DIY Home Decor: Tween Bedroom!

By Sherie
Introduced by Amy

So, my sister Sherie has THE COOLEST house.  Have you seen it in her Home Stylin post?  If not, you are missing out.  Fer real.  You gotta check it out pronto.  So, after she recently re-did her daughter's bedroom I was like, "Um, this sweet room wasn't part of your home tour on SOM!  So, you must do another post." And she delivered!  My niece Livi is the coolest pre-tween ever...more into books, music, and art then boys, clothes, and shopping, so I love that this room is such a perfect fit for her.  She is close to my heart, cause we were best buddies when she was a little girl and we would always draw and dance together.  Plus, I too was more into books and the Beatles than the Disney Princesses at her age.  Her room would have been my dream. :)  I'm happy Sherie is letting us all see her hard work in this cool bedroom!
-Amy

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When Number 5 was on it's way, we decided we needed to turn the upstairs Craft/Scrapbook/Storage for anything/Black Hole into some sort of livable bedroom. It was decided that my oldest daughter Livi would get the room - banking on my motherly instincts that the baby was a girl, then girls would out-number the boys. (Motherly instincts NAILED IT.) As you can see, we let the kids have a little fun painting and writing on the walls. Why not, right? Behind the wood door is the furnace for the house… no we did not do that. The room inside would have made the sweetest closet, but alas… it holds a commercial-size furnace instead. At least her room is warm in the winter.

Here are some Before pics:

The walls had old, nasty wallpaper that was fairly easy to rip down. The kids had fun pulling it down after I soaked it with a rag. After we got off all of the loose pieces, I left the rest to just mud over. I fixed all the wood trim and repainted it, then textured the room (including the ceiling) and gave it two coats of paint. And don’t be fooled – that took weeks to accomplish.. with breaks every three hours to nurse the baby ☺. There's a big unused, chimney in the room, so we came up with the idea of making it into a tree which went perfectly with Livi's idea to put a hammock in her room. I liked the idea of very light blue paint which worked great with the look of the sky in the background.

After the walls were painted, Livi painted the trunk of the tree then I began filling in the branches, freehand. We had found the owl stickers at a craft store which roosted perfectly on the branches. My mom added the leaves afterwards.

The floor was a struggle. Originally I was going to sand the floorboards and stain them a dark brown to match the hallway. We realized the gaps between the boards were so big, we would need to put a lot of filler in between the boards and if we were to sand it and stain it, the filler would stain lighter and really stand out. So I rented a big sander and did the whole floor, then filled in the gaps one at a time with thin wood putty and sanded it with a hand-sander. There were still some gaps where the filler dried and shrunk back, so yes, I had to do the process AGAIN to fill it all in. It took hours and the sand blows all over the room and coats the walls and ceiling… plus yourself and breathing through a mask is just awfully comfortable…. But I got it all done! And yes… weeks again. We got the walls / ceiling all cleaned and I decided to paint the floor a pale yellow and seal it with a deck sealer. Thanks Sherwin Williams for the idea. Connecting the hammock to the chimney was interesting, but we just anchored it inside the chimney flue and bolted it to the other side. As long as you don’t weigh over 100 pounds, you’re good! So no, I’ve never been in it... Livi tells me it’s nice….

We had fun furnishing her room with refurbished pieces. We had a few new pieces, mostly from Ikea. Livi reads like it’s going out of style, so we set up her own bookshelf. We found an inexpensive clothes rack to hang her dresses with the rest of her clothes in the drawers under her bed. So Livi loves her room! If definitely reflects her quirky, modern style. I did almost all of the work in the room, so I was proud too! In a few years, we plan on putting a bathroom in part of her room, so the chimney/tree will come down, but we’ll have fun scheming the room out again.

Here's the room!
-Sherie

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Isn't Livi's bedroom so cool!?  I mean, who the crap doesn't want a hammock in their bedroom?  And, Sherie is pretty much the cool mom for working so hard to help Livi have an awesome room...Livi had shared a room with her younger sister for a long time (who is all about the pink! Haha!) so now she's pretty stoked to have her own space.  

