A Finished Baby Boy Nursery

I am nearly 36 weeks pregnant and unfortunately, was diagnosed with preeclampsia.  Therefore, that means we will have a baby within a week!  I had hoped and prayed we'd make it full-term this go around (I have delivered my other two at 36 weeks), but it wasn't in the cards.  Most importantly, we need to focus on baby boy's health and my health!  The one good news with all of this was we got a little push to put the last finishing touch on the nursery and it's totally done!

Our sleep under the stars nursery kinda turned in to an adventure/ journey nursery and let me tell you, I'm in total love with it!  I wouldn't change a single thing about this room, it's not too theme-y, has great colors, isn't "I'm gonna be a tough boy!" and just lets this wonderful blessing come to a room that HE will make his own!  So blessed!

Without further ado, here's a tour:

I ADORE how our gallery wall came out!  I wanted something other than simply frames (which is gorgeous!  That's what I have in our living room!).  The creativity that this allowed me though was so freeing and fun!  I designed the "hitch your wagon" print and it's located in my shop (just email me at design@laceyfields.com if you want one!  It's $10 for the 8x10 and $14 for the 11x14).  The stitching was all done ourselves (hubby was great for tying knots!  Love those surgical hands, so handy!).  The frame with a photo is hubby's grandpa (baby boy's middle name is in honor of him).  The anchor and lures are also for hubby's Paw Paw (he was a big fisherman and navy man).  My favorite part is probably the calvin & hobbes page.  Hubby is a huge calvin & hobbes fan and that is the last strip ever made.  The last line is "let's go exploring!"  SO perfect for the theme!

This side of the room continued with the theme.  I decided to get teething rails instead of bumpers this time and they're awfully cute.  We kept with the bear-y theme for the bedding and for a crib skirt I just used a 40% off coupon and bought 2 yards of a green fabric at Hobby Lobby.

The mobile was purchased on our baby moon to Crystal Bridges museum in Arkansas.  It's so pretty and unique!

The shelves are simple yet have lots of life to them.  The lures are real ones that Paw Paw gave my husband over 20 years ago!  I did the handwriting on the globe and am ashamed to admit I painted the RV on a Mommy/ daughter date.  It looked cuter in my head! haha  But it's the thought that counts right? ; )

And there you  have it!  Room is all ready, now we just can hopefully keep the baby in there an entire week more.  Can't wait to hold him and rock him and lay him down to sleep for the first time in his room.

First Day of School

My little baby started school this week.  Big girl, real school.  Daddy & I had a little cry about it the night before.  Daddy was emotional b/c his job keeps him from ever taking, picking up, or even seeing her school.  He also couldn't believe his first born is old enough for big girl school.  I get emotional from pride!  I'm just so darn proud of this girl.  She's already made tons of friends in just 3 days (I've received emails, been stopped in the school, etc from parents saying "my kid won't stop talking about your daughter!").  She's a social butterfly and loving her big girl school environment. 

To celebrate her first day, I had a few ideas in mind but decided to K.I.S.S.  (keep it simple stupid for those that don't remember that being incredibly popular). 

I just propped her up against a brick wall before we left and then asked her questions on the way to school.  The answers, I'm sure, would change from day to day, but the idea is the same.  Every year until she screams back "mom, this is so lame!" I'll ask these questions and take a photo.  Seeing her grow, her dreams, her food desires, and all in between, will be so neat!

You don't have to do much to ahcieve this look!  Some tips --

(1) take photos outside!  It was raining when I took this.  But natural light beats just about anything.

(2) don't bombard them with perfection.  I took 2 quick pics and was done.  If neither was "picture perfect" who cared?  I wanted the real reaction!  Her eyes are big and excited in this picture because she was so excited to have her neon shoes on and start school (she chose these shoes herself b/c they would make her the fastest kid on the playground)

(3) make sure the background is SIMPLE.  A garage door can work too, but those lines are more distracting than you might like.  A front door would work, but you need something wide enough to fit the words on the left or right side.

(4) choose two fonts and just write on top of the photo!  I did mine in photoshop, of course, but picasa (a free google art program) would do the trick just as well!

Back to school time, it's fun! :)  But this waking up early again thing is for the birds!  Here's to sleeping in on Saturday ...

