Little Man's Room Sneak Peek

  J spent the first several months of his life in our room, this worked great for nursing and was helpful with moving. We transitioned him into his own room and didn't decorate at all since we were moving. One of the first things we did when we moved into our house was J's room. I knew exactly what I wanted to do for his nursery, we aren't into overly baby nurseries so I knew that we would a room that would be adorable and grow with him. I decided on the theme little man, overly themed rooms aren't our style either but I knew we wanted chevron's and mustaches to be a part of his room. When we moved in everything was terribly painted, the previous owners bought 5 gallons of white paint and slapped it everywhere...it was a terrible hot mess. Anyway we basically started from scratch.

The empty before

      J has this little chair that we bought for him with his birthday money. We wanted to use the same colors for his room so we took the coordinating pillow to Home Depot and had them create a custom match for us.

Little man's favorite chair

     We ended up using Glidden paint, and I HATED it, I would not recommend it. We ended up using three colors for his room, the blue teal, white and a deep navy. We sanded the walls and then measured off where we would want the chevron to go. We marked it off around the room and got to painting. When I say we, I mean the Wilson's and me, Joel HATES painting. Since we knew that we were going to frame it off with molding and add crown molding I wasn't intense with the lines. It took two coats for the Glidden and the paint was not smooth or easy to work with like the Valspar that we used in the rest of the house.

Almost ready for the chevron

    Next, we used the laser level and chevron Frog Shape Tape to tape off the entire room in the white section. Then we painted over the tape with the blue Glidden paint that we bought. It was terrible, after TWO coats it still wasn't working, it was streaky and uneven no matter what we tried. So we went to Lowe's and discovered that Lowe's also color matches! This was AMAZING, we grabbed a quart of Valspar and ventured home. The Valspar painted wonderfully after just one coat we had beautiful navy walls. We removed the tape and it looked perfect!

Finally decent navy paint!

   For WEEKS J's room sat like this until Joel had time to frame it off. We also updated his light switches and outlets with bright white flat outlets.  Since we had so many other projects going on at the house we bought pre painted molding to frame the room off and pre painted crown molding.  My Dad and Joel framed the room out with molding while my parents were visiting. I was so glad to have it done and love that I can tell J that his Big Daddy helped on his room. We still need to put up the crown molding but the weather and Joel's traveling work schedule haven't made that a possibility yet.

  I also still need to decorate and paint J's dresser but this is just a sneak peek post of how we painted his nursery :) I am thrilled with how it turned out and cannot wait to finish it up!

New Fan DIY Update

We obviously have BIG plans for our little home. With me doing my student teaching this fall that means that we have a limited budget for projects and home decor since we are paying for childcare and I’m not working. I knew that we would want to replace the fans in the house but I was planning on that being one of the last projects. Well when we moved in we discovered that our living room fan did not work, well it worked but only in reverse which is terrible for Texas summers. We were planning on replacing the fan with something to match our hardwood floors…another project that will be doing sometime in the distant future. Obviously we needed a functional fan so the hunt began for something beautiful, functional and budget friendly, this was obviously an impossible find. So we decided to look for a white fan that we could eventually move into our room or into little man’s room. We were still only finding fans that were decent and included a light kit for $100 or more. I decided to do some more searching and researching reviews and ended up finding a simple white fan with a light kit for $50, I was sold. Joel surprised me with it and I immediately opened up and started trying to think of ways to make it a little more beautiful. While I was brainstorming I saw our tv stand and lighting struck! I knew that a little lacy vinyl would really add a wow factor and tie in the gray tile in our fire place. I was sold!

Materials Needed

·         Vinyl

·         Cricut or Silhouette

·         Fan Blades

·         Squeegee or Credit Card

I started thumbing through my Paper Lace booklet I was not disappointed. I narrowed it down to 3 patterns and Joel and me decided on the same pattern and the crafting began. First, I cut a couple sample pieces on paper to figure out the sizing that I wanted, once I settled on a size I started cutting my vinyl. 

You will want to make sure that your blades are nice and clean :)

After all of the vinyl was cut I placed the vinyl on transfer paper so that it would transfer smoothly. This is extremely important with delicate or intricate vinyl. Then I measured where I would want to center the vinyl and marked where each piece would begin and end. This was to ensure that all of the blades would have the same placement and a very uniform look. Then I stuck the transfer paper to the blade and smoothed it out with a squeegee, if you don’t have one you can use a credit card. After this was done I removed the transfer paper and smoothed the vinyl over one more time with the squeegee. After repeating this process 5 times I was done and Joel assembled the fan! 

Measure and mark so that each blade has the same vinyl placement.

I truly cannot believe how much this simple inexpensive project has made such a beautiful HUGE impact in our living room. For under $5 it has made our fan go from drab to fab! So for $55 we have a functional and beautiful fan that really ties our living room together. 

I'm in LOVE this maybe my favorite project ever!

