Jewelry Organizer

I’m pretty sure both of these projects have been sitting in pieces in our bedroom/garage for a few months. They were so close to being complete but I never got off my butt to ask Jake to add the finishing touches. I had an extra shelf from my bookcase project. I painted random stripes on it using some test paint we had in the garage and marked out places where I wanted to put white hooks.

Today Jake drilled all of the holes (and a few extra that I had marked and not actually wanted drilled….my bad) and added the hooks. I might go back and fill in the holes at some point but since I’ll be the only one looking at this on a daily basis, it really doesn’t bother me.

My other project was adding some metal grating to an old picture frame (really old, like falling apart old, but my earrings don’t care). I got the sheet on sale at Lowe’s for $5!

A few nails in the wall, 5 minutes of moving jewelry …. and done!!

Sorry about the terrible lighting in our closet.

And just for fun, here’s a picture of Noah wearing my balaclava after our morning jog together!

Noah’s First Year in Pictures

A couple of weeks ago Jake put the frame together for Noah’s photo project and attached/hung the finished result.

We love how it looks and it reminds us how much has happened in the past year.

I like that it helps break up the GIANT blank wall that takes up our living room. Once Jake finishes the second bookcase to flank the TV stand it will look even more balanced. And there’s my “new to me” computer from mom & dad (they bought a new one). Jake and I decided to install Ubuntu on it and now it’s my main computer.

 

We got just over an inch of snow today so Noah and I have remained in pajamas. He enjoys randomly cuddling with his bear 🙂

Noah’s First Year in Pictures

While wasting time on Pinterest I came across this image:

I really liked how this looked and now that we have all of these blank walls in base housing I have an excuse to do this project!

Now her tutorial is great for getting started but didn’t really have any additional information (like dimensions, spacing, how she accomplished the spacing).

Jake and I decided to leave an inch spacing all over and an additional half inch all the way around for the frame. He cut a piece of plywood to 47 x 23 inches.

I gave it a couple of coats of paint (the same “pink” paint that I used for the bookcase) and then yesterday afternoon I did my best to get the spacing right – I used multiple rulers and scotch tape to secure the pictures in place. Next I followed the tutorial’s instructions to go over everything with Mod Podge.

I don’t think I’ve ever used Mod Podge before–probably when I was a little kid? If you are experienced Mod Podger you could probably get this project to look amazing.

Here’s what it looked like after the first coat, I started at the bottom and worked my way up.

So it you look very closely and at the right angle, you can see the streaks from the Mod Podge. I used this method because it is cheap (found an acrylic sheet big enough for this project at Home Depot for $35 vs. $4 for Mod Podge)

By this morning the Mod Podge had completely cured and it looks like this:

I am planning on putting on a second (and final) coat of Mod Podge on tonight after Noah goes to bed. While this step in the project isn’t toxic, I’m more worried about him making a mess if I did it while he was awake.

Next step is frame building/staining by Jake!

Welcome Baby Gerlach

One of my CT friends made an amazing banner for my baby shower. It uses the nautical alphabet for flags and says “Welcome Baby Gerlach”.

It has been sitting in the top drawer of Noah’s dresser since the shower. It is so well done that couldn’t recycle it and while it didn’t fit anywhere in Noah’s old nursery, I wanted to hang on to it until we moved to see if I could incorporate it into Noah’s new room.

While Noah was playing with the books by his changing table I grabbed some tape, the banners, and attached them to the wall. It looks amazing!! The colors pop so well off of the wave wall and it matches all of the other decorations in Noah’s room perfectly.

Making a Slipcover: Part 1

Last week we moved the chair that was hanging out in our bedroom down to the living room (and rearranged all of the furniture). We love what the additional chair does for our living room but we aren’t fans of how the fabric looks with the couch, rug and other chair. I decided to try my hand at making a slipcover (this is a first for me).

I saw a great upholstering tutorial on a blog I follow and applied some of her techniques to my project.

Step 1: Remove the slipcover from your chair. Start documenting this process with pictures (it’s impossible to take too many).

Step 2: Take apart the slipcover piece by piece with a seam ripper. Don’t forget to take pictures of each step, especially HOW pieces were joined together at edges, zippers, etc. Here is an example of the detail of my take-apart pictures (about 30 in all). It isn’t totally clear from the picture, but this is a super messy step — little bits of thread everywhere!!

Step 3: Iron all of the pieces.

Step 4: Lay out your pieces on your fabric. If your new fabric has a top/bottom to the print, make sure to lay the pieces the correct way so that random parts of your slipcover don’t appear upside down.

