When I was making the wall art display for our baby E’s nursery, I designed some religious themed artwork to frame and hang on his wall. I included the two Bible passages that inspired me the most during my pregnancy as well as a very inspirational quote from one of our favorite saints, St. Francis of Assisi. You can see how I integrated them into the design of his room here. I wanted to share them with all of you in case anyone else finds inspiration from these quotes as well! Click on the images below to be brought to a printable pdf version of each image. If you decide to use these, feel free to show me pictures of how you used them in your home!
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Baby E – “I prayed for this child”
Time has been flying by lately. I feel like I am trying to play catchup after so many months of inactivity. I spent most of last week trying to catch up on almost two months of housework that had to get put aside while I recovered from the extreme Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction pain, as well as recovering from my c-section as well. One of these days, I want to start working on really recovering my garden as well, but that will take a bit more time. Whenever I have a few free moments, I have been trying to finish working on processing all of the pictures from baby E’s newborn sessions that I shot. I am extremely proud of the session that I posted on our photography blog today…be sure to take a look (link here)!
Our Baby Boy’s Nursery Tour!
Yesterday’s post explained a little about how I got out of my creative slump a few months back, despite being on pregnancy bed rest. I originally had plans to design our baby’s room in a woodland style theme, with a large tree mural on one wall. However, once I started looking at pictures of baby rooms online, I realized that so many people seem to have had that same idea recently and I got pretty discouraged. Our neighborhood is named after all of the large mature pine trees here, and that is our favorite thing about this area. When we first saw all the trees in this neighborhood, we both instantly knew that this would be our home. 🙂
I wanted to create a nursery design that would reflect our love of the outdoors, and still show my unique design style. The idea of a tree mural had to be scrapped since I could not paint a wall while on bed rest anyway. My challenge was to find ways to reflect the look that I wanted, via projects that I could create while lying in bed. Normally, sewing and painting projects would be my first go-to option, but since I could not sit up and sew anything until recently, I had to use other methods of creating for most of the decorations. Even more of a challenge: I primarily had to use whatever supplies I had on hand in my craft room since I could not go wander around any craft supply stores for quite some time. In the end, I went with a nature/outdoors/garden/forest kind of theme, with a little inspiration thrown in from The Lorax (the mobile over the changing table has my version of truffula trees!).
Despite all of these restrictions, I absolutely love the end result. My husband did an amazing job redoing the walls, adding insulation to the exterior wall, and creating a custom frame for the window trim. We wanted to replicate the look of the trim in our old craftsman rental house. You can see the before pictures of this house here.
Some interesting items worth noting…the tiny rocking chair was given by my great-grandmother to my mom, then to me (I sewed the little “Rockin Cowboy” cushion). The hamper was a baby shower gift from when I was born. 🙂 I found the changing table for free on Craigslist and was originally planning to use it as a plant stand in my patio area outside. When I realized it went well with our crib, my husband sanded it down, repainted it, and made new shelves for it. The daybed was originally intended for our living room, but that didn’t end up working as well as we had hoped. I wanted to make sure that I have a pet-free bed to nap in after feedings, so we moved it into the nursery. The needlepoint pillow in the middle of the daybed was embroidered by my grandma, and sewn together by me.
The framed wall art is a mix of items. I found the vintage Winnie the Pooh prints at a thrift store a while back (actually during my first pregnancy just after we got married). I have been hanging onto them since them, waiting to be able to use them. 🙂 The owl prints were a free printable that I found via The Handmade Home. I sculpted the cross and made the yarn covered “E”. The round empty embroidery hoop on the wall is left intentionally blank for now. Once he is born, I will be making an embroidery design with his name and birth date. The prints with the Bible quotes and the quote from St. Francis are printables that I designed myself. They will be coming soon to the blog as well!
I am so happy with the finished room, and can’t wait for the little guy to join us in his room! The cats love the room so much that I have trouble keeping them out. 🙂 Two walls were intentionally left fairly empty to leave room for all of the photographs that we are bound to take of our little guy. In the next few weeks, I will be posting tons of DIY instructions on many of the various projects I made!
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INSPIRED Workshop
A few months back, I had the amazing opportunity to attend the INSPIRED Workshop in downtown Los Angeles. It was hosted by Emilee Sutherland of Tasteful Tatters and Susannah VanDyke of Lukas & Suzy VanDyke Photography. The workshop was aimed toward creative professionals, looking to find inspiration without being distracted by our internet saturated world.
The workshop had perfect timing for me. I was feeling particularly uninspired after a couple of months of pregnancy bed rest, and I was starting to get pretty down about being pent up in our house all of the time. While I was temporarily off strict bed rest and on modified bed rest, I officially should not have been driving to downtown LA, but I could not pass up the opportunity to attend this workshop! 🙂
The workshop was held in the VanDyke’s amazing studio, which is very cozy with its vintage decor and details. I would have loved to have taken tons of pictures of the studio and the workshop, but since I was not supposed to be lifting my camera at all, I had to settle for just a few pictures that I took while sitting down.
Emilee and Susannah put together these adorable gift bags (seen below) for all of the attendees, to jump start our creative process. If you ever have the opportunity to attend a future INSPIRED Workshop, I highly recommend it! It helped me refresh my perspective on my creative process, and get back to trusting my internal voice for finding inspiration, in craft projects, home decorating projects, future photoshoots, and more. I generally try to stay away from getting sucked into a Pinterest trap when planning a project or photoshoot, but while on bed rest, I was starting to see how people can get fall into the Pinterest quicksand. The workshop gave me the confidence to stop scrolling through various sites looking for inspiration for a very big project that I had been feeling kind of lackluster about…designing the decor for our baby’s nursery! After the workshop, I felt rejuvenated and ready to reboot my creative process, particularly with photoshoots for our own photography business, A+C Photography (once I am medically allowed to resume shooting of course).
