DIY Grommet Man Cave Curtains

The man room is the one place in the house that I don't get to decorate. I can have my opinion, but in the end, it's Hubby who decides how he wants to decorate. However, I did offer to make manly curtains for the room to block out the sun while he plays video games!



First, I special ordered 10 yards of striped fabric (picked by Hubby) for the curtains. For the black portion at the top, I bought a heavy industrial fabric so the grommets wouldn't pull on the fabric and rip it.

I washed and ironed all my fabric before starting. Annoying, but worth it in the end.
I attached the black fabric to the striped curtain panels.
I finished all the edges except the bottom and cut off the excess.
I've never used grommets before, but it was pretty easy to follow. Each package came with a template and 8 grommets.

I measured each curtain panel and marked the area where I wanted each grommet placed.
Then I used the template to mark each circle.I cut out all the holes a little smaller than the size of the cirlce. I'd rather be too small and have to cut more than have a hole that's too big and can't be fixed.
The front and back grommet pieces snap on and I tucked the excess fabric inside.
(FYI, snapping the grommet was a bit of a challenge with such heavy fabric. This is where Hubby is asked to help!)
Finally, I hung up the curtains and then hemmed the bottom so they almost hit the floor.

Baby's Nursery Reveal!

The baby boy nursery is finally done! It's been such a fun experience to renovate the room and come up with crafts to personalize the space. Hubby and I spent so much time this summer trying to make it perfect for our little boy.

(See the list at the bottom of the post for tutorial links and where I bought things)First, let's go back to the room before when it was just for storage and random crap...
The nasty mirrored closet doors and icky 80's blue blinds are horrible!
Old ugly trim and doors...and Kitty taking a look!
To this little baby haven!

So let's start out at the door with the new 6-panel door and updated white trim. We painted the room in light yellow with a blue border around the top.

I couldn't resist this cute door hanger for 50 cents from the thrift store

We bought white wood blinds with a valance for the windows. Curtains are just too much of a mess with a hairy cat! The white dresser will have the changing pad on top and we can look out the window as we change diapers.

The white wall shelves in the corner are perfect for showing off future baby photos, heirloom books, etc. The lip on the edge is great so nothing falls off. The frames were thrift store purchases that I painted to match.
(See the sock monkey and crayon frame tutorials at the bottom of the post.)

Ah, the glider. Sadly, this glider decision stressed me out more than anything! I had the hardest time picking one that was comfortable, cheap, and matched the room. After hours spent at baby stores, I took a risk and ordered this one online. Who knew it would match perfectly? We love it and it was a lot cheaper than those baby store gliders.

The lamp was also another struggle. Of course, I needed white to match, but it's pretty hard to find a white floor lamp. After some searching, I found one, but it came with a pink lampshade. I figured it would be super easy to find a blue or red lampshade to replace it with. I was wrong! Apparently, colored lampshades are harder to find than I thought! I gave in and decided to cover a white one in fabric...until I put the white one on and realized I just liked it plain white!

The wall letters were a fun project that Hubby and I worked on together. It's a little twist to the normal wall letters because we hung them on drawer knobs.

I love the bedding we picked! I never would have thought this would be my choice, but I got really into all the preppy boy stuff I saw in the stores. I love that it's not super masculine, but it's still cute and really soft. It's been fun to be able to make pillows to go with it also. The embroidered C pillow and the patchwork one pictured above were some of my fun crafts from the summer.

Did you happen to catch the old light that used to be here? It looked almost like a spotlight and the lightbulbs made the color in the room horrible. I picked out a white fan to replace it.

So maybe we're bad parents, but yes, we have a tv in there. I admit to being a tv addict, so Hubby convinced me that we would want one in there if I'm going to be spending a lot of time nursing and sitting in the glider. We plan on taking it out later when the baby knows what it is.

Wall art was really hard to find because we don't really have a theme in the room. I saw these pieces and I knew they would match perfectly!

After our baby shower, I realized we would probably need somewhere to store books and toys. We found this small shelf set and bought some canvas storage cubes to hold toys.

Remember those nasty mirrored closet doors? Now we have 6-panel white doors to match all the doors in the house.

Nothing too exciting in the closet, but there's lots of room for baby stuff! We got very lucky that our house had Elfa already in the bedroom closets when we moved in!

And our growing collection of baby clothes...

So there it is! We're so excited to have it done and ready for baby to come home to!

Shopping List:
Yellow paint - Behr Pale Honey
Blue paint - Behr French Court
Baby furniture - Babies R Us Baby Cache collection
Glider & ottoman - Target Danielle glider & ottoman
Floor lamp - Target (comes with a pink gingham shade that we changed)
Bedding - Babies R Us Bacati Boys Stripes & Plaids
White storage shelf & colored storage cubes - Target
Wood Wall letters - Joanns
Framed wall art - Hobby Lobby

Tutorials:
Crayon Name Frame
Patchwork Pillow
Embroidered Initial Pillow
Sock Monkey
Wall letters - coming soon!

Family Room Window Transformation

I don't think I ever shared this makeover, so I wanted to post some pictures. This was our scary family room when we moved in last year. Yes, the carpet was new, but the rest of the room was still stuck in the 70's!

As the first task when we moved in, we pulled down the nasty paneling and trim around the windows. I'm so proud of my hubby for spending many of his days off of work building beautiful trim around the windows to dress them up.


And here they are!






They took some getting used to, but we love them now. It's so fun to sit on the couch and look out the window at all the hard work we put into making these windows beautiful!

DIY Craft Room Curtains

This is the bedding I picked out for the craft room. I love the bright colors to inspire me while I work. The bed sets came with bedskirts, but we have trundle beds in there so we don't need them. Extra fabric? Of course, my first thought was to reuse it in some fun ways!

Why buy boring curtains when you can make your own? I wanted something that was very light and would let a lot of light in. The room is pretty dark, so I'd love as much light as I can get. I started out by buying some cheap white curtains to work with. (Yes, I could have made my own, but I HATE working with large pieces of fabric when I have to measure them perfectly.)

I started out by laying the curtains on the floor since that was the largest work surface I could find.


I wanted to add the bedskirt fabric panel near the top, so I measured 4 inches from the top.


Freaking out, I cut the top 4 inches off. What if I mess this up and ruin my curtains? This was my first window treatment ever so I was really nervous.


Then I measured the bedskirt fabric to fit and finished the edges.


I pinned the pattern fabric to the top and bottom of the curtain and sewed.


Once the curtains were hung, I hemmed the bottom to almost hit the floor. You can see how the light is really weird in this room, so it's very hard to get a good picture. I promise it's a nice lime green and not pukey green!


I love how they turned out!


I *heart* link parties! Go here to see where I'm partying it up today...

A window to the world

Loving this DIY idea from Crafty nest!


Use an old window to create a pretty piece of wall art! All the instructions are on her blog (including pics). As soon as I saw these pics, I knew I had to share them with you. SO pretty!

And in honor of this idea of reusing an old window, I want to show you some other great ideas...