The Kitchen Makeover (Part II)

We've been working on our kitchen makeover.  Last post, I discussed the taking down of the banquet.  As a reminder, this is what we started with when we decided to make the kitchen over:

Too dark!  So the first thing we did was take the banquet out but we had those gaping holes in the ceiling.  The hubby went to Home Depot and bought all the materials to fix the holes but upon further consideration we realized this is just one of those times that DIY isn't necessary and we'd probably spend more money in the long run trying to fix it.  So we hired our painter to do it.  It took them SEVEN hours (would have probably been 20 hours had we done it ourselves) and the price was incredibly reasonable.

The texture isn't done on it, but you can already see how open it looked.  While they were fixing that, we started with the DIY portion.  We got a quote to paint the kitchen and while we know it is a lot of work, we also knew WE could do it for MUCH cheaper.  We ended up saving about $850 by doing it ourselves ... totally worth it!

Hubby spent time caulking a ton of items in the cabinets.  The BIG tip is to make it look good BEFORE painting, especially when going lighter.  Light paint just highlights inconsistencies so do the job well.  Caulk any areas that need it, sand and fill in holes if they're there.

Then take down the cabinets and either go to the garage (or in our case, paint in your living room b/c the garage is cold in the winter).  We sanded some, although I think how much you sand depends on the finish of the cabinets.  Ours weren't shiny and didn't have a finish so that was quite  helpful.

Get a FLAT roller and your primer and begin!  We put two coats of primer on each side.  To paint the sides, we just put little pieces of wood underneath so they'd be up from the floor some.

We decided not to go with a SUPER white paint, but a white that had a little bit of warmth to it.  We chose Swiss Coffee by Benjamin Moore and only needed one gallon for it (that shocked me!).  We bought the Advance Benjamin Moore brand in semi-gloss finish.  We thought about getting it in a matte finish but I read somewhere that it's easier to wipe them down (remember ... two small kiddos in this house!) at semi-gloss so that was a big factor in our decision once I read that! :) 

TODAY this is what it looks like from the same view!

We still have more to do!  We want to buy some shelves, paint the fridge (yes you read that right!), make a pantry, paint the dining room table, etc.  BUT this is just BEYOND what I expected!  I LOVE walking by the kitchen all the time now.  It's bright, airy, and so fun.

Yes it was quite a bit of work to paint the cabinets, but well worth it. It took us about 2 weeks, but that's because we only worked about 6 evenings.  It's hard to do these projects when the hubby is gone so much, but we made it work and couldn't be happier!

A little kick of fun is the inside of the cabinets.  They're painted Birds Egg by Benjamin Moore.  I just bought a sample from them and it covered it, so the little kick only cost $5.

We bought a bigger rug (kitchen rugs are usually too small.  Something a little larger is much warmer and nice on your tootsies) and the towels from our favorite place, Target.  We had some Target gift certificates from Christmas and didn't spend any money getting these so it was a nice touch.  I still want to change a few other accessories, but with time.

ALL with time, but in DIY it's important to take the time and notice the huge steps.  And, I'm lovin' it.

The Kitchen Makeover

You probably think we've been lazy here at Lacey Fields.  While some nights that's true (we just don't have it in us to DIY EVERY day or week for that matter!), that isn't the case.  We've been busy redoing our kitchen the last 6 weeks and while it might take some 2 weeks to do this work, it takes us longer.  The kids, the unforeseen circumstances (such as holes in the ceiling, yes you read that correctly), the husband's job (this one is probably the biggest reason we can't work on evenings), and the fact that we just finished Breaking Bad, all contribute. ;)

When we first moved in to our house, we really were big fans of the kitchen.  But you know how things go.  When you start LIVING there, you realize you wish a few things were different.  And then you go on Pinterest.  You know Pinterest right?  That website that EVERYONE loves / hates?  I love it b/c it gives me fascinating ideas and let's me be creative. I also hate it b/c it gives me fascinating ideas and let's me be creative.

 The before shot.  Our living room no longer looks like this and neither does my office in the background, but this gives you an idea to where the problems started.  Do you see just how DARK it is?  This photo was taken in the middle of the day!  We needed some LIGHT and to OPEN things up!

