If your "into" babies

Head on over to Shelli's blog A La Mode for the Nursery portion of the Roomspiration Link Party.  Although we are approaching the time when we will never have a "baby room" in our house again I still love to look at all the sweet and gorgeous rooms that are so thoughtfully put together.

I shared our girl's nurseries.  One developed into another as our second daughter arrived and we didn't have to paint!  Woohoo! 

This was surprise #2's room

 and here is how we quickly and inexpensively prepped it for surprise #3 

And some day just some day I might get around to posting about Little Dude's nursery..He is only 5 now;)

You can follow all the parties listed below..Party on!

Join in

I am totally out of the blogging loop these days! In some ways I miss it but it others it has been liberating not to feel like I have another part time job when I should be rolling around on the floor with my babies! That being said my friend Dana over at Make Them Wonder has recently posted about the Roomspiration Blog Hop and it got me motivated to join in.  It is always fun to see all of the great and usually thrifty ideas that all you creative ladies come up with!  So I had to join in.  Go take a look.  Peruse through all the before and afters grab some great ideas with us!

I joined in over at View Along the Way to link up our little family room revamp.

 and then over to Homemaker on a Dime to share a few of our bathroom transformations.

Hope you'll join in and don't forget to go show Dana at Make Them Wonder some new blogger love!

Baby "Stage"

Oh baby!  Ya see this picture that totally doesn't do this room or bedding justice?  When we had E 3 1/2 years ago I wanted to forgo the pink route and use some bold colors and lots of pattern.  Well I don't know that we ended up with "lots" of patterns but we did end up with some gorgeous fabric in some bold colors.  I was lucky enough to have my mom offer to sew some bedding so we spent a couple of hours at JoAnns one day playing with fabric.  That sounds like fun doesn't it?  I miss doing that..maybe soon I will have a project that forces me to go rummage around a fabric store.

 Now this pic is even worse..I can't believe I didn't get better pics of this room when it was tidy and cute.    You see that tree there...Well before there were(or before I knew there were) vinyl wall decor options all over the place I decided we needed a tree on the wall like the one in a pottery barn catalog.  So the hubs graciously spent a few hours spread out over  a few weeknights to whip this baby up.  It turned out great!  Don't laugh when I say the poor hubs learned the hard way that you should not attempt to draw on a wall with a sharpie if you EVER plan on painting over it with white paint.  Lesson learned and many coats of kilz later it still looks good.  The sharpie is still showing its ugly face in a few areas but we  decided not to care a long time ago;)

Now enter good photography!  The lovely Miss Tanya of Cozy Impressions Photography has done a series of photographs to capture our last two babies 1st years of life and she does it well!

Look at my sweet E!  Our first girl!  She really was an angel baby..We had such a hard time with our first born that she probably would have seemed "easy" no matter what she did.  Sorry bud..you will probably always get a bad baby wrap but you know you are loved;)!

Here is a better pic of the tree too.  Didn't hubby do a nice job.  I am pretty lucky to have a guy that doesn't mind helping me achieve a girly goal when I need him too.  I am just to much of a spaz to draw a tree.

O.k. so the point of this post is really to document a few things we did to "stage" the house to put it on the market. 

Obviously that second picture probably wouldn't have wooed buyers to come take a peek.  The truth is I felt like I was staging the house most of the time we lived there.  I say that because we were constantly de-cluttering, putting things on craigslist, donating and just organizing so it didn't feel like we were being taken over.  Yet we still always felt like it was so easy to start drowning in stuff every time a birthday or Christmas would roll around. For that matter also any time family would come to visit..wink wink momo and ya ya.  

One thing we did was try to make the shallow closet in the girls room work better for us.

Enter: A quick trip to target for a closet shelving system.  It was fairly inexpensive(don't remember how much) but I wouldn't have bought it if it wasn't!  This gave us a place for some cubby "baskets" and shelving for all of those little shoes that you accumulate when you have two little girls.  

We also added a lower rod and raised the original one so we could have one for each of the girls.  Bitty baby's stuff on top and E's down low where she can reach and help momma by picking our her own outfits. Which she is actually pretty good at! Score!

One thing I have a attempted to do in the kid's closets is always have a labeled box in the floor so if in the "heat of the moment" which is the battle of getting dressed each day we could toss anything that didn't fit just right anymore into the box.  It isn't a fool proof system but it helped it not to just get tossed here and there(like in the laundry to be washed 162 times even though it was never worn).

I still use a bankers box in little mans closet but purchased these pink doosies for the girls closet because I think it looks cleaner and of course keeps the bugs out!

O.k. now as usual I am going to back track because you might think I have totally forgotten what room I am posting about if I don't.  In May of 2009 we found out we were getting a new little surprise in our family!  We were not expecting or planning this so after the shock rocked us for a bit and we found out we would have another chica in the house I started thinking pink! After all I didn't want to regret never playing with a pink room because I am typically not drawn to it so I  took the opportunity to soak it up anyway. (that is where you either do identify with my illness or not;)

I was perusing around baby's r us one day and came across this bedding set for I think $70 !  That is pretty good for a crib set as far as I 'm concerned.  It was pink and simple and I could totally see it working with the green tree wall that bitty baby would be inheriting from her big sis.

