DIY Pottery Barn Duvet cover for $12.00 and a new room

 So ever since we bought the house money has been tighter.  I have a really hard time spending money on things I don’t really need.  It is a blessing and a curse.  Unfortunately our house wasn’t exactly the way I wanted it when we moved in.  Little by little I am making changes.  One of the things that has been driving me crazy are the bedrooms.  We have just made them work.  Meaning is there a mattress in the room?....then yes you have a place to sleep.

I have been putting it off because honestly I lacked inspiration.  No matter what I thought I wanted it just wasn’t right. So I gave up, then inspiration came knocking.  My good friend asked me out of the blue if I wanted this totally amazing toy chest.  I took one look at it and said “Uh, yes!!”  It is seriously so beautiful, and great for a lot of toys.  Well the American flag on the front made me think, red, white, blue, nautical.  So I started searching for bedding.  It never ceases to amaze me how expensive bedding is.  I found this beauty at Pottery Barn kids, and of course I almost choked, I can’t justify spending $70 on a duvet cover when money is tight.  Especially when I have the skills to make my own.  So I tried and tried to come up with a more practical economic way of duplicating this, and it finally came to me.

I went to Walmart and bought 3 flat sheets at $4.00 a piece.  Two red and one white.  I already had a down comforter so I went ahead and measured that.  I then began cutting my sheets into long strips.  I made each strip 6” tall by the width of the sheet.  I then laid them out red/white/red/white.  Then I started sewing.  I think it is easier to work with less fabric at a time so I just sewed each red to a white.  Then took those strips and sewed them to another pair until I was sewing 4 strips to 4 strips, and 8 strips to 8 etc.  I went ahead and did the whole duvet cover in french seams.  I read this girls   blog and decided to give it a try.  I decided I wanted to try and brush up on some new skills and actually try to make it look as professional as possible.  

     

I went ahead and did this until they were all together and then sewed my big sheet of stripes to one of my solid red sheets.  I then finished the top, I decided to do buttonholes at the top.  I had never done that before, that was fun, and actually ended up looking really nice.

Going into it I thought, this might not work out.  I was a little worried about putting so many strips together.  I didn’t want the seams to detract from the cover.  I wanted it to look fluid.  (I think the one at Pottery Barn is just dyed red and white, so there were no actual seams).  I wanted to create that same look.  Well I have to say I surprised myself.  I think it turned out even better than I imagined and I like it even better than the one at pottery barn.  Plus it was dirt cheap and I have a deep sense of satisfaction in the fact that I created it.    So here it is.

And here is the before and After of Austin’s room.  What an improvement.  I love it, and overall I spent almost no money on his entire room.  I repainted using paint we already had, it is a light grey we used for our upstairs.  I went ahead and bought a bulletin board for $8.00 and painted the trim blue.  I bought the stars from a consignment sale for $2.50, (I bought them last years so I don’t even factor that into the price because I bought them originally to have around on the 4th).  I had the shelf from Ikea but had never actually opened it.  I bought the fabric for the curtains for $4.00 when they were 60% off after the 4th of July.  I then used leftover fabric for throw pillows.  I painted the Chevron sign all with materials I had around the house.  Everything else you see was already lying around in my grand stash of stuff.   So in total Austin’s complete room makeover cost me around $25.00.  Not bad. 

Winter/Spring

Once again, I vomit the last 5 months of pictures and experiences at you. So no time for a novel, just a few brief descriptions of our life.

 

My little nerds

Ryan is getting bigger everyday. He is seriously the best baby ever. So happy, so nice, so wonderful. Love him to death. He is featured as Spiderman below.

Spider-baby

 

Austin is the craziest pants of them all. So fun and so funny, and crazy all rolled into one. We are enjoying almost of the time we get to spend together. Next year he starts “real” preschool. He is my giant goof ball. I had to include the picture of Makenzie and Austin in their basketball gear. They look like the biggest nerds ever. They came to watch me play church ball once, and they played basketball for like a week straight. It was awesome.

Savannah

 

Lee and I are doing well. I included a few pics from our trip to Savannah, mostly just of the scenery, the city is so breathtaking and so full of history. It was really cool, the more I think about it, the more I want to go back.

Savannah

Twinners.  Ryan is the spitting image of Makenzie as a baby.  It will be interesting to see what he looks like in a few years.

 

Makenzie is doing well. She is in Gymnastics right now and loving it, in fact that is all she does all the time. She decided to have a gymnastics themed birthday. Well we had it at the house and had a few of our Pro YW gymnasts come teach the girls some tricks. They had a blast. She only has a few weeks of school and is starting swim team next week. I hope to turn her into a fish, because the thought of 3 on 1 at the pool makes me nervous. I need to know she is ok so I can focus on Austin and Ryan.