And this is how it started.  You can see a hubby just getting home from a hospital (and the wifey already putting him to work! haha).  My brother was fortunately visiting at Thanksgiving (hubby had to work so my family was kind enough to keep us company while he was gone) so we put him to work too.  With a BIG mess, lots of sippy cups (4 babies in a house will do that!), and about 45 minutes to work, they took this cabinet and banquet down.

I must admit that pulling the banquet down was the husband's idea.  For starters, the construction

on it (not done by us) wasn't done to our liking and would show many areas if we painted.  Also, it just closed things off SO much!  We'd only be losing one cabinet of storage (that we have a solution for, stay tuned) ... SO ... DOWN it went!

Once they removed that a few issues arose (as always happens with DIY projects right?).  The lights hadn't been properly installed and were wired through a cabinet and plugged in (according to the electrician that came, this was a major fire hazard.  Thank goodness we fixed this!)

ALSO ... there were HOLES in the ceiling!  We don't know why, who, what, when ... they're a mystery that obviously had to be fixed.

We went to Home Depot and bought these three lights.  We didn't even CONSIDER DIYing the electric work ourselves.  After calling 3 electricians, we found one we really liked and he did an amazing job.  If you live in AR and need a reference, email me!

  After that, this is what things looked like!
(forgive the 3 year old in the pic ... she was caring for her Amarylis).
 SO much more open! SO much fresher.  And SO much work left to do! :)

As of today, we're about 75% done with stage 1 of the makeover right now (the kitchen doesn't have holes, and the cabinets look WAY different!) so I have more updating for you and will be back soon.  STAY tuned! :)

PS Step 2 might have something to do with these gaping holes that terrified me for 4 weeks ...

Pumpkin Painting Extravaganza

My husband's favorite time of year is fall.  As a result, we've carved pumpkins for over 6 years and had our 3rd annual pumpkin painting extravaganza this weekend!

Each year we have more fun as our girls get to enjoy more and more!

My youngest, G, really had a great time this year --- as you can see.

Bath time. STAT!

For our 3 year old, L, we actually had her give us a work of art this year!  I just took masking tape and made an L with it (for her first AND our last name).  Then I told her to go to town!

Look at that painting pumpkin focus!

One recommendation I have is telling the kiddos to paint in different areas.  If they go over the same area you'll just have an ugly brown pumpkin.  L was patient (which is kinda a miracle) and painted in different areas.  She got to choose the colors and had a blast.  I think out of the three pumpkins, hers was my favorite.

Here's L posing with our masterpieces!  From left to right -- the hubby (boys aren't quite as patient huh? BUT it's actually so cute on a table on our porch!  A simply painted ghost pumpkin is kinda essential).  L's is in the middle and as you can see, it came out just amazing!  I waited about 30 minutes after she was done to remove the tape and it was so crisp.  Mine was the one on the right!

All I did with mine was paint the entire thing white and wait a couple hours.  Then I thought about taping the lines for the chevron but decided --- NO. THANK. YOU!  haha.  This is supposed to be a fun day for us so I just did the Chevron in gold by hand.  I waited 30 minutes and then wrote BOO in a Sharpie marker.  Then I went and painted in black on top of that.  VOILA!  

L's pumpkin is the first one anyone sees when they come to the door and she's just in love with it!

Happy October!

Master Bedroom Makeover

Over the last couple of weeks I've shared two makeovers we've done in this Lacey Fields home:

The Office -- a makeover where we painted, made an office, and helped Lacey Fields be born!
The Exterior Makeover -- a makeover where we did new landscaping, painted a front door, put rocking chairs and a swing, and painted the entire outside of the house!

And today?  Today we're unveiling the 90% done Master Bedroom!  I say 90% because we still have some ways to go ... but we've still accomplished a ton & I wanted to share the progress. 

First let's look at a before image:

The main things we wanted to do were lighten the walls, put curtains up (but leave our beautiful view of the trees), and add a second dresser!

Today, this is what our room looks like:

Lighter and our sanctuary! :)  This is a room where you can get some nice rest!

We bought my husband's dresser from Habitat for Humanity for $35.  After painting it, we mod podged some wall paper (that we bought at a carpet store here in Little Rock) and screwed in the handles.  Is it perfect?  Or course not!  BUT for less than $100, it was an affordable, large, and great dresser for our needs.  We customized it to what we wanted!  The lights and candles on top of the dresser are nice, simple, and romantic.  I bought the lamps and candles at Hobby Lobby.  The rocks are from Garden Ridge.

