It's a....

Girl!!!! Last Thursday we went to our ultrasound and found out that we are having a healthy baby girl. We are so over the moon and can't even begin to express all of our excitement.   We went into the ultrasound just praying for a healthy baby.

We were both absolutely convinced it was a boy, but to our surprise we were wrong.  We shared the news with family and friend on Thursday night and I will be back soon with all of the details. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!!

Joy to the World!!

Back a few posts ago I told you about a few treasure's I found at an antique barn in WI. One that I left out is this partial piece of fence post.

 It had three posts and it was perfectly distressed. It has been sitting in my garage for some time and I decided Christmas was the perfect use for it. I originally thought I would use it by the front door, but realized there was plenty out there and a perfect empty spot that needed a little help.  The deck!! We decorate our deck with white lights along the railing and like to have a little something to look at through both the sliding glass door and the family room window. Now on to how I made this little sign.  I picked up a few wood letters at Jo Ann fabrics and had the hubby spray them silver.

  I was thinking spraying them silver would be just enough, but unfortunately I was wrong.  As you can see in the pic the letters were a little spotty since it was so cold when he was spraying. So I went to plan B and decided to glitter the letters.  It was absolutely the right  decision!! I just painted them with modge podge and then sprinkled them with silver glitter.  Once they had dried I used a little gorilla glue ( I was out of wood glue) and decided to stagger the letters.

 It turned out wonderful!!  I wanted to cover up the table and umbrella holder that stays on the deck all year so this was the perfect thing to do so.

 I filled another winterproof pot with tree tops and left over lights and picked up the battery operated silver reindeer at santa.  It turned out to be a perfect little vignette for the deck!!!

On the other side of the deck is a little item I had repurposed last year, my great grandmothers sleigh/sled that she used as a child.  I don't have pics of what it originally looked like, but it was a blue sleigh with pictures of circus animals on it.  I used a can of silver spray paint on the sleigh and added a spray painted wood snowflake to the side.  Now that it is all completed I just add tree top, lights and large glittered balls to the inside of the sleigh. I love how it looks out the window each night.

Has anyone else been working on some Christmas crafting??

It's Christmas Time!!!!

I can't believe it is here! The most glorious time of the year. December is filled with faith, family, friends and decorations galore.  I must confess I have been at the decorating game for a few weeks now and will have lots to share in the next 20 days. Including our gender reveal party!!!!!  Since today is our first real snowy day I thought I would start outside in the entry.  I love having a festive front door for people to walk up to. It is inviting right from the start. 

I filled my pots with lots of spruce tops, birch sticks that my MIL gathered at the cabin, stick lights (I will try and get a night pic), and a bow to top it off. Very simple, but I love how the rustic birch sticks tie together with all of the silver pops.  Above the pots I hang 6 over sized ornaments. I use small command hooks that stay up all year round and because they are small and mostly white you don't even notice.  Now on to the cheery green front door! 

Last year I was on a hunt for a vintage pair of white skates for my front door. Once i found them I modge podged them and covered them with clear glitter.  It is hard to see in this pic, but the glitter just adds a little freshness to the skates. They are by no means perfect since they are vintage after all.

I buy a pre done swag at the local nursery and add the skates with a bow and there you have it!  I absolutely love how the skates look on the front door and enjoy how unique it is since it is not a wreath.  Ok, I will try and add a few night shots of the front once we finish outside lights for our party this coming weekend.  I also have two new projects that will be added to the entry that I will hopefully have finalized next week.  Hope you all take time this Christmas season to spend precious moments with friends and family and most importantly remember the reason for the season.  The wonderful birth of our savior Jesus Christ!!!

My Obsession with the Letter P!

Okay, so I don't know about you, but I have an absolute obsession with monograms and anything that incorporates my last name initial P.  If you have been reading along for awhile you may have started to notice a trend.  Below is my living room armoire that as you can see begins this tour with 2 P's on the shelves.

Moving up the stairs I recently added a P to my gallery wall that goes up the stairs (as well as a few new frames!)

