I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a shorty. 5′ 4″ to be exact. I don’t mind being short – I married a nice tall guy who can reach the top shelf on the cabinets for me, and I can wear super high heels without feeling like a giant. No big deal.

But, um, there’s a slight issue in our closet.

I keep my boots on the top shelf on my side of the closet, and there is no way I can actually reach the shelf without jumping. And even then, I usually miss.

So, when I want to wear a pair of boots, I have to have Corey come and get them for me, and I have to ask him to put them up when I’m done. I hate to bother him every time, though, so usually the bottom of my closet looks like this:

Something needed to be done about this. So, I asked Corey to build me a step stool for the closet.

Just to be clear, I asked him to do this back when the weather was actually conducive to wearing boots. It’s just taken him, uh, a while to get it done. But that’s okay. I still love him.

He used a plan from Ana White’s book (it’s also online, you can see it here) to build me this cute little guy. I gave him a few quick coats of blue paint and added a fun pink detail. The stenciling is far from perfect (in fact, it’s very, very imperfect), but I don’t mind…I’m the only one who’ll really ever be looking at it! I like the fun little pattern on it, and it makes the stool feel a little more special.

And now?

I can reach! And the bottom of my closet is looking a lot less messy (though it could clearly stand to be vacuumed).

Anyone else vertically challenged? Let’s commiserate…like, am I the only one who has to jump (or climb on the counter, or stretch reeeeeeally far) to reach the top shelf of my cabinets? So annoying!

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GUESS WHAT? It’s the first day of voting for the FINAL ROUND of Creating With the Stars (sorry for all of the caps, but this is a Big Deal, people!). The projects are, as usual, amazing and the competition is seriously stiff. Go check it out and vote for your favorite – I’d love it if you’d use your psychic powers to try and pick ours…I sure would like to win this thing! 

So, there’s this corner (well, really it’s just an area – not an actual corner) of our master bedroom that has been woefully neglected since the day we moved in.

You’ve only seen it once or twice because I avoid photographing it as much as possible (though I’m sure you can’t possibly guess why). I’m not even exaggerating when I tell you that we plopped down that little table there on the day we moved in because we didn’t have a better place for it, shoved a box underneath (that happens to be filled with my N64…because I’m still 12, apparently) and haven’t touched it since. Like, the box is still unpacked, over a year and a half later. We hung the television shortly after moving in, but it was hung entirely too high, and the cords were all over the place.

Basically, it was not a good look.

But we’re making progress.

Corey’s parents got a new television and so we got their old one, which is significantly larger than the one we had here before. Since we were already having to re-hang everything, Corey took some time to hang it lower (thank goodness), and he also hid the cords and components for me. It’s basically the exact same system we have in our dresser downstairs (that’s a seriously vintage post right there, but it’ll get you the info you need!), except that instead of hiding the components in the drawers of a dresser we hid them in the linen closet in our master bathroom (which happens to be right behind that wall), and it makes things look oh so much better.

(Please ignore the random splotches of darker colored paint. There were a few parts on the wall that needed a touch-up and we used the sample tin of our paint, thinking it was exactly the same…apparently it was not. Still need to fix that. Awkward.)

Look! No cords!

We also recently snagged this gorgeous vanity from Craigslist – I’ve been wanting a vanity for forever but up until now I hadn’t seen anything I really liked. This one is the perfect size for this space. We needed something narrow because it’s right next to the door entering our room, and this fits the bill perfectly.

Obviously, we haven’t done anything to it yet. We’ve been a little bit busy with this whole competition thing. But, we’ve been tossing around a few ideas for what we can do with it, and we’re excited to transform it into something a little more modern and fun.

Oh, and just if you’re curious, this is what happens in my house if you try to take a photo of anything, ever.

Yet another Hadley photobomb. Let’s try that again.

(And yes, if you’re curious, she is as tall as that vanity. It is not just the perspective.)

(And, um, as a reminder…she’s not quite even 10 months old yet.)

(Good grief.)

Of course, I’m so used to doing my makeup in the bathroom, it’s going to be a major adjustment for me to change things up and get ready in here. I’m a creature of habit, so disrupting my morning routine is going to be a challenge – but I’m so excited to use this thing that I may have no problem jumping right in and using it instead. It’ll sure be nice to be able to sit down while I’m doing my makeup…can you say lazy?! 

