Dresser - Before and After

Back in September the girl I visit taught who was moving offered this dresser to us. I thought it would be perfect as a dresser/changing table duo in Aiden's nursery so we snatched it up for 20 bucks.

Our first thought was to sand it down and stain it.  My parents willingly kept it in their backyard and Trent would go over a day here and a day there, among everything else he had on his plate, for several weeks and would work on sanding it.  Neither of us have any experience with sanding and this dresser has many beveled edges.  Trent sanded the whole dresser (pretty much), but was worried about sanding the edges down too much as well as unevenly.  It's very hard to sand beveled edges and keep them all even.

That's when we came up with a brilliant idea - to just paint it! So much easier!

We went to Home Depot with a gift card from our wedding 3 1/2 years ago (love it!) and picked up paintbrushes, primer, and paint.  All of the walls in our apartment are completely white and we don't want to deal with painting them, just to have to paint them back whenever we move, so we knew we wanted to paint the dresser a fun color to add some color to the room.

We decided on a green color - Martha Stewart's Bay Leaf to be exact :)

Trent and I spent 2 days (just a few hours each) on this project.  The first day was for the primer and the second day we painted.  Then we went to Lowe's with another gift card from our wedding 3 1/2 years ago (love it!) and picked up new knobs.  This was so fun and we are so pleased with our decision.

Check it out!

Again, before.

And after!

Looks pretty good, huh?!  The color may be a little shocking for some people, but we really love it! And it was a needed "pop" of color in the nursery :)

We sanded parts here and there to give it a distressed look.

We moved the crib to the other side of the nursery to make more room and allow for both the glider and the recliner to be in there (we love having both).  

We have a few finishing touches to make to the nursery (yes, Aiden is 2 months old..ha), but we are so pleased with how it is turning out :)

My Baby Shower :)

This last Saturday was my long-awaited baby shower!  And it turned out so great!  I only really got pictures before the guests came.

Trent (he had just come from a ward service project) and I behind the food table (that was still being set up).  

We picked up those canvases from a cute boutique in downtown Mesa back after our first ultrasound when we found out we were having a boy, but kept it a secret from our family for several more weeks :)  They have been the basis for our nursery theme.  And check out the adorable cake! Everyone was so impressed!

A close-up.  Tanis (Trent's mom) has a very talented friend, huh?!

After Amber, Jill, and Jen showed up :)

The cute favors :)

 A close-up.  A sister in the ward, who is known for her cookies, made them for us!  Delicious!

With my beautiful mom :)

  

On the left is the crib quilt from our bedding and a diaper cake (it didn't photograph very well).  On the right is the beautiful Petunia Picklebottom diaper bag my mom got for us and also the baby blanket she and Amber made for us!  I'm so excited about all of it!

The three hostesses and I at the very end.  Nicole McBeth, who offered up her beautiful home, my mother-in-law, Tanis, and of course, my mom :) They all made for a beautiful shower!  Thank you so much ladies!

We felt pretty spoiled when we headed home with all of our gifts.  I know this picture just looks like a mess..haha.  Most of the gifts are packed into all of the bags.  We are SO grateful for all of our family and friends and their generosity, love, and support!  We feel very blessed!

And my 37-week bump with a glimpse at the non-cluttered side of our nursery.  It still needs a lot of work, but we're excited with how it's coming together :)

You can see our new glider in this picture!  We were absolutely floored when Trent's second-cousins purchased our glider and had it delivered to us!  Trent can attest to how excited I was!  We never expected anyone to get it for us back when we registered for it. Again, we are SO grateful for such loving family and friends!

The shower was wonderful and now we are feeling pretty much ready to meet our little boy!  Our car seat should be coming in today (thank goodness!) and then we just wait for this little guy to make his debut!  Last Wednesday I was 1.5 cm dilated so we're hoping that's a good sign and that he'll come a little early.  We'll see my progress again on Wednesday!

Ikea purchases

So as I mentioned in my post yesterday, we went to Ikea today! We had 2 specific purchases in mind so it was a pretty quick trip, which was good because I wasn't feeling my best. The heat sure gets to me :/

First we got drapes for the dining room! And I am absolutely in love with them, as is Trent!! We can't stop looking at them..haha. We really needed a pop of color in the room b/c our blinds are white and all of our walls are white. We don't want to deal with painting the walls b/c whenever we end up moving we'd have to paint them back.

What do you think??

We're still deciding on window treatments for all of the other windows.

Our second purchase was just this little lamp. We've needed some more light in the living room for a while now because we never use the overhead light. We just don't like it! We chose this one b/c it matches the floor lamp we have on the other side of the living room. Plus it was only 10 bucks!

We are very pleased with our purchases! Gotta love Ikea!!

Deck the Halls!

We finished our Christmas decorating last week and I figured I'd put these pictures up for me to look back on.

Here Trent is putting the star on the tree. I realized after he did this that most people put their star on at the very end! We're just different I guess :)

This year, now that we're in Arizona near both of our parents, we got all of our ornaments from our parents. Both of us have a grandma that would give us an ornament every year. So our tree is kind of a hodge-podge of ornaments, but we think it ended up looking pretty nice! They are all totally different and it's fun to look at each of them :)

The final tree!

I changed out the fabric on my blessings board (which I wrote about last month) so now it's Christmasy :)

Here's the whole living room decked out :) It's so fun to have a mantel this year for our stockings. This is actually the first year we've gotten stockings b/c the last few years we came down here from Provo, so there wasn't really any point to have them since we weren't at our own place.

