DIY Striped Curtains

So we've seen these all over the blog world and I guess I figured it was my turn to give it a go.  I found these curtains at Tar-jay for about $14!  I was originally planning on using ones from IKEA but the Tar-jay ones ended up being less expensive.

You can order them online here.  You're welcome Target.

When it comes to having perfectly straight lines I always get nervous and call in the Hubs for help.  I also referred to these 2 great tutorials:

Dwellings By DeVore

Reckless Glamour

Home Depot had their gallon size Martha Stewart paint on sale for $12 so I picked up a gallon along with some "textile medium" that I found at a local craft store.  I wanted to be able to wash these curtains if need be since they would be in a nursery of a boy (aka probably always going to be dirty).

Since I used the same exact curtains as Reckless Glamour it made life super easy since she already did the measurements ( I HATE math).

It was super easy (just time consuming) to tape off the stripes...until I got to the bottom and one side had less of a stripe than the other.  I called in reinforcements (aka Hubs).  I almost had a breakdown until my phone rang and I chatted for a while with a friend and then by the time I was done Hubs had fixed it all!  I just love him! 

He said that it wasn't really my error that the curtains were sewn wrong...not sure if this is completely true but it made me feel a little better.

While we were working on these it was pretty darn cold so I didn't want to paint these outside and risk the paint freezing before it had time to dry.  We laid down a bunch of cardboard and laid the panels on top of that. 

 

Then i went to work painting away with a small foam roller.  

Here they are in all their orange glory!

Hanging Ribba Frames...Disaster or Deleight?

I knew I wanted to keep most of the design for the nursery pretty simple.  I didn't want it to be totally themed out but we did want a strong influence of Kenya in the room.  Kenya holds a very special place in Hubs and my hearts since we went on a short term mission trip there over a year ago.  While we were in Kenya we were able to go on a real life African Safari.  I never thought I'd be able to check that one off the bucket list!  Hubs got some AMAZING pictures of the animals and we decided to use some of those in simple IKEA Ribba frames in the room.

We printed the pictures out at Wolf Camera and found free online coupon codes so we ended up not paying a dime!  The Ribba Frames set us back about $40 ($9.99 a piece).  $42 if you want to add in the cinnamon rolls we ate while we were there...

I was putting the photos we printed into the frames and looked at how I was supposed to do assembly for hanging them.  That's when I discovered why a big, matted frame was sold for $9.99.  There were wires and clips and a feeling of getting the things in a straight level line would be impossible.  WRONG-O!  Thanks to blogs, mainly thanks to Kelly at View Along the Way.  She has a jammin' tutorial on how to hang these bad boys. 

You can check it out here.

So once we figured out how to make sure all the frames were hung at the same level we wanted an easy way to space them.  We looked around the room and low and behold we found a tag from a pair of baby shorts that was just right.  Ghetto or Genius?  I'm going to go with genius!  My job was to hold the tag up there while Hubs leveled and made the mark for the hole.

It really did not take very long at all to hang them.  The most time was spent assembling the frames and making sure the photo was in the frame straight.

We have a few more things left to do before the nursery will be completely done.  One of which is hanging a ceiling fan with lights because right now the lighting in this room is awful (can ya tell by the pics...I think so!)

Thanks again Kelly!

Nursery Lamp

The nursery is moving right along.  We have hit our fair share of bumps in the road while redoing it but, hey, that's something that comes with DIY projects and not paying full retail for items!

I had this lamp that I bought years ago from Wal-Mart.

Since the wall color is very neutral I wanted to pep the room up with some pops of color.  Enter Krylon's Blue Ocean Breeze.

I removed the shade and taped off around where the light bulb goes.  Then I used my spray primer and let it dry.  Next I went to town with the spray paint.  I did have a few drip marks when I went back to check on it so I just sanded them out and resprayed those places.

IKEA Spice Racks turned Bookshelves

I know we've been seeing this idea floating around all over Pinterest and other blogs.  I first saw it on Daily Garnish's blog.  I thought it was such a super cute idea.  I didn't really want to put it on a dresser or the changing table so I decided on hanging them from the wall.  There is a small strip of wall next to the closet that would work perfectly!

We bought the spice racks at IKEA for $3.99 each.

Then I primed them, let it dry, and spray painted them a gloss white.  I did 2 coats because I figure kids are rough on things and I rather do it now than later!

From here I told Hubs where I wanted them hung and he went to town with the rest. 

Here's what they look like now. 

Sorry for the grainy iPod picture.  I'll take a better one for the entire room reveal.