Summer House Projects!

Since our little man is now 100% finished with diapers, we have had a tiny bit of extra money each month. So, this summer I had a long list of things I wanted to do with the house and was finally able to accomplish some of those tasks.

First, I wanted to re-vamp Alex's bedroom. He has had the same theme since he was a baby (dinosaurs and jungle animals) and we decied the time had come for him to have a more "Big Boy" look to his room. Basing my design off of his interests of course, I bought a new Cars comforter set and curtains, took down all of the nursery pics and put up a framed Cars poster and racecar frech board, and took the changing table insert off of his dresser and put some framed photos of the family atop his dresser. He came home from daycare and loved his room, and was so excited to sleep in his new Cars bed! I did not paint the room though. After much thinking about it, none of us could part with the bright green including Alex, so it's there to stay awhile! His new "big boy" room!

Secondly, I wanted spruce up our foyer/entry way--whatever you call it! It's been sort of plain jane for awhile now and I never could find the money or figure out what to do with it anyway. So, I did some brainstorming and bought a new console table, some fake plants, a new picture frame, candle, and shoe rack and organized the small space. Now, I think it looks awesome and I am not ashamed to hold my door open wide when we go inside :) In fact, not too long ago a neighbor came over to use the phone and all I could think about was "thank god, I finished the foyer! " lol

The foyer looks a little more inviting now!

My third project was little Miss Amaya's big girl bed. She's no longer a little baby, and she was showing signs of being ready, so a few weeks ago, we took apart the crib and put together the toddler bed that Alex had used. I was able to find a complete toddler bed set on clearance at Target for $7! Isn't that an amazing deal? And the best part is it is actually the one that matches the lamp I bought before she was even born. I guess it was so old by now, they were discontinuing the design, thus I got a great deal. She loved it at first, but it has been an adjustment. Just getting her to lay down and go to sleep hasn't been happening all of the time,but we usually carry her over once she's asleep and then she does fine. We're getting there with it! It's hard to believe there's no crib in the Arceo house for the first time in 3.5 years!

Amaya reading in her new big girl bed

Of course she has to be a princess in her new bed!

My fourth and final project of the summer was a new curtain/panel system over the sliding glass door in the kitchen. Our vertical blinds were getting really old and some were broken, so we decided to replace them with something a little different. We purchased a panel/rod system from Ikea and Abe spent many hours putting it together. This one is still not quite finished as we will more than likey add curtains to the outer edges and still need to trim the bottoms a little, but it's coming along and we love that it's different and more modern looking.

Not the best pic since I didn't have good lighting, but you can see our new system in place!

Oh and one last thing, I finally finished staining the deck this summer. Sorry the only pic I have of the deck is what it looked like after the hurricane toppled all of our furniture--it usually doesn't look like this! lol

This was after Hurricane Irene..usually the furniture is upright! lol Just look at the staining..that was all me and took many days because I did it 100% by hand!

So there you have it, I was a busy bee this summer and still have some more plans up my sleeve for the house--next on our list is making more workspace in Abe's office for the kids to work on their daycare projects and repainting, re-designing the upstairs bathroom. We'll get there sometime!