The Nursery to Toddler Room Transformation Part 1

Slowly but surely, we have been turning Liam's nursery into a toddler's room. It started when we moved into our new house, I knew soon we would need more storage space for toys and less space for things like a changing table and containers of Desitin. So I procrastinated and saved his room for last to be worked on. Now that I'm finally getting around to working on it little by little I think I'll share bits and pieces here and there. 

So piece no. 1 

The owl art has been removed from over his bed (though I painted it and loved the tree branch, I hated my owl) so here's what replaced it....

(Side note: we have kept his owl theme minus the old piece above his bed.)

These frames were so easy and cheap to make! I purchased $5 photo frames at Walmart....

And after removing all the mat, glass and backing, I painted them blue with few streaks of dark brown mixed in to my paint-careful not to mix the colors more than necessary. (Also, dipping a cloth in dark brown paint/stainer and strategically rubbing it along with the wood grain were needed does the trick as well!) 

After I got the effect I wanted with my paints, I attached the wires along the back of the frame. 

Then using mini clothes pins, I hung my pictures and was done!! 

Up next for his room update: 

A toy bin padded bench

Changing table into a night stand 

Pallet made bookshelves 

New bedding

At Home Coffee Bar

We have a serious problem in our new house... It's called a lack of kitchen counter space. It's very serious too as my hubby is a major chef and spends lots of time in the kitchen. He's one of those "use every pot and pan on one meal" kind of cookers too.
So what to do when you have less counter space than your used to?
Well keeping lots of appliances on them is totally a bad idea as we have found. These appliances usually end up sitting out of the way in the laundry room or dinning table were we eventually have to move them right back after clean up, and clean up never happens the same night.
Part of our kitchen appliance clutter=our two coffee pots (not his and hers, more like coffee pot and cappuccino/expresso machine). Yes we are major coffee snobs and we are totally okay with that.
So to get these off our counter top and provide the master chef with a little more room, we made a coffee bar out of our old china cabinet. All it took was a $6 board from Lowes, a $0.99 bottle of white paint which we already had, two $5 bracers, $1.99 hooks and a handy dandy husband to install it all. Five minutes later ta-da!!
Clean counters = cute coffee nook.
Cute coffee nook = clean counters.
It's what we call a win-win.