Guest Room Makeover

Last week we started our guest room makeover. Before the room was VERY BLAND. It consisted of the mattress and box spring on the floor and absolutely no furniture. I had adorable Lilly Bedding but it was very girly. So we started a new project. Project: Spruce up the guest bedroom.

So far, so good! I love the color palette we decided on. Erik came up with the idea of incorporating Navy. I decided to go with Navy and green. The rest is history.

In one week we changed out the light fixture, purchased and built all of the furniture, built a shelf, painted the shelf, and threw some decorations together. Let's be honest... my dad and Erik did all of the putting together, I directed and decorated. Hehehe!

We still have several other things to do. We have to pick out a photo to enlarge for the big frame on the shelf. We have to get a little table of some sort to put in front of the bed with a television on it. And I am thinking about putting together a gallery wall with friends and family photos. And I am waiting on shams that match the duvet. I also want to switch out the door knob and make it pewter to match the chandelier.

Here are photos to show our progress:

This is where I need your help. The picture below is the section of the room that I want to add something to. Should I do a gallery wall? Do you think it would be too much in such a simple room? I just love the idea of having photos of all of our friends and family in this room so when they come to visit they can reminisce about all of the fun we had together. If I do a gallery wall do you think I should do all of the same frames? Mix it up? Do canvases and no frames? Maybe incorporate some prints and art work? Or leave it simple? Any comments are MUCH APPRECIATED!! 

Pinterest Makes Me Feel....

Let's be honest. Pinterest makes me feel inadequate. The houses and decor are so perfect. The craft projects are so creative. The outfits are so well put together. How can I possible live up to my pins?

I've concluded... I can't. Until I win the lottery and have beaucoup of money, it is nearly impossible to live out my wildest pin dreams. So in the meantime there is IKEA! We made a last minute late night trip to Ikea last week and started picking out furniture and decor for the guest room. It is so affordable! The only problem is that is makes me want to sell everything I own and start all over. I use to have a more traditional taste. I loved old antique furniture and anything shabby chic. But now I lean towards a modern feel. Much more clean and simplistic. I like chevron, quatrefoil, and creek key patterns.I like organized, new, and shiny.

Harper's nursery was the first room in the new house to receive a makeover. I love the way it turned out! You can check it out here.

Next up, our guest room. And we did quite a bit of work last week. I was going to take photos of the progress but my new pillows came in so I decided to wait and take some pictures when I buy inserts tomorrow.  So far, I love it. And it has been fairly inexpensive. I took several concepts I saw on Pinterest then found the cheap way to copy them.

Here are 5 ideas that I loved and tried to use as inspiration for our room:

I love these colors together. Navy blue and as I call it "preppy green" are such a great color combination. I didn't want a ton of color in this room because I was going for a very calm and comfortable feel but I wanted enough color that it doesn't seem boring. 

I love the shelf over the bed. Actually I am obsessed with the idea. It is so much easier to lean photos against a shelf rather than to try to hang them up in a perfect arrangement. 

I love this bed spread and sheet set. I love the linen color. It looks nice and cozy. It works perfectly with the color combination I had in mind. 

I love this cream headboard and white side tables. They look great together and this room loves very warm and inviting. Exactly the feel I want for my guest room.  

I love the idea of having a little "guest basket" somewhere in the room. It is so nice to have a few chocolates and waters sitting out when your guests arrive. It makes them feel like they are in a hotel. Hotel Huffman! haha.

We still have more work to do but I am excited to share the progress with you. It is already a huge improvement. 

One down, One Hundred to Go!

I knocked the first thing off my "new home" list! As soon as we decided to buy our new house I knew I wanted to hang the South Carolina flag on the front porch. I am so happy to be back in SC and I absolutely love our state flag. I think it is the prettiest flag of all the 50 states. And it is officially up!!! Now I just have to finish unpacking and knock the other hundred things off my to-do list.

Up next-

*Unpack (unfortunately this one does not excite me so I keep pushing it to the bottom)

*Hang baskets of flowers on the rest of the front porch poles

*Paint Harper's nursery 

*Find prints for Harper's room (I could really use suggestions! Does anyone know of any good Etsy stores for nice nursery prints?)

*Get a gamecock welcome mat

*Get shoe boxes and take photos of my shoes to put on the front of the box

and the list goes on and on and on....

And if anyone knows of someone looking for an AMAZING nursery recliner, I am selling mine. It does not match Harper's new room so we are going to sell it. It is made by Best Chair and is the Tryp recliner in Navy. They are FANTASTIC! If anyone is interested shoot me an e-mail. JaimeNHuffman@yahoo.com.

Here is a photo:

Reba's Wisdom

"To succeed in life, you need three things:  a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone."-Reba McEntire

I saw this quote and and absolutely loved it. Reba is a wise woman. I love to wish and dream. I think that is what keeps me going and motivated. Sometimes my ideas are a little far-fetched but I guess it is always better to dream big then to just settle. And I am blessed to have such an amazing backbone, my sweet husband. Erik has such a sweet soul and manages to keep me smiling in stressful situations. And even when a smile is pretty much impossible to put on my face, he still tries! My little munchkin is my funny bone. He cracks me up and his little laugh is so contagious. Sometimes I will just lay down with him and we will go back and forth laughing at each other for hours.

