The butterfly evolution

Changes continue to happen in Sofia's big girl bedroom and if I do say so myself, I'm loving it!  But enough talking, let's get down to some pictures!

The Rug came and I'm so in love with it!

Her room looks so sweet and girly!

I originally bought the lamp for the basement playroom but 

it's perfect in its new home.

Now I just have to figure out what color to paint the book cubes?  Book rectangles?  

Book holder thingies?

Should I paint them white to make things a little cleaner and let

the books be the color, or go with a shade of pink and orange from the rug?

In this corner, the red pouf is getting replaced with a white one, as soon as I can find one that's not a million dollars.  I just put the pink pillow in the chair to see what it would look like, but I will find a fun fabric and recover the smaller striped pillow that used to be there.  I'm not sure if I should repaint the side table, as it mimics the white base and black top of her chalkboard table.  Thoughts?  I still haven't hung the shelves or curtain wire on the wall opposite the dresser, but I'm hoping to get that done this week.  It's coming together and with a few more small tweaks, Sofia's big girl room will be all finished!

Also, this is my new favorite thing about her room.

This was just for fun.

Sofia doesn't sleep with anything in her bed; she's constantly kicking off blankets 

and stuffed animals get thrown to the floor if they dare try to share her space.

This isn't one of my word-vomit dumping kind of posts, but I sure do love decorating my little girl's room and I just wanted to share what I've been doing with you, my friends.

And it's a good thing I like decorating, because I have another little girl's room 

that is in DIRE need of some attention.  I'm just waiting for inspiration to strike; even though I've been all over Pinterest and the design blogs but nothing is speaking to me just yet.

We'll just call this shot "Before the before."

This post is a short one, but hopefully a fun one.  I think you have to have posts like these every now and then, right?  

Anyway, I have to run.  I'm interviewing babysitters this afternoon so Drew and I can have a date night this weekend and I should probably shower and get out of my pjs.  It's a huge but necessary step (getting a sitter, not getting out of my pjs.  Although some days that's a pretty major thing too) and I'm crazy nervous about it.  I'm going to be positive, attract nothing but happy positive energy, say lots of prayers and get a sitter for my child.  If that sounds ridiculous, it's because it is.  I shouldn't go nearly three years without a regular date night with my husband, without regular mom time for me.  We're all important players in this family and we all deserve some recharge time.  I will ask lots of questions, use my mom intuition to guide me to the right caregiver and we're all going to win.

Wish me luck!

Put down the Haterade

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed this morning and I came across this article.  Now, I don't know who this guy is and from what I can gather from his other blog posts, I don't agree with everything he writes, but this particular post may resonated with me so loudly that I was like, Holy cow, I get this.  I like being stopped in my tracks like that because it's not often that my brain gets a workout and I get to critically think about things other than parenting.  

I read his open letter to the haters of the world and I found myself nodding my head in that 'hell yeah!  Preach!' kind of way.  We've all had personal experience with haters; it's human nature.  Competition is not entirely evil and exercise is a great example.  I push myself harder in a group than I ever would alone and that's not a bad thing.  Unfortunately, competition and its darker cousin, comparison can become a slippery slope and the haters lay along that path, just waiting to kick you while you're down. 

When I was young, the haters hated my light skin and long hair.  As I got older, it was my weight (among other things.)  Obviously I eat lettuce and air every day, because there's no other way that I'm 37 years old and 120 pounds at nearly six months pregnant.  Obviously I don't care about my health or my unborn child's health, otherwise I wouldn't be so skinny.  Obviously I have good genes and I'm just lucky because there's no other explanation for my body.  Obviously if you too ate lettuce and air, had good genes and didn't care about your health, you could look like me.  I'm supposed to laugh and shrug it off when you call me a skinny bitch.  Because you know, I'm being skinny at you.  (Btw, here's the original article about that if you'd like to read it.)

