric purchasing experience.

3) I couldn't (and still have not) figured out how to work around the edges of the crib's metal frame, the portion that holds up the mattress. So, that section is not perfect, but it will do, and I'm probably its worst critic. (Something tells me the baby won't notice.)

4) Spending about $40 total to make a crib skirt (supplies = fabric, hem tape, and Velcro) is a way better deal than buying an entire crib bedding set that can run you in the hundreds of dollars. I have started to see some stores and some bedding lines carry crib skirts separate from an entire bedding set, but so far the options I've seen are pretty limited. Now that crib bumpers are a supposed no-no, maybe more companies will start selling crib skirts and all other nursery bedding items a la carte.

Despite a couple tiny setbacks along the way, making the crib skirt was an easy afternoon project, and I think it makes the crib appear less naked, especially now that the crib is adjusted to the highest setting in anticipation of Baby Awesomerod's arrival. Before I attached the crib skirt there was a lot of empty space exposed underneath the mattress frame.

Right now we have a patterned crib sheet on the mattress. It's only there because we bought it for our sweet niece's visit several weeks ago. We tasked her with breaking in our crib, and she was up for the challenge, but we needed a sheet. So, while this sheet isn't my first choice (we registered for these bright green sheets at Buy Buy Baby) it will do.

Now with the crib skirt, the crib's a little more jazzed up.

Matt also took a few minutes over the weekend to attach the IKEA Billy bookcase to the wall, and I took a few minutes to see what it looks like with a few items added in. You might recognize a few of the items as toys I preserved from my childhood (and rediscovered in our crawl-space clean out). I'm sure everything will get reshuffled as Baby Awesomerod accumulates her own loot, but for now we've added a little more life to our little nursery space.

Now that all the furniture is in place and the more significant DIY jobs are complete, all we have left to do in the nursery is:

1) Buy an ottoman for the chair.
2) Find and install floating shelves next to the window.
3) Decide on and purchase/make/arrange nursery art.
4) Figure out if we're going to have a mobile over the crib and/or changing table; if so, will I make it or buy it, and how will we hang it from our really high ceilings?
5) Organize items in closet and determine an organizational system for all baby supplies.

So, at this point I view the remaining items as gravy. Nothing is a necessity (well, I guess most of our nursery tasks have been non-necessities as babies don't truly require much in terms of physical possessions). There's no rush, but hopefully the final items can get settled before January, and hopefully she won't arrive early.

Nursery progress: Modge Podge in the house

I have heard so much about Modge Podge on the Internets in the last couple years that I finally decided the nursery gave me an opportunity to try it out. It also helped me achieve my goal of adding those desired bright pops of color to the nursery's overall neutral palette of gray and white.

I decided to line the back of an inexpensive IKEA bookcase (this white Billy bookcase we bought a few weeks ago, to be exact) after being inspired by this post from IHeart Organizing about revamping a bookcase for bathroom storage. Even though Jen stenciled and painted the back of her bookcase, I decided the paper and Modge Podge route would be easier for me to tackle.

Then, inspired by this post from Young House Love about lining the drawers of their nursery dresser with pretty gift wrap, I did virtually the same thing to the inside of our nursery dresser drawers.

For both the bookcase and the dresser drawers I decided to use the same paper to create a consistent look. I figure the curtains are the biggest statement piece in the nursery, and I don't want to go too crazy with too many conflicting patterns in our relatively small room. I found thick single-sheet wrapping paper at World Market with a modern orange pattern (5 sheets at $2.69 each). I got my first-ever bottle of Modge Podge at Jo-Ann Fabrics (16 oz. for $8) a couple weeks ago.

If you've never before worked with Modge Podge, I have to say that it is a shockingly forgiving substance. It's sort of like Elmer's Glue (the old school kind), except something about its water-based make up means it's even easier to work with and glides on smoothly. When it dries it's perfectly clear, so you don't have to be worried about applying perfectly even coats to still get the results you're hoping for.

Here are my Modge Podging supplies all laid out: my giant bottle of matte finish Modge Podge as well as a foam brush I picked up in a bulk set from Michael's years ago.

After cutting the five pieces of gift wrap to fit in the bookcase backing and dresser drawers, I spread a thin layer of Modge Podge onto each surface and then immediately placed the gift wrap inside, taking care to press down firmly on the middle of the paper first and then smoothing the rest of the paper from the middle out to the edges of the surface to prevent bubbles.

I gave a little bit of drying time between getting the paper to adhere to the surfaces and then putting a layer of Modge Podge over the paper to protect the paper's surface, but I have to say that the hour or so I allowed for drying was not enough. If you are striving for absolute perfection -- absolutely no air bubbles -- definitely take the advice of the Young House Love folks and give yourself four hours of drying time between gluing the paper in and then sealing it.