Step 5: Pin the fabric together and loosely cut around each piece. I numbered pieces to help me when it’s time to reassemble the slipcover.

Next up, cutting the pieces exactly to size and then the sewing can begin!!

Moving

No, we aren’t moving…at least not for a couple of years. But we did move some furniture this week. Every time I glanced over at the window I thought Crimson would be there but instead there was an ottoman looking back at me. I thought maybe rearranging furniture would help me to create a new routine with this space.

So we went from this on move-in day:

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/103560948@N03/10006082344/&#8221; title=”2013-05-09 16.51.14 by monicagerlach, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3825/10006082344_0a9bf61b21_z.jpg&#8221; width=”640″ height=”420″ alt=”2013-05-09 16.51.14″></a>

Progress….

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/103560948@N03/10005858164/&#8221; title=”2013-08-16 21.47.33 by monicagerlach, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3804/10005858164_6f7e4d4f4b_z.jpg&#8221; width=”640″ height=”480″ alt=”2013-08-16 21.47.33″></a>

And added the chair that was in our bedroom to get this:

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/103560948@N03/10005885515/&#8221; title=”2013-08-17 15.39.54 by monicagerlach, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7312/10005885515_2452a797f8_z.jpg&#8221; width=”640″ height=”480″ alt=”2013-08-17 15.39.54″></a>

The lighting in the last picture isn’t too good but you get the idea for where things moved. So far we like the new arrangement and have more ideas for how to continue this momentum!

Crimson’s wall

So my original plan for this wall was to make it for Crimson. His bed was under the window and pictures of him are on either side of the curtains. Even though he isn’t here to enjoy it I decided to go ahead and paint the wall. I am so happy with how it turned out. His pictures pop off the fun wall color (an oops! gallon of paint from Lowe’s) and I moved our ottoman to where his bed used to be. Clover has enjoyed spending more time in this window during the week.

Here’s a before picture of this view of the room (nice and messy too!):

And after the wall was painted:

Jake is still working on the TV stand. I’m excited to paint it and add another fun color to the mix in this room!

Next up for me is to figure out something for above the sofa…it’s so blah right now.

A little painting makes a huge difference

Back in our old house we needed something above the couch and to fill the space we picked up these two pictures at HomeGoods. On clearance we paid $40 for both. I liked that they were large, chunky, and inexpensive….we weren’t exactly enthusiastic about the paintings themselves. Fast forward a couple years and the pictures are still above the couch in the new house.

So one day I took them off the walls, put Noah in his Wonderbug in the garage and grabbed one of our sample paint jars (we have about 10 different colors). 

I think I will probably do another coat at some point and have Jake add dark wood frames but at least there is a little improvement for now. Here is what this half of the living room looked like before. To give you an idea of how gigantic our living room is, that rug is 9 x 12.

And after…

Unda the sea

Move in day Noah’s room started out like this…lots of blah, bland colors going on in here. His bedroom in our house was a deep sea green/blue so it made sense for all of his furniture to be white. In base housing, white furniture just makes the rooms look even more institutional. 

A month and a half later we have some curtains, a new light fixture (taken from our house in CT), sheets, and more….but that giant white wall still taunted me. This morning I pulled the furniture from the wall, taped and started painting!

About 20 minutes later I was looking at this! It is so motivating to see paint on the wall, and made me so excited to see the final product. I used a discontinued Martha Stuart paint in semi-gloss to give the wall a watery look.

Another 20 minutes later my first coat was complete! I am going to do the next coat tomorrow, and then I’ll post more pics with everything in place. Noah is sleeping in the guest room tonight in his pack n play (no inhaling paint fumes for him). We will probably move him back to his room on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week.

Mounting a whale

There was one small patch of blank wall next to Noah’s dresser that I thought would be perfect to hang a few items of sentimental value.

The small black frame is a cross stitch from a woman I worked with in East Lyme of the little engine that could (she also gave us a copy of the book). I loved that book as a child so it is super special to me! The “N” is from Restoration Hardware…enough said. The shell is the cloth that Noah’s head was wiped with when he was baptized. The white frame is Noah’s name spelled in nautical flags, it was a gift from a friend in Connecticut. And the what is something I found at a thrift store when Jake and I were trying to get pregnant. He made a face and I said that it would work for either gender!

I didn’t do a great job hanging the N so hopefully Jake can fix that at some point!

Hopefully these items will stay with Noah for a long time and be something special he puts in his apartment or home when he’s an adult.