So, let's hear about your bedroom growing up!  I loved mine.  I shared with my poor sister Laura till she went to college (I was a hoarder as a little kid...all sorts of "collections" of treasures -aka- weird crap that kids love, like marbles and a million crayons/pencils.  I was NOT fun to share a room with.) From middle school on, I quit my pig-sty ways and spent many hours decorating my room...I bought tons of cool records from the library basement sale and hung the covers in my room, along with a giant beatles poster, a collection of globes, and huge magazine collages I painstakingly made.  Oh, and I rigged up a string of lights and several lamps to all turn on with the same switch of a power strip.  (Lots of extension cords...haha, what a safety hazard!)  

How about you?  What was your room like?  Did you share with a sibling?  Did you do your own decorating or did your mom?  If you have kids old enough to care, do you let them have a say in their bedroom decor?  I'd love to hear. :)  Not that it's an imminent concern (my two kids are little little) but, I've wondered about how that will go down, cause I care so much about the aesthetics of my home--I'm a little leery to give a kid free-reign, ha. What if we end up with black paint or One Direction posters everywhere??  *shudder*...haha.

I hope you loved Livi's room!  Be sure to Like, Pin, Comment, etc to show the love. :)  Thanks friends!  Have a sweet fall day! 

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The Art of Knick-Knackery!

By Amy

I'm a hopeless home decor junkie.  I love it SOO much.

But, being married and sharing a home with a male occasionally brings up some minor conflicts of opinion and preferences when it comes to home decor taste.  My hub and I share a lot of similarities in our style, but now and then he's less than thrilled about one of my design choices.  One thing we don't always see eye to eye on:

KNICK KNACKS. 

I love to peruse thrift stores and garage sales for awesome, quirky little objects.  The thrill of the hunt is half the fun!  Cause there's a LOT of useless, ugly crap out there to sift through.  I just like the useless, pretty crap!  Ha!  Especially if it's cool and vintage.  Or weird.  Or funny.  Or weirdly funny.   And there's a small amount of knick knacks in my house that are kept around purely for sentimental value.  Like the rather hideous cat that came from my Great Grandma.  I just can't get rid of the wall-eyed monstrosity!  I don't have anything else from my spunky, short, opera-singing Great G-ma.  Plus, I kinda like it....do you ever just love something just because it is so hilariously ugly?  (I wonder if this is why people are into those flat faced cats that look like they got their mugs slammed by a door.  And, I even like cats!)

So Patrick rolls his eyes and heaves great sighs of pain when I bring home any little treasures.  (He loves me, though, so you'll notice they are still in our house!)  And, here's the thing, I actually agree with the clutter argument...I don't want a bunch of silly figurines filling up every surface.  SO, I keep my knick knacks in designated areas, usually specific shelves.  That seems to keep Patrick pacified.  

But, I have to admit, I need to practice the art of editing.  Cause when I bring home an awesome fifty cent brass figurine, something else has to go.  I don't want my treasures to overrun our little home and suddenly we look like Aunt Ethel's cluttered parlor room.  Neither do I want to become a candidate for "Hoarders."  Too much is too much.  (Profound, I know.)  Knick-Knackery is an Art that has to be coupled with restraint, otherwise, it becomes a little puky.  But, tasteful, controlled knick-knacking awesome.  It adds character, warmth, personality, interest, and a sense of history into a home.  

Ok, I am done waxing philosophical.  Here are a few of my little treasures that I love most!  (PLEASE ignore the dust.)

My Knick Knack cupboard!  

Patrick made that little ceramic piano when he was a boy...hee hee!  Isn't it so cute and OCD?  His careful attention to detail never ceases to amaze me.  I bought that beautiful teacup at a student art sale in college.  I had to have it.  (Isn't it insanely good!?  And, a cute little thrift store bowl, along with the most adorable, tiny little porcelain kitty.  

