Frames, Lamps, and Storage Solutions

And a few more other things but that would add up to a really long title.

Anyhow, are ya’ll ready to finish up this wall in the boys’ room? Because I am. I mentioned their crate turned shadow boxes here and now I’m gonna wrap this baby up. And by ‘wrap’ I mean ‘finish’ and by ‘baby’ I mean ‘wall.’ Well, I guess this portion of the wall because there is still more of the wall undone.

I obviously needed a little somethin’ somethin’ to go between the two shadow boxes. And I’m cheap ya’ll, and I have lots of cool things laying around my house waiting for a home, so I just dug through the boys’ art box until I found a calendar from last year. I kept it because the photos within it were really neat and I could foresee a free art project in the future. And guess what? The future is now. Because I picked my favorite photo from the calendar, ripped it out, and was ready to pop it in a frame.

I also finally found a lamp shade that I love for their floor lamp. The lamp originally came with a solid black one, I wasn't diggin' the color and it didn't give off a lot of light but I liked the base so I figured I'd find a new shade eventually. And I did. Four months later. 

I decided to go with simply a white shade.

And then I added red ribbon along the top and bottom. The accent color in E's room is going to be red, so that's the color I'm pulling into their shared room as well.

Moving on to storage... I went to Old Time Pottery a few weeks ago, I initially went there for some storage boxes. That’s because I went to organize the boys’ game consoles and realized that they have controllers and remotes and games everywhere. Everywhere? Everywhere.

And since red is one of the accent colors I plan to use in Ethan’s room I went with red boxes in two different sizes. One is big enough to hold DVDs and the other holds their video games and accessories. It’s much more organized than it was sans storage boxes. They really need a new TV, a flat screen, but that’s not a priority on my list of things to purchase so it’ll be a while before that happens.

Oh, and I hung their long board using a skateboard bracket I got picked up from Target a while back. I knew it'd come in handy so I bought it, then I stashed it away in my pile of 'That'll come in handy one day.' And that day finally came. It was super simple to install it and took me all of five minutes. The bracket is made for a skateboard but I simply spaced them out a little further to accomadate the long board. And I have to say that it worked out mighty fine. 

Yay to longboards not leaning against and marking up walls and taking up very, precious, limited floor space!

When I was at my parents' house last summer I came across a bunch of stuff from when my brother and I were kids. This Kermit the Frog was one of the things I just had to take home with me. 

And I found this little needle thingy at Kmart (I obviously have no clue what it's really called). I used to have one as a kid and I loved it. And every time I've seen one in stores the needles are plastic instead of metal, so when I saw this metal one had to buy it for my brood. I give it a thumbs up.

Yep, I'm a cheeseball.

I’m proud that I made this little bit of progress in one weekend. It’s baby steps but it makes me feel so good to peak my head in here and see their little part of the wall all done up. I can’t be the only one that has neglected a room in my house. Typically it’s our master bedroom that gets no love, but the boys’ room was right up there with our room. I'm making slow but steady progress in here, hopefully I can keep it up.

Xo,

Lorri

Pop Goes the Boys' Room

I admit it. I have totally neglected the boys’ room. Partially because I knew our current digs is temporary and partially because I didn’t have a vision for the space. Well, thanks to *sound the trumpets: dun, dun, dun, duuuuun!* Pinterest I found a solid foundation on what I’d like to build the style of each of the boys’ rooms around, but the problem is that they currently share a room *whomp, whomp, whomp, whooooomp* (I really need sound effects for this post). So I’ve decided to simply get started on a few small projects that will work in the shared space for the next few months as well as work for their own individual rooms when they get ‘em. 

You can check out the boards I have for E’s and Owen’s rooms on Pinterest to get a better idea of my starting point, but to be honest, a lot of the design for their rooms is simply stored in my head.

I’ve recently started to dig distressed, unperfect looking art and furniture so for E’s room I envision the focal point to be a huge piece of art hung above his full size bed. To be exact, I want to do a painting of an American flag but give it a distressed look. I also want to do some sort of wall-mounted shelves to display his knick-knacks on. And this kid has a lot of display worthy items, namely Legos. He has a future in architeture, I tell ya. So in addition to the shelves I plan to one day make I was keeping an eye out for other awesome, vintagy pieces that I could turn into a cool display piece.

In comes Craigslist. Holla!

It’s hit or miss with Craigslist when it comes to finding neat-o things. But when browsing the site one day I came across this:

It’s an old pop crate. A Pepsi bottle crate to be exact. Super cool. And with a price of a cool 20 bones I had to jump, I didn’t even barter with the guy, I wanted it thaaaat baaad. What’s even better was that the guy actually had two of them that he was getting rid of. Can I get a 'what what'?!

The crates are old so they already have that rustic look that I’ve been envisioning. So all I did was give ‘em a good wipe down and slap some poly on it.

Now don't let the sentence "all I did was give 'em a good wipe down" fool you into thinking that this was a ten minute process. The bottoms of the inside of the crates were filthy with...I guess it was dust. It looked like it had been sitting in someone's basement for years and just collected layers upon layers of dust on the inside. So I washed them with water, sprayed cleaner on them, scrubbed, rinsed, and repeated about three or four times. Then I had to let them dry for a day and a half to make sure they were totally dry before putting the polyurethane on them. And the poly just helped to warm up the color of the wood, so they still have that rustic look.

Four screws later and I’ve got myself some spiffy looking shadow boxes.

 

I love the vintagy, worn look. And the PEPSI on the sides.

Gotta love the power of Craigslist. And poly. And 20 dollar bills. And pop. And all things distressed.

Xo,

Lor