Sometimes, I will seek to make myself more accessible and point out all my jillions of flaws in response, as if to make up for something that does come to me naturally, but I work for it too. Well yeah I'm thin, but I have crippling anxiety; I have no trouble finding clothes but I'm plagued with daily self-doubt about almost everything; I never worry about my body image but let me tell you about the ten thousand other things I worry about.  It's a drag, especially when I feel like I'm apologizing unnecessarily.   Why in the world should any of us apologize for our good fortune, ever?  But we do, and it's only ever to make the haters feel better.  What kind of sense does that make? 

Yet we've all done it; we've all apologized for our successes at some point in time.  We've all taken self-deprecation too far in the name of making someone else feel better and it's often at our expense.  We minimize our own greatness because somehow, somewhere we came to believe that it's not polite to be proud of ourselves.  (There's a poem about being great and one of the lines says 'Who are you to live small?  You're extraordinary and it's your duty to shine your light' or something like that.  I wish I could remember that poem right now.)  How many of us can receive compliments without squirming or saying 'oh it was nothing' in an almost knee-jerk fashion?

Hearing about someone being picked on for their appearance really spoke to me and got me thinking 'You know, haters really suck.'

In my opinion, haters suck so much because they get vile and vicious without warning and for no reason.  In the case of the fit mom, the haters were like 'Well she obviously doesn't take care of her kids because that's the only way she can look like that.  She obviously has nannies and a personal chef and an independently wealthy husband because there's no other way to get abs like that.'

The most dangerous part of that is that none of that is true.  But haters don't care about the truth because they have their emotions and if that's how you feel then that's how it is.  Talk about a slippery slope, because emotions are important and vital to life, but making emotions and truth interchangeable is a dangerous game to play.

Emotions are easy.  They require no accountability and whatever you feel is your truth.  But that's the thing - it's your truth, not *the* truth.    For me, *the* truth is only that which can be proven.  If you feel like someone doesn't like you, that's your truth.  If that person pulls you aside and says directly to you "I don't like you" that's *the* truth.

However, your truth isn't completely invalid.  It's actually quite useful, in the same way that an animal's hair stands up on its back and it's ears perk up because it senses a predator is near.  You should never discount your intuition and it's never a good thing to talk yourself out of a gut feeling.  You just have to be careful that you don't live your life thinking there's a predator around every corner.  No animal can live in a constant state of stress and you miss out on a lot of good things if you live like everyone's out to get you.

I try to live that lesson every day, especially when I feel myself falling under the influence of the Haterade.  I see these moms on Facebook posting about their girls' night outs or the five-mile run they just completed and I'm like Well yeah, if I had family next door to babysit for free I could do that too.  

And then I stop myself cold, reminding myself that I'm not the only one with no family nearby.  I've received emails from you, my beautiful readers, who have no family or whose family is in another country and you're all living life, making it happen and I have no choice but to stop feeling sorry for myself.  I don't get out and do things because *I* make that choice.  Not every babysitter is a child molester in disguise and I have to stop being held hostage by my fear.  I could go on a five-mile run if I really wanted to, although let's get one thing straight:  I don't want to.

  A little humor before it gets too serious around here.

Matt Walsh says he loves his haters.  He's a better man than I am; I have no love for someone who hates me.  I'm human, not Jesus.  I try my hardest not to waste my precious life-force apologizing for my good fortune or trying to make my haters love me and I really hope that awesomely fit mom holds her head high and lives life with no apologies.  

We give our haters too much power; we let them tell us how we should live by letting them make us feel bad for our choices.  That is bullshit.

Some people climb the mountains. Some people stand at the base and hope the climbers hit a loose rock and fall to their deaths. You seem to be in the latter group. Fine, you’re safe down there on the ground. It’s just that you’re not really alive, either.  source

That quote resonated with me the most.  Climbing a mountain is hard work and it's perfectly acceptable to do without smiling the entire way, as long as you keep going.  The haters will point at you and say See!  You're bitching about how hard it is!  Obviously, you don't like what you're doing and you're just showing off and you're a terrible person.  It's especially true if any mother ever dares complain about parenting in any way.  Obviously you don't care about your kids/you're doing something wrong/you're not strong enough, otherwise you wouldn't complain/it wouldn't be so hard.

