Nursery Project: Crib sheets (and a revealing)

While my dear mother (and father, and brother and sister) was in town for Mother's Day weekend, I starting thinking about what color crib sheet I wanted or what design, but I didn't want to pay much for them.  The kid just sleeps on them after all.  And then they'll get exploded on.

I remembered that I had the fitted queen sheets from the sheet set I made my downstairs curtains out of years ago and thought maybe if I knew how to make a fitted sheet I could use those to make my crib sheets - for free. :)  I also found my old dorm sheet I used for 1 year that's baby blue t-shirt kind of sheet.  My mother, the sewer, of course knew how to do this and so we cut them out and she sewed up 2 to show me.  That left me with 3 to finish sometime.  I did it today.  I sewed all three and they all fit and look great!  I'm really excited about them and I was pretty pumped this morning with their completion.  So much so, that I told Dash how awesome his mom was - and that it was no wonder he chose our family to come to.  It was an achievement for me and they were free!  I'm feeling pretty good about things today...

The chocolate circles remind me of Dwell Studio stuff and I love the silkiness of the gray fabric.  These are some posh crib sheets.

We measured the size of the mattress- I grabbed the dimensions from Ikea's website - and added 2 inches to each of the 4 sides so the sheet would reach around to the bottom.  We cut a square out of each corner (whatever the depth was including the 2 inches) and then french seamed the corners together.  Put elastic in the corners and then hemed all the way around.  Really not that bad.

What's your favorite?

We can't get enough of this barn door so I keep showing it off. :)

The copper pig is Bryce's from childhood, the silver crab you can barely see is Bryce's from his Grandfather Long who was stationed in Sicily during WWII.  It's engraved Sicily 1944.  We love the wooden train.  I need to get some baskets and bins and books to fill the shelves now. :)

I really wish I would've taken pictures of the room's clutter, then cleared out, then empty with the walls painted, and then with the things going in it slowly so you could see the amazing difference.  But maybe it's good I didn't, because you don't really want to see all that.  You want to see the finished product!  It's not finished yet, but here's what you get right now.  Oh, the random bag on the floor is the diaper bag I purchased the other day.

Next on the project list:
barn door
wall o shelves
crib sheets
mobile
find a dresser
mount and hang antlers
window treatment
put shelves and rods in closet
stenciled pillow
figure out what to do with the small navajo rug that's thrown on the back of the chair

Nursery

Here's the basis for our little man's den.  

I like to think of it as a contemporary/industrial ski lodge in the southwest....you follow? ;)

I traded my chocolate bunny for a chocolate bathroom.

That's right, no candies in my Easter basket tonight.  I spent today, with Bryce's help, transforming our upstairs bathroom from builder basic to 'a little more fun' basic.  I feel like bathrooms are fun to do bolder colors or patterns in because they're small and you don't live in them (you know what I mean) so you don't get tired of it as quickly.

I have to eat and go to bed though, so check back for some pictures tomorrow!  Of course it needs touch up and the shower curtain, but that will be another day.

I learned a few things from this particular bathroom project:
1. Bryce doesn't particularly like brown
2. Brown is a hard color to pick out - so many color/undertone variations
3. Brown, like all other dark colors I'm sure, definitely needs 2 coats
4. I buy a quart of paint for these small projects and it freaks me out every time.  It some how is always enough though.  And I use it all.
5. Most of the time, just go with your gut and what you like.  It turns out fine in the end.
6. Bryce doesn't like round or oval mirrors (round slightly less than oval) because he likes to see a larger picture and doesn't think you can get that with a circle.  I would've loved to have one large porthole circle mirror, but this was our compromise and I bought it on sale at k-holes and used online 20% off code and free shipping.

 

Horders

We're working on clearing out our closets and getting rid of things we didn't know we had.  I went to our HOA meeting today and came home to Bryce working away on his office closet.  The closet itself is not that big...

...so I was thoroughly impressed with what I saw.  Bryce is a horder.  The box on the right on the closet shelf is filled with every bill Bryce has received since 1996.  Thank goodness most of our stuff is electronic now.

 Empty boxes - you never know when you'll need the box you bought your first CPU in, even when you don't have it anymore...

