As you can probably see, it’s going to be a very monochrome room with lots of white & cream (walls, bed, linens, curtains, floors – hopefully!) with accents of black & gold. How very Purdue of me! I also want to have quite a few plants in our bay window. Ideally I’d like to have a Fiddle Leaf Fig tree at some point, but they’re pretty pricey so I’m waiting awhile on that one. I’m not known for my green thumb so it makes me a little nervous to invest more than $20 in a plant. I’m going to string up the felt balls & hang them across the windows for a little visual interest. I also want to get a print made from our photo shoot last year to hang on one wall. I just have to decide which one & if I’m ok with looking at my face every night All in all, what I really wanted out of this room was for it to be a serene & calm sanctuary. With three (!) kids in the house, I thought it’d be nice to have somewhere special & romantic for us to be able to go. We have lots of color in the rest of the house, but I just really wanted our room to be mellow, you know? Now I just have to get that bed in & then I can finally relax for real in there….

1. Canvases that I created using lyrics from our wedding song  2.Black & White Ombre Felt Balls by Maypole  3.Between a Rock & a Lamp by Land of Nod  4.Marrakesh Shag Rug by RugsUSA  5.Threshold Iron Wire Table at Target  6.Love Print by Made by Girl  7.Hexagon Terrarium at Urban Outfitters (no longer available online)  8.Turning Triangles Terrarium at Urban Outfitters  9.Faceted Terrarium at Urban Outfitters  10.Coleman Bed by Pottery Barn

I discovered these pillows when they were on Brickyard Buffalo awhile back & fell in love. If I had room, I’d buy every single style that she sells.

All pillows by Goods by Grinn. 11.Heart  12.Kaleidsoscope  13.Polka Dot  14.Pathways  15.Arrow

Meeting for the first time. Swoon.

We tried to do a copy of the picture that Dustin did with both Jack & Finn, but she wasn’t into it. At all. We took it anyway

Finn wouldn’t go near her for about 10 minutes, but he warmed up quickly after that. Both Jack & Finn are super sweet with her. It’s a pretty great thing to watch.

Four days old…

A rare picture with her eyes open. She slept SO much the first month. Honestly, she still sleeps a lot, but not nearly as much as she did then.

Two weeks old & testing out the hair accessories. She approved.

5 weeks old & decked out in her sweet Easter dress. I forgot to put her bow back in for this picture…oops!

The whole family at Easter!

*I already posted this over on the Pure Photography blog, but thought I’d better post it here too, just in case you weren’t following over there (highly likely).

We have pretty high ceilings in our house, which makes decorating the walls a little trickier than usual. I’m always looking for creative ways to fill the space & finally stumbled upon this little DIY about a month ago on Design Sponge on how to make your own pompom garland. It looked easy enough, so I ordered the pom maker & then went searching for some yarn. You wouldn’t believe how long I spent staring at different yarn colors. After experimenting with a couple of different types of yarn & finding which one worked best for me, I got to work. It was a pretty easy project to do considering I just sat on the couch & watched tv while I wrapped the yarn. Although, you’d be surprised how tired your arm gets after awhile! Eventually, I had about 40 poms so I went to work. I left about 6 inches between my poms since there were going to be so many of them. If I would’ve had 4 strands full of poms, I’m pretty sure it would’ve been too overwhelming. Not to mention I was ready to be done making them, honestly. I tied them to some thick cotton cording & hung them from a small c-hook screwed into the ceiling at about the center of the crib. Then I just tied the bottom pom to a thumbtack & stuck it into the wall. Easy! Click on the Design Sponge link for the full tutorial. She explains it way better than I ever could. Oh & she uses more than one color in her poms, which looks fantastic, but I couldn’t quite get the hang of, unfortunately. I thought it’d look great over the crib & be something that I wouldn’t have to worry about falling off the wall. For some reason I’m always paranoid to hang pictures above beds for fear of them falling down & hitting someone on the head in the middle of the night. Weird, I know. I stopped them at a high enough point on the wall that she shouldn’t be able to reach them as she grows & starts standing in the crib. Hopefully she’ll enjoy looking up at them and seeing all the fun colors.

I actually had to add 2 poms on each side of the top strand, which meant tying on extra cording. You can see it if you’re looking for it, but it’s surprisingly not too noticeable.

In the following picture, you can see the new closet doors. Yay for gaining 2 feet of closet space!

I don’t expect to start doing a bunch of baby or maternity posts, but like I said, my style posts will definitely be different, starting with this one. Ok, this isn’t really a style post. This is me on the beach during our vacation to Grand Haven, Michigan last week. On a final note, it’s absolutely insane how much earlier you start showing by the time you get to your third baby. Egads.