My dresser was from a little Antique store in San Antonio, Texas.  It's moved with us and we just painted it to match the other dresser.  The lamp and vase are from Home Goods.

I bought the cushion on this chair off etsy and it's what started the inspiration from the room.  The chair was SUPER cheap at TJ Maxx on clearance.  The gallery wall was actually the husband's idea.  Instead of doing a ton of pictures of us (which is nice, but we wanted a change ...)

We boght ALL these frames from Target (talk abotu a lucky snag that day!) and put a picture from our favorite places: left is a mission in San Antonio, the tree is from College Station, Texas (gig 'em aggies!), el Morro in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the small one is Arkansas.  The largest is oru wedding picture with one of our favorite qutoes: "Marriag is not an end or a ritual.  It's a long, intricate, intimate dance together."

The two pictures above the nightstand were printed and designed by me.  I still have to change them a little (the color is off) but you get the idea. ;)

And one last view:

Source List:
nightstands: built by my handy husband and painted by us
wall color: Palladian Blue by Benjamin Moore (my favorite color ever)
Cushions and throw on bed: TJ Maxx
two lightstand lights and floor lamp: TJ Maxx
comforter and sham: Target
chair: Home Goods (on clearance for $40!)
dresser up against window: habitat for humanity (we then painted it and mod podged wall paper on the drawers)
mirror up against curtains (the inside is a jewelry cabinet): Kirklands
curtains and rods: Target
headboard: Pier 1 imports
mirror above bed: IO Metro

Still to go: some decor for the nightstands, a little more decor for my dresser, an area rug, and installing the wood flooring!  But for now, we LOVE it! :)

The Exterior Makeover (from blah to YAY!)

A few weeks ago I read this post on one of my favorite blogs, Young House Love.  They repainted their door this beautiful, bright, and lively blue color (called Blue Lake by Benjamin Moore).  I. WAS. SOLD.

I mean, literally within a week I had gone to Benjamin Moore and repainted.

But let's start with the before picture shall we?

So before we moved in the house was dark.  VERY dark.  I mean, here in Arkansas we have so many trees that light inside a house is a luxury.  So we always knew we wanted to lighten it.  We originally painted the door a grayish blue.  It looked ok. But it definitely didn't transform the house like we wanted.  When I saw the Blue Lake color, it started a bit of a ... well ... transformation of sorts.

Here's the door after I painted it AND after I had my husband remove the storm door.  The front door is super protected so the storm door really isn't needed.  A diy trick we've learned is to use your neighbors for observation.  We realized the vast majority of our neighbors didn't have storm doors and we have one of the largest porches, so even more protection.  A couple hours later, the storm door was off and it started looking a little better.

But we weren't done yet!  After much pinterest pinning and looking, I came up with this:

We started with the columns ...

I wanted to paint the columns.  My husband wasn't too sure if he agreed or not.  He thought it would look strange to have the dark gray contrast so much. But he's a sweety and agreed to try it.  The columns are White Dove by Benjamin Moore. The second we did it, we saw a huge difference.  We started getting a vision.  Our pocket books started burning, but we knew it was worth it.

But obviously one thing we really needed to do was clean up the damage from taking the storm door off.  With patience, wood filler, and caulk when needed we prepped to make sure it would look great.

And here we are today! :)  I love the door.  I mean, it is so welcoming, so fun, and just wonderful.  The door paint is blue lake by benjamin moore and the trim is white dove by benjamin moore.  We bought the mat at Target.  One little thing I've learned --- get a BIG mat!  Most porches (unless you're in an apartment) require a bigger mat than your average size.  They're only $2 more and actually fit the space.

But remember how I said our pocketbooks started hurting?  Well, after we had this done we knew we couldn't stop, so we hired painters to do the rest of the house.  They were AWESOME (if anyone in Arkansas needs a painter, email me and I can give you the name.  We were VERY happy and as much as I like to joke, they were very reasonably priced).  So in a couple days, our house looked like this ...