Then I came across these party poofs at michaels and got to use my 40% off coupon so I literally spent a few dollars for a nice contrast to our outrageously pink wall!  I wanted to tie the walls in with the bedding a bit and this is what we did.  I probably wouldn't do it again but we definitely were not going to repaint it.

Bitty baby needed a window treatment so again to Target we went and ended up mixing a couple of different styles of curtains in order to cover up the whole length of the window.  If I did it again and wasn't in a hurry I would have done something a little different and definitely hung them higher.

Ok back to staging...We previously had this little changing table # for E's room.  Turns out this was way less handy than using a dresser as we had for little man's room.  I just found it hard to organize and then there was all that wasted space around it that could be filled up with storage!

So knowing that we needed more room for the girls clothes(all we had were those 3 little drawers in that red dresser in the second picture in this post) I started a very long craigslist search for a decent and cheap white dresser.  Does anyone else think craigo has gotten competitive?  You really have to be on the ball around here to get anything good.  This wasn't as cheap as I wanted(150.00) but it was the best thing I could find at the time.  So hubby went to a sketchy area with a defense plan and got our baby girls clothes some new digs.

To balance it out a bit I brought some green from the tree wall to this side of the room with this little guy.  Again from Target..I swear I don't buy everything there. As a matter of fact I try to avoid the place because it is too easy to spend $$ on un-needed yummy stuff.

Now enter more good photography(not mine but a local real estate photographer we hired in preparation to hit the MLS).

It is clean, uncluttered, simple and staged.  I sure wish we had gotten around to replacing that boob light but oh well it won't be our random boob for much longer.  I know most realtors would probably suggest we repaint to so we don't turn off potential buyers but we just don't have time so here's hoping someone will love it or be willing to do their own thing!

Linking to the parties at:

Thrifty Decor Chic

Be Different Act Normal

Tater Tots and Jello

Whipperberry

Just a Girl

House Of Hepworths

Shabby Creek Cottage

Fireflies and Jellybeans

Somewhat Simple

Savvy Southern Style

The Thrifty Home

The Trendy Treehouse

Blue Cricket Design

Type A Decorating

DIY by Design

Hope Studios

Todays Creative Blog

Between Naps on the Porch

The Girl Creative

Skip to my Lou

Sumos Sweet Stuff

Crafts Keep Me Sane

Diy Home Sweet Home Project

Life Made Lovely

Dittle Dattle

Polly Want a Crafter

Home Stories A to Z

Playful Decor

First Impressions

What do you base your first impression of a home on?  Is it the lawn, the front door, or the all of the above?  I think it is probably all of the above for most of us but I do think the yard makes a huge difference...Post coming soon on that one.(see how we dealt with one lawn issue here)

Let's talk front doors.  Our door was fine..nothing special(still nothing special really) but I felt like it could give a bad first impression to any would be buyers as they entered the house.

This was it.  We attempted to paint it black a year or so ago but made the mistake of picking black from a swatch and it had a purple tint to it.

This was the "super cheap" DR Horton choice of door bell.  Almost every doorbell in the neighborhood has broken like this..No plastic left on the button so it's a "push at your own risk" doorbell.

And here is the not so quality choice of door knob that Dr. Horton supplied.  We have lived here 4 years and the finish is almost completely worn off plus the deadbolt was really hard to unlock(not real welcoming to a potential buyer if their realtor has a hard time unlocking the door right?)  And..the paint was already a little chipped on the front door.

So I thought we should freshen this spot up a bit.  We replaced the doorbell(our selection is not fancy either but guests won't be shocked).  On a side note...when you have lost a ton of value on your home it is really hard to make changes and spiffy it up without feeling like your throwing more money down the drain.  So we had to be conservative yet make it look clean and well taken care of.

We then repainted the door black.  We just asked the guy at Sherwin Williams for a basic black this time instead of looking for a swatch.

Then we replaced the door knob and deadbolt.

We then added a little color in the form of some flowers in the corner instead of the pencil cactus that was there.  Hopefully this will get bigger and more vibrant quickly!

So now we have this..Again nothing huge but when you approach the door you don't notice chipping paint, a worn out door knob, and an electrocuting door bell(that is one way to keep the solicitors away though..hmmm)!

Before

After

Linked up to the great daily parties on the right and:

Between Naps on the Porch

The Stories of A 2 Z

Momnivores Dilemma

Tweak 2

Wow I forgot how our kitchen use to look....now of course this is a horrible picture(dark and baby junk abounds) but it really has changed without even really "changing it" too much.

You will see what I mean down below but I put this picture here to show what our kitchen usually looks like on a day to day basis(and thankfully I know I am not alone!) We don't have as much baby stuff crowding the room these days but there of course is always stuff everywhere and there always will be. But....when it is all tidy you can see it has taken on a new life after removing that little half wall and replacing all the flooring in the space. Oh and the island! Hubby trimmed it out and painted it my at the moment favorite color from Sherwin Williams. The walls also had a slight color change from a slight green tint to Sherwin Williams relaxed Khaki which is now throughout most of the house.