Skirt - Express  |  Shirt – J.Crew (similar) | Shoes – Bamboo (last year) | Clutch – H&M | Ring – BaubleBar | Watch – Anthropologie | Necklace – Francesca’s – (no longer available, here’s a similar style at Bauble Bar)

This is one of my most favorite things in the whole house. It’s from IKEA & although I think it’s still available in black, they stopped making the yellow quite awhile ago. It’s the one piece of furniture that I’m terrified of something happening to because I have no idea how I’d repair it. That being said, this probably isn’t the safest room for it to live. Oh well….

Another of my favorite things is this light fixture from Pottery Barn. It replaced an ugly old ceiling fan & it makes me happy, happy, happy every time I look at it. It was a total pain to hang, but now that it’s up, it was totally worth it. Two of the bulbs have recently burnt out, so I’m on a quest to find replacements. Fingers crossed! On a side note, I’ve had that map of South America since I was a kid. It’s hung in every house we’ve ever lived in & people have always asked why I have a map of South America on my wall. It’s pretty funny to me that they’re in style now. My bookcase is getting unreasonably full. The plan is to buy two more & place them where the kitchen play set is. I just have to have a day to spare to drive to IKEA & pick them up. Much easier said than done…

And finally, our “famous” gallery wall. When we had our family pictures taken, the picture of us reading on the couch, with this wall behind us, was pinned & repinned on Pinterest a crazy amount of times. It was pretty surreal. This wall took probably 2 years to completely be at the stage that it is now. Most of the frames are ones that we had just lying around in the basement/attic. I ordered some Montana Gold spray paint from Dick Blick & went to town. I added in some wood, white & metal frames along with some canvas prints & mirrors to keep it from being too colorful. Not that this is sedate, but it’s less crazy than it could be. I was going insane trying to decide what pictures to put in the frames so I decided to get some colorful paper to put in them as placeholders. If I’m being perfectly honest, I’m not a huge fan of the papers, but they do the job for now. Also, they’re all hung straight, but I used a wide-angle lens to take this picture so it looks like they’re not straight at all. Didn’t want you to question Dustin’s excellent picture hanging skills

Since this room was the first room that we did, I didn’t get a chance to take any before pictures until it was under way. This is what 3 of the 4 walls looked like. That’s a tiny floral print on the wallpaper, in case you were wondering. On the fourth wall? A cream & burgundy toile pattern. Yeah.

I saw this Zara jacket on Pinterest a couple of weeks ago & had to have it. I’m not normally prone to rash purchases of such substantial items, but I bought it right away. I’ve learned by now that if I see something I like through Pinterest to not take too long thinking about it or it’ll be gone. It’s so ladylike in both color & fabric that I knew I had to toughen it up a little, although the awesome zippers already help with that by themselves. So, I threw on a pair of my old ripped jeans & voila! Tougher indeed. The wedges are another Zara find (yes, I might be obsessed with Zara) & they’re pretty great with one caveat. While comfortable & easy to walk in on flat surfaces, they’re nearly impossible to walk in on uneven surfaces such as carpet, gravel or old sidewalks like the one I’m standing on here. I almost bit it a few times but luckily Dustin was there to help me out. He also helped me out by taking these pictures. Such a nice guy, right?

Details:

Blazer – Zara

Top – Francesca’s

Jeans - Gap (similar)

Wedges – Zara

Sunglasses – Ray-Ban

Rings – H&M (in-store only)

Lipstick – Nars in Schiap

Earrings – Renegade Handmade, sadly no longer in business, but the craft fair is still alive & well!

Nail Polish – Color Club in Age of Aquarius (I received this in my Birchbox sample box that I blogged about in April)

Step 1 – Find a great gift! My friend Gail recently found out she was expecting & considering she’s quite the world traveler & a voracious reader, getting her these books was a no-brainer. We have the New York version here & I absolutely love it. I gave Gail Rome, Paris, London & San Francisco, but there are even more titles, including the Moon. So great.

Step 2 – Find some fun yarn. Probably my favorite part of the whole job

Step 3 – Wrap your gift & tie it up with the yarn in a simple knot. I actually ended up using a kraft paper bag because the store was out of rolls of paper. It had it’s quirks, but ultimately, it worked just fine.

Step 4 – Make a pretty bow. This was actually how the present first turned out. It looked just fine, but I wanted something more fun. So, I decided to try something else.

Step 5 – Try another bow, er… pompom. Ah, there, that’s better. Look below for how I made this super easy pom. Seriously, it took about 2 minutes. It doesn’t really get much better than that, right?

There are few different ways to make a pom, but I just did it this way & it actually seemed the easiest. First, I wrapped a ton of yarn around a postcard. If you want a smaller pom, just use a smaller rectangle of some type of stiff paper/board.

Then, just fold the paper in half & slide the yarn off.

Next, slide a piece of yarn under your pom & center it. Then, just tie it all together. Finally, trim the loops & voila! A great big pom! I mean, c’mon, how easy was that? Just use the excess from the piece of yarn to tie it to the middle of your gift & you’re all set.