If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...

I'm not a mouse, but this story starts in a similar manner.

Now that our little man Connor is here, I've started rethinking more areas of our home.  Right now Connor sleeps in our bedroom with us.  We are planning on transitioning him to the crib in his room soon, but having him in the bedroom with us for now has gotten my mental wheels turning.  Babies are messy, and little boys are even messier.  And from what I understand, they don't make messes in localized areas, even when advised to do so.  Our bedding is beautiful (to me at least), but the giant comforter is not easily washed.  It's too large to fit in a washing machine drum, even a front-loading Star Trek-esque one like ours.  Which means we're rolling the dice on making an unplanned trip to the laundromat every time we have that baby in the bed with us.

He's sleeping... like a BOSS.

Last spring Steve and I started talking about updating our bedding for temperature reasons anyway- the poly fill of our comforter was nice and toasty in the winter, but much too warm from May through September.  And after three years of use, the fill was a bit deflated at the top edge and had sunk down into the lower corners.  So we decided to start searching for new bedding.  Our requirements were: easy to wash, hypo-allergenic (down fill makes me sneeze and itch), natural fiber (poly fill can make us sweaty), work with our existing sheets and wall color, and not cost an arm and a leg (hello, maternity leave!).  We decided we'd look for quilts and see what we came up with.  This time around I was also looking for something decidedly less fussy than what we had.  Not that I disliked it, but just that our style has evolved since we purchased it and so has our lifestyle.  I was hoping to trade elegance for ease.

How it was.

I ended up finding a quilt Steve and I both liked on Target's website.  It had good reviews, a trip to my local store confirmed that it was soft and a nice weight, and it was on sale.  Bingo.

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And then as long as we were getting a new quilt, we might as well replace the down-alternative blanket we've been using that had grown increasingly lumpy with each wash....

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So now our bedroom looks like this.  Please ignore the dust, piles of stuff on our nightstands, and non-matching pillowcases.  I have a baby, it's not like I have time to style photos for this blog.  Puhleese.

The raw edge makes this more modern than your average quilt.

Love the edge on that blanket!

Which got me thinking.  Steve and I love the new quilt and blanket.  But now everything else in the room seems too formal.  And plain verging on monochrome since there's no loud print on our new quilt.  Plus our lamps.  They aren't exactly our style (even though we both love Tiffany lamps), they take up so much room on our nightstands, and they're really heavy and fragile!  I can just imagine Connor walking in there, grabbing the cord, and knocking himself out with one of those- you know, once he's walking.  I mentioned to Steve that I liked the idea of having wall lamps, and he was immediately sold.

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Which got me thinking.  If we had wall lamps, we'd be able to actually have some organization in place on our nightstands.  And maybe some pretty things, too.

Which got me thinking.  We'd have room to hang some art on either side of our beds.

Which got me thinking.  We'd be able to introduce more color to the room to add visual interest and warmth.

If you give a mouse a cookie....  She'll end up making a collage on polyvore and wanting to refresh the whole bedroom.

Awww yeah!

Challenge accepted!!

Shoe Shrine

I have an awkward confession.  I have big feet.  Like, really big for a gal who tops out at 5'7".  I  wear an 11.   And, being a girl, I harbor a deep abiding love for cute shoes.  This has led me to be a compulsive shoe buyer.  I hunt religiously for 11s.  If I see them in a cute style, and I try on that style, and if (miracle of miracles) they fit and are comfortable and don't make my feet look like boats, I buy them.  End of story.

Well, almost.  It's gotten to a point where it's become difficult to wrangle so many pairs of cute shoes.  Especially now at the tail end of summer, where every pair I own that's not boots gets a little action.  It's not like wintertime when all of my sandals get tucked up for the season and I have tons of closet space for my little closed-toe pretties (#firstworldproblems).

