{ Etsy Shop Love + Upstairs Today }

I am excited to show you all the spaces that I love and that the kids love about their upstairs bedroom. It's been a long time coming and I've finally got things organized enough that I am willing to share with everyone. There's still SO MUCH that needs to be done but for now we will concentrate on where we are today. 

We'll start in the "reading corner" or so the kids call it. It's the little area behind the stairs where I painted the herringbone accent wall. 

They got these bean bag chairs for Christmas from their Aunt and we decided this was the best place for them over in this corner. The kids love sitting down and picking out a book to read and I love that they are reading! 

We have the trim up around the room but it still needs paint on it. The base trim got two coats on it before putting it up but the upper trim around the staircase hasn't even had a coat of primer yet. 

While Jenna spends a lot of her time over in the reading area or in her kitchen -which I will show you soon, THIS is where Trevor spends the majority of his time. At the Lego table. We painted this table with chalk paint which is perfect for drawing roads and all sorts of things.

The kids and I painted it a couple months ago

 

Hours have been spent at this table. He doesn't have a huge Lego collection but he started to accumulate a few sets last year and now he has enough to spend a whole afternoon building and playing. Future engineer right there!

 

The kitchen is the other spot that Jenna will spend the majority of her day. This is the IKEA kitchen and it's perfect for her. 

She just got a new apron and literally wears it all day and goes back and forth from the kitchen and doing other things all.day.long. We put that little table over in the corner with the chair so she could set up the table to eat her "meals" and drink her tea! So.darn.cute!

Here's the other side of the room where their beds are. I love the look of the painted beds! 

 

I still want to put something above each of their beds and get a little table for the short corners on each side. I bought those curtains at Ikea and shortened them. I like the curtains but I am still looking for something different. I want something with a little more of a bold pattern on it that jumps out. I think it would be better with the walls being so plain to bring in more of a catching curtain. 

Did you notice the little baby bed? We got that for Jenna as a Christmas gift. She thinks it is her duty to put her baby to bed every night. I found the bed on Etsy. The shop is called, TheLittleMommy. Kristal has a lot of super cute beds and she also makes blankets, pillows, and mattresses to fit the beds too. You can see the blanket on our little baby bed. It is so adorable! These beds would be perfect for photo shoots too as seen below.

 Kristal is offering 20% to my readers by using the Promo Code: PROMO20.

There really isn't a lot of wall space to hang things up on, other than the wall space behind the beds and this little space between the closets. 

I finally got a few things hung up and I am really loving it!

We still need to paint the closet doors and add some handles yet as you can see, but so far I am really liking how this little wall is turning out.

I am using three of the frames to display the kids' art work and two of them to hold my two favorite photos of the kids. They are held up with command strips. I've never used those before and I'm not getting paid to say that I love them, but really, where have these been all my life! Love them!

The bottom board with the green chevron design is a magnet board. We made a little daily chore chart to put up on there-not pictured, and it's the perfect spot for it!

We love that little magnet board. It's already held up countless pieces of art work from our craft days and whatever Jenna thinks needs to be displayed!

I found this on Etsy at LivyLouDesigns. update: Chris is working on adding things to her shop right now so the link wont work today but should be up and running soon! You can click here to see her facebook page and the products that she has. Chris will be back soon with a promo code for my readers when her shop is up and running again. I will update you when I get that. 

Chase spends a lot of time up here playing too. We have his little jumper toy in here but he's just recently started to get board with it so that will probably go away soon.

That pretty much sums up the whole room tour for now. Like I said there are still lots of things to be done up there. Painting trim, painting closet doors, adding closet shelves (for now the clothes are just folded in piles on the floor :/), and adding wall art above the beds. The kids are always wanting to be in their room and I am SO glad we Mark spent a lot of time making this room the best it could be for our kids!

Here's a quick reminder of what it started out like if you are new here or if you've forgotten...

I love looking back at those old photos and seeing just how amazing the transformation really is!

Pretty awesome huh?! 

If you could already tell by now too from reading my past posts about my Etsy shop love and then this post, I LOVE buying off Etsy. It's a great place to find a lot of different items. I wanted to take a second to share two of my other favorite shops today. I haven't purchased anything yet from these shops but some of these things are definitely on my Christmas list!

The first one is RagNBoneStudio.

Allison has great welded jewelry displays over at her shop Rag N' Bone Studio. These are a must see and so cute they are begging to be displayed on your vanity or dresser! She is offering 10% off to all my readers using the promo code: RHP10.

The second shop that I am really liking right now is OneHappyLeaf.

Anna's shop One Happy Leaf has some adorable laser cut unique items. These are one-of-a kind things that would be perfect as a gift to a friend or wedding party (see the cuff links) or yourself (of course!). She is offering 10% off to you guys using the promo code: FIRSTLOVE.

Thanks for taking a minute to check out our upstairs bedroom and for allowing me to share my fav Etsy shops here on the blog! Until next time.... Be Blessed!

{ DIY Star Shirt }

Today was craft day at the campground. 

We painted our own t-shirts and they turned out so cute!

I printed out three different star sizes and traced them onto freezer paper. Did you guys know when you iron freezer paper onto fabric it sticks? It does! After you have your freezer paper shape cut out all you have to do is press the hot iron on it for a couple seconds and it's stuck on. It peels right off when you're done with it so it's perfect for these kinds of projects.

When I was at Walmart last I picked up a handful of their cheap children's t-shirts. They have them for around $2 sometimes so it works really good to stock up for when we want to do these kind of projects.

The only other things you need are pencils with good erasers and some fabric paint. 