Be sure to check out the INSPIRED site here! Tomorrow I will be posting the end result of my creativity reboot…the full tour of our baby’s nursery!
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Easy DIY Project: Fabric Decorated Bulletin Board
I have been working on all of the finishing touches on my home office lately, and this is one of my recent projects. I had previously covered my plain cork bulletin board with some pink vintage fabric at our old house, but I wasn’t thrilled with the end result for my new office. For one thing, I didn’t want a pink bulletin board on a pink wall. Secondly, the craft glue that I used the first time around was not the best choice (you can see in the first picture how it seeped through the fabric and left a visible mark).
I selected some fun fabric to use this time, and decided to lay the new fabric over the old fabric since I liked the scalloped border on the pink fabric so much. I measured out how large of a rectangle I would need, and then added about an extra quarter inch on each side to allow for a non-sew hem, and cut out my new fabric rectangle.
Once the piece was cut out, I folded in each side of the fabric and pressed with the steam setting on the iron. When I got to the corners, I folded and steamed them in at an angle, kind of like when you make a bed with a flat sheet, and secured with a tiny dot of fabric glue. After all of the edges were cleanly finished, I made sure the rest of the fabric was well ironed and wrinkle free.
Since the craft glue that I used the first time was not the best option, I decided to try a glue gun this time around, and it worked much better. I just glued the new piece of fabric in place, putting small amounts of glue around all the edges of the fabric. That’s it! Super easy project, and I love the finished result hanging in my office. 🙂
More of the office decorating projects coming up, and the full unveiling of my new home office coming soon!
Easy DIY Project: Fabric Covered Custom Cabinet Knobs
I have been working on all of the finishing touches in my new home office, and I have not been able to find any knobs for all of my storage cabinets that I liked. I have looked everywhere, and nothing seemed to be just right. When I found a pile of fabric scraps in one of my drawers, I came up with the perfect solution! I decided to take some plain knobs and decoupage them into knobs that coordinate perfectly with my new office decor. 🙂 I love the end result! Here’s what I did:
1. Found some plain, inexpensive knobs that were the right size. I used pink ceramic knobs.
2. Covered a knob with a layer of decoupage glue (I used glossy Mod Podge).
3. Covered the knob with a scrap of fabric, and wrapped a tiny rubber band around the fabric to keep it in place.
4. Added an exterior coat of decoupage glue all over outside of fabric and let dry. Repeated with a second coat after approximately 20 minutes.
5. Once all of the knobs were dry, I removed the rubber bands and trimmed off any excess fabric.
6. Attached knobs to my cabinets!
More of the office decorating projects coming up, and the full unveiling of my new home office coming soon!
Easy DIY Project: Custom Fabric Covered Lamp Shade
1. Start with very plain lampshade.
2. Line up fabric so the pattern displays best across various areas, and pin in place with clothespins along top and bottom. I covered half of the lamp shade at a time to make sure that the fabric pattern is evenly distributed.
3. Very carefully removed fabric from lamp shade, with clothespins still in place.
4. (not shown) Trimmed excess fabric in a line parallel to line created by clothespins, in order to allow for hem inside lampshade.
5. Carefully ironed and steamed fabric along line created by clothespins, and folded under again from there, ironing and steaming again. This creates a clean line on the inside of the shade, with no loose threads showing. Once the lines were all pressed, I carefully used a few dots of craft glue to hold the raw edge of the fabric in place.
6. Next I placed the fabric back onto the lamp shade, and started carefully gluing it in place with a glue gun. I started by placing a thin line of glue on the outside edges of the lamp, top and bottom. Once those were in place, I glued the hemline to the inside of the lamp. I made sure to work in small sections, and kept the fabric smooth and tight at all times.
7. To finish it off, I snipped a few areas of the hem where the metal structures of the lamp shade were preventing the fabric from lying flat.
8. I repeated the whole process with the other half of the lamp shade, and then it was ready to set up in my office!
More of the office decorating projects coming up, and the full unveiling of my new home office coming soon!
Easy DIY Project: Faux Vintage Light Switch Covers
I miss the old-fashioned light switches in our old house (seen in our house tour here). They were so cute and charming. Our new house is not “new” but it is not old enough to have details like that house had. I decided to make my own faux vintage style light switch covers.
I started with the basic white plastic covers, and painted them with some gold paint and a sponge paint brush. I just used one coat. After that paint dried, I used a second type of gold rub on paint to add some variation. Very easy, and I am quite happy with the results!
Easy DIY Project: Vintage Lace Decorated Flower Pots
I love vintage lace. 🙂 I have a stash of lace trims that I found at an estate sale, and I love using these trims to decorate everything. My supply is starting to run a little low so I will have to replenish soon though! I decided to dress up some plain flower pots for our front “porch” (not actually a porch at all).
I just started with a few plain flower pots, some that were thrift store finds, and some larger ones that I actually found at the 99 Cent store! I measured off enough lace to go around the rim of each, and glued in place with a glue gun. I used a different type of lace on each size pot. I filled the smaller pots with various succulents, and the larger ones with geraniums. I love the finished result, decorating the area around our front door!
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