I promise to keep you updated on where we land with this guy – we’re hoping to tackle it pretty soon.

Since we haven’t decided anything for sure, I’d love to hear your thoughts – what color do you think we should paint it? Anyone else have a vanity where you get ready in the mornings?

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It’s week 3 over on Creating With the Stars, which means it is the semi-finals and only three are moving on! Go check out the amazing projects and vote for your favorite!

I mentioned a while ago that Corey and I have been working on putting together a gallery wall for above our bed. Last time we saw it, it was looking a bit sad…

We’ve slowly been acquiring more frames and prints, and it’s definitely coming together a little bit better now!

It’s still not where we want it to be – there are way too many vertical frames, so we need to add a few more horizontal ones. I may also play around a bit with the arrangement, but I think this is a good start. It’s been a very random process to put it all together – we started with just three or four prints that we already had laying around and hung them in an arrangement that we liked. Then, as we slowly bought more we just added to the arrangement until we got here. Doing it slowly like this meant that we sometimes had a super lopsided gallery wall, but we just pushed through and now it’s looking a little more filled in. Like I said, we still need to work on it a bit, and we’d like for it to eventually spill over the sides and go to the edges of our nightstands, but this is a good start!

I like how this little arrangement has a decidedly “nature-y” theme, and I think it goes well with the natural feel of our bedding too. I’m also loving the random, eclectic feel it has going on – it makes the whole room look a little less “put together” and a little more cozy and collected, which is a good thing in my mind.

Anyone else been slowly building a gallery wall? I’m hoping we can finish this one off soon!

 

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If there was a theme to our Christmas gifts (other than the Dr. Who one I already shared!), it was definitely ceramic animals. I already spilled the details on our beautiful faux deer head in the living room, and I gave you a sneak peek of a couple others right after Christmas.

I’m telling you, our house is starting to feel like a straight up zoo. And I love it.

We finally got around to hanging up the other wall-mounted animals that I got this year, and it turned a little corner of our room from a nondescript area to a fun and quirky vignette that never fails to make me smile.

I know, I know. A giant yellow turtle shell and a rhino head hanging on the wall of a bedroom isn’t for everyone. But it’s definitely for us. It was kind of unintentional for both of these guys to end up in the same corner in our bedroom, but we didn’t have any other ideas on where they should go, so we figured it wouldn’t hurt to group ‘em together for now until we find a better spot. But I kind of love it and we may just end up leaving them there forever.

I’ve had that rhino (from Z Gallerie) on my wish list for quite some time now and no one has got it for me (maybe because asking for a faux rhino head as a gift is considered a bit strange?), so I was very surprised to open it up on Christmas. And I originally wanted the white turtle shell (which is from the Nate Berkus collection at Target), but I fell in love with the yellow when I saw it and I like that it’s a bit more unique and probably isn’t the same one that everyone else got (the white one seemed to be in high demand).

I’m pretty happy with how we spruced up this corner of the room, and I love that it feels a little more complete and a little less like we just tossed some furniture over there and called it a day. Plus, who doesn’t love a good faux animal head in their bedroom? Just me?

Anyone else adding some quirky charm to your bedroom lately?

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Alternate titles for this post:

• Furniture Jenga
• Why Won’t All My Furniture Fit in My Room?
• We Were Super Excited About This Chair, Then We Realized It DOESN’T FIT
• How To Squeeze More Furniture Than Necessary Into Your Bedroom

Can you sense the frustration?

Let me back up and explain.

A few weeks ago, when I took you on a quick tour of my mother-in-law’s house, I mentioned that there was a pretty, light blue chair in her master bedroom that she had promised to us in the near future. Corey & I have been in love with that chair for quite a while now, and we’ve been itching to get our hands on it ever since she mentioned that she had plans to get rid of it.

So, you can imagine our excitement last week when she left a message on Corey’s phone letting him know that she dropped it off in our garage while we were at work. We couldn’t wait to get it in our room – and we already had the perfect set-up for where it would go all planned out in our heads.

As soon as we had a few spare minutes to do some furniture rearranging, we carried the chair upstairs and excitedly got to work. The plan was to take this dresser that sits in a corner of the room:

(Apparently I don’t have a better photo of this dresser from before – oops!)

And move it to underneath the television (which is currently what could easily compete for the most-embarrassingly-ugly-spot-in-our house).

Then, we’d plop the chair in the corner, maybe add a cute table, and call it a day.