The haters miss the fact that they're hollering at you from the ground, while you're getting closer and closer to the top and the view when you get there is going to be so worth it that the haters will hopefully be drowned out by all the magnificence and beauty.

Something like this.

This is what I see at the top of my mountain.

I may curse and cry along the way, but I will put one foot in front of the other

until the end of my days for this.

You're at the top of my mountain too, New Baby!

Also, I need some new belly pictures because this one is from 13-14 weeks.

I can't believe I'm 22 weeks already; this pregnancy is going by so fast!

I've let haters get to me way too often about way too much.  However, I have a renewed sense of commitment, spurred on by that mom who was being awesome at me in the best possible way.  She's no superwoman, she has the same 24 hours I do.  While I don't have her same goals, I can set and reach my own even if they're as simple as I'm not going to let the haters bring me down today.

Haters are poisonous scary people and if you come across one, take heed.  If your hair stands up on the back of your neck, that's real.  Give them a wide berth, don't try and make them love you, and if you're a better person than me, say a little prayer for them that they find peace.

And if you find yourself under the influence of the Haterade, just stop.  Recognize that comparison and competition are normal human emotions and you don't have to be ruled by them.  Your feelings matter, just know the difference between your truth and *the* truth.

I'm going to be awesome today and although I'm not I'm under direct attack from any haters in the present moment, I'm not going to let them bring me down should any of them rear their ugly poisonous tiny heads.  I'm an awesome person and I'm about to go change my daughter's diaper - awesomely.  Then I might play blocks with her - like a BOSS.  After that, I'll feed her - like a PRO.  

You AND me.  We're awesome.  Don't let the haters tell you different.

Good things make me happy

It is a new day, friends.  Sleep was had all around, Daddy came home, and there's no longer a red line on the battery charger.  I've got the smallest sliver of green and it's growing.  It's because of you.  Your comments and emails lifted my spirits and gave me just enough juice to keep going and I thank you so much for that.  We are in this fight together, mamas and we will prevail.  Sofia is back in her diapers, she's back to being happy and that's all I need in this world.

Drew came home from his trip last night and 

said those three little words I never get tired of hearing:

"Let's eat out."

We had a very nice dinner that I didn't have to cook, Sofia slept through the night, it's a gorgeous day today and I feel a little stronger because of all of it.  I might even make it through his next business trip in one piece - it's a short one this time and it's during the week.  Weekend trips are ten times harder than weekday ones, long trips are harder than short ones, but I'm going to make it through because that's what I have to do.  It's my job and just because I had a hard day at the office doesn't mean I'm going to quit.

That said, with this bit of energy I have I'd like to share some pretty pictures of good things that make me happy.

I did some switching and changing in Sofia's room and I got the okay to order The Rug, which my hot little fingers will be doing at the stroke of Payday tomorrow.  In the meantime, I did some other stuff.

I brought the king-size duvet down to the basement so I 

could split it in half and sew it up the middle.

I had to clean up my sewing area since I

use it oh so often.

Turns out, the twin size comforter is not half the size of a king; 

it's more like two thirds.  However, after deliberating for a minute and deciding

that I really wanted two duvets out of this little project, 

I split the king-size down the middle anyway.

I figured 'over-stuffing' the duvet would make it extra fluffy.

I measured a couple of times and I pinned nothing.  I gave myself a pep talk the whole way: "It's just fabric, you can sew a straight line, you can do this.  The bed's against the wall anyway, it's just fabric, just cut it up!"  And I sure did cut that thing up the middle and sewed it shut!  If I do say so myself, it doesn't look half bad.  I got a ruffled bedskirt from Target and her little bed, while not finished, is looking quite sweet and girly.

Then came the butterflies.  When I first made and hung them, they were around her canvas.  This time around, I wanted more of an accent wall.  I didn't have enough for a full wall, so I went to Michael's, where of course, they only had two sheets left of the white paper.  You know, just once in my life, I would like just one of my projects to go off without a hitch.  Since it would take two weeks for them to order more white paper for me and I don't have the time or patience for that, I improvised and bought paper in a couple of shades of pink and some orange for an ombre butterfly accent wall.

