Henry's Room

It was pretty important to us to get the kids' rooms done first, mostly because we wanted them to have a place to call their own.  But, I must admit, I was also really psyched to give Henry a little boy room!  The family who lived here before us had two girls, and we thought it was a good time to inject some boyishness into the place!

Just as with Nina's room, we stripped the wallpaper and replaced the pink carpets.

Henry's room got a board and batten wall treatment too, and a fresh coat of paint.  This color is called Sepia Tan by Benjamin Moore.

We removed the old vertical blinds, which lightened up the room considerably.  Henry's buffalo check curtains from Pottery Barn Kids are so cute in here!

I love Henry's bedding.  It's a quilt from Pottery Barn Kids with a camel colored duvet from Woolrich.  The "H" pillow, red ticking stripe pillow and brown corduroy pillow are all made by me, when I was sitting in California, trying to keep busy until we could make our move back to the Midwest!

I always try to use an area rug in rooms that have wall-to-wall carpet.  It just seems to cozy it up and define the space a little bit.  I picked up Henry's rug at Tuesday Morning and the colors are perfect in here!

He still has plenty of room for his toys and books and other little boy goodies!

I love how warm and welcoming the room feels.  When I go in to check on Henry at night, half the time I want to crawl into bed with him and take a nap.  (Plus, he still has that sweet little three-year-old boy smell that I can only get when he's asleep and actually holding still.  I'm going to soak it in as long as I can!)

I hope he loves his room as much as I do!

Nina's Room

As promised, here is the first of many stops along our renovation path.  You may not want to hold your breath between posts, though, because these room-by-room changes are taking a LONG time!  

Out of respect for the previous owners of the home, the "before" photos are going to be rather limited.  So you'll have to forgive me if the angles of the before and after photos don't match up!

That being said, here is a photo of my daughter (age 5) Nina's room, from the day we had our home inspection.  Yep, that's my husband, who had Achilles tendon surgery in the spring and was on crutches for weeks!  

A few things I will point out about the room.  The carpet was pink.  There was lots of wallpaper.  There was pink crown molding.  In short, this is a room I would have rocked in the 1980s.  I wish I had something this cool when I was a kid.  Alas, decorating times have changed, and this room needed a change too!

I get lots of inspiration from all over the web, and this pin board was the kick start of the whole room.  It came from the amazing Holly Mathis.  (Have you girls discovered her yet?  Unbelievable!!)

I also loved the colors of this gorgeous room from a furniture store in California called Art For Kids:

And...here is how Nina's room looks today!

We went with a gorgeous seafoam green for the walls. (That is, after days upon days of removing wallpaper!)  It's called "Pale Vista" by Olympic.  My talented husband even indulged me and created a board and batten treatment for the lower half of the walls.  (We relied a lot on this tutorial from Just a Girl for the board and batten.)  I love it!!

You'll notice we also changed out the pink carpet and painted the crown molding a crisp white.  Here's another shot, a little closer up, of the wall treatment.

I would lay awake for hours in the months before we moved to Ohio, counting the days until the house would be ours.  All those sleepless nights translated into lots of ideas for projects to keep myself busy, and these Euro pillows and striped accent pillows are one of the many results!

The kids' rooms both have these adorable window recesses.  I can just imagine them hiding away in there with the curtains closed, reading a book or daydreaming.

I am so glad we decided to complete the kids' rooms first.  I think it helps for them to be excited about their new house, and it gives them a place to hang out where I don't have to tell them "Don't touch that!"  So many other parts of the house feel like a crazy jungle gym of boxes and piles and paint cans.

Now all Nina needs are a few little pals and she'll be ready for her first sleepover!

Coming Out of Hibernation?

Wow.

So, here I am.  It's been awhile!  I know I've been gone a long time.  Does anyone know how long bees hibernate anyway?  Could my absence still be called a hibernation after all these months?

We've had some big changes.  Some I can talk about, and some, as I'm sure you'll understand, are best left to a personal chat over a glass of wine on the back patio.  I will say that it's been an incredibly rough few years, starting with our move to California in the summer of 2010.  In some ways I feel like an entirely different person, but I guess hard things will do that to you.

In the good news department, though, it turns out I am still the Queen Bee!  In June, we were able to finally move back to Cincinnati, Ohio!  Here's a photo of us that we took mere minutes after crossing the Ohio River.  It's not the most flattering picture of any of us, considering we had just completed a LONG cross-country drive from northern California, but I will always treasure it because I know what emotions I felt when we drove across the bridge and saw my hometown again, knowing that this time I was here to stay.

My husband's job has taken us from Cincinnati (where we met, got married, and had Nina), to Colorado (where Henry was born), and then to California.  We've been gone for over five years.  I didn't always know that I wanted to return to Cincinnati, but as time wore on, it became obvious to us that we wanted to be back in the Midwest, close to family and friends.

Within a few days of moving back, we found ourselves at the Fourth of July parade in downtown Madeira, which is a small Cincinnati suburb.  This is where I grew up and where I always hoped to live again.  People call it Mayberry, and for good reason!

As you might have guessed, I am back on my blog because we are homeowners again!  It's been so fun after being home renters in California. We bought a fabulous family home in Madeira on a cul-de-sac, one that had been owned by the same family for over 30 years.  I'm so happy to know we're coming into a place with such wonderful memories within its walls.

I am so happy to be home, and I am slowly feeling more like myself again.  I'll be around periodically to share our home renovation projects with you.  That is, if there's anyone left out there to see them! :)