Our Nursery

So I’ve been a bit busy. Both the business and I grew this year! I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things, starting with blogging a bit more. What a better way to get started than with the nursery I designed for our new little one?!

Crib: Delta Children’s Greyson

Last fall, before even becoming pregnant, I decided I wanted our future nursery to have a gradient mountain wall. Boy was that a beast of a project! It took multiple weekends but I love how it turned out. It gives this room a bit of whimsey and magic. At least, I hope that’s how Atti will feel about it one day.

Shelves: IKEA LACK Wall Unit

His room is huge. Seriously, massive. I wanted to take advantage of all that floor space so it can one day double as his playroom. Hence shelves. These Lack shelves from IKEA help keep things off the floor. There are also cube shelves in his closet for extra book and toy storage.

Of course for me, his room wouldn’t be complete without a gallery wall! This one went MUCH better than the one in our living room. I followed my own advice and used paper cutouts of each item to design it all before hammering a single nail.

All of that extra time in the planning process really paid off. We absolutely adore his gallery wall and all of the pieces that became a part of it. Those mountain shelves? His grandma bought them from Etsy, and they are filled with wooden toys that were hers when she was a child. There’s a sign my best friend got him. A sign I picked up from a local shop. And one of our dear friends hand lettered his name onto a slice of wood!

Dresser: IKEA Hemnes

Mountain Shelves: Etsy

Air Plant Holders: Etsy

However, after all of that, my favorite thing in this room is the rocking chair. Mr. Rocking Chair is his name. That’s right, he has a name. There are photos of my mom being rocked in Mr. Rocking Chair when she was a little girl. It warms my heart that now my son is also being rocked to sleep in the same spot.

Of course, I couldn’t miss out on a little modern flair with those hanging air plants. For me, this room is a wonderful combination of old and new.

It’s our hope that this room will inspire Atticus to never stop exploring.

Photos by Luxe & Pine Photography

3 Ways To Maintain A Tidy Home

    Getting your home tidy can be tough with all the other responsibilities we have in our adult lives. Often times cleaning is seen as a never-ending, overwhelming task that as soon as you are done straightening up, your home is suddenly a disaster once again. So in order to keep your home tidy, try following these 3 simple steps to end the messy cycle.

1. Declutter

     I know this sounds pretty crazy but this step is actually quite simple. Check it out. Start by making three piles: donate, discard, and keep. Then, sort. If you haven’t worn something in the past year and a half, chances are you won’t wear it later. So, put that item in the donate pile. Anything that is broken and/or worn out needs to get tossed into the discard pile. Then, once you have the keep pile you can organize back into their designated spaces.

2. Tidy a little every day

     It seems like the simplest of tasks but cleaning everyday can make all the difference. We’re not saying you have to scrub the floors every day, but consider wiping the shower down after you bathe. Or put the mail up after looking at it. Doing something small each day will allow you to avoid the huge task of cleaning once a week for 18 hours. Whether that means making your bed everyday, or picking up items off the floor when you leave the room. Little tasks like these allow your space to look so much cleaner.

3. Clean as you Cook

     This is a game changer right here! The kitchen can get out of control quickly, especially when food scraps, dirty dishes, pots and pans start adding up. That’s why cleaning as you cook is important. It makes it so you can avoid the daunting task at the very end of cooking (and we know how horrifying that task feels). I know how easy it is to let dishes pile and the sink be enclosed with dirty dishes, but its not the best environment if you’re trying to avoid fruit flies. So as you’re cooking, clean the dishes or put them in the dishwasher once you’re done using them. Consider wiping down the counters and cabinets after you cook a meal. Then, once you’re all done you can celebrate in how much better your home feels with a clean kitchen and a home cooked meal.

     Let’s face it, you don’t have the time to spend your entire life keeping your home clean. Whether or not your home is an apartment or house, keeping your space tidy on a regular basis just got a whole lot easier. If you have any other tips or tricks on keeping the home tidy and clean let us know in the comments below!

Four Storage Solutions For Small Spaces

     One thing I hear often when going to staging and styling consultations is that the homeowner feels as though they don’t have enough space. They have things spread out on counters and stacked on floors because they can’t seem to find a better place for it. If you are reading this nodding your head in agreement with them, you are not alone! 

     Sometimes there truly isn’t enough space, but more often the space is just not being used as efficiently as it could be. If you suspect that may be the case for your home, here are some tips to improve your space utilization and de-clutter your rooms!

