Oh hello. Long time no blog. My excuse? I’m really enjoying momming it up in my free time.

I was holding out on posting pictures of the baby’s room. I felt like it wasn’t done. Then I realized, it’s totally done, it’s just not Pinterest done.

But what room is ever done? Especially for a baby. Toys will be added. Lamp shades will be changed. Framed pictures and prints will accumulate. Slowly, he’ll develop a personality and preferences that will be reflected in his room. But until then? Eye-catching patterns, bold colors and interesting objects. Perfect for a baby. Okay, enough jibber jabber. Here’s where our kid *sleeps.

*Yes! He’s actually sleeping in this room. We co-slept for three wonderful months, and still do on occasion. I highly recommend it for new, breastfeeding moms. Just be sure to follow safe co-sleeping practices.

Now that he’s 4 1/2 months old, he loves to study patterns and abstract objects. Like I said, color and texture were the “theme”.

The dresser is from Habitat, it holds most of his diapers, blankets, wipes, pants, bibs and sheets. The shelves are IKEA, relocated from our living room.

When I took these pictures, we were still changing him on our bed with a towel. Now we’re using the changing pad. Yes, that frame is still empty. Best thing ever: glowing tap light for night time changes.

The shelf has three frames with pictures of us (his favorite people, duh), a baseball glove (to brainwash him early I guess?), baskets with a few essential for easy grabbing and some knick-knacks.

Favorite knick-knack: wood cars that were my husbands when he was a kid. Yes, those are his adolescent doodles on them. So cute. Behind them, an abstract print of Simpsons characters (last year’s anniversary gift, “paper”).

Some sweet UNC slippers. More early brainwashing.

A Melissa and Doug stacking set and a couple of stuffed animals my mom brought back from Kenya.

The crib is from Target and I made the panels for the skirt. Not pictured: three space bags of clothes.

Another favorite: the hanging mobile. He’ll stare at this for days. Or, like 10 minutes before he gets bored.

The easy-access bookshelf is great, but I’m thinking we need more book space. I’ll figure it out eventually.

Oh, betcha didn’t see that coming. We got some LED fairy lights from Amazon. They have a nice glow – a little too bright for a night feeding (the intended use), but still fun for him to look at.

I hung them with tiny clear Command Strips. I’m tempted to move them behind the curtains so the glow is more gentle (the LED doesn’t get hot, we never keep them on more than 15 minutes), but I can’t bring myself to pull 15 of these things off the wall and restick them.

And a peek inside his closet. My advice: hang all onesies and shirts by size. Not by label size. By length. The kid wears 3M in one brand and 12M in another.

And, just because: our monitor. It’s an AngelCare motion + sound monitor. There’s a flat motion detector that goes under his mattress. The wire runs down the crib leg, under the carpet and to the nursery unit (which has a nightlight). Super nice because our kid basically only sleeps on his stomach, and this thing sounds an alarm if he stops moving for more than 20 seconds. We’ve had three false alarms (he wound up in a far corner of the crib each time), but it was 100% worth the investment.

So what’s the little dude up to these days? Expanding his vocabulary, of course.

We have some other things we’re working on in the house. We found an antique high chair that needs refinishing. We’re in the market for a new dining room light. Our living room furniture has shifted a bit. There’s a file cabinet (exciting!) that needs painting. We’ll get to them and I’ll share it all eventually!

We’ve been poking our way through making our deck and outdoor living space more enjoyable. The latest: painted Adirondack chairs.

Just ignore the end-of-season horrible garden beds in the back there. Urgh.

We got these chairs last year and I stained them. I didn’t intended to do anything more to them, but I got my hands on a HomeRight Finish Max Fine Finish HVLP (high volume, low pressure) sprayer.

I’ll skip the detailed process because there are a ton of guides out there. Check out Gail at My Repurposed Life for great videos and how-tos.

Obviously, I had to prime the chairs since they were stained. I needed a (1) stain-blocking (2) exterior (3) wood primer. Definitely forgot the stain-blocking part. It’s been two weeks and no stain is showing through, but I’ll keep you updated (I’m sure you’re very concerned about stain leaking through my paint job, right? heh.)

I wanted to pull a color from the umbrella. Brown and orange were out, out of personal preference. Yellow and green were too light (I was scared of that whole stain spotting thing). So blue it was. Mariner by Sherwin Williams was a close-enough match. I got a quart of their exterior latex enamel in high gloss.

 

I didn’t take any pictures of myself spraying it because my husband took the baby to his parents’ house that afternoon, and setting up a tripod…ugh.

Anyway, two weeks later, we have these chairs that are bright and fun with a lovely brushstroke-free paint job.

The FinishMax has a slight learning curve with adjusting the spray amount, but a quick knob turn on the trigger can fix it. And I learned the hard way (as I usually do) to keep an eye on the extension cord so it doesn’t drag across the fresh paint job.

I can’t imagine priming and painting these by hand. I would have gone crazy with all the nooks and crannies, and frankly, it would have been sloppy because I am not a patient person. This was way easier and, unlike spray paint, I got to choose an exact color.

Clean up was a pain, but only because it required thoroughness, which I find tedious. Again with that patience thing. Dried paint = bad. All it took was warm, soapy water though. I’ll probably avoid ever using oil-based anything in it just because I detest solvents.

Now I suppose I need to paint the royal blue plant stands, but that can wait a season. It feels weird painting brand new things.

Anyone need something painted?! I know a lady who can hook you up with a sweet paint job. (It’s me. I’m the lady.)

Disclaimer: HomeRight provided a Finish Max Fine Finish HVLP Sprayer for this and future projects. All opinions and wrong primer usage are my own.

Well, outdoor plastic anyway.

A few years ago, we had one of those cheap, white plastic outdoor dining sets. The kind you find at a community swimming pool. In an attempt to spruce it up, I sprayed painted it. Since it was plastic, I used a primer for plastic and outdoor spray paint.

Within weeks, it was chipped. We ended up chucking it because it looked too horrible to even donate.

So, this time around, I decided to try something new. Krylon Fusion, specifically designed for plastic.

We have this deck box. It’s nice and beat up, the perfect candidate for painting.

I used gloss since the enamel is a bit tougher. It looked really splotchy at first, but evened out after a day of drying in the sun.

It looks so much better now. But it’s not perfect. In just a few days, chips had flecked off. Pretty disappointing.

I only prepped it by scrubbing it down. Maybe I should have sanded? Used a deglosser? Or even primed again? Who knows. I’m not calling it a total fail because it IS better looking, even with the chips. I’ll let you know how it holds up through the rest of the summer.

So there you have it. Plastic, spray paint and the elements just don’t go together.