I won’t bore you with too many words when there are so many pretty pictures to come, but I will say that the bedding from Target inspired the artwork (made by Leslie) and the pillows (made by her mom).  I can only take credit for ONE of the many origami stars in the mobile above the crib.  Many many hours were spent by my preggo friend on that one!

If you have questions about where Leslie got anything, I’ll pass them along and we’ll get you answers just as soon as she’s coherent again!

This is Evan’s big sister Izzi, standing guard at the window.

A comfy place for mom to feed the baby.  I love those rocket ships!

Here they are close up:

There’s another rocket ship above baby Evan’s dresser.  Leslie made the artwork with scrapbook paper and floating glass frames.  Genius!

Of course the empty frames are just waiting for photos of the little guy!

And finally, my favorite part of the room.  The crib and that beautiful mobile!

The Razorback Red cherry on the cake, a little Arkansas bear.

What do you think of Leslie’s amazing nursery?  I think she and her husband Chris did an awesome job.  Only a few more hours before Evan is here and they get to enjoy this room as a family… Best wishes Leslie and Chris!

However, I’ve been suffering from some serious side effects due to this change in career – the biggest one being falling in love with homes all over town when our own house is far from ready to sell!  So instead of making any rash real estate decisions, I thought I’d share my favorite finds with you.

I’m sticking with what I know (Northwest Arkansas) for now, but hopefully my house-crashing friends out in blogland can appreciate pretty houses, no matter where they are!  :)  Without further ado, here are a couple of my favorite homes on the market today.  Click on the address to see more photos and a description of these homes.

808 Fritz Drive ($265,000)

A downtown beauty, this home has been almost completely updated.  You get modern conveniences and finishes in a historic beautiful home.  Doesn’t get much better than that!

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1008 East Trust Street ($595,000)

This was the first home ever built by the architect Fay Jones, famous in our area for his mid-century modern designs.  It has been recently remodeled and boasts great views!

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1400 West Cleveland ($349,900)

Anyone who was a student at the University of Arkansas will probably recognize this iconic yellow house.  It has always been one of my favorites and is so well maintained.  Maybe we can make it ours *next time* it’s up for sale!

So what do you think of my picks?  You can probably tell by the properties I selected that we tend to like old and updated rather than brand-spankin’ new around the Heard household.  Stephen and I would love for our next home to be one with a great history and within walking distance of all the downtown Fayetteville attractions, but for now I’m content just showing and selling these beauties!

They reminded me so much of the colors in our master bedroom that I decided to get a couple and turn them into accent pillows!

I’ve seen tutorials on turning placemats into pillows on several other blogs, but here’s how I did it.

Step 1: Iron your placemats

Step 2: With scissors or a seam ripper, take out the stitches in one edge of the placemat

Step 3: Using your favorite polyester filling, stuff the placemat/ pillow cover

Step 4: Close the seam – I chose to hot glue mine shut (sooo easy)

Step 5:  Admire your new pillows!

Here’s a reminder of what our bedroom looked like before our new pillows.

And here it is now!

Of course my girls felt the need to get in on some photos, as usual!

I hope you liked the quick and easy placemat pillow tutorial.  Now go grab some placemats and start stuffing!

I’m linking to The Link Party at Tea Rose Home

Frugal Friday at the Shabby Nest

Remodelaholic’s Anonymous

UPDATE: My tutorial has been featured on the Remodelaholic blog!  I have to say, it has to be one of my favorite blogs for daily inspiration.  If you haven’t checked it out before, I highly recommend it!

1) We painted the woodwork and shelving supports glossy white to blend in with the walls.

2) We added reclaimed trim to the inside of the doorway and and new baseboards along the floor.

3) We caulked and painted the baseboards.

4) We took one more shot of the new light fixture and then … moved in!

Here’s a refresher of what the room used to look like.

BEFORE

Now here’s what the room looks like today!

AFTER

Stephen was sweet and let me take over a *little* more than my half of the closet.  We went monochromatic with the white walls, white shelving, and ALL white hangers, and I love how clean it looks!

Now I have room for my retro dresser (a gift from my in-laws), which I use as a jewelry and accessory stand.  We also have new bamboo shoe racks (also freebies from my MIL), which are great for keeping our footwear nice and neat.

Let’s not forget that new light fixture!  I love the purple, and I’ll let you in on a little secret – we actually pulled this color from some changes we’re making in our master bathroom.  I’d also eventually like to add some matching storage boxes along the top shelf in the closet to bring more pops of purple into the room.

