paper lanterns.

i finally hung up the paper lanterns i bought for serena's room. they were lost in a drawer for a year and i found them again when i was decorating for new years eve. they are a martha stewart product... just one more reason why i love the woman :)

serena loves looking at them. i think she is getting bored of her froggy mobile.

p.s. how did i forget this beauty when i posted about my grandparents' things? this used to be in my bedroom and now it's in serena's. the print was on the inside of a vintage cosmetics box.

lucky girl.

how lucky is serena? grandma made a nursery at her house. now serena has not one, but TWO rooms all to herself {for now, anyway}!

♥

i like it. it's yellowy and it makes me feel comfy.

♥

and we put that crib up with no help from any man. {even with ikea's terrible picture-only instructions.} go us!

i think i need to do this in serena's room. love it.

i ♥ the nursery.

and for once i'm not talking about serena's nursery! i'm talking about j&j. for my bday my mom gave me a pot and today we went to the nursery to pick out some flowers to plant in it.

we ended up deciding to take the pot back and buy a planter that was already planted :). you know, cut out the dirty work! they were all so pretty, i had a hard time choosing one.

this is the one i chose. and now the fun part: trying to keep it alive.

have you been to j&j? they have a huge section of really cool home decor stuff that i didn't get a chance to wander around in. i'm going to have to make my way back there soon.

nursery revealed: part two.

the big reveal. sorry the lighting is kind of bad, but i refuse to use the flash. i can never take good pictures with the flash. i'm very happy with how the room turned out. i like how everything isn't perfectly matchy. and i'm pretty sure that rug is the best part of the whole room :) love it!

{sean's favorite parts are the night light, light switch cover, and mobile that he picked out}

thanks to my mom for hemming the curtains last night! i'm so glad it's all done. now i can concentrate on deep cleaning every square inch of my house before baby comes :)

nursery revealed: part one.

this past month we decided to tear apart my pretty nursery to make way for some "simple" improvements. as you can see from the picture below, there was a random corner that was wasted space and a window seat full of empty space. we thought it would be a simple enough project to put up some shelves and add a storage chest in the window seat.
it turned out that it really wasn't that simple of a project. luckily we had a lot of help from some great neighbors and friends.

this was demolition day one. the project begins.

making way for the storage chest. still no shelves.

we realized that we needed to rip off the entire top of the window seat to make the lid for the storage chest flush with the rest of the seat. {this is where we are thinking... wow. this is a big project.}

the lid is on and hinged. added some beadboard {perfect idea, ryan!} to hide the storage box and pretty it up a little.

shelves up. molding up. last minute addition of the molding below the window. everything is caulked and ready to be primed and painted. {by far the worst part of the entire project. i hope to never pick up a paint brush again!!!!}

and voila! the finished product. we are so pleased with how it turned out. it was totally worth the dust all over our house and all of the tedious painting.

the things we do for this baby. she is so spoiled. this is by far the nicest room in our house now :)

you like?

{stay tuned for part two of the nursery reveal. there's still work to do. pictures to hang. curtains to hem, etc. hopefully we finish it before she arrives!}