Category / House

I always said I wouldn’t do licensed / character / branded stuff for my kids. (Yes, I was on a parenting high horse ha!) But as much as I’ve resisted t-shirts based on tv shows until now, it’s freaking 2020 and I’m leaning in to whatever my soon-to-be kindergartner wants to do with his room as we embark on this crazy covid school year!

I do love that Page and I are always on the same wavelength about this stuff — nothing too tacky or weird, embrace the theme but in a “cool” way. At least, that was the goal! I can’t bring myself to do a giant size creeper across a bedspread, but I can find ways to work in the icons of the game around his room. We started with the torch from Amazon – even I have to admit, it looks pretty cool lit up at night! I bought some styrofoam cubes and painted them to look like stacked TNT inside his lamp.

Like all things, this obsession will pass at SOME point, so we didn’t go crazy. I bought the Periodic Table poster on Amazon, and designed a smaller one myself of Emerald Ore with Crew’s gamer name. We added the lava nightlight and piggy bank from Target to his shelves.

We kept his existing comforter and shams, but swapped out the sheets for these relatively neutral ones. We also did a much overdue upgrade to his mattress. We’ve loved it so far and would purchase again!

Other details included a TNT storage cube from Target, and a creeper water cup to keep by his bed.

It worked perfectly that he already had these green IKEA cubes in his closet cubbies. Some quick black vinyl iron-ons with the Cricut and we had custom creeper cubes. (Say that five times fast!)

This was a fun “quick and done” project that we were able to swap out while he was at his last morning of pre-K. I managed to capture his reaction on video and I’m so glad I did – he was SO grateful and excited – the very best kind of response you can hope for when it comes to little boys and home decor ha!

Thinking of all you parents as you send your kiddos back to school this year, whatever it might look like for you. We are beginning in person (fingers crossed!) and taking it literally day by day. Covid kindergarten – heck covid parenting in general – could (and probably will) be a whole other post!

Stay well! <3

It started with the crib sheet. It was one of the very first things I pinned (even before we knew we were having a girl) and I kept coming back to it.

I was so in love with the SW Faint Coral paint in our basement guest room, and I like the continuity of repeating paint colors in a home, so her wall color was an easy choice. I also knew that I wanted some subtle nods to children’s literature in her room as well, so this Roald Dahl sign quickly followed (I embellished it with these poppies).

It’s fun to see Crew’s crib take on such a feminine look this time around!

After adding the matching poppy changing pad cover, I was ready to branch out a little and find other ways to repeat the pinks, bright reds, and greens around the room. Enter the prettiest Rifle Paper Co. copy of A Little Princess to keep the book theme going, and for a nightlight, my brother happened to gift me this perfect pink salt lamp (similar linked here) at Christmas. The wreath is the crown of leaves I wore in her maternity pictures — you’ll notice it floats around the room in these photos as I try and find a permanent spot for it, which I think may be this shelf (brackets from Ikea and painted, shelf cut and stained by us) with my childhood copy of Madeline and some first gifts.

My favorite piece in here is the dresser, for both functional and sentimental reasons. We started with an Ikea Hemnes dresser because I love the layout of smaller drawers across the top for all the tiny things.

While I love the way it’s organized, it fell a little short in the details. So we swapped the knobs for some gold hex pulls from CB2 and Page added some Dad skill sawing off the existing legs and giving it a little height and interest by building a new base, which we stained to coordinate with the Roald Dahl frame. I love, love, love the finished product and the extra couple inches of height along with the blackout curtains which we hung as high as possible make the whole room feel a little bit larger.

The final touch was some hidden detail inside the drawers – something Page had seen elsewhere. A couple rolls of Rifle gift wrap and some double sided tape and I love this little peek of girlyness.

We reused the Pottery Barn glider from when Crew was a baby, and added the pink pouf from Crate & Kids. (I’m obsessed with that Petit Pehr blanket draped over the chair, from Mimi at Christmas!) The little throw pillow was a post-Christmas clearance find at Target.

I wanted to balance some of the warm wood elements with a little gold metallic, so we added the lamp and mirror from Target to tie in with the drawer pulls and a couple other details around the room.

And it’s not a girl’s room without some accessories — and I do love a good organization project. These IKEA “Sunnersta” rails and hooks are tucked behind the door for easy access.

