we really wanted to keep a guest bed in the room – we absolutely LOVE to host our friends and moms!  SO, we squeezed it all in, and i think it works!  one thing we were worried about is finding room for the huge (and amazingly comfortable glider) we had for Jackson, but it simply wouldn’t fit with any configuration.  i recovered this wing back i got on the side of the road for $5 a few months back (yay!) for our living room, and on a whim, asked husband to drag it in and see if it worked . . . it’s perfect!! it doesn’t glide, but it’s super cozy and will be a great nursing/sleeping chair.

the bedding/bumper for the crib is by Dwell Studio, the charlotte pattern.  i wanted it before i knew jackson was a boy (!) so it’s a design from a few years ago, which is discontinued now.   i was simply in love with the color scheme, and as soon as we knew we were having a girl, i hunted it down (thank you craigslist friend from oklahoma!!) then i called about 40 stores (yes, i know it’s ridiculous) to find those giant storage bins to match . . . one random store had one with an “ugly display” and i said, i’ll take both please!!  i love those bins.

i wanted a little place to put her bows/headbands, etc. where i could easily reach them from her changing table, so i repurposed an old gold frame my dad had given me years ago.  i just painted it the same color as the pink wall (but semi gloss) and then stapled white ribbon across the back of the frame to attach everything on to!

this butterfly mobile above the crib is from pottery barn kids, and when i saw it, i just fell in love with it.  however, the “i can do that” pride came out and instead of buying it, i took a bunch of pictures of it in the store and counted the butterflies, etc. and decided to make my OWN mobile.  but with birds!!  i carefully cut out over 80 white birds (FAIL! they wouldn’t hang right and looked like bats) then i tried using these weird white fake flowers (FAIL! looked cheap and ugly) and after those two failed attempts, i trekked back to PB kids to take another look at how theirs was made and remembered i had a gift card for the exact amount as the mobile . . . so i just broke down and bought it.

then, the next day i was at michaels buying stuff to fix the frame for the bows, and right there at the checkout were these PERFECT little teal paper flowers and i thought, now THOSE would work for the mobile!!  so i bought them and just decided to try one more attempt and see how i liked it.  i simply loved both and decided, what the heck, if it’s a little whimsy with two chandelier mobiles, that’s OK.

anyway, i love being in this room, and it’s purely functional for what we need for the first several months.  there is lots of room to play in jackson’s room next door, so i’m sure that aside from nursing, changing and sleeping, we’ll be hanging out in big brother’s room a lot!!

back in september, we took a look at our short & long term goals and decided that will be staying in dallas for several years and it was time to buy a house.  we began the search and were approached by a dear friend of our to consider building a house instead.

we laughed it off at first — i mean, who builds a house for their first house??  the more we looked at places in the neighborhoods we wanted to live in, the more discouraged we became about being home owners. they were too expensive, in need of too much repair, didn’t have a space for me to have an office, blah blah blah.

then, we stumbled upon a lot in a “transitional” neighborhood that we fell in love with.  we were SO incredibly excited about this idea — because we love getting to know our neighbors and having people near us that aren’t exactly like us.

with a few phone calls, wise council, a lot of number crunching, and some conversations with God, we decided that this was a unique opportunity that had been given to us and wanted to place an offer on the lot.

within a few short weeks, we had closed on our house (!) and the schedule for building a new house in it’s place had been set. it’s been all things “project mayhem” ever since . . .

i had high hopes of blogging all throughout the process, but it’s all just moved too fast for me! {we closed november 1st and we hope to move in the second week of february!}

since it was all going to be demoed anyway, we thought it would be so fun to go in first and have our own demo party. jmay invited a bunch of guys over for poker and cigar smoking (inside!) and a lot of hitting things.