- M Is for Mama

Hi there, 52 Mantels readers! I’m just tickled pink that Emily is letting my stop by and say howdy (yes, I am a fellow Texan) to all y’all wonderful folks!

Okay, so I don’t actually talk quite that Texan (although I do dearly love my “y’alls”). But, since I do live in Texas, I feel a little bit of pressure to live up to that whole “everything is bigger” business we’re known for.

Which is, apparently, why I decided to crank out a set of identical twin girls in September of 2012 to go with my two boys and a girl (ages 6 1/2, 5, and 2) that I already had.

{If you want to read their home birth story, you can here; I promise it’s light on the blood and guts}

Here we all are looking entirely too photogenic and happy for the mayhem I’m sure had taken place only moments before this shot was taken (see my left hand there? I look like I’m trying to throw gang signs, but I’m guessing it’s actually on the downswing from a child’s wardrobe adjustment and/or ear-pinch). You can see more of our family photo shoots here and here if that sort of thing interests you.

Umm…what else? Well, I blog about a little bit of everything at Five days…5 ways.

Each day even has a theme: Move-it Monday: Fitness and projects, Try-it Tuesday: Tutorials, Wardrobe Wednesday: Fashion, 5 Things Thursday: 5 random tidbits, and Feature Friday: where I feature YOU at our weekly linky party of creativity!

Speaking of creativity, very little gets my juices flowing like a blank slate of a room…like this one.

3 years ago, my husband built our house from scratch with his own two bare, extremely talented hands (and no, he’s not a professional contractor), so practically every room in our house looked like this. But, this particular space was designated for our now-2-year-old daughter Adelaide (whom we affectionately call, “Della” or, “Ladybug”).

And after much sweat, many hot-glue burns, and a whole heap of DIY projects, it ended up looking like this:

I went with a red/aqua color scheme and spray-painted practically everything in sight to achieve it—including, but not limited to….

…her chandelier

her lamp and dresser knobs…

…and her initial plaques.

I also made her bedding and curtains from Alexander Henry’s gorgeous Starling fabric (in natural).

A few other DIY endeavors included her framed butterfly art:

…her butterfly mobile:

and that cute little ottoman:

…which sits at the foot of, by far, my favorite element of the entire room:

And that would be the swivel rocker I scored on Craigslist for $25 and then had recovered (I was going to give it a shot, but piping scares me!).

If you’d like to see even more details and pictures of Della’s nursery, you can pop on over to the blog and take a gander, but as much as I’d love to, I could not invite you over to see it in person…

And that is because it no longer exists. In fact, writing this post has been a bit of a jaunt down memory lane, since we added onto our house in the spring of 2012 and converted Della’s room into a hallway.

Most of her big girl room is already in place (man, do those finishing touches trip me up!), and the design board for it looks a little something like this:

Similar color scheme, with a little bit more sophistication for this oh-so-grown-up two-year-old:

{The truth? she’s still sleeping in the twins’ crib while they snooze away in their cozy little bassinets at night}.

Speaking of the twins, if you’re itching to see what their nursery looks like, here’s a sneak peak:

I’ll be doing the full reveal this upcoming Monday, so be sure to check back then.

Until then, please stop on by and toodle around for a while. I suggest starting with the “Our House” page for more room reveals and maybe even taking a second to enter our $50 Target Gift Card Giveaway that ends tonight!

Can’t wait to meet you all (er…I mean, y’all!)

Thanks again, Emily, for the chance to stop by! It’s such a huge treat to get to be blogger-friends with such a talented girl as yourself! : )

by Abbie
First of all, a huge thank you to Desiree for inviting me over to chat today. I have happily ogled many of her beautiful, creative, and practical projects for a while now, and I’m so honored to get to share a bit of myself on her awesome blog!

So…hi there! I’m Abbie, and like many of you, I wear so many hats that sometimes I walk out the door with the wrong one on. I’m a follower of Jesus, a mama to three children: Ezra (5), Simon (3 1/2), and Adelaide (9 mos.), a wife to one (no polygamy here…though sometimes I do feel like a blogamist), a fitness instructor, a writer, a DIY fanatic, and a thrifting junkie.
Oh yeah. And I run not one but two blogs (hence the blogamy): Five days…5 ways, which is kind of like my everyday house, and Secondhand or Bare Bottom—a little more like a vacation house, with a closetful of killer 100% thrifted finds.
Today, I’m sharing with you some of the DIYs and thrifted goodness that I combined to create Adelaide’s (or Della, as we call her) nursery.

Because we built our house from scratch (and by “we,” I mean my hubby, my father-in-law, and I), I don’t have any truly horrendous before pictures to show you. No moldy carpet, dingy water-spotted ceilings, or dated wallpaper. I can practically hear the collective groan of disappointment echoing through cyberspace.

In fact, no matter how hard I searched, all I found in our expansive array of home-building pictures were these two measly shots (keep in mind we built well before I even thought about blogging; unforgivable, I know).

Here’s a shot of what we had to work with:

Plywood and primer and painter’s tape, oh my!

…and now the serenity of:

*Sigh* That’s better.

Oddly enough, even though she is my only girl, Della’s room is blue—a creamy aqua from Laura Ashley called Spruce Frost. It ended up being a pretty-darn girly color, but I chose it, partly because I’m not the color pink’s biggest fan, but mostly because I am a bit of a crazy-obsessed stalker fan of anything blue/green: teal, turquoise, aqua, ocean-blue…watch out because I’m coming for you!

My inspiration for the entire room was Alexander Henry’s beautiful, whimsical fabric, Starling (I found mine on Etsy under the “supplies” tab for a very reasonable $6/yd), which comes in several different color schemes. I chose Natural, which had everything I wanted: bright, but not overwhelming, colors, pops of black and white, fat little birds, and a retro feel.

