everything is coming up poppy

one of my first crafting projects in a long time: baby bedding for my friend, greyson. she's expecting her first, a little girl, in a few weeks and i volunteered to make the bedding for her as a shower gift.

she picked the fabrics and i did the rest. this was the first time i've made either a baby bumper or a crib skirt. i crossed my fingers and prayed the end result would be somewhat recognizable. i ended up using the directions from amy butler's little stitches for little ones book. the directions were fairly simple. but i'm not sure if i'm out-of-practice because i did find myself reading and re-reading each step. what am i saying? i've always had a hard time reading patterns. it's like it's written in some kinda sewing code or for the dyslexic.

in the end, i was happy with the outcome as was greyson. the nursery is absolutely adorable. almost makes me want to have a girl for our next. almost.

another crafty project i did for her shower: poppy cupcakes. brett and grey are 90% sure they are gonna name her "poppy" so as one of her gifts i got her this. which inspired me to to makes these for the shower.

they are homemade peach cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. i used prepackaged fondant to make the flowers, didn't trust myself to make my own. unfortunately i could not find black edible candy balls in boone, so i used yellow instead. they still turned out great and actually matched the cake at the shower, at least the coloring (ha, ha. if you saw the cake you would understand why this is funny). nothing like a baby to inspire some craftiness. tomorrow i'll post my ghetto-rigged teeth guard i put on little mans crib yesterday.

in the bedroom

sooner or later i'm gonna get around to decorating our bedroom. i'm pretty much at a loss on where to begin. i've been building somewhat of a furniture backbone but still need to get ideas on how to bring everything together. thank goodness for the internet. i stumbled across a really great website to find ideas for any room in your house.



above are the gender-neutral designs i like. below is what i'd love if i didn't have to worry about appeasing the man. yep, i'm sure i need a little girl or avery's gonna be surrounded in purple and poofs pretty soon.

welcome to my roboto crib

here are some long overdue pics of avery's nursery. i ended up going with different bedding i found on ebay. i loved the original one i picked out but this one seemed more appropriate and matched a little better with the prints.



of course, he has yet to sleep in here. spending a majority of his time either in our room or the living room. as you can see, i tried to make it not so babyish. i think i somewhat accomplished that.

below is the robot painting my sister-in-law and i worked on while she was here for my baby shower last month. it turned out great. you can also see the name plaque i was finally able to hang after his birth.

right now i'm uploading more photos and trying to figure out how i can share them via snapfish. apparently it says i can load them to blogger, so we'll just see about that.

on target

i absolutely love target. i ordered the baby bedding a few days ago and it arrived yesterday. i wanted to go somewhat gender neutral just in case we switched teams. and i wanted it to be modern and chic. it's gorgeous and i'm very happy with my purchase. i can now make some progress on the nursery, namely painting the walls. today i ordered the crib and matching dresser. i'll share that purchase later. i feel like we are starting to make some progress getting prepared for bbw (baby boy westphal). tomorrow i'll post today's doctor's appt. along with a long overdue belly shot. i finally have something to share. i'm amazed how things just pop out of nowhere. ;)

weekend work

the house is slowly getting painted. this past weekend i decided to do a small project and painted the foyer area. i needed a color that would somewhat compliment the green so we went with this blue. i can't believe how much the molding and wood are popping with the addition of color. we got our chairs last week and are waiting on the couch. the next room to conquer will be the living room. i have absolutely no clue what i'm going to do in there.

green subway

i ordered a few samples of glass tiles off ebay yesterday. not sure if it's gonna be too much green for my taste, so i did a quick mock-up of what my backsplash looks without and what it would look like with the tiles. i'm sure it'll look better in person, but right now...not really loving it. i'll continue the search.

