Haven Mei En Wong!

Haven made her appearance February 27, 2014 at 8:31pm. She weighed in at 7lb7oz and 20 inches long. Her Chinese name, Mei En (MAY-UN), means Beautiful Grace.

I'll be blogging about my labor experience soon (and the nursery reveal!), but wanted to share a few photos of our precious angel that we had taken recently by Rachel Ezzo of Rachel Ezzo Portraits. She did an amazing job! 

Make your own floor pouf!

I love floor poufs.

There, I said it.

They are cute and practical and just such a fun way to bring some pattern and color into a room. They are also expensive! If you have no idea what I'm talking about....here are some adorable poufs:

Via

Cute, right? I really wanted one to put in front of our glider in the nursery, but could not justify spending $100 or more on one. I didn't really want to add another DIY to my list, but DID want to choose my own fabric and save money...so DIY it is.

I found a lot of blogs that raved about the Better Homes and Garden's pouf tutorial. They also said it wasn't too hard and I found that to be very true. In fact, I think pretty much anyone could tackle this tutorial and be just fine. It only took me a few hours and I was so pleased with how it turned out! 

I bought two coordinating fabrics from Hawthorn Threads, one yard of each for about $20 total. One of my fabrics was not cut very well and did not equal a whole yard, so I was a bit disappointed about that, but it was still enough to make my pouf. They have a great selection of fabric on this site and it was fun to go through and decide which ones I wanted to use. 

I didn't have enough fabric for the hexagon shape that BH&G used for the top, but just had to google how to sew it closed instead. It's not perfect, but does the job. I used a bunch of old clothes to fill it up and then bought one bag of fiberfill at Michael's for about $5 with coupon to use along the sides and the top. 

I'm tempted to make another one for the living room, but maybe use fabric that is all the same instead of alternating panels. If you've been tempted to buy a pouf, but can't afford the price, MAKE ONE! If I can do it, you can. Mine cost about $25, but you could definitely do it cheaper if you get a great price on fabric. 

Best of all, it covers the ugly glider base of my chair quite nicely :)

DIY Ruffle Curtains

Well, only a few more weeks until my due date! I thought I would use them to reveal some of the DIY projects I worked on in the nursery. We are obviously trying to save as much money as we can, so this experience reminded me of our wedding...DIY projects galore.

One of the things I finished up just before Christmas were the curtains. When I thought about curtains for our baby girl's room, I wanted something pretty and feminine. I decided on ruffle curtains and I loved Pottery Barn's version:

But at almost $100 a panel, I was not feeling it. Instead, I started trolling the internet for a DIY version...and boy did I find one! I was excited to discover I could make my own ruffle curtains for $10 a panel. Um...yes please. I used this tutorial and it was pretty easy to follow...but also very time consuming for this beginner. It basically consisted of buying two twin flat sheets from Walmart at $5 a piece. That is for one panel, so it ended up costing me $20 total to make two panels for the nursery. MUCH more desirable than $200! I wanted them to be an off white instead of a true white, and thankfully the sheets came in just the right color (ok, truthfully they are a tad too yellow, but I'm not gonna complain).

I won't go through the whole process, you can follow the tutorial I linked for that, but just be prepared for a lot of work. I think the first panel took me around 8 hours, and the second one about half that (it's easier once you get the hang of it). Still, I'm pleased with how they turned out (not perfect, but not too shabby) and REALLY pleased with how much money we were able to save. Here is the final result...and excuse the horrible coloring, it's such a hard room to photograph!

And there is a sneak peek at the next tutorial coming up...a fabric pouf!

Changing Table DIY Reveal!

One thing we knew we'd need for the nursery was a changing table/dresser. I wanted to get a combination of the two because our nursery is not huge and I figured it would be more practical. Plus, I just really like the look of a long dresser used as a changing table.

For months I scoured Craigslist looking for just the right dresser. I found a set that was really cute and drove 45 min to take a look at it. It was at an antique shop, so the prices were just too high for us. We wanted something we could redo, but this dresser needed work AND was still a bit expensive. I was sharing my lack of luck with my supervisor at work when she mentioned, "I have a dresser we were thinking of getting rid of, you can have it for free if you want it." Well only an idiot would say no to that! I told her we'd take it. It wasn't until I saw it in person that I was really pumped! Look at this beauty:

Yeah, I have the best supervisor ever, basically.