Then I got to cutting and cutting and cutting more butterflies.  I did not measure and stuck them on the wall in a grid-ish pattern.  One of these days I'll take more time and be more precise with things, but I was too busy telling Sofia that the lovely butterflies within her reach were in fact, not for touching.  It took her a minute to leave them alone but I'm happy to say that she doesn't pull them off the wall now.  However...

In theory, a butterfly accent wall sounds whimsical and magical.

In practice, it was way too busy and chaotic underneath

the window with the chair and the bookcases and the table and the butterflies.

The butterflies are what you see when you walk in the room and there's nowhere to rest your eyes.  I couldn't deal so I took down the ones under the window.

Removing the ones from the bottom meant I had more white butterflies to use, but I 

was precisely six short.  Not to worry, I put some orange and pink ones in 

to fill the spaces and I'm kinda liking it this way.  

Now there's not so much going on at that wall.

Once the rug comes and it's in place, I'll decide what color to paint the bookcases and I'll sew another pillow for the chair. I'm still on the fence about whether or not she needs a headboard or just some more throw pillows.  Throw pillows are against my religion, but you can't deny their merit.  Throw pillows on beds just irks me, but I feel like her bed needs a little something more - maybe those floral sheets, I'm not sure.

And here's a hideous picture of the canvases I moved. 

I tried to wait for a sunny day to take these pictures but it was gloomy and rainy for like three days straight and I finally gave up.  Even though Sofia is back in diapers, I'm moving the changing pad and supply basket to the nursery.  I'll change both kids in there so I'm going to put some random fun stuff on top of this dresser.

Incidentally, I read about design stuff with most of my free time, when I'm not reading about how to potty train your kid, that is.  I should probably just stick to reading about design stuff.  Anyway, I read that odd numbers of groupings is more pleasing to the eye than even numbers.  I don't usually listen to design rules and I just do what makes me happy, but in this case I found it to be totally true.  I love having the three canvases over the dresser, and having just one picture near the door versus two feels so much better to me.

Not that this isn't good...

I just like this better.  And I know you can't really tell because 

it's not the same vantage point, but trust me it looks cleaner.

I'm planning to make a field trip to Ikea in the next couple of days and load up on stuff to finish Sofia's room and our bedroom.  Our bedroom walls are so painfully bare it's sad.  

Oh and PS - thanks for throwing me under the bus on the whole bedding thing.  We're probably getting gray bedding now because I got voted down so hard.  

I'm kidding - even though I die for the black bedding, after considering what else I want to put in the room, the gray probably will look better.  Next time I ask for your opinion though, I'm going to have to figure out a way that Drew won't see it because I got some gloating.  "See!  Even your blog readers think you should go with the gray!"  Yeah yeah, whatever.

So, today I'm happy and that's a good thing.  I will remind myself that I'm a good mom regardless of when Sofia gives up diapers, learns the full alphabet, knows her colors or what college she gets into.  She's a wonderful beautiful child and I get to be her mom, so I'm already ahead.

I just may need your help remembering that the next time, and if you need help remembering it for yourself, just holler and we'll be there for each other.  Y'all are right and it does take a village, real or virtual and I'm so thankful for you that continue to visit me and join me on this journey.  

You're good people and I'm grateful.

Hard day at work

I want to go back to the days of my previous post.  The one where I did things right, because I had a hard day at the office today.

In my last post, I was bragging all over the place at how my daughter had nearly mastered the whole potty training thing.  Then, this weekend we went to a birthday party at a friend's house and it was regression all over the place.  The next day was no better - we went through so many changes of clothes even I began to get discouraged.  I thought we had this; I thought I was going to get to put a checkmark in the 'win' box.  

