Ruler of the Elves

Errr, make that the playground.

Today, Pinky and I made a trip to her school (she starts kindergarten this fall, EEK) to check out her playground.

The weather here was absolutely gorgeous and while she played on all of the equipment, I played around with my camera.

I’ve severly been slacking in the photography department due to a slump and I’ve finally been inspired to get back too it.

The temporary tattoos are not my thing. Someone gave her a pile of them for Christmas and we’ve I’ve been slowly reluctantly allowing her to wear them.

I think we stayed for about 2 hours and Pinky made sure to test out every single piece of play stuff they had. Then, Chris showed up, starting a game with her of who-can-push-the-person-in-the-huge-swing-the-highest. I’ll let you figure out who won.

The Preparation

The Goofy Excitement Grin

The Push Up

The Swap

It was pretty entertaining to say the least. They had a blast being silly and I had fun capturing their joy. And to help me keep up with the photos, I’m joining a Flickr group devoted to taking 1 photo per week for a year of a loved one. Since I’m around Pinky the most, she will be my subject and I will also be sharing each of those photos here with you. Here is the first one of fifty-two…

Well, well, well… Pinky’s bedroom makeover is finally completed! And it only took 4 months. We are so excited that it is finally finished and Pinky has been livin’ it up in her new space. You may remember the before picture that I posted way back at the end of March…

It was certainly a good blank canvas to start with. Enough of that old space though. It’s time for the big reveal.

It was a lot of fun to try and figure out how to make this room work for us. We had a few features that made decorating the room a pain in the behind. First, the 8 x 12 room was the smallest bedroom in the house. Not too small, (I know some people have much smaller rooms) but smaller than her previous bedroom at our old house, so trying to fit all of the same furniture in there was a bit of a stretch. Ok, it wasn’t even possible. We decided that it was obviously important that she at least had a bed and a dresser for clothes, but anything else would have to be flexible and if it didn’t work out, we would have to find it another place in the house to live, i.e. the playroom/music room.

Secondly, we had to take into account that there was one wall completely devoted to the radiant heat source which is enclosed by a chunky baseboard cover. That made putting any substantial piece of furniture there complicated. Also, a lot of stuff in the room is DIYed or updated from its original look, so most of our time went into working on that.

Take, for example, the dresser. It was a hand me down that we re-painted and added new hardware to. We think it fits perfectly into the space without overwhelming the small room. (You can see it here in our old house.)

The small box on top of the dresser is actually just an extra that we had from Ikea. I decided to cover it in girly fabric and add a simple bow. Now, Pinky has a place to stash all of her little paper projects when it’s time to clean up.

If you’ve been following along for awhile, you will remember the “art work” that we made to put in some of our old frames. It’s pretty nice to be able to repurpose stuff you already own. Especially when it turns out so pretty!

There is also the cutey antiqued owl switch plate which we scored from Anthropologie and the pretty Brocade waste receptacle from the Container Store. Although they are only small details, they do make the room more cheery.

As far as furniture goes, there really was only enough room to have a bed and a dresser, but we wanted the space to offer a little more. This mirror ended up being perfect for a little dress up area. Pinky can now pick and choose her outfits from under bed storage of her dress up clothes and then check out her new look whenever she wants. She loves to brush her hair and put on “makeup” in front of there as well.

And there it is… the bed from, well, you know where. This thing gave us more headaches than anything else in the room. The bed originally comes in a light blue shade, but we wanted white, so of course, we decided it would be SMART to paint it.

We tried brush painting, but that proved to be too time consuming, so we scratched that and attempted spray painting. Well, that was a disaster. Whatever we did, we just could not avoid little drip spots (is that the technical term?) and it really looked horrible. So, we proceeded to sand everything down and then repaint by hand again. Honestly, the room would have been finished a lot sooner if it weren’t for that stinkin’ bed. Thank goodness it is done!

