Just add baby!

Chris and I can't wait to welcome home, Baby Boy Walker.  My due date is August 13th, so he could be here any day now!
Although our house is still under renovation, and things feel a little disheveled, the nursery is all ready!

The bumper pad wasn't ready yet when I took these photos, but here's the fabric...

Thanks for checking in!  Hopefully my next post will have some pictures of sweet baby boy!

A room I'd actually like to dine in!

We hung my grandmother's chandelier!  Finally!
I've been hating our chandelier since the day we moved in, so I'm so glad to finally get up something that I love!

Before:

After:

Also in the name of being less prissy in our dining room, I removed the cafe curtains from the windows...

Before:

After:

I also added in a few more antlers.  I probably have too many antlers in our house, but my husband loves to hunt so we have tons of them.  They're free and such an easy way to add a natural, rustic element to a room.  

The bad news is, this window is directly across from our bathroom, and so I'm trying to figure out how to add back in a little privacy.  I'm deciding between bamboo shades or some sort of gauzy pocket panel cafe curtains gathered on upper and lower rods...not sure what the word for that is.

I'm finally happy with our dining room!  (At least for today.)

Thanks Grandma (actually, "Grandmother" as she was called)!

Before:

After:

A little less prissy, a little more me.

People are always commenting and inquiring about the wall of hats in our dining room.  They were my grandmother hats, and they are all fabulous and unique.

I have loved having them displayed as a focal point in our home, but it was making our dining room so feminine and prissy...especially when paired with our floral rug and floral cafe curtains.  So I x-ed the cafe curtains, for now, and I shook things up a bit with the hat wall.

I made the back wall of our dining room more of a salon wall, with the vintage hats as the main element.  This feels a little more casual to me, and a little more "me".

Don't worry...I know our chandelier is the real downer in our dining room!  Just ask my husband, I complain about it constantly.  But luckily, this weekend we are getting started restoring an old chandelier that was my grandmothers!  It will be much better!  I can't wait!

Counting Sheep

On a budget, it's hard to afford big rugs!  So I find myself having to layer smaller rugs around my house to keep things warm and cozy, literally...our house is freezing in the winter!  I was tired of stepping out of the bed onto the cold floor in the mornings, so I picked up these sheep skins at Sams for $30 each!  I think they frame the bed nicely (I wish I had a wide angle lens to capture it!).

I love the organic shape of hides.  Bedrooms are full of squares, and so it's nice to soften things up a bit.

...and they're perfect for Bei to snuggle up on.

  

Thanks for checking in.  

the Cinderella Chair

If you take this:

Subtract this:

And then your mom finds this at a garage sale:

 And you hunt down the perfect fabric that looks like this:

You add x-large buttons and chocolate brown velvet piping, remove the skirt, paint the legs chocolate brown and click your heels three times, you might end up with this:

Which looks pretty happy in a room like this:

So the moral of the story is, this nasty old chair went from this:

to this:

And I'm glad.  

Now, I just need the perfect, cheap, fabric to make a slip cover for this:

Junk in the Trunk?

I love old trunks!

Should I make this our coffee table???

(thrift store)

I haven't bought it yet, so I'm trying to decide!

Will it look like a black hole on top of our dark cow hide???

The secret study...

I've never really blogged about our study, because it's such a hodge-podge.
Lately, I've put a little more effort into it and it's shaping up a little bit, but definitely not my favorite room.
I guess it's time I take this room out of hiding and show it on the blog...

I'd like a smaller desk with drawers (without the tower) that could later move into the guest room as a bedside table/desk combo.

This desk creates a real storage problem!  And, it's so traditional, for my taste...although I did pick it out once upon a time.  

I painted the legs on the desk chair, just to spice it up a little.

I had fun painting this elephant lamp this peachy-pink color.  It used to be black.  I think it has a lot more personality now! 

I need a different color shade for it, but I haven't found the right one yet.

I'm glad to get this hand-me-down kilim rug from my mom- by way of my sister, Emily, who no longer had a spot for it.  

Even though, per this post, I know some of you voted for my to put my cowhide in this room.  Which, I agree, looked great.  But this is my leftover room...the other rooms in my house get priority for all things fabulous.  So the cow ended up in the living room.  

I recommend color coordinating your books...it made a big difference in this bookshelf.

This is my favorite vignette in the room!

I bought the shelves unfinished and stained them myself.  

My sister found the two little egg shaped lamps at a garage sale.  I need different shades for these as well.    (You can't tell from the pic, but the bases are cream and the shades are stark white)

I coiled some rope up in this wooden charger for a little interest.  

The chest was a hand-me-down from my Mom's friend.  I love it!  The drawers need some work though!

I'm embarassed to show, this "vignette" looked like this for months...

It's aweful, I know.  I couldn't look when I walked by.  I was waiting around for new lamps, and thinking I would either bribe my sister to paint me something big or try to do it myself.  

I was glad when I thought to put shelves here, because it saved money on artwork, and I didn't have to buy two big lamps.  

Now, erase that from your memory and go back to this...

Ahhh, much better right?

Thanks for checkin' in.

I want twin beds...

After seeing this picture I want twin beds...

...and to basically have this exact room in my house!

credit unknown.

I wonder if Chris would go for it...

*This has always been one of my favorite color combinations!  Navy and fire colors (yellow, orange, red-orange).

The cow has landed...

I think the cow has found a cozy home.
It's not in our dining room....or our study.

It's in our living room.

Check it out...

(it was about a week before i noticed, my cow skin is accompanied by a cow painting)

Before cow:

(I love this kilim rug in here, but cow needed a good home.  

this rug is now in my dining room!  I'll post pics of that soon.)

After cow:

Thanks for checkin in!