This next pic shows my little "hiding place" for the stuff that seems to be around on a day to day basis. Notes, grocery lists, random easter baskets, artwork, things to fix or add batteries to. They all end up shoved in this little corner because from the living room you can't see it and that in itself is all I need to make it feel a little less chaotic. You feelin me? I bet you are!

 And here is another view...See how you can't see my junk corner from the living area?  Gotta have me a hiding space in the house we build.

So the point of this post was actually to show a few little things I tweaked in order to stage the house for pictures and showings since we are finally getting closer.

The kitchen looks absolutely fine I know but I felt like I needed to remove a few more things to make for  better pictures.  1st thing I did was remove the fridge clutter of artwork and to do lists and decided what needed to go from my junk nook.

There is nothing spectacular here but I made this 

look more like this

(with some great photography at hand of course..more on that in another post..and no they are not my photography skills;)

Just by de-junking, placing the blender in a cabinet(and I actually moved the knives to the pantry during the shoot) I think it opened up the space and will let people see the space and not the stuff.

Then there is this corner.  Since we use our coffee maker religiously twice a day I could not bear to tuck it away in a cabinet so I moved it to.

.Guess where?

See it?  She doesn't look bad there does she?

The mixer on the other hand is a nice appliance that happens to match everything and helps it look like a real functioning kitchen(which it sometimes isn't due to my lack of desire to cook these days) so I left her there in all her glory.  I did however move the silver bucket of cooking utensils to the pantry for photos as well..At the moment they are neighboring up with Mrs. Bunn(the coffeemaker).

So what do ya think?  She looks all clean and organized doesn't she...Like "move in ready" I would say!

I present the final before and after below:

(as you have probably noticed we didn't end up painting the cabinets like I had discussed in this post.

Here is the not so appealing before...

To um "we would like to make a very generous offer and move in next week"!

Have I ever mentioned I'm a dreamer?

Linking to: the fab blogs in my right sidebar and...

Between Naps on the Porch

Craftomaniac

CRAFT

Making the World Cuter

Thrifty Decor Chick

The Stories of A 2 Z

While we're on the subject of living rooms...Another Before & After

This is our current living room.(I mention "current" because of the recent blast from  the past posts about our first home)  Or should I say this was our current living room..have I lost you yet? This little space is the most used area of our house yet is so hard arrange in a way that makes sense for our family.  See that corner on the left?  Stuffed to the brim with toys!  That had become the toy box and free for all for the kids.  We had super large furniture that took up too much space and as you can see it also had to be butted up against the walls.  Ideally we would have had a sectional to put on the back wall that wrapped around onto the right wall but since we are always "about to put the house on the market" we didn't want to make the purchase.  Although I did search about a 1 1/2yrs ago for the perfect kid friendly gray sofa and believe it or not couldn't find one(one that didn't break the bank that is).  Now they are everywhere!  I even when to Bassett where you can pick your own fabrics and had no luck.  Crazy how much things change in a year.  Anywho, that wall there on the right has always driven me crazy.  It is really hard to decorate around a thermostat so we just threw something up and lived with it.  I mean we really lived with it....all three of the photos on that wall are of our first born child and we have two more that never got there pictures up;)

BEFORE

So back to the we are going to " put our house on the market" comment.  We have been thinking about selling for the past two years but the market in general has made us weary of making the move.  The builder is still building in the neighborhood and it is tough to compete with them.  So instead we have been in constant staging mode.  I took all of our family photos down over a year ago and we try not to add anything that would get in the way of it being staged to sell.  That being said we decided that it was time to move the big brown beasts out of the living room.  They were weighing it down and there were a couple of huge rips in the leather that we didn't want to spend the money on because we didn't know if we could use them in the new place or not.  So the big sofa is now in the garage and we moved the chair into the formalish living room.  Not wanting to spend a lot I scoured Craigslist for microfiber sofas (we have 3 kids a cat and a dog) I found these brand new looking sofas and an accent chair for $500 or 600 I can't remember.  The accent chair wouldn't fit and was too matchy matchy anyway so I sold it.  Even though I wasn't really looking for blue I felt these were a good enough deal that we could sell them after we sold the house and at the same time they would lighten things up a bit.  We had already bought the rug at the Crate and Barrel outlet and it has some aquaish blues in it and I apparently was in an aqua mood because I had bought the lamp for $30 at marshalls. So here we are with a ton of blue in the room.  This is not what I had envisioned at all but hey it lightens it up a bit and looks clean and tidy.

As for the toy corner..there is a small closet under a staircase over to the right and we placed a low bookcase from Ikea with 8 large containers full of "stuff".  The kids each have their own box labeled and it seems to be working out pretty well.  I recently threw those pillows on the sofa(they were here and there in other rooms) and they add a bit to the sea of blue that we find ourselves in.

AFTER

So that's how our current living area became the staged good enough living area!  I think it brightened it up for sure!

Now if it only always stayed like this!  This is what I had to throw into the formal living so I could get a decent picture;)!

Linked to:

Homemaker on a Dime