Reader Spotlight on Kristen

Hello Everyone!

I've been MIA from blogland for quite some time now, and I needed a little extra push (and some material...) to help me jump back in.  Well lucky for you, a fellow reader sent me her incredible project and was gracious enough to let me share it with all of you!

Kristen had this coffee table that she had at one point purchased from Overstock.com.  She has since moved to a different home,  and her relationship with the table was getting stale.  So instead of replacing it, she thought she might as well try to paint it first!  And goodness me, she found my blog and used the Driftwood Look  tutorial!  Hot diggety dawg I am super impressed!

 Everybody give Kristen a high-five!  Also, I'm loving her new home.  Beautiful.  Check out that molding and built-in.  Party at Kristen's house!

Just kidding.
Only because I don't know where she lives...
Probably in California.
Have you ever noticed that every DIY blogger in the universe seems to be from California?  What is it about that state?  Maybe it's the fresh air because of their super-strict emission laws.  Hmmm.

No matter, Kristen did a great job and has been rewarded with a beautiful piece.  See?  It's worth painting before you buy a replacement!

And while you've all been watching the arrival of Spring for the last four months, I've been loving being a mommy.  And now our little Snuggle Bug (that's what I've decided to call her on the blog, since she loves being held and snuggled) has gone from being a newborn to this sweet little bundle of cute :)

Thanks, Kristen for letting me share your genius!

Have a project you'd like to see in a Reader Spotlight?  Use the Contact link at the top of my site and let me know!

~The Doodle Bug

She's Here!

It's a Girl!

Photo courtesy of Cheryl Lancaster

Meet our little Munchkin

Born January 27, 8:02am

A perfect little 7 pound, 12.9 ounce bundle of beautiful.

Photo courtesy of Cheryl Lancaster

Photo courtesy of Cheryl Lancaster

I have decided for now to leave her name out of my blog, so we'll simply call her Munchkin :) 

We are wonderfully blessed by God to have been entrusted with such a precious little girl.

Welcome to our little family, you are so very loved.

~The Doodle Bug

Mission-Style Rocking Chairs

Due Date Countdown:  8 Days

Yes, I'm still pregnant :)

Baby seems perfectly content to keep hangin' around in my belly, so for now you get to wait in expectancy with me.  Except you can probably walk without waddling, so you can only kind of sympathize.

Quack.

But are you ready to see a couple of chairs get a makeover??  I bet you are.  I've been getting emails up the wazoo about people really wanting to see chair makeovers.
Okay, I just made that up.

But I have been getting a few people asking questions about projects via the new "contacts" tab, and I'm loving all your creativity and sweet compliments!  Also, the archive tabs above are all updated and ready for you, so if this baby comes before I can put up another post, you'll be set for a bit.
(Joe and I actually think that since we have family driving from 5 and 12 hours away, the baby is bound to come during a snow storm.  We keep checking the forecast to figure out when the little munchkin's going to arrive.  Nothing yet...)

Here we go.

Mission-Style Rocking Chairs

Ooh, pretty!  And how often have I seen these chairs and never thought to do anything with them?

This was a project I was hired to do for a wonderful couple at our church.  Let's call them the M&M's (because I'm apparently still not over that chocolate craze of a previous post).  The chairs came to them from Mr. M&M's mother, and Mrs. M&M just wanted to update the look.  They went back and forth about painting the oak frames--which is perfectly understandable--but decided that paint would really give her the finish she wanted (wood purists, are you fainting?).  In the end, I think the paint was a great choice.  Why have something if you don't really like it?  Plus they're practically oozing awesome now.

It seemed like a fairly manageable project from what I saw initially, and actually turned out to be a bit easier than even I anticipated.  So if you have a pair of Mission-Style rockers that you want to re-do, have no fear.  You don't even have to have a special staple gun for this one!  All you need is a sewing machine, something that throws staples, and some gumption.

I won't get into a lengthy explanation, but if you have questions please feel free to ask and I will gladly go into more detail for you.

My Super-Handy Hubby painted the frames for me.  Because he's such a good dad already :)  As you can tell by the t-shirt he's wearing and the snow-free driveway, this was a while ago.  

All slicked up in their new finish!  I then sanded the edges very lightly.  We wanted a tish of distressing for dimension, but nothing close to the "chippy" look.  Just a light touch did the trick.

The back cushion had only a little sewing in the top corners, so that was really simple.

The fabric was installed by fitting the corners properly at the top, and then wrapping the fabric around to the back side to staple.  This whole cushion was essentially an "insert" that screwed into the sides of the frame.  It was a pretty slick system to work with.

