DIY paper airplane mobile

Now that I’m trying to get back in the regular routine of blogging, I need to show off some of Miles’ room cuteness.  Since I overhauled the plan for his room about 2 months before he arrived, his mobile plans also needed to change.

I just couldn’t land on anything I loved.  I’m not a “themey” person when it comes to my kiddo’s rooms, so I had colors in mind but not a shape.  I was going to just do a cute circle one with my leftover fabrics and then I spotted this on Etsy:

(source)

Adorable, expect for the price tag and I wanted to add a few more pattern instead of just solid papers.  So I busted out my trusty glue gun and got to making one myself.  Here were all the supplies I used:

• 2 wooden embroidery hoops – 8” and 10”
• paint for the hoops
• hot glue gun
• about 8 different scrapbook papers in gray, yellow, and white
• fishing line – I wish now I would have used line that was a bit thinner and more transparent, but you can’t be picky when you’re nine months pregnant and doing craft projects
• little white hook to attach everything to the ceiling

1. There are a few tutorials on how to make your own paper airplane mobile here and here.  Mine isn’t super detailed as I forgot to take pictures of lots of steps.
2. I only used the insides to my embroidery hoops, not the outside part that has the hardware on it.  You can discard that part (or save it for another project).  Then I started by painting my hoops with a gray spray paint I had and hated the coverage and color.  So I switched and did 2 coats using a acrylic craft paint and loved it much more.3. Make your airplanes!  There are a million different ways to make your paper airplanes.  Look here for some good examples here.  After lots of trial runs, I decided I wanted something very simple with very few fold lines.

• I cut my paper into 4.5” x 5” rectangles.
• fold your paper in half
• open it back up and fold each top corner down and line up with the fold down the middle
• fold in half again
• Take each side and fold down so the top fold line, lines up with the bottom of the plane.  Does that make sense?
• And that should make your simple airplane!
• I hot glued it together in all the places it could come unfolded and while the glue was still hot, I stuck in a long piece of fishing wire to hang it

4. I tied 3 fishing wires evenly around each hoop (6 lines total) and tried as best I could to hang the 2 hoops so they were even with each other.  They’re actually not tied together in any way.

5. After I made lots of airplanes, I tied them loosely around the hoops to figure out how I wanted to space them, which colors I wanted where, etc.  When I was happy with the placement, I tied the fishing wire as tight as I could and added a small dot of hot glue to secure it.  Then I cut off the excess fishing wire.  (the beginning stages of mobile is hanging from the ceiling fan in this picture)6. Lastly, William helped me measure and hang it from the ceiling just using a little white hook.I love how it turned out and I hope Miles enjoys this view from his bed.

Miles’ nursery {part 1}

I’m all about real around here.  So here ya go.  Take it all in.This is our guest/craft room after we took out the bed and started getting ready for our garage sale.  I will also say that I was emptying out all my craft boxes and going though them.  But oh yeah, it looked like for a good couple months.  During this time, Miles’ nursery plan went through a couple revisions.  Originally, I had my heart set on doing a wood or pallet wall.  Kinda like this:

 

(source)

I priced reclaimed barn wood and knew quickly that wasn’t going to happen.  Then I looked into doing it ourselves with pallets.  But the larger my stomach got, the less that large of a DIY project seemed appealing.  William was also worried about how to be sure all the pallets were treated in a way we’d want on a nursery wall.  I also looked into “wood” wallpaper.  Again, not quite in the budget range I was trying to stay in.  So I abandoned my original idea and started to fall in love with this color scheme:And these were a few of the inspiration nurseries I found on Pinterest that I liked:So remember when I was 30-something weeks pregnant with Ellie and painting her stencil on her wall swearing I would never do that again?  Hahahaha.  Never say never. I decided that to do this color scheme, the cream trim in his room and on the doors would have to go.  So William prepped and I spent a week carefully painting 2 coats of trim.  Not for the faint of heart, I tell ya.  But oh is is beautiful.  Luckily, the doors for the basement (oh yeah, I haven’t blogged about that yet have I?) were getting painted around this time, so Miles' closet doors and the back of the main door to the room were painted by someone who knew what they were doing.  Because all the outlets were beige as well, I have to give major props to William for being willing to buy all new white ones AND install them for me.

The next step was picking a color.  While I was researching nurseries, I saw this blue/aqua/sea green color coming up a lot and several bloggers mentioned using the color Iced Green from Benjamin Moore.  I got a small sample from Do It Best Hardware and it was exactly what I was picturing in my head!