The little globe ringholder was a gift from my mom (I've collected globes since middle school!) and the little "See No, Speak No, Hear No Evil" monkeys I bought when I went to Japan for a two week summer exchange program, and the little stone carved container was from my Grandma June when she visited Israel)

Cool little ceramic box, only glazed half-way down...it has great texture!  And a sweet vase from my sister, Sherie, but it's probably too big to count as a knick knack.

Elephant from my Grandma and Grandpa Brown.  A sweet little bugle from the thrift store and the key to my heart I gave Patrick to put on his key chain while we were dating.

Thrift store whittled deer!  It's on a high shelf and apparently it's dusty up there, folks.

A glass globe that my two cooperating teachers gave me when I finished student teaching.  I love it!  

Jewelry...some of it I never actually wear, but it is sentimental, so I display it, like the amber beads were a gift from an elderly lady I knew on my mission.   So, the purely ornamental is mixed in with those necklaces I actually wear.

I made this top hat man in my college ceramics class!  I love him so much.  If my house was burning down, first I'd get out my son and make sure my husband was safe, then grab important documents....and this dude.  His hat comes off and you can put cookies inside!

...And with the other hand, while sprinting through the flames, I'd grab this pig.  Oh SWOON!  Patrick doesn't really like it, but the pig and I are a package deal.

This vase is cracked up the back--I pulled it out of the dumpster at the ceramics lab--and it holds our change.  The cool ceramic succulent and the shell were both TJ Max.

I love this crazy metal fish!  I found it at a thrift store.

 Ok, so my son was taking a nap when I snuck in to snap these pics...that why the lighting is all weird, cause I had to use a flash.

Thrift store whale penny jar, and a gold owl from the decorations at Hayden's baby shower.  Thank you, Heather!

Little Squirrel from my mom and that tiny hedgehog (GAH! ADORABLE!!!) a little girl was selling at a craft fair/rummage sale.  She had a bunch of other tiny clay animals she'd made, and I wanted to buy them ALL!  

This sweet little bear was made for my family by one of our Japanese exchange students.  I swiped it from my parent's house.  haha!

A lop-sided ceramic pencil holder that a friend made for Patrick in Jr. High.  I love the color!

A sweet, old recipe tin.

Well there's my useless crap.  But, they bring me joy, so they can't be useless, right? :)

What do you think about knick knacks?  Love?  Hate?  In the middle?  What is your favorite/coolest/weirdest knick knack?  Why do you love it?  I'd love to hear! :)  

PS. This post is linked to the Be.YOU.tiful Link Party...go check it out! :)

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Home Stylin: Pillows...Annoying or Awesome?

By Amy

I have an important question of deep significance I've been pondering for a long time.

*Deep breath...* Here it is:
Pillows on a couch--yea or nay?

I kind of hate when I go to sit on a couch, and I have to perch on the edge because, OH, the couch is already occupied by a ton of freakin decorative pillows.  Despite the fact that these pillows could be totally cool looking and really add to the aesthetic of the room, if one can not comfortably sit on a place which is designated for sitting...there's a problem.  Seriously, they are couch hogs.  Like, whenever I am at my mom's house, the first thing I do when I walk into the living room to sit down, is dump all the pillows one by one back behind the couch.  (Sorry mom!)  Then I can sit back in the couch and relaaaax.  Ahhh, so much better than perching.

Doesn't it seem like the second you sit on a couch or get ready to get into bed, you chuck all of the extra pillows on the floor?  So then they're just kicking around next to the bed, getting in the way, gathering dust bunnies.  Aren't they just extra crap to deal with?  But, maybe their aesthetic appeal is worth retrieving them when I make my bed the next morning (*cough*...or afternoon.  Ha.)  I gotta admit, I don't like ANY extra work...can you tell?  Right now, I am a huge pregger, so picking ANYTHING off the floor makes me unreasonably bugged.