But the shine had worn off; the novelty of going to the potty was officially over and things were as they had been before, except a lot more accident clean-ups because everything I read said how horrible it was to go back and forth between diapers and underwear, how I would be confusing her, how she'd never learn.  So I dutifully changed her clothes every single time.  But I made the mistake of taking it personally; if only I'd followed the rules (whatever they are), if only I'd had a better plan, if only I'd done it (whatever 'it' is) differently, it would have stuck and there would be no accidents.  I failed.

There were so many tears today because I so desperately needed a win.  I needed to do something right.  I needed to be a good mom and I hung that need on potty training.  Such a huge mistake, but I just couldn't help it.

And here's where I get stupid because I can't see the keyboard through my tears.

She comforted me.  It's not supposed to be that way.  "Mommy why you crying?  It's ok."  She kissed me on my cheek and I felt even worse, even more of a failure.  I apologized to her; she laid in bed and hugged me and stroked my cheek.  Where did she even learn to do that?  

I'm alone too much.  I can't do everything, and I know I'm approaching the edge when I get mad at people on Facebook and Instagram.  "How are you having a girls night out?  Who's watching your kids?!?!"  It's probably a babysitter or a husband or family - I have none of those things.  I mean, I have a husband.  Technically, but he's gone so much.  I could get a babysitter but I have such paralyzing anxiety that I can't trust a stranger with my child.  The stakes are too high.  Your kid only has to get hurt once for their lives to be ruined.  And for what?  Even if I got a babysitter, where would I go?  What would I do?

I read something once about this concept of people living their lives at you.  Like, they're shoving their perfection down your throat when all they're doing is just living and most likely they don't even know you exist.  That's how I feel - how dare you have your potty-trained child at me?  How dare you post about your evening out with your friends at me?  Don't you know I'm alone 90% of the time?  Don't parade your perfect family at me like that.

And then I know I'm crazy and I need to step away from the computer.

But I turn away from the computer and turn towards an empty house, an empty bed; another day where everything is on my shoulders.  It's another day where I feel like I haven't done anything right and I'm surely destroying my daughter's future because of it.

I know people say Oh it's just one day where she watches a ton of tv, it'll be all right.  But it's not; it's a lot of days.  Because no matter how hard I try, I can't entertain her every waking hour.  I try so hard and I feel like I fail so hard.

Don't be so hard on yourself, you're doing a great job.  Really?  How do you know?  How does anyone know?  The only way to tell that you're doing a good job raising your kids is when they're old and gray and haven't done anything bad with their life.  Even then, you can't take complete credit for that, because they're their own people and whether or not they do good with their life is up to them.  So you just end up doing this, day in and day out, not knowing how it's going to turn out, getting no feedback from the one who matters the most.  I need her to tell me that she's going to do good things with her life because I taught her.  I need her to promise me that she'll make good choices because of the effort that I put in raising her.  That's what I need and it'll never happen because it can't happen because it doesn't work that way.

My God, I'm about to have two.  

This is just a hard day at work.  This too, shall pass.  She will give up diapers with no help from me; she'll do it when she's really ready.  I won't feel personally offended when other people have lives and live them when I can't.  One day I'll get to have a life too.  One day I'll get to do things for myself and I won't feel guilt or anxiety.  Maybe.  

After a good night's sleep, maybe I will take these things in stride.  I will see these things as minor setbacks and not utter parenting failures.  I really hope so.

I'm making no sense and against my better judgement, I'm posting this.  I need to.

I hung too much on this accomplishment that wasn't mine; this wasn't my milestone to reach and I took credit for it prematurely because I needed something tangible to show that my efforts weren't in vain.  I needed something to point to and say See?  What I do is important!  The time I spend matters because look what I helped to do!  And when it didn't work, I was crushed.  I desperately needed to do something right and this was that thing.

I know I'm not alone.  I know I'm not the first to feel this way and that's probably really why I'm putting this out there.  I need perspective.  I need to know that this indeed is just a hard day at work.  Just one day.  That the other side exists and we'll make it there.  

Sofia and the big girl room

I would like to take this moment to do a little bragging.

About this small person right here.

She loves ice cream.

