At first I thought I would get some decals, but all the ones that I liked were repeating patterns, and it was going to cost me $200+ to cover the whole area. Then I thought back to the Halloween party we host every year. For the party, I used red tempera paint to write in “blood” on the glass of many of our family portraits. It looks great, and washes right off with a little windex on November 1st.

Tempera paint dries to a matte finish that holds up pretty well, but then easily washes off, so it was the perfect solution. So I ordered some red tempera paint and an inexpensive wall stencil and I took this:

to this!

I love how it turned out! It’s not perfect…ideally you should paint a matte base coat behind the stenciled area first (obviously not an option for me with the glossy plastic sheets). This base coat keeps the paint you stencil on from running. So if you get up close, it’s far from perfect. But overall, I think the effect is great! And I love  it a heck of a lot more than the bleh grey! What do you think?

Back in California, we had an oversized clock that hung in our living room (a present from my folks). But alas, right before the big move to Japan, it fell off the wall and broke. We joked that “Mr. Clock” was Ollie’s first friend, because when he was teeny tiny, he would just stare at it. I think in his baby book I even listed “Mr. Clock” as his first friend. So sad. We miss you Mr. Clock.

After an appropriate mourning period, I knew that it was time to move on–we needed to replace Mr. C. But instead of getting one really large time piece, I opted to put up three little ones and set them to different time zones. This works out really well since our family is now spread out all over the world! It’s like Mr. Clock had babies! (Yes. I just said that.)

The first one is set to Atsugi, Japan, the second is set to wherever my Hubby is, and the last is set to LA time. When I know the West coast time, it’s easy for me to calculate midwest and East coast time. The clocks were uber-cheap from Ikea and the letters are just scrapbooking letters I had on hand in my craft boxes. Score! I love inexpensive little projects like this!

Our new place! It’s a end-until townhouse on base, so it’s a bit on the institutional side, but I’m slowly but surely putting my touches on it! Here’s the front door. On my list of projects out here: to make a new house number and to get a chair or bistro table or something to put in that little open area right there.

There’s also this little storage area just to the right of the front door. I really appreciate the storage area for our bikes/stroller/etc., but I HATE seeing everything right as you walk up! So, I’m working on some ideas to cover those little doors so it’s not quite such an awkward area.

When you walk in the front door you can walk straight back to the living room/dining room area or you can walk into the kitchen/eat-in area. And here is the eat-in area. This is where I feed my little monkeys every day.

Right across from the eat-in area is the kitchen. It’m not in love with the blonde cabinets, but it’s overall much better than I expected. I have a really neat plan for spicing up this area–so stay tuned!

Through that doorway is the dining room. I am really loving this area–it just seems so cozy! That little white shelving unit is new from our recent trip to Ikea (Yes, they have Ikea in Japan, and yes, it’s pretty much just like the Ikea in the States!). It’s actually empty right now, but I’m guessing as the boys get older, there will be more and more “stuff” to store downstairs, so it’s nice to have some space to grow into.

That is a sliding glass door at the end of the dining room which leads to…

our postage stamp of a backyard! Our backyard neighbors are nice, but as you can see, they have a lot of kiddo stuff in their backyard, and I find the block worth of fenced in backyards a little depressing. So I’m working on some ideas to cover the fence and make it a bit more private.

Our little patio area.

And back in the living room…here is our new sectional! I LOVE it. Our trusty yellow sofa and loveseat that we had in California were super comfy, but they were a bit saggy and would have dominated this room. So right before we left we opted to buy a new piece. We found a great lady in SoCal who makes custom sofas for a great price. And the best part? It fits in this space perfectly!

Heading upstairs, here’s the nursery…well one side of it…the other side just has another crib and a bookshelf. I still have to put up the starfish in here, but otherwise it’s finished. The boys really love it in here.

The guest bedroom.

The boys’ bathroom.

And lastly, our bedroom (don’t you love that 80s country fan?). We have a small (and I mean teeny tiny) bathroom off the master bedroom that I forgot to take a picture of, but other than the bathroom…that’s our whole house! I hope you’ve enjoyed our tour!

When I found out we were moving to Japan, there were many question I asked myself. Where would we live? Would I have a job? Would we take out dog, Paul? Will I ever be able to find pants that go past my knees?