Makenzie's Birthday

Future Team USA at Makenzie's Birthday Party

 

Other than that we are just keeping our heads above water. We have been doing a lot of work to the house. I don't really have many before pictures, but I have taken a lot of after pictures. You could probably scroll down the blog and see the before pics if you were really interested. Anyway Mom and Dad these are for you. We finally got the couch in the loft, put up some curtains, feels like a regular room now. You can see the curtains in both the dining and play room. I also took a picture of our stair wall, see we painted that to match. Also you can see where we removed the tree and created the beds. The beds themselves don't look stellar right now. We still need to get the mulch in, but we tilled the ground (that was a beast) got rid of the pine straw, and put in the plants. You can see all the mulch from our tree stump grindings everywhere. It is a slow process. Lee doesn't like the wall I built but I think it looks nice. Anyway that is us in a nut shell. Doing great, looking forward to summer. Taking a few trips to the beach, and if I can plan it just right we might try and get up to VA. We will see.

The house from the street

The kids strawberry picking

Ryan and I strawberry picking

  

This looks about right

                                             YMCA Santa Photos 2012

       Austin holding Ryan - my ugly Christmas sweater in the works in the   background

                 Christmas Eve, this may be the best family photo we have in 2012

 The Annual Christmas Eve Nativity.  Baby Jesus, Mary and Angel

                                                  Christmas PJ's

      You know when you read your friends blog, and every picture is beautiful, they constantly look like a super model, their family picture should be in a magazine, their children are perfectly put together, and their Christmas was perfect in every way.  Yeah, one thing about reading my blog, you will never get that feeling here.  Yes, people this is the best of the best.
     Lee and I hardly ever take pictures, not because we don't want to, but because we have the world's oldest camera and we always forget it.  Then we hardly ever look picture worthy.  We haven't had a family photo for over 2 years and even then it was at JC Penny.   I ooooh and awe at everyone else's family portraits, but dang, I will not spend hundreds of dollars on a photograph.  I am sorry I cannot bring myself to do it.  Especially when I feel like I have the know how but not the equipment.  So when my children look back on their lives in photos they will see the truth.
    Yes, half the time you weren't wearing pants, no we never bothered doing your hair.  Yes you wore the same outfit for 1 entire year.  Yes we got the cheapest Santa photos we could find, yes your Mom is wearing a Hoody Footy.  Yes your parents did look young, and yes they were and continue to be awesomely embarrassing.  No fabricated photo shop quality picture perfect memories here, just the real freaking deal!  But that is one thing I love about us, what you see is what you get.  And if you ask me, it's pretty dang good.

A picture says 1000 words right??? Here are my words.

Any Day...

So no picture here because Lee just changed around everything on the pude again and I can't even begin to know how to find them.  Anyway, life is well underway.  We have been in our house for 2 months now.  Finally I think we are mostly done.  There will always be those "house projects" but really, we are in.  Still a few things to put on walls etc but it looks and feels like a home.  Since then Makenzie has started Kindergarten.  In fact we've been going for a month now so we are pro's.  She is doing great.  Loves her teachers, love her friends, loves the bus.  Life is good.  Now if only something could wear her out.  Seriously, the girl is an energizer bunny.  She never stops.  I have to wake her up at 6am everyday and she pushes all the way until 8pm no problem.  Even then she's fighting sleep.   Then there is Austin who has trained himself to get up at 5:30am and I want to die.  My kids won't sleep.  And now I am about to add number 3.  As if I need another kid who doesn't sleep. 
   So that brings us to now.  We are just waiting for number 3 to arrive.  Any day now really.  Am I excited, yes and no.  Is this terrible to think?  The other day Lee and I were talking and he goes "we planned this right? We sat down and had a conversation about having another child right?"  And in my head I was thinking... I know, what were we thinking.  Then today Austin goes "Mommy I don't want a baby."  Then Makenzie heard that and goes, "I don't know if I want a baby either."  These are all comments that a pregnant woman should not be hearing a week before her due date.  Now I'm thinking..  "what the crap are we doing?"  We will love this baby right?  Am I alone in having a hard time wrapping my mind around loving another child.  I love my 2 children so much, what if I don't love the 3rd?  If I am this much of a crazy person right now, I am doomed in 3 weeks.  Anyway we will keep you posted on the arrival of our hopefully bundle of joy.

Home Sweet Home

So it finally happened. Lee broke down and bought me a house. Nah, he loves me and he loves our home. I just can't believe it. Everyday I am still like, what?? This is mine? Well the bank's.. but you know. Anyway, we came in and did a lot of painting. They had some colors that weren't really my style, I tried to post the before and after, they aren't in exact order so use your imagination. Anyway they had some really bold browns and yellows and oranges, barf, so we went with grays and blues to soften things up a bit. I am really happy with how it turned out. We got all the major projects done but there is still more painting to be done, that will have to wait. Also I have been scrubbing this place from top to bottom, it was pretty dirty when we moved in, so now it is deep cleansed. I also went ahead and spray painted most of my door knobs. A little trick I learned on pinterest, hope it lasts. But it makes a huge difference. Too bad my hinges are still bronze. I have knobs to put on cabinets, hardware to change, bathrooms to paint......the list goes on, but we are excited. I threw in a picture of the back yard just because it is so awesome. The land behind the fence is ours as well and it is level. We just bought a trampoline to put back there. Should be fun. We are so excited and feel so blessed to have such a lovely home we can grow into. I obviously didn't post every room, maybe later when I finally get everything set up, or when my kids finally have furniture.