In all honesty, as I approach the final stretch of pregnancy my patience is waning and my sense of urgency in regard to completing all projects is only increasing, so I decided on the express route (i.e. not striving for perfection). The good news is that there are no visible air bubbles on the back of the bookcase, but there are some inside one of the three dresser drawers.

Now that the Modge Podging is complete, one question remains: What to do about those pesky holes on the sides of the Billy bookcase? Granted, a few sets of holes will be filled in when I install the remaining four shelves. But most of the holes are going to be visible if I don't do anything. Although we have a Billy bookcase in a wood tone and we have the holes exposed on that one and it doesn't bother me, the holes are so much more prominent on this white bookcase. So, I feel like I should do something to make them less visible. One option would be the putty them up, but that seems semi-permanent and thus defeats the purpose of adjustable shelves. An idea from my in-laws is to cover them with ribbon, and I have orange ribbon that rather perfectly matches the gift wrap color.

But maybe you all have other ideas. What would you do? Suggestions welcome!

Nursery progress: DIY no-sew curtains: mission accomplished

We just got back from a fun, low-key weekend in Amishville (aka a small town outside Lancaster, PA -- not its actual name) with my high school friends and their husbands. We thought we had escaped Hurricane Irene, who thankfully did not accomplish too much in our neighborhood here in Virginia, only to wake up this morning in our rental house in Pennsylvania with no electricity and no water. Still, no biggie, and now we're back. Tomorrow I return to work for another school year -- teachers are back though kids don't return until the day after Labor Day. With summer vacation coming to an end, before we left for our short, final summer trip, I was determined to create the nursery curtains, and I'm happy to report I did it!

I will admit that I was pretty scared of tackling this project, mostly because I was afraid of messing up my expensive fabric. Fortunately, that did not happen, and I've learned that this is one of those projects that falls into the category of, "If I can do it, you can do it."

I started here with the Young House Love post about their DIY no-sew nursery curtains. Their measurements wound up being a little different from my own, though, because I wanted to make curtains 84" long for the nursery window which is 64" long and 33" wide. I did follow the advice of Sherry from YHL and added 3" to each length of fabric so that I could have a proper 1.5" hem on each end of each curtain. So, I laid out my long fabric on the floor and got to work cutting two 87" panels. I used a light gray oil pastel to mark off my fabric and easily cut a straight line.

You'll also notice I bought Heat N' Bond hem iron-on adhesive in super strength. (Way better price on Amazon! Good to know for the future...) I originally bought one roll at Jo-Ann Fabrics for $2.99, but it turns out one roll is almost exactly enough for one curtain panel, so I had to turn this one-day project into a two-day project once I was able to return to the store to buy a second roll.

I followed Sherry's tutorial on how to use the hem tape. Unfortunately, in doing so this is where I made my one significant mistake. Apparently the tape Sherry uses has a paper side and a fabric side. I thought mine did, too, but mine really has just the fabric. So, Sherry talks in her video tutorial about putting the iron directly on the hem tape to allow it to get warm and adhere. As soon as I did this, I got gluey goop all over my iron. Then I read the back of my Heat N' Bond package and saw where it expressly says, "DO NOT apply iron directly to adhesive tape." Lesson learned (after taking a wet sponge to my iron): always read the package, and don't just rely on another blogger's know-how.

Once I discovered the difference between Sherry's tape and my own, I went a little rogue (Ok, I disregarded the rest of Sherry's tutorial). I put my hem tape onto my curtain fabric. I placed it about half and inch from the top.

 

I measured out exactly enough hem tape to run the length of one side of curtain. Then I used books to hold down the curtains and the tape as I folded the fabric over itself so that the hem tape was secured inside a little curtain sandwich.

With my iron on a medium setting, I started applying heat to the hem. The hem tape definitely gets hot even when it's sandwiched between two sides of fabric. I held the iron for about three seconds at a time in each spot along the hem. Another thing I learned is that you do not want to slide the iron across your fabric. Doing so runs the risk of creating a bunched up hem. Instead, be sure to lift your iron as you work your way across your curtain. Below you can see the portion of the hem that had been ironed against the portion waiting for the iron.

I simply repeated these steps for the three other sides of each curtain. Between figuring out what I was doing, cutting the fabric, messing up, fixing my mistake, and then hemming four sides, it took me about an hour to finish the first curtain panel. The next day, when I had purchased my second roll of hem tape, it only took me about 30 minutes to complete the second panel. So, if you do this right, this is an hour-long job for two curtain panels.

As for how we'll hang these curtains, we're using the type of curtain clips that simply attach to the top of each panel and require no addition sewing, holes, etc.

