6 Month Old Painting!

As far back as I can remember I couldn't wait to proudly display my sweet child's artwork, it just struck me as one of those mom things. I have stored away scribbled messes of princesses on the back of napkins from my niece and have a small canvas that is pretty much brown from over-mixed colors from my nephew and I love it. I am a very proud Aunty but every fiber of my being has longed to be a mother, and I couldn't wait to watch my child create.

I picked up a 8x10 canvas from the dollar store, it is a great gem to grab and makes creating that much more special too. Immediately I knew I wanted to have Lilly paint something so we could hang it in her bedroom but I wondered if she was too young and so I kept putting it off. Shortly after she passed 6 months old I put my foot down, this was happening and I gathered my supplies. Because I knew I couldn't handle the stress of her possibly ingesting the paint I knew we would have to keep the paint from her while still giving her the chance to create. Here comes the large Ziploc bags to the rescue!

I squeezed a few drops of each color, you could also get a nice effect if you did each color separately
and allowed them to dry between colors to create a more layered painting. Maybe next time. After carefully slipping the paint covered canvas into the Ziploc bag I held it in front of my sweet baby girl and let her smoosh and pat the canvas as she created her first little piece of art work. 

For now it is part of the gallery wall in her room but if/when the day comes that we change it out I am the first in line to hang it on our wall - I love it so much, I love her so much.

How do you encourage creativity in your home? Do you have a stash of sweet little one's artwork? I know I can't be the only one ;)

xo, Anne.

Project Nursery { accent wall }

From the beginning I knew I wanted an accent wall, although I briefly bounced between a few different ideas I constantly came back to horizontal stripes.

There are a few different ways people do striped walls, this is what I found worked best for me. But before any calculations or prepping, spend some time planning out what you really want. I had a lot of trouble settling on what colors would become the base color and the stripes; pink on pink, pink and white, pink and grey or somehow adding in that mint. If you're painting a new base you are supposed to allow at least 4 hours of dry time before prepping for stripes, I left mine overnight. I also had to decide how thick I wanted the stripes, a lot of big paint companies claim stripes look best between 4-12 inches, I settled with 7 inches after holding the measuring tape against the wall to get an idea of what it would look like. Did you know that horizontal stripes will make a room appear wider while vertical stripes will make ceilings seem higher than they are - all tricks of the eye.

You will need:

- Step ladder or stool (maybe that's just me?)

- Painters tape

- Measuring tape

- Construction level 

- Pencil

- Small roller (and/or) brush

- Paint!

STEP ONE: CALCULATE

Honestly, I'm not so good at math, so if this is feeling a little daunting to you don't worry - it isn't nearly as complicated as it seems. Start by measuring the height of the wall, if you're doing vertical stripes measure the length instead, I decided to round down to 91 inches after getting 91.4 since that .4 meant one stripe would be a tiny bit larger anyway. I grabbed my calculator (... ahem, my phone) and divided 91 by 7 and got 13. 

If you can't decide on the size of your stripes you can always reverse this calculation by dividing the number of stripes you want, if you use an odd number you will have the same color on top and bottom, choose a smaller number for fewer but larger stripes (try 5) or a bigger number for many thin stripes (try 17). 

As I mentioned before, I ended up with a small decimal (this can happen after you divide too), what will end up happening is one of your stripes will be less than an inch larger than the others. Before you start to have a confused meltdown because math is hard, I know I did right about here, just round down! You won't be able to tell the difference, especially once things like baseboards or crown molding come into play and your furniture moves in.

STEP TWO: DRAW IT BEFORE YOU TAPE IT

It may seem like an extra step, I know I felt that way and tried to go straight to taping, but it is totally worth the effort and it wont take nearly as long as you think. Starting from the bottom corner use the measuring tape to mark where your stripe will start, then line up the level (and make sure it is level) and draw away. 

STEP THREE: TAPE AWAY!

This isn't horribly complicated, just take your time and keep track of which color will go where, for the stripes made of your base coat tape inside your drawn lines and for your accent color line your tape up on the outside of those lines since you only need to paint your accent color now. 

It isn't necessary but I put little bits of tape onto the stripes that I wouldn't be painting, the size difference should be enough to tell which ones get the new paint and which ones will be the base coat, but I wanted to make sure if I wasn't thinking straight I still wouldn't accidentally paint an extra stripe pink.

STEP FOUR: NOW PAINT!