1) Bins 

     Y’all, I love bins! Especially the wicker ones. These can be found at Target or IKEA, fit most of those cube shelves, and look really pretty. I use them in most of my closets for things like shoes, dog supplies, and even in the laundry closet for small appliances I don’t use often (hello space heater). Aside from making the closets appear more organized, it helps you go up in the space. It’s pretty hard to stack shoes on top of one another without a container. They spread out as far as the space will allow. Same goes for space heaters, towels, etc. These small bins will help keep the clutter out of sight while giving you more space to work with in your closets.

Photo: IKEA.com

2) Storage Ottomans

      If you like the look of tufted ottomans, then this is a major storage solution for you! The come as small as eighteen inches wide and as large as four-five feet! These are great for tucking away remotes, blankets, dog toys, books, children’s toys. Basically anything that may end up in your living room (or even bedroom, at the foot of the bed), could be tucked away in here. For even better utilization, put small bins inside to keep remotes and other smaller items from getting lost in those blankets.

Photo: target.com

3) Shelves  

     This is key for those with smaller kitchens and pantries. The name of this game is "going up". IKEA is a great resource for finding various shelf racks. Some can be drilled into the wall, some can be attached to existing wire shelving. Whatever your need may be, I bet they have a shelf for it. If you have an open wall in a kitchen, embrace the open shelf tend! 

    Don't have space in your living room for a bookshelf after your couch is in there? Put shelves above the couch. Stagger books and framed photos/artwork on these shelves to keep the space beautiful and feeling intentional. 

Great use of wall space in a laundry room. Photo: Target.com

4) Wall Racks

     They make these for all sorts of things now. You can hang brooms on the wall of the pantry. Get some for the back of the bathroom closet/linen closet for storing cleaning supplies or beauty products. IKEA has some that you can hang tins from, which can be used for utensil storage or growing herbs/succulents. We've used wall spice racks as a solution to our tiny pantry. 

photo: ikea.com

Hopefully this can get you started on a more organized, less cluttered living space! 

What Not To Do When Creating A Gallery Wall

I didn't realize some of these frames were crooked until I was editing. The perfectionist in me is literally twitching, haha

     I had every intention when we started this gallery wall that I was going to write this fabulous "How-To" for big gallery walls. Um, three days and roughly eight collective hours later, I realized I was so naive. So just like How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, I'm reverse how-to(ing) this. 

    I started this process quite awhile before we purchased anything for it. I'd like to think I did the first few steps correctly. I picked a frame that was simple and would be uniform across the entire wall. I picked a few big pieces that we would work around. Finally, waited for wedding photos before beginning because I knew I wanted it to be all about us. 

    Then, Michaels had a HUGE sale on the frames I wanted. We went to two separate stores and still ended up with two different colored frames. A dark wood and a white. I decided to come to terms with this, even though I knew I will eventually want all the same shade. Luckily, the Belmont frame from Michael's doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. 

    So, now that we've cleaned out both of the Michael's of their remaining white and dark wood frames, we headed home happy. Ok, I was happy. Alvin was agitated that he went to decor stores after a work day. As soon as we got home, the high of the deals had me instantly moving our coffee table to make room on the floor to start creating the layout. 

Creating the layour was messy work. 

    After creating a beautiful layout that I adored while it was on the floor, I measured the width and height to give us some parameters on the wall. We used painters tape to mark the height parameters but I decided pretty quickly that I wanted the gallery to be a bit wider than it was on the floor. In my excitement/Friday night exhaustion, I didn't think through the problems widening it might cause. This is mistake #1. 

    So we put them all up, roughly where they were on the floor. I say roughly because mistake #2: we didn't measure between the frames as they were on the floor. Not that it would have mattered since I widened the space anyway. Are you following this domino effect of mistakes?  

All the frames at the bottom were driving me nuts! 

    Frustrated and tired, we call it a night. In the morning, it becomes obvious that there are weird gaps that weren't there before. That afternoon, I try rearranging it a bit. Just moving frames a bit to the left here, a bit to the right there. But overall keeping the same design as had been on the floor. Mistake #3. I should have realized that the shape on the floor only looked that good because of the width parameters. The only thing we accomplished on day two was creating lots and lots of little holes in our wall. Seriously, it looks like someone took a machine nail gun to it.  