I absolutely love our hardwood floors, but for some reason I just don’t like to step onto the cold floor in the morning when I get out of bed. I felt Pinky shouldn’t have too either, so when I saw this rug on sale for $2.99, I grabbed it and didn’t think twice. It’s also serves as a great place for her to play, read books, and have tea parties. Or for a dog to sleep on.

Since we couldn’t fit in a proper bookshelf (it’s currently hanging out at the top of our landing,) we thought that this white basket from Land of Nod would work as a nice landing spot for books. It’s also good for transporting books back and forth between the shelf and the hallway. Pinky loves to read and be read too, so it was important to have some sort of book wrangling system in her space.

As I mentioned before, Pinky enjoys her new, made-over space. Because of the setup, she has ample floor space to play and dance in. Chris and I also liked that the room can be easily updated if Pinky’s love for pink diminishes by adding different colored accessories, since almost everything works with gray!

So what do you think? Does the bedroom makeover make the grade?

We have been working hard to finally wrap up Pinky’s bedroom and this week, we plan on doing the big reveal! There are just a few more tweaks to finish up and then, the job that would never end, will be done! Woohoo!

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe 4th of July.

Our 4th was fun filled and our marvelous out of town guests only added to the entire weekend’s awesomeness. On Thursday night, my brother and his girlfriend arrived from Chicago and on Friday, my sister, brother-in-law and Fuzzworth also checked in from New York. . If we had just added a few more heads, the whole family would have been here! They all make my heart so happy and it seems like time certainly goes by too quickly whenever we are together.

Pinky, Chris and I were all excited to share our little neck of the woods with everyone, so we made sure to take them by the majority of the cool spots in our town and even managed to take a picture or two.

On Saturday, we did some light shopping and mingling in New Hampshire and Maine. The small area that we saw was absolutely beautiful and I have a feeling we will be heading back there soon to take in more of the amazing scenery.

During the day on Sunday, we checked out some of the more historical sites in our vicinity before heading to the harbor (which was beautifully lit up) with friends to watch a remarkable fireworks display.

Monday became our day of rest (kind of) and the beach was the place to be. With temperatures soaring the past several days, it felt so nice to put our feet in the water and cool off. There were plenty of hermit crabs to be tortured entertain us as well.

(No crabs were hurt in the taking of these pictures.)

In the evening, our grill got in a nice work out. We had a great dinner featuring steak and lobster, the perfect surf and turf combo.

And judging by the photo below, I believe that the food was enjoyed by all (or everyone was just that ravenous by the time the food was ready.) I’m so glad that we were able to spend some quality time together and hopefully it won’t be too long before we can all hang out again!

I may be running around like a chicken with my head cut off right now. Ok, not right this moment, but today in general. We are very excited to have some super awesome visitors coming this weekend, so we have been quickly trying to prepare for them. However, I thought it was time to share a couple of the photos I scavenged of Brittany and Adam’s wedding, so I’m taking a much needed break to show the goods. (Some photos are from Facebook.)

As I mentioned before, there was some preparation that went into this wedding on my behalf. I offered my design skills up and Britt and Adam accepted, so we put our heads together and I whipped up some cute wedding stationary (save the dates, invitations, RSVPs, programs, and thank you cards.)

(Some personal info changed for privacy.)

My sis and I also took on the majority of the decorating. The hall we were working with was pretty Plain Jane, as was our budget, so it was quite a task to get it looking decent. (Eek, Those metal chairs are scary!)

I was only able to find this photo so far, which includes Pinky and the rest of the wedding party. Sadly, she isn’t even looking at the camera and pretty much blends in with Brittany’s dress. (The photo is from the wedding photographer’s Facebook page. You can check out more of her work at www dot alleyesonyou dot biz)

I also wanted to throw in this gem. I wonder if I could have looked any crazier while dancing. And you may have noticed that my future is so bright, I gotta wear shades.

(Photo taken by my cousin, Amy.)