Out with the old: the first step to a baby room

This weekend I stuck around the house and got a lot done, including a good start on my next sewing project, raking the yard - it was a gorgeous spring weekend, and spending lots of time in the basement yesterday, with the goal of getting all the non-baby furniture out of the baby room.

Once all of our dressers were moved out into our bedroom, which included taking apart and moving the bed to the opposite end of the room, and moving all the hat boxes, boots and other odds and ends that accumulate, I was able to vacuum and deep clean before unrolling my new baby room rug.

I ordered it from the company Dash & Albert, who I found through the nursery inspiration blog LayBabyLay. Now that I know who Dash & Albert is, I am seeing their rugs more frequently, and most recently in my new Martha Stewart magazine.

I love the stripes, and I love the colors. It's appropriate for my nursery theme that they named it "Ranch Stripe." From the rug I'll draw the patterns and colors for the rest of the room, including a definite new window treatment. It's high time the pink/red sheers disappear, as I've just been ignoring them until now. The gold chair and ottoman are a find at Odds and Ends when they were still good, and I've had plans for a couple years now to make a slipcover for them, and I've even had the fabric that I wanted to use, but it didn't go with anything else in my house. Now I will be able to use it, because the powder blue and white pattered upholstery will coordinate perfectly with the rug.

So I feel like we made a big step forward over the weekend in preparing for the baby, because diving in and getting all those dressers moved and the bed rearranged was a big task. Thanks to Scott for patiently helping me. :-)

I'll take some pictures of the new bedroom arrangement once it's to a point where it's a little more finished... I didn't get to finish up the details yesterday because we ended up going to dinner with Uncle Sonny and Aunt Carole from Kaycee and cousin Griff, whose birthday is today. Finishing the details includes hanging some new shelves and a shelving unit on one of the open walls for our boot/hat storage, which we desperately need. I've come to realize we can never have too many shelves or hooks in our house. I also want to hang some of our yet-unused art in the bedroom space, some of which we received as wedding gifts.

Too many pretty ideas...

.... to even hope to make them all. The latest find is Centsational Girl's felt poinsettias.

how cute is this

this clever person featured on the design*sponge before and after series, took this typical bland entertainment center and re-purposed it into a play kitchen. a very clever idea that, i think, turned out really well.

i especially like the little window with the curtain, and the stainless bowl for the sink, and the mini utensils hanging on the wall. the attention to detail makes me wonder what the inside of the refrigerator looks like?

johnson county

our next special edition is winter cattlemen's, and we're featuring johnson county for the 2011 edition. johnson county is just north of natrona county, where casper is, and the two main towns are buffalo and kaycee. heather has already made her first trip of interviews up there.

this is a photo that heather recently posted on her blog, double h photo. it would have made an excellent fall cattlemen's photo! i love the orange/gold color. that's the problem with the publishing business.... everything has to be done way ahead of time. i guess if we really wanted to get on the ball, we'd do these editions a year in advance, like some magazines do. but, then we'd lose the current feeling of the articles. so i spose we'll just go ahead with summer-looking fall cattlemen's and fall-looking winter cattlemen's.

it doesn't help that our snow is extremely late coming this year, but heather did also get this photo, with a dusting of snow on the peaks of the big horns. hopefully we'll get a little bit of weather coming through for photos before our deadline, which is dec. 10.

since we had such a hard time getting people scheduled for interviews in fall cattlemen's in fremont county, we're trying to do a lot better with getting going on winter cattlemen's. this afternoon i've spent calling my list of people, and out of the 14 i did get a hold of four, and have them scheduled for next tuesday. hopefully i hear back from more over the weekend, in which case my trip will extend into wednesday. i will be ecstatic if i'm able to get eight interviews done. with more meetings coming up and the thanksgiving holiday with a shortened deadline that week, it would be great to know the bulk of interviews are done and in my files.

as far as i know, coworker jody has not yet started selling adds for winter cattle. it's great when we well a lot of advertising and generate a lot of income with these editions, but i'm also half hoping she doesn't sell as much so i don't have to worry as much about filling the extra pages with editorial! it's something that we can never plan for sure until the last few days when the whole thing falls together and designer tracy puts it together.

i dread the phone calls from tracy, telling me about the holes we have yet to fill. so, we just try to put more than enough articles on our list, and do about a half dozen more articles than i think we'll use, and that usually comes out about right.

basement inspiration

"My husband went out of town for about 36 hrs...so I thought I could put up board and batten, paint and get the Master bedroom I've dreamed of...all within the 36 hr time limit. Why is it when husbands leave to go out of town, every creative juice starts flowing? I think I can re-do the entire house while he's gone. I also think I'm on vacation and I don't have to cook and we can eat out for every meal. He's home now...so I will cook tonight."

excerpt from Pink and Polka Dot. visit her blog to find out which project she's tackled. it's occurred to me that i could do something similar to add more drama to the main bedroom downstairs... right now it's pretty 'blah.' too bad scott doesn't have any more hunting trips planned this fall. :-)

red and powder blue

yesterday centsational girl posted reader suggestions on how to paint perfect stripes on walls. they were very helpful, and this photo - the colors especially - have me thinking i want to paint some stripes somewhere in my house. they're not a wall, but i would love to eventually get my basement steps to the point where i can paint them, banishing the tile.

ideally autumn

can anyone find anything more ideally autumn than this, from heather bullard's blog? i like the vines, and the burlap on the table. i see hancock fabrics has burlap on sale this weekend, and i would love to pick some up and put it to use somewhere. so far my weekend wanderings (whilst i'm a hunter's widow) will include the one-day sale at macy's (i have a gift card from cousin aaron and wife jenny) and hancock fabrics, and probably odds and ends, too! i've also looked into how to make a top-down roman shade for my living room windows. i can never decide which fabric to use... there are too many pretty patterns, colors and textures.

this color palatte is from one of my regular visits, colourlovers, and it's one that the upstairs of my house tends to follow. except i've  added deep blue instead of dark purple. so maybe the shades in my living room i will make from mustard yellow, to continue the yellow color on the walls of the front room?

personally signed copy

i finally have a copy of the pioneer woman cookbook! complements of my mom, who entered a drawing on the blog of a woman who cooked through the cookbook julie-and-julia style. if i could remember the name of the blog, i'd link to it. :-)

anyway, the blogger was planning a trip to oklahoma to meet with ree drummond, the pioneer woman, so she took this copy along with her and pw signed it with my mom's requested message, about how i grew up in iowa but have adapted well to ranch life in wyoming:

since i've been so busy, and it's been so hot and there's no air conditioning in the house, i haven't cooked much this month, but once winter hits and there's no yard work to be done and the days are dark, then i will get busy experimenting!

thanks, mom, for thinking of me and entering the drawing. :-)

i recognize that

was browsing a newly-discovered blog called habit when i came across this photo, which contains a teacup exactly like the set that matches the white dinnerware made in england that my mother found at a thrift store and gave to me several years back.

i found the blog while on another new blog, known as maggie makes, and she describes habit like this: It's a blog that captures daily moments in the lives of a group of friends. They post daily snapshots with short captions that either encapsulate a moment or the day. No staging, just real life.