Hope everyone is happy and enjoys the holiday cheer over the next few weeks :)

Blessings Board

Lately Trent and I feel like all we ever do is pay bills, and sometimes we feel like we can't keep up with them. It's hard to go about life without complaining, worrying, and stressing about all that isn't going quite right. Often we (I mean "we" as in everyone) have to make a conscious effort to be optimistic. In reality we are all spoiled and have so much to be grateful for! I know because, for the most part, anyone reading this are family or friends :)

I was thrilled when I happened upon this project several weeks ago, and could not pass it up. And it's so easy to make :) I found the tutorial here.

We found a red frame. Here Trent is spray painting it black.

Here's our final product. We are so pleased with it!

Julie, the woman who came up with the idea, is using her Blessings Board as a Thanksgiving decoration, but Trent wondered why we wouldn't just use ours all year round. We think it'll be fun to change out the fabric for the appropriate season and time of year :) We can't decide if we want to add flowers to ours like Julie did. It would be harder because we'd have to change them up everytime we change the fabric. We may just add some ribbon to a corner because it would be easier. Who knows! My mom thinks we should just leave it plain, but Amber thinks we should definitely add a flower or ribbon ;)
Trent and I took turns writing our blessings with glass markers (I found them at Walmart for about $3.50). It's fun to be able to change them up whenever you think of one! I don't know if you can read them all in the pictures.
They are (I started):

1. Trent
2. Jess
3. Our home
4. The Atonement
5. Our jobs
6. Scriptures
7. Midol (earlier that morning I had terrible, terrible cramps)
8. Pumpkins
9. Cooling weather
10. Date night
We have our Blessings Board right near our front door. As silly as it sounds, it helps keep things in perspective. There's something about having a tangible object that we can look at and write on :)

Hope you guys will think about making one too!

Our First Visitors!

My cousin, Josh, and his cute wife Tiersha came to stay with us this past weekend. There's a possibility they may move here once they're done with school so they figured they better come check out Arizona. Here are some pictures from Saturday of some of the fun things we did while they were here!

First we took them to see the Mesa temple. It was a beautiful day and we saw 3 wedding parties while we were there!

I think this picture is funny b/c I'm the third wheel..haha. Obviously Trent was taking the picture :)

Tiersha and Josh

And Trent and I.

We spent most of the day in Scottsdale and did some shopping. Then we got cupcakes at Sprinkles. It was me and Trent's first time and we were not disappointed :) We tried the Red Velvet cupcake as well as the Black and White. You can check them out at the Sprinkles website.

That evening we had dinner at my parents' place with all of my sisters. We went on a walk after dinner with the dogs. Arizona always has beautiful sunsets!

The three puppies :) Whoops! I think Buddy is taking a potty break here..haha

The group! None of the dogs were cooperating for the picture.

This is just a short video from our walk. Sorry, it's not great quality.

Then we went back to our place for some games. Jenga first.

Jill about to topple the whole thing over!

And there it goes! I think this is a cool picture! We played Nerts after this. Always the intense game :)

We loved having Josh and Tiersha here and would be thrilled if they moved down here (no pressure guys!). All of my sisters, except Amber, will be heading back to college in the next few weeks and we'll definitely miss them and everyone in Provo. We would love to have more visitors! Come stay with us!

A Great Find!

This will be a short post, but yesterday we picked up this nightstand for 15 bucks from a lady selling it on Craigslist! We needed one for our guest bedroom and I am so pleased with it! We'll probably spray paint it black to match the bookcase that is also in the room. Don't you just love a great find?!

A Critter in the Bathroom

Last night as I was getting ready for bed I discovered a gecko in our bathroom. I wouldn't say I'm scared of geckos, I actually think they're quite cute, but it did freak me out how fast this little guy could run! I screamed a few times and had my sweet husband come in and capture it!

Here is our captured critter!

I'm grateful Trent is always there to capture critters in our home. This gecko was definitely a first, but he's had to take care of many spiders since we've been married. I even have him take care of the tiniest spiders. Yes I could just kill them myself, but I always prefer that Trent do it for me :) I just think spiders are incredibly creepy.

Our New Home!

I thought I'd take you all on a little tour of our new home :) When we moved here we fully intended to move into a one bedroom apartment - we had booked it, finished all of the background checks, signed all of the paperwork, and everything. Once we started moving everything in we realized there was no way we were going to fit everything in! We made a run to the front office and they thankfully had some two-bedrooms available. The switch went very smoothly and we are so grateful we went for it!

Here is the outside. We are on the second floor.

This is what we look out on! A little man-made pond! Trent and I are making a habit of taking a walk around it every night before we go to bed (this picture only shows about half of it).

This is our lovely living room. We really can't stand the pure white walls throughout the apartment (boring!) so we are in the process of brainstorming some ideas of how we can bring some more color in (ideally without painting).

This is another angle. You can see the front door in this picture.

Here is our cute dining room! You can see our balcony in the background.

Obviously this is the kitchen :)

And the other side that looks out to the dining and living rooms.

This is just the hallway.

Our bedroom. After taking this picture we realized just how white our room is. We're hoping to put a cute wall decal up to add color. I'll have to take pictures when we do that :)

Just another angle.

Our bathroom.

The laundry room.

And lastly the guest bathroom. And yes we do have a guest bedroom, but it wasn't cute enough to take a picture of yet :) We would love visitors if anyone is ever down this way. Definitely give us a call!

Hope you enjoyed my little tour! We are loving our place! In an upcoming post I'll have to let you all know what I've learned about the heat since we've been here :)