Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

Ella got a new lighting fixture! (Sort of.) It's new to us. It came from my mom's house who is moving out of state :(. I have always loved this fixture and am so excited that Ella owns it now. My mom and my husband tried to convince me otherwise, but I really wanted it for her and it turned out that they both really liked it in her room once it was up. The Mister even said it looked great.  She's been needing a new fixture not because the one she had was faulty but because it just didn't "go". It was a fixture we got for free from a neighbor years before she was born. It was a cool fixture just not really for us, and definitely not for Ella's nursery.

We had been looking into getting one, but we didn't know when that may happen because the ones we were interested in were at least a couple hundred dollars. I am so happy we didn't end up having to dish out all that money to update the lighting in Ella's room to something that we'd like.
I couldn't find a picture of the old one, the reason being, I always made an effort to make sure it wasn't in the shot when ever I'd take pictures of Ella's room, but we had to take one to list it on Craigslist and didn't before it came down so here is a shot of it that was taken while the Mr. held it up:

And this is her new fixture:

 All those lights (5 bulbs) really make her room bright. Ella's room already has the best natural light in the house, but now it's also got the best lighting at night time too.

Here's a shot of it in her room, all lit up, pre-pennant banner:

It's definitely girly, but that's just perfect, she is a baby girl after all!

Times, They Are A Re-Arrangin'

Ella's room has been getting a bit of a facelift by means of some new furniture arrangements and additions.

This is what it looked like a couple weeks ago:

And this is where we are so far:

The pennant banner is something I made for under $3. ( I promise to do a how-to post on this and give you details on how to make your own for this price as well!) It was supposed to say "Happy 1st Birthday Ella" (notice how there are exactly enough pennant flags for each letter?) and then I was going to flip it over to use in her room, but I ran out of time before her party and never got the letters up. I'm not quite certain if it will stay on this side of the room yet, but for now it will do.

Ella's changing table switched walls and is now located on the other side of the room, which I am not done with quite yet, but I will do a post on when the layout on that side starts to make sense.

There's the ottoman (not yet reupholstered) and the rocking chair showin' it's true color. The fan got moved to here, but.... I'm not sure I'm lovin' it.

These wallpaper letters are the ones from Land of Nod and they used to hang above her window, but since I have plans for drapes to go up I'm not sure where we will find a home for them just yet.... maybe above her closet?....

Ella's window is still naked, save for the faux wood blinds. I have the fabric I'd like to use for them, but they're shear and have a pattern, and I promised the mister that I'd back all of the drapery in our home in white blackout material since he has a thing about homes that appear to have mis-matched draperies from the outside of the home. Also, the blackout fabric will help the bug and I to sleep at night since we are both a tad light-sensitive.

This mirror is something we snagged at the Home Depot for 35 beans. It was a second choice as they discontinued the one I had originally had my heart set on.  It took the place of Ella's "My First Year" calendar, literally. I just hung it up on the small nail that was holding the calender as a temporary fix even though it came with a substantial nob type hanger. 

The wicker toy chest you see in the first picture is still in that same spot, beside the window. It's not my favorite thing to to look at when I first step in the room or walk by (it's located directly in front of the door) but I'm having trouble finding another spot for it that still gives the bug enough room to pull out her toys and play with them in front of the toy chest.

The reason for all of these happenings is that I have never really finished her nursery and I told myself i wanted to at least have Ella's chair painted, drapery up, and a rug for her room by her first birthday. So far I'm obviously not done and have exceed my deadline, but it is still important to me and I hope to make her room a place that is fun to be and nice to look at.

Night Tide

Too much has happened since I last blogged! Ella's first birthday came and went and so did her very first birthday bash! But those are for another post. Today I want to show you what I got done before her birthday. The rocking chair I got for Christmas while I was pregnant with the bug went from this:

To this:

To this:

And there she is all primed and painted! The color is Night Tide by Rustoleum and is actually a smidge darker than this picture shows. I really like it and feel that it brings some modernity to this piece. 

Lookey at what I found!

This awesome ottoman for only $7.99 at Goodwill.

I do plan to reupholster it. I love the plush fabric but it needs some cleaning and it just doesn't mesh well with what we have now. I'm thinking a darker color to hide stains, and maybe something stain-resistant as well.... it's on casters which I have debated removing and replacing with table legs but I like it mobile and Ella does too. The mister is worried the casters that are on it will scratch up our bamboo flooring but it may just find a home in Ella's room for good and if it does I'm thinking hot pink velvet 'cuz girl needs some color in her mainly-white-furniture nursery.