She likes to make lists and can hold a pen with the precision of a surgeon.

She is a master face-maker.

She's also an expert-level cuddler.

She's fearless and would climb more trees if the branches weren't so high.

For now, she accepts Mommy's help with grace.

I'm the luckiest person in the world that I get to share space with such

an amazing little girl.  I get to be her guide on this journey and that's pretty awesome.

And as of a week ago, this little girl went ahead and made that leap and started using the big girl potty.  I'd been trying to coax her to use it for a couple of months now, but Sofia does things when Sofia is good and ready and she wasn't ready.  We'd been going diaper-free at home, but it was hit or miss.  Until one day, she was playing in the living room and she stopped what she was doing and ran to the bathroom.  She climbed up and peed like she'd been doing it forever.  No prompting, no bribing - she just went and it was glorious.  Ever since then, if she's not wearing pants, going to the potty is no problem.  We have to work on getting used to wearing underwear and going to the bathroom before the underwear is wet, but it's happening.  I broke out the candy to get her to poop on the potty and that was a rousing success.  One look at the Gummi Savers and she was like, Oh let me just go on and poop so I can get that candy.

We don't have candy in the house and she actually doesn't have much of a 

sweet tooth.  The Gummi Savers and the Pringles were the only treats she wanted,

and even those lost their novelty after only a short time.

She's got the idea and I'm sure that keeping her underwear dry is a goal that she'll reach within days.  She's only wearing her 'sleep pants' (we're not even calling them diapers anymore) for naps and bedtime and she's started to even keep those dry.  She's amazing.

Therefore, when one has such an awesome little kid, it's only fitting that awesome kids have awesome bedrooms.  Sofia's nursery is still one of my favorite decorating endeavors, but I'm pretty excited about her big girl room, and I think I've got some pretty decent ideas about where to go with it.

When we moved to this house, I did her room almost exactly like it was in Texas because I wanted Sofia to have a sense of familiarity in the new place.

Not-so-great shot of her room/windows.

I hung some butterflies, which were a success after the colossal failure that

was trying to make my own curtains.  The bamboo shades weren't much easier.

Then, yesterday we made the Big Switch.  I'm talking The Big Girl Bed.  We bought two twin beds from Drew's co-worker, one for Sofia and one for the nursery.  I was wary of buying beds secondhand but they were only a year old and used exclusively on the weekends by older kids (no pee) and no pets (no pee.)  So we went for it and by the time you read this Sofia will have taken a successful nap and (hopefully) slept through the night in her big girl bed.

It always takes her a minute to wake up, but I had to take a picture

of her first successful nap in her bed.

This is how it's looking today.

After the blood, sweat and tears I put into the curtains and bamboo shades, we went ahead and sprung for wooden blinds for the rest of the house.  Now all the windows in the bedrooms have the same matching blinds and it makes everything look so much nicer.  However, the blinds do nothing to block light so I had to snip the blackout liner from the bamboo shades and put them on the windows.

I stuck command hooks on the window frame and cut little holes in the liner.  They hang 

behind the blinds and once again it's pitch black in her room.  It's a pain

to take them down when I want to open the blinds and let light in, but it

was a cheap and easy fix so we're going with it. 

I try to keep her toy corner somewhat neat, but as kids get older

their toys get bigger and harder to stow.

She's still getting good use out of her little table too.

So that's how things are looking in her room right now.  Here are my plans:

The quilt, although beautiful, is only temporary.  We bought the beds a while ago, but Drew's co-worker wasn't ever available to help load and unload them so they sat at his house for over a month.  Sunday, he was suddenly available so I just ran to Target and bought the softest white flat and fitted sheet I could find because I wasn't sure what kind of bedding I wanted.  Drew's Aunt Penny made the quilt for us when we got married and it was living on the guest room bed and I just put it on this bed as a (beautiful) placeholder.

Unfortunately, the quilt is a little too much in this room.  With all the colors, her room feels chaotic and overstimulating, so this isn't the final choice.  Wanna know what is?

Ta-daa!