 Things waiting to be sorted through ...

The other part of his office with the cleared path to the closet.

When I expressed my surprise about what had fit so nicely into the closet Bryce's first reply was, "Well you know I'm a good packer.  It's pretty spectacular."

Anybody need a 10 year old keyboard?

Things Bryce found:

Car title from Dodge Avenger (first car he ever bought.  He sold it 13 years ago.)

Christmas cards and Happy Birthday cards from family from 10 years ago. And I quote "I didn't know I cared this much about my family." He's really is so sentimental :)

Some old drafts he did in AutoCad in high school

His Spanish book from college because that's handy for a programmer. 

Empty boxes for hard drives and other electronics he no longer has.

"Anything I think I may sell someday, I'm keeping the box for...."  Still a horder at heart.

 I had already started on another closet and made a mess...Here's a glimpse of that.  At least mine is empty boxes that we can throw away and then bags of things that can be given away...just have to get them out of the house.  That seems to be the hard part.

Bathroom: The revealing

It's been a long time coming. We bought our framed mirror today along with floating shelves, a TP holder, towel holder, waste basket, and baskets (to hold extra towels, soap, and TP) and hand towels.

We got home and Bryce went straight to work on hanging the TP and towel holders and mirror.  He placed the brackets for the shelves and was ready for the shelves by the time I was done painting them the color of the molding and walls.

Looked great - ready for pictures.  I went up stairs to switch a load of laundry and Bryce started putting away a few tools and trash when we hear an awful crash with a following of clinks and clangs and bangs.

Jamba thought the shelves looked nice too.  A nice place to sit...but it didn't hold her jumping on it.

So, we made sure nothing was broken and the walls didn't have holes in them.  Jamba was fine, but the shelf would not hang up again.  So, here goes another adventure with this bathroom.

We decided to pull the shelves off and rehang them with serious anchors.  Those suckers are study.  I might be able to sit on them on and I guess we don't have to worry about them falling on some one's head while using the bathroom.

The shelf that fell had a pretty good gouge in it so we filled that, sanded and repainted before it went back up.

Here's the (mostly) final bathroom.  I say mostly only because I want to get a cool terrarium or chia pet thing to put on the shelf for a touch of color.  Gotta have my color. :)  I wanted to put a fun colored towel in there but Target was not cooperating with their color choices...neon or neutral.  Really?  No buttery yellows and no soft greens or fun mauve/purples?  Nope.

neat texture on the mirror frame

sturdy shelves with the wainscotting (sp?)
and obviously the builders weren't concerned with centering the toilet.

see the crown molding? ;)

We decided this was a great place for Grandpa's rabbits. 

Maybe that's what Jamba wanted.  She was hunting...

Never ending (bathroom) story

It was supopsed to come closer to an end today, but FedEx has mucked up our plans by not arriving in their 6 hour window they gave us.  How do you miss delivering within a 6 hour window?

I digress...  We painted the downstairs half bath after patching holes but we haven't hung the shelves or the mirror.  Since these pictures were taken we've added wainscotting, crown molding, patched holes and repainted small sections where paint pulled off with the tape, painted our countertop and replaced the light fixture, faucet, and vanity hardware.

The wood for the floating shelves and stain to match the cherry vanity are what we wanted to get at Home Depot, but Bryce has something coming for his car that he has to sign for and since FedEx didn't come between 10 and 4 we're still sitting here waiting instead of heading to Home Depot to get closer to finishing the never ending bathroom project.

Here's how we did the paint job.

 Bryce's snack in between taping and painting.

You can see how we stopped the pattern and then painted the bottom section prepping for detail molding.

with the tape off:



We painted the entire bathroom the base color in eggshell, but once we started taping and realized that covering every wall in this pattern from ceiling to floor could end up being a bit much.  We decided we would make more work for ourselves and do wainscotting to match our entryway and put up crown molding to match as well.  Good idea because it looks really good, but bad idea because of the work and one late night running short on patience making dents/holes in our wall with the molding and getting upset and walking out on the project.  I won't tell which one of us did that. :)

I do really like it and I'm excited to finish it so I can share the final product with you too.  The molding and everything looks so good in there.  We're like pros.