FINALLY! It's the moment we've all been waiting for, planning and day dreaming - it is finally time to paint those stripes! Grab your roller or brush and paint away, I work from the bottom up, from drawing those lines to pulling off the tape, so once that last stripe was painted I jumped off the ladder and went to my bottom corner. I ended up doing two coats, of course make your own judgement - can you get away with just one coat? do you need a third for perfect coverage? Just like before once I painted that last stripe on top I was off the ladder and at the bottom corner, which was starting to dry already, to move onto step five.

STEP FIVE: THE BIG REVEAL

To prevent paint from being taken off the wall (and subsequently wrecking your otherwise beautiful accent wall) I peel the tape off before everything is dry starting at the bottom. It is a little nerve wracking but you'll soon see that there is no ill effect as you pull the tape away and finally all that hard work reveals your perfectly straight stripes.

This whole process from start to finish took less than two hours, I could have probably been finished shortly after the hour mark but stopped to paint a final coat of pink on the other walls. 

I don't know what it is about paint but it absolutely transforms a room and now we're ready to start moving in our little Lilly's furniture!

xo, Anne

Project Nursery { Paint }

No posts last week and it's horrible! These last few weeks have felt like a long run of paint choices and painting and waiting for that horrible paint smell to disappear and then starting over again.

But all that to say we are done painting our sweet baby girl's nursery!

Let's start from the beginning, a couple months ago I brought home a stack of paint chips, my little pile of pink all seemed pretty close to each other. I spent a lot of time holding them up to the various walls in her room to get an idea of how the different lighting throughout the day would play into our final choice, slowly dwindling down our list. I knew I wanted something soft, something that would compliment the white furniture, something she can grow with. As the selection continued to drop I then compared the remaining pinks to the pink on the basket we bought for her room (the very first thing we bought for her nursery!) and Satin Sheets won.

Our chosen pink is from the Lowes Olympic line and I have always liked their no voc paint but at $30 a can, with how much primer and paint needed to go onto our new drywall we were looking at over $120 just on paint alone. Not to mention that the low and no voc is done to help the environment not to protect our bodies from the bad chemicals, I love the environment but if it wouldn't really protect us there wasn't a huge pull to go from low to no vocs. Especially when the switch to low voc cut the price nearly in half.

However to avoid color matching issues we still went with Lowes no voc paint in Satin Sheets, and planned to save on the not so specific ones (primer and white for example)

We tried out a recycled paint, Loop brand from Walmart, which boasts a low voc AND is friendly to the environment by keeping paint out of the landfills but after painting one coat I was sorely disappointed that the strong smell clung in the room and throughout our suite for days, actually it didn't go away until I painted over it and we ended up sleeping elsewhere because the odor was so strong. After that experience we ended up with another brand from Walmart called Home Trends which was still latex paint and claiming to be low voc we grabbed a pre-tinted can of white paint and went on our way. This was actually the same brand as the primer we used and it turned out well so I felt like I was taking a much smaller risk with this brand than the recycled one. Sure enough great coverage and although there was a slight odor having the window open and fan going quickly put and end to that.

Tomorrow I'll give a little sneak peak at our freshly painted nursery and how I did our accent wall without breaking my inner perfectionist :) 

xo, Anne

Project Nursery { planning }

With how well our sweet Lilly is growing, it is very clear that the days of her sleeping in her bassinet are numbered and she will need to be transferred into her crib very soon. With that quickly approaching we're officially kicking off project nursery!

While we were trying to conceive and throughout our pregnancy I had a lot of time to day dream of our someday nursery and while there are a lot of things that stuck, there are a lot of things that have changed too. Especially with Lilly here, I've started to include things that she likes and I LOVE that because even though she's so young she has a say in her room! 

Here are the rough plans and ideas for our baby Lilly's nursery.

 All of our nursery furniture is white, which I love, and I think that our all white furniture will make a great base to add pops of soft pink and minty-teal through accessories, paint and what feels like a million sewing/DIY projects that I am hoping to pull off.

While the color combination is far from unique I am looking forward to finding ways to customize her room and like that you can't just go to the store and get the exact same nursery set (though there is nothing wrong with that, just isn't my thing)

I would like to include:

- an accent wall, more than likely with pink stripes, behind the crib.

- create extra seating that doubles as toy storage. 

- a gallery wall featuring things like; maternity photos, a shadow box, her little prints, newborn photos, ultrasounds, meaningful quotes, a pretty mirror ect. (but some of these things may find their place elsewhere)

- a TON of storage by using the bench/bookshelves for her toys and books, having a change table with shelves for storing bath/diaper changing supplies and maximizing both the closet space and the space under the crib for additional storage of clothing/diapers/ect.

I seriously can't wait to start putting things together and see our baby girl's nursery go from ideas and day dreams to ready for her to move into. 

xo, Anne.