Vacation

My family and I spent the last week in Florida and had an amazing time!  The first half of the week we spent at Disney and the second half was the beach, shopping and time with my grandparents.  We went with my parents, my brother and his wife.  We've never as a group taken a big vacation like that so it was really nice.  The best part about all of it was getting to make my daughter happy!  Getting to take your child to Disney World is like getting to go as a kid for the first time yourself.  You see everything through their eyes and it's so fun.
Here are a few pics...

 

 And since my last post was about my new Emerson fan I had to share the following...

As I mentioned before my sister in law designs fans for Emerson.  She designed the one that's in Raeleigh's room and in our office...

So it was an awesome surprise for all of us, especially Bethany, when my brother spotted this...

You've got to feel pretty good about your design abilities if Disney chooses it!

Coming up soon, a new addition to my living room.

Hint

Raeleigh wants to give you a hint as to what my recent project has been...

She's a great helper!  Pics to come!

What I did with my "Ice Day"

I grew up around St. Louis.  There we got Snow Days.  I now live in Springfield, MO where we get Ice Days.  So yesterday we had an ice storm which left Raeleigh's daycare closed for the day and me calling in to work.  I love unexpected free days.  I always think "Ok!  This is a day I can let myself rest." (something I never do, I'm a busybody at home)  So I relaxed for awhile.  Well.... until about 9 where I couldn't take sitting around any more!  So I cleaned out my jewelry case and straightened up my closet, did some laundry, cleaned Raeleigh's room and then I thought... hey, I have a sewing machine!

I wasn't planning to make anything that day, because usually I would have been at work.  So the only material I had was left over from making our table runner and faux roman shade.  I'd been researching pillowcase dresses via Pinterest and You Tube (also googled to figure out measurements).  So I went for it.  I went into it just for practice.  But guess what... it actually turned out!  Here are some shots of my girl.  Oh and she decided she needed to wear the crown with her pretty new dress. She even went hunting for it just so she could put it on for some pictures.

(sorry for the poor quality, these were taken with my phone.)

Here she is showing off her sparkly shoes.

The ribbon on the dress is just temporary I plan to actually sew long strips of fabric to put in place of the ribbon.  But even still... yay!  I made my daugthter a dress!  Now I'm even more excited about sewing projects.

So to all who are considering sewing but are thinking... I've never really sewn before, do it!  I've never once sewed anything on my own.  The projects I listed above were mostly done by my mom.  I think the key to sewing for beginners... Don't be afraid to just try it.  Just dive right in and see what happens.  In my case, it actually worked out!

Without Further Adieu...

 Raeleigh's big girl room!

But how did we get here?  Let's look back.  When we first moved into this house (May 2011) I just made everything look like it did in her room at our last house. Same wall color, furnishings, etc...  The downside of that was that this is a much bigger room than her last one so it never looked right, it just looked like big space with stuff around the perimeter.

A perfectly good room but it never thrilled me.  I was always looking forward to the eventual big switch-over to the big girl room.  I was inspired by a few different rooms on Pinterest but one above all was "London's Big Girl Room" which you can see HERE.  I don't remember exactly when I first saw it but I think it was in March or April 2012.  It was exactly what I had pictured for Raeleigh's room and I was so happy to have a direction to work toward.  From that point on I was ready to start slowly collecting things for her new room.  It started in May when I saw these great fabric letters at Silver Dollar City.

At $5 a letter, it was a little pricier than I had hoped (especially when your daughter has a long name) but for the impact I knew it'd have, I decided it was worth it.  I think the next things I bought were on our vacation to California in August.  I got her duvet cover, curtains, a frame and lap desk at Ikea.  (SO happy there's one finally coming to Missouri!)  After that I just hit up places like Hobby Lobby, Target and Ross'.  Around the beginning of November I decided I needed to wait until after the holidays to do her room.  So then the last week of January it was!

The weekend was just about here and then I realized as all moms tend to do..... this is the last of something... her last night in her first bed.  It was her crib that turned into a toddler bed where aside from the first 3 (colic filled) months of her life, we had put her to bed.  So I busted out the camera to put my heart at ease.

 

Also, Roxie's not allowed in Raeleigh's room but I guess she sensed something was going on because when we turned around, we saw this...

 

So with that sad face of course we had to let her in!

The next morning I got up early and drove Raeleigh 2 hours to meet my mom in a city between me and her.  I handed my little miss over (which is always so stinkin' hard to do) and I drove right back home.  I stopped off at Lowes first and picked up my paint (I had decided on Valspar's Sea Breath).

The first day I pulled everything out of her room, every last little thing. 

 (Note the dirt marks on the wall that look like crib slats.) =)

The last thing I left up was her name on the wall.  It was so hard to take down.  We had another one at the last house that I had carefully taken the "R" off of and framed.  Again to put my heart at ease I took the "R" off of this one too.  Only this time i just stuck inside the back of the frame of the first, just so I had it (If that makes sense?).  Also, I needed to FINALLY take down the awful stars the first owner had left up. 

 

Something we had put off doing because when we took them down it looked like this.

 

Blue tacky stains all over the ceiling.

Next I started in on priming and painting the ceiling in the closet, then it was on to priming and painting the shelf in there too.  

And that was about it for the first day.  The next day I had Jake at home with me.  We primed over those awful blue dots and painted the ceiling.

Having never painted a ceiling I was SOO happy with the results!  Then we painted the white wall that would become the striped wall.  Got a picture of my helper in action.

 

He's great at "bulk" painting, I do the edging.  Which let me say this was the first I ever strictly "cut in" without taping.  I prefer it so much more and you get a much better result.  So the only thing I did tape was the stripes.  And that was the last thing I did that night.

 The next day was our last full day and it was the fun one!  First thing we did was get the pretty blue on the walls.  

 

And I was so happy!  It was just the color I had imagined her room to be!  

Then the really fun stuff!  Getting to put all the new stuff in! 

 

The headboard I bought off craigslist for $25 and painted yellow.  The bed frame and mattress were from Sams and I'm so happy with them!  This kind of bed frame doesn't need box springs so that leaves extra room for storage underneath!  And the mattress is so comfortable!  Actually I'd say it's more comfortable than ours that was 4 times the price of hers. :/

Ok and after all my blabbering, here's the final result!

And in the end, what mattered most?   ..........it was Raeleigh approved!!

There are some minor things left to do, but there it is! Hope you enjoyed!

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