So We Bought A House!

That's right, since I blogged last we bought a house! It's a fixer upper with lots of potential but we love it. Since signing our lives away and getting our keys we've been busy cleaning, unpacking and making our house a home one diy at a time. Our house sat empty for over a year before it went on the market, so we spent the majority of our first week deep cleaning and getting it move in ready. Here are a few pictures of our sweet little home :) It's a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom with both formals and a breakfast nook!

This is it!

This is our Kitchen excuse the finger and cell phone picture.

The breakfast nook.

Our formal living room, we use this as an office.

Our formal dining room, this will eventually be a formal dining room and craft room.

Part of the living room.

Our living room has high ceilings and a bar that opens to the kitchen

 

Our hall coat closet. Sorry this is so bad.

Our hall linen closet.

 J's room and the guest room basically look the same

J's closet and the guest closet both look like this

The kid's bathroom

Our bedroom

Our bedroom is off the living room

Our bathroom has a toilet room, stand alone shower, soaking tub and double vanity.

Our closet

  We have BIG plans and a budget for making our home our own. I am so excited to share our journey of home ownership and making a house a home with all of y'all!

Catching Up With the Carman's!

So much has happened since my last post. I survived a long rough pregnancy, am now a wife to a college graduate, a mother and a Texan! That's right we moved to Houston at the end of May! Little man is almost five months old and is growing up way too quickly! There is a lot of transition going on in our lives right now but I'm diving back into blogging! My camera is currently out of commission so cell phone pictures will have to do until we get settled and I get a new one! I am so excited to share our life with you!

Crockpot Meatloaf Stuffed Peppers

Ingredients:

 1 Cup of White Rice

 1 Package of Italian Seasoned Ground Turkey

 2 Eggs

 ½ tsp. of Salt

 ½ tsp. of Pepper

 1 tsp. Garlic Powder 

1 tsp. Parsley 

1 tbsp. McCormick Italian Seasoning 

1 cup Grated Mozzarella Cheese

 12 oz Jar of Tomato Sauce

 6 Bell Peppers

 EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) 

      First you want to cook your rice, you can use instant rice, or cook your rice the old fashioned way. Next you want to get a big bowl to mix in. In this bowl mix your turkey, eggs, seasoning, cheese and cooked rice together. Cut and gut your peppers, once this has been done stuff them with the mixture. Coat your Crockpot in EVOO and do not use a Crockpot liner. After your peppers are stuffed place them in the Crockpot. Once they are in the Crockpot top each pepper with the remaining tomato sauce, allow some sauce to drip to the bottom. Cook on low for 6 hours. When they are done take them out and enjoy, we top ours with some extra cheese.

These are a favorite at our house, I hope your family enjoys them as much as mine does!

2+1=3

Our family is growing by two feet! I still find myself amazed that we are actually having a baby! We both feel so blessed and amazed! We had such a fun time telling our family and friends and have been overwhelmed with the kind words thoughts and prayers.I have been very sick but thankfully I am now starting to have a few good days and a few sick days. There are a few baby things that have made their way into our apartment. And of course my mind has full of nursery ideas, which has lead to hours looking at cribs and thinking of color combinations for our little one.

My Lovely Desk

I am so excited to finally have a craft room and my very own desk! When looking for a desk I knew that I needed something sturdy and big enough to accommodate my needs and my crafting tools.I picked up my desk off of craigslist for $60.00 but knew that it needed a little updating.

So I picked my colors and got to work. I decided to take the desk apart to make sure that I didn't miss anything. Once it was disassembled I went paint crazy!

The bottom of my desk is a light coral color that I fell in love with. For the top of my desk I went with a light bright blue.

I also covered the top of my desk with lace print contact paper. It looks amazing and if I get ink on it from stamping it wipes right up! it's a little hard to get a picture of but it's lovely in real life!

I am so in love with my new desk! I think this transformation is quite possibly my most favorite one yet!

Tea Cup Pincushion

Mother's day is quickly approaching, and there are gifts to be made, flowers to be sent and cards to be crafted in the Carman house. Today I am going to share another handmade gift, perfect for a sewing Momma. This is a super cute gift that is very budget and time friendly, from start to finish it took me a little over five minutes to finish this adorable gift. To make this gift you need a teacup and saucer, I got mine for $1.00 from my local thrift store. You will also need fabric, steel wool, some batting, a rubber band, and a hot glue gun.

I began by cutting my fabric into a decent sized square and hot gluing the steel wool onto the fabric. I used steel wool because it will actually sharpen your pins and needles!

Then I added the batting and hot glued it to my steel wool. I only added it to get it to sit in the teacup the way I wanted.

Next, I gathered the fabric tightly and rubber banded it. It is important to make sure you are satisfied with how the fabric lays, and the way the pincushion fits into the teacup.