Now that I know how to do this, I plan to make curtains for our master bedroom using the same method. That's a project for another day, though. For now we're prepping the nursery for painting, which will get done this week. Once the walls are dry and we hang the curtains, I'll share how they look in their finished state. For now, though, I am also quite happy that they are the right length with no visible imperfections (and when Matt and I held them up against the window in a test run we were really happy to see that they achieved the black-out effect we were hoping for in the nursery). Remember, if you're wondering whether or not you can accomplish this project, the answer is yes!

Weekend update

Here are a few quick items of note from this weekend:

1) Rug update -- The West Elm beauty is officially out of the running. It was Matt's favorite, and I was getting pretty excited about it, too, but when we went to see it in person I realized that it is entirely too thin. As an entryway rug, I'm looking for something more substantial that can stand being kicked around. I had visions of the ends of this rug curling upward if it were to get stuck under a door or under feet -- not the greatest "welcome to our home" statement. I'd still love to hear your opinion about the remaining rug choices.

Sorry, buddy, you're out.

2) Missing our herb garden, I thought I would try potting some store-bought herbs and see if they'll last for any substantial length of time.  Have any of you tried this? Was it a success or a flop? Any words of wisdom?

3) In late November I had brewed up another batch of homemade laundry detergent, so I was surprised this weekend when I went to do laundry and was met with a powdery, dry and almost empty bucket of what should have been lots of laundry detergent. The DIY detergent should have lasted until April.

Now I have figured what I did wrong last time: I used only half the required amount of water.

This time I tried two things differently:

• First of all, after boiling 2 cups of soap in one quart of water and mixing in 2 cups of Borax and 2 cups of washing soda, I simply put the bucket in the sink and ran the water until my 10-quart bucket was nearly full.
• Secondly, I added hot water to the bucket. When I'd made this before, I had been adding lukewarm water. 

This time the detergent has truly achieved a gel-like consistency that's just a little more chunky than the Tide I used to buy. I think this accomplishment is mostly thanks to using hot water.

DIY dish washing liquid

I've been making my own dish washing liquid for handwashing dishes for a while now, and I realized I'd never shared the simple recipe. It involves just a couple basic ingredients: castile soap, water and essential oil. I found the recipe in one of my favorite domestic books, Clean Home Green Home, that I've referenced here before.

Although the original recipe calls for 3/4 cup of castile soap and 1/2 cup water, I find that combination leads to an overly watery dish washing soap, so today when I made more dish washing soap I used the remaining 1 cup of castile soap I had and a little less than 1/2 cup of water. Then I added 10 drops of lavender essential oil.

This old Seventh Generation plastic bottle has been the holding ground for all my homemade dish washing liquid, but then today while I was at Home Goods looking for a new rug (no luck so far!) and containers (of course) I found a cheap glass dispenser for $4.99 and immediately thought of another organizing blog I read. Although the author just wrote about how this glass dispenser has not worked well for her dish washing liquid, I thought I would give it a try because having to reach underneath the sink to get out the soap has been keeping me from cleaning the kitchen counters more often. (As a side note, this DIY dish washing liquid is an eco-friendly way to clean granite counter tops as well.)

I also picked up this cheap glass tray at Home Goods to make the dish washing soap and hand soap dispensers a little nicer looking. And, yes, I totally ripped this entire look off of IHeart Organizing.

And, even though I got about 11 hours of sleep last night, for some reason I am exhausted, so I think I may need to take a nap before tonight's neighborhood dinner party commences!

Good to know: homemade laundry detergent lasts!

Back in May I wrote to you about my DIY laundry detergent experiments. After making a huge batch of laundry detergent, I predicted I might have enough to make it through February. Well, that was hyperbole, but it turns out that this DIY detergent managed to last for over six months! And, it is getting our clothes just as clean as the chemical-laden store-bought stuff. Victory!

One of Matt's colleagues laughed at him when he found out we make our own laundry detergent. He said, "This is how I know you all don't have any children." All I have to say is that spending 10-15 minutes every six months doesn't seem like a big time commitment, kids or no kids.

Now that I've made my second successful batch of laundry detergent this weekend, it's time to find a better storage solution. The aluminum foil lid is not working out too well, but at least the detergent is pretty great.

Hallway bathroom reveal

Earlier in July I told you that when we got back from our trip I had to tackle the hallway bathroom. In fact, in the Philly airport while waiting to fly back to D.C. Matt and I each made our post-trip to-do lists, and at the very top of mine was to redo this ugly bathroom. I'm proud to say that after several days of work, it is finally complete (or, it is 95 percent complete...one additional piece of art will be added, but that's all).

You may remember the two reasons that this bathroom needed an overhaul, both of which are encapsulated in the photo below: 1) bright orange paint and 2) outdated lighting.

