Update! ... and our beautiful chandelier!

I can't believe that it's been 9 months since I've updated this blog!! Time flies by when you are having fun with your baby. In 8 days our baby boy will be 1! I still can't believe it. His birthday party will be August 2nd, so I'll post pictures of the cute decorations and favors I've made after that! I don't want to give it away yet!

Here is our sweet boy now.

Awwww.... I can't get enough of that sweet face. Love, love, love...

Photo by Melissa Curry Photography

Because of little A, we haven't done too much more to the house. The one room that we have updated is our Giants room. We never used it before because it was so awful and now it's the room we're in the most!  I will post pictures tomorrow, I promise. 

** We also painted our bedroom. I don't know how I forgot about that!! We have a few more things to do to the room before it's done. Ill post a progress picture when my hubby picks up his clothes. *cough cough lucian.* Should be any day now...**

The only rooms we have left to update are the entry, guest bedroom, and bathroom upstairs. I have so many ideas for those rooms! I can't wait to get started! Check out my pinterest for those ideas. 

One other little project we have recently done is putting a chandelier in our entry. Just look at that beauty.....

Lucian found this chandelier on a local for sale group on facebook. It was broken and ugly but he saw potential right away. I can't say I did. The woman was giving it away for FREE, so I had my mom pick it up for us since she was closest. I wish we had a "before" picture but somehow that was lost in the past few months. :(

It sat on the floor in our entry foyer for 3 months! My dad said he'd try to mess around with it to see what he can do. He took off all the broken pieces, reassembled it, and rewired it. We hung it up the other day and little A loves it!! He "oooh's" and "ahhhh's" over it every time the light is turned on. I have to admit I'm pretty fascinated with it too. 

My dad can do anything!  I am so appreciative of his skills and the time he takes to do things for us! Thank you dad!

Isn't she just gorgeous??

Until tomorrow.... 

Sarah

Before and After: Austin's Room

This room was THE worst room in our house.  From where we started to where we are now, it doesn't even seem like it is possible for it to be the same room!

Here are a few pictures of the lovely room when we bought the house.  I'm not sure why this wood paneling was ever in style.

And even better.... look what's under the wood paneling!  Other parts of the wall under the paneling had a floral wallpaper.  Some spots even had holes in the wall.  What theme were they going for in this room???

Obviously with the holes and really old wallpaper, we couldn't keep the plaster that was currently on the walls.  The plaster was ripped out and this is what the lath looked like.

After some holes were patched and part of the ceiling was repaired, drywall was put up, the walls were textured, and then painted.  Here is a before and after:

And another.. Those newspapers are from the 1980s!

My father and I also made a custom closet for Austin.  The original closet is the top left picture.  The bottom left picture is with the custom closet in and the picture on the right is after it was painted.

And finally.. all the "after" pictures.  The quilt was handmade by my Aunt. It's so perfect for his room!  The letters were bought from a seller on Etsy, she had them all cut and sized like they are, I just painted them.  The crib was also Addison's crib.  I am so glad that it stayed in such great shape!

The chair and table are from Ikea and I made the floor pouf pillow.  There were ugly mini blinds in the room before, now we have these great faux wood blinds that are about $25 each from Walmart.  We are slowly replacing all the window coverings in the house with these blinds. I love them!

I love the pictures I have above his changing table/dresser.  The one on the left was ordered by my mom.  The 3rd jersey from the left is number "22" with the name "Neely."  The picture on the right is the front page of The Record after the Giants won the 2010 World Series.  Another cute little addition to his room is the knobs on his dresser.  They are baseballs!  I got them from Hobby Lobby.

Here are the letters up close and also a canvas I painted for his room.  My Aunt got the inspiration for Austin's quilt from this canvas that I made.

All we need now is baby Austin to arrive!  At the most, we have 14 more days left before his arrival.

-Sarah

Living/Dining Room: Updated Pictures

I didn't have the final pictures of what our dining room and living room look like with our furniture when I posted last week.  Here they are now:

Living Room

From the entry foyer to the living room

The couches are from the Ashley Homestore.  They are SO comfortable!

 We still need to clean up the soot on the fireplace, but I like it the way it is.  Lucian, on the other hand, doesn't.  Maybe someday we'll update it, but as of right now it's staying like it is.  

The TV stand is from World Market.  I really like that style.

Living room to dining room 

From the dining room to the living room. I just got the rug on my amazing Home Goods run.  It was perfect for this room.  It really lightened it up and completed it perfectly.  The coffee table and side table (hidden) are both from World Market also.  

What we love best about the rooms that we don't use very often are the pocket doors between the living room and the dining room.  There is also a pocket door from the entry to the living room, but it doesn't close all the way yet.  We still need to work on getting that working.

Now to the dining room pictures.  I think this might be one of our favorite rooms.  We love having people over for dinner so it's fitting.

Dining room

From the living room to the dining room

New dining table and chairs- YAY!  Love it!  It is from the Ashley Homestore.  We have two slipcover chairs and 6 regular chairs.  The fabric is a cream and light grey.  The rug in the room is one my mother-in-law has had for years.  It's about as old as the house and we actually love it!  Even the spots that are worn down.  It gives the room more character.

I really like our window seat.  There was a really old gross cushion here before, so it needed an overhaul.  I went to Morgan's Fabrics on Fremont and got two 1 inch cushions for $10 each.  At Joann's, it was somewhere around $60 or more with the coupon.  I wasn't going to pay that!  Morgan's also had the batting to make the edges and cushion softer.  I got the fabric from Joann's with a coupon.  Here's the link for the cushion design that I was going off of.  Of course it's a Pinterest find.

http://pinterest.com/pin/195484440047721835/

 Our two built-ins.  The one on the left I'm using for barware on the top and the bottom drawers I have linens and serving trays.  The one on the right is for crystal.  I was surprised one day by my mother-in-law who had filled it for me!!  I still want to do something different with the bottom since it's such a big space, I'm just not sure exactly what yet. 

Our favorite part of the room is probably our chandelier   I tried to take a good picture of it but it wasn't really working with the amount of light in the room.  In the next two pictures, you can see the details of the chandelier.  It's beautiful.  We got it from LampsPlus.com. 

Chandelier with the light off.

Chandelier with it on.  Isn't it beautiful??

The last project that I added to the room is a picture frame board.  I spent about $5 on it because I had most of the supplies to make it already.  The picture frame is from the photo booth from our wedding, then I put nails in various spots on the back, and twine to wrap around the nails.  When it was wrapped enough, I tied off the twine and then hammered the nails so that they bent sideways to lock in the twine.  It took me about 5 minutes to make and it's really cute in our dining room.  I got the idea from a friend of mine.. she got the idea from Pinterest.

The next updated rooms I'll post are of the kitchen and then I'll show you the bathroom before and after pictures.  Just need to do some final touches to it before I take the final after pictures. 

- Sarah