took the leap

yesterday i finished the dining room/kitchen accent wall paint job. i always seem to make things harder on myself than they have to be. case in point. after doing all the remodeling work on the basement, i thought for sure we'd have a 12" roller handy. we, in fact, had three. three caked with drylock gunk, that were pretty much useless for anything. instead of heading out to buy a new one, i decided to use the 6" roller i had instead. (sorta reminded me of the time i used a 12" level to make striped lines on the walls with vaulted ceilings) so what i probably could have done in half the time is finally done. i am proud that i stretched the paint and only used a gallon for everything!

i am extremely happy with the end result. i can't believe how much cleaner the walls look and how bland they looked beforehand. all the walls in our house are currently painted with flat paint. after a couple of years of living here, there seems to be more smudges, scratches, marks than there is clean wall. this is the first "big" room i've done in the house.

next on the list. tile backsplash in the kitchen and paint the kitchen/den. below are the before pics. what an improvement.

dining room possibilities

i'm about 90% positive this will be the future color of our dining room. both picture and color chips have been sitting on our wall the past few weeks. the dilemma: one wall continues into the kitchen and i'm not sure i want a green wall in there because we were thinking of a blue and stone backsplash. but the more i look at it the more i like it. hmmmmmm. i'll have to keep pondering or perhaps reconsider the color of the backsplash.

living with dictators

yesterday, we headed down to the hickory furniture mart for their "presidents day sale." yeah, right. the only things "on sale" were home accessories. you'd think with 4 levels of furniture stores, we'd have a lot to choose from. it sure wasn't the case here. half the stores we didn't even bother to walk in. when you have a lion standing guard at your store front, i'm pretty sure you're not going to carry anything i like. we did manage to find a few items amongst the overstuffed and gawdy. behold. our new couch. we got to pick out the accent pillows and imagine my surprise when i found my roman shade fabric amongst the choices. we opted for a more subdued fabric. since we went with the chair fabric below.

yes, we got some bold print chairs. if you didn't notice from my previous post, i'm a bold print kinda girl. i made a beeline towards them the instant i saw them. aaron laughed, "i knew that's why you wanted to come in here." he knows me too well. i knew i wanted that particular print, but they had it in two different colors. one with blue and green leaves and a lighter background and the one you see here. with the dogs we opted for this one. (funny how your animals and children start to dictate your furniture purchases.) so in 4-6 weeks we'll have a new living room which has been empty since we moved the sectional to the basement. yay for progress.

sofa king cool

the past few months we've been on a quest to furnish our house. it's actually been an ongoing process since we've moved in, but a serious consideration the past few weeks. we made a special trip to charlotte to look for a bed frame and some new living room furniture. we pretty much came back empty-handed. our main problem: delivery. most places do not deliver to the high country or if they do, it almost costs more than the actual furniture. we considered renting a uhaul and picking things up ourselves, but we have to have everything ordered or in stock for it to be worthwhile.

the other problem: i can't find anything i like. i'm extremely picky. don't want anything overstuffed, leather or wood-colored. and that seems to be what's popular and in abundance. i really don't want to settle. so it's been a very slow process. aaron's pretty much given up and has left all the decision-making to me. although i'm happy about this, i know it's going to be extremely tedious task. there's a reason why the only rooms painted in our house are bathrooms!

so i've been scouring the internet, trying to find home decor. hopefully there's gonna be some changes in the westphal house soon. how soon is the real question.

female retail therapy

the last few days i've been doing a little online retail therapy to get my mind off things. i haven't really found anything worth mentioning, a few hooks for the bathroom and other odds and ends. i did stumble upon this site: cribcandy. and on the first page was this vase. i thought it was kinda funny, given light of our current situation. of course, this gave me the idea find more tasteful reproductive art.

exalted beauty uterus medallions. 30 one-of-a-kind art jewelry pieces created by amy e. fraser.

a series of plates about fertility and sex by nina levett.

not to worry. you won't be seeing these at our next holiday function. although they would make for some great conversation pieces!

fit for a king

when i was talking to my dad about arranging pickup for the dinette set i also told him i was cruising craigslist for a king-sized bed. (with our new basement addition aaron and i decided to upgrade our bed to a king and move our current queen to the new guest room.)

