New Site!

I'm excited to share a new, simpler site to find www.myloveforwords.com
I hope you'll visit for all of my new updates and pictures of the finished office.

Office Inspiration

This is my current inspiration board for the office. The walls are close to the soft blue background color (on my monitor anyway), and the stenciling is in the light blue and white as opposed to what's pictured below.

 

I received the lamp (from PB Teen) a few days ago and adore it! It's so bright and colorful and adds a lot of fun and personality to the still-in-progress space. It's also currently sitting on the floor (unplugged) so the baby's getting a kick out of crawling over to it and banging all of the dangling little circles.

 

I decided to go with a metal tray table (from Ballard Designs) because I already have a lot of white furniture in this space. I thought the metal would be a nice accent and give a little more visual interest. Two chairs will flank the table, but those are supposed to arrive in early March... like I can wait that long!

 

I have some other things for the space including floating shelves, artwork, and cute little decorations, which I'll hopefully be able to share soon in my after pictures. Until then, here's what I've been working with...

 

 

 

 

Let the remodeling begin!

It's hard for me to believe that we've already lived in our new house for 9 months. Time is flying by (how is it almost February already?!), and we haven't done nearly as much in this place as I'd assumed we would by this time.

We did remove a border, paint, and organize the kids' play area, and our kitchen walls now look like a patchwork quilt because we've tried at least 10 different paint colors in the kitchen in hopes of finally covering the bright green walls.  (I think I've finally stumbled upon the perfect color. More on that another day... just in case I change my mind.)

But other than those little changes we haven't gotten around to much else. In my defense, we do have three kiddos and another on his way so I did lose about 2 months to morning sickness, but I'm the kind of person who wants everything right now. For better or worse, waiting has never been my strong suit. I want this house to finally feel like us so we started a new project this past weekend: the office.

I spend a lot of time in the office between my personal organizing (and now etsy) creations, taking online courses here in and there in hopes of finally finishing this degree, and pinterest. However, I didn't want our office to just be a glorified computer room. I wanted to make a functional space where I can scrapbook and be crafty too. A little mom sanctuary. I'll share my inspiration board with you soon, but here are some before and during pictures until then.

See, obviously something had to be done about this place. The walls were a fine shade of green, but it wasn't the color I was looking for. As for the curtain, I've been dreaming of the day when we could take those down. Once again, they're fine but not for us (I feel guilty putting down the previous owner's decorating choices).

Grace was determined to help me paint. She did a very good job.

Here you can see the focal wall has been painted white, soon to be stenciled, and my desk before and after. I was toying with the idea of buying a new desk because I love white furniture and wanted a clean, crisp, coordinating look, but all of the features of this desk are perfect for us. It has storage for the computer tower, printer, supplies, and a pull out drawer for the keyboard. The only thing wrong with it was the color so we saved a ton of money and just decided to paint it.

I'm really happy with how it's turning out, but it still needs a coat or two of more paint. I'm also going to look into getting a piece of glass to put on top of the desk to protect it. I love it! Not bad for my first time painting furniture. :)

Sticker Chart

At the request of a friend, I've made a new printable! It's a sticker chart for positive reinforcement. For my kiddos stickers are an always welcome and exciting reward. I'll just have to replace "potty" with something else for use around our house. Given all the fussing the kids have been doing lately, I think an "I cleaned up my toys" chart is in the not-so-distant future.

I put one up in my etsy shop too. Stop by for a visit by clicking here.

What could go wrong?

I love our new house. I do, but one thing I didn't really pay much attention to before we bought it is that there's a lot of wallpaper in this house. It's everywhere.

It's in the:
Dining Room
Half Bath
Laundry Room
Basement Wet Bar area
Movie Room
Basement Bath
Basement Bedroom
and quite possibly some other little nooks and crannies I've forgotten about.

It wasn't until this past summer, when my husband and I removed a border in the kids playroom, that we realized what a mess we'd gotten ourselves into. The project seemed to take forever, and we had plenty of gouge marks to repair afterwards. Obviously, we aren't the most skilled wallpaper removers.

I'm definitely not considering putting any wallpaper into this house, but I would love for some of the walls to have a little personality so when I found this website I got very excited. I've never applied a stencil before (I'm not kidding when I say I'm new to this do-it-yourself stuff), but I want to give it a try.

I'm thinking about this Aspen Stencil for our home office but in a light shade of purple and white. Honestly, I'm a little scared to do something even remotely bold, but it's just paint, right? That's easy enough to fix if something goes wrong.

Cash Wallet

Today, I was reading one of my favorite blogs, IHeartOrganizing, where author Jen was discussing how she and her husband organize and keep track of their family budget. Then she mentioned this adorable etsy shop, and $20 immediately disappeared from my wallet. An impulse buy... that's something my new purchase is, humorously enough, designed to prevent.

I've been wanting to transition to a cash only, or mainly cash, system for a while now in hopes of making impulse buys more difficult due to limited funds or simply the pain of handing over the cold, hard dollars and cents. I'm hoping this cute new addition will help me make the transition. It has 6 dividers inside that can be categorized for different things. Groceries, dining out, and entertainment will be a must for me.

I am beyond thrilled! Ever since we moved into our new home (9 months ago now!) I've wanted to make it feel like our home. Unfortunately, our previous house didn't sell as quickly as we anticipated so we were stuck paying two mortages for months on end. That was a painful, scary, and expensive lesson, but I can confidently say that we will never again buy a new home while still owning the last.
Thankfully, we were able to sell it a couple months ago, and I finally feel like we can focus on this house now.

The only room that really feels finished at this point is the master bedroom, and my current goal is tackling the craft room/office. I've noticed lately that my taste in decor seems to be transitioning more towards modern, crisp lines, bright colors, and a clean, fresh feel. I want our home to feel cheery and inviting, and I'm ready to try some new styles... so off to Ikea we went.

Honestly, as we were packing up the three kids and heading out in the snow all I could think was, "Do we really need to go to Ikea today?" Despite the fact that the trip was my idea, trucking the entire crew 90 minutes round trip for nothing in particular is not always the most exciting task. Now, I'm so glad we went. Today, I finally started to see the finished space in my head. I've never made a mood board before, but I think I'm going to make my first one soon to see how everything ties together outside of my thoughts.

One addition will be this new folding table that we stumbled upon while shopping. It's meant for dining, but this is going to be the perfect addition to my crafting space.

I'll be able to pull it out when I need a large surface to work on and fold it up and put it away when I don't want it in the middle of the room. I'm beyond excited about this... really probably too excited given that it's just a table, but I guess it finally feels like the room is starting to take shape, and after 9 months of feeling "blah" about our new home it's nice to feel energized and excited.

Click here to visit Ikea's website for more information on this piece.