Style Crisis

OK that title, including the word "crisis," is a bit dramatic. Everything is quite fine over here. And maybe that's the problem.

Every time things get good and relatively easy, I start looking around my house and feeling unsatisfied. It's like my psyche knows to not even go there when there are real trials and tribulations that need my full attention. But when things are good, it goes there. Often.

I'm realizing that I'm quite random when it comes to home decor. And I'm OK with that. For now. I don't think I really know what I want our house to look like. When Marsh and I married, it was such a whirlwind. Graduating college, moving, getting pregnant right away, moving again, living with our parents for stents, living with Janson for stents (ha), starting a teaching job while being 6 months pregnant, leaving my teaching job to be a full-time mom to 3 kids under the age of 4...wow. Home decor took a back seat. Not even a back seat. It's more like it got thrown out the car all together. We basically just ran to Dillards or Bed Bath & Beyond in the spare seconds of our sanity and picked up a bunch of stuff to fill up our home as fast as possible. It's not bad stuff. It's just not me at all. So now I'm working on phasing it out (while also being on a tight budget).

The problem is, I'm not really confident I know what I want to replace these phased out items with. I want a house like Jones Design Company, but more color. Industrial undertones, but soft and frilly, too. Oh ya...and some mid century modern stuff. Ya confused yet? Because I sure am. I can't decide which of these styles I can seamlessly mix and which will just look wrong together. Sigh. #WhiteGirlProblems, right?

So I'm starting with something that I know I want to do. Paint these cabinets. These perfectly new and functional cabinets that have nothing wrong with them (cue Marshall's dirty look), but everything wrong with them.

They're so...builder's grade. And boring. I'm hoping that throwing some white on them will give the kitchen just the shockingly refreshing change I need. Can I even hope that they'll look as good as Jones Design Company's? I think I'll just stick with hoping that I don't totally botch them up. I'm nervous!

More details to come soon :)

Un-Green Thumb

I have whatever the opposite of a green thumb is. So, I guess a black thumb? Plants come to my house to die. The only plant I've successfully kept alive is this one:

It's some type of grass that is supposed to keep bugs away. I forget to water it for days on end, but it hasn't given up on me. In fact, it's getting a little out of control and bigger than I thought it would. None of my "gardening" ever goes as planned. And please notice that it's next to an empty pot. That wasn't always empty (R.I.P. pretty orange Geranium). I'm coming to the realization that the only living things that can survive in my house are the ones that can walk up to me and demand a hot dog.

I love plants, though, and am always wanting to try again. And again. I saw this glass terranium on sale at Urban Outfitters and just lit up with excitement at the thought of having it in my kitchen and growing some parsley in it, or something.

I'm pretty conflicted about actually getting it, though. It's not that expensive, but I just don't know if I can take the possibility of any more gardening failure. Plus, it wouldn't surprise me if the plants at the store grew legs and ran away from me the next time I went to buy them. I'm sure they've heard it's a plant cemetery around here.

Big Sister's Big Girl Room

I decorated a "big girl" room for Laney back when I was still pregnant with the boys, but never posted pictures because it quickly became the catch-all room once we brought home all the gifts from our wonderful baby shower and shoved most of them in there. Now that the dust has settled and most of those gifts are being used, I decided it was time to clean out the room and get it ready for Laney to start sleeping there. We haven't made the move in there quite yet. I'm scared to try. She just still seems too little to sleep in such a big girl bed! And I feel like we've turned her world up-side-down enough for the moment with these new brothers. I'm thinking we'll try it out in a few weeks and see how it goes (crossed fingers).

I knew I wanted to decorate her room in a shabby chic style but still make it feel like a kid's room. The start was slow because I'd never decorated anything in this style before. Once I got going, though, I loved how it came together. A lot of special things I already had went great it there, which was fun. The funny thing is that I spent so much time trying to make this room perfect for Laney and she'll probably say, "I want a Barney room" as soon as she can put a sentence together. Good thing I got this done before she could make any hideous requests- ha. It might not be so easy next time. Here it is!

The stuffed animals are some of my Boyds Bears that I collected as a little girl. And the Feltman Brothers dress above the bed is what Laney came home from the hospital in.

This old window was a gift from my sister and was used to decorate my house in college as well as our first apartment.

This picture was made for me by my grandmother and was hung in my first bedroom.

On the nightstand is my Mimi's Waterford crystal lamp. I was a little unsure about putting it in a toddler's room. It just looked perfect in there, though. I may not leave it in there very long. We'll see how Laney does with it!

The Yard - Before & After

I know I've been blogging a lot lately about how I've been too busy to blog. Ha. So I'm going to show you some of the stuff that we've been doing around here so that you might actually believe me. One of the things we really wanted to get done before the boys' arrival is get our yard and back porch in working, presentable order. It needed a lot of work. Here are some pictures of our yard LAST spring. It was bad. We had been so busy with Laney's arrival and babyhood that we completely neglected it for months over the winter and beginning of spring, and by the time we looked up in April, this is what our "yard" looked like (if you could even call it that):

So, we started working on the yard/outside early this year. We extended our back porch by having an extra slab of concrete poured. Marshall then stained it all by himself. The color of the stain is called "cola." It turned out so great! Go Marsh!

We then got some new cushions for the furniture and planted a hibiscus in a pot back there on the porch (my favorite!). It really warmed things up. I'm so glad we did it. Here are the "after" pictures:

We also got our front yard looking better. When we moved into this house, there was no landscaping at all. Marshall and I planted all the shrubs and flowers last spring and even constructed the Austin stone and cement border around everything (Landscaping pros, now? What what!).  So this year all we had to do was get the weeds out of the bed, lay new mulch, and prune and fertilize the plants. I was so delighted when our knock-out roses burst into bloom this year just in time for my grandmother to visit (she LOVES flowers)! I wish I had some "before" pictures of it, but no such luck. You can probably imagine, though, just from looking at how bad our backyard looked- ha.

The Playroom

The playroom is finally finished! I'm so excited. Laney has loved playing in there already. When we moved into this house almost a year and a half ago, we made this fourth bedroom into an office/sewing room. It ended up be a junk room more than anything, though, because it was just too easy to put anything we didn't know what to do with at the time in there and just shut the door. We were silly not to make it a playroom from the beginning. The other bedrooms are pretty small, so the kids won't be able to do much "playing" in them. Hopefully this will be the perfect solution!

I knew I had to get this room decorated quickly since I still have TWO more rooms to do -- another nursery and a "big girl" room for Laney. I couldn't decide for the longest time how I wanted to decorate the playroom, so my mom and sister helped me dream up a plan over Christmas break. Marshall was just thrilled to see us come home from Lowe's with buckets of paint and hear that we were, in fact, set on repainting all the walls (ha). He put on his trooper pants, though, and led the way. He stayed up all night one night after I went to bed and started and finished all the solid walls. The next day, he helped me tape and paint the striped wall. {I also want to give a shout out to my sister Lauren. She was the one who taped off all the edges, ceilings, and baseboards. And that's the most important but least fun job.}

After that I just painted all the animals on the walls ordered some animals and tree wall decals from Pottery Barn Kids and stuck them on the walls. I DID paint the canvases that say "PLAY." Then we just shoved all Laney's toys in her new toy box, hung the new TV on the wall, and finished the room off by bringing in her pink chair and bean bag.

Here are some pictures! It will probably never look this perfect or picked up again. I hope it doesn't. I mean, it is a playroom. Laney is not feeling too hot right now, but as soon as we get that precious snotty nose cleared up, I'll get some "real life" pictures of her playing away. :)