I'm not gonna lie.  I was pretty panicked those 3 days.  Ladders, taller ladders, and spraying, oh my!  But when they left, we knew it was a great idea.  The house color is Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore (and so is the garage -- which we painted ourselves).

The hubby & I painted as much of this as we possibly could to save on money so we did the columns, front door, porch ceiling and trim, shutters, and the garage.  It was probably close to 20-30 hours of work on our part and it took us about 5 days ... thank goodness for great daughters that played in the kiddie pool or took naps at the same time, or played in the playroom in the front lawn so we could do it!  The painter said the work probably saved about $700, so worth it for us!

And today ... here we are!

Wait wait ... let's look at a before again:

And now! :)

So much better right?  To recap colors, main body is revere pewter, columns are white dove, door is blue lake, and shutters are hale navy (all by Benjamin Moore ... I'm obsessed with BM paints).

As you can see, we also put some fun goodies on our porch!  All our porch furniture is from Garden Ridge - the swing, rocking chairs, and bench.

This is one of my favorite makeovers ... the view from the porch.  It's just so inviting.  The porch ceiling is Quiet Moments (by BM).

I painted the bench a really light blue color from BM (can't remember the name!  I think it was the lightest color on the swatch with blue lake on it) and we bought a couple cute cushions at this random rug store! ha!  We have spent SO much time reading, chatting, sharing drinks etc on this porch.  It's our family hangout, and we love it.

And there you have it! :)  I'm so in love with it all.  All the work is always worth it ... in all these big projects just have to say "it'll be worth it, just keep swimming!"

Where LaceyFields works!

Slowly but surely, this house is coming together.  This house is our true labor of love ... we work on it all the time to make it what we want.  And one thing we've learned throgh DIYing and decorating over the last 2 years is this ... TAKE.YOUR.TIME.  Have a vision.  It took about a year to get this office where I wanted.  I didn't know what to do on the one big wall, so I gave it time.  I didn't know what to do around my window b/c I loved my tree view, so I took my time.

And now, the room that I spend HOURS upon HOURS in is ... WONDERFUL!

Let's take a trip down memory lane first....here's the before:

The previous owners had it painted a very dark red and had it functioning as a ... honestly, I don't know!  Dining room / office / library?  We have a 6 person dining room table in the eat in area so for us, since I work from home, we knew an office was what we had to do!  SO ... off we went.  The main thing I needed was LOTS of work space.  I use my computer, I have a professinal grade printer, I cut, I have tons of inventory (enveleps, paper, flat mailers, ink, etc) ...

and here we are TODAY! :)

This is my packaging area! : )  Here I cut all invitations, prints when necessary.  This big wall was a challenge to decorate! I didn't want a huge gallery wall b/c I wanted some variaton and some storage too.  SO I decided on these three shelves (from Walmart) and the rest just started geling together.

* canvas: from Hobby Lobby
* shelves and office chairs: Walmart
* bunting: I designed myself and have been considering adding them to the shop!  They're SO fun! : )
* candle, accessories: TJMaxx and Target
*set of three office tables: Target

Here's my main desk area.  I love that I have a few of the trees when I work.  But I knew I needed something to the side of the desk my sweet hubby built me (to the side of this picture is a TON of storage ... all my envelopes, paper, etc in two huge storage built ins).  SO I decided I would make curtains.  I went and bought fabric from Hancock fabrics at first but it was SO expensive ($90!!!!).  I then thought "why not just cut a curtain from Target?  Then my husband said, :I bet you could do it with one panel!"  And BAM he was right!  $20 later, I had these pretty curtains to the side of the window.  I just cut the panel to size and used sewing adhesive.  Iron the sides and about 30 minutes later they were ready to be hung! :)

*curtain and rod: Target (I love Target .... a lot)

*rug: Overstock.com
*trash bins: TJMaxx

*on the other side of the storage, I have my "packaged area" --- all those packages on the right are ready to be mailed out this afternoon and there's my little handy scale on the left.  All I did to decorate here is buy clip boards from Walmart and then I printed some of my prints (three of these aren't in the shop yet ... this is an area where I collect ones I want to list and then I can photograph a few at the same time and list them all).  It's a little area to highlight Lacey Fields prints and adds so much color!

And there you have it! : )  LOVING the Lacey Fields office!  Now yo know where all your goodies are created, packaged, and made with love!