The bottom cushion was a little more sewing, but it only involved attaching two side panels to the seat.  Again, really simple.

Then once again, Joe to the rescue!  These frames were solid oak--even the inside framing that was for the upholstery.  Seriously, if I had tried to break these chairs I just would have ended up with bruises.  They were so tough.  Tough enough that I couldn't get these screws in or out by myself.  Thanks honey, you're the best.  And I apparently need to work out more.

Here's the finished product again.  I apologize for the not-awesome pictures.  I *may* have forgotten to take pictures until Joe was getting ready to load them into the truck for delivery, and it was dark out.  Oops.  But hey, at least we deliver!  We deliver for the small cost of cookies and ice cream.  Not really, but they did give us cookies and ice cream when we picked the chairs up...because they're super sweet people.

And in case you're wondering, Mrs. M&M picked the fabric out herself, and I really love it.  It's classy but not too formal at the same time.  She bought it at Joann Fabrics, in case you're now in dire need to buy some for yourself.

And now you can mentally sit in those chairs, rock back and forth and dream of how cute our baby is going to be!

In case you missed the Nursery Reveal! last week, you can check it out Here (or in the linked text before, but hey I like to be thorough).

And I did forget to post our Christmas picture this year, so I'll bid you adieu with that.

Photo Courtesy of Cheryl Lancaster

Have a great weekend, everyone!

~The Doodle Bug

I'm usually partyin' at these hangouts:

Friday Feature @ Redoux

Feathered Nest Friday @ French Country Cottage

Furniture Feature Friday @ Miss Mustard Seed

Show & Tell Friday @ My Romantic Home

Flaunt it Friday @ Chic on a Shoestring Decorating

Frugal Friday @ The Shabby Nest

Simply Creations Link Party @ Simple Home. Life

It's a Hodgepodge Friday @ It's a Hodgepodge Life

Spotlight Saturday @ Classy Clutter

Trash 2 Treasure Tuesday @ Kammy's Korner

Nifty Thrifty Tuesday @ Coastal Charm

Tuesday's Treasures @ My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Be Inspired @ Elizabeth & Co.

Make It Pretty Monday @ The Dedicated House

Nursery Reveal!

I know, you thought it would never come.
But it has!

I've been working on the nursery for...a long time now.  Putting it together bit-by-bit since August.

People have been asking Joe at work what the theme is for the nursery.
Theme?
Uhhhh...

There's no theme.
My goal was to make a gender-neutral nursery (we don't know what we're having), and since I didn't want to do yellow and green, I decided on a different route.  I decided to put feminine and masculine elements into the room and (hopefully) strike a balance between them.  You can judge for yourself how I did.  And if you don't like it, just lie and tell me you do, or I might break into a bout of hormonal crying :)

37 weeks this Sunday, by the way!

Here is how the room looked when we moved in.

Not bad...just boring, and like the rest of the house, "oaky" (check out the Kitchen & Dining Room Reveal if you want to see more).

I decided first that I would put a "lemongrass" color on the wall.  Awesome.
So I mixed up a sample, pretty excited to get started.
I tenderly painted the color on the wall, thinking fondly of our little munchkin-to-come.
...and then I just about bopped in my mouth.
I. Hated. It.
I'm going to be looking at enough baby poop in the coming months, I don't need the walls to be singing the same tune!
Okay, time to revamp.
So I headed to my computer to Pinterest (where else??) and my trusty Nursery board.  And I found a solution.
Phew!

I know, beige and white are a bit...boring?  But I like it.  Simple, and I could add whatever color I wanted in the rest of the room without worrying about clashing.

So that's the introduction, and here is the finished room!  I'll list out some items and details at the end.

SCREECH!!!

Hang on a second.  Where the heck did that INCREDIBLE blanket come from???

Oh, you know.  

My Mom made it.

SAY WHAT?  She Made it??  I knew she was knitting a blanket, and I picked out the colors, but I was pretty much envisioning a simple stripe or a basic chevron pattern.  Then at Christmas I open THIS.  I was completely blown away.  Thank you, Mom, for slaving away for six months +.  Baby is going to love it.

Yes, I am still in shock.

She made it.

So exciting!

Here are the dirty details:

Paint & Moldings:  We painted the walls, window and trim.  The trim around the top of the room is actually two different moldings, and we painted the wall between them white to give a bigger impact.  The top trim is a small crown, and the lower one is Picture Rail Molding.  I think we spent about $60 for both moldings.  We had to special order the Picture Rail, and I still need to order hooks to go on it.  It's a molding you can hang stuff from with special hangers they make (Google it, it's pretty snazzy).  And I think it makes the ceiling feel higher, which is nice.