I want new bedding for our bed, but the white duvet isn't even a year old and there's nothing wrong with it.  I hated for it to go to waste when I had a total epiphany.  We have two twin beds; a king-size duvet is about the size of two twins.  A duvet is just a giant pocket; what if I just sewed a line up the middle, well, two lines actually, and split the duvet in two?!  Bam!  Two duvets for our two new beds!  And if you squint, it looks kind of like ruffles - perfect for a girl's room and a nursery, not so hot in a grown-up bedroom.  It's perfect!  It's genius!  And even *I* can sew a straight line! (Famous last words...)

With white bedding, that'll calm things down a bit in there.  Then there was the issue with the butterflies.  I loved them, but they too were a little chaotic with all her colorful books and toys.  I need order and symmetry.

I first saw these hearts here, and I fell in love.

I plan to use them in the nursery but I wanted something 

similar in Sofia's room to sort of tie the two together without being obvious.

They're going to be in the same grid pattern and I'm really excited

to see how it turns out.

I'm also going to get some picture wire to hang her artwork, which

will be just below the picture ledges.  

I think I'll need another short ledge, so I can have two ledges and a picture wire.

Like so, from here.

I feel like these changes will bring a little more order to the room, while still honoring it as a child's space.  I hate children's bedrooms that are too precious for a child to live in, but I don't feel like you have to sacrifice your sense of style to plastic and primary colors.  With these ideas, I think it'll look stylish and be a fun place to play.

Now, I haven't changed much in here so far; I just plan to move things around and give this room some new life.  I like her furnishings and they're not too baby-ish, so I saw no reason to make huge changes.  The only thing I found I was craving was pink, of all things.  I want some pink in this room and the roof of her little dollhouse wasn't enough.

And then I found it.  The rug of all rugs.  When I saw it, I knew it was it.  It would tie everything together perfectly and it must be mine.

Behold, the most perfect rug for the most awesome girl in all the land.

It's got the pink, it's got the orange, and it's ombre for crying out loud!

Really they should just call this the Desiree and Sofia rug.

This rug will pick up the orange in the canvases, the pink in the dollhouse and I'm thinking some floral sheets peeking out from the white duvet might be just the touch I need in my, I mean, Sofia's life.  The rug is more than my $300 limit for rugs but how can one put a limit on perfection?  It's freakin ombre!  Ombre is my LIFE, people.  You know this, and the only thing I love more than ombre is stripes.  It's like it was MADE for me and I simply have to have it.  This rug will make the perfect big girl room, I'm sure of it.

I plan to repaint her little bookcases and get new knobs for her dresser.  I'm in love with the idea of little pink crystal knobs and maybe pink and orange for the bookcases?  And once I move the changing pad to the nursery (because my big girl doesn't need it anymore!) I can put a few fun things on top of her dresser.

I'm really excited about this makeover; I don't think it'll take much time or effort to move some things around and I'm pretty sure I'll get a big impact out of it.  You know I'll keep you posted on how it turns out!

In the meantime, I'm going to go back to drooling over that rug....

It's only paint, part 2

When we last left the master bedroom, it was greeny gold with giant brown furniture.

Giant brown bed, giant brown nightstands and no room to walk.

Because of the giant brown chest of drawers.  

There was about six inches of walking space around the bed and furniture.

That was not working at all, and we were both ready for a change.  I wanted to get rid of the matchy-matchy furniture, Drew wanted to paint the walls, so we ditched everything and started from scratch.

First, we tried down-sizing.  We brought in the queen-sized platform bed from the guest room and swapped out dressers.  The small dresser came into our room, the big dresser went into Sofia's room and the chest of drawers went into the guest room.  After paring down our clothes, everything fit in that small dresser.  It's amazing to realize what you really use when you get down to it; especially now that I'm pregnant, I can get by on a few shirts and a couple pair of jeans and I'm good.  

Downsizing the bed made the room feel ten times bigger 

and it was nice to have all that walking space.

Then that blurry small person in the left corner threw things off.