We pulled the dresser out of the way and put the chair in place – looked good! We agreed that it needed a table, so we started playing around with some options. First, we tried the most obvious solution – the white sewing table that had been under the television.

(Note: Please excuse the quality of the photos in this post. They were all taken on Sunday afternoon, and I forgot how the time change would affect my lighting conditions! Also, you’ll see in the rest of the photos that the room is very messy…I was about to wash the sheets, so, um, yeah. Our room isn’t always clean – welcome to reality!)

Yeah, it didn’t work. The table was way too tall, way too large, and just didn’t look quite right. So, not an option.

Next up we tried one of our bedside tables. We’ve been contemplating replacing them (we still love the look, but they’re a bit small for us), and they’re a perfect size for this little nook, so we figured it could be perfect.

Only, as soon as I got it in place I felt like I had been transported into my grandmother’s house. Having two pieces right next to each other with such vintage-y lines (the chair and the nightstand) just wasn’t working for us, so that option was out too.

Next up? The turquoise table that used to live next to our couch.

It worked (as long as we painted it a different color, of course), but I still wanted something a little more modern. It was definitely the best of our options so far, and I began to think of some fun options for painting it (white with gold dipped legs?), so I thought it might be the right solution.

Just for good measure, I decided to see what our little laundry basket would look like over there – it would bring in some wood tones and some new textures – and I wanted to make sure I looked at all of my options before making a decision!

I liked the wood tone and texture, but it definitely wasn’t the right combo.

So, with the chair corner somewhat figured out, I moved my attention to the dresser.

And that’s where the problems began.

I put the dresser where we had planned on putting it (under the television) and while it looked fine from the front…

We had a problem from the side.

This is the view that you would see immediately upon walking into our master bedroom. Definitely not welcoming. We could possibly get past the dresser-in-your-face when walking in the room, but in addition to that we had the major problem of how far it stuck out from the wall because of the outlet right behind it that has a power strip plugged into it. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but it’s away from the wall by a good two or three inches, which looked seriously awkward in person.

Not. Gonna. Work.

I was determined to have the chair in that corner, though, so I needed to come up with a better place for the dresser. I sat in the room and stared at it for what felt like forever, and I just couldn’t come up with a good solution. I tried it by our bed…

…and it actually didn’t look awful, but it was a bit awkward to have a nightstand on one side and a tall dresser on the other, and it wasn’t very functional (I actually use my nightstand, so getting rid of it wouldn’t be great).

There really wasn’t any other good place to put it (I wanted to put it in the trash can at this point, but since it’s full of my clothes that wasn’t really a viable option), so I tried putting it back in the corner with the chair.

It actually looked pretty cute from the front…

But when you went back to the entering-the-room viewpoint, it just looked strange and awkward.

At this point, I was completely out of ideas, so I just gave up.

No, I didn’t throw the chair back in the garage and pretend it doesn’t exist (although, I seriously contemplated that option). I decided that maybe this particular corner of the room wouldn’t work for the chair, and I decided to try it somewhere else.

The only other viable option in our room currently for the chair was the corner next to my side of the bed. It’s a bit cramped, and it’s next to my bedside table so there’s a tiny bit of the grandma vibe, but the super modern bed and accessories cancel it out enough to make me happy.

And, of course, the dresser is just going to stay in its little corner where it doesn’t have to worry about playing nice with the rest of the room. But, I figured since I was already moving it around I would shift it so that it sat flush against the wall rather than being set at a diagonal. It had been bothering me ever since we brought the full-length mirror up to the bedroom, and I thought I’d like it much better if it wasn’t sitting at an angle. And I was right.

Oh, and while I was at it, I decided I should probably go ahead and make the bed so you can see some true “after” photos.

No, it’s not a perfect solution. Yes, it’s a little cramped. Will it stay like this forever? Absolutely not. Corey and I have plans to eventually replace both of the dressers in our room with very different pieces, so in the long run the chair probably will end up in that corner. It’s just not ready to go there yet. And, honestly, I love the chair enough that for now it can hang out in a slightly-wrong-for-it space while we wait until we can fit it into that right space. That’s the nature of fixing up your house, no? Sometimes things are messy, and awkward, and not perfect, but we’re always working towards making it just a little better!

Do you have any rooms in your house with too much furniture in them? Anyone else have an insane urge to throw some furniture out the window this weekend?

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