Darcy's Big Girl Flower Garden Bedroom

We're only a few weeks away from a new occupant moving into the crib, so it was time to boot Darcy out and transfer her to a big girl room!

I originally intended for this bedroom makeover to be a Christmas surprise for Darcy (although I never got as far as figuring out how to keep an entire room in our house a secret from her), and it is just now completed in mid-March, so that's right on track for my typical scheduling!

I recruited some design talent to put this room together -- namely, Kathleen of Lindsay Hill Interiors (aka Darcy's grandma) and she did a marvelous job of creating the perfect space for Darcy. We wanted to give her a room that was sweet and girly, without being babyish or too 'cutesy.' The results are a lovely, feminine space that can grow with her, and won't feel like a baby room as she gets older.

Needless to say, Darcy LOVES her new room.

Step 1 was getting this girl a Beddy's of her very own. Every member of this family now sleeps in a Beddy's bedding set and they are THE BEST EVER. Perfect trifecta of being simple to use, comfy to sleep in, and absolutely adorable. We picked out the Vintage Blush Beddy's for Darcy's room.

If you aren't familiar with this awesome product, it is an all-in-one bedding set (meaning, literally ONE PIECE of bedding from fitted sheet through top quilt) that zips up the sides similar to a sleeping bag. It is a one step, one zip process to make the bed in the morning, and Darcy can do it by herself. Hallelujah for one less chore for me to complete every day! Another perk for young kids transitioning out of a crib is that zipping it up to her armpits at night prevents her from falling out of the bed as she gets used to sleeping in a bed without side rails. Just awesome, all around.

If you'd like to see how we all use our Beddy's, you can see them at home in Forrest's bedroom HERE, and our bedroom HERE (those pictures are actually from our old house -- maybe someday I'll get around to photographing our bedrooms in our current place!).

Kathleen recommended a feminine accent wall, and she found this beautiful floral wallpaper from Milton & King. I found the idea of wallpaper pretty intimidating, but it turns out, wallpaper is pretty simple to hang (as long as you've got two sets of hands at your disposal, and bonus points if your designer has worked with wallpaper before and doesn't mind helping out!). It took us an afternoon to put the wallpaper up, and I love that it brings in some fun color and pattern without being overwhelming or too 'trendy' -- I have high hopes that this is a style that will look great for years to come.

This dresser was a vintage find that we refinished in a cheery yellow color before Darcy was born (you can see it in her original baby nursery HERE), and it looks perfect in this colorful, happy room.

This girl LOVES her stuffed animals and plays with them frequently, so we included a big basket in her bedroom for her furry friends to live in. And this shaggy, plush, comfy rug from Rugs USA is so soft and cozy that I keep catching Darcy lying on it, trying to make snow angels.

Darcy is absolutely loving her new room, and so am I! If you have questions about any of the items in her room, let me know and I'll do my best to answer :-)

Product list:
Zipper bedding, bedskirt, pillows: c/o Beddy's
Bed: Walmart
Basket, dresser, floral paintings, and many accessories: thrift store finds
Distressed letter "d" over bed: Hobby Lobby
Nightstand: thrifted, I believe originally from Ikea?
Lamp: Target
Wallpaper: c/o Milton & King
Rug: c/o Rugs USA

My Kitchen for the One Room Spring Tour

I'm excited to be a part of the One Room Spring Tour blog hop today with Lindsay Hill Interiors! Every day this week, 5 bloggers are sharing one room in their homes, and how they've decorated for spring.

Today's featured room is kitchens -- if you're hopping over from Kelley Nan, welcome and thanks for stopping by!

On to my kitchen, which I think makes a great backdrop for spring decor in all its bright white glory.

Tulips are the ultimate spring flower to me -- they are just so peppy and inviting. I love this big planter box filled with yellow tulips. If only they'd last year round.

My kitchen hutch is fun to decorate for different holidays and seasons. For spring, I added a few pink plates to the white dishes and plants I always have on display. I love the splash of color.

Do you like how I dressed up all stylish and fancy for these photos? This can double as a home decor and a fashion post. This is my very nicest sweatshirt. For my fashion-forward readers, you can find it at a local boutique called Walmart.

Thanks for swinging by for my spring kitchen tour! Make sure to head over to Driven by Decor tomorrow morning as she kicks off the final day of the blog hop with her spring dining room!