Here’s a closeup of my little accessory stand.  I found that sweet little green Anchor Hocking chip and dip set at an antique store in Little Rock a few months ago, and it’s the perfect jewelry organizer. Earrings in the top and necklaces in the bottom!

Stephen’s what you would call a minimalist when it comes to his wardrobe, especially after his recent donation to the Goodwill!  Here is his side of the closet.

I don’t know about you guys, but it seems like I have a little shadow that shows up every time I try to take pictures.  I guess she knows she makes the pictures cuter.

Molly says “I hope you enjoyed my mama’s closet makeover!”

I’m linking to The DIY Showoff Project Parade

Frugal Friday at the Shabby Nest

Between Naps on the Porch’s Metamorphosis Monday

Link Party Wednesday at Tea Rose Home

Remodelaholic’s Anonymous

]]> http://welcometoheardmont.com/?feed=rss2&p=2226 8 http://welcometoheardmont.com/?p=2240 http://welcometoheardmont.com/?p=2240#comments Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:33:39 +0000 Meredith http://welcometoheardmont.com/?p=2240 These are a few photos I’ve come across recently that make me 1) want to keep my house really clean 2) want to paint something 3) want to be a better photographer!  Enjoy!

{HGTV’s Sarah’s House}

(If one of these photos is yours, please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due!)

Left side:

Right side:

We had new flooring (ceramic tile) out of necessity, but pretty much nothing else had changed in this room during the two years we’d been in the house, including the hideous popcorn ceiling.

Before I started this blog, I got to know a spray bottle of water and a 4″ putty knife pretty well during the hours I spent up on a ladder, scraping the popcorn texture off the ceilings in our kitchen, dining room, entryway, and hallway. Needless to say, smoothing out the ceiling of our 75-100 square foot master closet wasn’t exactly fun, but it was nothing compared to the other 700 square feet I’d already done in the rest of the house.

I was telling somebody the other day that I imagine the process to be somewhat like childbirth – painful and torturous while you’re doing it but when you see the end result, you suddenly forget how bad it was and you’re ready to do it all over again!

Eight hours on a Saturday, and we went from popcorn to pretty smooth in our closet (and master bath)!

Just for laughs, here’s a peek at the mess I got to clean up afterwards.

I learned my lesson with other rooms in our house and knew I couldn’t just paint the ceiling without doing some spackling work beforehand.  This time I decided to try priming the ceiling first and touching up the rough spots afterwards since having the ceiling all one color would really make the shadows from the uneven spots obvious.

After priming, I smoothed everything out with touch ups of quick-dry spackel, and then it was time to paint!  Since the closet is directly off our master bath and is exposed to lots of moisture, I decided a semi-gloss finish was the way to go.  I actually tried Valspar’s High Hide White Contractors Paint and was surprised at how well it covered for an “economy class” paint.  Two coats on the ceiling, but only one was necessary on the walls.

After hours of effort on the closet ceiling, I knew we would have to change out the boring 80s globe light fixture and replace it with something fun.  Or it could have been the fact that I broke the globe light when I was prepping to paint… either way, it all worked out in the end

I had grand dreams to construct a beaded chandelier with those lampshade frames I mentioned here, but after researching the cost of 100s of colored beads, I started looking at other options.  One day, while I was out picking up some real estate signs I’d ordered, I stopped into one of my favorite local thrift stores.  I sure am glad I did because I came across this sweet woven light fixture for $5.  As luck would have it, it actually worked when I got it home!

After cleaning it up a bit and adding some purple and white spray paint, it looked like this:

I purchased a canopy conversion kit for $5 at Lowe’s and Stephen helped me convert the plug-in light to a hard-wired fixture.  We clipped the chain and cord…

… threaded the cord through the ceiling plate

… split the wires and joined them to the wires in the electric box in the ceiling.

Safety first – of course we turned off the breaker to our closet before taking down the old fixture and putting up the new one!

Less than $15 later, and viola!  A smooth glossy white ceiling and a revamped retro light fixture.

I can’t wait to share the rest of our closet makeover with you.  Come back soon to see the finished result!

This post is a little preview for you all to see how far things have come in our master closet since we moved into our first home two years ago.  We’ve been spending a lot of time sprucing up and organizing in our little walk-in the past few weeks, but you have to see where we started to truly appreciate the changes.

Here’s our closet two years ago, before we’d even officially bought our first place.