Joe thinks it's funny that the only room in our house with crown molding is the Nursery.

Meh.

Okay, here's where I got a bunch of stuff.  I did a lot myself, many were gifts (recent and from the past) and some I bought from stores or other creative people.  

Crib:  A Beautiful and generous gift from my parents.  It's the DaVinci crib made by Kalani, in Espresso.

Mobile:  A gift from my Grandparents.

Embroidery Hoops with Fabric:  I bought the embroidery hoops at a thrift shop, painted them white, and put  in fabric that I had on hand.  $8.

Knitted Blanket:  A gorgeous gift from my awesome Mom.  Wow.

Crib Sheet:  Carter's Brown Plush (Velour) Easy-Fit Crib sheet.  Babies-R-Us.  $18.

Crib Skirt:  A gift from my Grandparents

Curtains:  I bought plain white grommeted panels at Target ($29.99) and bought a yard of the super cute Argyle fabric on Etsy ($9?).  I sewed a strip of the fabric onto the panels and voila!  Custom panels for under $40!

Metal Bucket O' Blankets:  I bought the bucket (with red handles! Eee!) at Now & Again.  ~$20?

Glider & Ottoman:  I bought it on Craigslist for $25, in desperate need of new foam and fabric (but the wood was already white.  Score).  I recovered it with fabric from Jo-Ann Fabrics and replaced almost all the foam.  Total came to about $60.

Red Changing Table:  I found this at one of the Occasional stores in town, This & That, for $50.  Already painted and everything!

Changing Pad Cover:  Mod Pod "Pop Monkey."  Babies-R-Us, $17.99

White Wall Shelves:  I bought these at Now & Again, and painted them white.  I used a little stamp for the green flourish and bought the hooks at Menards.  $19.

Rooster:  The rooster on the shelf was a gift from a dear friend.  

Large Wood Sign:  The piece of wood was a tabletop that I really loved...and couldn't let go of (look at the grain, I know you wouldn't let it go either).  So I found a new purpose for it!  We took it off the table frame (it was wobbly and couldn't be fixed), and I painted the Robert Frost quote on it using a large engineering print from Staples and transfer paper.  I used the same method that I did for the Mailbox Makeover and DIY Canvas Art.  Then I distressed the writing a bit with sandpaper and waxed the whole thing with a dark furniture wax.  I am super happy with it.  And in case you're worried about baby, we hung it on the wall with two hangers, each rated for 50 lbs.  Special order at the hardware store for this worried first-time Mom :) 

"Imagine" Sign:  This was a gift a few years back from another dear friend.  The company covers letters with recycled metal containers.  Crazy fun.  I don't know where my friend got it, sorry.

God Gave Us You Book:  A sweet little gift from my parents. 

The pictures I took myself and other little knick-knacks I had on hand from random places.  

If you have questions about anything else, just let me know.

So there you have it!  The Nursery is finished and just waiting for a perfect little bundle to arrive!

We're all packed (well, as packed as we can get at this point) for the hospital, and waiting impatiently for the time to come.  But the baby will come in God's time, we know.  

We're hoping & praying for you, Little One,  

and we can't wait to meet you!

~The Doodle Bug

I'm usually partyin' at these hangouts:

Friday Feature @ Redoux

Feathered Nest Friday @ French Country Cottage

Furniture Feature Friday @ Miss Mustard Seed

Show & Tell Friday @ My Romantic Home

Flaunt it Friday @ Chic on a Shoestring Decorating

Frugal Friday @ The Shabby Nest

Simply Creations Link Party @ Simple Home. Life

It's a Hodgepodge Friday @ It's a Hodgepodge Life

Spotlight Saturday @ Classy Clutter

Trash 2 Treasure Tuesday @ Kammy's Korner

Nifty Thrifty Tuesday @ Coastal Charm

Tuesday's Treasures @ My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Be Inspired @ Elizabeth & Co.

Make It Pretty Monday @ The Dedicated House

Kitchen & Dining Room Reveal

Chocolate?
Does anyone have some chocolate they want to give me?
No?

I see how good our friendship is.

But I guess even though you won't give me your chocolate, I can still show you our KITCHEN!
And our DINING ROOM!

**Edit:  The day I wrote this post, we had friends coming over for dinner.  She brought me chocolate.  She gets a gold star every day of her life :)

Yes, the time has finally come when you get to see a whole entire room of our house.  The living room is nearly done, but you have to wait for that until after I get a sofa reupholstered.
 Let's just say it's a bit of an "elephant" in the room.

