by Brooke Christen
We went to my friend Annie’s home, who is a fellow blogger and lives about 25 minutes from my house in Connecticut. We were inspired by a recent book series to make glass terrariums. My daughters are using the completed project as night lights in their room. Come see the finished product and more of Annie’s lovely home.
With summer in full swing I am always looking for DIY projects that are quick and have immediate results. I made a pillow that requires no sewing and is something even kids could do! It is a fun, easy DIY project that can be done in less than 20 minutes. This will also only cost you less than $12. All you need is a 2×3 rag rug, yarn, batting and a sewing needle and you can complete this project.
Ever since the day we moved into this house of January of 2015 I have wanted a sliding barn track door. First of all the doors in the upstairs of our Connecticut Cape are hallow core doors, not like our nice 1950’s solid wood doors on our main level. I was searching on Instagram and came across wood doors from White Shanty and fell in love with their style. They aren’t your typical rustic “barn” door look. I found a classic style door and we are thrilled with the look in the space and how much space it saves. Come see the before photos and how we made it work in a tight space.
Our hallway on our main level needed a little updating. We had painted the entire house in Cloud Cover from Benjamin Moore, I loved the wall color, but the space was still missing something. I knew I wanted a rug, the funny thing is my girls actually play in the hall, they like to be right in the middle of everything. I also had some extra wood left over from our wood floors upstairs. I would see the leftover wood sitting in our basement taunting me to be used somewhere, I couldn’t let a stack of wood sit there unused. So I talked my husband into starting yet another project…
With my other two babies I used a bassinet for about 2-3 months. In our other home our master bedroom was further away from the nursery so it made sense to have a bassinet. This time the nursery is pretty close to the master, basically I could lay in bed and touch the other room, maybe exaggerating a little, but honestly it is like 10 steps away. I spent some time looking at bassinets. These were my favorites and also I couldn’t help myself I bought one, keep reading to see how it looks in our master bedroom.
I have painted about 7 of my own pieces of furniture with Chalk Paint or Mud Paint. I get asked often what the difference is between them, so I thought I would share my experience with both Mud Paint and Chalk Paint. Both are great products and I love the end result of these pieces I painted and some I had a client paint in her home.
I went out to dinner with some friends the other night and we were catching up on what we have been up to. One of my friends is moving so she has been de-junking. They moved from Utah when we did and she was shocked with how much stuff they brought with them that they haven’t even unboxed or used in over a year. My other friend shared that she read something online about de-cluttering and setting a timer for 15 minutes to tackle as much as you could in that time. This are my top tips for keeping your home clutter free.
We had these Ikea white cabinets with the plastic bins in the girls playroom in our old house. I know you have all seen them if you don’t own one yourself. The plastic always kind of bothered me, but I thought “relax Brooke, it’s a play room.” Now that we are in a smaller house we use the bins in the girls bedroom. They have a good size bedroom and there was plenty of room for toys. But now that it is all open the plastic bothered me even more. So I came up with a Ikea hack to create something more pleasing to the eye.
When we moved from Utah to Connecticut we had to sell and giveaway A LOT of our furniture and accessories. Our new home in Connecticut is about half the size that it was in Utah, we had a lot of things we were not going to have room for. I was able to sell several pieces with the home. There were extra things that I knew had value and I would have to replace like sofa’s, dining table and beds so I wanted to make some money off of them. I used to be a store buyer and manger of a store in Utah, clients would often ask how much to sell pieces for when they were buying new things. I thought I would share what has worked for me and some examples and my top tips for selling furniture.
I shared on my Instagram the other day my frustration with my recent hydrangea purchases. I bought one batch at Trader Joe’s and they died about two days later. I had family coming into town and my daughters baptism, so I went back and bought some more. One of the hydrangea heads died the next day and the others followed a day later. I was mad and so bugged! So I aired my frustration and received so many good tips, I had to give it another try and of coarse share with you.
