With the addition of the crib, I feel like the baby's room has taken leaps and bounds!  It will be a fairly neutral nursery since I've decided that painting anything in this house is just too much considering we're only here for 2-2.5 more years and there's just SO much to paint.  So the nursery will be white with accents of color.  

I posted some nursery inspiration images below that I've been looking at and also some items I've decided to purchase.  The room will slowly come together over the next couple months.  

My hope is to just have some fun colored accents. I've purchased plum colored drapes and the bedding I've registered for is a lavender color.  The rug is from Ikea and just kind of goes with everything.  I'm hoping to find a fun colored dresser or maybe even painting one.

I've picked out the three prints below from The Animal Print Shop and hope to order them this month.  I'll hang them over her bed.  

I'm also loving the book ledge idea.  I've registered for a couple from Pottery Barn Kids.

My mom and I are going to try to make our mobile  based on the image below.  I'm excited for our little craft project.  I think I like the below felt colors from Crafty on Etsy.

More to come!

Its way to early to do anything in the garden here in Colorado.  I've been told by my wise neighbor to fight the urge until May at least, despite the tempting garden displays that start to pop up at every store as soon as the weather starts getting pleasant.  

Even with this in mind however, I am starting to look at my sad cold garden as the snow starts to melt on top of it and am starting to think about our last season here before the big move to Germany.  We rent, so there aren't any major landscape overhauls in my near future (plus my gardening needs some work), but I love gathering ideas for our "One Day House"

Here are some images to inspire!

I just discovered a site called Wayfare and haven't been able to stop looking at it all morning! 

It's a travel blog and magazine that feature trendy spots, unique finds, tips, and gear.  You should check it out. Be warned, however, that it will add to your bucket list (there's lots of U.S. adventures too)! 

The quote and image above is from their recent, and first, print magazine.  I think its very fitting,  I feel like traveling and experiencing new cultures changes you in a way that few other things will. 

While I was checking out Wayfare, I saw a recent post where they featured the designs of Herb Lester.  He has a line of travel maps out that I REALLY want.  They look so cool! 

We gave the half bath at my mother-in-law's house a refresh over the holiday.  It was QUITE a task!  We kept running into issues at every turn.  We had problems with the plumbing, we uncovered a horrible ceiling patch job when we removed the popcorn off the ceiling, the paint we bought ended up requiring four coats instead of the intended two, the hardware to the sink and toilet were completely corroded, etc.  But its done, thankfully!

Here's some photos of the process and the finished product.  It was hard to photograph because it was so tiny!

Somewhat before the work started.  I didn't get in there with the camera quick enough before the wallpaper ripping started.  It came off really easily on the walls away from the light, but the stuff closer to the light was tough.  We think that maybe the heat from the light over time just set the glue.

The color selection begins.

All the wallpaper we have access to is off.  Now the sink and toilet need to be removed so we can access behind them.

The sink was not only caulked to the wall and floor, but was tipped back to the wall so it was caulked in a leaning position.  We kept running into really poor craftsmanship as we moved through the process.

I didn't get a photo of it, but next to the light fixture, the previous installers had cut in wiring from the light fixture to the light switch and instead of removing the wallpaper to patch the holes they made, they just applied netting and spackle OVER the wallpaper.  So all that needed to be fixed in this process.

The screws were so corroded on this old toilet that we had to drill into the screws to break them apart.

We scraped the popcorn ceiling off using vinegar and water.  It was a really messy job because the plaster gets glue-like as its being scraped off, but it came off fairly easily.  Unfortunately we discovered this hideous patch job in the process that had to be carefully sanded, patched, and plastered.

After removing the sink, we could finish removing the wall covering.  We also had better access to the plumbing fixtures, which were very corroded from age.  We replaced all that we could without making it a major plumbing job.

Nothing like painting at midnight :)  Apparently red is one of the hardest colors to get good coverage with.  Who knew?!  To make matters worse, we were painting directly on drywall, which I had never done before and it wasn't accepting the paint very well.  If you tried to do more than one pass with either the roller or the brush it would start to clump and pull itself off the wall.  It was horrible.  We ended up needing to do 4 coats of the base color red.

After finishing the 4 coats of base paint, we taped off vertical stripes with a laser level.  The base coat was an eggshell and the stripe is a high gloss paint.  The stripes are subtle and were really hard to photograph.  I think the effect turned out really nice though.  I had never done this before, so we were figuring things out as we went.

Finished!  This isn't the ta-da photo that I wanted (the room, again, was really hard to photograph).  To my defense though, this was taken at 6:15 in the morning.  We had worked through the night.  I had just installed that shelf seconds prior and we were 15 minutes late to leave for the airport!

We installed a new faucet, drain, shelf, glass shades for the light fixture, towel rack, toilet and sink plumbing hardware, a new toilet, a GFCI outlet, new white switch and outlet covers, and purchased new accessories (towels, soap dispenser, basket for TP, and scented oil).