I have needed all three this past month because my life has been beyond stressful. We moved, I just started a new job, and the entire family decided to get sick. We are still unpacking boxes and will be unpacking boxes for the next few weeks. But we are absolutely thrilled with the new house. It has four bedrooms so we have a guest room, a master bedroom, Harper's nursery, and I am going to use the fourth room as my craft room! I am so excited. The only bad part is having to redecorate everything. Of course I want to decorate Harper's nursery first! I think I am going to paint his walls a cream cream color and then have one accent wall with baby blue stripes. I found this very pretty metallic blue paint at Lowe's that I want to try to use. I went ahead and bought some cream colored paint from Sherwin Williams. It is called "Roman Column" and I think it will look perfect with the light baby blue. All of Sherwin Williams paint is 40% off today!! Great deal. We are going to try to paint on Tuesday but we shall see because our schedule never seems to go as planned these days.

Here are some photos from our move in day:

Testing out the new nursery:

The first time they walked in the new home!

I will try to take more photos of the new house as we start unpacking and redecorating! I would love decor suggestions.

Home Improvements

For the past few weeks, the only thing on my mind has been BABY!! But now things are slowly getting back to normal. I go grocery shopping, I am starting to cook again, some kind of order is coming together in the house. Now it is time to start decorating the house. We moved in in June but never got the chance to complete all of the rooms. We went from a 2 bedroom home to a 4 bedroom home, so as you can imagine we need a lot of furniture and new decor. Now that we are on a budget I have starting looking for bargains on furniture. I found a gorgeous dining room table on Craigslist! And now I am searching for console tables.  I need two. One for a hall upstairs and one for a space in my living room. I want to get an antique looking one for the living room but the one upstairs can be a little more modern. 

I found this one at www.allcoffetables.com and it is only $189.00 plus free shipping! I think it would be great for extra storage. 

I also like these two: (As you can see my taste is all over the place!) 

Which one do you like the best??

What places do you all go to when you are shopping for home decor? Where do you find the best deals? I also need several rugs for the house. One in particular needs to have a beachy feel. I don't want anything with an aquatic scene... more of a plain rug but in beach colors. Light creams, blues, greens, or corals. Any ideas? I appreciate any help I can get.

Back Blogging!

The view when you walk in the house

It has been a quiet few weeks on my blog! My life has been pretty crazy this past month and it has been really hard to keep up. We are still doing tons of renovations to the new house. I am getting a little impatient (I will blame that on the pregnancy! hehe) but it is looking one million times better.

When we first moved in I had a really hard time! It just didn't seem like "home." The colors throughout the house were very dark and the designs were very out of date. I had a very distinct vision of how I wanted everything to look but I knew it was going to take awhile to get there. I wanted a more airy feel to the home. When you walk in the back wall is all windows and it is overlooking the lake. So I thought we should go with light grays and very soft greens and blues. So the boys painted... and painted... and painted! And man, what a difference it has made. I am so thankful for all of the time and effort our families put in to help us out.

For the most part, the painting is FINISHED!! yay! Which means I can actually go in the house. While they were painting I had to stay outside and work on the garden and organize the garage because  I couldn't be around the paint fumes. For the past week, it has been extremely hot outside! It is averaging about 100 degree every day! I am glad I can start working inside the house now! We still have to paint the brick on the fireplace. I am sure you are all thinking, "Why are you painting a brick fireplace!?" and well, the owners before us had already painted it bright red. It was really odd actually because they painted red brick an even brighter red color. Well this fire engine red color looks horrible against my "Sanibel Gray." So we are switching to a softer color. Then we have to paint two wooden poles white and we should be done with the painting! (Well that is until we renovate the kitchen... but that is a whole other subject on its own!)

I am very excited that phase one of the house renovation is complete!! Now for phase two. New carpet and overhaul of the master bedroom. When we moved in there was a sink in the master bedroom. Nope, not a part of the master bath... it was actually in the bedroom. I have never seen anything like it. I knew it had to go immediately. Dad and Erik removed the sink. Then came the next problem. The closet. It was way too small. We have four bedrooms. So technically I could put some of our belongings in each closet. But I really want to have my "life" organized before little Harper gets here. And it is kind of difficult to stay organized if all of your clothes and belongings are thrown in different closets around the house. So my dad came up with a brilliant plan. When I say my father is a genius... that is a serious understatement. The man manages to find a solution to any and every problem all of his girls seem to have. He decided to put up a new wall at the back of the master bedroom and add on a whole new section to the closet. It added about 6 more feet of space. I can literally fit my whole life into the one closet. Dad and Erik spent an entire day constructing a new wall, adding a door and trim, and painting it to match the rest of the room. It looks amazing. I am very excited about my new closet!! Now we just need new carpet. Hopefully it will be installed by next week. Once it is in, we can move all of our stuff into the room and start organizing and DECORATING! (my favorite part of course!)

Since we started renovating the house, I came to realize how much of a difference little things can make. Especially when it comes to new fixtures. I think adding new fixtures to a home is the easiest and least expensive way to update a home. Just adding new fans, light switches and plates, and window treatments has made the house look so much better! It is really exciting to see everything come together.

Now that the major renovations have been finished and we finally have cable and internet in the house, I will try to start blogging on a regular basis again!

The start of my garden

The new pontoon boat

My adorable pup

Fender loves the lake!