Whimsical vintage chic baby nursery plans and progress!!

Planning, preparing, and organizing for a baby (especially your 1st baby) is a gigantic adventurous task filled with excitement, anticipation, anxiety, and LOTS of choices!! It's like exploring a whole new world, just like the journey the baby will be embarking on in about 5 months. We are overwhelmingly excited, and are trying not to overlook any detail. 

I feel like it's much shorter of a time frame than planning a wedding even. (We were engaged for 2 years, which was a personal preference, especially for Jon who probably required that much time just to make sure he was making the right decision, hehe jk, I'm sure he knew the moment he 1st met me...riiight...I digress...) The point is that by the time the wonderful news sinks in and you spill the baby beans, you have like 5 months to prepare and be completely ready to be handed over an adorable bundle of joy, with lots of baggage and only hope that you won't say "I never thought of that..." or "Hmmm, That's a great question." or..."Didn't know I would need one of these" or "How the heck do you use this gadget from Babies r us??" or even worse..."What is this thing??" Granted, that's what Youtube is for!! Luckily, there are awesome resources out there!! 

In my opinion, one of the most important things to take extremely seriously when preparing for a baby is designing an exciting, functional, organized, and creatively engaging baby nursery that feels inviting, comfortable, uncluttered, and chic!!  Basically, this is where we are with our nursery so far : We've been diligently working on and tweaking the "soon to be" Botbyl baby nursery, for which we've decided (a while ago) to create a whimsical vintage space, neutral enough to accommodate baby boy or girl. Our paint color is a soft grayish taupe, and our furniture is sortuv a hickory finish. Our colors are sandy tan and cream with orange and teal accents. Here are a couple photos of our vintage nursery in progress. We still have tons to do and a considerable amount of time, and I feel like we're off to a great start with it!! We will probably be taking a little hiatus considering that school has just began and we'll be exceedingly busy in the months to come, but were able to get a lot done!! This is where we are so far!!

This is a baby mobile that I made, which was an ongoing project for a few months, and started out as an experiment that ended up pretty cute. It's definitely a major goal of mine to make or even embellish many items that will go into the room.

 

Here's a lampshade that I made (covered, actually), which came out a little funky, but kinda cute. I just used layers of fabric that I bunched together and tied around a regular white lampshade.

 This adorable music player was mine when I was a baby!! I love it!!

 I placed an old black and white photo of my grandmother inside this vintage jar along with silver antique buttons.

 

Nothing says whimsical artistic vintage baby nursery more than a cute little sock monkey...or maybe two...(or three??) We'll see!!

 So, I had been on the look out for a rug that was cute and functional, but also neutral, and scored this one at home dept for around $77. I'm extremely happy with the way it looks in the room!! It's definitely patterned but not like BAM when you walk in!! It adds subtle whimsy.

I'm definitely making it a point to keep the nursery closet organized and functional, and make sure everything has a place!!

We've already purchased our bedding, which I love love love, but it's still in the closet. Here's a picture of the bedding online - We ended up find an amazing deal online!! I absolutely love how simple and textural the quilted pattern is!!

A couple future nursery projects consist of : Finding and purchasing a fairly inexpensive, but antique-ish crib, and an art project for the wall directly above the crib.

I'm happy with the overall direction of the nursery, and I'm sure we will come up with a couple more cutsie projects that will suit a little baby boy or girl!!

Thanks so much for stopping by and have a terrific day!!

We're expanding our home by two feet!!

This is how it went down. "Well, Cecelia, we have some pretty exciting news to tell you!! (whisper whisper)"

 "WWHHAT?! I'm gonna be a...Is he pulling my tail?"

I'M GONNA BE A BIG SISTER!! I'M SO EXCITED!! Just one question...What's a...a...big sister?"

 

"Are these shoes for me??

 Coming soon to a crib near you!!

Baby Botbyl 
(possibly in Concert, shaking the maraca)

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February 19th, 2013

Oh, I get it!! I just thought mommy must have been loading up on the donuts lately and randomly yelling at Daddy for no apparent reason!! This explains it!!

"I'm still the baby right?"

Kitchen and Family Room Updates, Part 2

Good Morning!! Hope this beautiful morning finds you well-rested and ready to begin a new day!! I've been anticipating our amazing kitchen reveal!! Here's a couple quick updates : Jon and I chose our back splash tile at Lowes, where we had gone back and forth between two choices that were both awesome and unique. We're exceedingly happy with the tile we selected, pictured below (before installation). We were basically searching for sleek glass tile mixed with stone or marble in a linear pattern, which we found in a couple different shades.

