The Little Boy's Room : Before and After

and by "After"... I mean as good as it will get for the foreseeable future.  I don't really expect anything to ever be truly done.  Let's start with the Before:

 

And After.  I will break it down for you.  Obviously, white paint and wood floors made a huge difference.  I added woven wood blinds and drop -cloth curtains hung from a pipe.  The dream catcher is from Urban Outfitters and the pendant light is from Cost Plus.  This house didn't have any overhead lights when we moved in, so there are a couple plug in pendants around until we get around to hard -wiring everything... eventually.   

The bedding above is flannel for the winter.  Below are the beds as they look in the warmer months.  The Summer bedding is from Serena and Lily and the beds are from Good Will ($16 each, baby!)  I was on a serious quest for about 5 months to find 2 vintage spindle beds with a masculine flair.  I drove my husband crazy, checking Craigs' List constantly and running into every thrift/antique store I saw, but these are perfect.  They were brown, very 70's.   I love them and they make me happy on a daily basis.

Can you tell Mama likes her some pattern?  The rug was custom bound from wall to wall... you can see in the first picture at the top that our dumb pointer recently chewed away some of the binding in the front.  Technically, he's not allowed upstairs, but I'm the only member of the family who got that memo.  The little stools are also from Serena and Lily.  I didn't want to block the view or detract from the beds with night stands.  I wanted the drop-clothes to look finished, I sewed a rick-rac trim which did the trick. 

This lamp makes the world go around.  Again, from Serena and Lily, but it sold out this summer: (  The horse painting has been in Dan's family for years.  They are from Reno, and it's of the wild mustangs that are all around here.  It was in a huge frame with a mat, with my Mother in Law's permission I cropped it to fit under the eves.

 Here's the little reading nook.  The floor pillow is made from the baby quilt that Dan's grandma (Nonni) made Graham when he was born.  It was too small to really use anymore, this way we get to enjoy it every day.  Soon, I plan to hang picture shelves on the wall to display books.

The little play area.  From the top!  A Schoolhouse Electric sconce. 

The baskets (Anthro) hanging on the wall double as helmets in a pinch.  The string lights and wall shelf are from Urban Outfitters. The little painting over the shelf was a gift for Graham when he was born from my dear friend, Marjorie.  One of the primo features of the room is the little floor bump-out for racing match-box cars.  Zoom!  The vintage horse breed poster used to say Budweiser along the bottom.  I went ahead and cropped it out.  There is another poster at the top of the stairs.  I had them framed to hang over the beds without realizing they wouldn't come close to fitting.  We still need to put the fronts on the stairs...

 A Cost-Plus settee divides the zones and keeps the toys pretty-much on the rug.  I can also sit here and read a magazine while they play.  The small pillow is from Target.  The large pillow is from Caitlin Wilson (the pillow so nice, I bought it twice... there's also one in the barn) and the Pendleton baby blanket was Paolo's when he was a baby.... ahhhh.

We did the boy's rooms first.  We wanted them to be as excited about the big move as we were.  This room is very special.  It reminds me of a movie-kid room.  Have you noticed that movie-kids always have cozy rooms under the eves, that are usually unrealistically large?  That's this room!  It also has a view of the high-desert hill side and the stream.   We love it.

Our Property

Our friends, Doyle and Susan wanted to see more of our property,  so here you go!  They are the ones who inspired our desire for land.  We used to visit them when we were newlyweds in Indiana.  The tree house Doyle built for his kids was the coolest thing I have ever seen.  A tree house is one of our many projects planned for next summer.

 When you enter our property there is a very serious wall on the left.  On the right, a big old buck with his harem of half a dozen does.  I really need to take that no trespassing sign down.  We are currently the only house on the road, which is awesome!

 I took this picture the first time I came here.  Dan couldn't come with me because of work.  Actually, we had an accepted offer before Dan got the chance to see what he was buying.  That's trust!   I probably should have cropped my thumb out of this picture.  The building in the foreground is the barn we lived in this summer.







Another one of the first pictures I took.  I am standing on, or near, the lot my in laws bought.  As you can see, they will live right next door.  Fortunately they are wonderful and we all enjoy each others' company.  We are on about 8 acres and they will have almost 2.  The pond is now empty, I want my kids to live.  Dan has plans to deepen the pond and stock it with fish.  Hopefully I will keep him too busy for the next 10 years to get around to that.

The boys and I built a fire pit as soon as we moved in.  I love to have friends over for camp fires.  Any kid who has been over for a camp fire thinks we have the coolest back yard and I love to impress children, so that's fun. 

The entire North border of our property is a spring-fed year round stream. The gazebo needs a lot of work.  Sorry about the blurry picture, but you get the idea.











Here's the reality of our summer.  Toilets, trash, dumpsters, trailers, all sorts ugliness in the front yard.  You can see in the picture of the boys in the snow that my father in law, Steve, was nice enough to take that huge arbor vitae thing down for me.  My neice, Emily, was very naughty and graffiti-ed this very prominent tree.  Emily!   You stinker.  We have so much work to do... landscaping, a garden, a zipline...

 Here is my land today.  On the left is the view 

from my front door.  That gray line past the trees is actually the freeway.  We can hear it from the front yard, sometimes from the backyard but not from inside the house.  It doesn't bother us.  On the right is the view from my backyard.  Do you see the tiny white dots in the middle of the picture?  Those are my Adirondack chairs around the fire pit.  The hill in the background is Mt. Rose.  I can see the poles for the chair lifts from my kitchen window.

Here is my house from earlier this week.  The good news, the ugly bushes are gone.  Unfortunately, Dan screwed some weird light to the wall.  This summer we will paint and get a new front door.  I also hope to lose the screen door on the porch and take down the weird light Dan screwed to the wall.  Oh, and the Blue Spruce on the right has to come down.  We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we love our little piece of Earth and we are very excited to raise our family here.