Here are some before and after shots, and I'll give you a rundown of some specific things along the way.

 The "before" pictures are from the day of our house inspection, while we were trying, trying to buy this house from a somewhat hesitant realtor/bank.
What?
Yeah.
First picture is what you first see while walking into the house.   Overall, things were in decent shape.  Just dirty.  And Oaky.  Is "Oaky" a real descriptor?
Here's what it looks like today.

We actually have had this chandelier for over 2 years.  We were once looking for a house in Iowa, and I found this nice chandelier at a garage sale for $15.  I thought "Oh, we'll be able to use that soon!"
Well, after two years of storing and hauling this thing around, it has finally found a home.  And the scale of this one is much better than the little baby that was there before.

Next is a view from the top of the stairs that you saw on the right of the last picture

Awww, even Jip looks cuter in the after shot :)

And do you see our new sliding door?  Much better!  The old one had a pane of glass broken out of it, so it had terrible insulation.  And the weatherstripping and wood had been all gnawed up, too.  Again, we say "thank you" to our good buddy...I'll call him the "Old Man" because he'll appreciate that...for helping Joe install it a couple Saturdays ago.

Also from the top of the stairs, here's a view into the kitchen 

* Please ignore the pile of dishes on the counter.  They're clean, I promise*
And here you can also see the Striped Bench...that mysteriously never made it into the shop to be sold. Strange thing, that is.

This is the kitchen, as seen from the dining room.
Gettin' the hang of the layout?  Good.
Because if you break into my house, I would hate for you to get lost.
Seriously, don't break into my house.

Here you can see the Kitchen Island, built by my handsome hubby.  Click on the link if you'd like to see some detail shots.

Also, check out my super-duper roller shade in the window above the sink!  I just made it about two weeks ago, and I'm pretty stoked about it (do people still say "stoked"?  Now that I typed it out again, it looks stupid).  

Slick, huh?  If you want to make one of your very own, it's not difficult.  I followed the tutorial from Design*Sponge found here.  The only part that they didn't explain was how to shorten the roller blind to fit your window.  I found those instructions here.  And if you're like me and you found a fabric you love...but it's lightweight, not medium like they suggest, you can do what the cool people do and iron on some heavy-duty interfacing.  Hooray!

Lest you think that all we did was paint the walls and trim and windows...and that led to so much more light bouncing around, I would like to direct your attention up.  To the ceiling.

EWWWWWW!!! Do you see that nasty ceiling?  EWWWW!
I think I almost had a conniption fit when Joe starting putting up the new ceiling paint.
And now that our ceiling is "bright white," it bounces the light around like crazy.  Which means we don't use lights during the day very often, and we only need to use a few at night.  I love that.
That plus the light wall color and white trim, and the house feels much more fresh.

 My amaryllis is almost done blooming.  So much for waiting for Thanksgiving, huh?  It's been really beautiful this year, though.  5 blooms in total, can't complain about that.

So there's our kitchen and dining room!
I'm still not sure if we're going to put something on the dining room wall.  And what it might be.
And I don't know if I'm going to end up putting something above the cabinets in the kitchen.
Perhaps I need to start collecting plates...
Or grapevines.
I hear those are all the rage.

Sorry, I'm getting snarky.
Probably because you wouldn't share your chocolate.

I'm off to go make bread and a mess in the kitchen now, though.  Good thing I cleaned it for these pictures!

If I don't get a post written next week, have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  I have a lot to be thankful for this year.  A gracious God, wonderful husband, perfect little baby to meet, loving family and friends, a new home, a puppy, and the list goes on...and on.

I hope you are able to spend your Thanksgiving surrounded by people you are thankful for.

~The Doodle Bug

I'm usually partyin' at these hangouts:

Friday Feature @ Redoux

Feathered Nest Friday @ French Country Cottage

Furniture Feature Friday @ Miss Mustard Seed

Show & Tell Friday @ My Romantic Home

Flaunt it Friday @ Chic on a Shoestring Decorating

Frugal Friday @ The Shabby Nest

Simply Creations Link Party @ Simple Home. Life

It's a Hodgepodge Friday @ It's a Hodgepodge Life

Spotlight Saturday @ Classy Clutter

Trash 2 Treasure Tuesday @ Kammy's Korner

Nifty Thrifty Tuesday @ Coastal Charm

Tuesday's Treasures @ My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Be Inspired @ Elizabeth & Co.

Wow Us Wednesdays@Savvy Southern Style

Make It Pretty Monday @ The Dedicated House