I knew I wanted to do an ombre paint feature on the drawers and figured it's a girl, so what better colors to use than soft pinks? I painted the main part of the dresser Behr's Vermont Cream which is an off-white as I wanted everything to be soft and not a glaring white. For the drawers I chose three pinks beside each other on a color swatch and ended up with Valspar's Brushed Rose, Salmon Bisque, and Snow Pa. We just bought a sample pot of each to keep it cheap.

For the knobs I chose these really pretty glass rose petals from Hobby Lobby. I waited until they had a 50% off sale and then snatched up 6 of them for just under $26 with shipping and tax. I am really happy with the finished product! Here are some before and after side-by-sides :)

We are so happy with how it turned it! It's exciting to see the nursery come together and we can't wait to fill the drawers with little girl clothes and have our precious angel with us to wear them. Here's one final photo for the road :)

Final cost:

Dresser - Free!

Paint - $5 each for a total of $15 and $20 for a gallon of the off-white

Knobs - $26

Total: $61!

EDIT: Apparently this dresser is a rare McCobb Planner Dresser and multiple people have felt the need to email and tell me how horrible of a person I am for destroying a piece of art. Honestly, we had no idea it was a rare piece of furniture! So for anyone else who feels the need to cut someone down for recreating a piece of furniture for her daughter's nursery when she had no idea of it's value, you can save your time... I know! But thanks for your kind words :)

Happy New Year...and a DIY

It's hard to believe it is already 2014! There were a lot of changes in our lives this past year and we are so thankful for God's provision and leading. This year we:

• Celebrated our 1 year anniversary
• Moved from Singapore to the US
• Found out we were pregnant with our first baby
• Ended up settling in my hometown because of an unexpected job offer for Clarence
• Bought a new car

2014 will bring the biggest change to our lives yet, the arrival of our baby girl! We are so excited (and a little terrified) about all the changes to come. And how does someone who enjoys crafts and DIY cope with the coming changes? Throw myself into making stuff for the nursery, that's how!

A few months ago I was in Ollie's and saw a big canvas for $8.99. I had no idea what I wanted to do with it, but figured I could come up with something nice for the baby's room.  It was too cheap to pass up. I considered a few different things, but when I saw this pic on pinterest, I was sold.

I was even more sold when I found out how easy it was. There are LOTS of blogs out there who give the steps on how to create one on your own, but here is one that I followed. It's super simple! 

I used leftover paint we had from the dresser/changing table makeover (reveal to come!) and the nursery wall paint. Just slap it on the canvas until you're happy with how it looks, place painter's tape in a herringbone pattern overtop leaving spaces between each one, get your husband to take it outside and spray paint the whole thing to save you from the fumes, and then remove the tape! It probably took me a couple hours tops. I'm so pleased with how it turned out! 

The nursery is horrible to photograph and gets no direct sunlight throughout the day, so this is the best I could do. Anyone can make this, so if you're thinking of creating some cheap art, do it! Not bad for $8.99, I'd say :)

Merry Christmas!

From Me, Clarence, and Baby Wong....

We are trusting you enjoy celebrating with loved ones and are filled with joy over the amazing gift we were given 2000 years ago...the birth of a Savior!

DIY Ornament Wreath

I've never stepped into the handmade wreath world, but this year figured I'd like to make the journey. I always see photos of cute wreaths all over my FB feed or Pinterest and, gosh darn it, I felt left out!

The first one I saw and absolutely LOVED was this:

via

I was a bit overwhelmed at the thought of all that hot gluing on a wreath and also questioned how well it would stay. Then I found another tutorial where you use a wire hanger. It seemed way easier and had less chance of me burning my finger off with hot glue. I can't find the tutorial I used, but here is a link to a similar one. 

And here is my finished product!

It was super simple and took only about 1 1/2 - 2 hours from start to finish. It cost me about $15 in ornaments from Dollar Tree (I bought around 100) and I had about 20 left over that we put on our tree. So in the end, I probably could've saved a few more dollars, but I'm still really happy with it! 

In case you don't want to follow the link above, the basic instructions are:

1. Hot glue the tips onto the ornament themselves so that they don't fall off later
2. Bend a wire hanger into a perfect circle
3. Start stringing the ornaments onto the hanger, alternating sizes and colors and overlapping them so that all gaps are filled in
4. Once all your ornaments are on, hook the two sides of your wire hanger together at the top
5. Hang and enjoy!