Happy Spring Everyone!  You may have noticed that I didn’t share an April Round Up (due to the One Room Challenge craziness) but I’m back this month with lots of updates.  To start, I have added a new subscription button to my website (you can find it in the right hand column) so feel free to sign up to know when a new post is published.   Along those lines, I’m also going to be including a list of my posts from the previous month to my round ups as well so you can catch up on anything you missed – here’s what went down in May:

• One Room Challenge Week 5 – Faux Fireplace and the Final Details
• One Room Challenge Week 6 – The Dining and Front Room REVEAL
• Adding the Final Details with Legrand Outlets and Switches
• How to build a Faux Fireplace – and make it glow!

Playroom Organization

My boys have both really gotten into drawing this last year (which I love!) but it has led to some big messes and some big fights over art supplies (which I definitely do not love!) so I knew as soon as I had some time I wanted to figure out an easy way to organize and separate their materials.  I had two big shelves on either side of the built ins that were never really utilized for anything so they were the perfect places to give each kid their own designated space.

I needed to replace some of the long thin art boxes that had been falling apart since we moved so I picked up 3 new ones from Pottery Barn Kids on prime day.  These are a great place to let them keep drawings and blank paper, but I also love to store all of the special art pieces I have collected over the years that I want to hold on to.  Since my littlest one can’t read yet, I like to use color coding whenever I can – Green or Gray for Grayson, and Blue or Black for Blake.

To corral everything else, I picked up some awesome and super cheap storage containers from IKEA, and just used some stick on letters I had laying around to label each one.  This simple system has made it so much easier for all of us to clean up, and to make sure they’re not fighting over markers every night!  As much as I want them to be able to share, I also think it’s important that they each have things that are just theirs that they are responsible for taking care of.

May Delivery

There’s something so exciting about building furniture for children, especially when it’s for a newborn baby’s nursery.  When a very dear friend of mine asked me to help build a bookcase to house all of their changing table supplies I knew I wanted to make something really special.  I usually find a base plan to work from and modify it to what I need, but for this project I challenged myself and designed it entirely from scratch.

She wanted the stain to be very light to match the nursery furniture, and I wanted the piece to be something that could grow with the room from newborn to teenager so I kept the design very clean with straight, simple lines.

To see some of my other favorite pieces visit my Custom Furniture page.

A Change of Plans

If you read my 2018 project plan you may remember that I mentioned our plan for the backyard this year was to work on a firepit/lounging area – well now that the weather is starting to warm up and we’re spending more time outside we have decided to make a change and do some more work on the patio area.  Last year I built this sawhorse table (I used these plans from Shanty 2 Chic if you’re interested) and bought these amazing black chairs from Target on a great sale, so we really want to be able to eat dinner out there – but since our backyard faces west the sun just beats down on us right around dinner time.  To fix that, we are working on getting a large umbrella set up to provide shade in the right spot so fingers crossed!  Additionally I picked up this awesome outdoor rug from Rugs USA and am planning on building some storage benches along the back of the patio.

May Recipes

For mother’s day this year I finally got a copy of the Magnolia Cookbook and I knew instantly that I was gonna love the recipes in it!  Over the next few months me (and the boys) are going to try to cook our way through it and I’ll be sharing all of the goodness with you along with my honest opinions.  So far we’ve tackled three recipes from the Breakfast section and they have seriously all been DELICIOUS and my oldest in particular has gobbled everything up.  I can tell already that she knows how to season her food really well, and that the recipes are exactly what comfort food should be.