Map Bedroom Reveal

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I feel like it's been forever since I started looking for the pieces to put together this travel themed bedroom for my favorite second grader!

I'm happy to report that he is officially sleeping in his new bed, and hopefully he is as pleased as I am with his new room.

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Preppy Cottage Bedroom Reveal

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Finally! In the wee hours of the morning, I finished my cottage update, and I couldn't be happier with the results. What started out as bland and run-of-the-mill is now crisp and vibrant. In order to appreciate where we are now, you have to understand where we started. On that note, let's take a brief and slightly unpleasant stroll down memory lane...

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DIY Pirate Bedroom

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The idea was to come up with a creative way,  using recycled materials and items already in the house, to turn a small, white bedroom into a room fit for a young pirate.

Since this house is a rental, we couldn't paint the walls. I love to paint and I love color, so not being able to paint was a challenge for me.

The room is in the eaves, so add slanted walls and we had a second obstacle.

I still have a dresser to finish, but we're so close to done now that I can share!

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DIY: 7 Steps to an Allover Wall Stencil

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A few weeks back, I decided that what my small cottage bedroom needed was an accent wall. The space was cute and clean, but utterly boring.

A typical update for a room might consist of repainting the walls, refinishing the floors (if they need it) and hanging a few new pictures.

But how do you give a room real personality? Adding wallpaper can lend character to a space, but good wallpaper is not only expensive, it's also very labor intensive.

I was willing to spend the money since I was only looking to do one accent wall, but the patterns I loved simply didn't come in the colors I was envisioning.  Which led me to stencils.

I discovered Royal Design Studio's Allover Patterns and found the answer to my design dilemma. After much deliberation, I chose the Hollywood Squares stencil.





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The Making of a Pirate Bed

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When a friend told me she was moving and that her two boys were going to be getting their own bedrooms, I jumped at the chance to help decorate their new rooms.

Not because I'm such a fabulous friend, but selfishly because I thought it would be fun to try out some new ideas incorporating this summer's yard sale finds...and MY kids won't let me change their rooms again - crazy, right?


After talking with the boys and their mom, we settled on a pirate theme for the five-year-old.
I had been thinking about using 4x4 fence posts as pier pilings for a simple platform bed. We wanted something tall enough to store toys underneath (or even a trundle), but rough-hewn, as if it was made out of materials washed up on shore.

Out of the blue, another friend called me to tell me she had discovered a piece of driftwood on the beach that I might want for a project. If someone is willing to pick for me, I'm all for checking it out.

Still, I wasn't expecting to see her haul a piece of timber the length and diameter of a telephone pole over the top of that dune. She had found the legs for my pirate bed!



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Saturday's Score

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Today was the best day of the season so far for yard-saling! 

Perfect weather and sales around town in all of my favorite neighborhoods. 

Here are a few of today's favorite finds ...

The Lilac Pitcher. 

I'm not one for collections, but I do love to buy unique and brightly colored pitchers to use as vases for cut flowers. 

For next to nothing, I now have several great colors that I can pick from to give away when I want to share my hydrangeas with my neighbors.

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Stenciled Accent Wall Contest Preview

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Here's a a sneak peak of my stencil progress so far.
Thank you to Royal Design Studio! for letting me check out this fantastic product!

Visit again on July 30th and I will share the full tutorial on how to create your own accent wall in just few easy steps!

I'll also be giving away a Royal Design Stencil to one of my readers so check out their website and see which one you would like to try.

Have a fabulous day!

Dani

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Things I LOVE

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Source: flickr.com via Dani on Pinterest

For all of the New England colonial wallpaper and apple borders that I have endured, I still maintain my love of wallpaper. There is just something beautiful about a great allover pattern.
I'm not talking about your mama's vinyl folks, but real handcrafted, high quality wall coverings.

I've looked everywhere for that perfect paper to add some large scale interest to an accent wall.
After looking at all of the traditional books and then scouring the designer sites, I finally found a few papers that I like. Some I even love. However since my taste never seems to suit my budget I had to move plan B.
Stencils.

I was researching how to try to make my own, when I came across Royal Design Studio.

My search is over and I am in LOVE.

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Preppy Bedroom Update

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Our first weekend in the cottage and the first step in my Preppy Bedroom project is complete!

I've been working on coming up with a headboard idea for this room that would let me get rid of the too big bed frame that was dominating the room. I decided to upholster a headboard with this great Sunbrella fabric from fabric.com and finished it with gold nailheads to match the new gold and green dressers/night stands.

I've still got some work to do to finish up the dressers, but I couldn't wait to share my first before and after photo!

Let me know what you think!

(Check out below for the before photos)


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The Back Story

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I've been yard-saling for as long as I can remember. I went with my aunt and grandmother as a child and thought it was just the greatest thing ever. Grandma gave you a dollar and you traded that dollar for treasure.

My husband and I moved to Newport in 2001. It seems like a lifetime away now. We had just moved home from California after working through the dot.com hiring boom on the west coast.  We were just barely married, and we had we just bought our first house.  Right before we passed papers on the house, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Mom had fought breast cancer five years before and won, but this was brand new. This cancer came with an expiration date.  For the next two years, I was at Mom's side, visiting doctors and doing my best to make memories.

From a young age my mother included me in her "craft" projects. We liked to joke that if you fell asleep on the couch she'd wallpaper you. I'm not sure that that wasn't true. Growing up I was her sidekick. Lots of parents let their kids "help paint." But Mom took it to a whole different level.

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Moving Day

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I should be finishing packing up my office for our summer move, but instead I'm dreaming about all of the great projects I am going to tackle with the spare time I hope to gain by not maintaining a big house for the next ten weeks.

I estimate that I run up and down the three flights of stairs between my kitchen and my home office on the third floor an average of 30 times a day.
Need a glass of water? off I go. Time for a coffee? absolutely. Shoot! I forgot my phone! One more lap.

I have a very hard time sitting still so this works for me, but after working all day and then packing and hauling for the last seven hours, my legs are tired! So instead of running one more lap to haul another box down to the first floor, here I sit, dreaming about projects.


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Happy Independence Day!

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Every holiday I look forward to having an excuse to try out new ideas I've been thinking about since the last holiday.

I planned to have a red, white and blue themed Fourth of July, no surprise there, but this year since the neighborhood children are getting older, I wanted to have a more interactive, family focused day. Meaning no more renting the giant bounce house as a babysitter, but instead getting the neighborhood together to have some real live family fun.











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