It's Play Time!

When we moved into our home last year, we decided to make the sun room Lilly's playroom. The room is situated between Jeff's office and the den so it's great to be able to watch Lilly and get a little work done at the same time. Also, the room is surrounded by windows so it's super bright and cheerful feeling (although you can't really tell because it was nasty and rainy today when I took the pictures).

The room is stark white. It bothered me for a few months and I considered painting the walls. However, at this point, I'm glad that I haven't touched the paint, although I might eventually paint the ceiling light blue (maybe...).

I didn't have any furniture for this room when we moved in, but Jeff's parents were getting rid of a twenty year old sofa about that time. The sofa was not at all my style (think patterned burgundy), but it was super comfortable and had good lines. I found fabric that I liked and had the piece re-upholstered. Also, I took an old coffee table and had it upholstered to make the ottoman. The table used to have a glass top that broke when we moved so I had a contractor friend make a wood top so now it's a super solid piece of furniture to sit/jump on.

The fabrics I chose are both strong patterns, but I think they go together fine because of the matching colors. Also, I had the cording done in the same green fabric on both pieces. I decided to go with a contrasting cord on the pieces because it seemed a little more playful to me and, well, it's the playroom :) I put indoor/outdoor fabric on the ottoman which is great because it's already been colored :)

The room still needs a little more child height storage, but I'll get to that eventually.

Pinterest Obsessed

Okay, judging by Facebook comments that I've read, I'm not as obsessed with Pinterest as some people are, but I do really like it! Pinterest is my new go to cook book, magazine, instruction manual....

Here are a couple of the things I've tried recently and had success with.

These s'more cookies really might be the best cookies I've ever had! They taste exactly like the real deal! They were a little time consuming to make (relative to my usual brake & bake), but totally worth the time!

http://jamiecooksitup.blogspot.com/2011/07/smore-cookies-and-easy-indoor-smores.html

Another thing I made were these birth records (for lack of a better term) for the babies. I saw the idea on Pinterest and saw that you could buy them on Etsy, but they were super easy to create. I played around with fonts, sizes, and colors until I found what I was looking for. After I was happy with the way they looked, I just cheaped out and printed them on printer paper and framed them. They were super cheap and I think they're pretty darn cute.

http://lorrinteriors.blogspot.com/2011/07/sophisticated-baby.html

On a side note, I just found out today that it is now grammatically incorrect to use 2 spaces after typing a sentence. Obviously this post is very incorrect.

Have you actually followed through with making any of the things you have pinned??

Just call me Clark

...As in Clark Griswold.

Jeff and I went out a couple of days ago to get our Christmas tree and I told him that I wanted a big tree..like, really big :) When we got to the lot, I found a decent sized 10 foot tree that was still wrapped in twine. The kind man at the tree place cut the tree open and it looked great (even though the branches obviously hadn't dropped) so we took it home.

When we got home, Jeff and I were barely able to carry the damn thing in the house. We hadn't hoisted the tree up on the roof of my car so we didn't realize it was well over 200 lbs. Thanks to my husband's huge muscles :), we were able to get the tree inside and then Jeff asked me if I'd measured to make sure it would fit. Of course I hadn't measured, but of course I told him I had and that it would definitely fit because we have 10 foot ceilings.

Well, I measured before we put the tree upright because I didn't want marks on the ceiling just in case, and what do you know...our ceiling height is about 9 1/2 feet :) We ended up cutting a foot off of the top of the tree and then put it up only to discover the tree is about 7 feet in diameter! (Although it's difficult to capture the size in the pictures, just compare the tree to the 7 foot door frames and the three foot picture behind it)

Our tree was in the foyer and literally busted through the posts on the staircase, hence the Clark Griswold reference.

We moved the tree in the living room where I could move around furniture to make it fit, but I still haven't been able to figure out how to get a bow on the top :)

Moral of this long story...it really is prudent to measure before you buy a Christmas tree (or at least know how tall your ceilings are :)

By the way, welcome back. I've been so busy re-upholstering, cleaning, changing diapers, bathing babies, Christmas decorating, cleaning, Christmas shopping, changing diapers.... that I haven't blogged in over a week :) I'll try to do better.

Do any of you guys have fun Christmas decorating stories or disasters??