I have her newborn and 0-3 clothing on-hand in the drawers, and I use the closet to hang future sizes so I can easily see what we have and what we need (I love to shop ahead and score a bargain!). The shelves below hold books and toys at her level. I love that it’s not jam-packed and we have plenty of room to grow.

The only thing I’d still like to add is a planter in the far left corner behind her crib to round out the green in here – just waiting on our greenhouse to open soon!

Otherwise, I feel oh so ready. Hurry up, baby girl. We are excited to bring you home!

And for sentimental reasons…sharing a link to our son’s nursery from a few years ago here!

When we built our home four years ago, we had an idea of what we wanted to do with our basement level, but we weren’t in a huge hurry with so many above-ground decisions to make in the meantime. Page drew out a rough idea and our builder framed it for us, and stocked it with drywall. And that was how it sat for a year or so. Slowly, we’ve been moving it forward over the last couple of years.

We’ve been using this lower level so much now that it’s complete, starting with our living room. The leather couches moved down here (finally!) and they are perfect for family movie nights. I love that we kept it light and neutral down here (paint is Sherwin Williams “City Loft”, trim is SW “Extra White”) since our only natural light comes down the stairwell from a window, and from the two egress panes on one end of the house.

The play area is as getting as much use as ever (and the Ikea Algot toy closet has paid for itself in spades!). You can see more of the toy closet and the inside of the playhouse here.

Crew’s under-the-stairs playhouse is one of my favorite projects to date!

We tried to maximize the daylight by going with glass doors to the gym. Page picked this wall color (SW Oceanside) and I admit I was skeptical at first, but I love the change of energy and mood when you walk in here (which I need to do more often than I am right now. Ha!)

This black metal plaque from Magnolia is my favorite detail in here.

Here’s a quick peek at the guest bedroom and bathroom that I wrote more about in previous posts.

The last pieces of the puzzle were the bar and golf simulator. We bought stock cabinets which I painted (SW “Cascade”) and we built the counter from butcher block stained Carbon Gray by Varathane. We debated adding a dishwasher down here but after so much up-and-down in our last basement bar with dirty glasses and snack bowls, we opted to include one this time around. We did vinyl flooring because of the nature of basements -it’s from Home Depot and the color is Weathered Wood.

Page used remnant pieces from the counters to create floating shelves and found the hardware on eBay. The faucet and cabinet hardware all came from Amazon.

The golf simulator is by SkyTrak and Page installed it himself. We had to walk on many, many 1-foot squares of turf before he found “The One” 🙂

I love how all the textures and tones came together in this area. The stone isn’t the exact material we have upstairs, but it’s so darn close and carries the vibe from upstairs down to this lower level.

And I’d be remiss in not pointing out the barn door we had built as a solution to the noise of both the simulator and if we want to watch a movie down here after Crew goes to bed. It’s hard to convey in photos but this thing is massive. You have to love a talented trim carpeter – this is perfectly cut at the bottom to hug up and around the skirt trim that comes down our stairs for a sealed closure.

Another favorite little detail is the angled corner step down into the simulator. I will never forget showing up late ONE TIME to our builder meeting and noticing they had marked a sunken foundation. I knew exactly what had been decided without me – ha!

Thanks for following along. I’m so happy to have this big project checked off our list, and we’re finding so much validation in how frequently we are using the space!

In case you missed it, Life in Yellow is now 29th and Delight and I’m jumping right back in with a tour of our updated main living area! After finishing our lower level, we moved the existing furniture downstairs to make way for some furniture we scored on Black Friday. I love the way this space has come together over the last year and we’ve spent a lot of family time in here playing games on the coffee table and snuggling on the sofa.

Rug | Sectional | Armchair | White Pillows | Pink Tassel Pillows | Throw | Coffee Table | C End Table | Bar Stools

Thanks for taking a peek – I’m excited to share more of what we’ve been up to around here the past few months!

This room has been painted, with a door, and a bed for quite some time. But when we learned we’d be hosting company last week, we kicked it into high gear to finish out some of the details.

While Page worked in the bathroom next door, I did my best to pull together some little details to make this room comfortable for our guests (and yes…maybe benefit us long after they leave when one of us is sick or snoring – the other often ends up down here!) 😉

I scored a dresser at our local HomeGoods for a song, and we added a spare TV from storage, connected our Hulu to it, and framed all the passwords for our guests. 🙂

I’d like to find a prettier standing mirror eventually, but for the time being we hung a smaller one behind the door for getting dressed.