As we started working on the details of our impending move over the fall, the answers to those questions became much clearer (on base in a townhouse, yes–I would begin telecommuting part-time, we had the option to bring Paul–but  because of our small yard we elected to send Paul to live with family in North Carolina, no–but  thank goodness Gap and Banana Republic mail to foreign bases). But one question that I was never able to find the answer to was “Would I be able to feed my addiction to spray painting?”

If you’re a longtime blog reader–you know that many of my home improvement projects involve spray paint. Don’t believe me? Check out the guest room, the nursery, and the man cave for just a few of the many items in our house reinvigorated with the elixir of life…ahem, I mean spray paint. Would I be able to continue repurposing? Friends…I now have that answer.

Ta Da!

Yes…only five minutes away from me right here on base at the Navy Exchange Depot (kind of like a mini office max/home depot) is a great little selection of Krylon Spray paints. Boy am I relieved! So you can look forward to many more spray paint projects over the next few years. It’s the little things…

And my cousin Steve and his son Travis tagged along (That’s Steven with Miles not Steve with Travis…Travis is 16 and is much larger than that ).

They held lots of babies, ate a lot of good food, and while they where here they knocked quite a few things off my Honey Do list!

This is a shot of our kitchen (please excuse the awful curtains by the sliding door and the boob lights…this was before we replaced them…oh and the dog treats and hairdryer on the counter). See that random little cabinet? I HATE it. The placement is great for holding spices and such for cooking on the stovetop, but it’s so tiny that when I get the spices out I ended up knocking half of them down practically every time! Arrrg. And it looks so strange, this one random little cabinet.

So when the Missouri clan came to town they immediately took to work

Here is the Hubby and my dad evaluating how to best take down the cabinet.

Well once they took down the cabinet, they discovered that the wall behind it was the original 1963 wall. So they had to build it up a bit, sand it down, and then paint it yellow to match the rest of the kitchen. This part actually killed me a bit, because I hate the yellow paint in our downstairs, but we couldn’t repaint everything right now, so, we had to buy MORE of the paint I hate for now. Grumble grumble.

While the paint was drying, my cousin Stinky Steve (that’s his nickwhipped up some shelves and brackets based on these that I found online. Yes, I decided it was time to jump on the open shelving bandwagon!

And this is how they turned out! I just love them. I bought these baskets at Target (they’re dvd storage baskets) and plopped all my spices in there. My spices all have black lids, so I used a silver sharpie to label them all, and now I have easy access and it looks so much nicer!

I just love my new little shelves! Thank you so much Steve, Dad, and Hubby!

*As a side note, my hubby was gone when I bought this, and I tried to move it upstairs in our condo by myself. Bad idea. I ended up punching a hole in our wall. Oops.

When we redid the Man Cave last summer, I moved the desk up to the guest room. It didn’t really match the decor of the guest room as a wood desk, so I painted it white. It looked so sweet tucked in the corner.

Alas, it lost it’s place in that room when we started making the guest room the nursery. That’s when I decided to make it a changing table (but later almost regretted that decision in great the boot meltdown).

But sanity prevailed and my hubby sanded her down:

We slapped a quick coat of teal paint on her, and then the Hubby sanded her down again. And this was the end result:

I just love how it turned out–it was so EASY! I’d say all together it took about 30 minutes to complete. And that’s how one desk has had three lives in just three years!

First up, the cribs. Aren’t they adorable? I love those crib skirts turned out. And that dresser was in this room back when it was a guest room. I have some little white starfish that I’m going to put on the walls above the cribs when I get around to it…I’ll be sure to post more pics then!

Moving around the room you can see the desk we painted, that will be our changing table. I LOVE how it turned out. I’ll do a full tutorial on how we refinished it in the next week or so.  I still need to get a changing pad for the top of the desk, and replace the pics in those frames above the changing table, but then that part of the room will be finished.

Here’s a better shot of the changing table and the bookshelf that the hubby refinished. It was laminate and he was very skeptical of painting it, but he obliged his pregnant wife and put in a little elbow grease, and I LOVE it (another tutorial to follow). You can see the little shadowbox I made last week above the bookshelf.