I have a point, I promise.  About a month ago, Nine West had an amazing sale.  They pretty much never stock 11s, but I love to browse anyway.  So back in the clearance section, I found a pair of amazing coral flats.  In 11.  And way comfortable.  And $14.  IKNOWRIGHT!?!  And wouldn't you know they had a pair of navy patent flats right next to it.  And then I found a pair of oxblood pointy toe flats in suede with the cutest buckle detail.  People, you know I bought all three pairs of shoes.

Here comes the point:  I got home and realized that I didn't have any room for my new shoes.  I tried rearranging to no avail.

Hanging shoe rack, wire shoe rack, and floor: full.

I shopped the house and thought the ladder bookshelf that lives in our dining room (right where that buffet that Steve told me he'd make will live one day) might be the solution to my issue.

The photo's bad, but at least I restrained myself long enough to take one!

Nope.  It was cute, and I liked that my shoes looked like they were on display instead of just shoved in some cubbies, but I still didn't quite have enough room.

Steve brainstormed a fancy shelving system that he could build me.  We estimated it'd cost about $150.  Large enough for more pairs of shoes than I own, and with customizable cubbies.  Sounds cool right?  No matter how cool  it would be, I just couldn't justify spending $150 to make a thing to hold the things that I'd just spent money on at Nine West.

So I canvassed the garage, found two extra shelving brackets, some of the same MDF that Steve used to support the shelves he built in our office closet and kitchen pantry, and two leftover planks of the nice primed/edged shelving material.  Steve whipped the shelves up in about 45 minutes, and I followed behind patching the screw holes and putting a couple coats of white semi-gloss paint on everything to make it look clean and uniform.

Ready to roll!

And while we were working on a better way to organize my shoes, we found a better way to organize Steve's, too.  He inherited the tall wire rack that I used to use, and his slim press-board cubby fit perfectly under the bottom shoe shelf on my side to give an extra layer of storage for my flat sandals and tennis shoes.  Check out how my shoes live now!

SO MUCH SHOES!

I love that I am able to keep everything organized.  Flats get the top row.  Heels get the middle row.  Seasonal and athletic shoes get the floor.  It's so easy to see everything.  I never "lose" a pair of flats because there's nowhere for them to hide anymore.  Since they're organized by style and color, I get the thrill of feeling like I'm shopping every time I go to pick out my shoes for the day (or pick an outfit to match the shoes I want to wear).  It's also forcing me to keep my shoes neat.  Why would I kick my shoes off in the closet when I can display them so prettily?  Here's the thing that really kills me about these shelves, too.  My closet is the exact same size it has always been, but I GAINED closet space.  I can hang more items because I no longer have a hanging shoe rack, and I am fully utilizing the bottom portion of my closet.

LOOK AT ALL THOSE SHOES!

Here's how Steve's closet looks now that he reorganized his shoes, too.

Note: the purple dress does not belong to Steve.

Makes a pretty big difference, eh?  I love that this was such an inexpensive and easy upgrade.  We had everything we needed on hand already, but even if you had to buy the brackets and boards you'd spend less than $25.  Does anyone else have clever shoe storage ideas to share?  You never know then next time I'll run across some adorable 11s that need to come live with me!

Branching Out

I love it when something you've been on the prowl for what seems like forever randomly pops into your life.

Steve and I have been waiting for the perfect piece of art to hang above our bed for a long time.  It had to be serene.  It had to feature some aspect of nature.  And it had to be large.

Think five feet wide covers it?

That's exactly what this beauty is.  About five feet wide and twenty inches tall.  I found it on Fab.com (which is a really fun place, if you haven't checked it out already).

Branching Out by Elementem Photography.

It's crazy how fast this bad boy arrived at our house.  Exactly two days after I ordered it, it was on our front porch.  And exactly one day after that, it was hung above our bed (thanks, honey!).

Perfect fit!

Serendipity at its finest.

Love it!

Master Bedroom: Move-In to Present

The house tour continues!  Our master bedroom has been "mostly finished" since move-in.  Like the office, we knew we'd be spending a lot of time in the bedroom so it was important to us for to make it comfortable ASAP.   We were aiming for a room that felt calm and luxurious.  Let me tell you, we have come a long way from sleeping on a futon (like we did in the early days of our marriage... until I put a knee through it.... long story).