Shag carpet, wood trim, off white walls, and popcorn ceilings with a globe light fixture weren’t exactly our choice of finishes, but “Hey, it’s a closet.  Who really cares what it looks like in there anyway?”

Then came the flood.

Halfway through laundry day in the summer of ’08, our washing machine hose came out of the wall and soaked the carpet, not only in our hallway, but through the wall into our master closet.

So out with the soaked and musty carpet and in with the ceramic tile.  We selected the tiles to match those in our adjoining bathroom, but as it was our first DIY tiling job, we failed to see the importance of staying as neat as possible and cleaning up our messes BEFORE they dried.

Yes, that’s dried mortar all over every single tile in our too-big-for-its-own-good closet.  And yes, that’s a chisel and a mallet waiting for me to pick them back up and slowly chisel away all that dried mortar.  Thanks house.  Lesson learned.

Then it was time to grout.  After hours of chiseling and scrubbing away the excess mortar, we finally did something right.  Some people say grouting is their least favorite part of installing their own tile, but for us, it went as smooth as buttah.  Our saving grace was most likely the fact that we read the instructions and bought the pre-mixed variety.

I’m a bit embarrassed to tell you how long it took for us to get to this point, but once we had those tiles grouted, we decided it was good enough for the time being and moved our clothes back in.

So here’s how our closet looked until about four weeks ago.  Not pretty to look at, but somewhat functional and thankfully not carpeted in musty shag!

Left side:

Right side:

Check back tomorrow for the next phase of this project: Going Under the Knife and thanks for visiting!

]]> http://welcometoheardmont.com/?feed=rss2&p=2176 0 http://welcometoheardmont.com/?p=2159 http://welcometoheardmont.com/?p=2159#comments Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:09:47 +0000 Meredith http://welcometoheardmont.com/?p=2159 Yes it has been too long.  Starting your career from scratch really takes it outta ya.

But we have been working on the house, I promise!  Any guesses as to what messy project we’ve tackled this time?

Here’s how it all went down.

After sanding down all the existing old wood trim in the room, we started to paint.  Luckily I learned my lesson with windows when we did our living room trim and knew it didn’t matter if I got paint on the glass.  A handy-dandy razor blade is all you need to fix that.

Once I had a coat on the window and doorway trim, it was on to the baseboards.  We tried to avoid getting paint on our new floors by sneaking brown painter’s paper under the baseboards.  Sadly, any paint that we got on the paper acted like an adhesive and stuck it to the trim.  :(

Next time, we may try using painter’s tape or pulling the paper up before the paint dries.  If there is a next time. haha.

After the paint dried, we put on a second coat and then went back around and edged everything with our wall paint color to get a nice sharp line.  I don’t use tape to do this, but I know lots of people swear by it.  For me, getting in the painting groove usually makes my lines straighter than if I’d wasted time taping.

After we’d finished our glossy black trim, it was time to switch out our outlets and light switch to coordinate.

Now don’t let this picture fool you… at this point it was about 9 pm on a Sunday night after having starting painting that trim Saturday morning.  The real life version of this picture looks like this.

Yep, nighttime electrical work requires a head lamp, people.  Be prepared.

After we turned the power back on and we were sure all the outlets worked, I was in charge of putting on the outlet covers.

Besides the 4 outlets and 1 light switch, our 1981 ranch featured a lovely ROUND telephone jack in the studio.  Needless to say, not many of our local hardware stores carry ROUND telephone jacks, especially black ones.  The solution?  Spray paint for the cover and a Sharpie for the part attached to the wall.

We weren’t too upset by our DIY black telephone jack cover, especially since it got covered up by the couch anyway.

So do you want to see the room to date?  Here it is!

Admittedly not the best photo I’ve ever taken, but it was nighttime and we were just too excited to share the result of a weekend of painting trim!  Still on the to-do list are baseboards in the closet on the other side of the room, installing threshold pieces at the entrance to the room and the entrance to the closet, and (oh yeah) decorating!

So what do you think of Stephen’s color choices?  Modern?  Manly?  Meh?

]]> http://welcometoheardmont.com/?feed=rss2&p=2122 4 http://welcometoheardmont.com/?p=2118 http://welcometoheardmont.com/?p=2118#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 23:30:33 +0000 Meredith http://welcometoheardmont.com/?p=2118 If you like funny things, you’ve got to check out the new blog Catalog Living.  It’s the perfect sarcastic response to the over-styled photos you see in home decor magazines.

Found and immensely enjoyed via Young House Love.  Go check Catalog Living out!