Then there's the question of: should pillows match?  Or be mis-matched?  I found some AWESOME pillows at Ross a while back with these super cool geometric print that looked like a maze... but they were more expensive then I wanted to pay, and there were only two.  So, with two matching pillows, do I put one on each couch?  Or both on one couch?  See...these dilemmas plague me.  So I walked away. (And they never had them again...curses!)

For a while I haven't had pillows on my couches besides the teal diamond one you see below that I made out of a sweater.  I usually sit on the other couch, (cause the two cushion couch reclines!) so I don't have any feelings of animosity toward this particular pillow.  We have an understanding...It stays out of my way.

No new pillows...

Then, the other day at my fav thrift store, I saw 4 matching pillows.  Now, before you say, "You NASTY!  How could you buy pillows at a thrift store!?  Lice and fleas and weird smells!"...let me tell you, I totally agree, and I wouldn't normally even consider it.  BUT.  These looked BRAND NEW.  Seriously.  And they smell fine, too!

Here were my reservations: Yellow is not my favorite color.  I like gold and orange, but yellow I've always found a little too...bright, or too much, or something.

With new pillows.

Plus, they are Chevron, and I wonder if maybe Chevron has become a little overdone by this point? Maybe not...what do you think?

However, despite these two thoughts, they cost $1.95 each.  For pillows in excellent shape, I decided that the price was too good to pass up.  And if I found the PERFECT fabric later, I could recover them!  You can't even find a pillow insert thingy anywhere near that cheap.

So I bought them and plopped them on my couches.  I was surprised by how nicely they brightened up the space!  (I am a bit stuck in neutrals and blues.)  However, that night I sat down on the couch with my hub to watch some Netflix and eat an ice cream sandwich...immediately I yanked the offending pillow from behind my back and tossed it down on the floor.  I like to sit in the corner of the couch, and that pillow was cramping my style.  Hmmm.

So, I'd love to hear your thoughts...Are pillows on a couch annoying to you?  Or maybe I'm just a crasy person.  (It's likely.)

And on my bed...remember this pillow?  It's my sappy, DIY luv pillow.  :)  I love it, but it always ends up on the floor.  So does the navy blue body pillow that is back behind the two pillows that we actually sleep on.  Do you have extra pillows on your bed?  It kinda makes me crazy when a bed has 30 pillows on it of all shapes and sizes, and it takes like 15 minutes to retrieve them from all over the room in the morning to make the bed...ain't nobody got time fo that!  It's so unnecessary.  Sounds like a great way to ensure that I never make my bed again.  Yeah, it can look so fancy and cool, but...still, it's a hassle, you guys!

Well, at least somebody likes pillows on the floor!  Ha!  I took off all the pillows to take a pic of the plain couches, and when I looked down, somebody had gotten cosy in them!

Well, those are my deep and haunting pillow questions.  Is there a happy way to have decorative pillows?  This is probably the most important issue in the world at this moment, so please share your opinion, especially you home decor peeps.

....Ok, ok, I guess world hunger and war trumps the GREAT PILLOW DEBATE.  But it still keeps me up at night.

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A Tale of Two Dressers

By Amy

Anybody else out there obsessed with home decor?

For reals, if we owned cable, I would watch HGTV for days on end.  I'd have to move the toilet and fridge into the living room, so I'd never miss a nano-second of "Love it or List It" or "Property Brothers".  

HGTV was very important to me when I had cable and a 1- month-old baby.  I never got out of the house; I was either bouncing my reflux-y baby on the exercise ball or sitting on the couch, hooked up to the milk machine (breast pump..."'shudder'") while binging out on tv home remodels.  

Yeah.  It's a good thing that I haven't had cable since then.  And since we've never owned our own home yet, I have to expend all my addictive, remodel energies on decor-ing the walls of the home we're renting and re-doing furniture.

SO, here's two projects my patient husband and I finished up this summer!  They took some WORK, but they were so worth it.

Two DIY Dresser Redo's!  Enjoy! :)

Ok, so this dresser looked like a piece of crap when I saw it upside down, with the drawers out, and one leg off, in the middle of a crowded yard sale.  But I saw the cool legs and funky handles, and pounced.  I just knew it had some serious potential.  And, you can re-finish wood, so it was no big deal to me that it looked like it had been kicked off a truck and rolled down a hill!  