Steve and I have never had bedroom furniture before.  After the futon, we did upgrade to a queen-size mattress.  It was our first big purchase as a married couple.  For a long time that mattress lived on the floor.  We kept our clothes in mismatched hand-me-down dressers and made do without nightstands.  Then we inherited a very pretty cherry veneer bed frame with two matching nightstands.  We felt so posh!  But after living with those for five years or so, we decided that as long as we were going to move into a new house, we might as well take the plunge and have a real grown-up bedroom, with furniture that matched and a mattress that two tall sleep-thrasers would comfortably fit on.  We drained a large chunk of our savings on a king size bed frame, two nightstands, a tallboy dresser, and a Tempurpedic mattress.  Let me tell you, that mattress is probably the best investment we have ever made.  Worth every last penny.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Here's what things looked like when we first bought the house.  When we first walked in from the hallway, we were excited about how BIG this room was!  Not that it's huge, but it was bigger than any bedroom we'd had before.  There was a sliding door to the small concrete patio in the backyard (which included a view to the aforementioned McChevron).

Blank slate.

And once we were in the room, we turned and saw this:

His and hers.  Oh yeah!

Steve and I were lucky enough to have a walk-in closet in our last house, but we've learned that walk-in closets mean you have to share space with your spouse, and unless your walk in closet is ginormous, that can be tricky.  His and hers closets meant Steve was excited about never having to trip on my shoes again and I was excited to never see a pile of his clothes on the floor again.  I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you it doesn't exactly work out that way all the time, but it's a lot easier for each of us to camouflage our own mess now than it was when we shared a closet.  I offer this photo as proof.

Hidden mess!

You can see three of the only four upgrades we did to the room itself in this photo.  We painted the walls a soft grey-blue called Rising Tide by Valspar in Sherwin Williams' low VOC Harmony line.  I think it's really pretty with the white base trim.  Steve and his dad installed crown moulding, which made a huge difference in making this room feel upscale.  We replaced the white wooden pulls on the bifolds with oil-rubbed bronze ones.  We also switched out the overhead brass boob light with a less obviously boob-ish one in oil-rubbed bronze.

My closet is on the right.  These closets were chock-full with icky looking coated-wire closet systems when we first bought the house (like pretty much every other closet in the house).  Steve ripped them out and built us a sturdy, more traditional shelf and rod closet system.  I've got a box of keepsakes and a box of off-season and off-size clothes above.  Shoes live below and in a hanging organizer that's hidden behind the right bi-fold.

A peek inside my closet.

Steve's also got keepsakes and off-season clothes in the top of his closet and shoes down below.  His closet is a little emptier than mine because he also has total use of the tallboy dresser in the foreground.

A peek inside Steve's closet.

 Since Steve gets to use the tallboy, I use the two storage drawers in the footboard of the bed.  I wish I had a better camera- it's difficult to capture how regal the furniture looks.  The headboard is sleigh-style.  We lucked out with the color scheme- the bedside lamps are tiffany-style hand-me-downs from Steve's parents in blue that go perfectly with the blue and brown that's already going on in the room.  We are still on the hunt for artwork to live above the headboard.  I have a very specific idea of what I want; I just haven't found it yet.

Comfy.

And then there's my quasi-vanity.  I wanted a place for my jewelry to live that wasn't in the bathroom or on my nightstand.  So I morphed a few different ideas I had seen on Pinterest.  I bought some cheap boxes at Target to hold our socks and my odds and ends like belts.  I spray painted an obnoxiously teal cheap-o mirror with oil-rubbed bronze and used a towel rack with shower curtain hooks to hold my necklaces.  I love that I can see everything easily.  Plus it's pretty.

Vanitatiousness.

 And thus concludes the master bedroom tour!  Only two more spaces to go before we're up to date, everyone- the master bath and the (eeps!) garage.