A P in the kitchen!

Two P's in the office

A new P in the entryway! ( More details on this later!)

 

I also love to use P's in a number of other ways, napkins, drawer knobs and anything else I can get my hands on!

So, here is the question do you have a similar obsession? Do you also love to use your initials when you decorate?  I know it may be weird, but I will just keep collecting :)  Happy Thursday!

Exciting News!!

Baby P will be arriving in May 2014!!!

You have no idea how excited we are to finally be able to share this news with everyone.  What a blessing it has all been. We are thrilled to start planning for Baby P's arrival and all the joy (and details) that comes with it.  I will share more as time goes by!

The pictures were all taken by the amazingly talented Sara Jayne Photography!! You have to check out here website and all of the beautiful pictures she takes. The girl is seriously talented!!!

www.sara-jayne.com

Organizing my life!

Hi all! So sorry I have been MIA for a bit. It is my crazy time a year for my real  job!! I promise I have been working on things behind the scenes though and will have a ton to share with you over the next few weeks. A little project I worked on a few weeks ago was an organization overhaul. I am going to warn you some of these pictures are going to be embarrassing (for me!), but I will share them now that I have come up with a nice organization system.  My goal over the next few months is to touch every closet and get rid of a ton of stuff!! Ok, here is the dreaded before of my office closet.

Is it as bad as you thought?? As you can see everything and anything was shoved in here. Work stuff, craft stuff, pictures, and the kitchen sink!! I took everything out and sorted items into piles.

I picked up a bunch of inexpensive organizing items from my very favorite store, TARGET!!

The colors make me happy and I am so excited to start a new project now that I can easily access everything.  Have you been working on any fall organizing these days?  Any tips?

Pillow Painting

Back this week with a quick post on my new pillow that I showed you HERE.  This was one of the easiest projects and may be one of my favorite DIY's ever. I am not joking. I want to make 100's of these pillows and put them in every room of my house. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration,  but I do love it!!!  If you follow me on Pinterest you will see my board Pillow Love that is filled with beautiful designs. It gave me the inspiration to DIY something much less expensive. I started with a Gurli pillow from Ikea, acrylic paint, painters tape and a stencil brush. All in all The project cost me under $10!

First I layed a large X in the middle and started filling v's around it as a place holder. Once the row was on I would pull off my place holder and put it on to the next row.

Then I used my stencil brush to make sure there was nice coverage without it seeping under the tape.

After the X was all completed I taped off the edges around the seam and i painted it a dark gray color.

Pictures tell such a better story.   Here is the beautiful metallic pillow all finished.

What do you think? Did you check out my pillow love Pinterest board? There is a lot of inspiration there and you will see many more techniques to come.  Happy Friday!!!

Living Room Love

Now that the office is almost complete I wanted to change rooms and share something new.  It's Living Room time! When we first bought this house it had a sunken living room.  I don't have a great picture to show it, but when you walked in on the left hand side you had a very odd railing that only went one step up.  It absolutely cut off the space and made it feel small. Below are the always beautiful before pics :)

 We hired a contractor to raise the floor so that it would be seamless with the kitchen and the dining room.  Huge score!! It made everything feel much bigger and now after getting rid of the 80's I absolutely love the space. 

The first real furniture purchase we made in this house was the beautiful houndstooth chairs. We bought one and my parents bought one as a gift. 5 years later and I am still just as smitten.

Now I must tell you a few things. One I change the color scheme in this room often, and two the bench that is serving as"love seat" is temporary, but it was an awesome solution on the cheap!! 

I like the small pop of mint/blue and I think it ties in the entryway console table really well. 

Looking at this picture I can see I am still in need of some art on the walls in the entry :) Are we really ever done decorating?? I added the gold 1.5 years ago and I still love how rich it looks with the black and white. 

Other than the large armoire which is my MIL's, most of the furniture is a TJ or online find.  Do you see this pillow?

That is one of my new DIY's that I will be back to share next week. So you don't have to scroll to the top here are the before and afters!

 So what do you think? Do you like the black white and gold?