We chose to do stars so the kids could wear these shirts for the 4th of July. We also chose red, white, and blue for our paint colors to stick with our theme. 

It's pretty self explanatory, but all you do is dip the pencil eraser into the paint and dot away. Try to make lots of dots around the perimeter of the star so when you peel off the freezer paper the star shape will pop.

The kids really liked doing this craft and it was SO easy!

Even Chase got in on the action!

This is my kind of craft too because there was NO mess, other than wiping the kids hands down. 

I really love doing t-shirt crafts with the kids because it's something that they get to keep AND wear. I love getting pictures of my kids in their homemade shirts and then those memories last a life time.

We are really enjoying our camping trip this year! The kids are having a blast and we are getting in some much needed family time.

Have a safe and fun 4th of July! I'll be back later this week with the sneak peak of the kids room!

{ The Kitchen Today }

You'll all be happy to hear I'm feeling a little less crazy today! I was in a cleaning mood this morning too so I figured I would take some pictures of the kitchen while it was at it's best. Let me tell you a little secret, it NEVER looks this clean and clutter free. This was a clean and "staged" photo session, we actually live here with chaos and kids so don't think for two second that I have it all together because that "clean" look lasted about 5 minutes! So now on to the photos...

I think you had a quick glance at the new microwave and the shelf above it in the last kitchen post. I wanted a shelf and Mark gave me a shelf, it is perfect! I still haven't really decided what I want to put up there yet but for now it is home to two of my flee market finds (a cake stand and white wire bowl) and a cute cookie jar I picked up on clearance at Target. 

The shelf is pretty basic and I painted it the same color as the cabinets including the wall in the back to give it that complete "built in" look. Here's a couple quick phone shots while he was building it.

Below is a comparison of with and with out the microwave and extra shelf. It really makes that side of the upper cabinets look more complete. Plus the hardware really helps to make it all look a little more finished. 

We still have a few things we want to do with the upper cabinets. Remember that little 5 inch spot on the end? We're not sure what we want to do there yet. I think it's too small for one of those spice rack things and it's too small for a stock cabinet so if we wanted a tiny little cabinet it will have to be custom built. The other option is to just put a panel there and block it off completely to give it a more finished look. We also want to add crown molding up on the top.

I am LOVING cooking and baking with a center island. That says something because if you know me and if you don't know me, now you know, I really really don't like cooking. Like at all. I love to bake, I could bake all day long, and do sometimes, but cooking meals and stuff like that, not so much my thing. But cooking and baking is SO nice in THIS kitchen. It is really functionable with the island and the layout and I am extremely happy with everything that we decided to do in here.

Here's the side of the island. I don't think I ever showed you the detail work Mark did. It really makes the cabinets look more custom. I absolutely love it!

Mark thought to put an outlet on the end too and it sits right at the top so it's hardly noticeable but highly useful. I've used that thing a lot already!

The ends of the cabinets against the walls have the same detail too.

The outlet was a little too close to go right down with the trim so Mark cut around it. Handy guy he is!

I don't think I showed you the table and chairs yet either. We used to have a counter height table and chairs set (which is for sale by the way if you are looking for a table). We loved our old table and having 8 chairs was awesome but we just didn't have room in this house for it so we went to Ikea and got a long and skinny table to go in here. 

It extends even further out so when we have lots of people over we can still accommodate 8 people around the table. Right now we have it pushed up to the window. This allows us to have the most room during every day use because this room is really small. Here is what it looks like with it pulled out and you can see how little space there is between the island and the chairs. 

See what I mean. It's a little tight. It works but for now we like it to be pushed against the windows. The future plan is to build a bench along the window side that accommodates the table being pushed in and out from the wall. Lots of kid butts can sit on a bench which will be nice when the kids have friends over but when it's just us we will still be able to push the table back toward the windows to have maximum walking space in the kitchen. 

Did you notice we have the old fridge out on the deck still. I don't know why but we seem to move appliances out to the deck and that's where they stay until we finally get time sick enough of seeing them to move them. Clearly we have our priorities in order!

Back to the table and chairs...

We purchased the two end chairs at Ikea and the four clear chairs are called ghost chairs. These are great for small rooms so the room doesn't feel too "full" with chairs in it. These ghost chairs are great to have with kids because they are so easy to wipe down. I really like them a lot. Mark is indifferent. I got them for a really great deal too because these are factory defect chairs, meaning they have tiny flaws (that I cant even really see) so I could snag them at a fraction of the cost!

The end chairs are SO comfortable. If you are looking for a relatively in-expensive nicer chair Ikea is the place to look. I am thinking of stenciling a pair of slip covers to have for a pop of color. Did I mention these are fully removable slip covers that can be machine washed?! Yep, that's why I was ok with getting white!

Did you notice the big dining room light in one of the photos above? If you follow me on Instagram, you already saw this. Isnt is cool?! That was another Ikea purchase. It was around $20 too so even more exciting when you know the price tag. 

Here's a shot of the other side of the room. The pantry cabinets are back on and the trim has been put up around the cabinets and the doorway. 

We want to get a cabinet for above the refrigerator and then Mark will construct something around the fridge to make it look built in. For now it sits there and the top of it gets to showcase my mixer and other things that I don't have homes for yet. 

When I look around this room I am still amazed at where it is now compared to what it looked like before. Amazing really doesn't cut it when describing the transformation that this room has undergone. My hubby is the BEST and has worked so hard to make this room into the vision that I drew for him on a piece of paper almost eight months ago. 

Here is a quick comparison of what it looked like before and then now.

If you missed the posts about the kitchen renovation you can see a few of them here and here.

Thanks for stopping in and checking it out! 

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