Also... I am in the process of painting her rocking chair. I meant to ages ago when I got it as my Christmas present from the in-laws back when I was still pregnant with the bug, but never got around to it. I figured I would paint it white (I'm slightly obsessed with this non-color color), but now I have a vision for it. It's almost done being primed and I have boughten the paint and if all goes well it will be done tomorrow.

Also 2 big things happened today. the first and most awesome is not really home-related: Ella walked! In this house.. she took steps. So there, it's house related. The second awesome thing that happened today you will have to wait for a post on it! I promise it's that amazing.

Pillow Talk

Sew, sew, sew. I finally finished my throw pillows for our chairs in the living room! I bought this fabric probably 2 months ago, then realized I wanted the pillow covers to have invisible zippers, which lead to a further realization that the sewing machine I am borrowing from my sister-in-law doesn't have a zipper foot... so I ordered the Coats and Clark set of invisible zipper feet on Etsy since it was cheaper than Amazon after shipping. It took me over 3 weeks to run out of patience and write the person and ask them where my purchase was... turned out it hadn't been shipped and had slipped underneath a seat in her car...whoops! So a few days later I received my package with a note inside apologizing for the delay. It took me another week to get the motivation to try on the zipper feet, none of which worked.

My brilliant husband then suggested that I sew in the invisible zippers by hand. I seriously lack logic sometimes so to me this was a genius idea! Not only did it work out but it saved me the headache of trying to seam rip out stitching in my zipper which is inevitable for me whenever I sew a zipper in. It did take me about 40 minutes to sew in each zipper, but I did it while watching my newly-discovered favorite show of the moment, Ally McBeal.

So after 2 days (one pillow per day during Ella nap time, also known my time to let the creative or slacker juices flow) they were done! That day we had 5 friends over including 2 female friends and no one noticed or bothered to mention my pillows :(. I was really hoping they would because I'm so proud of them! Without further ado here are my lovelies sitting pretty on our chairs:

The print is actually a knit and is a hounds tooth plaid which made it a bit tricky to not only match up but also prevent the sewing machine from stretching the knit so that my carefully pinned plaids no longer lined up front to back. I had originally bought pipping for them, but since they did not have gray I bought white and then decided I might like them better without pipping rather then settle for white, but I'm sure they would look good either way.

I already had the pillow inserts, which were 18". I cut each piece (4) to be 18" by 18" which may sound like I didn't leave any room for seam allowance, but it actually helps the fabric to snugly hug the insert and keep you pillows looking plump rather than frumpy and sagged. I could have even cut the fabric smaller or had a larger seam allowance as mine were not as tight and they could have been.

I bought slightly more than 1 yard and at 44" width I still enough leftover material to make another pillow but you could buy just one yard and have enough to make 2 pillows. The fabric I found was on the clearance isle at Jo-ann's at $10/ yard. I went back 7 days later and they were having a 50% off sale on all clearance (it was St. Patty's day weekend, they usually do this around the holidays) so I drove home grabbed my receipt and got refunded for the difference in cost of all the fabric I had bought a week prior. This made the total only $5 for a yard of fabric and about 2.50 per zipper.

I bought some other fabric the day I bought the above fabric to make throw pillow covers for our couch and plan to have those done soon!

Oh What A Colorful World!

Wen to the paint shop with the mister today to visit his favorite paint salesperson Kelly over at Rhodda Paint. We picked up a gallon of paint in Classic Burgundy by Benjamin Moore that we had color matched, and will be painting our front door in the near future.
We are also looking into getting a magnetic kick plate for the front door in Satin Nickel (this is the hardware finish we have throughtout our home) to cover up a few dents made by skateboarding into the door and also to jazz it up a bit. I am currently "working my magic" as the mister likes to call it, finding the lowest price possible for the kick plate we'd like. So far, the low price leader, which can be found here, has it at $58.00 plus $9.95 s&h. Anyone seen them around for cheaper?

We will be getting the 8"x34" size for our 36"wide door, and again are opting for magnetic mounting so that we won't have to screw the kick plate into the door which can lead to rusting.

When we are done our front door will look something like this:

The exterior paint color of the house will be medium gray. Below you can see the impact of the red door, white trim, and grey house combo:

To complete our entry, I'd love to add a pair of boxwoods or some other pair of potted low maintenance greenery to frame the door.

All images from Your Nest Design

Also, to read more about choosing the right door color for your home you can visit Your Nest Design and see more great color options!