But, if you see something you like at a yard sale, you gotta be chill.  Act all nonchalant, like you don't really care about such a hunk of junk... "How much for this dresser thing?  (act a little disgusted by the nicks and dings...) She answers and you reply, "Oh $5?  Hmmm...well, I guess we could pay that."  (Still playing it sooo cool.)  But really, I'm so excited, I want to throttle the lady perusing purses next to me..."DID YOU HEAR THAT?  SHE SAID 5 FREAKIN DOLLARS!!!!  AHAHAHA! (maniacal laugh...)"

When we walked off with that scratched-up beauty, I felt like waving and hollering back to the yard sale shoppers "I got it SUCKERS!!! Ya'll don't know what you just MISSED!!!  IN YO FACE!"

But, no I don't holler like a football player on roids...I'm still playing it coool.  (Till the car door shuts at least.  Ha!)

The Re-do process:
Um, it took alot more time then I realized when I was gleefully victory dancing at the yard sale. (well, in my mind I was.)  But still SOOOO worth it.  Oh, so worth it.  I love this baby.  And, now we have so much storage in our kitchen for extra bowls and dishes and my art class supplies.  And Hayden can't open the drawers!!!!  WOOOO!  Toddler proofed! :)

Leg off and a sticker too! 

Lots of sanding.

My boys!

I help too, I swear--it's just I'm usually taking the pics. :)

Clear coating...4 layers of it....ughhhhhhhhh.  Then you have to wait 8 hours between each coat...suspense, people!

Hanging the boards to dry

BAM!  Oh I love it so much!  I want to weep! 

Sigh....worth the work.

Now for beauty numero dos.  This one was so wretched when we bought it off of craigslist.  It was in another city, so we had my mom pick it up.  We probably wouldn't have bought it, had we seen it in person, cause it had some damage-- but my mom didn't want to make that call, so she handed over our money and brought us the precious, heart covered dresser.  Ha!  We decided to make it work, and we are so happy with the end result!  (Thanks for picking it up mom!)

See, miracles DO exist!  Ok, back to the nast.  I'm not really going to get all detailed into the process...there was a lot of sandin', then a lot more sandi'n...the hearts were stamped on with some thick paint, so we had to sand them till they were flat, or you could see hearts through the blue.

Then several coats of paint.  I waffled back and forth on the color of the knobs 3 times, then finally spray painted them this light blue that I had left over from another project (and the sprinklers came on while they were drying on the grass in the front yard...ha, that sucked.)  and...VOILA!  It is finished!

See, there was some damage that we fixed with some wood putty.

LOVE this little trunk.  I found it at a different garage sale, and Patrick was like, "Are you kidding?!"  But he likes it on the dresser!  You'd think he'd just trust me by now.  :) 

Ha...another glamour shot of the little trunk.  Along with a little teddy bear from our japanese exchange student, some globes (I've collected them since I was in middle school) and a pic of Jesus that I love!

Sweet boy! :)

Well, that's it, friends!  Can you believe the hearts on the "before" pic!?  Ha!  Maybe if we had a girl....jk, nope!

What do you think?  I was nervous to paint such a large piece such a dark color, but I'm happy with it.

I think it's super fun to see other people's home projects too!  So, send me your before and after pics to share here on SOM! (amy.the.graham@gmail.com)  It's always nice to get a virtual high five for some hard work, right?  You can help me responsibly get my home decor re-model fix, since it's unhealthy for me to watch HGTV.  :)

And, if you're new here, be sure to LIKE "Swag on, momma!" to join the party!  We have lots of fun hanging out and discussing all sorts of important (and not so important) stuff.  We'd love to have YOU!  Just click the little "Like" button on the upper right margin...it's calling your name. :)  Or click "Join this Site" button to never miss a post!  And, if you really want to get me doing my on-roids-victory-dance...do both!  Ha! :)

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