After I chose my fabric, the rest fell into place as all of my decorating does: I see something that’s a bazillion percent off of the original price and think, “Hey, I bet if I spray-painted/recovered/altered that in some way, that would be perfect!”

Yeah…it’s a gift…and a curse.

Aaaaanyhoo, I’ve tried to be as thorough as possible with my sourcing, but if I miss something, and you have a question, please don’t hesitate to ask!

Della’s bedding is a hodgepodge of 1) a Simply Shabby Chic Target full-sized bedding set that I bought at Goodwill, then cut up and made into a comforter and pillows (the blue/white ruffled one in the center). The bed ruffle came from that, and I just bunched it up strategically to make it fit Della’s crib, 2) a fun bolster pillow I found at Walmart, 3) a bumper I recovered with the Starling fabric (also used to make her curtains), and 4) a piece of polka-dot fabric I used as a crib-sheet (an idea I got from the very talented Emily of Jones Design Company).

The flower hangers were an old Hobby Lobby purchase, and I decided to repurpose them for Della’s room with a coat of red spray paint. In fact, unless you wanted to end up looking like a candy-cane, it was kind of dangerous to get anywhere near me while I was working on this room since pretty much everything got sprayed glossy white or Banner Red (Krylon).

I found the square decorative mdf pieces at Goodwill for $0.59 each—man, I love me some Goodwill!—and mounted Della’s initials (the unpainted letters came from Walmart for under $2 each) onto the front to give them a three-dimensional feel.

I made the butterfly mobile for well under $20 (including the butterfly punch, which accounted for $12 of that) and am showcasing a tutorial on how I did it for my Try-it Tuesday today if you’d like to hop over and check it out (after you finish here, of course! : )).

A fun, vintage glass shelf I got at a local “barn sale” flea market. It provides a place for the blue wooden mouse brought home from Germany by her Softa (my mom), a mini-birdhouse I found at Hobby Lobby, two red/white polka-dot dessert plates I scored at Goodwill for a $1 (for both), a pair of “ruby slippers,” and a pair of shoes I made her from the Starling fabric.

The bassinet and Hello Kitty in the corner are gifts from my mother-in-law and work perfectly with all the other white and red in the room. I found the little-girl-praying silhouette at Hobby Lobby and added it to the to-be-sprayed-red pile. I also framed more of the butterfly cutouts in vintage gold frames (an idea I swiped from a guest post at Stefanie of Brooklyn Limestone fame’s fantastic blog). I matted mine with a sample of textured white wallpaper I already had.

I changed out the wooden knobs that came with Adelaide’s dresser for ones with more flower-power (from Marshall’s), which I also spray-painted red (yes, all while I was pregnant; don’t worry, I worked outside in the sunshine, and Della has all her fingers and toes and only a minor facial tic—JOKE!—I’m going to prove to you how perfect she is at the end of this post).

I found her bed and dresser as a matching set on craigslist, by the way. The brand is Legacy.

I found this sweet sign at Marshall’s. I hope she’ll do just what it says for Jesus some day.

Believe it or not, this chandy started out with a dark, old world look. Of course, then spray-painted every inch of it red and white (see? candy cane…stay away). It adds just the right touch of girly glamour.

My favorite corner of her room.

I got the chair for a steal ($25!) on craigslist—it rocks and swivels and is super-comfy—and then bought the fabric from a local quilting store and the covered buttons (which match the curtains and bumper) from Etsy. A local lady recovered it for me and did a fabulous job for a shockingly low price.

I made the curtains and the blue/white pillow. I found the pink/black one @ Goodwill for $3. The polka-dot rug is actually a bath mat—$5—from Walmart (it coordinates with the bolster pillow—$8—in her crib), and I found the ottoman at Hobby Lobby for $8. A can of spray paint and aqua and white polka-dot fabric transformed it from a dark, manly-looking piece into the perfect little girl footstool. The red mini-chair was a random find from a roadside flea market (maybe the only wooden piece in the room that came red) – $4.

The trio of mirrors came in a pack for $6 from Ross. The butterfly print is from the Etsy shop of a really great Australian blogger, ishandchi. The “Adelaide” print is from the online shop of the amazing Jones Design Company.

I painted this little jewelry chest white and the knobs red, and it now houses Della’s barrettes, pacifiers, and socks. A good friend made me the small butterfly canvas (the background is the text of Psalm 139; so cool!), and the little lamp is a Goodwill find for maybe $1. I recovered the lamp shade in white fabric, trimmed it in polka-dot grosgrain ribbon, then spray-painted the base and made a cover for the ugly cord out of some fabulous red/white striped fabric I found at—uh-huh, that’s right—Goodwill.

Last, but certainly not least, this is the adorable pouf my best friend, Mandy, made and hung from her chandelier at my baby shower. I tied it to the the curtain rod for an extra jolt of whimsy and color.

And there you have it!

I hope you love Della’s room as much as I do. It is my sanctuary of beauty and calm, and even before she was born, both my husband and I would go and sit in her white rocker (one at a time, of course; we’re not hobbits) and pretend we were holding her.

Now, that she’s here, it tends not to be quite as pristine as before (can we say laundry and diapers?), but it’s made infinitely better by her sunshiney presence!

In fact, I’m going to go take a turn in the rocker now. With this cuteness for company:

I would love to have you by for a visit, so we can “meet!”

I’ve got some super-exciting giveaways coming (every heard of The Pleated Poppy? Yeah, I didn’t think so ; )), not to mention tutorials, fashion finds, exercise tips, and house pics (be sure to click on the “Our House” tab at the top of my home-page to see the latest) galore!

I promise we’ll have a good time!

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