Living Room Idea Board

We decided shortly before closing on our new house that our collection of mostly hand-me-down living room furniture was going to look a bit shabby in such a pretty new build.

I don't think our old furniture was bad by any means -- it was pretty neutral and in decent shape, but definitely starting to show its age, and not well suited for this new space. You can see our old living room setup in THIS post. (Bear in mind that everything always looks nicer in blog photos than in real life!)

With the new house being so open and light, we want to go for a new look. Here's our idea board that I very inexpertly pulled together just now. Thanks to my mom for always working for me for free :-)

- I've wanted a white couch FOREVER but have never felt like it was a practical choice with our little monsters. But after reading roughly 4000 reviews of the Ikea Ektorp, I think I'm ready to go for it.

- For some reason, light colored chairs don't sound half as terrifying to me as a light colored couch (maybe because my kids always, 100% of the time, opt for sitting on a couch instead of chairs). I already purchased THESE chairs from Joss & Main (which were at least $50 cheaper a few weeks ago!) and Scotch Guarded the crap out of them.

- The coffee table and sideboard on the right we already own (not those exact ones, but similar). My sideboard is a dark walnut color, and I want to do something to it -- paint? strip? I can't decide. It looks great in the room, but the color just isn't right, and I don't know what to do with it. Suggestions welcome.

- The sideboard on the left is just a dream at this point. We have one very large, very long, very empty living room wall that would look great with a long, impressive sideboard. And of course, I chose a very expensive one to set my heart upon. I actually couldn't find a picture of the exact one I want, but the one shown is the same maker and style, just a smaller version of the one I want. I'll need to save up my pennies for it.

New House Tour

I've got a few pictures to share with you today of our new house! I wish with all my heart that I had taken more/better pictures before we moved in, because I really want to show it to you empty before I start sharing any of our decor ideas. I saved the photos from the MLS listing, but I'm worried some psycho will reverse image search them, find the address, and come murder me in my bed.

So instead of that highly appealing option, I proudly present: cell phone snaps taken over a month ago!

Please don't come murder us, mmkay?

We didn't have anything to do with the building process, but this house is a new build. Kind of fun to have something fresh and new without having to make any of the tough decisions or deal with any stressful waiting. It's a rambler style with all the main living on one level, plus a large unfinished walkout basement.

We'll start with my favorite room in the house: the kitchen.

White cabinetry is my love language. I love how bright and fresh this space looks, and I'm crazy about the tongue and groove ceiling. 

Also: DOUBLE OVENS!!! I remember saying to Jeff when we looked at the house that they felt like a bit of a waste, and I thought I'd probably only need to use them on holidays. FALSE. I have used them quite a few times already in the (not even) two weeks we've been here, and they're amazing.

I don't think I really understand the framed accent tile over the stove top -- I can't say it's my favorite part of the house, but honestly, I'll probably never bother changing it. My plan is just to hang something in the middle of it and call it a day.

The doors on the right open onto a deck. The lot is sloped, so the front door is at ground level, but the back of the house here is the height of a second story. The deck overlooks a nice lake view, and I think we'll really enjoy it in the summer. The closer doorway on the left leads to a small mudroom area, the laundry room, a half bath, and the garage. The farther left door is the pantry.

Backing up a bit, this is the view from the entryway into the living room and kitchen area. Of course I bought the first house I could find that was constructed of more windows than walls. Love me some natural light. That stair rail you see at the left leads down into an unfinished basement -- we'll save up and tackle that project in a few years.

And from the other direction, you can see the entry, the stairs going to the basement, and a lovely board and batten wall. And also my little helper, measuring the living room for me.

Directly off the entry is a smaller room that I am extremely excited about. It's too small to be a family room, and I'm not sure what the builders meant it to be used as (probably an office, or small sitting room for visitors?). Whatever their plans were, I've been waiting forever to make a little reading nook in a house, and I'm finally getting it here. Welcome to my library room.

Nice big windows on one side, and we'll be adding built in bookshelves along the opposite wall (on the right in the picture below). I'll add a couple big cozy chairs and reading lamps, a few little side tables. I'M SO EXCITED. I made sure Jeff realized that building a library room will only encourage me to buy books much more frequently. We have an understanding that many new books will need to be purchased. #happydance

I don't have any pictures of bedrooms or bathrooms (which are down a hallway on the opposite side of the entry from this room), so those will have to wait until they're all set up and ready to share. So this is a brief and partial tour, but it's a start, at least! Thanks for visiting our new house with us :-)

Iron Birch Coffee Table GIVEAWAY

We have been absolutely thrilled with the beautiful custom furniture and equipment built by Iron Birch for our new office space (check out the full office tour HERE!), and I'm so excited to be giving away a coffee table to one lucky winner!

