What Have I Been Up To?

What have I been up to?  It's been a while since I finished a project start to finish, but rest assured the wheels have been turning over here.  Progress on finishing our basement is slow but steady, one of the results of doing nearly everything yourselves.  At this point, we are finished framing and ready to start the electrical and plumbing.  This does eat up a lot of our spare time (ha! what's that?), but I have been able to sneak in a little side home improvement project upstairs.  Remember this bathroom?

This is the main bathroom of our house.   It's right by the kids' bedrooms, but it is also right off the front room area, so it's the one that gets the most use.  Right now, I wouldn't say that this room is complete by any means, but we have made some real progress.  Ready to see?

Yep, we painted!  And did board and batten!  Well, you know, faux board and batten.  It was an easy, yet time-consuming and detail-oriented project, but this was a much needed transformation for this room.  It just had no heart, ya know?

We still need to frame that mirror, hang some hooks, and get some new decor going on in there.  The hair clip tree and hair clip frame, both fun and easy DIY tutorials if you need the storage, are both things I would like to hang onto in some form or another.

As far as decor goes, I'd like to add some river rock grey or toned-down cool hues to the room.  There isn't a defined theme for the room, but I'd like to have a New England lake house feel going on.  I have also considered spray painting some or all of the metal hardware in the room with oil rubbed bronze spray paint.  I'm not sure how those two ideas go together, though, so we'll see how this all plays out.  The shower curtain will probably have to go as well, although it still kind of matches.

What do you think?  Any ideas?  I'm glad to be back at blogging and excited to share some more fun things in the near future.

Toy Stroller Makeover

So, my daughter has this cute little toy stroller for her dolls/stuffed puppies/sippy cup.  It's very versatile, and it gets a lot of use.  Due to that, the cover that it came with started falling apart recently, not that it was that great to begin with-- poor quality fabric, coarse binding, and loose stitching.  At first, I thought I was just going to fix the parts that were coming apart, but then I figured if I was going to spend time on it, why not just make a new one?  Here's a photo of the old cover (after I already took it apart to use as a pattern for the new one):

Yeah, not a fan of the washed-out flower pattern.  So, I got myself some bias tape (one day I'll try making my own, but not this time), cute fabric, and ribbon.  I looked at the existing cover to see how it had been done and basically followed the same method.

I am not much of a pattern seamstress, so this was a big accomplishment for me.  It only took a couple of hours one afternoon, and I already had all the supplies except the bias tape.  I reused the buckle from the previous cover, and I reinforced all the trouble spots, where the old one had been wearing out, on the new cover.

My daughter is back in business and loving it!