Girly Airplane and Space Room

Pinterest rarely fails me but when we were looking to decorate Madeleine's room, I was struggling. She's into airplanes, robots, and dolls but loves everything to be pretty. "Pretty" in Madeleine's terms so far means floral, purple, or a dress, but I haven't figured out the rest of her definition. For example, Pottery Barn stuff is not pretty to her but skulls are? 

Anyway I was really stumped on how to decorate her room, but in the end, I kept coming back to airplanes. Matt already made her rocket models for her room, and Matt and I both enjoy airplanes. It's not something we would get sick of. But I googled, pinterested, etc. and could not find an airplane room that was girly. 

Here's what in the end we came up with.

Her room from the hall. The coolest thing is probably the pictures. I always ask for Matt's input on stuff and he didn't want to put up fighter planes. So we ended up printing black and white photos of what we consider important events. There are three people, Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, and Chuck Yeager with their planes. The Wright brother's plane, international space station, and the Hindenburg are a few of the other ones. Madeleine loves them and is always hitting them and taking them down. 

(I'm a bit obsessed with this picture of Amelia Earhart)

To the right of the bench you have this. Her closet doors were glass so we had them removed, for those who are curious this is what the inside looks like.

We all share the dresser and we mainly just use the closet for her larger toys. Most of her toys are on the bookshelf next to the closet

Notice most of her pictures are black and white because I'm too cheap for colored printing. :)

Her bed was she was most excited about. I found some fun fabric at Joann's and threw the pillowcases together. Madeleine picked out the trims herself. The green polka-dot fabric has little yellow roses in the center. When she walked in and saw the room that's the first thing she gravitated towards.

I still havent' completely finished her quilt. It's 90% done though and she's been sleeping with it for the last year. It will get done some day!

Close up of quilt.

The last wall I forgot to take a photo of. It has her little red kitchen.

It's been just over two weeks and she loves it. 

Art for our room

Matt and I needed some art over our bed and as much as I'd like to buy art from an artist, we simply cannot afford it right now.

So I looked at some of the art I have been pining over for sometime to see if I could figure out away to create something similar myself.

There is this art shop on facebook and etsy called Leroy's Place. It's one of my favorites. She buys old thrift store paintings and adds a bit to them.

Here

and here for this one

Matt and I both thought they look fun and quirky, and thankfully not to hard to take some inspiration from. So first we got our ugly painting from Goodwill. It was so funny watching people come up to my cart and look to see what great find I had. Several ladies even shot me strange looks when they saw it, but that's alright. I marched my $3.50 painting right up to the register with a grin.

This is what the painting looked like but this is after I spray painting the frame black.

The first thing Matt and I had to choose was what we wanting to put on.

Then he drew them out and I painted them. Two hours later we had our painting done. I think it cost us $7.50 total. 

When we finished

 And here's it hung!

I like the grown up look of the landscape with the fun of the childish things mixed in with it. Totorros are little calm creatures in my mind too so they seemed to be the perfect little guys to go into our picture. 

With that our home is done. We spent the 4th going through all the closets and bathroom. My next goal is trying to get us up early. Today didn't go as well as I hoped. While I did get both Matt and I up, he's currently at the lab. In his sleepy state, he stormed out of the house this morning to sleep at the Chemistry building. When I called him, he was a little annoyed that he was too awake to sleep. I'm hoping this isn't how every morning starts, but hey at least I got a blog post out of it. :)

Welcome to Lakeside

As we were moving out of Butler, I sat down and read over a few blog post from when we moved there. Despite the fact that I felt relieved the first time I moved into it, I forgot how hard actually moving in was. In this blog post I said, "I always feel like when I move that I'm some type of cowgirl that has to break in and tame my house.Each room has its own challenges and getting the place to feel like home is even more frustrating. And they each seem to fight me too!"

That made me laugh. That's exactly how I feel like moving into this house was too. But this one came together a bit easier, despite our rocky beginning. I kept telling Matt,"Don't panic! Pinterest can fix everything!"

And it can! So far I have the living room/kitchen done and the bedrooms are pretty close. I'm still working on a few things though before I put some pictures up of the other rooms though.

So tada!

 1st half of room

Dinning room table! (We have a dinning room table again!)

 1940's Life and fashion magazine from the flee market.

Lights I made!!! I'm so overly proud of myself for this one. I couldn't find a light kit that would work so I made my own. Matt was a bit freaked about the whole thing, but it was so worth it in the end.

(Tutorial here: http://www.vintagerevivals.com/2014/01/rock-what-ya-got-copper-skeleton-shade-light-fixture.html)

 Word art Madeleine and I did last night. I don't suggest black paint with a toddler. :)

And the other half of the room

Weird kitchen

Spice rack that Matt put up even though he didn't want to 

Art by bathroom in the hall.

So that's it so far.

We like it. It likes us. I think we're doing pretty good.

Moving and a new place

And with a good-bye comes a hello.

Guys, I would totally be lying if I said I was thrilled about the new place when I first walked in.

When we moved in, I thought we were going to die or at least Madeleine. She figured out how to undo the deadlock and escape the house within an hour of getting here. Then we noticed that there were so many things that she could get in trouble with, like long window binds cords that she sucked on, no shelving that was out of her reach (we are in the handicap unit), and glass closet doors (she threw a chair at) just to name a few. Matt and I spent the next few days frantically trying to toddler proof. On top of that, even though this is a new complex, we had so many issues with hasty construction. At this point, 9 days out, we still have broken AC and don't have card access to our front door. 

But there is also a lot of good. The washer and dryer are amazing. With the help of them and the dishwasher, we have less than an hour of cleaning per day. I spent two hours a day doing dishes at Butler. I cannot believe how much extra time I have. The handicap unit means that there are more things at toddler level, which is nice for a few things. Madeleine was thrilled to run her own load of laundry a few days ago. We also have our own tiny back area. It's not fenced or anything but it does mean we have a place for outside toys. 

As for actual move , it was pretty easy. My mom and brother came out from Utah, and my brother helped Matt so much with the actual moving. People from church came and watched Madeleine while I packed since we were only given 42 hour notice that we were moving. The actual move took 6 hours and we spent two days packing and unpacking. By the end of the actual move day, we had everything more or less unpacked. It was amazing! The whole move cost us just under $64. Pretty sweet. :) I think I made most of my goals. Matt and I were able to go through every single thing before we packed them. I consider that a major win in itself.