And last but not least, the other side of the room. Remember the little seahorse wallhanging I made? That rocking chair was part of our Halloween decor, but a bit of paint later and TaDa–fit for a nursery. I still need to find a new lampshade for that little lamp (I’d like it to match the Blue lamp on the other side of the room) and a different tablecloth for the side table, but then it’s done. I love how that board and batten wall treatment looks behind everything!

And there you have it! I’ll do some close-ups and a breakdown of prices in the next few days–but I CAN tell you right now that the whole room–furniture, mattresses, artwork, curtains, etc.–cost well under $1000.

Speaking of a house, that’s about how big I feel these days. Here’s my most recent “bump” pic. But I think we can all agree that it’s a little larger than a bump these days!

Any-who. I’ve known for awhile that I wanted to do a shadowbox for the nursery, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to put in it. So when I had a small piece of burlap leftover from my crib skirts, I decided to start working on my little shadowbox.

I started by just pinning the burlap to the back:

I busted out a bunch of shells, starfish, driftwood pieces, and such that I already had on hand, and started playing. I finally settled on using all the little shells to create a monogramed “M” (the first letter of our last name). I just used a little hot glue and glued them into place after I’d settled on the design. Lastly, I put a little sand and some random shells and such in there. Here’s how it ended up:

And since I already had the box, the burlap, the glue, and the shells, this project was FREE! Love those sorts of projects!

Now, if you’ve ever been in the market for a cribskirt, you know just how flipping expensive they are. Seriously, folks, need to make a few extra bucks? Go into the cribskirt-making business. The cheapest skirts I found were for $19.00 at Target, and since we need two, it’d be $40 just for cribskirts. I just couldn’t do it! So my ol’ friend burlap and I decided to work together. I should warn you that this is the most ghetto-fabulous cribskirt you’re likely to come across–but it looks great, and that’s what matters, right?

First, I grabbed some of this stuff.

It’s the first time I’ve ever used it, but I’ve read rave reviews out there in blogland, so I decided to give it a chance rather than break out the ol’ sewing machine. I took my burlap and measured enough to reach from the mattress to the floor around two sides of each crib (the other sides are against the wall). Because I have this funny bracket in the cribs, I ended up cutting two pieces (1 per side) for each crib. I “hemmed” the bottom of the pieces, and one side of one panel for each crib (the only vertical edge that shows). As for the efficacy of the Heat n Bond–it worked pretty well, not amazing; I wouldn’t use it on a pair of pants, but it was good enough for this project. And it was speedy–just iron and you’re done!

I then put it in the crib and safety pinned it to the springs (I told you–ghetto fabulous).

I folded the edges around those funky brackets on the corner, and made sure the finished vertical edge was right on the corner, so it would be, for the most part, hidden behind the leg.

I put down the mattresses (recently purchased for us by my dad–thanks dad!) with the light blue sheets I just bought, and lastly I tied on the adorable bumpers from The Company Store .

I just LOVE how they turned out!

Now all we need are some babies to go in there…although I have to admit that these cribs look so expansive now. These little babes might get lost in there. Luckily, they each have a little sleep sheep (courtesy of the Hubby’s mom–thanks Barb!) to keep them company.

So there you have it, how I used $12 and many, many shortcuts to make two crib skirts!

Back when the Nursery was a guest room, the one thing that drove me CRAZY about the room was the ceiling fan. I didn’t like the shape of the light or the blades and the wood didn’t match anything in the room. But, a guest room ceiling fan just wasn’t at the top of the home improvement priority list.

So when we started working on the nursery, I knew that a lighting fixture for this room needed to move right to the top of the must-buy list!

All the finishes in the nursery are silver, so I wanted a silver fixture, I debated whether we really needed a fan or if we could go with just a plain fixture. In the end, I decided the option to have the windows open and have a cool breeze here in SoCal is pretty nice–so fan it was. I found this one for $117 on Amazon, not too bad. With our Amazon Prime it arrived in just two days (I LOVE Amazon Prime…if you buy much on Amazon, it’s definitely worth it). The Hubby went right to work installing it, and he had it up in no time. First the chandelier, then the boob light replacements, now this–he really is becoming quite the lighting installer. Here’s how it looks now:

I just LOVE it! And yes, as soon as we have a few more projects finished in the nursery I’ll be posting LOTS of pictures, I promise!

P.S. I hope you’re not getting too tired of all these Nursery projects–it’s kind of been our focus lately!