And here's the bathroom as I got ready to tape everything off

I went with Behr Premium Plus Ultra paint in Classic Taupe with Flat Enamel finish. I know a lot of people are skeptical of Behr paint, but it's the only paint I've used in our house, and with the exception of my own poor color choice with the bright orange, I've been really pleased with the quality and durability. I had never used the new Premium Plus Ultra paint before, but this was the perfect time to try it out because it's paint and primer in one. I have to say, even though I loathe painting bathrooms, this was actually the easiest painting job of my life thanks to the quality of this paint. In places where I used the roller, I could have gotten away with doing only one coat, though I obviously chose to do two coats over the entire bathroom just to do the best job possible.

Here's the bathroom with coat number 1. Pretty impressive job covering up the orange, right? Go Behr!

And then there's the light fixture. We checked out Lowe's and Home Depot, and as our neighbor Mimi warned us, Lowe's has way better selection than Home Depot, at least for bathroom light fixtures. Still, we weren't thrilled with the offerings with either Lowe's or Home Depot, so we went to the Lamp Factory Outlet and found what we wanted, this four-light fixture from Quoizel. It takes 100W bulbs, but when we installed four 100W CFLs we thought it was entirely too bright, so we downgraded to four 60W CFLs, and it's still plenty bright (so bright, in fact, that it makes taking a picture of them nearly impossible).

I also wanted to add some art to the bathroom, so on a whim at Michaels I decided to pick up some wooden letters, wooden frames and bird stickers to create these little happy-family emblems. I painted the letters blue using some leftover Behr paint from our master bathroom, and I added some brown ribbon to the backs of the letters so I could hang them up.

The frames were buy one, get one free, and they were table-top frames, so I simply removed the glass and backing. In my cost comparisons this was cheaper than buying backless frames, and they were what I wanted. Isn't it great when what you want is also the cheapest option? The stickers are by Martha Stewart. Although I didn't realize it when I bought them, they're not plain-old paper stickers, they're some kind of plastic, so they're even more perfect for their place in a humid bathroom.

So, after three hours of taping the bathroom off, two hours for coat 1 and then another two hours for coat 2, followed by a couple hours of touch ups, Matt's fixture installation, clean up and some time for original art creations, here's the bathroom!

I plan to add a piece of art over the toilet (a lovely place for art, right?) but for now I am just glad that this is done and that Matt and our guests will no longer burn their retinas when they use our hallway bathroom.

DIY postcard art

I love to use big vacations as an opportunity to gather items that add personal touches to our house. I've been thinking a lot lately about what I'd like to pick up in Italy and Spain this summer. I don't have too many specific ideas, but I have been thinking about specific areas of our house that could use some more personality.

This got me thinking about what I've done already. Two years ago, toward the end of our last big trip -- one month driving cross country -- I picked up a packet of vintage-inspired National Parks postcards. I didn't know what I would do with them at first, but then I had an idea: DIY postcard art!

Somehow, without hardly trying, I managed to find a frame with nearly perfect dimensions for creating this postcard collage that is four postcards wide and four postcards long. (It took me no time to find this, compared to the seemingly ridiculous amount of time it took to find the perfect baskets for our entryway bench.)

I cut some light-green scrapbooking paper to completely cover the background and fill some empty gaps between postcards. I measured out the gaps between cards so they'd at least be uniform. I mounted everything together using double-sided tape.

Here's the result, hanging in our still-boring-white stairway between the second and third floor. At the top I have six postcards from some of our favorite cross-country National Parks stops: Rocky Mountain, Arches, Yosemite, Sequoia, Grand Canyon, Bandelier.

DIY daily shower cleaner

Back in February, when I wrote about how I use Method Daily Shower Cleaner and was looking for an alternative, reader Samantha suggested using a DIY daily shower cleaner of vinegar, water and tea tree oil.

Last month I finally ran out of my Method cleaner refill, so I bought another spray bottle (not the Home Depot brand spray bottle, which I've noticed stop working after about a week) and got to work. I tried half vinegar, half water, but I thought the solution was too vinegary even after adding some drops of tea tree oil.

You can find tea tree oil in the organic section of your grocery store (along with other essential oils). Yes, they can be pricey, but they last a long time because you only need a couple drops to create a fresh smell.

Then I read on another blog, and now I forget where that was, that another lady uses about 1/3 vinegar, 2/3 water, because over time she's discovered that a little vinegar can go a long way.

I have to say, I agree, and I used her solution. Over the last month, my shower has stayed just as clean as it did when I was using the Method cleaner. Plus, a DIY solution is always cheaper and has fewer chemicals, and you know that's something I care about.

Another DIY cleaning product victory!

(In case you're wondering, most of our cleaning products are now DIY. Two I have not given up are our wood floor cleaner and our liquid dishwasher detergent, and I'll write more about those soon!)