After I got all the trim done, I wasn't quite sure what I had gotten myself into.  Thankfully, my mom came to the rescue to help with the rest of it.  Her and William did one coat on Friday night and knocked the other one out Saturday morning.   Owen and Ellie were great helpers (NOT).Then after the paint was done, we put together his crib and dresser.  It felt awesome to finally get some of the big stuff done so I could focus on more of the fun little details. Ta-da. Paint done and crib is assembled! And here is the adorable light I found at Target next to a sweet little owl I picked up a long time ago at Prairie Gardens.  I’ll post a few more of the individual crafts projects I did and then show you a full tour of his room!

my kids are growing up

Just a super short post to say my kiddos are growing too fast.  Owen is a rock star on the potty and I'm almost ready to try nighttime.  He also loves to fit in some reading whenever he can.

 

And guess who went to the nursery this past Sunday and childcare during Mom2Mom?  That's right, this girl.  I went and checked on her several times, and turns out, she didn't need me. {tear}  No really, I was super happy that she did awesome.  Looking forward to actually hearing the message on Sundays and enjoying my mom friends at Mom2Mom!

 

house tour {Ellison's Nursery!}

My sweet little girl's room has been done for months now, but I am finally just getting around to cleaning up the piles of laundry that never get put away, taking pictures, and getting them posted! It's a pretty small room, but it's perfect for Ellison!  When you open up the door, this is what you see.  (I did take out the ottoman for the pictures since it takes up quite a bit of room.) We took down the ceiling fan that was in there and added one of my favorite things. . .her light.  And by we, I mean William and my dad.  It's from IKEA and it was my splurge (kinda like I splurged on Owen's mobile).  I love, love, love it! Now let's start from the left and go clockwise around the room.  In Owen’s room, I had the 2 dressers together.  I loved that because I was able to leave the wipes and things out on the other dresser for easier access.  But there just wasn’t room to do that in this room, so her diapers and wipes are in the top drawer under the changing pad.Above her dresser is her big bow board that gets added to pretty regularly.Behind her crib is the one wall I did a paint treatment on.  This is absolutely my favorite thing in her room and I almost wish I had done it on all the walls.  I love is because it is so subtle.  See, in this picture, the walls just look tan.But from this angle, you see that there is a pattern on the wall.  See how I did it here.Here is a close up of her adorable pink sheets from Target.  My mom made a simple pink crib skirt with a little ruffle in it. I decided to pass on the crib bumpers this time around.  Not really because I’m all about the controversy that surrounds them, but Owen just played with them too much during nap times.  And I will do anything with this child to make her a better sleeper than he was. Above her crib hang another one of my favorite projects, her 3 flower balls. Moving around the room is her first closet and then her window seat.  I knew I wanted ruffle curtains.  We toyed around with the idea of making our own ruffle curtains like these or these.  But then I found this fabric from rufflefabric.com and decided it was perfect.  They had the most amazing customer service and sent me 6 FREE samples of the fabrics so I could be sure I was getting the right color pink.  And all my mom had to do was literally cut the fabric in half and sew the top so they’d fit through a rod.My mom took an extra crib sheet and covered a little pad for under the window to make a perfect place for some reading.  And a perfect place to take some of her monthly pictures.  Oh my goodness, she was tiny!Anywhoo, moving around she has another closet and then you see this wall.  Details on how I did the wall stuff is here.I bought a simple white light from Target and my mom helped me cover it using extra fabric from her curtains.I found 2 of these adorable pink boxes at our Tuesday Morning a store that reminds of a TJ Maxx in a way.Here the view from the window seat area.And a close up of what’s on the floating shelves on the left.  The doll was mine when I was little.  This is one of the only books I’ve seen that has Ellison’s name in it.  Becca and Matt gave it to her!  The little elephant in the story is a boy, but oh well. :)  And my favorite thing from this wall is the ballerina picture.  Growing up, I had a ballet themed room.  I never changed the wallpaper even in high school.  My parents bought me this picture for that room.  I had them change the mat so I could use it in Ellie’s room. But I made sure that they didn’t touch the inscription on the back.  What a cool dad I have.  He makes a pretty awesome Grandpa too. And that’s it!  Hope you enjoyed the tour as much I enjoyed putting it together for my sweet little girl!