One of you will receive this gorgeous metal coffee table (well, we're keeping ours, thank you very much, but you'll get one custom built for you, in exactly this design!). It is all metal, so sturdy and durable, and I love the design -- rustic and charming, yet sleek and modern.

Deveren, the owner of Iron Birch, is crazy talented both as a designer and a metal worker -- in addition to the coffee table, he also built our beautiful office sign, Jeff's jaw-dropping office desk, and all of our traction equipment.

And to give you a glimpse of some of his other designs, this coffee table was built from a set of vintage drafting drawers, topped with weathered barn wood. I saw this one in person at Deveren's shop, and it is, if possible, even cooler in person.

This dining table is so cool I can hardly come up with an introductory sentence worth of its magnificence. Love it.

Enter to win a custom metal coffee table from Iron Birch just like the one we have in our office by using the Rafflecopter below! The giveaway will run from 2/18 - 2/24, when a random winner will be chosen. Giveaway is open to residents of the continental US only. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Foundation Chiropractic Office Remodel

The last time I mentioned our business, I believe, was when Jeff was opening the doors of his chiropractic clinic at his first location. You can visit an older post HERE to see the before and after pictures of that office renovation.

That office space had enjoyed a previous life as a very colorful tattoo parlor before we took over (seriously, I'm going to have to insist that you go and visit that post to see the before pictures -- they are so worth a click), and we subdued it into a nice little office space.

2 years later, we had the option of renewing our lease, or cutting ties and searching for something new. That office space was a great place to start, but in those 2 years of business we had taken on a few employees, added some new equipment, and really outgrown that space. It was getting awfully tight, and we decided it was time to relocate somewhere a little bigger and a little nicer.

We found a great space just 2 miles away from the first office, and spent the month of October tearing down walls, installing new flooring, and painting in the new space while continuing to see patients in the old office. We opened the doors of the new location in November, and have been so happy with how the office turned out!

I took these pictures right before Christmas and have been procrastinating this post for weeks! Pay no attention to the holiday decor :-)

We decided to go with a rustic industrial vibe in the office, and I have been loving how it all turned out. The tile floor and reception desk/counter were original to the space, and we thought the colors fit in perfectly with what we had in mind. I really wanted a cool wall feature to be the first things people see when entering the office, so we decided on this awesome reclaimed wood accent wall.

Those boards are actual, honest-to-goodness reclaimed barn wood, purchased from a gentleman who has made a retirement job of traveling throughout Utah, Wyoming, and Colorado tearing down old barns. I love all the character and variety in the boards. You can find our barn wood source on facebook -- Barnwood Recyclers.

That amazing sign came out even better than I'd pictured it -- the logo is cut out, and the wood is visible through the letters. It was made by Iron Birch, a local custom metal designer. Deveren, the owner of Iron Birch, made quite a few pieces for the office and they are all showstoppers -- more on them as we head through the office.

Across from the reception area is our waiting room. That beautiful coffee table is another creation from Iron Birch, and I love the clean lines and modern design. I'm tempted to hire Deveren to make another just like it for my living room. I think it would work beautifully with so many different design styles!

This Friday, I'll be giving away one of these coffee tables, so make sure to check back in to enter to win!

To the right of the reception area and waiting room is a small room that we turned into a kids' play area. We used a half door for this space so kids would stay put while their parents are treated, but parents can still see and hear their kids while keeping them contained. It's worked out really well so far.

The adjusting bay is just around the corner from the waiting room. I love how bright it is, thanks to all the big windows. The wall color is new, as are the lovely gray wood floors.

And that brings us into the main office space. For the technique Jeff uses, he needed the majority of the office to be one big, open space. He uses a lot of traction equipment and exercises with patients, and it made the most sense to tear down walls to create a really large open space in the center of the office. We had to rip out and open up a large conference room as well as 4 individual offices to make this open space happen, and it came out awesome!

His traction equipment above was also built by Deveren from Iron Birch, and it's been fantastic! A huge step up from the equipment Jeff was using at the old office.