End of day 2, contemplating my life decisions. JK, I was trying to solve the puzzle.

    So on day three, I decided I still loved the height. And I picked two edge frames that I wanted to be the furthest points. Then we moved nearly everything else around. We ended up with two fewer frames than originally intended because once it was on the wall, I liked having the negative space. Here's the final product! 

So what can you learn from this post? 

1) Don't take shortcuts. We were so tired we thought we'd just hang them up "roughly" where they were on the floors (Actually this was Alvin but he was doing the hanging so I didn't want to fight him on it). Taking this "shortcut" ended up costing hours in rearranging times.

2) Use tape to mark parameters or even the shapes of each individual frame. It would have taken quite a bit of time to use tape to mark each individual frame (we have sixteen on this wall) but it's also going to take quite a bit of time to fill in all those holes from us moving the frames around.

3) Do your style research. I had a hard time finding a similar gallery wall to mine, in that we used clean modern style frames but did a large asymmetrical layout. However, if you're interested in a mismatched farmhouse wall or a super clean uniform wall, there are a lot of examples out there that you can browse through. Find what you do and don't like before starting to hang things. 

4) Don't be afraid to rearrange it. Sure, you may end up with a few holes. But those can be patched up! Accept that you made a mistake the first (or fourth) time around and just tweak it until you're satisfied. 

5) Know when to stop. This is especially tricky for perfectionists like me working on an asymmetrical gallery wall. Just know, that it's probably never going to be "perfect". But once it looks pretty to you, stop. Then just enjoy your beautiful work and photos! 

Shoutout to our wedding photographer Erin, of Luxe & Pine! We adore our photos so much we spent hours working on a gallery wall because we couldn't narrow down any further which ones we wanted framed and up on the wall! 

What's Up Wednesday: Style With Confidence

     Boy have we been busy! I haven’t had the time to devote to this blog as I would like. So I don’t have any well researched piece for you today. Instead, I thought I would give you a glimpse into what I’m working on and give you tips on how to do it yourself.

     I have a super fun home styling project I’ve been working on this past month. This family is practically starting from scratch and hired me to help them make the few pieces they do have match the look that they want to end up with. Their old pieces are pretty traditional while they want to steer towards a modern boho feel. I swoon!

Step 1: Create A Mood Board On Pinterest

     Luckily, this client had already started the first step, which is to create a Pinterest board for each room. This helps you find patterns in the things you’re drawn to. Hopefully this will help you and/or your stylist know which direction to go once it comes time to purchase new pieces. 

For privacy reasons, I did not share the client's board. This is a board I quickly created as an example.

       In my example, you'll probably notice some recurring themes and colors. Obviously grey sectionals have my heart. Other common pieces are white faux fur pillows, ivory rugs, and minimalism. Three out of four shown inspiration photos have plants. Three out of four have modern coffee tables. Three out of four have simple gallery walls. These are the types of patterns you can use when creating your room idea boards.

Step 2: Create A Room Idea Board

     After thoroughly studying the client's Pinterest boards, I created some room idea boards on Polyvore. It’s not a perfect format but I find it easy to use and I love that if they love something you have on the board, it includes links on where to buy it. I’m sharing the sunroom board because A) I just adore the feel of it and B) They did too and ended up buying nearly everything in it.

     These idea boards are also great for referencing when you’re out and about and stumble upon something you love! If you aren’t sure how it would fit into the space you’re working on, you can simply pull up the board and compare it to the pieces/feel you have going. It seriously cuts back on the impulse buying and helps those who are unsure how something in the store will suit their room.

Step Three: Search For The Pieces

     Final step: Shopping! And lots of it! These boards are a reference point, but you may not love everything in them. For the dining room, the client loved the feel of the board but we ended up purchasing different chairs for seat comfort. You'll also probably want a bit more than what's in the board. These are reference points, not final rooms. 

    Here's a list of the places I suggest this client shop in order to create the modern boho feel in her space. She doesn't like a "matchy matchy" look, which makes bargain hunting perfect! But it still allows for a few splurges. 

Stores I recommended to achieve this style:

Port of Raleigh

Zartiques

Wayfair

Craigslist

Facebook Marketplace

Target 

HomeGoods

     Hopefully by following these three steps, you can confidently revamp any space! Or if you’re not the DIYer when it comes to revamping your space, you could always hire a stylist to help you!