The Results

Jayla's room makeover is finished! Here are the results:

BEFORE....

And, AFTER....

Trust me, the bed is much prettier without that big old bed-rail on it, but gotta have that for now otherwise Jayla would roll right off the edge! The pink wall color was intended to match the pink butterfly on the picture, and it got pretty close. As for the bed/furniture, I used some pieces that we already had and tried to make them all match. My mom had that daybed at her house, and we decided to do a switcheroo and she took the extra twin bed that we had. My original plan was to paint the twin bed white, but when my mom offered the daybed I just couldn’t refuse because it looked much more ‘girly’. I had a daybed through all of my years growing up, so I thought it would be fun for Jayla to have one too! Anyways, going into it, I wasn’t sure how the black bed frame would look with the color scheme that I had picked out since I originally was thinking white furniture, but I am digging it! JJ had a black dresser in his room, so I switched a different dresser to his room, and tried to jazz up the black one a bit. I forgot to take a before picture of the dresser, but here is a picture I took while painting the edges and knobs on the drawers.

And, here is the dresser all finished....
Turned out cute!

I found some cute little glass butterflies that I put going up one wall...

The room still feels like it needs something……hmmmmm..….I think maybe what is missing is the accent pillows for the daybed? Not sure. However, the canopy is probably my favorite part of the room! So cozy and princess-like!

Here is a little video I took of the ‘reveal’ (the screen is black but if you click play it should work). JJ and Jayla were at my mom’s for about a day and a half, and on our drive home I had talked up the surprise and couldn’t wait for them to see. You will laugh when you see what Jayla does:


Yep, she pretty much didn’t even notice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Went straight for Elmo!!!!!!!! Gotta love it. At least my sweet JJ liked it (he is saying 'it's so pretty' in the video)!!!!!!!!

So, Saturday night Jayla got her first run of sleeping in her new bed, and she did great! It helped that we got home late so she was very tired and went right to sleep. The next morning JJ and I couldn’t wait for her to get up to see what she would do! We didn’t hear her over the monitor at her usual 7:15am wake up time, so we went in to check on her…..and she was still sound asleep.
Can you see her?

We eventually had to wake her up (which I don’t think I’ve ever had to do) because she was STILL snoozing and we needed to get going! I snapped a picture right when she got up so that I could remember it…


Looks like she slept pretty good!!!!

Sneak Peak

Tomorrow I am starting a two-day project of giving Jayla’s room a little ‘makeover’! Her room is a tad bland right now….cherry wood infant furniture, white bedding, and tan walls….certainly does not match her personality! Right Jayla?

Yes, that's what I thought. A girl has to hold her own when she is living in a house full of boys! Well, for the past 6 months I’ve been excitedly dreaming and scheming of how to coordinate the perfect little girl’s room for my big girl who will be saying bye bye to her crib! I am ready to jazz it up a bit! I had been going back and forth between doing a tropical theme or a butterfly theme, and then I saw the PERFECT painting at Pier I that sealed my decision. I’ll give you a sneak peak:

Have you seen it? I LOVED IT! The colors just seem to match a red-haired brown-eyed girl perfectly! After I first laid eyes on the painting I waited and waited and waited to see if it would go on sale….and after Christmas it did and I got it at a steal of a price! The painting is kind of the center piece of the room, and I am trying to do the rest of the colors to follow its palette. Hopefully it works out and my uncraftiness won’t shine through too badly. If all goes well I will show you the results next week. My mom is kid-wrangling for me so I get two days off mommy-duty + a date night with my husband + some sweet time to blast the music, paint, and work my creative side. I am excited!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Balling Times Day

Yesterday JJ woke up from his afternoon nap and said, “Happy Balling Times, Mommy”. It took me about 5 minutes of repeating his words slowly and him saying them over and over, louder and louder, and more and more frustrated until I finally figured out that he was trying to say, “Happy Valentines, Mommy!” You would think that I would have put two and two together, but it was quite a random time of the day for him to all of a sudden wish me Happy Valentines Day.

So, the story goes that I had planned all week to do some sort of Valentines Day themed craft, but we just didn’t get it done. (Bad Mommy). And, there we were, 3:30pm in the afternoon on Valentines Day, with no cute hearts cut out of construction paper, no cute Valentine cards to take over to friends or mail to grandmas, and no ingredients to make any adorable heart shaped cookies. And there I was, watching my cute JJ with the biggest heart in all of Valentine world, wishing me the sweetest Valentine wish, and feeling guilty that we hadn’t done anything Valentine-ish. Right then and there, I almost drove to the store to pick up ingredients to make cookies, but then I remembered……I had ingredients to make rice krispie bars. I also remembered that somewhere in my lazy susan cupboard I had last year’s unopened Valentines sprinkles and unopened Valentines cookie cutters from when I actually bought the Valentines Day craft supplies, but failed to have us actually complete the Valentines Day craft. I put two and two together, and decided we would make Valentine krispies. And, my idea worked. (I am sure this has been done before, but we've never done it!)

The attention spans only lasted about 10 minutes, but we got the job done! Now, getting a picture of these two crazy cats with their finished creation was a different story. Really, do they ever sit still?

Ever?


This was the best I could do.

Word to the wise: if my cookie cutters would have been a little larger, our Valentine krispies would have turned out PERFECTO! But, we made do with the little cutters, and they were nice lil bite size treats. Maybe next time I will plan ahead a little bit!

Happy Belated Balling Times Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Uncraftiness

When I told you the other day that I was going to attempt to make some table runners, did I mention that I don’t know how to sew? Uh, yeah, I am that uncrafty. So, what is a non-sewing, uncrafty person to do when attempting a crafty, sewing project? I am glad you asked. Have you ever heard of a

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Glue gun?

Oh yeah, I’ve got your attention now. I bet you can’t wait to see how this one turns out! Well, here is what I did -

My supplies were:

Later on I added an iron and ironing board. I cut the fabric into approx 10 ft by 1.5 ft strips. Then I folded over the edges and hot glued ‘em so the fringe wouldn’t show (I think this is where a crafty person would sew). Here is a picture of what I mean:

I did that for each edge. Then I glued some ribbon on the ends:

Then I ironed out the edges and voila (is this really how you spell this word?)!

Not too shabby, yet certainly not without imperfections. And actually, even though I had a ruler, they are kind of un-measured if you know what I mean. I just sort of eye-balled it because I realized that measuring things makes me bored. It’s supposed to be pretty dark in there so I am hoping my uncraftiness won’t shine through too much. :) But, at any rate, I think they will do the trick to add in some color to the tables! Next week I’ll be able to share an actual picture of the runners on the tables over the white cloths….and how they looked in the big scale of the gym!

Also, if you are wondering about my second trip to the fabric store, let me just say -

one less kid + McDonald’s happy meal = one fantastic time at the fabric cutting counter

And, if you are wondering why I didn’t post the promised sneak peak at Project:Ghana this week, well, I decided that I didn’t want to spoil it for anyone coming tonight! And, c’mon, table runners are exciting aren’t they?!?!?! I can't wait to share about Project:Ghana next week so stay tuned!!!