Since this is such a big space, we were stumped on wall art. How do you decorate such big, long, empty walls without having any art choice look dinky and tiny?

We found these cool vintage anatomical prints, and had them printed up as huge engineers prints, and used spare barn wood from our accent walls to frame them. I think they came out so cool.

I originally had bigger plans for the massage room, which I wasn't able to finish in time before opening our office doors . . . maybe I'll come back to finish it one day. For now, it's a clean, simple space, and I've enjoyed many wonderful massages in here :-)

Heading down the hall, you can get a peek into Jeff's office, where we continued our barnwood accent wall. IT'S SO COOL, I CAN HARDLY STAND IT.

At the last office, Jeff was using the desk I had in my bedroom as a high schooler. It wasn't a bad desk, but it's getting older and didn't fit the style we were going for, so it was definitely time to upgrade him to a big boy desk. This new desk came out AMAZING. I still just gape at it every time I visit the office. So so cool.

This is another Iron Birch masterpiece. We gave Deveren very little direction here (we totally trust his style!) -- I believe the helpful design instructions we gave him were along the lines of, "I dunno, something manly and cool?"

Nailed it.

I'm jealous of Jeff for being able to sit there and use it every day.

Just look at the awesome detail and design here. When I die, I want Deveren to design my coffin.

We've also got an x-ray room, which looks about like every x-ray room you've ever been in, as well as a large corner room that was being used for storage on the day I took pictures, but is now being used by a physical therapist, who we are super excited to have in the office! I'll have to get pictures of his room and add them to this post another day.

I'll wrap this post up with the wintry mountain view out of one of our windows -- our office is on the second floor of the building, so we get amazing mountain views!

If you'd like to learn more about our practice, you can visit the website HERE.

And be sure to visit Iron Birch's SHOP, FACEBOOK, and INSTAGRAM! See you Friday to give away one of those beautiful coffee tables!

Kids' Holiday Cookie Party

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #GiftDeliciously #CollectiveBias

With Christmas coming up, I wanted to do a little something to get the kids excited about the holidays. And I thought a Christmas cookie party would be a great way to generate some holiday excitement.

We headed to my mom's house for our little gathering, since she has it decorated adorably. It basically looks like a gingerbread house right now, so it seemed like the perfect location for a Christmas cookie party. We kept it simple by focusing on red and white decorations. She already had her white tree set up with red ornaments, so we used a white tablecloth and red place settings to keep the theme going.

I set up one end of the table with sweet little gingerbread man cookie plates, and used the other end of the table as a cookie decorating station. I bought OREO, Chips Ahoy!, and Nutter Butter box packs at Walmart for our party, and set them out on a tray along with some decorations like frosting, chocolate candies, and pretzels. These snack-size boxes were perfect for our party (almost no prep to pull this party together!), and they'd also be perfect as stocking stuffers, neighbor gifts, or teacher gifts. I grabbed a few extra to give to Forrest's preschool teacher and our neighbors. Gotta love an easy, affordable gift that makes this season a little simpler.

 I set out a few examples of decorated cookies that the kids could copy if they liked, which, of course, the children totally ignored and let their artistic juices flow. Fine by me, as long as they have fun!

Don't laugh at my snowmens' faces. I did my best.

We dipped the Nutter Butter cookies in melted white chocolate to create a snowman body, then used black decorator icing for the eyes and smile and an orange mint for the nose. Broken pretzels make nice antlers for OREO reindeer, along with a red chocolate Rudolph nose. And the Chips Ahoy! cookies are so delicious sandwiched with frosting and rolled in colorful sprinkles.

Poor Darcy was feeling a little under the weather on our party day. She wasn't a very active participant, but perked up after sampling the cookies, and sure looked cute sitting at the head of the table.

After we finished decorating (and snacking), we let the kids bag up their cookies to take home and deliver to their friends, teachers, and neighbors. I love finding ways like this to get them thinking about how to make someone else's day special, even if it's as simple as delivering some cookies.

We're attaching these cute little tags to our cookie bags. Feel free to print them out and use them for your holiday gifting! Just right click on the image below to save it to your computer and print at home.

I'd definitely recommend stocking up on these cookie boxes to give during the Christmas season. They're easy to find in huge bins right by the checkout aisles at Walmart!

What's your favorite Christmas cookie?