"how bout as a christmas gift we get you guys a bed?"

"sure!" as far as mattresses go, i think i'd rather have new than used. so it was really a no brainer.

in anticipation of our new bed, i've been scouring ebay for new bedding. trying to stay a little gender neutral for aaron's sake. i did find this set which somewhat resembles the green bathroom color. too girly? well it's too late, i won a set and just received it. i'm really happy with my purchase and will probably start decorating our bedroom soon. be on the lookout!

my mom and dad should be here in a couple of hours. better get back to cleaning house, pulling the turkey out of the freezer and starting some chili for tonight. happy thanksgiving everybody!!

do as the romans

i finally got the roman shade finished for the master bath. made completely from scratch. i installed all the hardware, including a stop pull and corded it all myself. yes, i am patting myself on the back. and - double bonus - it's fully functional. i did buy a pattern to make it, but in the end i didn't use it. the only thing i needed were measurements. which i'm sure i could have found somewhere on the web. the room is pretty close to done. i was thinking about taking the pattern on the shade and making some type of stencil with it to place around the room. not sure it'd be too much in the way of matchy-matchy. i'll ponder that a little while longer. i did buy a couple of shelves to install and plan on stocking them up with white pottery. i've been eyeing this vase. and these would also be a perfect addition. the possibilities are endless.

almost...but not quite

i added a few more items to my shop last week. almost made it to 50 but fell a little short. finally busted out the alexander henry pear fabric and added a few items using it. card wallets seem to be a popular item so i'm off to make more. instead of five i'll probably make ten.

i'm still in the process of painting the bathroom. got all the green up and a coat of the blue. i'm not really digging the shade of blue i chose so i might have them exactly match the fabric for the window treatment. i did for the green and i don't know why i didn't go ahead with the blue too. live and learn.

remember this? i didn't name any names back then but i just got an email about it yesterday. read more here.

tonic living

i've put the master bath off long enough. after ripping down all the green wallpaper the room has been sitting in disarray for a few months now. today i ordered some "tonic" fabric which the rest of the room will be loosely based on. instead of wallpaper i've been thinking about using vinyl wall art similar to the image below.

i came across this in my search yesterday. completely awesome and completely out of my price range. it's about $1200 a panel and consists of seven panels. there's a few others i found at velocity that are more in my budget. hopefully it's easier to handle than wallpaper. i've learned that job should be handled by the professionals.

friday find

i've been on a mission to find a really ornate frame for as little as possible. i want to refinish it and give it a shabby-chic feel to house some embroidery i've been doing. it's proving to be a difficult task. i hit up three thrift stores and two antique malls and didn't find anything to my liking.

i did make one purchase. a crewel embroidered pillow. i picked it up for $10 and am thinking i can do something that would resemble the isabella fiore handbag i posted a few weeks ago that i absolutely love. i'm finding it difficult to even consider taking a pair of scissors to it. it's so lovely as is. i'll keep it on the back burner for now.

i did end up finding a plain frame on saturday. for now i'll distress it, give it a nice decorative mat and see how it turns out. it's not going to be completely what i wanted, but it'll have to do for now.

pillow talk

i finally finished brian and irina's pillow set. i did two of each design. (you're only seeing one here.) they all have zipper closures, which are still a challenge for me. i changed the fabric they had originally picked out, monk cloth. i honestly don't know what you'd use that fabric for. it unravels as soon as it's cut, almost definitely needs a lining, and pretty much loses shape with it's loose weave.

i'm happy with how they turned out. it might be a little while before i start on their christmas set. yes, i when i got home last week they had the christmas fabric all picked out and ready to go. along with two more requests for mp3 pouches and a handbag for mom. i'm off the mail these and my jar of whimsies!