Now, all that's left is some simple hot gluing! You want to coat the inside of the teacup with hot glue, and then insert the pincushion. I then hot glued my teacup to the saucer, this can be done or skipped.

There you go! A simple sweet handmade gift that any mother or grandmother would love and cherish!

Note Holder!

I am also a firm believer that God gave us hands for a reason, and I love making things, and giving handmade.

Craft Room

 Our new apartment has two bedrooms! And they are two nice sized rooms, both of them are big enough for a King size bed.  We decided to take the second bedroom as our bedroom, and use the Master Bedroom as a shared craft and office room. Now going from a corner to a room has been a huge jump. We are still figuring out how we want to set up the room, but one thing we knew for sure was that we we're going to need a desk for Joel and at least a craft table for me. Well, it just so happens that my Mom's work was moving some offices around and changing out furniture. So my Mother, knowing that we were searching for a desk, made arrangements for us to get one of the wooden L-Shaped desks that they were getting rid of. All we had to do was pick it up! While picking up our free desk, we also scored 3 office chairs!
  At first Joel didn't want the desk, so he was just going to use a table like he had at our old apartment. However, that quickly changed once we got the desk set up in our room. We decided to let him have it, and I would use a table or search for a desk online. After a few days of searching, I was beginning to give up hope, all of the desks that I was finding were several hundreds of dollars USED. The most expensive furniture purchase that we have ever made was our bedroom furniture. There was no way that I could justify spending that much money on a desk. Just when I was about to give up hope, I found this!

Yes, I got a tanker. For $70 bucks it was mine. Sure it doesn't look amazing but it's mine and beautiful things will be made on it. Now, those of you who know me, know that there is no way that I'm leaving my desk looking like this. I picked out the colors for my craft room and should have a total transformation for you soon!

May Flowers

I can't believe that it is already May! This year is flying by and I am so excited that it is finally May! So much has happened since I blogged last. My brother is now one of the few, the proud; he’s a United States Marine!

We moved! To a new apartment, we are still settling in and unpacking, but we love it! I can’t wait until it’s all done! Our new apartment has two bedrooms, and we are using the second room as an office and craft room. I am hoping to have this room unpacked and somewhat organized by the end of next week. I am no longer a stay at home wife. I was offered a wonderful job, and started working full time this week. I am still trying to get used to being back in the working world, I think that once everything settles between moving, school, and going out of town life won’t seem so crazy! I am also thinking about opening an etsy shop, but we’ll see how life goes. I hope that your May is off to a wonderful start! I can’t wait to get back into the swing of blogging and project sharing! I have a few projects that I am planning and I cannot wait for Summer!

New paint for my new end tables!!

As most of you know we were supposed to make a cross country move to Houston this May. I say supposed to because our plans have changed and Joel's conflicting school schedule is keeping us here until December. Awhile ago we had picked out colors for what will be our new bedroom. I had begun putting together this room in my mind with colors and furniture, and since we recently found some of the key pieces to what I have in mind I decided to keep putting the room together like we were moving. The main colors that we have picked out for our new room are gray with a white accent, we also picked teal and purple as our pop colors. Our new found end tables are going to be our nightstands in our new bedroom. I really love the shape of them, and they have so much room for storage that it's ridiculous! So last night after Joel got out of class at 10 we made a walmart run for spray paint. We wound up getting some Kylan duel spraypaint, it has primer and paint, we went with white, boring I know but I love how it turned out. We knew that the end tables needed a little bit of sanding,so that the paint would stick, but that they wouldn't need to be completely sanded. Since we had some sanding blocks at home we didn't buy any. I started this project by taking the hardware off of the tables, and removing the door from the tables, when I say I did this I actually mean that Matt did this :] I started by lightly sanding the doors, then I gave them a gentle coat of Krylon Dual spraypaint. I also lightly sanded the tables and gave them a few gentle coats as well. Amidst my coating I ran out of spraypaint so I ventured to the store to get some more, and I might have gotten a Diet Cherry Coke from Sonic during Happy Hour. When I got back I finished spraying and went to a meeting. After my meeting I painted the pops of color on the tables. This took forever to dry and I feel like was the most time consuming process in the entire project. Once the pops of color finally dried, it was time to glaze. I was most excited to glaze and to finally have my side tables done! Below are pictures of each step! Now to figure out what to do with the hardware. My tables, prior to transformation.

Prepping to paint.

Paint!!!

Pop goes the color!

Glaze and Amaze!

I think it's fair to say that I'm just a tad excited to finally have them, and for them to be painted. I had the best time painting my day away!The darker color is purple in real life, the same color as our cross candle holders, I'm not sure why it's turning out so dark in the pictures. I really love how they turned out! I feel like our new room is starting to fall into place, now if I can only find gray paisley Hillcrest king sized bedding my life will be complete! Ok...maybe not my life, maybe just my dreams... I think for now I'll stick to trying to figure out what I want to do as far as hardware goes.