Before the back splash went up, the counter top was installed. I'm in love with the mix of gray, white, black, and cream stylishly running through this piece of stone. We love how it compliments the wall color and bright white cabinets which definitely pop more now!!

Here is a photo of our back splash during the installation process :

Here are my most up-to-date photos of the finished product (still in progress, but as finished as it will be for a while) The back splash has yet to be grouted. For the grout, we chose a medium gray. David, our tile guy brought this cool tray of what looked like oil pastels so that we could compare different shades of grout to the various hues in the tile. Jon wasn't overly concerned with the shade of grout, but I had everything laid out all over the counter, just to make sure I was selecting the best shade. We went with Silverado, which David had originally suggested an hour before I made a decision, tehe!!

Hope you enjoyed our kitchen updates!! Have a wonderful day!!

Kitchen and Family Room Updates, Part 1

Good Afternoon!! It's such a beautiful day, although exceedingly hot and sticky, that's for certain!!!! I decided to post about our Family Room/Kitchen combo this afternoon because these rooms, mainly the kitchen, are going through a couple of much desired changes/upgrades such as new kitchen counter tops and the addition of a chic modern glam back splash, which we have yet to explore then pick out, as well as some fresh new lighting that will hopefully make the room feel light, bright, airy, clean, and modern, but still glamorous and playful.

Searching for granite counter tops is definitely a task, but I Jon and I have found that going through the granite slab yard is the best way to truly get a feel for the pattern and stone itself; Small samples barely allow you to explore the depth and detail of the counter top as a whole. For our last house, we purchased our kitchen counter tops from Home Depot, which proved to be a fairly good idea. Here is our kitchen in our previous house, after renovations. I realize it's extremely difficult to even see the counter tops in the 1st picture, and in the 2nd picture just try to ignore the adorable creature climbing over the ceramic apple soup bowl. (Also, we had this beautiful glass tile and stone back splash installed for a great price, which we're planning to do again in the new kitchen, about which I'll go more into detail in the next post.)

KITCHEN IN OUR 1ST HOUSE (after much needed renovations)

This time, we decided to go to a slew of places that just specialize in stone or counter tops to check out their selection without going through a middle man (which usually takes you to a slab yard anyway) Long story short, we've been looking for a couple of months for the most beautiful counter top at the most affordable price, and each place we went to brought us to the same conclusion - There are two counter tops that we're absolutely head over heels in love with and they are available at all the places we visited, only more affordable at one particular place, so we decided to go with them. We were given a couple of samples to take home with us, which are gorgeous, but like I said, doesn't do the counter top as a whole, justice, because you're not seeing the movement and detailed pattern. This passed Friday, measurements of our existing kitchen counter tops were taken. Here are some photos from our counter top selecting process!!

Counter top 1 : (it looks much bluer in the photo than it is live)

 Counter top 2 :

Here are the samples we took home :

Here is the exact slab we choose, after much contemplation :

Our new counter top will be installed this coming Friday - Can't wait!!

We've selected and installed our new kitchen lighting, an incredibly gorgeous glamorous chandelier, that lends itself to a modern fresh airy aesthetic. We found this beauty at Lowes, on CLEARANCE, then on CLEARANCE on top of the CLEARANCE!! We scored this breathtaking light which I'm totally in love with, plus bulbs and everything, for under $80!! Amazing deal, considering everything else was over our price range, and not as beautiful and lavish!! Only problem we didn't fore see was fitting the chandelier in my corolla, in which case we needed to take all the separate pieces out of the box just to get everything in the car!!

 Here's Jon reading the manual before installing the light fixture!! He's awesome at installing things!!

 

And here is the beauty!! I LOVE IT!!

As for our family room, we're taking on a few minor updates. There's nothing more inspiring than a beautiful fresh summer Mantle!! I love turquoise, green, lime, and cream and really tried to bring out that gorgeous color combo on my fireplace mantle in my family room. Every couple of weeks, I slightly move things around, but for the most part, this is what it looks like and even in the cool winter months, my family room is decorated with a light summery aesthetic in mind!!

Jon has decided to extend our fireplace by building a fireplace surround, which will hopefully add much desired depth and drama to the hearth. In general, I'm always looking to add more chunky architectural details to the family room. That's about it for this room, for now. 

Well, I hope you enjoyed our Family Room/Kitchen updates!! Please stay tuned for Part 2 of this post, which will consist of our plans for a glass tile back splash, then (hopefully), our completed kitchen.

TO BE CONTINUED...