Two adults and a toddler who sleeps crazy do NOT work in a queen-sized bed, especially when one of those adults gives off enough body heat to melt the icecaps.  We had high hopes; we thought that by using a smaller bed, Sofia would magically stop wanting to sleep with us, but no dice.  We lived that way for about two weeks, when Drew got fed up with being too hot all night and I got fed up with being kicked in the head one too many times.  We needed a king-sized bed, just one with a smaller footprint.

We liked not having the chest of drawers in the bedroom, so we looked for storage beds.  However, the ones at Pottery Barn and West Elm were nasty expensive or didn't come in the size we needed.  So we turned to our friends at Ikea.  In my world, frames and vases are fine to buy from Ikea, furniture was not.  I had nightmares of the whole thing collapsing under us and I was not a fan.  But we couldn't find anything else for a decent price, so the Ikea Brimnes came home to us.  We've had it several weeks now and I'm happy to say that it feels sturdy, there's no creaking and it's actually not that bad.

  It was a bitch and a half to put together though.  

It took Drew from sunup to sundown to get the whole thing put together

and it's definitely a two person job.  Even though I was pregnant and couldn't lift anything,

I still had to hold one end while he put another end together, etc.

It was an ordeal and I'm glad my husband is an engineer, for real.

If it was up to me, we'd be sleeping on the floor.

The storage drawers are gigantic and we had no problem putting all our stuff in them and there's room to spare.  I'm going to change out the handles so they look less Ikea and we're getting new bedding, which should help as well.

Then it came time to paint.  I do the painting around here, because Drew doesn't like it and he's not the best at it.  (I wonder if he's not good at it on purpose...)  We went back and forth on colors forever because I wanted a bluish gray and he wanted yellow.

Marriage:  Pick Your Battles.

There are some mountains I'll die on; wall color is not one of them.

It was a close one between Fairmont Lobby Cream and Jersey Cream, 

but in the end Jersey Cream won.

I patched the holes, put three coats of paint over the greeny gold, told myself that

you can't see the green coming through and voila!  Jersey Cream all over the place!

Oh, and we got the Brimnes headboard and that cutout at the bottom fits over the baseboard

heat perfectly, so maybe Ikea's not so bad after all.

Okay, now this is super ghetto so y'all don't laugh at me.

But I need to see things before they happen.

shelf source picture

basket source picture

The right side of the bed needs balance, so I thought about getting three Lack shelves from Ikea and putting a basket underneath the shelves.  The shelves will address the randomness that's happening on top of the headboard.  We just threw things up there and it's not working for me, but they have no other place to go.  The basket will fix my other issue:  This is Drew's side of the bed and even though the laundry hamper is RIGHT OUTSIDE the bedroom, somehow that's too far for my dear husband and his clothes are always on the floor between here and the bathroom.  So fine, I'll get a basket.  

flower picture source

antlers

Those dirty clothes are not floating in space; they're on a storage bench I plan to recover.  I don't want to overload the room with pictures, but we need something on these walls.

And I think a grid of frames would look really nice on this wall.

This is the bedding I want.

The duvet with three euro shams would be so hot.

Drew is voting for gray.

I'm debating whether or not this is my mountain.

I think black would be so dramatic and grown up and chic.

He thinks gray would go better with the yellow walls.  We'll see.

We might even get super crazy and put a cowhide rug somewhere in here.  I think it might be fun to cover the bench like this one, or maybe we'll just put it on the floor like regular people.  So those are the plans for our bedroom, and I'm putting this out there for input.  Not the 'these are the dumbest ideas ever' input; rather, I'm looking for the 'hey, check out this bedding place or this site for art or this seller for cool stuff' kind of input.  After all, it was you fine readers who led me to my dream diaper bag, so I'm sure y'all are a wealth of information about all kinds of stuff.

Next up is Sofia's big girl room.  While I was typing part of this post, she had her first successful nap in her big girl bed, so it's time to change things up in there!  And of course, we have to do New Baby's nursery, and I've got plans for that room too. 

It's been a year in this house, and it's finally starting to feel like home...