There’s nothing worse than being too hot or cold — this room runs particularly cold in the basement, but I made sure a spare blanket was easy to find if needed.

I’m so pleased with how light and airy this space feels for being a basement room with only an egress window to provide light.

When Crew was over his sound machine from babyhood, it made sense to keep it down here for those who like white noise. (Dohm makes the BEST sound machines, if you’re in the market!) I also added a wall USB/iphone charger because I am the POSTER girl for traveling and forgetting a charger cable.

One of my favorite details in the room is the “Hotel” print — and the colors work so perfectly on the wall color.

Much of what we used in this room was repurposed from elsewhere in the house and no longer available to link online (sheets are Garnet Hill, and the duvet, bedside table, and lamp are all IKEA, if you can luck out in store), but sharing what I can!

house tissue box  |  pennant fixture  |  Dohm sound machine  |  paint color is Sherwin Williams “Faint Coral”

The guest bathroom in our basement level is completed! Do you hear the angels singing?!

Some out of town friends coming to visit was just the push we needed to pony up the last dollars and burst of energy needed to bring this three-quarter bath to completion.

We are thrilled with the result and I’m swooning in bathroom heaven. Per usual, Page whipped out his mad DIY skills to build the vanity to scale. He did all of his own plumbing work (seriously…I did not even know this about him when I married him…score!) hooking up our shower and sink and toilet and installing all the plumbing fixtures.

I don’t like when things get too “matchy” so combining fixtures in both shiny chrome (already in our door handles) and matte black (to echo the dark floor tile and shower grout) struck the right note for me.

My very favorite part is thinking through all the little details — spare (stylish) toothbrushes, the cutest little overpriced travel toothpaste I’d never splurge on for myself, soaps, lotions, and everything else someone away from home might need.

The beauty of a bathroom that isn’t heavily used on a regular basis is that you don’t end up with all the “stuff” of a daily use bathroom. All we needed in here were a couple of towels and a bath mat stashed under the sink with a basket for extra toilet paper, and a quick spray paint “first aid” box project to hold some basics for our guests.

Thanks for peeking in! And if you need me I’ll just be over here tile-gazing and soaking in the success of (finally) checking this project off the list!

Products used:  shower curtain  |  curtain rod  |  curtain hooks

faucet  |   sink  |   sconces  |   shower head set

hair dryer bag  |   towel hook  |   toothbrushes  |   TP holder

I last posted some updates about our basement bar/living room here, and the guest bedroom / bathroom here, earlier this winter.

Since then, it’s been flooring glory!

Beginning in the bar, we put down a “luxury vinyl” (that term kills me) at the recommendation of a couple different flooring experts, because of the fact this is basement level. It’s still dusty in this pic, but we love the variation in the color, and the texture that looks like real scraped wood.

I’m totally psyched about how the cabinet color turned out (“Cascade” by Sherwin William), and it was all in all a piece-of-cake job. The bar will have some copper accents, including this cabinet hardware. After weighing a TON of counter options, we’ve decided to stain some butcher block for the counters to match tones in the floor, and keep some woodsy depth going — it was starting to feel like a light of “light” between the carpet, paint color, and white trim.

In the bathroom, we went several rounds of plumbing WTF moments — the super short version of a very long story is that our basement was originally plumbed for a tub/shower combo — not what we wanted. And because the builder had already been in here once to jack up our foundation and move the pipe once before (it was originally placed in our storage closet on the other side of the wall — face palm), we didn’t want to do that yet again. So we settled for an above rough-in “special” (read: expensive and must be custom ordered — budget increase/timeline delay GRR!) shower pan insert. To make it feel as little contractor grade as possible, we opted to surround it with subway tile up to the ceiling, and hopefully draw eyes away from it altogether. I love the contrast of the dark grout on the white tile, and grounding it all with the dark floor tile and light grout that makes it pop.

A standard shower door won’t fit the space and while we looked at some alternative options, we are MORE than happy to put in one of the many cool rod options I’ve seen popping up, along with an extra long curtain and call it a day down here. This portion of the project ended up way over budget, both in time and money, and I’m okay that a curtain tucked to the side still shows off the tile. A toilet, some trim, and a vanity that Page would like to build himself will finish up this bad boy.

The basement is just one of many projects in the works right now, but as soon as there’s more to show (hopefully just a final “DONE” tour!), I’ll be back!