Category: home

Room Tour: Our Toddler Nursery

Michelle1 Comment
Image of a decorated nursery featuring a bookshelf wall made of picture ledges.

Today, I’m sharing a few photos of Jamie’s nursery – the first fully finished room in our house! (It’s “fully finished” in that everything has been painted, it has baseboards, and it’s furnished and decorated.) Obviously, we had a little bit of a time crunch since we moved into the house at the beginning of my second trimester and we had a LOT of work to do still! (You can see here what it looked like shortly after we moved in. I almost forgot this room was an office until a few months before Jamie’s birth!) We’re very happy with how it has turned out – it’s simple, unfussy, calming, and uncluttered.

While we didn’t approach the room with a theme in mind, we semi-inadvertently added a lot of woodland/forest/bear elements. We mostly tried to keep it simple and child-friendly, with plenty of room for Jamie to move around and play. We don’t keep many toys in here – just lots of books! (Eventually, we do plan to have a playroom, which will have plenty of space to make big toy messes.)

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An Easy Update: Our Painted Kitchen Door

Michelle3 Comments
Photo of a muted green painted door with brass hardware: Jungle Camouflage by Behr.

When we bought our home, we knew that a kitchen renovation would be in our future. I originally had dreams of painting the cabinets, since I knew we wouldn’t be replacing them for a few years. However, they’re metal cabinets with a plastic-y wood veneer on top, so I knew they wouldn’t hold paint well. Instead, we decided to focus on more permanent changes for our “phase one” update.

Since buying our home, we’ve replaced the floors, primed all the walls, opened up the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, built a brand-new pantry (sans doors for now), replaced the light fixture, added new appliances, and – most recently – painted the door. New cabinets and counters are in our future, but we’ve totally transformed the room without even touching them yet!

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The Best Gardening Resources for Beginners (Like Me!)

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When we first moved into our house, one of the things I was most excited about was planting a garden. I’m still very much a beginner, but last year I was able to harvest a few things (peas, green beans, raspberries, and some herbs), which was extremely rewarding. This year, I’m growing even more! We also have big plans to build some raised beds on the sunny side of our house, which I’m hopeful will mean even more successful gardening. (Our beds are in less-than-ideal spots currently – but preparing for a garden is one of the projects on our list for this year!) I’ve loved learning as I go, and I’ve put together a list of the gardening resources that have been most helpful for me as a beginner.

  • Garden Resources for Beginners: image gallery of plants growing in a small garden.
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